Cameron had been dealing with the shock of their weekend in the same way that any self-respecting teenage boy would: by ignoring it completely. He pretended Sloane had never broken down, that he had ever jumped to conclusion, and that she'd seen him shed a tear—and really, it was easy enough to regret considering how intense(ly destructive) their snogging had gotten shortly after.

He even invited her to study with him in the library, making sure everyone around him saw the stack of textbooks he'd been carrying with him as to not cause any suspicion. He'd invited Ned, too, just to be on the safe side (and it was the safe side, because he already knew Ned had a prior commitment). Besides, it wasn't as if he intended to snog her in the middle of the library. He knew better. If she got so panicked over snogging in the Potts library—something that had made his ability to meet Calla's eye that week way too difficult—he couldn't imagine how she'd handle it in the library. No, he actually intended to study. Intended to.

"I'm never going to pass my Potions OWL," he groaned not even ten minutes into their study session. Before now, it hadn't mattered much. Quidditch was his future, and no quidditch player needed Potions to play, but now he was beginning to consider alternatives. Not because quidditch wasn't his future, but because it had recently dawned upon him that quidditch wasn't a forever. The only son to a widow who he greatly suspected had spent much of his father's savings to survive in the years after his death, he needed a real job after the sport. He couldn't afford to coach or referee or whatever players did, and he needed more than three NEWTs (and thus, more than three OWLS) to accomplish that.

Maybe Potions wasn't one of them. He still wanted the option.

"What sort of jobs can you get with three NEWTs anyways?" he asked, not expecting her to know much more than him. At least girls didn't have to work. At least Sloane wouldn't. Not forever.

---