A/N: This is for a-trip-to-honeydukes' Best Friends competition. I know, I've been caught up in a lot of these lately, haven't I? My characters were Alicia Spineet and Angelina Johnson and the quote this was based on is 'a friend to all is a friend to none'. I've never written such non-central characters before, so I hope I did an okay job! :)
"Hey, Ange!"
Alicia Spinnet's chipper voice rang through the Monday morning haze like a bell as she swung herself onto the bench beside her fellow second year Angelina Johnson. Angelina glanced at her over the milk jug, bemused by the girl's seemingly perpetual cheeriness.
"Hi, Alicia. What's up?"
"The Quaffle, last night," Alicia beamed. "Those were some excellent plays, weren't they? You all looked really good! We'll win for sure next Saturday."
"I hope so," Angelina said fervently. "Charlie Weasley really deserves a win. It's his last year. But if Micheals keeps messing up those back-handed throws, Slytherin will be able to slice through our ranks."
"I've offered to practice with him every night before the match," Alicia told her, helping herself to some bacon.
Alicia was the reserve Chaser for the Gryffindor team. Angelina had been a bit taken aback when Alicia had shown up for the Quidditch tryouts. She had not pegged her sunny, chatter-box roommate, whose sleek hair always tumbled down her back in perfect ringlets and whose nails shown a different glittery color every week, as the Quidditch type. But Alicia surprised her. She was quick and agile with excellent aim and had very nearly beaten out Angelina for the one open spot on the team.
In all honesty, despite having shared a dormitory for an entire year, Angelina couldn't say she knew Alicia very well. Now that they were both involved in the Quidditch team, this was starting to change, but before trials, the two had shared nothing more than superficial conversations and sleeping space.
Alicia was out-going and always seemed to have something to talk about with everybody. She had easily fallen in with the four other girls who shared their dormitory, and Angelina had written her off as one of those giggly, social-butterfly girls whom she had little patience for.
Angelina preferred Quidditch talk to fashion tips, had very little interest in gossip and very rarely giggled. As a result, she found herself spending most of her time in the company of the Gryffindor boys in her year, in particularly Lee Jordan and the Weasley twins. They seemed more than happy to have her in their group, and they made her laugh.
But since the Quidditch trials, Angelina had begun to reevaluate her opinion on Alicia. Not only was she a surprisingly good player, she also seemed to take everything in her stride. Angelina had rather expected Alicia to be upset at only being a reserve, or at the very least disappointed. She would have understood if Alicia had avoided her for a few weeks. But she hadn't. She'd been thrilled. And what was more, she had actually sounded sincere when she'd congratulated Angelina on making the team. She showed up to every practice, even if she wasn't flying, and never once had anything negative to say about the Chasers who had gotten her position. It was rather baffling to Angelina who anybody could be so friendly all the time.
With so much of her time devoted to Quidditch, Alicia was a little left out of the loop with her old friends, but Angelina had started to fill the gap. And in all honesty, it was nice to have a friend who was a girl. As much as she liked hanging around with the twins and Lee, once in a while it was nice to be around somebody who didn't find endless amusement in dung bombs.
"Ange? You coming?"
Angelina was brought out of her thoughts by Alicia poking her.
"Huh?"
"The bell's going to ring soon," Alicia told her. "We've got to get going or McGonagall will set us lines."
Angelina noticed with a jolt that the Great Hall was rapidly emptying around them. She downed the last of her orange juice and jumped up.
"I hope we don't get homework," she said as they hurried up the marble staircase. "We've got practice tonight, and if Fred and George screw around – like they always do – Charlie'll be keeping us late again."
"You know, Charlie's kind of cute when he's yelling like that," Alicia said matter-of-factly as they swung around a corner.
"What –?"Angelina almost dropped her books. Alicia grinned unabashedly back at her and Angelina couldn't help but burst out laughing.
Something else to add to the list, she thought; brazen.
XxX
By the end of Transfiguration however, Angelina was in no mood to laugh. McGonagall hadn't given them homework (because it was the week leading up to the match and it was no secret how badly she wanted to win the cup), but she would not let them slack-off during class.
Angelina had never been good at Transfiguration. Charms she could do. You might manipulate things into acting like other things in charms, but they always stayed solidly the same in essence. Transfiguration was too shifty, too unstable for her to wrap her mind around. Nothing was as it appeared and nothing stayed as it was supposed to be. She couldn't work the spells and the paper McGonagall had handed back to her had a prim P looped at the top.
"Don't worry," Alicia told her consolingly as they filed out of the classroom. "It's hard. I don't understand half of it either."
"You actually managed to make the spell work, though," Angelina pointed out dejectedly, cramming her Poor paper into her bag.
