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25

A TEENAGE FRENZY

MUSICAL MOOD FOR THIS CHAPTER: TAYLOR SWIFT - MY TEARS RICOCHET

"What the fuck am I doing?"

So, I'm usually not a fan of author's notes at the beginning, but I just wanted to prepare everybody that there is some light mature content in this chapter (I know it's rated M anyway but just in case)… it's not extreme but – well – a little bit ;) Have fun!

The Woodleys would have never made a scene.

As usual, the struggle was internal.

I had stumbled out of the phone box inelegantly, my legs still shaky from the alcohol, which even I knew was just embarrassing, but no one had spoken a word; not to me, nor to each other. I had simply been ushered away from James with as much dignity as the situation would allow and steered into the nearest fireplace.

Even now upon returning to my Grandparents' house, away from prying eyes, my mother had done nothing but send me up to my room. Granted, she hadn't been able to look at me, but there had been no shouting, no accusations, no drama. No one had raised their voice. No one had even so much as acknowledged my presence; except for Vala, who had given me weird, long glances whenever she thought I hadn't been looking.

In proper Woodley fashion, I was to be ignored until my parents and my grandparents, who had retreated to my Grandfather's study, had reached their verdict concerning my fate.

It was frustrating, to say the least.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Vala hissed at my back as she followed me up the stairs, keeping just enough distance so that she would not tread on my dress as it swept the staircase behind me.

"Leave me alone, Vala," I mumbled, not even bothering to turn around and face her. It was rather rich of her to chastise me for my behaviour when she had done much worse things already than merely kissing a boy in public. Granted, it hadn't been a Potter and she hadn't ruined years of scheming and match-making in one night, but I felt that, as a first offender, everybody should cut me some bloody slack.

"Do you know what this means?" She had pursued me all the way down the corridor, apparently unabashed by my unwillingness to contribute to the conversation.

Of course I knew what this meant. It meant the end.

The end of Hogwarts. The end of my freedom. The end of everything.

But the thought was too painful to allow into my head just yet and so I forced myself to push it away.

"I don't need a lecture, OK?" I snapped as I opened the door to my room, whipping around to finally look at my cousin; the strange look on her face caught me off guard and I lost my train of thoughts for a moment. "I need to be alone."

Only when the door snapped close behind me, I allowed myself to lean against the warm wood, my eyes closed to shield them from the glare of the ceiling light. My head was throbbing in sync with my heart as one thought chased another, whirring so fast that I had difficulty holding on to one for longer than a fraction of a second. But I forced myself to stand upright again and crossed the room to the desk in front of the window, grabbing a piece of wrinkled paper and an old ballpoint pen. Just as I had written the words 'Dear Katie', though, my hand froze and I stared at the empty white sheet, realising that writing a letter could never have calmed the storm that was raging in my head, forcing me to trace my own footsteps over and over again, trying to disentangle the blur of tonight's events so they made sense.

But they didn't. None of it made sense. None of it was at all logical.

And then there was James Potter - his hands circling my waist, his body pressing against me, and the fogged up windows of the phone box.

"Shit." Frustrated, I crumpled up the almost empty page and carelessly chucked the pen I was holding at the small, round mirror on the vanity where it hit the glass and left a fine crack. I barely noticed, however, as my thoughts kept oscillating between the telephone booth and my Grandfather's study, where surely my transfer to Madame Esther's Magical Academy for Etiquette and Manners was being finalised this second.

I had never felt so helpless in my life and it made me angry - recklessly so - that it seemed to boil in my blood. I wanted to run downstairs and tell them that I wasn't a bloody puppet, that they had to talk to me - but, instead, I was yelling the words in my head, pacing my room like a docile pet.

It was then that my gaze fell onto the colourful piece of paper that stuck out from between the pages of one of my books; it was the old issue of Witch Weekly I had found in the library a couple of months ago featuring the cover story of the Potters' cottage in the Scottish countryside. Underneath the title, a younger, somewhat roguish version of James was flashing that lopsided smile at me that always seemed like a silent challenge and I thought about how it had felt to defy my family and not care, at least for a small, shiny moment. Sure, I might have been drunk and possibly not making the best decisions of my life, but at least they had been my rotten decisions; my mistakes.

I couldn't just sit around and wait for things to happen to me anymore.

I didn't have a plan. My thoughts were running wild, disobeying any attempt to disentangle them, and all I knew was that I needed to get out of this house.

