Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mad Eye Touz 
Aspen had indeed began to crawl away,but she did stop short when Cornelius spoke to her. She peeked around her shoulder back to where he was leaning down. Again, she had to pause and consider just how very, very, very strange this was. Perhaps everyone DID have the right of it to look at her the way they did, friends, peers, and professors alike. She was, after all, crawling under the table in the Great Hall like a runaway mouse.
"It's okay," Aspen assured him. She wasn't mad or upset. Honestly. "And, yes... yes, if you talk to me, I'll talk back. Though I've no idea why you'd want to after this."
Aspen began to crawl again, then stopped short again. One more time, she peeked back at the boy that had just YELLED about her to the whole Great Hall without even an ounce of shame to the whole thing. "You can come with me if you want." She made a quick gesture to her surroundings, the floor under the Ravenclaw House table. He could crawl out with her... if he wanted. In fact, she took a page out of his book and went ahead and offered him her hand - the same way he had offered her a hand out of her chair in the Common Room. He "helped" her up; she'd "help" him down.
Cornelius was more than surprised to find that Aspen didn't seem upset with him. The second he found her under the table, he was positive that she wouldn't want to speak to him again; something he wasn't exactly accustomed to. Sure, he'd never stood up on his chair to yell about a girl before, but any kind of wild thing he did to impress a girl before usually got him some kind of points with her. He hadn't really expected this.
It was then that it occurred to him... Was he trying to impress Aspen with that whole announcement? His brows furrowed just slightly at the thought, but he didn't have much time to think about it as in the next moment Aspen told him that it was okay, assuring him that she would talk to him if he ever actually wanted to speak to her again after this. His eyebrows rose.
She had to be kidding.
He'd just yelled out about her in the Great Hall and here she was, worried that he would never speak to her again. Sure, he'd never had a girl duck under a table before to get away from him (something that, he had to admit, sort of stung at first), but it certainly wasn't something that made him angry with her. And in the next moment, she had offered him her hand in the same way he had to her in the Common Room, except now she was offering him the chance to crawl under the Ravenclaw table and escape out of the Great Hall undetected alongside her.
Did she even have to ask? Grinning, Cornelius took her hand in his own and ducked beneath the table, joining her beneath it and turning to look at the girl beside him with a warm smile.
"C'mon," he prompted, squeezing her hand momentarily before releasing it so they could both begin the crawl towards the exit.