"It was only luck," Alicia said modestly, even though they both knew it hadn't been. "I can help you practice tonight if you want. Or Fred and George could help us both. They seemed to have no problems with it."
"Not with the transfiguration part, no," Angelina snorted. "It was what they did after they'd transfigured those poor lizards that caused the problems."
The two girls looked at each other and began to laugh. Angelina was amazed. She had never been able to brush off a bad grade so quickly before. Mostly because she had always been so embarrassed to tell the guys about it, seeing as they were all geniuses at most everything they did.
"The Weasley twins sure are a riot."
Angelina and Alicia turned at the slightly sarcastic voice behind them. It was Malory McNulty and her group of straight-O, Ravenclaw friends, who the Gryffindors were unfortunate enough ot have Transfiguration with.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Angelina asked coolly.
"Nothing," Malory said flippantly. "I'm sure Migg's Wandering Sideshows would be happy to let them do a lizard show for Knuts. Such a waste of talent though…"
"Excuse me?" Angelina said, gaping at the twelve-year-old in front of her. "Um, rude much?"
"Oh, lighten up, Angie," Malory told her with a tinkling laugh. "It's just some ribbing. I mean, honestly, can you really see either one of them being a productive member of society?"
"They got the hang of the spell faster than you did. Where will that place you in society?" Angelina snapped.
Malory waved an unconcerned hand. "Different techniques yield different results. They got lucky and picked the better technique their first try. Although, Ange, I have to say, you technique might have been the most unproductive, but I liked it the best."
Malory waved her arms in wild circles, doing an exaggerated imitation of Angelina. Her friends tittered behind her, and Malory, gaining confidence, cried in a poor copy of Angelina's voice, "Change, morph, transform! Do something other than nibble your tail!"
Her friends howled. Angelina's face burned with embarrassment.
Laughing with the rest, Malory clapped Angelina on the shoulder as if she were part of the joke and not the butt of the joke. "You're quite the riot yourself, Angie."
Then she flounced off with her posse.
XxX
Angelina was late getting to dinner. It had started to drizzle half-way through practice and a well-placed bludger had sent her sprawling on the ground. Luckily she'd only fallen a five or six feet, but it had taken her nearly ten minutes in the showers to get all the mud out of her hair.
She swept her gaze up and down the Gryffindor table as she hurried across the Hall, looking for Lee or Alicia (Charlie had kept the twins after for dive-bombing him with mud balls). But halfway there, a familiar, bubbling laugh made her turn around.
Alicia stood with Malory McNulty near the Ravenclaw table, talking animatedly to her through her laughter. Malory was nodding and grinning as if she was in on the joke, too.
Malory's laughter from that morning filled Angelina's head and she felt her throat tighten. Blinking, she turned on her heal and stormed over to the Gryffindor table, blinking rapidly. And she'd thought Alicia was actually becoming her friend. What a joke. She'd been right about her the first time; Alicia was nothing more than asocial butterfly flitting from person to person, trying to make everybody as sickeningly happy as she always was.
"Hi, Ange!"
Angelina didn't look up as Alicia swung herself onto the bench opposite her.
"Hello? Earth to Angelina!" Alicia giggled, waving her hand in front of Angelina's face.
Angelina sighed. "What do you want, Alicia?"
Alicia looked taken aback by the brusqueness in Angelina's voice.
"What's the matter?" she asked, looking concerned.
"What do you care?" Angelina snapped. She realized she was acting harsher than maybe she ought to, but the sting of losing the only friend she could count on to understand the inevitably girly part of her life was raw.
"I'm your friend," Alicia answered in a hurt voice.
"Oh, really?" Angelina asked, raising a cool eyebrow. "Got enough room for me next to Malory McNulty?"
"Angelina, what –"
"You know how she is, Alicia. You heard her this morning! Making fun of Fred and George. And me. How can you talk to her after that and expect to still call yourself my friend? How could you just stand there and let her laugh at me this morning? Friends don't do that."
"It was only a joke," Alicia said quietly. "She isn't so bad, really. You're taking this too seriously, Angelina. I'm sure if you got to know her –"
Angelina snorted. "I'd rather get to know vicious hawk, thank you very much."
"Well, she's my friend, too," said Alicia. "I'm on the Charms committee with Malory and the others. If you two don't get along, fine, but that shouldn't mean I can't still be friends with both of you."
"Yes it does," Angelina gaped. "She makes fun of me all the time! If you're her friend, you're helping her do it! You pick her side. And that's fine, I don't care what you do, but don't skip over here and pretend we're mates like you didn't just stand by and let me be publically humiliated."
She stood up, abandoning her half-finished dinner, and stalked out of the hall, leaving a gaping Alicia behind her.
