𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐬 | niki

24 | his motivation

After marking both of our papers whilst Niki plays mobile games, my eyes widen in shock when I calculate our scores.

"Niki, you've got to be kidding me." I gasp and he looks up from his game.

"What happened?"

"You scored so highly oh my gosh!" I exclaim and his face brightens in excitement.

"Seriously!?" He gets up and moves to my side of the table and looks down at his percentage. "85 percent!?"

"No, that's mine silly." I laugh. "You got 62 percent!"

He stands up straight with his hands on his hips looking as proud as ever, but also very surprised himself which makes me giggle.

"What can I say, I'm an academic weapon." He tells me and I nod.

"For sure, for sure." I laugh. "How did you manage to pull this off? Usually you'd barely scrape 30 percent."

"Well..." he starts, taking a seat beside me. "Since we stopped these study sessions for a while, I've been trying to revise on my own." He explains, looking kind of embarrassed as I sit there in shock. "I knew that if I scored badly in these coming exams you'd get questioned by McGonagall and it wouldn't look good for your Head Girl application."

He scratches the back of his neck and looks away from me, looking extremely shy.

"Awww, Niki." I shove him a little. "I never knew you could be so considerate. I'm proud of you."

"You are?" He asks, still not looking at me but fiddling with his pen.

"Yep, very proud." I nod, tapping his shoulder. "I guess you don't need me then." I sigh. "If you can score highly like this without my help, then what am I here for?"

"No, no, no. Trust me, I really do need you." He tells me and my stomach flips, even though he just means he needs me as a tutor. "You're the only thing that motivates me to actually revise."

I just pause and gaze at him as he explains, a soft smile forming on my face and he slowly turns to look at me, noticing me staring and his ears turn red as a smile creeps on his face too.

"What?" He says nervously.

"Nothing." I shrug. "Shall we continue?"

He nods and I get started on explaining to him the questions he got wrong as he listens closely to everything I'm saying.

***

"So, did I teach alright today?" I ask Niki as we leave the library, walking through the empty castle corridors to return to our own house chambers.

"Meh, you were okay." He shrugs and I nudge into him as we're walking.

"I need you to keep getting scores like that Niki. I know you can do even better." I say to him and he smiles.

"I doubt it, it was probably a one off."

"We'll do another mock paper tomorrow and then we'll be the judge of tha-" he suddenly cuts me off mid speech and stops in his tracks as I look up at him confused.

"Can you hear that?" He whispers and I gulp, hearing faint voices around the corner.

"Niki we can't be seen together." I tell him, becoming panicked.

"Oh shit yeah." He says, thinking about what we should do.

We see a shadow approaching from around the corner and in a split second, I feel his arm around my waist, dragging me into some sort of tiny room, before shutting the door and trapping us both inside.