More Than That

Chapter 6

"Do you just want to come over to mine after dinner?" George asked.

Sage and George were in Care of Magical Creatures, the only class other than herbology that she shared with upperclassmen. It wasn't standard for a fifth year to be in the advanced class, but Mcgonnagal had agreed to level Sage up a couple of years because she was above average in the classes.

Hagrid had just told them that they had a new research assignment - learning the origins and evolution of a creature of their choice - and George had asked Sage to be his partner for it.

"Why can't we just go to the library?" Sage asked as she lifted her bag onto her shoulder and started to walk back towards the castle, seeing that class had been held in the magical forest that day.

George sped up to walk next to her, also carrying a book bag over his shoulder. "Because the library's boring. Pince is always shushing me whenever I do anything," he complained.

Sage chuckled and shook her head, "Maybe if you would actually do your homework you wouldn't have a problem."

George rolled his eyes. "So can we go back to mine or not?".

"Yeah, sure," she said as they approached the castle doors.

Sage knew that Fred would probably be there, which was something that really shouldn't have made her nervous. She had been avoiding him for the last couple of days, and she wasn't positive why she felt the need to. She didn't know if it was because she was scared that he would continue more of his antics or if she was scared of her own confusing feelings towards him, she had just felt that it would be easier to stay away.

It wasn't that she was having feelings for him per se, she just hadn't thought that a few light touches and flirtatious comments could affect her as much as they did and it took her by surprise.

She had always had strong feelings towards him - but it was always those of anger and annoyance. Never anything else. She knew that he was attractive, had always heard other girls her age talking about him, but it had never really had an effect on her up until this point. It was a new weakness and it scared her.

She was just going to have to suck it up and do the project with his twin though. She was going to have to push whatever thoughts that were swimming in her head away.

At quidditch practice that afternoon it was announced that Oliver was sick and wouldn't be able to direct their practice so the duty fell on the oldest players on the team: the seventh years. Just to Sage's luck, the only seventh years on the team that year were the twins, leaving them to co-lead the drills and scrimmages.

George ended up directing everyone to pick a partner and run a few of the team's typical drills that everyone was familiar with.

Sage and Ginny grabbed their brooms and a quaffle and made their way to the opposite end of the field, rolling their eyes and complaining about how they didn't want to take orders from Ginny's older brothers as they went.

They got on their brooms and started passing the quaffle back and forth, throwing some more difficult catches and practicing like they normally did, but they soon started goofing around and not taking the drills too seriously. They saw it as a free day, like when you have a substitute teaching your class and you don't actually have to do the work.

Sage had flown over to Ginny to chase her and try to push her off her broom, Ginny having said something to piss her off when Fred came over to their side of the field.

"This looks like good practice for our games!" he yelled up at them right as Sage made a move to shove Ginny from mid-air. "Totally legal!".

Ginny and Sage separated, each muttering an unconvincing 'sorry' and moving back to their positions.