Everyone knew that one of the worst things at Hogwarts was Snape's potions lessons. But if you were a Hufflepuff in one of his lessons then you might as well have painted a target onto your back. There was nothing Professor Snape seemed to hate more than having to teach Hufflepuffs - rumour has it that in his first year of teaching at Hogwarts, a Hufflepuff student had managed to anger him to such an extent that he had held a grudge ever since.
I had found that it was better to keep your head down during his lessons in order to minimise the chance of getting picked on. That was exactly what I was doing now; keeping my head down as I took notes on what he was saying. Snape was listing off the pros and cons of two potions that appeared to do the same thing when I felt Susan nudge me in the side.
Turning my head to look at her, I went to ask what she wanted when Snape's head snapped in our direction. We both looked quickly back down at our notes.
"Hey," Susan hisses quietly, keeping her head pointed towards her notes. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, my quill still moving across my parchment.
"What?" I asked quietly, the words barely more than a whisper. The man had the ears of a bat - he was able to hear even the quietest of whispers.
She ducked her head and nodded slightly to her left. I furrowed my eyebrows for her to see and she nodded over to her left again. Rolling my eyes I followed her gaze and tried to figure out what it was that she was trying to tell me. I leaned forward in my seat and started slightly when my eyes collided with green hues.
I kept my eyes on Potter long enough to see Weasley glance at his tablemate. Seeing Potter's attention on something else, Weasley followed Potter's gaze and saw me. Instantly a huge grin emerged on his face and he nudged Potter teasingly. Potter shoved at Weasley's arm and turned back to the front. Heat ran up Potter's neck, turning his ears a shade of red that could rival even the brightest Weasley hair. Weasley kept his eyes on me, wriggling his eyebrows. I furrowed mine in return; what in Merlin's name was going on?
My eyes picked on an all too swirling mass of black that was making its way towards Weasley. I watched as Snape crept up beside Weasley and motioned rapidly for him to turn around. He watched me in confusion. Really, being so dull was only going to get him in trouble. Finally realising what I was trying to tell him, he turned but it was too late. Weasley found himself face to face with Snape.
"Mr Weasley," Snape drawled slowly, making Weasley's eyes widen drastically. "Perhaps if it's not too much of a task you could concentrate on my lessons rather than on Mr Potter's absolutely thrilling love life?"
Weasley floundered for words to defend himself and make his punishment as low as possible, "You see Professor, I was-"
"I don't have time for your excuses Mr Weasley," Snape turned his back to Weasley and Weasley's shoulders visibly relaxed. "10 points from Gryffindor."
Before Weasley could protest, Potter's hand shot out to cover his best friend's mouth. Snape returned to the front of the classroom, sweeping his eyes across the classroom with a cold glare.
"Now if we are done speculating on the wonderful love life of our dear Mr Potter, perhaps we could return to our lesson?" A silence filled the class and I picked up my quill again, "Unless anyone has a problem with that?"
His eyes met mine and I glanced down at the parchment again. Merlin, I didn't blame Longbottom for having Snape as his boggart. The man was scary.
Thankfully Snape continued to teach the lesson and the bell tolled after five minutes to signal the end of the lesson. Five minutes might have been a short amount of time but those five minutes had been the most suffocating moments of my life. Once the bell had tolled, we had all rushed to get our things ready and go back to our common rooms.
Once we were out of the Potion's classroom and on our way to the Hufflepuff common room, Susan started talking about what had happened during the lesson.
"It was weird," she said tugging her bag further up her shoulder, "Potter had been looking at you on and off, the entire lesson."
"You're probably seeing things Susan," I said dismissively as we approached the entrance to the common room. "If anything, he was probably just dosing off into space and just happened to be dosing off whilst looking in my particular direction."
"I don't think so - it's not the first time I've seen him do it."
**********
I was on my way to meet Susan. She was waiting for me so that we could go down to Hogsmeade together. Susan had a habit of waking up extremely early and so had left the girls' dorm before I had even been awake. I knew that she would be waiting for me at the Hufflepuff table. Reaching the main part of the common room I made my way over to the boy that had waved me over.
Ernie stood up and walked alongside me as I left the common room. He was fiddling with his hands nervously.
"Just spit it out Ernie," I said in amusement. He was rarely like this.
"Do you remember the favour that I asked of you?" He asked quietly, keeping his voice down so no one heard him.
"Of course I do," I said with a roll of my eyes, "You've been pining over Susan for two years now, if I can help to end your pining then I'm fully on board."
