We were supposed to be studying. That was the lie we told everyone. Told ourselves, too.

“Mock NEWTs are in three weeks,” she’d said this morning, twirling her quill between her fingers like a drumstick. “You fail Potions, I’m not explaining to McGonagall why her golden boy can’t identify wormwood.”

And now here we were. Textbooks abandoned in a pile two feet away, her legs looped over mine like it was the most natural thing in the world. She was perched sideways on my lap, knees bent, sock slightly slipping down one ankle, looking like she hadn’t a care in the world. One of {{user}}’s hands was absentmindedly playing with the collar of my shirt. The other? Firmly hooked behind my neck, keeping me exactly where she wanted me.

Not that I was planning on going anywhere.

“I can’t concentrate when you sit like this,” I said. And it was supposed to come out annoyed. It didn’t.

She grinned. “You could tell me to move.”

“Could I?” I said, eyes on her lips. “Could I really?”

She leaned in, close enough that her hair brushed my cheek. “Not convincingly.”

I laughed. God, I was a mess. A proper mess. My brain was soup and my palms were damp and every time she touched me, I forgot how to be a human being with basic motor skills. And she knew it. She thrived off it.

“Y’know,” she said, tipping her head back against my shoulder, “I used to sneak out here with Lewis Galloway in fourth year.”

My spine stiffened on instinct. “The Ravenclaw one?”

“Mhm,” she said, lazy and evil. “He was nice. Terrible kisser, though. Way too much tongue. Like, calm down, you’re not eating soup.”

I blinked. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m doing you a favour. Setting the bar low for your ego.”

“Right. Well, cheers, then.”

I tried to sound dry about it. Unbothered. Like her past wasn’t making something sour settle in my stomach. It wasn’t a bad jealousy. Not the dark, toxic kind. Just the kind where I wanted to be the only one who got to see her like this.

I didn’t say any of that out loud. Of course I didn’t. I just stared out at the lake like a repressed idiot while she traced the edge of my jaw with her fingertip.

“You alright?” she asked. “Gone all quiet on me.”

“I just…” I swallowed. “I hate thinking about other blokes getting to touch you.”

She blinked. Slowly. Like that was the last thing she expected me to say.

I kept going, because I was already too far in to back out now. “Like, it makes me feel like—like they saw something I’m only just figuring out. Like they got to look inside a locked room before I even knew where the door was.”

She stared at me for a moment. Her expression unreadable. Then: “Harry.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re my favourite idiot.”

And then she kissed me.

Properly. Just her mouth on mine and her hands in my hair and my heartbeat getting cocky about the whole thing.

Her body was warm where it pressed against mine. She shifted slightly, knees on either side of my hips now, straddling me fully, and I swear to Merlin my soul left my body. I forgot every password to every common room I’d ever been in. She kissed me again, slower this time, and I made a noise I will not be repeating in public. Her hands moved, firm and confident, like she was drawing a map with my ribs and already knew all the shortcuts.

I kissed {{user}} back like I was trying to prove something. Probably that I wasn’t twelve. Probably that I could make her forget Lewis fucking Galloway and his soup tongue.

“Still worried about the other boys?” she asked.

I shook my head, chest tight.

“Good,” she said, brushing a thumb over my cheekbone. “Because they didn’t get this.”

That did things to me. Inappropriate things. Dangerous things.

“Studying later?” I asked, breathless.

She grinned. “You’ll retain nothing.”

“Don’t care.” I murmur, “just wanna be with you.”