Dancing In November
By Capucine
Prologue
It is, in a word, surreal. Surreal, to watch the world spin while she stands still. It is as if someone has sliced through her lifeline to the world, and as a result, isolated her in her own melancholy sphere while others keep on with their lives.
Automatically, she walks through the corridors, among the chattering body of students. She is aware of their conversations, but she doesn't hear them. She pushes aside dark red hair and takes a seat in the back of the classroom.
What class was this, she wonders?
History of Magic, answers the reproachful autopilot of her mind.
Does it matter?
Her life hasn't always been this way. Once she'd been school-obsessed and flawless, the highest achiever in the school. Once she'd been warmed by thoughts of snowball fights and study groups in the library.
Now she avoids such direct confrontations with other people. It is frightening, how much this relationship has changed her.
How much she has let it change her. Once, boys like Amos Diggory wouldn't have been able to penetrate her so deeply. Once, Amos Diggory would have had the effect of a fruitfly on a horse.
How could things have changed so much?
Once she'd been optimistic and sunny, quick to point out the positive and forever denying the negative.
She even has the distinct impression of having been happy. Once.
She misses those days, when the only ones to irritate her beyond relief were James Potter and his band of pranksters. It's not that everyone irritates her beyond relief now; it's that she seems incapable of irritation. She wonders which is worse.
She plays idly with her quill as Professor Binns begins the lecture. Hers and the translucent professor's are the only heads that do not move towards the door as four boys saunter in. Or at least, two of the boys saunter. One strides and the last cowers.
She looks up as someone waves a hand in front of her expressionless face. It is James Potter. He says something, but she can hear only a slurred sort of question, as if they were both underwater.
"What?" she says, her voice hoarse.
"Is anyone sitting here?" he repeats, gesturing at the empty seat to the right of her desk.
"Oh," she says. She glances back up at him, searches his inviting eyes. It is perhaps the first time she has seen the seductive, jocular side of him shuttered out. She makes a decision. "No."
He sits down. The other three boys have already taken their seats. Binns hasn't yet realized what has just taken place in his classroom; he merely continues monotonously about dragon hunting in the fourteenth century.
Somehow she makes it through the lesson, fidgeting with the coarse threads of her quill. At last, the bell tones, managing to sound gloomy to her depressed ears. She picks up her bag and stands up, making her way to the door.
"Evans."
She stops, turns around. James Potter is standing there, holding out her quill. She must have dropped it. She accepts it almost gratefully, the first emotion she has shown in days.
"Thanks," she says.
"Anytime," he answers. "So, Evans... how about a date?"
She blinks. He asks her this almost every week... she wonders if it's only out of habit as of late.
She can't go out with James Potter. What would her friends say, after all her snide comments about him and his band?
What had they been saying recently about Amos?
What did it matter?
She makes up her mind. "All right," she answers.
It's Potter's turn to blink now. "What?" he says, as if he hadn't heard her.
"I'll date you," she reiterates. After all, what does she have to lose? "I'll date you for a month. Nothing more."
"A month," he says. His expression is unreadable. "And after it's over?"
"It stops. No attachments," she says, adjusting her bag. "Those are my conditions."
"Okay," James says, looking down at her. He's too tall. Amos was never so tall. She kicks herself mentally for bringing Amos into this.
She says something about seeing him later at dinner and leaves the classroom without a backward glance.
She hasn't been going to dinner. Sometimes the house-elves bring a tray to the tower for her these days. Why should she make an exception for James Potter?
Why, indeed.
As she climbs the stairs to her Arithmancy classroom, she wonders how it will all turn out.
It will probably end badly.
Probably.