For a moment, I contemplated grabbing a coat and simply sneaking out the door, but I discarded the idea momentarily again when remembering once again that, in fact, there was nowhere to go. My grandparents' house was conveniently located in the middle of a dense forest so that wandering Muggles wouldn't stumble across the vast estate coincidentally.

Floopowder wasn't an option either since I had no clue where my grandparents kept their reserve and searching for it would not only raise suspicions but also seemed rather futile considering the sheer size of the house. Hence, the only way I could effectively leave without scouring through the dark, snowy woods for hours, was apparition.

Granted, legally, I wasn't allowed to apparate. I wasn't even allowed to take the official test for another year. But during the last lesson before Christmas I had actually succeeded in disappearing from inside the wooden hoop I had been standing in and appearing inside Thomas Walder's. Admittedly, my aim had been slightly off, but, in principle, I could apparate.

Like a glowing door, a wealth of possibilities suddenly seemed to have opened up for me; I could go anywhere I wanted. Technically, the only place I could think of was Katie's house, but the sheer power of being able to have at least a quaint of control over my mess of a life was electric.

"Seth?" There was a sharp knock on my door and I froze momentarily, staring at the key underneath the handle, wondering if I had locked it. "Seth! Are you in there?" Vala's muffled voice spoke again. "Let me in! We need to talk!"

I stared at the slowly moving handle, thinking that maybe it would be better to just stay; to let Vala in; to accept whatever my family would throw at me. It would have been the smart thing to do; the thing I usually would have done.

But I couldn't –I didn't want to do the smart thing. Maybe it was the residue of alcohol that still coursed through my veins, clouding my judgment, but just for once in my life, I didn't want to be reasonable and responsible. And so I picked up James' jacket which I had discarded on the floor before and, trying hard to get my cluttered mind to focus on my destination, I began to revolve on the spot as a roaring filled my ears and the terrible sensation of being sucked into a vacuum rolled over me until the room around me had dissolved into a whirl of indistinguishable colours.

No matter what people might say about apparating, materializing was definitely the worst part of the whole procedure; most of all when it included landing on a soggy patch of earth with a freezing wind whipping small, hard snowflakes into your face. Also, there was always this awful feeling of disorientation that accompanied the process which usually set in after having made sure that there were no body parts missing.

So, for a moment, I was almost certain I had messed up my great escape and landed just a few miles from my grandparents' house, whose outline was clearly visible among the towering snow-covered trees. However, when my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I realised that the building that was nestled against the edge of the forest was much smaller and less intimidating than the house I had just fled from. Dark wafts of smoke were softly billowing from the chimney and warm light filtered through the drawn curtains, casting a faint glow over the snow that had built up on the window ledges of the cottage.

It wasn't Katie's house, though, and, as I stared at the Potter's home which looked exactly like it had on the Witch Weekly cover, I realised that my subconsciousness must have had other plans. What exactly they were, I wasn't quite sure yet, but I was beginning to shiver in my thin ball gown and so I began to move towards the house, hoping that some sort of plan would have formed in my head by the time I had reached it.

Unfortunately, the only thoughts that ran through my mind were dumb questions: I still wasn't exactly sure how I had gotten here and, most of all, why. Not only was there a quite likely possibility that the Potters didn't even live here anymore, but I also wasn't sure I wanted to come face to face with James or his family after everything that had happened tonight. After all, if the Woodleys were any indication to go by, I wasn't keen on learning how the Potters handled snogging in an enchanted phone box in front of Britain's magical high society.

The only plausible idea that my woozy brain could drag up from the abyss of feckless thoughts was to get close enough to the house and hope that it was inhabited by wizards so that I could disaparate again without anyone ever finding out what I had done. After all, no one had to know where I had been; I would simply sneak back into my room and wait for my family's verdict like a good Woodley.

It was a good plan. Not brilliant, but solid; or, at least, it would have been if I hadn't mindlessly turned the corner and stopped in front of a brightly lit window with sloppily drawn curtains, staring at a scantily dressed James Potter like a deer in the headlights.

I could hear him yell out in shock, even through the glass, as he toppled backwards, the hem of his T-shirt, which he had been in the process of pulling over his head, awkwardly stuck to his upper-arms and shoulders.

For the lack of a better plan, and probably because I was still a little drunk, I smiled and waved.

"Woodley?" James hissed completely bewildered as he opened his window, struggling to pull his shirt all the way down. "Are you okay? What happened? How did you-"

"I apparated," I said casually, not feeling like elaborating on the whole sordid tale. "I meant to end up at Katie's house but – well, I kind of messed up."

