The Only Exception

Summary: Everyone love's James Sirius Potter, what's not to love right? He's handsome, charming, Qudditch captain, oh yeah and the savior of the Wizarding Worlds son. For all intents and purposes the golden boy of Hogwarts, well I guess you could call me the exception, why is this you ask , my name's Anna McCoy , and I can't stand James Potter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter , only the plot =)

Chapter 10:

James' POV

We went back to polishing the trophies, and I mean I couldn't help but draw the parallel between the way my grandparents supposedly were with each other, and how Anna and I are now, it's kind of hard to miss you know. I mean we can't stand each other we fight all the time, but I mean, I'm definitely not falling in love with her, and she only has feelings of hatred towards me, that's absolute. I can't even imagine how we would be as a couple , we'd definitely kill each other , although I mean I wouldn't particularly mind snogging her, actually it's been on my mind a lot recently , but that comes with being a fifteen year old bloke. Good lord when did I start calling her Anna. Seems like my hormones are running away with my mind again… awesome. I quickly glanced in her direction to see her reaching up on her tip toes to grab a trophy, I mean she is pretty tall, but these shelves are gigantic, she let out a slightly aggravated sigh and went to reach for it again. I walked over behind her and reached above her head and took hold of the trophy, this time she gasped in shock, and turned around to face me. She looked up at me with wide eyes, and I just stared back at her. You know that feeling when your thinking about nothing and everything all at once, no, well it's really confusing and that's exactly what was happening in my head at that moment. Her lips parted a little bit drawing my eyes down to them. And that was the moment Professor pea head decided to make an appearance. I took a step back from her and looked down; she quickly turned around and started polishing the trophy I had gotten down for her. Her face had no emotion on it which I knew for a fact wasn't normal since, for as long as I've known her emotions ran right across her face, letting everyone and anyone know what she was thinking ,not now however , right now her face was completely blank . What the HELL was I just thinking , I think I might be losing my mind completely , I almost freaking tried to kiss her , what is wrong with me! She just looked so kissable at that moment, that's what I was thinking. I'm going to lose my mind it's going to be a problem. Lovely, now we have to go through the rest of detention with this nagging feeling in my gut about wanting to kiss her, should be great.

The detention carried on for the next few hours in mostly silence, my mind was racing non-stop even after I went to sleep I tossed and turned all night, until I finally came up with a solution, I was going to have to distract myself from her, find some other girl to take my attention away from her, it's a perfect plan, this way things can go back to normal we can fight and argue and play Qudditch and everything will be absolutely fine.

The next day I walked in to the Great Hall and started taking in the female population of Hogwarts, first obviously I weeded out my family members and then all the girls who were dating my family members, and then I weeded out the girls who I've already dated, and then those who weren't first or second years since that's just plain weird, after that there weren't many girls left over. A few older Slytherin's, a couple of Ravenclaws, a handful of Huffelpuffs and then I looked over at the Gryffindor table, and there she was , sitting with Shannon , Missy and Dom. Something struck me as odd I had never dated anyone in my year ,in my house before . I mean it makes sense ,they're my best girl friends , operative word being friends , I mean I guess I would say they're, for the most part, the only girls I would actually consider friends. With Dom ,well she's my cousin so we've always been around each other and we've always gotten on, I tell her when she's being a brat and she tells me when I'm being a pain in the ass , it's a very loving relationship ,with Shannon it's like she's another sister to me , I can go to her with anything even stuff I can't talk about with Freddy or the guys , she's always there to listen to me, with Missy it's like she's my wing woman , if that makes any sense , I go to her with my girl problems,I mean she's obviously gorgeous, maybe a little intense, at least the rest of the guys at Hogwarts seem to think so anyways , but she's good to have around at a party or just hanging out , and then there's McCoy, we fight constantly, I'm guessing you've realized that by this point , but occasionally, there are those rare moments when we forget were supposed to hate each other and almost act like were friends, moments like last night. And honestly I kind of like when those moments happen, it's like if we could forget to hate each other all the time, maybe we could be… I don't know, god this way of thinking is way too deep for this early in the morning. I kept scanning the crowd for a moment and eventually gave up on the search for the moment because my rumbling stomach took precedent above my desire to find a distraction from McCoy. So I walked over to where the girls were sitting and plopped next to Shannon, she looked up from her conversation with Dom, smiled at me and said

"Morning James."

"Morning Shan" I replied as I took a plate and started getting some food. A moment later Lysander came and sat down across from me next to Dom

"Mornin mate" he said looking dead, it was safe to say that Ly isn't a morning person.

"Jeez Ly what bus hit you last night?" Dom asked ever so kindly, there was a bit of a twinkle to her eye letting them know she was just kidding around

"Ha-ha very funny" he grumbled obviously not in the mood and he just stared down at his food. Dom gave him a strange look and then went back to her conversation with Shannon. I looked farther down the table a bit and my eyes landed on McCoy, once again, and almost as if she felt my eyes on her she turned and looked me right in the eye, and to my surprise , smiled a for a quick second. I just kept staring at her shocked and then the grin came over my face, she just shook her head and started paying attention to Missy who was recanting something that happened today in class. God I need to stop thinking about her, it's just bad for my health. I gave Dom a sideward's look, to anyone else she seemed unfazed, to me I could tell that Ly's attitude affected her, however she continued her conversation with Shannon. I looked over at Ly, and saw he was stabbing his food rather aggressively, I just gave him an odd look , telling myself to ask him about it later. Good lord I think my friends might just drive me right over the edge. Freddy and I walked out of the Great Hall together, and made our way to our Muggle Studies class, the rest of our friends were lagging along behind us, chatting amongst them. Along the way we spotted our younger cousin Sam, Uncle Charlie's son who is a fourth year he was running down the hallway with his best mate Colin Creevy II getting chased by some angry and boil covered fifth year Slytherin's.

