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"Yo Badger - don’t you have to turn that in, in like, an hour?"
Jesse and two of his friends were sprawled across three armchairs in a corner of the Hogwarts library. Half-completed homework assignments and stacks of books were scattered on the floor and across a low wooden table in the center of their small circle.
Badger looked up from his History of Magic essay, which so far consisted of maybe three full sentences. For the last twenty minutes he’d just been drawing dicks all over the parchment.
"Wha? Oh. Yeah, bro. Don’t worry, I’ll just vanish ‘em. See?"
He tapped the paper with his wand and the ink doodles disappeared, for the most part, save a couple of splotchy stains.
"Lookit that! It’s like magic!" he snorted at his own joke.
Jesse rolled his eyes.
"Way to go, genius. You still gotta like, write the thing.”
Badger yawned loudly.
"Man, don’t be all on my ass about some essay Binns ain’t even gonna look at for ten whole seconds! We’re like, two weeks into first term."
"Yeah bro, relax,” added Skinny Pete.
"Easy for you to say,” Jesse retorted. Skinny Pete could usually get passable grades even when he was barely trying. Which was probably why he was in Ravenclaw, instead of Hufflepuff like Jesse and Badger, despite his laid-back attitude towards things like studying. Some people had all the talent.
"Anyways, you guys don’t have to worry about your OWL’s this year," he went on. "I got so much homework already it’s up to my freakin ears.”
Badger laughed. “Aw, man. You’re right. Sucks for you, dude.”
Badger and Skinny Pete were both 7th years, so they’d already survived 5th year exam hell. Jesse poked at the armchair cushions with his wand, feeling sulky.
"My parents said if I don’t get at least an "Acceptable" average, they’re finally gonna disown me."
"Disown you?" said Pete, "That’s pretty harsh."
"Yeah, they’re gonna make me go live with my crazy Aunt Jenny. Who I’ve only ever met, like, once, ‘cause she married a muggle and they don’t want her to ‘be a bad influence,’ or something."
Badger had started doodling on his essay again.
"Your parents are weird, dude."
"Tell me about it," Jesse drawled, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. He let his head fall back and stared up listlessly at the high vaulted stone arcs, tracing the criss-crossing patterns with his eyes from wall to wall.
We can’t keep letting these things slide, Jesse, his mother’s voice nagged in his head. You’re old enough that we shouldn’t have to remind you to be responsible. Being a part of this family has certain expectations, and you need to start putting in the effort!
He wouldn’t be surprised if his parents sent him off to Aunt Jenny’s anyways, regardless of his grades. Ever since his little brother Jake had been born three years ago, it seemed to Jesse that his parents had slowly given up on trying to keep him in line. Like they’d decided to cut their losses, in order to do a better job with their second chance. Which was practical, he supposed. He was a rough draft - only valuable in that they could look at him to see what they’d been doing wrong, and not make the same mistakes.
"What’ve you got next?" asked Pete, snapping him out of his reverie. He sat up.
"Uh…potions. With Professor White."
"White?" piped up Badger, "Woah, good luck man. I heard he actually like, expects things.”
"I know. He already hates me," Jesse grumbled. "He made me stay late on a Friday just to copy down some stupid notes about the properties of magical funguses."
"That’s ‘fungi.’"
”Whatever, yo.”
He looked over at the library clock, and jumped.
"Shit!"
"Woah! What’s up?"
Jesse rummaged through his bag for his schedule, feeling his stomach sink. He consulted the timetable, and let out a low groan.
"Late for potions?"
"I shoulda left five minutes ago."
Swearing under his breath, he grabbed his books and took off without a backwards glance at his friends.
"Run, little man!" he heard Badger call after him, then both of them chuckling loudly, before the librarian hissed at them to keep the noise down.
Jesse wove through the rows of bookshelves towards the south exit. He glanced down for a moment to check that he had his potions textbook, and saw that thankfully he’d remembered to bring it with him before he’d come to the library. He was still looking down as he hurtled around a corner, noticing at the last second a person-shaped mass appear front of him when it shouted-
"WOAH!"
Wham!
"OW!"
"Ah! Shit! I’m so sorry!”
He’d collided almost headlong with another student. She dropped all her books, and he nearly toppled backwards onto his ass.
"Uh- geez. Sorry, my bad, yo. You okay?-"
Jesse looked up, and almost lost his breath for a moment.
She was gorgeous - the girl he'd nearly just flattened a second ago. Round hazel eyes, full lips, and striking black hair with bangs that fell neatly across her forehead. Jesse caught himself gaping and shut his mouth with a snap.
"I’ll live," the girl answered dryly. "In a hurry much?"
She was tall too. Like, intimidatingly so. Jesse straightened his back self-consciously, drawing himself up to his full five-foot four-and-a-half stature.
"Late to class…" he stammered. "I should probably…watched where I was…yeah."
He could feel his face heating up under the girl’s cool stare, and cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Don’t worry about it," she offered, fortunately not seeming angry. "Watch where you’re going next time, Speedy Gonzalez."
"Who?"
She shook her head.
"Never mind. It's a muggle thing."
She knelt down and started collecting her strewn books.
"Oh- here, I’ll help."
Jesse sat down next to her, setting his own materials side. He picked up a book laying open with its spine up, closing it gingerly.
"Looks like I just dog-eared one of the pages - uh, sorry about that."
She sighed. “Whatever. It’s a hand-me-down copy anyways.”
