Isabelle buried her face into her folded arms on top of her desk, letting her soft black hair fall like a cloak around her. She was bored out of her mind, and she knew Professor Binns wouldn't notice- hell, he was dead. History of Magic was by far the most boring class. She'd stopped listening about ten minutes into the lesson, after Binns had started going on about some goblin war hundreds of years ago, and her mind had begun to wander. In the direction of a certain dark-haired, bespectacled Hufflepuff...
She'd known Simon since they were fifth-years- well, since Clarissa and Jace had started going out. Clarissa and Simon had been best friends since they were tiny, and had come over from America together to attend Hogwarts, making them sort of outsiders from the beginning. Being placed in different Houses had come as a blow to them, and they'd basically spent every moment they could together outside of class- pretty much excluded themselves from making friends with the rest of the students. Isabelle hadn't even known or cared that Simon existed until Jace, her adoptive brother, had fallen for his best friend and after a year or so, finally persuaded her to go out with him. After that, she and her twin brother Alec had been forced to hang around with both Clarissa and Simon, seeing as they came as a package deal and wherever Jace went, so did they.
At first she hadn't really paid him much attention. It had been around the time that they had all been revising madly for their O.W.L's , and she and Alec had spent too much time in the library with their heads bent over textbooks to worry about anything else. But it was over that summer after fifth year that things began to change. Isabelle and Alec's parents had dropped the bomb on them that they were divorcing. Izzy had known about their father's affair long before any of the others did- that was another reason she'd been so stressed during exam season. Knowing how difficult and awkward things were at the Lightwood house that summer, Clarissa had offered to have Jace, Alec and Isabelle to stay at her mother's farmhouse in upstate New York. As none of them had ever been to America before, and they couldn't think of a better excuse to get away from the tension at home, they jumped at the chance.
It was that summer, during long, hot afternoons lounging in the gardens of the farmhouse, that Isabelle had finally taken notice of the formerly quiet, geeky Simon. Something about being back in his home country brought out a different quality in him. He was just more- he made her laugh, he was interesting and interested in her. Alec was barely around, continually slipping off on solo daytrips into the city for some mysterious reason, Jace and Clarissa were barely around for another reason... and despite the gorgeous surroundings and weather, Isabelle had realised she felt lonely and down. Many afternoons after that she had found herself in Simon's company- sipping cold drinks out on the terrace, taking walks into the nearby woods, and one memorable day, plotting a water-gun attack on the others. She began to feel more at home every day, and when the summer ended and it was time to go back to Hogwarts, she actually felt sad at leaving the place.
So when they'd returned as sixth-years, things had shifted slightly between them, and in a way that was both confusing and welcome to Isabelle. She'd been pleasantly surprised to find that the sixth-year Gryffindors had several classes with the Hufflepuffs, and several times, glancing across during a particularly dull Defence Against the Dark Arts lecture, she'd felt a jolt ripple in her stomach as her eyes met Simon's across the room. Each time she smiled, blushed, embarrassed, and returned her eyes to the front of the class. She'd never imagined he could have that effect on her- any effect, come to think of it. He definitely wasn't her type. She'd dated guys before, had a bit of a reputation for it, but always went for the bad ones- Slytherins, often, with a taste for her pale skin and dark hair, her provocative curves, who had always treated her like a piece of dirt on the hem of their robes. But maybe that was the thing about Simon. He actually seemed to enjoy her for who she was.