attached | james potter

seventeen: a deal with the devil

Chapter Seventeen

James Potter was missing.

Well... not exactly.

He hadn't been kidnapped or murdered or anything. He just.... wasn't present at the moment. Nobody seemed puzzled or anxious over his absence. It wasn't as if the whole school was in an uproar just because he hadn't turned up for breakfast. Nobody seemed to actually notice.

Except one person.

Brooklyn bit her lip absent-mindedly as her gaze swept down the Gryffindor table once again. She had only been there for thirty minutes, and yet, she must've looked at least a thousand times. The messy black head of hair was simply nowhere to be found.

She glanced over at the marauders again, noting that James still hadn't joined them. The three boys were eating and talking jovially like nothing was wrong, and she admittedly found it odd that their ringleader was nowhere in sight.

But it wasn't like she cared.

Right?

Maybe she did.

A little. Just a teensy bit.

To be honest, she was starting to dislike him less (and if she really was being honest, she was starting to like him a lot more too). She rarely felt the urge to yell at him, and she actually enjoyed his company. She didn't even mind his constant flirting as much. His annoyingly confident charm was truthfully rather endearing. There was also the tiny fact that he seemed to be getting more and more inexplicably attractive by the days.

The laughing image of James Potter unwillingly cropped up in her mind for the millionth time that morning. With silky, disorderly coal-black hair, a chiselled face and michevious eyes, he was the perfect balance of mature suavity and youthful cheekiness.

Dammit, she swore in her mind. She was starting to sound like one of those girls. The girls she swore she would never be, back in second year (when he'd officially decided to make it his hobby and personal mission to annoy her).

She was turning into one of the dreamy-eyed members of James Potter's much-too-large-for-his-ego fan club.

"Brook?" A snap of fingers in front of her face forced her out of her daydreams. Marlene was staring at her oddly. "You spaced out for a moment there. Everything okay?"

"Um... Yeah." Brooklyn nodded, glancing back down at her breakfast. She could almost picture the infuriating smirk on James' face as his voice echoed in her mind, 'Thinking about me, Jones?'

"Shut up," she mumbled to herself. This time, it was Lily who gave her a strange look. "What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing." She couldn't take it anymore. She stood up slowly, turning to the girls. "I'm going to go over to the marauders for a while. I'll be right back."