"Ah. That’s lucky."
He looked at the cover.
”Magical Gems and Minerals. You like…rocks?”
Beautiful mystery girl raised an eyebrow at his rather obvious attempt at an icebreaker. But she was smiling, so he mentally counted it as a win.
"You mean in general? I’ve got nothing against them." She took the book back and tucked it safely into the black leather tote bag at her side. "This is for Advanced Divination. We’re doing a section on lithomancy."
"Oh. Right."
The fuck is lithomancy?
"That’s…fortune-telling with stones," she supplied.
"Oh! Yeah, no. That’s cool."
It dawned on him then - Jesse thought he knew who this girl was: Jane Margolis. A Ravenclaw, one year his senior, if he was guessing correctly. He couldn’t be entirely sure, but he’d seen her around, hanging out with some other girls he knew to be sixth years. All he could be sure of, was that she had the prettiest, longest black hair he’d ever seen, and he kind of wanted to touch it to see if it was as silky as it looked.
But that would be a weird thing to ask.
"How about this one?"
He picked up a worn-looking journal, bound with faded red leather.
"That’s just my sketchbook."
"Yeah? Right on!" He looked at it again, curiosity piqued. "D’you mind if I…?"
"No, go ahead."
He flipped through the pages. It was filled with ink and graphite sketches of all sorts of objects - shells, crumpled flowers, a golden snitch, a crystal ball, a candelabra, a bird skull. A lot of them were colored.
"Woah! These are like, really good."
"It’s a work in progress," she said, amused at his enthusiasm.
"Where’d you find all this stuff?"
"A lot of the empty transfiguration rooms have some neat odds and ends just laying around. I like to sit there in my free time and…sketch whatever I see."
"Are you gonna be an artist?"
She shrugged.
"Maybe. Right now it’s just a hobby."
Jesse closed the journal and handed it back to her.
"Hey, I think you’d be totally awesome at it."
"Thanks." She smiled in a way that was sort of half humoring him, half genuinely pleased. All books collected, they stood up and Jesse tried not to stare as she brushed out the creases in her gray skirt.
"Anyways…" she went on, "right now I’m working on a report about notable wizarding literary figures from the 20th century. I just stopped by to check out the Parthenia Arkwright anthology.”
"Parthenium…Artwright, sure."
She looked up at him, eyebrows raised in the universal expression of ‘Really?’
"The poet?…"
"Uhh…"
"You’ve never heard of Parthenia Arkwright?”
Jesse winced apologetically.
"Er. No…"
Jesse could tell by the way her mouth drew up at the side that she was trying not to laugh. He took a calculated risk and bit his lip facetiously. “Is that…bad?”
Then she did laugh, and the sound rang through his ears like silver tinkling bells…or some shit.
She pushed on his shoulder lightly. “Boy, you need some educating.”
"Yes! Totally. You could…teach me sometime…uh, maybe?"
He hoped against hope he wasn't coming off as too desperate. To his slight amazement, though, she seemed to be following him. Her lips curled into a slight smirk and Jesse was pretty sure it was the hottest thing he'd ever seen.
"Maybe you're right. I bet you will need some extra help if you're gonna be late to class all the time."
Jesse winced. "Right. I gotta work on that..." He scratched at the back of his neck, feeling chagrined.
"Where are you going, anyways?"
"I got potions. With White."
"White?" she made a face. Jesse's eyebrows shot up, and he laughed.
"What? You don't like him?"
"He reminds me too much of my dad."
"Why, is your dad also a total hardass?"
"Ha. In a word..." She trailed off, and gave a small shrug. "But I was always crap at potions anyways, so, there's that."
"Aw, man, I'm screwed!" Jesse dragged a hand down his face dramatically, prompting another warm laugh, and he broke into an answering grin in spite of himself. He cocked his head and regarded her questioningly.
"What's up with that, yo? I thought Ravenclaws were s'posed to be good at, like, everything."
"No one's good at everything. I dunno. Art's just more my speed."
An idea sprang into Jesse's head.
"Well, uhm- hey. I actually draw too. A bit. So, we could like, y'know...compare notes."
She raised one eyebrow appraisingly, pausing for a moment while Jesse tried not to look too obviously hopeful.
"Well...I’m not doing anything Saturday. We could meet in the Great Hall for lunch. That cool?"
"Saturday- Yeah! Um…that is cool. Definitely."
"Great! It’s a plan. Oh, wait-" She suddenly narrowed her eyes uncertainly. "You’re…It’s something with a ‘J,’ am I right?…"
It took him half a second to catch on-
"Right, yeah. Jesse."
"Jesse," she said. "I’m Jane."
"Oh! I know."
"...You do?"
"-Well, I mean…" Shit. Awkward...
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve seen you around, and stuff.”
Jane smiled.
"Well, I’ll see you around on Saturday."
She brushed past him, headed towards the literature section. Jesse turned to watch her go.
"Awesome. I will see…you…Saturdayyy."
He stared until she disappeared behind one of the bookshelves, her long black hair swishing out of sight after her. He exhaled a huge puff of air, suddenly conscious that his heart was beating in his throat.
”Wow.”
Abruptly, he remembered that he was supposed to be hurrying to Professor White’s intermediate potions class. He took off towards the dungeons at a quick jog, feeling strangely lighter than he had ten minutes ago.
Maybe this year wouldn’t have to totally suck, after all.