Benji took a deep breath as he made his way toward the designated meeting spot. Yeah, the summer was off to a great start -- in some ways, anyway. Sure, his parents had already yelled at him twice for insignificant things in between long periods of pretending he didn't exist, but they had also left him largely unsupervised as they busied themselves with work. Soooo he hadn't even had to sneak around very much in order to find himself here in Diagon Alley. He had kind of just... Casually left. He'd actually taken a Muggle bus to get here. That had been pretty exciting.

BUT not as exciting as finally seeing Penny. Sure, it hadn't been all that long since they'd seen each other, and of course they'd been keeping in touch, but it felt like an eternity since he'd actually gotten to give her a hug or hold her hand or kiss her or just, y'know, SEE her. Saying he was looking forward to this was a vast understatement.

He passed by the various shops, not even tempted to stop and look around. He was too focused on getting to Penny! PENNYYYYY!! He could feel a goofy grin sliding across his face at the thought of her. He was probably going to explode soon because he was just SO DARN THRILLED, okay?!

And then he spotted her. But wait... She looked... Upset? Or something? What the heck?! Had somebody done something to her? Benji wasn't the fighting type, but he would fight somebody if they'd hurt her. He hurried over to his girlfriend, plopped down on the bench next to her, and, looking at her intently, said, "Hey, gorgeous, are you okay?"

His face flushed a bit as he called her gorgeous. Was that too much? It had kind of just slipped out. She'd said that she liked it when he'd done it before, but what if she'd changed her mind since then? What if she took one look at him and remembered that he was a dweeb and just ditched him? He wouldn't blame her...