The Chaser and the Keeper (A HP Next Gen Story)

32 ► Returning

James sprinted back into the common room. It was now around 1 in the morning and he hadn't expected to find anyone in the common room still. However, sitting in chairs by the fire place, James saw Fred and Louis waiting for him. Upon hearing him enter, they turned their attention towards him.

"James, if you really want to get Kristen, then going out late at night to meet other girls isn't the best idea," Fred pointed out, disappointed that his friend had given up.

"It'd be better to just ask her out," Louis added.

"I wasn't out with other girls," James argued.

"Then what the bloody hell were you doing at this hour? Taking a leisurely stroll around the castle?" Fred asked.

"No, I was with her!"

Fred and Louis looked stunned. This had definitely not been the answer they had been suspecting.

"You were hanging out with Kristen Wood at one in the morning?" Louis asked.

"I never pegged her for that kind of person," Fred added.

"We weren't snogging or shagging!" James protested, "She was showing me the Chamber of Secrets!"

"What is that? A place where people get really drunk and spill all their secrets?"

"Honestly, you two need to pay more attention in History of Magic," Louis stated, "The Chamber of Secrets is where Salazar Slytherin stored a Basilisk and where Uncle Harry saved Aunt Ginny and destroyed Tom Riddle's diary, which later turned out to be a Horcrux."

"Yeah, that's pretty much how Kristen explained it," James agreed.

"So you snuck out in the middle of the night to take an educational field trip?" Fred asked, "That is rather lame if you ask me. Did anything remotely interesting happen?"

James's cheeks turned red and his cousins knew that something had definitely happened in the chamber.

"I think Kristen fancies me. She seemed to get quite jealous when Moaning Myrtle was flirting with me," James started.

His cousins roared with laughter. Why would anyone get jealous of Moaning Myrtle? That was absolutely ridiculous!

"Later, when we were in the chamber, I kissed her," James finished.

"Did she kiss you back?" Louis asked.

"Yeah, she did, but then I realized that Andrew was going to kill me so I kind of sprinted out of there."

"You kissed her and then left her alone in the Chamber of Secrets?" Fred asked, "That's probably the stupidest thing you've ever done!"

"I'd go with second stupidest, considering he did orchestrate that quidditch catastrophe last spring," Louis argued.

James rolled his eyes. It'd been almost a year since that happened, and yet people still brought it up all the time. He understood how stupid he had been. Couldn't everyone just forget about it and move on?

"James, if you want to be with her, kissing and running is probably not the best approach," Louis pointed out.

"Especially after what Renolds did to her back in December. She probably thinks that she's a terrible kisser or something," Fred added.

James was quiet for a minute. He really should have planned that out better. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. What if Andrew had been right? What if he had hurt her more, by ditching her in the Chamber of Secrets, than Joey Renolds ever could? James didn't think he could forgive himself if that was the case.

"Oh damn it!" James exclaimed, remembering something, "I left the invisibility cloak in the Chamber!"

"Kristen probably has it," Fred stated, "I wouldn't expect to get either of them back, her or the cloak."

***

Kristen walked into her dorm to find all three of her room mates waiting up for her.

"Where have you been?" Samantha asked.

"In the Chamber of Secrets," Kristen replied honestly.

Everyone looked at her like she was crazy. It was hardly the place they had expected her to say, but they could tell that she wasn't lying.

"What the bloody hell were you doing in the Chamber of Secrets?" Kailey asked, "How the hell did you even get down there?"

"Well, I've been tutoring James Potter lately, and after learning about it, he wanted to go down there. So I told him if he could find a way to learn Parseltongue that I would go with him," Kristen explained, "He listened to some of his dad's old recordings and apparently on one of them he was speaking in Parseltongue."

"What did it look like down there?" Kim asked.

"There were tons of snakes all over the place. It's quite obvious that Slytherin built the place."

The four girls discussed the Chamber for a while. Finally, Kailey couldn't stand waiting anymore and asked the question that had been on her, Kim, and Samantha's mind since the start of the conversation.

"So did anything happen between you and James down there?" Kailey asked.

Kristen blushed and her friends could tell that something definitely had happened down there.

"He, um, kissed me," she mumbled.

"Did you kiss him back?" Kim asked.

Kristen nodded, her cheeks growing redder.

"Did he ask you to be his girlfriend?" Samantha asked.

"No," Kristen replied, slightly annoyed, "He sprinted out of the Chamber, leaving me standing here. He didn't even bother to grab his freaking invisibility cloak!"

Kristen placed the cloak on her bed.

"Do you know why he sprinted out of there?" Kailey asked.

"I heard him say something along the lines of 'Andrew is going to kill me'. I think my brother has James scared for his life!" Kristen replied.

"What are you going to do?" Samantha asked.

Kristen thought about this for a moment. There were a lot of possible things she could do. It was hard to pick just one.

"I think I'm going to hold on to this cloak. If he wants it, he can come talk to me," Kristen decided, "Also, I believe that I'll be having a conversation with my brother."

With that Kristen closed the curtains around her bed and tried to sleep. However, sleep evaded her for several hours. That damn James Potter had really messed with her.