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September 1, 1976
James and Evanna spent a long time just talking about their lives and trying to make sense of it all. But, as any human being knows, it's hard to figure out your life within the timespan of an hour.
"We should probably head back, yeah?" Evanna suggested after a moment of comfortable silence. "It seems to be getting dark."
"Yeah," James sighed as he heaved himself off the rock they were sitting on and then offered a hand to Evanna.
"A real gentleman," She said as she giggled.
He smiled. But Evanna noticed that it wasn't his usually cocky and arrogant smile. It was genuine.
"What can I say?" He said as she jumped not-so-gracefully off of the rock landing right in front of James and wobbling so he had to catch her to stabilize her, his hands landing on her waist. They found themselves quite close to each other. Evie could feel the echo of his heartbeat and the warmness of his breath, which surprisingly smelled like mint tea. "I can be a gentleman every once in a while."
"I bet you can," Evanna smiled and she suddenly started to feel her palms getting sweaty and her stomach flip over.
"C'mon, Chase," said James leading her back to the castle, not letting go of her hand.
Evanna noticed this but she didn't mind. He held her hand firmly but also in a way that implied that she was made of glass.
On the way back to the castle, James entertained her with some stories of the pranks the Marauders had excelled at completing and even some that failed epically.
"I swear to you!" he was saying as Evanna was laughing hysterically "It totally back-fired and the bucket landed on Sirius's head! Totally soaked him! Mind you Sirius was stupidly standing under the bucket as bait but- it- it still happened!"
He started laughing now and if anyone looked down at them from the clock tower they would see two sixth-year students laughing and guffawing at something totally unknown to the viewer.
The pair were wiping their eyes of tears of laughter as they were walking up the moving staircase and weren't even bothered when they moved totally off track and they had to turn back around again.
When they were outside of the Gryffindor common room James sighed and said, "Thank you for chattin' with me," Evanna smiled at him. "It really helped take my mind off of... well, ya know."
"Sure," Evanna agreed as James returned the smile. "It was fun."
James then turned around to open the Gryffindor common room door but Evanna stopped him and said, "Wait, James," he turned around with a bit of a puzzled look on his face. "Yes?"
"Well, I just wanted to know if we could ever talk like this again."
"Oh," he said softly, walking back toward her. "Of course, we can talk like this again. We bonded tonight. Let me ask you this, does this make us friends now?"
