Every Little Thing, James Potter.

08. Snog The Spoon

Time had slipped away from Gwen and James, and suddenly they only had one week left to complete their Potions project. They had gone the entire term without even touching their Amortentia assignment; honestly, it was impressive how long they'd gone without doing a single ounce of work.

But time was not on their side, and Gwen was growing increasingly more stressed as the deadline snuck up on them. So she found James one exact week before their potion had to be turned in and forced him to work with her so they could 'finish the damn project,' in her words.

     It was also the first time she'd spoken to him since the Veritaserum fiasco.

     "It's Sunday," she said, unlocking the door to Slughorn's classroom, "so nobody will be coming in here. Which is good, because we need to finish this. No distractions."

     James followed her inside, glancing around the empty Potions room. "Do you have the recipe, or are we going off our brilliant minds?"

     Gwen gave him an unamused glare and flicked her wand; a Potions textbook flew off the shelf and landed on the table in front of their cauldron. "You think I trust either of us to go in blindly on this?"

     "Well," James shrugged, "you did admit that you're horrible at Potions, so I suppose not..."

     Gwen tensed, avoiding looking at James. Of course he'd bring it up. Now it was unavoidable, though Gwen so desperately wanted to crawl into a hole and off herself so she never had to think about it again. She'd been at her very lowest that day and it was still being hung over her head.

     She had heard from Jackie—arguably Hogwarts' biggest gossip—that it was still going around that Gwen had been dosed with Amortentia, so James clearly hadn't told anyone that it had been no such thing and everything Gwen had said that day was true. He had the high ground, and chose not to use it against her.

     Of course he hadn't; he was James Potter.

     She wished he weren't so bloody fanciable.

     "This takes exactly a week to set." James had already leafed through the journal to find the page marked for Amortentia, his finger skimming down and stopping on any important information. He looked up to Gwen, pushing his glasses up his nose. "We can craft it together in a day, but we can't give it less than a week to develop. We'd better get started, then. Don't have much time to spare."

     "Right," said Gwen, snapping back into action. Academics always came before the boy she fancied, whomever that may be. She tied her hair back into a ponytail and slid herself into the apron. "You grab the sage-infused dragon scales, yellow eyes of newt, and the pearl dust. I'll—"

     She cut herself off at James's blank stare. "What?"

     He blinked.

     "Oh, right." Gwen rolled her eyes. "Merlin, why did you have to be born colorblind? You boil the Belladonna and add in the Bicorn horns, three of them. I'll get everything else."

     "You know," he said, stirring the starting ingredients together in the cauldron, "it's not my fault I'm colorblind."

     "I'd bet there's a spell that can fix that for you," she responded without turning to face him, while rummaging around in the ingredients cabinet for the rest of their constitutes.

     "Never looked," he admitted, peering into the cauldron. "I kind of enjoy it."

     "You're very odd, James," Gwen told him. Her arms were full of ingredients as she made her way back to their table, and she dumped them all onto the workspace, catching the vial of pearl dust as it almost rolled to the floor. She exhaled a heavy breath, opening their log to the first page. She picked up a quill. "Right. What color is it right now?"