"You're Susan's best friend," he said cautiously and I nodded. "She doesn't talk to you about people that she has crushes on."
"Not really." We approached the great hall. "Susan's the type of person to suffer her crushes in silence until they pass and then she'll casually announce that she's over the crush that we never knew she had."
"That's ... confusing."
Walking into the great hall we made our way over to the Hufflepuff table. Catching sight of Ernie and I, Susan waved us over and cleared a space for us. She wished us a good morning with a smile.
"Where should we go first?" Susan asked as I reached for the plate of eggs. I gave her a look.
"You say that as if there's a legitimate choice Su, we all know that the first thing we need to do is buy enough sweets to satisfy your sweet tooth."
"Fine," she said with a roll of her eyes, "Where should we go after going to Honeydukes?" She paused as if just remembering Ernie's presence on the table, "Are you going to be joining us today?"
"No, I've got plans," he said with a smile.
Yeah, plans to stalk us the entire trip to make sure that I fulfil my promise to him.
Once we were finished with our breakfast, we made our way to the carriages. Ernie parted ways with us when we arrived at Hogsmeade. Really, what was the point in him doing that? If Susan caught him following after us then he was on his own - I wasn't going to explain his weird behaviour in his stead.
We head straight for Honeydukes and Susan made an instant beeline for their newest display of chocolates. I hovered by the door, looking over their main display of sweets. Hearing the bell on the door chime I turned to see Ernie enter the shop, seeing me alone his eyes widened.
"Susan-"
"Relax," I said and moved past him, "I'm going to join her now."
I found her in the chocolate aisle, a bunch of chocolate packages already in her arms. She looked between the packages and I stood by her side, picking up some chocolate for myself.
"What do you think about Ernie?" I asked as I received yet another prodding look from him. Honestly.
"He's very sweet," she said, picking up another package.
"I think you should go out with him," I said bluntly, catching the mini heart attack that Ernie had at my words, from the corner from my eyes. He ducked behind a shelf to draw less attention to himself but he stumbled into a display in his haste. "The two of you would be good together."
"You think?" She asked as we made our way over to the counter to pay.
I raised an eyebrow, Susan normally shook off my matchmaking attempts. Maybe she liked him back.
"Yeah I do," I insisted when she was done paying. She stood to the side and waited for me to finish paying.
When I was finished and had collected my bag, I dropped into step beside her. We walked out of the shop to brave the cold wind.
"I don't think so," she muttered hiding the bottom of her face in her scarf, "I mean - he doesn't think of me in that way."
"Are you kidding?" I asked, pulling my scarf tighter around my neck after a particularly violent gust of wind. "The boy is completely besotted with you. He has been for the last two years Susan."
We continued on our way through Hogsmeade and didn't say another word on the subject. But, judging by the way Susan was acting, my words had gotten through to her. Just as we were about to head into another shop we stopped at a shout.
"Hey Jones!" I furrowed my eyebrows at the sound of an Irish accent calling my surname.
I looked over at Susan and she shrugged her shoulders. We turned back and faced the group of Gryffindor boys that were walking towards us.
"What Finnegan?" I asked, he was the only one with an Irish accent out of the group. My eyes scanned over the group of five boys; Finnegan, Thomas, Longbottom, Weasley and Potter.
"You look good today," he said as though those words weren't actually aimed at me.
I pursed my lips; they had interrupted my conversation with Susan to drag me into one of their stupid Gryffindor games? He looked over at Potter who seemed to be pleading at the Irish boy with his eyes. What he was pleading for, I had no idea.
"Don't you agree Harry?" Finnegan asked.
When Finnegan took his name, Potter switched the focus of his attention. He became suddenly fascinated with his shoes, his face becoming red again. Weasley, Finnegan and Thomas began to teasingly nudge and prod at Potter. I rolled my eyes at them.
I linked my arm through to Susan's and went to turn away from them when Longbottom sent us a shy smile. Returning his smile I led Susan away from them and into the shop.
"As I was saying," I said shooting the boys an irritated look from the shop window.
From the moment that school had started, Potter and his friends had acted in that way and it was extremely annoying. It didn't help that I was struggling to figure out why they were adamant on acting like that.
**********
Out of all of my classes the one I looked forward to the least was Potions. But yet it seemed to be the one that came around the most often. It seemed as though I had twice as many Potions lessons then I did of any other class. Combined.
