beautiful - harry potter

chapter 8

Harry was back to his usual routine of admiring Thalia from a distance but he didn't bother her like he normally did. The bespectacled boy sat in the Great Hall with his hands on his face as he looked at Thalia Forthing.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Harry exhaled dreamily.

Ron, who was staring at his drumstick, happily nodded. "Oh yes she is," he said as he started to dig in, savoring the perfectly seasoned chicken. 

"Ron, he's not even- ugh!" Hermione groaned, clearly pissed off at everything. "Harry, stop being obsessed with Thalia for one minute and Ronald, stop eating! Harry, you still have yet to figure out what the second task is and-" 

"-and I'm sure I'll do fine, Mione," Harry said while still looking over at Thalia.

"You won't if you're not prepared," the bushy-haired girl scolded. Harry opened his mouth to speak again but Hermione hit his arm with her newspaper. "And no, the 'power of your love for Thalia' will not help you!"

"You didn't even know that that's what I was going to say!" Harry protested, rubbing his arm. "Fine, we can go look for an answer." Hermione let out a sigh of relief as the Golden Trio got to their feet and Harry glanced back at Thalia one last time.

-----

Thalia frowned as she looked at the material they were supposed to be doing. Professor Moody, their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, left the room and left them some work to do but Thalia had no idea what was going on.

She turned to Harry, who seemed to understand what was going on but he was equally stressed. He kept scribbling down words and crossing them out. 

"Harry," Thalia whispered hurriedly, "I don't understand this."

"Fuck," Harry mumbled under his breath. He was deep in thought as he tried to write down the answers on the parchment but it was so hard when Hermione wasn't there to help him cheat. "I don't understand either, love-"

Harry's shoulders immediately tensed up as the words rolled off his tongue and his brown eyes widened in realization. Thalia pursed her lips together awkwardly and looked back at her open textbook instead of trying to pry Harry for the answers.

The messy-haired boy just continued to slowly write answers. In these kinds of situations where you say something stupid, Harry found it best to just pretend that it never happened. 

Thalia rubbed the back of her neck as she flipped through the pages and Harry looked over at her. "I'm sorry," he apologized profusely, "I don't know why I called you that. I was just mad about the work and it kinda just happened."

"It's fine," the brunette replied, her voice a few octaves higher than usual, one of her common tell signs when she was lying. 

"Did you, uh, did you like it when I called you that?" Harry asked stupidly. 

"I guess," Thalia shrugged. "As long as you don't call anyone else by that." 

She looked over at Harry, who was trying his best not to smile too wide. He felt like doing cartwheels even though he didn't know how to and would probably end up falling flat on his face and embarrassing himself.

Harry just nodded multiple times very quickly, then went back to his work. He wasn't writing anything down though, he was just thinking about Thalia and his new name for her. The raven-haired boy used to think that his dreams for him and Thalia were impossible but this situation just proved him wrong.

Neither of them could really concentrate anymore and Harry finally put his quill down because it was no use even pretending that he was doing the work. "Are you coming to watch the second task? At the Black Lake?" Harry questioned.