Something told Gwen that the haunted suits of armor bewitched to throw snowballs at their passerby's were a sort of Marauders' prank, on the basis that she seemed to receive more of a pelting of snowballs than any other student in the castle. (Save for Snape, of course, who was hit by every statue in a vicinity all at once.)

     Gwen hadn't spoken to James since the day in Potions, which was ramping up to a full week ago. On the other hand, that meant that the deadline for their Amortentia was upon them, and luckily Gwen had been able to complete the potion on her own. She'd desperately wished James to come back in and give her another chance, but she knew that wouldn't be happening without an apology on her end. But she couldn't get near him without his little posse blocking her out, and he didn't go anywhere without the Marauders, so there was no reaching him. Gwen was stuck.

     But the suits of armor were getting awfully annoying, and she was sick of not seeing James.

"..if my lesson is too boring for Ms. Graham," came Mcgonagall's voice, from right in front of Gwen, and she snapped back to reality. She'd completely lost herself during Mcgonagall's lecture, and by the look on the professor's face, she was going to pay for it.

Mcgonagall glared at her sternly from behind her cat-eye glasses. She arched a sharp brow. "Something more important on your mind, Ms. Graham? Perhaps, more important than completing your assignment?"

Gwen stared up at Mcgonagall, swallowing thickly. If she had been feeling herself, she would have replied with a clever remark that brought even the faintest smile to Mcgonagall's permanently downturned lips. But Gwen was not feeling herself, and she only lifted her shoulders in response, before turning her head back down to the blank parchment before her.

Mcgonagall did not move for a moment. Gwen could feel her stern gaze through the top of her head.

"See me after class, Ms. Graham," the professor decided.

"Yes, ma'am," Gwen muttered.

She ran a hand down her face as Mcgonagall walked briskly away. Detention could probably be the worst possible thing at the moment, and she'd practically just scored herself a front-row seat to one by Mcgonagall standards.

From the table to her right, Walker leaned over, his brow furrowed with concern. "You alright, Gwen?"

She kept her face in her hands so he couldn't see her grimace. "Yep. Brilliant."

Walker frowned, averting his gaze. "It's just... We had practice last night. You missed it."

Gwen dropped her hands, turning to face Walker with a wide-eyed stare. "Are you serious? Oh, bloody hell, Walker. I'm so sorry. I completely forgot, and I just—"

"It's okay," he said, offering her a smile. "Don't worry about it. I was able to cover for you on the Grant front, but I hear Jackie wants to strangle you. Whenever she's done with her N.E.W.T. practice class, at least..."

"I'll keep an eye out for her," she said with a nod, turning back to her own desk.

Again, she buried her head in her hands. Missing Quidditch practice was a line that had been crossed, even if Walker didn't want to say it aloud. It would've been one thing if Gwen had had an excuse to be missing, but something told her it just slipping her mind would not go over well with Grant.

     Before she knew it, Sirius Black was glaring harshly at her as he walked past her desk, signifying class being over. Gwen swallowed and, averting her gaze from any of the rest of the Marauders, headed up to Mcgonagall's desk.

     "I'm sorry, Professor," she began, sincerely. "I was paying attention, at first, but—it's just, I've read ahead in the books and my essay for the topic is already completed. I did the math, too; it'd be fine for me to let one assignment go and it wouldn't affect my marks. I didn't think—I'm sorry, Professor, I really—"

     Mcgonagall held up a hand. She glared up at Gwen severely, from beneath her furrowed brow. "I can tell that you have been putting in the work, Gwen. You aren't a bad student, by any means. That's why I'm only giving you one hour for missing this assignment. You'll meet Filch in the Dungeons at six. After this, though, there will be no more leniency; I will give you the full three hours if this happens again. Understood?"

     Gwen swallowed, nodding her head vehemently. "Yes, Professor. Um, thank you."

     "Don't thank me, Graham," she said, her head already back down facing the piles of paper atop her desk. "Now, get going. I don't want you to get another detention for being late to your next class."

     "Oh, actually, it's free," Gwen corrected, though she quickly pursed her lips and nodded. "Right. Doesn't matter. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow, Professor."

     "Have a good rest of your day, Graham."