This time Snape had decided to pair us up to complete a potion by the end of the lesson. He had decided to pair us up - not letting us choose our partners. That probably meant that he was going to pair each of us up with someone that we couldn't stand. Snape stood at the front of the class calling out the list of pairs.
"Miss Bones," Snape called out, looking over in her direction. "And Mr Macmillan."
Susan remained frozen in her seat, not believing her luck. Out of all of the pairs that had been announced so far, hers had been the nicest. Shooting me an apologetic look, she stood and turned to walk over to Ernie. She sat in the recently vacated seat beside Ernie making Ernie shrink into himself slightly. I hid a grin as I watched his reaction. Ernie managed to compose himself and gave her a smile.
"Miss Jones," Snape continued, making me pull my eyes away from Ernie. I raised my eyes to his, waiting for the lump he was going to saddle me with. "Miss Jones and...Mr Potter."
I looked over at the boy who had visibly frozen at Snape's words. Almost instantly Weasley and some of the other Gryffindor boys began to cause a fuss. Merlin, I thought letting my head hit the table softly, if they made the same sort of fuss throughout the entire lesson -
The sound of a chair scraping against the floor made me look up. I watched cautiously as Potter settled down into the chair beside me, not looking in my vague direction. The noise from the Gryffindor boys continued until Snape cleared his throat. Just like that silence fell across the classroom before Snape returned to pairing up the remaining members of the class.
When Snape was finished talking I turned to the right page in my potions textbook and glanced at the boy sitting beside me from the corner of my eye. He hadn't moved since he had sat down beside me. Rolling my eyes slightly, I looked over the recipe for the potions and pushed my chair away from the desk. He looked up at the sound and glanced in my direction before scrambling to pull out his own potions textbook.
"I'm going to get the ingredients," I said looking down at him, "Can you set up the cauldron?"
He nodded and I turned to walk away from him. I headed to the front of the class and gathered the ingredients we needed. Going back to my table, I set the ingredients down on the table. Potter was setting up the cauldron and I tied my hair up into a messy bun - I'd learnt from personal experience that hair falling or even grazing a potion could offset it completely.
"What?" I asked seeing Potter watching me. He just shook his head silently and I furrowed my eyebrows. Wasn't Potter supposed to be louder than this? "Can you cut the Asphodel root for me?"
He nodded and reached out for the knife and the ingredient. We spent the rest of the lesson working in relative silence with me occasionally telling him something that he needed to do. Potter didn't speak a word the entire time.
Once the potion had turned the right shade of pale green telling me that it was finished, I opened up one of vials for the potion. Handing Potter the vial I watched as he carefully filled the vial with the potion. Writing our names onto a piece of parchment I tied it around the vial. Taking the outstretched vial from Potter's hand I placed it on Snape's desk.
By the time that I had made it back to my seat Potter had already cast a Scourgify on the cauldron. I sat down beside him, sitting in an awkward silence.
"You're really good at potions," Potter's voice said quietly from beside me.
"Oh," I said watching him from the corner of my eye, "I was just following the instructions that's all."
"Right."
Just like that we were back into an awkward silence that lasted until the lesson ended.
The bell tolled for the end of the lesson and I rose from my seat, watching as Potter did the same. Ernie and Susan made their way over to me and the three of us left the classroom together.
"I could feel the awkward tension between the two of you from the other side of the room," Ernie said as we walked to our next lesson.
"He just wouldn't talk," I said with a roll of my eyes, "He spoke like five words to me during the entire lesson."
"He kept watching you again." Susan said quietly from between Ernie and me, "Whilst the two of you were working."
"He was probably making sure that I did everything properly."
"I don't think that's what it was." She insisted as we turned the corridor.
I shrugged but didn't go to answer her. I mean, if it was something else then I was a bound to have noticed. Especially because we were in such close proximity to one another throughout the lesson.
*********
From the moment Ernie and Susan had managed to finally get together, they had been acting so coupley that it was hard to stomach. They were a cute couple, I could admit that but seeing the people that I had spent years around acting so cutesy was just gross. But they were still the same people, still my friends except now they tended to be attached at the hands or at the mouth.
I wouldn't admit it if I was asked but I had taken to hiding out in the library to avoid the couple talk. It was a phase that most relationships went through and I would just have to wait until they passed through theirs. Looking back at the open textbook in front of me, I let out a sigh. I had been reading the double page spread for what must have been an hour now and yet it still made no sense whatsoever. Maybe Ancient Runes wasn't for me?