"Hey James, Hey Fred" he yelled as he and Colin sprinted past us , laughing as they went. I looked at Fred and he looked back at me and we both started laughing. We carried on down the hall and spotted our older cousin Lucy, who is Uncle Percy's daughter and Head Girl this year. She was talking to another 7th year, Alex Moran, who also happens to be the Head Boy, they were arguing about something or other,

"Hey Luce" I called and waved. She looked up from glaring at Alex, and smiled brilliantly and Fred and I. Her hair was perfectly straight as was her uniform, and even though she had just been fighting with someone, she still looked flawless.

"Hi guys, want to do me a favor." she asked, while Lucy is my cousin and I love her, she can be a bit of an overachiever and a perfectionist, which is probably why she was made Head Girl and which is also why she and Alex fight so much, you see Alex Moran is the most laid back guy I have ever met, he's easy going and never stresses about anything, he's also considered to be one of the coolest and smartest guys in school. Lucy just can't seem to be in the same room with him without trying to claw his eyes out, personally I think it's all an act and she really just has some majorly repressed sexual tension with this kid, not that I want to think about my cousins that way but it's blatantly obvious.

"Sorry Luce, your favors usually require signing our lives away for some extracurricular activity, so, sorry but no thanks." Fred replied,

"James?" she asked, I just smiled down at her,

"Sorry Luce, no can do" I replied.

"Fine, if you don't want to make your school a better place that's fine by me." I just rolled my eyes a little.

"Sorry Lucy honestly, try Dom and Shannon, they're always willing to lend a hand" I said, just as Dom , McCoy , Shannon and Missy walked past, Lucy grabbed them and started chewing their ears off about this new project she was starting up. That was when Freddy and I made our escape, I glanced back and saw McCoy smiling at Lucy, and nodding her head, she was quickly getting pulled away by Dom, who was pleading with Lucy to let them get to class. But Lucy wasn't hearing any of it and kept talking until, Alex came over and took Lucy by the shoulder said a few things to distract her, and gave McCoy and the girls ample time to get away. Freddy and I kept going down the hall, saying hi to various friends and a few more family members, and eventually made it to class.

Once I got to class I sat down and continued my search for a new distraction, I looked around the Muggle Studies classroom, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, not a bad combination. I can honestly say I get along with pretty much everyone in both of these houses. Once again , my eyes drifted towards her, seriously now what the hell is wrong with me , I'm starting to think I have a problem, every time were in the same room , my eyes wander towards her . This time however she caught me looking, her eyes were on me and she gave me a look that said "What do you want?" I just adverted my eyes and began to doodle, I looked over at Freddy who was sitting next to me, he was simply staring off into space or so it seemed like, I followed his eye line and it landed on none other than Shannon, I raised my eyebrows m, yeah I have to ask him about that later but it seems our Fred's has a thing for little Miss Finnegan. I'm surprised no one else has caught onto this, or maybe they have and just haven't said anything, nah that doesn't sound like our friends, they definitely would have said something. And once again my mind wandered to McCoy , how would she have reacted if I had kissed her in the trophy room , probably would have punched me in the nose , eh might have been worth it though . Yeah I definitely need to find a distraction…and what do you know Mary O'Loughlin is looking my way, she's smiling at me , hmm , yeah she's perfect.

A few hours later I found myself in an empty corridor with Mary pressed up against the castle wall. I'd asked her to 'study' with me after Muggle Studies and somehow we ended up floors away from the library. She is a good kisser , but for some reason I couldn't really get into it, what's the matter with me , she's beautiful, and she's really trying hard to hook up with me right now, and for some stupid reason I can't let myself get into it. After a while I just pulled away from her , she looked surprised , but then I plastered on a grin , completely fake by the way, but she fell for it.

"We should get going it's getting kind of late" she said, I held in my sigh of relief and said

"Yeah, it is getting kind of late" I walked her back to the Hufflepuff common room, and told her I would see her around. I finally got back to the Gryffindor common room and what to you know, there's McCoy sitting on the couch finishing an essay I stopped at the portrait hole and just stared at her for a moment , she blew the hair out of her eyes and put her hands in the air to stretch , for a moment I think I stopped breathing , she had her eyes closed and her head thrown backwards , and of course my mind being the dirty place that it is jumped to the other ways I could possibly see her with that expression on her face. You catching my drift? Yeah , well now all I can think about is having her underneath me with that expression on her face, holy shit I have to get the hell out of here, before she catches me creeping on her , so I tried to make a quick escape , but of course she caught me.

"Potter?" she asked as I was almost up the boys staircase I looked back at her , I saw her eyes flick down at my appearance and I looked back at her, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of something , hurt , possibly, but a second later it was gone . She closed her textbook, grabbed her essay, and stood up

"Looks like you had a good night" she said the bite in her voice was unmistakable, and she brushed past me quickly and went up the stairs to the girl's dormitory, I closed my eyes and sighed. I think I may have just made a really big mistake, by trying to distract myself. She just looked so pissed off, and I think the few steps we'd taken towards becoming civil and maybe even friends have just been completely erased, my life just keeps getting better and better.

AN : Chapter 10! Hope you like it review pleaseee and tell me what you think! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far loveeeeeeee you all!