"At least let me help you there with your hand." Harry reached for my hand again. I pull it away from him. "Oh come on, Gab." He says impatiently.
"What are you even going to do? It's not like you know a spell for it." I retort, I can tell that I'm getting on his nerves by the way he keeps clenching his jaw.
"I just want to make sure you're ok!" He raises his voice at me a little.
"Well you kind of answered that question when you decided I was too much of a burden to stay in a relationship with." I snap back. I have been trying to ignore my throbbing hand and keep my focus on the conversation.
"I never said you were a burden."
"You didn't have to. But that's beside the point, we're supposed to be talking about tonight. why did you do that, Harry?" I ask. "We both know it was wrong."
"I don't know, I guess the potion got to me. I still don't need a relationship and I don't even know if I like you like that anymore." He says.
"That's not true." I start "It's liquid luck not liquid lies. Don't try and act like that wasn't already on your mind." I say boldly.
He visibly swallows then stares at my hand. I look down at it again but it hasn't changed. So I don't understand why he's still looking at it. "What?" I ask rudely. Then it hits me, I'm still wearing the ring. I had almost forgotten, it's just become a part of me. I never took it off. "Do you want it back? Is that why you can't stop staring at it?" I ask.
"No."
"Then stop drawing attention." I fire back.
"I can't." He says.
"Well why not?" I ask impatiently.
"You know, I never stopped loving you, Gab. It killed me to break your heart like that and I've kicked myself every single day because of it. You've said that you don't trust me as much anymore. I'm scared, I really am because I don't want anybody else to know you the way I do because you are so special to me. I look for you in every room I walk into. I would do anything and everything for you to forgive me. So no I don't want the ring back, I don't want it to even cross your mind that you would have to take it off."
All of my anger melts away into pure relief and joy. I'm not going to be able to top, or even come close to what he just said about me so I just blurt out the first thing that comes to my mind.
"I owe Ginny 5 Galleons." I say.
"What?" He asks.
"She bet me 5 Galleons that you still loved me, I didn't believe her. She was right, and this may be the first and only time I'm happy to admit she was right about something." I say as I try and hold back the millions of emotions exploding inside of me.
"So you don't hate me?" He asks.
"Harry James Potter, how could I ever hate you? That's just rubbish."
"A lot of people hate me, Gab. I wouldn't be surprised if you got added to the long list." He says. "Whatever happened to this being the best year of our lives?" He sighs.
"Life screwed us over. It's a recurring problem for the two of us." I say.
"There's a word for how I feel right now, maybe you could think of it. It's like when you-"
"Naive." I knew exactly what he was going to say before he could say it because I've felt it for a while now.
"Yeah." He says.
"What time is it?" I ask.
"I don't know maybe 1:30 ish." He says.
"Well, you only live once. Might as well start now." I say before standing up. "I don't know if you remember but a while back, you said we would get a night just the two of us and that never happened obviously so nows the time." I say. His smile widens as he jumps up and grabs my hand that has some dried blood on it. He had squeezed it tight enough to make it hurt noticeably more. I think he was able to read my facial expression.
"Oh I'm sorry. Let me look at it please." He asks politely. I give him my hand to examine. "Well, genius. The thorn is still in there." He teases. It's not that I can't deal with blood, it's just when the blood is coming from my own veins I tend to get a little bit faint. I was trying to ignore it but I can't just leave the thorn in there.
"Just take it out." I say looking away.
"You look a bit pale are you ok?" He asks.
"I'm brilliant." I reply sarcastically.
"Here I'll distract you. Once in the summer before second year Dudley was being an arse so I told him I could speak to my dead parents and I would I tell them to haunt him if he didn't stop bullying me. He started crying and ran downstairs to his parents. Then I got in trouble but it was worth it." I laugh at the fact that nearly twelve year old Harry could've come up with something so witty so fast and that Dudley actually believed it. "All done." He says.
"But I didn't even feel it, you couldn't have possibly-"
He shows me the thorn that was just inside of me. It's nearly three centimeters long "I don't need to see that." I say making a disgusted face.
"Anyways, I have somewhere better than the quidditch pitch or the astronomy tower." He says.
"Oh yeah?" I ask. He nods. "Well?" I ask again.
"It's a surprise. And bring your guitar." He says. I pick it up and start to walk out of the common room with him.
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I get that the whole thing with the thorn wasn't very significant but I added it for two reasons. One, to build Gabriella's character and two, to have Harry be nice about it and try to distract her and stuff.