The Chosen Love

The Prongs of New Beginnings

The cobbles reverberated the sound of my feet up through the cramped uneven streets of Hogsmede. It was a chilled, fresh Autumn early afternoon. The sky was a heaving, tumultuous titanium, with swollen looming clouds prodded with hues of flushed magenta. Coruscations of the discarded shells of brittle leaves were peppered among the pavements, vibrant colours of burned orange, blood-red scarlet and delicate saffron.  The skin on my face was chiselled in the scratchy dead breeze, blushing my nose a soft scarlet and prompting my eyes to stream down the sides of my cheeks which I quickly flecked away by the agile swipes of my fore-fingers.

All around me, the narrowed street breathed with the oxygen of the bustling, busy bodies swarming all around me. Sounds of excited childish squeals and thundering feet or the tinkling of shop doorbells or limp bags of goodies being torn seam from seam by grubby magical fingers. I didn't have time to mould into leisure. I was headed determinedly into HoneyDukes to purchase my favourite bag of Sherbet Lemon hard-boiled sweets before dragging myself off to the Library where I was willing myself to study for a Transfiguration test. It was ominously beginning to shadow my every free move, and considering it was Saturday I decided to spend the weekend revising before Monday's exam tripped me up. I didn't have many friends anyway. Only one. But that was alright. He meant a great deal to me, no matter what anybody else said.

From the passing shop windows I caught glimpses of my flaming hair tailing out behind me over my thickly ribbed emerald green sweater, which posed as a collared turtle-neck and paired nicely with my defined eyes. On my legs I wore darkly stained denim jeans and elegant winter boots complete with a portion of fur snared over my feet and nipping off just under the soft bend of my knee. My hands were smoothed into a pair of brown leather fingerless gloves, which I immediately began to grow distasteful towards and my top teeth sucked in my bottom lip with the effort to move my numbed purple fingers.

Smoothing my hands over the lane glass doors of HoneyDukes, I entered and welcomed the shrill of the bell as a wash of sticky, grubby heat fled over my body.
"Good Afternoon!" Brody from behind the counter greeted me, his brilliant mouth of white teeth co feasting harshly against his dark skin and tight mass of spiralled ebony curls.
"Afternoon Brody," I cheered back, moving over toward the many cabinets and colourful displays. I was just stooping over, bubbled up into an intoxication of interest at the sight of a minuscule lavender-scaled dragon weaving herself expectedly between magic fizzing chocolate eggs when another scream from the bell and a particular voice sent an unexpected and guilty thrill up through me.
I froze.
"Green looks good on you, Evans."

Closing the drawer I had pried open to inspect the issue of the little shop dragon, I stiffly straightened myself up to a standing plank and turned around to meet James Potter's magnetising blue stare. From behind the black frames of his glasses, they looked particularly enticing and icy, the frame of his tousled jet-black hair flocked over his forehead causing my heart to mis-step a few beats. He was sporting his Crimson and gold streaked casual Quidditch sweater - which I remembered smelled distinctly of a hazy wooden musk and sharp pine needles. Both his hands were plunged deep into his trouser pockets. I chanced a risky smile at him, decided to clip my visit short, grabbed my packet of Sherbet Lemon and approached Brody to pay at the counter - whose eager eyes I could see revolving from between both me and James. Does he know?
I swallow roughly as if my tongue were a bristled sheet of sandpaper, take my bag and smile again at James before walking back out past him.

The cold stuns me, yet allots my brain some few moments to recalculate and reform. With a tentative sigh, I take three steps off to the library until a familiar large hand hooks my my right arm.

"Evans, wait!" It's James. I turn and look up at him sheepishly, a fierce hot wave threatening to spill out from inside of me and steal over my porcelain features. He looks at my arm and suddenly retracts his hand, smoothly moving it to graze against the back of his head while he coolly leans back up against the entrance of the shop.

"I figured you've been avoiding me since Thursday night, and I don't want that at all, Evans." His face is intense, his presence magnetic to my tingling limbs. "Thursday night was one of the best nights out of all my seven years in Hogwarts so far, so I can't just give that up. So, are you free at all?"

I shift my weight uncomfortably and gesture to the heavy file block which is a burden in my arms.

"I don't know James...I have a test coming up on Monday..."

"So? It's Saturday!"

"I haven't revised."

"I'll help you."

I perk my eyebrows and glance curiously around me. "Where are Sirius and Remus?"

He steps inwards, eating up the space between us. His breath billowing into my face. It's scent coaxes back memories of Thursday. I close my eyes and restrain from swaying on the spot with being so overwhelmed and confused.

"I left them back at the castle. I came to see you alone. Please, Lil, I'll buy you a drink in The Three Broomsticks?"

The lull of him half saying my real name instead of throwing my surname around wins me over when I know it shouldn't. If this had of been any other year, I would have been revolted at his offer. My hackles would have risen as a normal defence mechanism against protecting Severus. But recently, it seems that our history is being diluted into nothingness and we are starting again.