He should have been expecting a question like that, based on what he'd said, but he wasn't. He took a deep breath in and held it a moment, shifting his eyes up to the ceiling of her room. After a second he let it all out in a long, audible exhale. He hadn't taken the time to reexamine his motives since the elopement, and he didn't think anything good was coming to come of doing it here on the fly, but he couldn't just not answer the question. Particularly not when he'd brought it up in the first place.

"At the Quidditch party? I don't know. I was drunk; you were pretty. Making bad decisions when I'm drunk is sort of my thing," he said, with a hint of bitterness, though in this context he could really only be angry at himself and not at her or anyone else.

"I think I knew it was a bad decision even then," he said, then, after a moment's pause, corrected himself. "I mean, I know I knew it was a bad decision. Which is why I avoided you after I came back from Canada. I guess I was overdue for getting myself into trouble, or something. I don't know. I do stuff like this, every once in a while. Just keep doing stupid stuff until it all blows up, and then Aldous has to come bail me out."