I looked up as Ernie settled down across from me, putting his books on the table. He was watching me closely, drumming his fingers nervously across the top of his books. When he raised his eyes to meet mine, I raised an eyebrow.
"What have you done now Macmillan?" I said shutting my textbook and pushing it to the side slightly so I could give him my full attention.
"Nothing," he insisted, raising his hands in mock surrender to show his innocence. "Really?"
"So you haven't managed to upset Susan in some way, already?" I asked suspiciously.
"No, of course I haven't!" He paused, narrowing his eyes at me slightly, "Unless I have done something without realising and she's told you about it?"
"No, you haven't done anything wrong." I let a smile appear on my lips at his evident relief, "If you haven't done anything wrong then what's the problem; why are you acting so nervous?"
"I have something to show you," He admitted as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumbled piece of parchment and put it on the table in front of him.
"What is it?" I reached across the table to pick up the parchment.
"I, um, I found it on the floor," He muttered, "I saw your name on it and read it."
I looked up cautiously, "What is it?"
"Just read it."
Straightening out the parchment to remove most of the creases, I glanced down at the paper and took in the scruffy handwriting. Looking past the handwriting I took in the actual words, once I had managed to understand what the words had said in the first place that is. Just looking at the title had be pursing my mouth in distaste.
Reasons That Harry James Potter Wants To DO a Certain Hufflepuff
AKA Miss Jones
AKA The Future Mrs Potter
AKA The Future Mother of His Children
I didn't even bother to look past the title. Scrunching the paper back up, I looked up at the boy sat across from me.
"Why did you show me this?"
"Would you rather I didn't?" He asked back.
"No," I admitted and pushed my chair from the table. Rising to my feet I squashed the feelings of outrage that were forming in the pit of my stomach. "Where is he?"
"I don't think you should-"
"Where is he?" I ground out.
Ernie, smartly, answered me the second time and I shoved the parchment into my pocket and gathered all of my things. Speeding out of the library I headed towards the Gryffindor common room as per Ernie's instructions. The 'Golden Trio' were making their way towards the entrance of their common room and I made my way over towards the three of them. What I was going to do once I had their attention hadn't crossed my mind yet but I knew that I had to confront Potter and get to the bottom of all of his weird behaviour.
When they saw me approaching them, the three of them stood still waiting for me to say something. Only Weasley opened his mouth and beat me to it.
"Hey Harry, look who's-"
"Shut up Weasley!" I snapped, in no mood to hear the end of Weasley's sentence. The three Gryffindor's were watching me in cautious silence. I turned to look at Potter, "Look, can I please talk to you for a minute?"
He nodded silently and gestured for his friends to go into their common room. Weasley looked as though he wanted to stay for longer but was frogmarched by Granger to their common room. When we were left alone I let out a breath to control myself as he looked down to the ground.
"For goodness sake Potter!" I said looking at the boy, "Stop looking at the ground like a wounded puppy!"
"Did I-" He cleared his throat and looked up at me. His eyes met mine and I forced myself not to falter. "Did I do something wrong?"
I reached into my pocket to pull out the parchment. He stumbled slightly from the force with which I'd shoved the paper into his chest. "I don't know Potter, you tell me."
He took the paper from his chest and I removed my hands. Glancing down at the paper now clutched between his two hands, his eyes grew wide in alarm. "No wait," He looked up at me, "I swear, I didn't-"
"I knew some guys were pigs but I never had you pegged as one." I jabbed an accusing finger at his chest. "Merlin's beard Potter, you turned out to be the biggest pig of them all!"
"Wait Jones," he called out as I went to walk away from him. His panic carried across to me.
I turned to look at him, cutting him off from saying another word.
"Save it for your fan club Potter!" My hands curled into fists at my side as I dug my nails into my palm to ground me. "I'm sure that any single one of them would let you do them!"
**********
It was as if not getting along with Potter and confronting him for his behaviour had caused a visceral reaction in both of his best friends. Both of them had made it their personal mission to make me see the error of my ways because, you know, I was clearly the one in the wrong.
"Hey Jones," Weasley greeted as the golden trio stood before the Hufflepuff table. Merlin, did they have to do this in the middle of breakfast with everyone watching.
Susan, who was sitting beside me, nudged me in the side.
"What do you want Weasley?"
"I just want to talk about the list."
Susan looked curiously at Weasley, knowing absolutely nothing about the list but Ernie spluttered slightly around the rim of the glass he had raised to his lips. I froze instantly at his words, shooting a glare at Potter who was standing beside his red headed friend. He immediately put his hands up to show his innocence. Now that I looked at him properly, I could tell how uncomfortable he looked.
