The Moon and His Night

14

Camille POV

"Camille..." A distant voice chided. "Camille, wake up. These potions ingredients aren't going to memorize themselves."

I groaned, lifting my head from where I had laid it on the table for only a few seconds.

"I'm starting to doubt I have the mental capacity to memorize another piece of information that is any way related to Potions." I sighed, looking at the mess of notes and textbooks opened all across the table in front of Brody and I.

"You just need to remember the acronyms and you'll be fine. Those include the order of ingredients and the amount of each. As long as you know those, you're good." Brody explained, shuffling through some papers as he searched for the parchment with all the potion ingredient acronyms on it.

"Or I can just memorize 60% of them really well and secure the minimum passing grade and get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight." I suggested hopefully, knowing that he was quickly going to shoot down that idea, but it was worth a shot. He lidded his eyes at me, unamused. As anticipated. "Ugh, fine. Get the acronyms back out."

After a few moments of searching, he finally found the singular piece of parchment he was looking for.

"Here. Look. It's easy." Brody stood from his chair and came over to the over side of the table, sliding the paper in front of me.

One by one he went over what each acronym meant and easy–while sometimes odd–ways to remember each one.

"Okay, now, this one." Brody pointed. "Antidote to Veritaserum. The acronym is P.E.N.C.I.L.S.–okay--you're laughing. Why are you laughing?"

"I'm sorry." I covered my face with my hands, slowlying shaking my head as my shoulders shook with uncontrollable and sleep-deprived laughter. "I'm paying attention, I promise. I'm just...so tired that I really thought that the acronym said penis, not pencils."

Brody snorted an unexpected laugh behind me, which only made my own exhausted giggles multiply. A few seconds later, we were both cracking up at seemingly nothing at all. 

"It's not even that funny..." I laughed, returning my hands to my face.

"I know." Brody cracked up, his shoulders now shaking with uncontrollable laughs too . "It's the sleep deprivation."

I nodded in agreement, laughing at how hard he was laughing now, which only made him laugh more. "Definitely."

God, I was going to bomb this exam, wasn't I?

The sound of a throat clearing is what finally interrupted Brody and I's delirious laughter. I peered over my shoulder, expecting to see someone eyeballing a book on the adjacent shelves or someone annoyed with the noise we were no doubt making. 

But I was met with neither.

It was Leo. His face was strangely expressionless as he took in the site of Brody standing rather close behind me as we both seemingly giggled at the most hilarious joke known to magical and muggle kind. Like we were giddy little school children or something.

This is what Leo was talking about when he said that it looked like Brody was into me a few weeks ago, isn't it?

Shit.

In the blink of an eye, I was struck with an urgent need to explain what was actually going on to Leo to ensure he didn't get the wrong idea here. Why did I want to make sure that he knew that Brody was just helping me study, and that our obnoxious laughter wasn't chemistry or flirty, but the result of staying up late multiple days in a row to study for these stupid exams?