     But Gwen did not have a good rest of her day; she barely had an okay day. Every hall she turned into, she was welcomed with bewitched snowballs and offhanded waves from people she'd never spoken to before in her entire life.

     Beginning of term, Gwen had enjoyed her off periods. She could find a good book to read and indulge herself in the library, or take a quick power nap in the Common Room, maybe get a spontaneous practice in at the pitch. But ever since the war had gotten so much worse—and ever since James had altogether dropped Gwen off the face of the earth—she couldn't find the motivation within herself to follow through with any of the things she would have done earlier in the year. She'd even left a half-read book on the Common Room sidetable, an action viewed as entirely disrespectful to the book itself and to the Common Room; and something she never would have even thought of doing, had she been in her right mind.

     Somehow, Gwen found herself at the lake before she had to meet Filch in the Dungeons. It was a peaceful place, and one that Gwen decided she had taken for granted in her prior years at Hogwarts, as she never truly spent much time on the shore.

     Because of the waves crashing continuously against the grass and the sheer depth of the lake itself, the freezing weather of the time of year never succeeded in turning the whole Great Lake to ice. So its waves carried on crashing, rising dangerously close to Gwen's feet, before following their rhythm and sinking back down to the water. She watched the white ripples rise and fall, gazing as the lake seemed to take in each wave like a breath.

     Gwen followed it, trailing each time the waves rose with a breath in and each time they sunk back with a breath out. It helped, oddly enough; helped calm her mind and heart, which had been beating much too fast for her liking.

     "Oh."

     She turned to see Lily Evans looking quite shocked, holding her bookbag at her side.

     "I'm sorry," she said, green eyes wide. "I didn't realize you were down here. I can go find—"

     "That's okay," Gwen said, standing. "I was just about to leave. I know this is unofficially your spot, anyway."

     "Oh," Lily said. She smiled bashfully. "Thank you. I didn't mean to kick you out, or anything."

     "Please." Gwen waved a hand, then brought it up and ran a hand through her hair. "You're alright, Evans."

     As she bent down to gather her own things—stack up her textbooks and put her own reading book atop those—Evans peered over her shoulder curiously, tiptoes employed to sneak a peek at the title of her book.

     "What are you reading?" she asked, as the title just slipped her view. Then she smiled, embarrassed, again, shaking her head. "You don't have to say, I was just—"

     Gwen's lips split into a smile. "It's okay. It's a Muggle book, my mum's favorite. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's quite silly, how they think magic works—"

     But Lily's face had lit completely up, and she nodded quickly, excited. "I've read that one, when I was a girl! It's popular with young Muggles, I think. I don't remember much about it, but my sister absolutely adored it."

     Gwen raised her eyebrows. "You've a sister? I didn't know."

     Lily's smile wavered. She lifted a shoulder and did not say much else on that front, so it was clear to Gwen that the sister topic was one that needed to be dropped. Luckily, Lily reached out and asked with her hand permission to see the book. Gwen acquiesced, and together the girls inspected it.

     "It's silly," Gwen said again, shrugging. "She eats cookies that make her bigger and smaller and there's talking cats. Funny how Muggle minds work, when they're not limited by the laws of their reality."

     Lily frowned thoughtfully, then looked to Gwen, tilting her head. "But.. don't we have all those things?"

     Gwen thought with her for a moment. She furrowed her brow, then waved a hand. "Oh, whatever. Anyway, you can borrow it, if you want. I finished it at lunch."

     "Oh, that's kind of you," Lily said, still gazing down at the book. "Where did you get it from? I know they don't have any Muggle titles in the library here."

     Gwen pursed her lips. "My mum's a Muggle."

     "Oh." Lily nodded. "Mine, too. And my dad."

     Gwen swallowed thickly. "Come to think of it, I'm not.. I'm not really friends with anybody whose parents are Muggles. Jackie's dad was, but he died when she was young, and she was raised as a witch. Walker's pureblood, of course. Everybody else has a very distant relative who's Muggleborn, maybe, but that's the extent. I don't have any real Muggleborn friends."

     Lily raised her eyebrows as she listened. Then, she set her face, nodding once sternly. "That settles it, then. We've got to be friends."

     "We have?"

