give her love » james potter

30

A big O is stamped across the rubric.

I look up at Professor Jackman, my eyes are wide in surprise. But he just laughs and says, "You deserve it, Miss Pierce."

It's hard to accept the good. That's probably the funniest sentence to so many people because who doesn't love good things? I love them a lot. I really do. But it's just hard to feel like I should be getting them because there's this small part of me that never stops saying . . .

Maybe you should've been the one to die.

I let my finger trace the letter, to feel the way it sinks into the parchment because he wrote too harshly. The inks dry because it was graded a few days ago but I still hope it gets on my finger, so it feels more real.

James leans into me. "We really need to watch the movie."

The parchment get's tucked into my bag. I let out a large sigh, "I have no social life, but you? Quidditch Captain and Head Boy, you tell me when you can and I'll be there."

"I don't think it's that way," he tells me. "If you wanted to do something, I'd drop everything for you."

Maybe this is flirting, I think to myself. Or maybe it's just him being himself, James probably acts like this around everyone, another part of my says.

I bite my lip, a smile begging to show through. "No, I want you to choose. I'm terrible at making decisions."

"Do I always make the first move then?"

"Yes," I say, seriously. "Because god knows I wont do it."

We're both silent for too long. Our eyes analyzing the other then looking everywhere but eachother. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if he feels the same. I wonder if we're just gonna spend the rest of our life going around circles or will we actually stop and do something.

But class starts.

We don't bring up the moment again. Instead choosing to quietly whisper saracastic comments and chuckling when the other says a good joke. But, this time, our arms always seem to brush the others and our knees continue knocking into each others until we both decide not to move again. I feel the fibres of his trousers burning themselves into the bare parts of my legs.

Something is happening right now.

"Eat lunch with me," he whispers.

I bite my lip.

They all fit so well.

All these people at the table. They have regular seats. Inside jokes. These glances that are packed with too much feelings an outsider like me could never understand. It's all the time and history they have, it's formed a bubble of closeness I can never really fit into.

But James tries. He alwas does and that makes it worth feeling a bit extraterasstrial in this new table.

He adds some green beans and mushrooms onto my plate, after frowning at the fact I only have some bread on my plate. "Incorporate all the food groups, or I'm telling Uncle Winston."

"Snitch."

James grins.

I pretend to be mad while eating more bread.

He turns his attention back to his friends and starts laughing at some joke. I like looking at them from outside the bubble, I realise, because watching people interract is one the most fascinating things in the world. The little things that we sometimes get used to are obvious to people on the outside. The way Frank always looks at Alice after someone says something. How Remus's voice always gets louder when he's talking to the boys. Peter's laughter after every bad joke because he never likes anyone to feel bad. They're all like pieces of a puzzle.

I know who the person taking a seat beside me is, far too easily for the fact I've only talked to him twice in the last year.

"Hi, Harv," I mumble, turning my head and smiling at the familiarity of him. It brings me back to a younger version of me.

He smiles his no-teeth-showing-smile. "Hey, Ang."

"How was your day," I ask.

"Fucking shit."

"Really," I say, a chuckle coming out of my mouth. Fucking shit, was his thing. What he'd always answer to anything. It's not an inside joke, not at all, but it feels like it for the moment. "Why's that."

Harvey laughs a little. "Killed my third plant this semester. Now the professor has banned me from class for a week." He pulls out a note from the herbology professor. "I need to fix my aura because I'm harming the class."

We met in Herbology when we were fourteen. I was absolutely terrible at it which surprised everyone because my brother was a god of sorts at it. But, Harvey? 

Well his parents owned one the largest flower buisness' in the magical world. Every wedding or major event was almost always done by the Creevy's. He'd grown up with plants and everything about them just came so naturually to him. 

So we got put together as partners. Between watering and yawning during our morning classes, we become really close. Harvey was the first person I clicked with. Something about us was easy in the way it wasn't easy with anyone else. You don't meet boys like that when your fourteen. You don't even understand it much when you're that young. So I continued to date Michael Charmichael for the rest of the year and Harv would go on dates her and there.

Then summer happened. 

Michael and I broke up. 

Harvey got invited to my birthday party. We toured the garden that my mum and Eli had dedicated months over. I pointed at a Bleeding Heart and told him how it was my favourite flower this year, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box.

("My mum gets a lot of gifts from all these peope she helps," he mumbled, dropping the box in my hands and looking at the ground in embarassment. "They always just get put in her office and sort of get forgotten, but, I, uh--"

I opened it. 

It was like a snow globe, but instead of a snowman or some cabin, it was a miniture cherry blossom tree. Not some scultpure though. It was a real life plant that had been enchanted to live inside of this minitaure habitat. The smell of it slowly wafted into my nose.

"We found the senior textbook and . . ."

"You told me that you wanted to go to Kyoto and see cherry blossoms," he finished for me. "Because they're your favourite flower and you haven't even seen them in real life."

Your first real love is such an unreal feeling because everything before that doesn't seem to matter anymore. It this pure feeling because you haven't really gotten to taint it with hurt from past relationships or compare them to other people. It's a true blank slate.

Something you compare everything else with.)

He shrugs, feigning hurt. "Sad my partner didn't take it this year."

Because she wanted to avoid you for the rest of her life, I think to myself. "Schedule problems," I lie, then actually start to be honest, "I think if I had though. This year would've been different."

We both know what I mean. So we smile the way old friends do and take a step back from the entrance to each other's lives. It's still too early to be friends, we need change a bit more. Until we're completely different people because right now it'd be too easy to go back into old habits.

I let out a breath, then turn away. 

Stranded on some planet that only fits Harv and I, while we orbit the sun that's everyone else. A part me just wants him to go on about how he doesn't want any flower names for our kids because that's so overrated and me to tell him I've always loved the name Poppy. Then he'd roll his eyes and say Poppy Creevy-Pierce did sound nice.

We were too young to have been talking about kids and marriage and how we'd elope because that seemed cool to our 15 and 16 year-old-selves.