She Said What?

Chapter 5: I Watch Quidditch Try Outs

A/N: This chapter should be nice and easy – Quidditch try-outs and James musings – and the next should be full of the general nonsense in a teenage girl's life, plus a James scene. Chapter 7 should make you guys pretty happy because it's predominantly LJ development.

I know, I know, you want romance and you want it now; but I am a loser when it comes to pacing and I insist that nothing major should happen to start, because the year is still pretty new. Plus, there's more to life than a love story. This diary isn't just about James – it's about seventh year in general. That means I can focus on other stuff too.

Rant over. Here's the chapter. Cheers!
Xx

September 16

Morning Check:
Today is the first official day of checking up on my goals, because I just remembered having them last night. Right now, I am focusing on waking up on time.

This morning was moderate. I did get to class on time, but it was close, because Livvy forgot my portrait's password and Alice went off to the library to do homework, which Livvy was not aware of. She got in there eventually, though, and I got to Charms with ten seconds to spare. I will need to work on that.

Livvy wrote my password inside her Transfiguration textbook so she won't forget again. She has sworn no one will steal it to stalk my dormitory.

3:30 PM
Status: Thoughtful

It's the sixteenth of September today, which means James's Quidditch try-outs are this afternoon, after class. He had invited me, but I wasn't actually going to go. I ended up having to go anyway, though, because Livvy wanted to try for her spot as Keeper (she's been Keeper since third year) and she begged us to come cheer her on. Alice and I had no choice once she used those puppy-brown eyes on us.

For once, it's a nice, late-summery day outside. The wind is present, but it's not tousling my hair as much as usual. I can write in here without having the pages flapping all over the place. Well, they're still flapping, but it's not too bad. According to Livvy, these are perfect conditions for flying and I trust her as the Quidditch expert.

At the moment, there's not much going on. Alice is ignoring us all in favor of Jeremy from Potions, because she needs help with her homework and she couldn't understand it when I tried to explain it. I'm up here on the stands, of course, and Livvy is waiting for her try-out. She is hanging back on the side, watching the Beaters fly. Her turn comes afterwards.

James is sitting on the scoreboard near the teachers section of the stands. He's got a clipboard in his hands. You know someone's in business when he's got a clipboard. He's watching the Beaters with a crease between his eyebrows, totally dead serious. He's writing something down with an enormous eagle-feather quill. That makes two of us, I guess. But he's not writing about me and I'm writing about him.

I dunno why I'm writing about him, to be honest. It feels weird to me, but also not-weird. Weird because I've never been close to him and don't think I ever will be, but not-weird because I've known him forever and he's a bit of a fixture in my life. He's one of those people that I have a significant running history with and I dunno...it's easy writing about him. There's plenty to say.

I met him in first year. Self-explanatory. But I have to say it, because there are lots of people that I'm friends with now that I wasn't friends with in first year – Livvy is actually one of them. James established himself as a person to watch very early on and I did, I watched, and I'm not sure yet whether or not I am happy about that. It's been a strange, complicated, multi-layered ride to get where we are now.

In first year, I was indifferent but a little opposed to him. In second year, I knew him better and I found him morbidly interesting. I ended up with an enormous crush on him for a few months – you know, the kind where you try to sit near him in class, talk to his friends in the hopes he'll talk to you too, bring him up in everyday conversation, doodle his name and sigh about him to your friends. Alice, my confidant, told me that we looked good together and I ought to ask him out. I never had the guts to, much to her displeasure.

I got over the crush pretty fast, though, in third year. Why? Because it was in third year that James Potter discovered that I was indeed a living, breathing young lady with unusual hair and female sex organs. He began including me in his group of female fan-girls and teased me all the time, about my nose and my boobs and how small my hands are.

Needless to say, I was disillusioned to his charms very, very quickly after that.

Unfortunately for me, though, Alice was not and insists to this day (as witnessed on my first night back) that we have chemistry. She maintains that we're cute together. I don't know how she can possibly think this, after all he put me through in third, fourth, and fifth year. I mean, she watched him give me water-squirting flowers and accidentally throw rat spleens in my face and try to grope my arse. She watched it all happen! She watched him humiliate me, bother me to the point where I would be within my rights to report him for harassment. And yet, she never lost faith in us.

I lost faith in us two years ago, on a bright summer's day in early June. It was the day Severus called me a Mudblood and disconnected our childhood bond, the day I took an exam I got an O on, the day I said some things I didn't consider to be so hurtful until the day after. It wasn't supposed to be such a monumental day in my life, but that's what it was and I find that the ripples settling today were started by a stone thrown that one silly afternoon.

The fact of the matter is, James and I fell apart from then on. He was quiet, quieter than I'd ever seen him, in the days that followed. Instead of trying to win a hug from me like usual on the last morning, he gave me an acknowledging nod and walked right past me. All summer, I never forgot that look on his face and I must have dissected it a million times over, but never understood it.

In sixth year, when I saw him again, he was a whole different person, both him and Sirius. It's said that Sirius had a falling out with his family and James was the one to take him in, save him. It's said that James was having issues with his own family and someone finally cracked down on him, made him think about his future.

I don't know if any of this is true. Neither James nor Sirius talk about it with anyone. But it makes sense, because James went from absolute clown to the average, funny guy in class. His pranking went down, way down, and although he continued to pursue girls, he left me alone. He joked, of course, because that's an irrepressible part of his character, and he teased me still, but it wasn't like old times. Not at all. And that's kind of where the bulk of our story ended, leaving us here, in seventh year, stuck together being Heads.

Watching him now, talking to Tom White about something, he seems harmless. Ordinary. You don't think about him that much. But when you're me, all sorts of things come to mind, looking at that face, that mad soul encased in that body.

I remember how he talked about me when he thought I wasn't listening, how he paid people a Knut to tell him a good joke, how he almost cried the day his first-year girlfriend (Tristan Dristler) dumped him in favor of someone else. I remember when, during one of his Quidditch celebration parties, he conned a dance out of me and told me he fancied me.

I remember good things (because contrary to popular belief, he wasn't all bad around me) and I remember things that annoyed me. There are some of the former and many of the latter. There are some I'm not decided on.

I'm not bitter about any of it. We calmed down eventually, stopped picking quite so many fights and recognized our abundant differences. I don't regret a lot of it. I just want this year to go smoothly so we don't leave hating each other or anything.

Well, now it's time for Livvy to try out. She's getting on her broom. I'd better pry Alice away from Jeremy and go support her – Livvy was kind of nervous this morning and would probably appreciate her best friends screaming her loveliness from the stands.

Until later, then.

A/N: This was quite short. I hope the next one won't be. The one after shouldn't be. Please review anyway?