Hehe, thanks, bud. I should have figured YOU would be a Jim fan.

Yay! I'm glad you came back. You've been missed tremendously. Come back again?

Thank you! That's the best thing you can say, actually... that my characters feel real to you. It's really nice of you!

Nooo, and he's not going anywhere, is he?

Welcome, welcome! Happy to have you. No worship necessary.

Welcome to you too! I think we're all a little Ally inside, which is why she's so fun to write. And read, I hope. I'm really glad you're enjoying her story so far.

***



Day 2, Part 3

Among the top adjectives used to describe me by my friends and family, I think talkative would rank high on the list. Chatty, maybe. ‘Never shuts up’ and ‘verbal diarrhea’ might also make an appearance, but only if Brad is the person asked.

So why is it that I’m sitting here with a good looking boy, complete with British accent and possibly magical bloodlines, and I cannot think of a thing to say? He watches me expectantly, as if thinking that at any moment I’ll start being entertaining, and I just make my demented goldfish face at him.

It isn’t even that he’s cute or British or magical that is so hard to handle. Al is all of those things, and we manage something resembling a conversation every time we meet. It’s that Jim knows. He knows that he’s cute, and he knows that he’s British and that American girls swoon over crap like that. And if he’s magical, he knows that too.

The other confusing part is that I can’t figure out why he’s bothering. Brad has a small gathering of older girls in his wake everywhere he goes, and I’m sure that Jim could pull at least the same sized crowd. So why the heck is he crammed in between a log and the hillside with me?

My dad would say, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” But maybe I shouldn’t think about Dad, because he’d be pretty shocked by this whole situation. And who goes looking any horse in the mouth, anyway? Other than horse dentists or something.

While I’m pondering horses, gift or otherwise, Jim nudges my leg and gives me that grin of his. “So who are we hiding from then? Al? Ah, summer romance fades so quickly.”

“I’m not,” I jerk my leg further away from him. By now, I’m practically clinging to the hillside, which means another filthy pair of shorts I’ll have to explain to my mother. “My brother was being especially creeptastic this morning, so I had to go out the window just to leave the cottage.”

“You went out the window?” Do I detect mild admiration, Mr. James Potter?

“I thought you were supposed to be nice.” I finally manage to hiss at him with some amount of outrage, although I probably sound more like a leaky tire than anything else. It’s hard to really be irate about getting attention from a cute boy.

Jim just looks amused, though. Not at all put off by leaky tires is our Boy-Who-Lived-Junior. “Says who?”

Says… me. Where was his Gryffindor chivalry? Was it even possible for Harry Potter to have a kid who was sort of a jerkface? I mean… Harry was awkward with girls, but he was nice. He didn’t flirt and make heavy use of the suggestive eyebrows the way Jim does.

But you cannot call a guy out for not being enough like Harry Potter. I’ve tried it before – it makes people cranky to be compared to fictional characters for some reason.

“I just thought you would be.” Lame. I sound super lame, but to his credit, Jim doesn’t jump the log and go looking for an unlame girl elsewhere.

Instead, he spreads in my direction again, a feat I must say is quite impressive. How can one wiry 16-year-old take up so much room?

“I happen to think I’m being very nice. You have no idea how nice I can be.” And I have no desire to know. Why why WHY couldn’t it have been Al who found me this morning? Why did it have to be his hot yet overly pushy older brother?

As if I had conjured him out of thin air, Al peers over the log at our cozy little beach party. Honestly, I have no idea where he came from, but I don’t have much time to think about it. The stricken look is too distracting.

Idea to consider later: invisibility cloak? Al is too young to apparate, but could there be another sneaky way to appear from nowhere?

“Ally? What are you… with Jim?” He makes his own demented goldfish face at us for a minute before fleeing down the beach. Not sure if I ever really saw what fleeing looked like, but it looks a lot like a really nice, cute guy getting smaller in the distance while his annoying older brother smirks at you.

And yeah… smirking? I’m not a fan.

“If this is you being nice, I’m not sure I want to see you being not nice,” I shove him away from me with both feet and struggle over the log after Al. It isn’t the best comeback ever, but I’m not interested in impressing anyone within hearing range.

Without waiting for a reply, I hurry in the direction Al disappeared. Today started on a low note, and it was shaping up to be a really sucky day.