XxX
"The great Angelina comes down off her throne to mingle with the commoners!"
"Shut up, George."
"I'm Fred."
"Whatever."
"What's the matter with you?" Lee asked as Angelina flopped heavily into a seat beside the three of them in the common room later that night.
"Nothing," she grumbled.
The three boys stared at her for a moment before shrugging and returning to their 'homework' which was more like a crumpled-parchment-wad war. Angelina tried to tell herself this was why she liked hanging out with guys; they didn't notice when you were upset and didn't force you to talk about it.
A wad of paper hit Angelina in the face.
"Are you going to study with us or not?" Lee asked, grinning.
How she had missed these kinds of study sessions.
XxX
Alicia didn't try to talk to Angelina again. The two of them engaged in a sort of dance, avoiding each other. They sat at opposite ends of the classroom, waited for the other to be asleep before going up to bed or out of the dormitory before getting up, and while they practiced Quidditch together after classes, they didn't exchange a single look.
Angelina went back to how she'd spent all of last year. She hung out with Lee and the twins most of the time and spent the rest (when the boys were being particularly boy-ish) by herself. It had been her life for an entire year. Why was it suddenly so lonely?
Alicia didn't seem to miss her company. She had plenty of people to spend her time with; Angelina was just a drop in the bucket for her. She might have been a little quieter than usual, but Alicia still went around with her smile, talking to everybody.
XxX
"Angie!"
Angelina clenched her teeth and ignored the call, keeping her head buried in the transfiguration book in front of her. She had no wish at all to speak with Malory McNulty.
"Hey, Angelina. Whatcha up to? Trying to figure out how to transfigure that bush on your head back into your hair?"
There was a chorus of titters that made Angelina's skin crawl. She closed her book with a heavy sigh and looked up. Malory and her followers stood across the corridor, giggling behind their hands. Alicia stood a little ways down the corridor from them, staring fixedly at her hands. Angelina felt her stomach squeeze at the sight.
"Can I help you with something?" she asked Malory politely.
"I don't think so," said Malory and the group burst into more laughter.
Angelina straightened her back against the cold stone wall and re-opened her book, pretending not to hear the whispers and laughter or notice the gleeful glances the other girls sent her way. Alicia caught her eye, but she hadn't looked up. Why should Angelina have expected her to, anyway?
The Ravenclaw girls seemed unable to stop laughing, and it was growing increasingly harder to ignore them. Angelina didn't think she could provide so much comedy, at her expense or not, but apparently Malory and the rest found her the funniest thing in the world. She could not wait for the bell to ring, or for Fred and George and Lee to show up. Where were they, anyway? Probably getting into detention somewhere else.
Malory broke out of the group and began waving her arms around in her impression of Angelina again. The rest of the class was starting to take notice, laughing behind their hands as they watched. Angelina's eyes stung. She wanted to run from the spot, or better yet, hex Malory, but she didn't trust herself to open her mouth.
"Malory!"
Angelina's head snapped up at the voice. The sharp cry had gotten the entire corridor's attention at once. Malory even stopped her ridiculous flailing, looking surprised.
"Come on, Alicia, you know it's funny. We were all laughing on Monday, weren't we?" Malory said.
Alicia dropped her books and strode over to Malory, an uncharacteristically angry expression twisting her face.
"It is NOT funny, it's pathetic! That you get your kicks at someone else's expense. Angelina's sitting right there and I don't see her laughing. You're being cruel and petty to make yourself feel smarter or more popular or whatever, and I think it's despicable. How would it be if I imitated you trying to pull open the bathroom door this morning and we all laughed? Do you think that would be amusing?"
Angelina gaped along with most of the rest of the class. None of them had heard Alicia even utter a rude word and here she was yelling at Malory McNulty in the middle of the corridor, red-faced and unabashed.
"Cool it, Alicia. What's your problem?" Malory asked, glancing around uncomfortably. "You're acting like a freak. It's just Angelina Johnson, she knows I'm just kidding around."
"Well Angelina Johnson is my friend and I don't know that your joking around, so leave her alone."
She glared fiercely at Malory, who stepped back. Angelina couldn't blame her. That look, especially on Alicia's usually-sunny visage, was rather alarming.
The bell rang, cutting the tension. Malory turned away and stalked towards the classroom with her posse, all of whom shot glares over their shoulders at Alicia. Angelina stood up, watching Alicia cautiously.
She turned slowly to face Angelina, her fierce expression morphed into one of shock.
"Did – did I really just do that?" she asked weakly.
A grin broke across Angelina's face.
"Welcome to the world of choosing sides," she said, flinging an arm around Alicia's shoulders. "You can't have real friends without real enemies."
A/N: Thanks for reading! :) Please please please review! I really want to know what you all thought of this!