James stared at me for a moment and I was sure he was going to ask why on earth I had ended up here, lurking in front of his window like a complete creep. For all the times he had accused me of stalking him, this was the first instance I couldn't even have blamed him for doing so. To my surprise, however, he didn't say anything and simply held out his hand to me.

I stared at it stupidly, not sure what to do; the last time I had taken James Potter's hand it had gotten us both into quite the sticky situation.

"Come on, Woodley. It's freezing," he urged softly and because it really was and because I wasn't keen on running into any of the Potters while hanging out in front of their house like an overzealous fangirl, I reached out and let James pull me inside.

"You're not seventeen yet, are you?" James had crossed the room in a few quick strides, rotating the key in the lock before turning back to look at me.

I shook my head, feeling suddenly awkward as I stood there in my bright red dress with James' black jacket still draped across my shoulders. In comparison to his simple grey joggers and the plain white T-shirt, I felt as though I was wearing a costume.

"So –" He said slowly, arching his eyebrows at me and looking vaguely amused.

"I'm not supposed to apparate, no." I shrugged, trying hard to ignore the prickle of panic that threatened to surface at the thought of having broken wizarding law. Shockingly, it hadn't even been the first time this semester.

James nodded softly, hands still in his pockets as he walked back around his bed. The fabric of his T-shirt was thin enough to outline the muscles on his stomach and I felt my cheeks burn as I tried to find something else to look at; anything, really. "Did you get into trouble?"

I couldn't be sure, but he almost sounded concerned. I couldn't allow myself to think about my family, however. Not right now and not in front of James. I needed the Woodleys to be far away and so, instead of breaking down and crying in James Potter's room, surrounded by Gryffindor paraphernalia, I put on a smile. "Did you?"

"For kissing a girl?" His voice was rough and low and I wished he didn't have that stupid dimple.

Jesus Christ.

Of course he wasn't in trouble. He had probably done this a million times - possibly even in the exact same phone box. For all I knew, this was his go-to move to impress girls at stuffy ministry events.

"Your family probably wasn't too thrilled." James' mouth curved a little - not a smile but almost - and I felt my heart stumble as he took a few steps towards me. His hair was slightly damp and he smelled of soap and something distinctly woodsy and I needed him to just stay where he was.

"I still have your jacket." I cleared my throat awkwardly and slid the black cloth from my shoulders, handing it to James who looked slightly bewildered as I thrust the piece of clothing at him. It felt too weird to be in his room like this. From the corner of my eye I could see the sloppily hung posters in red and gold and besides the pile of crumpled clothes that were heaped on the swivelling chair in front of his desk lay what looked a lot like padded Quidditch underpants.

"Maybe – maybe I should go," I said quickly, realising at the same time that, despite the dirty laundry and the awkward tension that had seeped into the room, leaving was the last thing I wanted to do at the moment.

"Yeah," James said gruffly, frowning at me. "Maybe."

"Yeah." I wanted to walk away - I knew that I should have - but my legs wouldn't move and he took another step, putting us close enough to send my pulse into overdrive. Like my heart, my racing thoughts had picked up speed so that nothing but a soft pleasant buzz filled my head, tuning out every ounce of reason I might once have possessed.

I was entirely helpless.

Also, nothing had ever felt this good and, before I could overthink this, I closed the gap between us, my fingers clinging to his T-shirt, digging into the fabric as he bent his head down and our lips touched.

I could feel the familiar sensation of his arms sliding around my waist, pulling me into him, and we stumbled a few beats like we were dancing a fumbled waltz. I leaned into him entirely but it didn't feel like it was enough - like it could ever be enough - and my fingers pressed against his T-shirt, tugging on the cloth. He understood before I did and, in one swift movement, pulled it over his head.

I looked at it for a second, as it landed on the wooden floor, next to James's backpack that he hadn't unpacked, and then my gaze wandered up to his broad shoulders, the plains of his chest, the cords of muscles that threaded all the way down to his stomach. I had seen him without his shirt on before, but this was distinctly different - everything felt different - and it was terrifying.

I was scared that if I looked up at him he would see it - see everything I was trying to hide; my nervousness, my complete inexperience, my uncertainty. I was so far out of my depth that I was sure he would call my bluff any minute. So, instead of doing that, I let my gaze drift to his right arm and the thin, black lines that stood out even in the weak light of his room. I wasn't thinking, really, when I lifted my hand, allowing my fingers to trace the small letters along the inside of his biceps; he was wearing his family's initials on his skin for eternity while I was trying to escape mine.