"Please just be quiet Weasley." I noticed most of the hall turned back to their own business whilst some remained nosy enough to still watch us.
Weasley wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. But somehow Granger had taken that to mean that she could talk in his absence.
"Listen Jones, about that extremely unfortunate list," she began quieter than her friend had so as to not draw much attention as he originally had. "I really think you need to hear-"
"Granger, right now you're the only one I can stand out of all three of you. Please don't make me change my mind." When she saw that I was going to be immovable in my resolve, she made her friends leave with her and they headed back to their own table.
Susan turned to look at me, her eyebrows furrowed, "What list were they talking about?"
"It's nothing," I said trying to brush it off.
"I know it's not, but I won't push you to tell me until you're ready to."
"Thanks," I said gratefully before reaching down to look through my bag.
I let out a sigh, realising that I had left my potions textbook on my bed. Excusing myself from the table I walked back to the common room and into our dorm. Grabbing the textbook, I headed out of the common room, trying to shove the textbook into my bag. Whilst in the dorm I had spotted the time on the clock and I had potions first; I didn't even want to think about what Snape would do if I was late for potions.
When I made my way out of the common room, I was immediately apprehended by two boys wearing identical grins on their identical faces.
"What can I do for you?" I asked as they went to either side of me and led me away.
"You can let us explain."
"Can't this wait?" I asked, trying to wriggle free from them but they held firm. "I've got potions now."
"Well then," the one on my left said, "It looks like you've got no choice but to listen to what we want to say-"
"Or risk being even more late for potions," the one my right finished. "I mean, we all know what Snape is like when students are late." It looked like I would be late for potions.
"Fine," I said when they led me into an empty classroom. I leaned against one of the tables and looked at the twins. "What exactly did you want to talk to me about?"
"The list."
"Do you Gryffindors spend every free minute you have gossiping or something? How do you know about the list?"
They both rolled their eyes at me and the one blocking the door started to speak. How the hell did people manage to tell them apart?
"The first thing you need to know is that Harry didn't write that list." He ignored my snort of disbelief I gave and continued to talk, "Ron did. He did it as a joke to tease Harry because that's what boys do. We tease our friends about their crushes. I mean Harry's handwriting is bad but trust me, Ron's is much worse."
"You just need to know," the other one said from the seat behind the teacher's desk, "Harry is, in your own words, completely besotted with you."
The twins held me captive for a few minutes longer, telling me all about Potter's crush, before they let me leave. But not before telling me that I had better run unless I wanted to be even later for Snape. With a quick glance at the clock I could confirm that I was in fact late but if I made it quickly to the Potion's classroom then I could be only five minutes late.
I ran down the stairs to the dungeons and by the time I had made it to the classroom I was panting for breath slightly. Straightening up outside of the door I regained my breath and knocked on the door of the classroom, my heart thumping in my chest. Merlin, Snape was going to murder me.
Opening the door to the classroom I stepped into the room to find everyone looking at me.
"Oh here she is. Ten points from Hufflepuff Miss Jones, one for each minute you were late." Snape drawled from where he was stood. "Here I was thinking that you were going to leave our dear Mr Potter without a desk partner today." At my curious look he elaborated. "We're continuing with the partners that were assigned last week."
He turned away from me and I took that as cue to make my way towards the only empty seat in the classroom, beside Potter. Sitting down beside him, I pulled out my textbooks and prepared to take notes. It looked like we would be having a theory lesson.
The lesson progressed but I kept reflecting back onto the words the twins had said over and over again. Before I knew it, the bell signalling the end of the lesson tolled and everyone rose from their seats.
"Potter," I said cautiously, seeing that he was still sitting down as he packed all of his things away quickly. "Can I talk to you?"
He nodded and I looked away from him to stand and pack away my own things. I took a deep breath.
"I'm really sorry," we both said at the same time.
"Wait," I said looking up at him and ignoring the looks that we were getting from some of our classmates who were doing a bad job of pretending not to listen to our conversation, "What are you sorry for?"
"The list," he clarified, "It was entirely my fault."
"It wasn't, I know it was written by Weasley."
He turned to look up at me. "How do you know that?"
"The Weasley twins. They kind of abducted me and told me a lot of things."
He groaned at my words and let his head drop down onto the table with a thud. "And let me guess," He said, his words muffled against the wood of the table. "This is the part where you tell me that you don't like me in the same way?"