     Again, Lily nodded, and she smiled. "We have to stick together. Especially..." Her smile fell, and she swallowed. "Especially now, with everything going on."

     Gwen twisted her lips to the side. "Right. Of course. Then we're friends, I suppose. I'm glad."

     Lily smiled. "Me, too. And since we're friends, I think I ought to let you know that it's two minutes until six and you have to meet Filch in the Dungeons."

     Gwen's stomach plummeted to her feet. She tucked her wand behind her ear and stumbled over herself, heading back up the hill. "Bloody hell! Ah, Merlin. I'll have to see you later, then, Evans. Wish me luck with whatever Filch's got laid out for me!"

     Lily waved her goodbye, still clutching the copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "Good luck with whatever Filch's got laid out for you, Gwen!"

Gwen noticed two things when she slowed to a stop at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Dungeons: One, that she was very late. And two, that she was not the only one who had been punished with detention that night. It made sense, of course, that she wasn't the only sixth year who'd gotten into trouble that day.

     But it felt like some cruel play of fate for her detention partner to be James Potter.

"You're late," said Filch, his grating voice interrupting Gwen and James's long first look at each other.

"Sorry 'bout that," she said, breathlessly. "Was down at the—Nevermind, doesn't matter anyway. What's our task, then?"

Filch scowled at her. He extended both arms, and two buckets hung down from his hands, soapy water sloshing out of them and onto the floor beneath him. There were two mops lying against the wall just to the side.

"Mop," Filch said gruffly. "Whole floor. If you think it's done, 's'not. Keep going until you can see your annoying reflections in the floor. I'll be checking in at the end of the hour."

And he trudged his little self back up the stairs, grumbling the whole way up, leaving Gwen and James with two mops and an entire dungeon to clean.

"I'll do the far end," James decided, taking his bucket and mop and heading down to the opposite end of the dungeon.

Gwen sighed, standing listlessly behind. "James, wait."

He didn't stop. "We have to clean."

"Would you listen to me?"

"No."

He walked past a suit of armor, and it lifted its arm and tossed a snowball at Gwen's head. James didn't even turn around.

"How am I supposed to apologize if you keep ignoring me?" she yelled down the corridor, brushing snow off her hair. "You make everything ten times more difficult than it needs to be, Potter!"

     "Trust me," he replied, now at the very end of the hall, "I know!"

     Exhaling a frustrated sigh, Gwen dunked her mop into her bucket and sloshed it onto the cobblestone floor. It was grimy down in the Dungeons, and cleaning up the ground was definitely more than a two-person job—especially when she'd been promised a one-hour detention at most—but she had no other option, and so she scrubbed her mop across the ground to try and even make a dent in the grot on the floor.

Half an hour later, Gwen had made it almost halfway to James. The floor wasn't so clean it reflected herself, but she figured that was entirely impossible, so she gave up and decided to half-ass the rest of the way.

"I met Evans today," she said, offhandedly, her voice carrying down to James. He wasn't far from her anymore. "She's sweet. I understand why you fancy her."

James just let out a scoff in response, shaking his head to himself.

Gwen threw her hands in the air. "I can't do anything, can I?"

"I just don't fancy talking to you, mate," he said, keeping his head down.

"You're being childish." She put her hands on her hips, watching him mop with a tilted head. "I've been meaning to apologize, but it's bloody difficult to get you away from the rest of your friends—and it's quite obvious you don't want to hear from me, anyway."

"Yep. You're right about that."

Gwen's breathing picked up, and she huffed, blinking quickly. "James, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean what I said. I was angry, and embarrassed, and you were too nice to reject me so I figured I'd get it over with for you, but it ended up backfiring because I actually bloody miss you, and—"

"I don't fancy Lily." James looked up, resting both his hands on his mop's grip and meeting her eyes intensely. "I haven't fancied Lily since second year, when I met you. Since we started playing against each other on the pitch. I thought you were the prettiest girl in the whole school—whole world, even—and you never even looked my way. Then third year hit, and I thought you would finally notice me. You didn't. Then, fourth year. Same story. I knew I'd gotten your attention in fifth year, but you only hated my guts, and that was even worse than not knowing who I was. Sixth year.. this was supposed to be my year."

