The Jock and the Swot

Chapter 5

A/N: Thanks to AlbinoPeacock for posting the plunny for this story. Thanks to Fae Orabel for betaing this story! All other mistakes are mine. If you liked this (or hated it) let me know about it in a review! Find me on Tumblr at crochetawayhpff. See the gorgeous manip that Klawdee890 made for this story on Tumblr!

And major thank you to all my readers for reading, whether you reviewed or not! And especially thanks for all the baby well-wishes! She is here and she is perfect! Hoping to stick to my once a week update schedule from here on out.

Enjoy!

~0o0~

If Thorfinn looked at another book, he was going to go mad. NEWTs began on Monday, but the idea of staying cooped up inside the rest of the weekend made him feel physically ill. It had also been almost a full week since he'd last been in the company of Granger. Perhaps she would be ready for another go around. You're playing with fire, a voice whispered in his head. It sounded suspiciously like Antonin, but Thorfinn decided to ignore it. Maybe he was playing with fire, but wasn't that what one was meant to do when they were young? Play with fire. Get burned a little. Enjoy life. Thorfinn knew there was a list of witches waiting for him compiled by his mother, but he wasn't interested in any of that. Definitely not interested yet, and maybe never.

He wondered how long he could put his mother off. Years, if he was lucky. He was pretty sure he could bank on his busy Quidditch career to fend off any witches his mother had waiting in the wings.

Thorfinn was positive he'd seen Granger out by the lake recently, so that's where he went to look for her and wasn't disappointed. She was lounging under a tree with a veritable fortress of books around her. She had several open and was scribbling like mad on a roll of parchment.

"You're still revising?" Thorfinn said by way of greeting. "If you don't know it by now..." He trailed off as she continued scribbling, acting for all the world like she hadn't heard a word he said.

He knelt down to try and get a better look at what subject she was studying for.

"I finished revising a week ago," Granger muttered suddenly, taking a slight pause in her writing and consulting one of the books.

"Then what are you doing?" Thorfinn asked, he settled next to her and peered over her shoulder. The parchment was covered in Arithmancy equations.

"Designing a spell," Granger replied absentmindedly. She brushed a lock of hair from her face and Thorfinn took a long look at her. She was in another of her sundresses, the dappled sunlight danced across her skin. She looked good enough to eat.

"Something you do often?" Thorfinn asked, still trying to make out what exactly she was trying to figure out with the Arithmancy equations. He'd taken Arithmancy for a few years but had dropped it after his OWL year.

"I hold a couple of patents. I'm hoping to secure a few more before I graduate next year." Her frantic scribbling was back in full force and Thorfinn was impressed with the fact that she seemed capable of holding a conversation and writing complex equations at the same time.

"Really? What are your patents?" Now he was truly intrigued. What sixth year held patents to spells? What kind of spells would a woman like Hermione Granger create? Surely, obscure, swotty ones, but still, the idea that she was so ambitious fascinated him. Maybe she should have been a Slytherin.

After a long moment of scribbling, Granger finally put down her quill and looked up at him. She'd been lying on her stomach, and the angle was awkward, so she half-turned over to see him. "Did you need something?" She sounded thoroughly annoyed and Thorfinn smirked.