Cottage Roads ° james potter

-vi. a proposal

"Potions used to be fun," Claire whined.

"It still can be," Riley said, giving her a suggestive look.

"Do not get my hopes up, Riley," Claire warned. When they entered the classroom, many students hadn't settled down yet due to it being minutes until the class was to actually begin. James sat at Sirius Black's desk, chatting with him and not noticing Claire's gaze on him. She walked past them and towards their own shared table where she began to settle down herself.

She took out her books and quill and began to flip through the pages, looking for something to grasp her interest. Of course, nothing did so she closed it and pushed it aside. She rested her head in her hand and stared off into space, letting her mind wander.

"Hello," a familiar voice greeted. She turned and looked over at a certain hazel-eyed boy making her cheeks begin to heat up. Oh god, she thought.

"He- ahem, Hello," She tried. He smiled back.

"Good afternoon," Slughorn said, silencing the class. It was a good fifteen minutes of the old man explaining something that Claire was too distracted to listen to until he finally let them proceed with the assignment.

"I can go get the worksheets," James offered, standing up and joining the other half of the class that was retrieving the papers.

Claire who had no idea as to what he was talking about, whisper shouted Hannah's name to get her attention. "Hannah." The girl looked up at her and nodded in greeting. "This is partner work?"

"Were you not paying attention? Yes," Hannah confirmed, rolling her eyes and turning to Remus who had returned with their work.

"Here you go," James said, returning only moments later and passing the worksheet towards her.

"Thank you," she responded with, not looking up at him. There was a moment of silence consisting of her conscience scolding her for not paying attention. "Um," she began, making him look up at her. "I wasn't listening, so do you know what we're doing?"

He snickered and proceeded to explain the task at hand. "Seems easy enough," he finished. Claire who was a bit preoccupied with staring at his face nodded in response and pretended to fully understand what he had said.

They worked together peacefully with Claire trying to reduce the number of questions she was asking so she wouldn't come off as a complete idiot. When they had reached the end of the worksheet and Claire was just now wrapping up her response, James had taken it upon himself to speak up.

"Claire," he began. Claire looked up at him and immediately took notice of the slightly nervous expression on his face. "Well, um, I know we aren't too close or anything, but I'd consider us acquaintances, right?"

She nodded, "I suppose."

"So, I've been thinking for a while now- well not really a while, more like since yesterday, but anyway, you know I like Evans-"

"How could I forget?" she muttered.

"Ha, yeah well, I was wondering if maybe we could be a thing and you know, act like we're actually together and maybe Evans will-"