     He bridged the gap between them, pointing an accusing finger in her face. "If you knew me at all, you would know there's no way in hell I would've rejected you. I thought I knew you, too. But I only knew your surface. Had no idea there was such a cruel person beneath it."

     Gwen stammered, "I—I'm not—"

     But James wasn't having it. He shook his head. "I'm so bloody glad you showed your true colors, though. Otherwise I would've still fancied you, and you would've just hurt me all over again."

     "James, stop." She shook her head, her eyes glistening with tears. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not..." She swallowed the lump of tears sat right in her throat and blinked up at him. "I'm not a cruel person. I didn't mean anything I said, James. I only said it because I thought you were going to... I had no idea. I didn't know how you feel about me."

"Felt," he corrected, pointedly. "Since you made it very bloody clear there's no chance of this happening."

"Felt," she agreed in a small voice, eyes falling to the ground. "James, I feel horrible. I was only saying it because of how embarrassed I was, and—"

"Imagine how it made me feel," he said, glaring down at her. "You had no right to say those things. Even if they had been true. You have a horrible tendency to shut people out when you start feeling things, and you've already done it to me twice. I don't want to give you a third chance, Gwen, especially since I know the same thing will end up happening and I'll end up kicked to the side all over again."

     "I know," she said, her voice breaking. "James, I really am sorry. I don't know what else to say."

     "Promise me." His chest was heaving, rising and falling with heavy breaths of fury. His gaze was hard. "You've got to promise me that if I give you another chance, you won't push me out again. You can trust me, Gwen. I don't know how else to make you believe me. You just have to know that I have your back. Because I do. But if you try to run away again, I'm not chasing you down. You understand that?"

Gwen thought for a moment. She inhaled a deep breath, stabilizing herself before shaking her head. "Maybe... maybe this just isn't right, James."

     He furrowed his brow, stricken. "Gwen, come on. Be serious."

     "I am," she said, giving the faintest shake of her head. "If this is all happening before we've even gone past being friends, then maybe we aren't meant to..."

     Her voice broke and she trailed off, but the rest of her sentence hung in the air between them like a haunting omen.

     "Gwen." James stared her down, his eyes red. "Look at me and tell me that you're just going to ignore whatever's between us. Look me in the eye, and I'll believe you."

     She met his gaze, for only a fraction of a second, then sighed and dropped her eyes to the ground again. "James—"

     "I'm not saying I don't fancy you," he said, firmly. "I do. I'm only saying that I need you not to run. And that's what you're doing right now, you realize that? You're running away because things got scary."

     "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

     "I want to be with you, Gwen," he said, and it was as though a flip had switched within their conversation; now, James was the one pleading, and Gwen the one holding the stoic denial.

     She shook her head. "But I'm not what you should want."

"You're all I could ever need."

"You deserve someone better than me, James." Gwen bit her lip, taking a step back. "You shouldn't have to beg someone to be good to you. You need to be with someone better than me, and I think you know that."

"Gwen, stop." James, too, took a step back, looking her up and down. He sighed, then put his hands to his eyes, digging the heels of his palms into them as though he could wipe the scene away. "I don't understand what you're saying. You're all I know; you're all I've ever known."

"I can't make it any clearer, James." Her shoulders hunched. She bowed her head, to hide the tears that were dangerously close to spilling over. "We shouldn't be together if it's going to be like this."

     James twisted his lips, clenching his jaw acidly and backing away from her. "You know what? Fine. That's fine. You have a nice life, then. I'm done being apart of it."

Gwen exhaled a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. "James, I'm sorry. If you would just listen—"

"I've heard enough," he said. "I thought we could work this out, but you're too much of a fucking coward, Graham. I'd say not to come crying back to me when you finally take a look at yourself, but you'd be too scared to even pick up the mirror."

And he was gone, stormed up the stairs and leaving a broken-down Gwen in his wake.

VIAS CORNER
So... something not that chill happened last night 😛
Gwames nation stand strong. things are looking grim for you.
he kind of gagged her i'm ngl. but there is still more to come
anyways almost 4k words is kind of insane for an angst chapter. if only i could write this way when i was writing happy
anyways hope u enjoyed and arent too broken up after this
catch yall on Da Flip 🫱🤚✌️🤌🤛