[27] Twitches

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Aisling had found herself in a position she had been in once before, about a year previously. She was sitting in the library and trying desperately to finish a particularly tricky potions essay, while trying even harder not to stare at Sirius Black. As she focused determinedly on her parchment and racked her brains trying to remember whether to stir clockwise or counter-clockwise when concocting a Draught of Living Death, she felt two eyes burning into the top of her head and she bent down even lower over her essay.

She had clocked him when she walked in, leaning back in his chair and showing no evidence of someone who was actually in the library to work or read. The two still hadn't spoken since their kiss in the stairwell; and Aisling didn't intend to. She knew that her and Sam weren't officially together, but she still felt immensely guilty about it. After all, she doubted that he was snogging other girls in the Ravenclaw common room when Aisling wasn't around. Then again, it would probably make her feel better if he was. She kept thinking, with an even sharper pang of guilt in her stomach, how grateful she was that Remus had walked in on them. As much as she kept trying to rationalise that she wouldn't, she knew that she would have let him lead her up to the boys' dormitories. She knew that she would have done anything to stop the fire between them from being extinguished.

Get a grip of yourself. She thought, shaking the thoughts firmly out of her head.

Just as her stamina reached its limits and she was on the verge of packing up her stuff and leaving, she felt someone tap her on the shoulder.

"Hey" Sam said, smiling at her.

"Hey." She replied, convincing herself that the strange feeling in her stomach was relief that it wasn't Sirius, and not disappointment.

"You've started on Slughorn's essay already?" He asked, sitting down next to her.

She nodded and for a few minutes neither of them said anything. The table was silent apart from the scratching of Aisling's quill on her parchment. Eventually Sam spoke again.

"Anyway I was going to ask if you wanted to hang out later? If you're not busy."

"Yeah sure." She said, smiling at him. "What do you want to do?"

"I dunno." He shrugged. "Naadir got a new set of Quidditch balls, we could get Roman and have a two-a-side game."

Aisling nodded and turned back to her essay, frowning slightly. She loved playing Quidditch, so why wasn't she excited at the idea of the game later? Maybe it was because she didn't like Sam's friends very much; although first impressions are often wrong Aisling had not grown any fonder of Naadir and Roman, and she got the distinct impression that the feeling was mutual.

"Difficult essay huh?" Sam asked, clearly misinterpreting her furrowed brow.

"Wha- yeah." Aisling corrected herself halfway through. "So am I on your team tonight then?"

"Depends, do you think that would be fair on the other two? I mean we're both pretty awesome."

Sam smiled playfully as he said this, but the smile quickly disappeared when they both heard a sharp, humourless laugh come from a few feet away. Aisling whipped her head around and saw nobody in the area. Nobody except...

"Black." Sam raised his voice slightly. "Something funny?"

Aisling noticed the glint in Sirius' eyes way too late.

"Nothing at all Matthews. Just, you do know what awesome means right?" He leaned further back in his chair so that the two front legs tipped up off the ground.

"Shut up, Sirius." Aisling said, through gritted teeth.

"Don't get offended Aisling, I wasn't talking about you." He grinned widely, showing gleaming white teeth. "I was talking about your friend here."

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