More Than That

Chapter 31

The dining hall was filled with noise during dinner the next day but none of the happy chatter between the students made it through the haze of the cloud that had been hanging over Sage's head all day. She was officially out of her slump and had gone to all of her classes that day, but that didn't mean that she was automatically feeling better.

She was still devastated over what had happened with Fred - her heart dropped every time she remembered that it had been her who had caused him any pain - and on top of all of the confusion that she had been feeling after her conversation with Ginny, her head was a big blur.

Her friends all laughed around her at something that Ron had said, but she hadn't heard the joke so she just tightened her lips in a fake smile as she picked at her food. She wasn't all that hungry so she was just sort of pushing the food around on her plate.

Fred wasn't at dinner yet, but Sage had attended Herbology with him earlier in the day. They didn't distract each other like they normally did and the class had gone by painfully slow because of it. She had caught her eyes drifting to him a few times throughout the hour and each time that she looked at him she got a weird, tingling feeling in her stomach.

Her eyes couldn't help but focus on the way a strand of auburn hair kept falling over his forehead or the way his brows furrowed when he was writing or the way his strong, long, fingers wrapped around his quill. He had caught her staring at his hands once - she had been following a particularly prominent vein that traveled up the length of his hand - and he had smirked at her when she looked up at his eyes as if he had known the exact thoughts that had been running through her head. She'd blushed and turned back to her paper, trying to convince herself that that hadn't really happened.

So she knew that she didn't see him just as a friend, it would be impossible to after the last few months, but she was still trying to figure out exactly how she felt about him. She knew that he was in love with her, but she wasn't positive that she felt as strongly yet. She didn't want to jump into something with him when she didn't feel the same way about him as he did about her.

Like she had told Ginny the day before, she had never tried to ignore any of her feelings towards Fred. She assumed that they'd always been there underneath the surface and she hadn't noticed them, and now that she was actually paying attention things got more and more clear the longer she looked at him. She just needed to actually understand what she was feeling instead of just feeling it so that she could put it into words and tell Fred.

When she looked up from her uneaten food, she saw the very boy who was on her mind walk into the dining hall. He wasn't alone, instead followed by a girl who Sage recognized to be a Ravenclaw in the year above her. She was intimidatingly tall, slender, tan, and she had a head full of flowing, dark brown hair - she was exactly Fred's type.

The two paused at the entrance of the hall and the girl placed her hand on Fred's arm as she finished whatever it was that she was saying, leaning in close and looking as if she was telling him a joke. Fred chuckled at whatever she said, nodding and pointing his thumb towards Sage's table, obviously telling the girl that he had to go. The girl nodded and waved goodbye to him with a wink, swaying her hips as she walked away.

Sage immediately turned her gaze back to the plate in front of her when Fred turned to walk over to the Gryffindor table. She didn't want him to know that she'd been staring. Again.

She couldn't help the frown that settled on her face as Fred sat down at the table and cheerily joined the group's conversation. She just continued to poke at her food, her stomach pricking with jealousy.

The most ironic and aggravating part of the whole thing was that she had absolutely no right to be jealous, no matter what was or wasn't happening between the goddess of a Ravenclaw and Fred. She could have had him all to herself and yet she turned him down. Well, she didn't really turn him down exactly, but the gaping and stuttering that she did probably weren't seen as a great sign at the moment of his confession.