"Seth." James's voice was still this low, rumbling sound and I stupidly looked up, surprised to find him frowning at me with a sort of strange expression on his face. "Maybe we should -"

But I shook my head before he could finish the sentence and slid my hands up along his neck and into his hair. It was enough to make him bow his head and I didn't hesitate as I kissed him again, not wanting to give myself – or him – enough time to doubt my behaviour. I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt reckless, and entirely unlike myself, and, even though I was possibly making a terrible mistake, I wasn't ready to lose this feeling yet.

My skin tingled as I felt James' fingers fumble with the zipper on the back of my dress and then the many-layered cloth slid off my body and onto the floor, crumpling around my feet in a shocking red heap.

I was standing in a boy's room, wearing nothing but gauzy underwear, and it should have triggered a mild panic attack; I could feel it pricking in the crook of my neck, trying to jumpstart the reasonable part of my brain that I had drowned in stale beer and whiskey earlier tonight, but James had pulled me into him again, one hand at the base of my neck, entangled in my hair, the other sliding down my lower back, and I pushed the feeling away, refusing to acknowledge it.

If I had hesitated for a second, he hadn't noticed it; his lips tugged on mine and I felt him press against me as he softly pushed me back towards his unmade bed. It was nothing elegant and maybe it was me or just generally how these things worked, but we tumbled clumsily into the heap of pale blue sheets and I was sure that James's knee had knocked against his bed frame as he climbed on top of me.

His hot breath prickled on my skin as his lips grazed my ear, leaving a burning trail along my throat, my collarbone, my neckline, and I wondered if he could tell that I had never done anything like this before. I thought about Athena Notte and Fern Sterling and all the others; the girls he had been with surely were more experienced than I and the fact that I didn't exactly know what to do with my limbs - how to touch him - might have been a bit of a giveaway.

But I wanted this – him; the weight of his body pushing against mine, the tips of our noses touching as he hovered just inches above me, my fingers clutched in his hair. His kisses had become more intense, harder, and my insides tightened with a jolt when I felt his hand slide up my thigh until his fingers were tracing the lace fringe of my knickers.

Obviously he knew exactly what he was doing.

And then, suddenly, he pulled back.

The movement was so abrupt that it took me a second to catch on, but when I opened my eyes, I found him frowning at me, propped up on one arm and slightly out of breath. I didn't understand what was going on; he seemed to be focusing on a particular freckle on the bridge of my nose and I tried to figure out what I had done wrong, but he wouldn't even look at me.

"What the fuck am I doing?" He mumbled and then pushed himself off of me completely, relieving me of his weight. "Shit."

"What?" I couldn't help the confusion in my voice as I sat up, instinctively yanking the covers up to my collarbones. James had pressed both of his palms onto his face, muffling his voice as he spoke again.

"I – I can't fucking do this." He ran his hands through his hair, scrunching it up in his fists.

"Are you serious?" I felt the heat of humiliation creep up my spine like a spindly spider. Everything that had happened up until this moment suddenly seemed incredibly embarrassing; like a painfully bad movie that was only possible to watch through the cracks between one's fingers.

"Woodley." James groaned as he watched me clumsily crawl out of his bed, dragging along the blanket that I had wrapped around my shoulders like an oversized cloak. "Hey, wait -"

"No!" I said sharply, holding out a hand to stop him from coming closer. "Stay away from me!"

He stopped dead in his tracks and I forced myself to hold his gaze; he was probably expecting me to cry or shout or go to pieces at his rejection, but I wasn't going to. Instead, I quickly picked up my discarded dress and laboriously tried to pull it on underneath my makeshift cloak, ignoring the fact that I felt like a complete idiot.

"No, Woodley, what are you -" James tried again, but this time another voice cut across him, causing both of us to freeze where we stood.

"Jamie?" Ginny Potter said loudly as she knocked on the locked door. "Are you alright?"

"Sure!" James called back, his eyes still fixed on me, watching me as I yanked up my dress, holding on to the loose neckline while I shimmied the blanket off my shoulders.

"It's just – your brother thought he heard you talking to someone." Something in her voice told me that this might not have been the first time that James had gotten caught with a girl in his bedroom and I rolled my eyes at his promiscuity and my own phenomenal stupidity.

