the Horcrux Thief, james potter

xxi. a brain somehwere

By Wednesday, the night of his task for the Order they'd gotten no further than finding out the obvious—it took a lot more than Confringo to blast the Horcruxes to pieces. And now he was sitting at a booth in the pub, the Black Cat, nursing a glass of firewhiskey and staring out at the flamed spot on the wooden table when really he should've been pretending to chatter whilst being aware of his surroundings.

The Black Cat was a shabby establishment but well-frequented. Decked in simple dark oak furniture and in need of a good cleaning, but at least the staff was mildly friendly—nothing like the Leaky Cauldron though. They'd walked in the front door and found themselves a booth that could overlook the majority of the pub but still give them some sort of coverage if someone were to recognize them and deem them to be in the wrong place.

At least James was well prepared if that scenario were to happen. He had his wand, of course, but he'd been also training his grasp of magic with Amaya (though not as much lately) and he was quite confident in his ability to at least cast an Expelliarmus wandlessly—he'd tried to teach Amaya to do it with a wand, and though she looked quite pale when she grabbed the wand, she caught the hang of it in little time (though he had to bribe her to try and refrain from doing it wandlessly, because like that she'd been able to do it in seconds and had blasted him across the pitch where they were practicing).

He couldn't do more than Expelliarmus yet, but he was getting better at the sensing magic bit. Not involuntarily and not at all—at all—on the same level as Maya, because the witch was extraordinary, but he could at least try and feel for the magic in the air.

This was why he was distracted as he tried to feel the magic in his firewhiskey and yelped when Sirius shoved his elbow into his ribs.

James looked up to see three pairs of eyes looking at him in amusement. He scowled. "What?"

"What crawled up your arse and died?" Sirius asked with a laugh, "You're off."

"I'm not off. I'm focused."

"On your drink?" asked Peter.

"No," James lied. "I'm trying to listen to our surroundings."

Remus raised a skeptical brow. "And?"

"And... nothing. Not all of us have heightened hearing."

"Literally all of us do," said Sirius, and James shrugged. "Siriulsly, what's wrong?"

Instead of answering right away, James downed his entire drink. He sighed. "I kissed her."

Sirius choked on his drink and Peter's lips curled up, in what James assumed was a confused face but just came off as disgust. Remus just patted Sirius on the back as the latter gasped.

"I need clarification," said Sirius, narrowing his eyes, "When you say, kissed, do you mean—"

"I snogged her."

"And by her you mean—"

"Amaya."

"Right." Sirius downed his drink, before rolling his head as if readying himself for a fight and James was mighty confused, the lad shouldn't be this disturbed. In fact, he should be giving James advice and not looking as if he might smash his face in like an unwelcome older brother who was hardly Amaya's acquaintance. "Did she say she wanted you to kiss her?"

James stared blankly at him. "You honestly think I'd kiss her if I didn't think she wanted me to?"

Sirius blinked. "Of course not."

"What he means is," said Remus, "Why did you kiss her?"

"Because—It's Amaya. Plus, she quite literally told me to—"