She Said What?

Chapter 42: I Find Myself out of my Depth

A/N: The next six chapters chronicle a proper love story. This chapter didn't come out exactly the way I planned it, but I had a lot of trouble getting it together; and after all that editing, my perception of the flow cannot be trusted. Therefore I now leave it to you to like/dislike/whatever.

So, cheers. You kids have fun.

(Great mood music = Gravity, Sara Bareilles.)

February 19

11:45 PM
Status: Terrified/vulnerable

If there was ever a time to be truly thankful I have a diary to vent to when things go sour, it would be now, because everything seems to be falling on top of me, a cascade of miseries poured right on my single head.

To start with the superficial, day-to-day stuff, I'm having trouble with Transfiguration lately and it's getting to a point where I'm terrified of not grasping this concept by the time the exams come around. I completely forgot I had a Herbology essay to write yesterday, so I dashed down something during lunch and got a D on it – and Sprout said that was being kind.

It also doesn't help that I'm tired, I'm cranky, I'm stressed out, and I'm feeling guilty about the Valentine's Day incident with James. Guilt, exhaustion, and crabbiness are not a good combination in my book and it's all I can do to stay conscious throughout the day. Patrolling at night doesn't help my sleeping patterns, either.

My solution to feeling miserable is either writing in here or eating like a hog – and with all the chocolate I got on my birthday, I've had ample supply of indulgence food. Now I think I'm getting fat, too, because I've been gorging almost every night and I'm freaking out enough as it is. Livvy insists I'm just the same (weight-wise), but Alice admits that there's a bit of extra malleability to my waist area, and I swear I'm going mad.

And then tonight...tonight didn't help in the least.

In fact, it made things even worse, because it opened up another avenue for me to be scared of – my relationship with James Potter.

I know, I know, the last time I wrote, we were fighting and unsure of the other's position on the matter. I get that. But tonight...like I said, it only made things worse.

Here's how it all went down.

It started off – of course – during our evening patrol. I've been unspeakably nervous about patrolling with James for the past couple of days, given how push-and-pull we can be sometimes, and yesterday's patrol was almost completely silent, save for, "Good evening" and "Good night." It was miserable, I knew, and fairly pathetic, but I didn't have the energy to change anything around. I was – and am – tired. I couldn't deal with it. And I must point out that James made no effort to change anything either, so I have to be at least a little bit in the clear.

This being said, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect tonight, but it certainly wasn't what I got.

The catalyst?

Sex.

No, I'm serious. Sex was the catalyst of the weirdness that manifested itself so fully a couple of hours ago. But allow me to explain properly before we run into any faulty conclusions.

See, near the end of our (completely silent) patrol, we passed by a cupboard that seemed considerably more active than some of the other, quiet ones we had walked by. I was kind of excited by this – nothing interesting ever happens during patrol – and I lingered by the cupboard, eyeing it closely.

"What are you doing?" asked James.

"Don't you hear this?" I put my ear to the door. "Yup, those are definitely the cheerful sounds of teenagers snogging instead of being in bed. Totally relevant."