after dark || James Potter

A.D. 1:8

Lucinda's been avoiding a certain hazel-eyed messy-haired Gryffindor for about a week and a half now. Well, she wouldn't call it avoiding per se... just strategically placing herself far, far away from wherever the boy might be. Sure, she still had dinners with them twice a week, but she always made sure that she wasn't sitting across from or beside James Potter at those times. She also took extreme precautions so that they would never be left alone together.

    Honestly, she knows she's being ridiculous. It's just a stupid schoolgirl crush on one of her friends, so what? But she was never good with her emotions, and although people saw her as someone who always had everything figured out, things like this freak her the fuck out. The newfound feelings for the boy were completely foreign to her, as she never really looked twice at anyone that wasn't Sirius or Millie for the first few years of her stay at Hogwarts. Sure, she occasionally saw someone she found cute, but she didn't think much of them after that.

    Lucy also knows that one of these days everything's going to go back to normal, and that she wouldn't be as mental about this as she is presently, but for now, she'll allow herself to freak out as much as she likes. Aside from feeling awkward around the boy and fearing that he'd notice how flustered she gets around him, she reckons she also needs time alone to process her feelings. Especially if she wanted things to go back to the way they were.

    That was what led her to where she was now, actually - lying down on the carpeted floor of her usual hiding place: the Room of Requirement. Luckily, it wasn't Wednesday so Sirius wouldn't come barging in anytime to distract the brunette from her thoughts.

    James, James, James, she thinks, who would have ever thought he would be the one to render me this way?

    Well, the more she thought about it, the more it made sense, actually. James is a very easy person to fancy, really. He always had a bright smile on his face, and he really cared about the people who meant a whole lot to him - as evidenced by how he was with the boys and occasionally with her. He made sure they were constantly laughing, and he'd go to the ends of the earth just to make them smile when he felt like they needed it. Granted, it wasn't always in the best or most morally acceptable way, but the intention was there. He's smart, often effortlessly so, as he doesn't even have to do much effort to pass his classes and understand their lessons like most of them did. And don't even get her started on his quidditch skills, that spoke for itself, really.

    And she was so sure that she's only one in about give or take twenty other girls who swoon after him. He was the golden boy after all. Both him and Sirius have their own sort of fan club with girls lining up just to get even the smallest of smiles from them. Sure, he wasn't the most humble person out there (she laughed at the thought because - James Potter? Humble? Really?), but he always spreads warmth wherever he goes.

Ugh.

    Why is she even going this far with her thoughts? She shakes her head, it's just a crush, Lucy, it's not that deep. This has always been the problem with her, most times when she's alone with her thoughts she can't help but let them run free and it always leads her into a pit of overthinking - ultimately making it much worse than it actually is.

    It's not like she's going to act on it, anyway. She has no time for that, amidst all of the things that kept her busy and plagued her mind. Lucy's content with where her life was going, really, and she didn't need the troubles of teenage hormones messing things up for her. Not to mention that, as she was quite well aware, she was never too good at expressing her emotions. Even affection came with feelings of awkwardness to her, as she wasn't used to receiving nor expressing that sort of thing. Sometimes, even just hugging Millie or Sirius makes her feel weird - something she was still working on. And for her, that automatically crosses out the possibility of relationships. I'm just not built for stuff like that, she thinks. And imagining more than friendship with immature teenage boys didn't really seem all that appealing to her, so she settled that she'd admire him from a safe and comfortable distance.