love bomb ♦ {archie}

Hazel sauntered into class, horrified that the only seat left was next to the last person she wanted to see after her earlier conversation – accident-prone Archie. She paused at the door, double checking the classroom, before reluctantly taking the place beside him. Regarding him with a disapproving stare, she said, “try not to spill anything on my project” very sternly. Then, Hazel pulled her supplies out of her bag and lined them up neatly on the desk in front of her.

Their assignment today was to design a card for someone they loved, and Hazel had half a mind to raise her hand and ask the professor if she thought they were all five years old. It then dawned on her that Shelby had just told her Archie was her perfect match – and here they were an hour later, sat side by side, being told to work on a love note. Hazel paled. Oh my stars, she thought silently but shook her head to calm herself. Astrology wasn’t real. Shelby Trickett had no idea what she was talking about! Hazel completely forgot her disapproval of the task, now focused entirely on Shelby’s premonition. She glanced at Archie then swiftly redirected her gaze to the paper on her desk. Think about the project. Who did she want to write to?

Soon, a brilliant idea came to mind and she promptly shut down any indignation. She got to work immediately, deciding she would start on the internal contents first and return to the cover design later.

Her curiosity caught hold of her once she noticed Archie working diligently on his own card. She peeked over, returned her attention to the letter she was writing, then looked at him again. Hazel’s eyebrows shot up, a look of disbelief flickering across her features. He was writing intently, and she wondered if there was a girl that the Hufflepuff was interested in. It was a bit of a relief – she’d be more than happy for confirmation of Shelby’s inaccuracy. Finally, Hazel asked, “Who are you writing to?”

-

@Archie Macnair

Archie hadn’t ever showed much promise at art, so long ago he’d made abstraction his niche. It didn’t always work that well, of course (if you let enough paint get mixed everything would just turn brown) but generally, it was easier. There were far more ways to make a drawing of a dragon look wrong than there were to mess up random splotches of color.

The cover of his card was now dry, with only one finger mark where he’d tested it too impatiently. Now he was writing his letter back to Rod. He was doing it carefully so as not to knock over his ink on Hazel So, who clearly still remembered that he’d once done so months ago. These cards weren’t exactly two-foot essays, but there was still no way she’d take it well, and the last thing Archie wanted was to provoke any more of her wrath. He was sure both of them had hoped she could sit next to someone neater.

Perhaps she was feeling the absence of Sienna, or perhaps just gone temporarily insane—but Hazel turned and spoke to him. “What?” replied Archie, uselessly, in surprise. “Oh, er, my brother and sister.” Kelsey didn’t technically have letter privileges at the moment, but mentioning her in the same breath seemed to temper people’s distaste whenever he spoke of Rod, so he’d picked up the habit.

He twisted his quill nervously between his fingers. “What about you?” he asked. That was the right answer, wasn’t it? Normally Archie was good at being polite, but he still felt like he was walking into a trap of some kind, and it was making him very—

“—Oh!” He hadn’t knocked over the ink, but in fidgeting with his quill he had bumped the bottle and stained the top of the feather plume dark blue. “Fuck,” Archie muttered.

His siblings? “Don't you see them every holiday?” Hazel was confused about why he'd decided to go that route but was pleased that it wasn't for her, thus disproving Shelby's theory (she hoped). Not waiting for an answer, she set to work on her own note, writing the first line in a swirly penmanship and dotting her eyes with hearts and flowers. A small smile formed on the Slytherin's lips and she had to suppress an excited shriek. This had to be the best letter she'd ever written.

At Archie's question, Hazel nearly hesitated, remembering the other girls' judging at the cafe, but as she surveyed Archie with a critical look, she decided sharing the details would do no harm. If anything, he would at least know that she was already spoken for. Hazel sat up a little straighter. "If you must know, I'm writing a letter to Joey Mowie." Briefly, she wondered if he knew the famous frontman but quickly dismissed the thought. Everyone knew who Joey was at this part. He was an absolute sensation - that's what the article in Witch Weekly had said. The article had also said that, "He's officially accepting owls from his fans, and the best ones might get a mention in his next interview." Hazel brought her hands to her face. Imagine Joey Mowie specially mentioning her letter - she could just pass out at the thought!

Not wanting to waste time, she went back to working on her card. In the upper right corner of the page, Hazel attempted to draw a guitar, but quickly discovered that drawing a guitar from memory would be an impossible feat. Instead, she was now staring at a lopsided heart. Hazel dipped her quill in some ink, ready to attempt a minor heart surgery, when she dropped her utensil in offense.

Her head turned sharply at the offender. “Really, Archie, do you have to be so crude?” Hazel’s nose wrinkled as she spoke the last word to put even more of an emphasis on it. Was that the kind of vocabulary he was going to use in his card?

Hazel seemed baffled that he would write to his family, which baffled Archie in turn. Who else was there to make a card for? “Yeah, I guess,” he said so as not to be too rude, “but they’re at home, so I’ll send this for my next letter, I think.” Had Hazel been writing home? Was anyone? Were they all supposed to be staying here in another country without keeping their families up on it? Archie had no idea.

Her card was going to Joey Mowie. “Is that the bloke with the Love Bugs?” Archie asked. He’d heard the popular song on the wireless some girls liked to play in the common room, but wasn’t good at remembering the names of artists. The rhyming silliness of the name “Joey Mowie” made it easier to place than usual.  “Do you know him?” he asked. It wasn’t a stretch, in a world so small as theirs—but no, she went on to talk about letters from his fans. “Oh,” he said. “That’s cool.”. He didn’t want Hazel to think badly of him, of course that was part of it, but he was also being genuine. He would never have the nerve to write to a famous person, especially one he admired as much as Hazel seemed to admire Joey Mowie.

Though it was better than the thought of talking to a famous person, he guessed.

He thought he might have been getting somewhere, but Hazel turned hostile once again when he indulged himself in crudeness. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He didn’t want to rat out any particular bad influences in an effort to escape his responsibility here, so he grimaced awkwardly and shrugged. “I’ll try not to do it again.” He let her pick up her quill again and inspected his stained one. Looked kind of stupid, of course, but it still worked so he didn’t care enough to get a grownup to fix it. The embarrassment had been the worst part of the whole ordeal. With a few significant exceptions, Archie found that most ordeals were that way.

The question was bubbling up in him, though, and he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Do you really never swear?” he asked. “What if you get really, really frustrated?” He had a lower threshold than many, he knew, but he felt some situations truly called for a good "fuck.”