"James?" Ginny called again when her son had failed to answer and then the doorknob twisted slowly.

"Fuck's sake," James muttered under his breath and turned towards the door, calling back through clenched teeth, "I'm fine, Mum!"

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, I stumbled towards the window and, with my wand wedged in between my teeth, I pushed it open and climbed onto the snowy ledge, slipping on the build-up before skidding down into the snow-covered ground.

"Shit, Woodley!" I could hear James hiss behind me but I did not turn around to look at him as I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus my messy thoughts on my grandparents' house until I finally felt the familiar tug behind my navel and darkness swallowed me on the spot.

I barely felt the icy wind as I ran towards the dark building, my dress catching on brambles as it dragged behind me in the snow. After one failed attempt that had taken me to a creepy deserted playground and cost me a strand of hair, I had finally managed to apparate back to my grandparents' house. Unfortunately, since I had not been able to magic myself straight into my room, I was left to climb the trellis that conveniently snaked up the entire south-wall and all the way up to my bedroom window, which, to my great surprise, wasn't left ajar just the slightest bit.

Lacking the time and nerve to question this conspicuous coincidence, I slipped into my room, feeling an unreasonable urge to laugh as I considered the amount of times I had performed this move tonight; maybe I was losing my mind. At least that would have explained why my life was crashing in front of my eyes.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

Vala's voice startled me and I barely stifled a yelp as I whipped around and found her lounging on my bed with my crumpled, old With Weekly issue lying in her lap.

"What are you doing here?" I hissed as something hot seemed to trickle down my spine. If Vala knew I had been gone, my family might know too.

"How about saving your arse."

I watched her crawl out of my bed, her hair piled on top of her head and a Maggie's Magical Blackhead Remover patch plastered across her nose. "Does anyone else know? That I was… gone."

Vala looked at me for a moment, taking in the creased ball gown which I was still holding up to my chest like a too large towel. For a moment I felt as though everything about me must have been giving away the unfortunate events of the evening – the way I had made a complete fool of myself – but, to my surprise, Vala didn't ask where I had been. Oddly, she didn't appear as though she even wanted to know.

"No, no one knows," she said slowly. "I've pretended to be you all night, sending Trixie and your mum away when they wanted to come in."

For a second we simply stood there, in the middle of my room, looking at each other as though we both were not exactly sure what to make of this. After everything that had happened tonight I would never have guessed that, in the end, it would be Vala who saved me from getting into even greater trouble.

"Thank you," I finally said and gave her a small smile.

"You're welcome." She returned the smile and then, very quietly, slipped out of my room and softly closed the door behind her.

As soon as I was alone, I let go of my dress, which I had been holding on to like it was a life vest, and let it crumple to the floor. The red cloth looked like a pool of blood and I felt like I could not look at it for another second.

I couldn't just go to bed now - not with the onslaught of images of James my brain was throwing at me - and so I began to pace my room, looking around wildly for something to do; something to make this entire day disappear. It was a useless endeavour, of course, but I felt as though I might go mad if I didn't at least try. Only when my gaze fell onto the small vanity in the corner did I finally stop.

It was barely visible from the far but as I moved closer to examine the damage, the thin rift was clearly discernible, snaking jaggedly across my grandparents' priceless antique mirror; the mark my ballpoint pen had left on it just an hour ago.

"Brilliant," I mumbled to myself as I sank onto the cushioned chair in front of the vanity, staring at the broken glass. "Just brilliant."

For a moment, I deceived myself that I could actually fix it – that the crack was so small, it would be easy to repair – but without magic, my hopes dwindled rapidly. There was nothing to be done and I could only sit there with resignation and stare at my dishevelled reflection in the damaged mirror.

And suddenly, all I wanted to do was cry.

A/N: First of all, thank you lovelies for all those reviews and reads, it really really means a lot to me! I am sorry for the long wait but it has been a very stressful time for me. My boyfriend had a really bad accident downhilling with his mountain-bike and he had to go through complicated surgery, which made it impossible for me to sit down and actually write. That is also why it took me so long to answer reviews… I haven't been on here a lot and during the more difficult days I simply couldn't get myself to reply right away. I just want you to know that those reviews still made my days and made me smile when I did not feel like smiling.

So, thank you. Really.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter and now that life is looking better again, I will write more frequently again . Just one last sappy note: Take care and live every day to the fullest… because life really is short and unpredictable and wonderful and crazy and worth every second.