A Friendly Face PV Paul Turner Finished

"Cor, there's really no need to apologize for your concern. Ever." Paul's face expression softened and he breathed out. "If anything, I should be the one apologizing for making you feel worried. Stupid me." Said the boy, guilty. This situation was strange. He never really felt guilty for anything he had done before. Once perhaps, when he was a kid and chose to jump into a mud puddle, splashing mud all over his clothes, his mum reproached him that he should be guilty. He wasn't anyway.

The thing was he just couldn't not notice her Cor's concerned face. Flashes of flashbacks from when he was about to touch the slime, ran in front of his eyes, and they all had one thing in common; the worries his experiment caused. Worries that he caused. How selfish of him.
Dammit Paul. It wasn't even worth it. You're not gonna publish a book about the Bubotuber slime, nor are you gonna ever be an expert on Herbology. So stop doing dumb stuff and start being more responsible. Thought the boy critically.

The fact he saw how sadly Cor looked at her notebook and his notebook then, didn't help to make him feel better. He didn't really mind not having taken notes, for he wouldn't have taken them anyway. Cor was exactly the kind of person who did though. But then, he got an idea.

"Uh, I'll... be right back!" Uttered the boy before getting lost for a moment among the crowd of their classmates. He soon reappeared however, holding someone's notebook. His face was shining with a bright grin, as he approached her. "There you go! Found someone who was actually paying attention to something else than the Bubotuber!" He handed the notebook to her, before he fixed the backpack on his back.

“I have Potions next, so I might have to walk fast.”

"Or we can run!" Said the boy, flashing her another one of an endless stock of smirks. "What do you say we repeat the race you won? Need to beat you at it still..." As he pronounced it, he lifted his eyebrows several times challengingly and started backing off from their original place, not taking his eyes off Cor. He eventually left the greenhouse as well as the grounds.

Location: Herbology
Tag: PV @Paul Turner
Date: September 10^th, 2o25
Time: 1:00pm
Word Count: 746



At this point, Corrine should’ve gotten used to it. Paul hadn’t been upset at her once ever since they met, so she doesn’t quite understand why her first instinct is to fear any signs of him being upset. Her friends’ opinions always matter a great deal to her and there wasn’t any doubt about that, but with Paul, it all felt amplified. The girl relaxed a tiny bit, realizing that Paul wasn’t burdened by her worry. However, despite what his words say, she could see the familiar spark of self-deprecation that she had (as much as she hated admitting it to herself). To know that Paul was likely experiencing it too made her uneasy.

With a frown, Corrine looked at him, forcing eye-contact even as she wavered in anxiety. “You’re not stupid,”she said, mustering up what courage she had next. “Please never say you’re stupid. To expect to know everything is unrealistic, and.. We’re both students for a reason. Please don’t let yourself think that you’re stupid just because you’re learning every day.”

A hypocritical statement coming from her, since she never thought she quite belonged in Ravenclaw, but that wasn’t her focus right now. It was Paul that mattered to her, not really herself.

“Would you think I’m stupid for not doing so good in flying classes?” Corrine added, trying to make an example. Her personal feelings aside, she wanted him to see what she was trying to portray in a way that didn’t seem demeaning. Paul was blunt and sometimes doesn’t think before he speaks, but he’s not mean. She doesn’t think he’d see her as stupid for struggling in flying classes.

At least, she hoped.

Before Corrine could say anything more embarrassing—thank goodness for the interruption, honestly—Paul had zipped away for a moment, approaching a random student. From afar, the girl could see him talk and nod, with a notebook being handed off to Paul, who then rushed back with a grin. It was a notebook, and the boy handed it over, seemingly for her to copy down whatever notes the student had on the other material aside from the Bubotuber plant.

Mumbling a soft thanks to Paul, she leaned down on the desk as she began to write what the two of them had missed onto her parchment, looking focused. What surprised her was the fact that it was actually a notebook; since she’s arrived at Hogwarts, there’s been little to no notebooks held by the students, since they often preferred the parchment. Perhaps just for the sake of tradition, or maybe because purebloods themselves don’t really think about the other stationary as an option, leaving it up to the muggle-borns like herself to use it.

She did miss it, though. Corrine made a mental note to herself about using a proper notebook next year instead of parchment, since it’s genuinely hard to keep track of notes with it.

Once the girl had finished copying down the notes, she hesitantly moved towards the owner of the mysterious notebook. “Thank you,” she said to them quietly. The student only nodded in acknowledgement before leaving the room, also in a rush to get to their next class.

Paul and Corrine were now alone, standing awkwardly side by side. The boy turned to her with a smirk, and she could immediately feel herself sighing in lighthearted exasperation. Again with these races, she shook her head in amusement, unable to stop herself from smiling softly. “The race before didn’t even count,” she chuckled. “You let me win. How does that count as a race?”

Corrine Aelina doesn’t like races. She doesn’t like overexerting herself, running, or anything of the sort. If a stranger ever asks to go up to her to ask for a race, the girl would say that she’d have to get paid to even consider accepting, since she knows she’d lose. That’s the type of logic that would apply to anything she doesn’t like doing.

But that doesn’t apply now. Corrine wordlessly braced herself for another exhausting run. Not because she liked running and being exhausted—goodness, no—but rather because Paul liked it. Paul liked having fun, liked running around and still somehow having an abundance of energy left.

So what does Corrine do?

Naturally, she followed his lead. Because to Corrine, Paul mattered more than some short-term exhaustion that’ll pass in a matter of minutes.

The girl grinned and rushed after her friend, her heart feeling light even as her body complained.