Moments

I don't own any of the characters you may recognize

Chapter 8:

Unbelievable. So I'm with the lads, we just pulled a prank on a couple of hapless Hufflepuffs when I spotted Ali. When she spotted me she gave me a look of disdain and then turned around and stormed off in the other direction. I don't know if the guys didn't notice or they were nice enough not to comment but I was affronted. This wasn't the first time this happened either.

Whenever I tried to approach her it was always 'oh, I'm busy I'll catch up with you later' or something else equally lame. But all together ignoring me was a whole other thing. I thought we worked past whatever insecurities she had, but if she still had reservations, then I'll just have to try harder.

I never really had to try to get a girl's attention before, not like this. It was weird. On one had I didn't even know why I was trying. On one hand she's just one of many girls that attends this school, if she wants to ignore me there are plenty others that can take her place. On the other hand I actually liked her and wanted to know why in the hell was she ignoring me as if I were a dementor stalking her trying to suck out her soul.

I told myself not to be a stalker, it's too desperate. She wants to ignore me? Fine, I'll let it go on for a few more days.

With my new found free time I was drilling my Quidditch team even harder. There were three weeks until the first game of the season. My brother is the captain of the Slytherin team. He's such a little traitor. This would be his second year as captain. He put together an interesting team last year. I think for the first time in probably a century, there was a female on the Slytherin Quidditch team. We still won the match regardless. But they'd give us a run for our money. Speaking of Quidditch Lorelai approached me when I entered the common room.

"Here you go" Lorelai handed me a parchment.

"Thanks."

"No problem" Lorelai said with a shrug, "Do you know if the pitch is going to be booked later?"

"I booked the pitch for later. Colin and I are going to be training, feel free to join us."

I kicked a set of third years out of the comfy seats by the fireplace.

It's never too soon to get intel on the enemy so I had Lorelai scout out the Ravenclaw team practice this morning. It's not cheating. It's strategizing. I know for a fact the only reason why Amber Ross comes and watches our practices is because she's spying for her boyfriend on the Hufflepuff team. Hufflepuff is so hopeless though so I don't even really bother with kicking her out of the stands. I doubt she's the only spy, but I like to keep the times of my practices unpredictable. Any practice were we're going over major strategy I make sure to mark off as a closed practice.

"Hey, James."

"Hi Laney" I replied without looking up.

"My grams just sent me brownies. Do you want one? They're homemade triple fudge."

I raised an eyebrow at the box of brownies she was holding out.

Laney rolled her eyes and took a bite of a brownie "They aren't spiked with love potion or poison. I promise."

"Thanks" I said as I cautiously bit into the brownie. It was good, not as good as my grams baking, but still good. In a way it almost tasted familiar. I was sure I had one before.

"Laney" I called to her as she started to walk away.

"Yeah?"

"Happy Birthday."

"Thanks" she smiled and strode off her blonde hair bouncing as she went.

A couple of years ago Laney told me that her grams sends her brownies on her birthday every year. She'd given me a couple that year too.


"This is twice the size of the dungeon we used last Halloween" Fred said as we scouted out places for our Halloween party.

"I think this is the place Nearly-Headless Nick uses for his death day party" I said as I looked around.

"Then I guess they'll be a lot of ghost in attendance, because we're using this space" Fred said.

Fred used his Head Boy privileges to make sure that only lax prefects would be patrolling Halloween night, and then he invited them to the party so that way no one would be patrolling.

I ordered the drinks already. "The space is almost too big. We can get a lot of people here to fill it, but after hours? You know the teachers are going to be patrolling as well since it's a holiday."

"I got that covered. We'll just have to put up the usual enchantments and hope that no one gets too drunk they decided to go streaking throughout the castle."

That happened once, last year. This little idiot got completely starkers in the middle of the dance floor, announced he was going streaking and then ran out of the party. Everyone in the party was laughing their heads off. And then McGonagall showed up pinching the twerp by his ear. He was so drunk that he ran around the castle being loud, McGonagall found him, and he told her about the party.

"Think we can sneak in a band?" I asked.

"It's been a while since we threw a party with live music. This seems like the perfect place for it. Maybe." Fred snapped his fingers. "Karaoke."

I shook my head. "Bad idea."

"Come on, you know how funny it is to watch drunk people sing" Fred pointed out.

"Nobody wants to hear Timothy Sands crooning You Charmed the Love Right Out of Me again" I said. We tried karaoke once, it was a bad, bad idea.

"Sands finished school last year."

"Maybe"

"Awesome."

We decided it was going to be a masquerade. Since it was such a short notice we would be passing it off as a semi formal, but everyone would be expected to come with their own masks.

We would wait until the day before to set up the protective spells needed to ward off teachers during the party. If we did the spells now and a teacher happened to come across them they'd know something was up. We did however set up a barrier at the door.


"Good practice guys. If we play like this in two weeks we'll destroy Slytherin no problem" I called at the end of practice. I stayed on the pitch gathering the snitch and the bludgers while everyone else hit the locker room. When I had all the equipment locked away I still didn't head to the lockers. Instead I flew around, daydreaming again.

It would be so awesome to play professionally. I knew there would be scouts at the game. I was hoping the Puddlemere scouts would show up. They're second in the league right now, only behind the Arrows. The Arrows put together a pretty good team for the past three years. It helps that their captain played for Britain during the world cup four years ago. He keeps his team training under a international level. Behind Puddlemere is Pride o f Portree. They've put together a good team but their weak link is their seeker. They might be at the game scouting for a new one. I tried to be brotherly and point out to Al that he'd make a good fit on their team but he wants to be an Unspeakable. I have no idea why anyone would want to be an Unspeakable but it's his choice.

Almost as if I summoned him by thinking of him I saw my brother approaching the pitch. I guess I've been up here for quite a while. I headed off to the locker room as the Slytherins got ready for their practice.


Since I skipped lunch I headed to the kitchens. I had a double bacon sandwich before I headed up to the Gryffindor Tower. As I came upon the corridor Ali was exiting the portrait. She made like she was going to walk my way, spotted me, and then turned and went the other way.

What the hell was that?

I was too tired to chase her down. More than tired, I was highly annoyed. I strolled into the common room. I spotted Fred and Brendan by the fireplace and I went over there and sat in the empty seat between them. They both looked like they were doing homework.

"What the hell is her problem?" I asked myself as I sat down.

"You still dating that sixth year?" Brendan asked.

"I thought I was" I said.

"Forget her" Fred said. "If she wants to ignore you, let her. There are other birds in the sky."

"I know that" I replied.

"I've never seen you hung up on a girl before" Brendan pointed out.

"I'm not hung up on her" I said.

Fred snorted.

"I'm not."

"Sure you aren't. That's why you'll be taking someone else to the Halloween party."

"I'm not taking anyone to the party. Going solo means I have more options of who I want to leave with."

"That's the spirit. Now stop bothering us with your girl problems we have to finish this essay for Defense" Fred said.

"You might as well join us, it's due next period" Brendan said.

"I finished it already" I shrugged.

"All four rolls?"

"I've had a lot of time on my hands" I shrugged again. "This is what happens when I don't have a girl to distract me."

"So find a new girl."

The prospects of finding a new girl didn't really appeal to me. For some reason I was hooked onto to Alison. If only I could get inside her damn head to know what the hell is wrong with her?

We did have that talk about jealousy and what not. I thought she had gotten over it, obviously not.

AN: I hate how the stupid page break things don't work all the time.