James Potter has a lot of things on his mind. Yes, our beloved Head Boy has a significant problem with the Head Girl. And what with and a graduation ceremony looming, James manages to leave things a little to late. L/J

Hi Everyone, I am being very bad and writing other things when I know you are all so hopelessly hooked on The Story Of James Potter, (not). Anyway, yet another of my pointless petit prose. Stuffed with fluff and fit to burst, tread carefully.
~fae
The Very Last Minute

One ~ The Human Liability

James Potter was standing Professor Dumbledore's office, trying very hard not to look at the person beside him for fear of falling over while standing quite still; the old man was sitting on the other side of his desk, trying not burst out laughing, and the person beside James Potter was trying to work out what in the world was so funny.

"Now," Dumbledore addressed James, opening a drawer and rummaging around a little. "You know that one of your duties as Head Boy is to recite the Morals of Magic at next month's graduation ceremony?" He handed the Head Boy a sheet of parchment with a lot of complicated curly writing on it. James nodded and took the parchment nervously, hoping that he wouldn't leave fingerprints of sweat of the clean sheet. "It's only about thirty lines," the headmaster said, "Take a little every day and you should whiz through it, you could even get through it before your OWLs begin next week, happy?"

"Yes sir," James replied, feeling his face slowly heighten in temperature.

"Good, good," Dumbledore said in a final sort of way, turning his burst of giggles into a brief coughing fit. "Well, Mr Potter, Miss Evans, until next time."

The head students made their way to the door. James stood back in the doorway he'd just open to let the Head Girl pass through, and grinned himself silly behind her back when she smiled at him. Little did he know, the old man had ducked behind his desk because he had had the extraordinary urge to grin as well.

Miss Evans waited for James at the top of the stairs, which he supposed was only polite.

Ah, Miss Evans, he thought dreamily. His eyes wondered over her profile; high, freckled cheekbones under dark eyelashes and slightly pointed ears poking through her dark red spirals, making her look faintly elf-like. She was he prettiest girl in the school, the wittiest, the most curious, the most sparkling, the most unique, the scattiest, the flightiest. James was almost certain that if she thought she could, she'd grow wings and flutter away. That was why he avoided direct contact with her most of the time, to save himself the heartbreak of seeing her go.

But what James didn't know was that it was too late, he was already so deep into his affection for her, he would probably grow his own wings and follow her to wherever she chose to go.

Apart from that, there was another, more embarrassing problem as to why he evaded her. James Potter was convinced that Miss Evans thought him. . .well, a bit of a pillock really. The fact that he was extremely tall and skinny didn't help; in fact whenever he was talking to Dumbledore, he would find himself conversing with the man's hat instead of his face. He had a requirement for large, round glasses, or else he'd be practically blind and James had hoped that seven years of walking around under an invisibility cloak would flatten his hair somewhat, but it hadn't worked. In fact, he was almost sure that his night black spikes were poking through the material and people would think that a sooty hedgehog was floating around the corridors. Nobody would be able to touch it without bumping into him though.

Except that he usually did the bumping into people when he was within a ten- metre radius of Miss Evans. This was the problem. Whenever he knew there was any chance of being in her line of vision, he automatically became so clumsy and butter-fingered that Hogwarts should have put him on their list of things that they did not accept liability for. It was especially bad when they were alone. He'd trip up on flagstones, drop his books, stutter like a rusty farm tractor, and then there was that awful episode with the statue of Ferp the Fermented and their sample of Potions coursework; that caused James to want to spontaneously combust every time he thought about it.

"Prepared for your exams?" Miss Evans asked brightly, causing James to smack into a door that displayed "Pull" in ten different languages on the handle.

"Um, er, n-not really," James stuttered, trying to repair his glasses as inconspicuously as possible. He didn't seem to be doing it right though. Let it just be said that Charms was not a speciality of James's. Transfiguration was a different story, he just needed something to begin with and he was unstoppable. Doing something from scratch was harder. It may have also been the fact that he was always partnered with the best Charmer (in more ways than one) in the year. Flitwick's theory was that with her guidance, he'd progress a bit, but the truth was, he hadn't progressed. . .at all.

"Is your wand OK?" she asked, squinting at the pink, frilly flowers that were spurting out of the end of James's wand onto the shattered fragments of his glasses. Her fuzzy outline brushed petals from his handful of glass and brought out her own wand. James felt her gather the shards from his open palms and sensed a shiver go down his spine. He heard her soft voice say "Repairo" and could just make out her shape reaching up to place his newly mended spectacles back onto his nose. The Head Boy involuntarily swallowed as she cocked her head to the side and smiled slightly at him. Her green eyes were mesmerising circles, disrupted only by the dark vortexes in the centres and the white bubbles of the candlelight reflections.

Dazed by this enchanting vision, James made it down three flights of stairs in less than ten seconds. It should have been a record, it really should have, it was just that the Wizarding Book of World Records refused to acknowledge him because he had a certain amount of unfair gravity on his side.

***

OK, here's the deal: I've decided to do a small experiment because I am a greedy sodess and I like my reviews. Er. . . 10 and I'll post the next chappy.

Thanks for reading,

~fae