"Actually, this is the part where I tell you that I feel the same way," I muttered so quietly that I wasn't sure that he'd heard me.
But I didn't stick around to find out if he had. Instead I finished packing all of my things and walked quickly out of the classroom and into the hall. Colour flooded my cheeks when I felt the stares of my classmates on me. Merlin, most of them had heard -
"Wait!" I heard him shout from behind me as his feet thudded across the floor in order to catch up to me.
**********
8 YEARS LATER
I stepped out of the fireplace and into the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place. Dusting some of the soot off from my clothes I looked around the kitchen and frowned slightly. It was odd; there was no sign of life in the kitchen.
Harry normally finished work before me on a Friday and the first thing he did when he got back was raid the kitchen cupboards and he'd forget to turn the lights off behind him every time. Turning the lights on with a wave of my wand, I glanced curiously at the clock on the wall.
Harry was supposed to be home by now, especially considering that I had stayed an hour later today.
I made my way around the house that had become my home just over a year ago, looking for any sign of Harry. When I found no sign of him having passed through any of the rooms, I came to the conclusion that he'd probably decided to stay late and work today and had just forgotten to tell me. Making my way upstairs and into my bedroom, I pulled my hair out of the regulation bun that was demanded by St Mungo's and ran a hand through my hair. I eyed my bed, really wanting to throw myself into bed and sleep all weekend long.
But I couldn't do that. I really needed to shower first. Then I could sleep for as long as I wanted.
Taking a quick shower, I changed into my underwear and threw on my night gown over the top before emerging from the ensuite. Passing the bed I wanted to dive face first into, I walked to the cupboard and pulled out some pyjamas. Returning to the bed I noticed something lying on my pillow. Walking over to the bed, I picked the folded piece of parchment. I looked down at the now all too familiar handwriting and felt my mouth part slightly in shock when read what was written on the parchment.
Reasons that Harry James Potter Wants to Change the Surname of a Certain Miss Jones
AKA, the Woman He's Madly in Love With
AKA, Hopefully the Future Mrs Potter
AKA, Hopefully the Mother of His Future Children
Folding the parchment up again, I put it on the bedside table and scanned the room for Harry. I knew from his note that he was bound to be in here somewhere.
"Harry?" I called out quietly, looking around the room. "Where are you?"
From the corner of my eye I saw something move and turned my head towards the movement. Harry appeared from beneath his invisibility cloak in the corner of the room. Folding the cloak up, he set it aside and met my eyes, swallowing nervously. He avoided my eyes for a moment before collecting himself and meeting my eyes.
"Well?" He asked cautiously as he approached me. Sitting beside me on the bed, he let out a deep breath before reaching out to take a hold of one of my hands. Raising his eyes to mine once again, he smiled gently. "Will you marry me?"
I stayed silent for a while, enjoying the way my silence made him wary. Was there a point in asking me? My answer should have been obvious to him. It wasn't like I'd move in with him if I wasn't serious about our relationship.
"Of course I'll marry you, you stupid man." I muttered, leaning towards him to wrap my arms around him and closing the distance between us.
He returned the hug, laughing in utter relief. His arms tightened around me and I grinned, burrowing my face in his neck.
"Well that's a relief because I don't think I could return the ring if you said no."
I pulled away from him. "You bought a ring?"
"I wasn't going to propose without a ring. What do you take me as?" He frowned slightly, but it was clearly fake. He couldn't hold his frown for long, the smile he tried to hide appearing on his face. "What kind of person proposes without a ring?"
"Harry -"
"But I didn't buy it." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black velvet box. Handing the box to me, he watched me open it. It was beautiful. "It's my Mum's - Dad gave it to her when he proposed."
"Oh Harry, it's perfect." I leaned over and pressed a short kiss to his lips. Pulling away from him I went to take the ring out of the box but he snatched the box out of my hand. Looking up at him in surprise I watched him stand up.
"Let's do this properly." He said, dropping down to one knee in front of me.
"I'm wearing my bathrobe and you want to do this properly?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Humour me." He looked up at me with a smile, reaching out to take a hold of my hand. Taking a deep breath, he turned serious. "Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
"Yes."
He grinned widely, slipping the ring on my finger and catching my lips in a kiss when he went to stand up. I wrapped my arms around his shoulder, pulling away with a grin.
"Harry," I said quietly as he leaned down to press a kiss to my nose. "How long were you hiding under the cloak for? I came home late today."