"GET OUT!"
"NO!"
"I'M GOING TO HEX THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!"
"Language girls, please—"
"I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS!"
"I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR CRISIS! I'M GOING TO MISS THE TRAIN!"
A very irate Mrs. Williams met Pepper in the hall of their shabby apartment. She was a pretty woman in her early forties with a lot of red hair and too many daughters. Currently, just having two living at home was proving to be a little too much when it came to mornings. "Really, Pepper, must you use such language? Be a bit more like your sisters, won't you?"
Pepper rolled her eyes as she withdrew her wand, the act instinctual at the suggestion she behave more like her older sisters. She'd spent most of her life behaving decidedly not like them, and not by accident, either. She tapped the keyhole of the bathroom door with her wand and quickly whispered, 'alohamora' and then edged the door ajar. Sticking her hand into the steamy bathroom, she waved her wand.
"OW SHIT, FUCK! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, PEPPER!"
Pepper lifted a challenging eyebrow in the direction of her mother, who clicked her tongue in disapproval.
The bathroom door swung open, and AJ, the fourth oldest daughter of Mrs. Hastings and stepped out in a fluffy pink robe, her skin an alarming shade of blue. She reminded Pepper of a character from those muggle comics Simon tried to pretend he wasn't obsessed with.
"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Hastings, covering her mouth with her hand. "Pepper, undo this now, your sister has somewhere to be,"
"I have somewhere to be—you know, King's Cross? Where the train waits for no one?" Pepper argued back, locking herself in the bathroom. Her sister had monopolized the bathroom all morning, leaving Pepper with very little time to shower and get dressed, which irritated her greatly, as these days AJ didn't seem capable of rising before noon anyway except for the one day it mattered to Pepper.
Soon she was showered and dressed, and although she still wasn't as good at taming her curly hair as AJ seemed to be, she had wrangled her frizzy curls into a semblance of acceptable thanks to some product from a shop in Diagon Alley that she'd nicked from Simon's bathroom called Sleezy Slick or something.
By the time she arrived downstairs at the breakfast table with her trunk levitating behind her, AJ had finished telling her mother about the time Pepper had gotten caught sneaking out of the dorm last year with a boy—no matter that the boy had been Simon—and that she'd stopped their mother from finding out about the subsequent detentions by sneaking out of the school, going to Hogsmeade, and flooing home to burn the letter Longbottom had written home. After which Mrs. Hastings caught Pepper flipping her sister the bird and launched into a second lecture, leading Pepper to admit that she'd only thought to do the thing after AJ had done it first, having gotten caught doing unspeakable things to someone else's boyfriend after hours by the Head Girl.
"Oh, wait—wasn't he dating the Head Girl?" Pepper asked, batting her eyelashes at AJ. "And wasn't she a good friend of yours?"
"You're the reason half my head's gone grey," muttered Mrs. Hastings.
Pepper wasn't sure if that remark was geared at her or at AJ or both of them, but her gold watch told her that it was about time to head out, and she was itching to get out of the flat. They'd moved in the summer before, when AJ had graduated and swore up and down she was moving out and had both a flat and a job lined up. Their mother had been eager to downsize to something cheaper, which unfortunately meant that, for reasons AJ still refused to properly explain, the two sisters were stuck sharing a room once more. AJ had been insufferable as she went on job interview after job interview, and their older sisters dropping in from time to time to critique various aspects of Pepper's life had nearly caused her to Avada herself on more than one occasion. Even the escapes to Simon's house were only good for so long; having to be in the presence of his parents had quickly lost its charm. They were probably the strangest Purebloods around, and still after all these years Pepper had no idea how she felt about them.
"'M goin'," Pepper muttered from around a mouthful of toast as she grabbed her trunk and Cinnamon's cage. The red tuft of hair inside made an annoyed meowing sound in response, and Pepper realized she'd forgotten to cast an inertia-negating charm so that he didn't feel too jostled about. She remedied her mistake immediately.
"Aren't you going to say goodbye?"
"And you know, undo this hex?" added AJ. With her blue skin and red hair, she looked like one of the figures from the Muggle comics Simon pretended he wasn't obsessed with still. "Because hello, still blue here!"
Goodbyes were quick; they made Pepper uncomfortable, and she avoided looking directly at her mother's misty eyes. She changed AJ's skin back to its flawless, milky pallor, and after more bickering, stepped out of the apartment and apparated, eager to be gone and eager to forget the guilt eating away at her eagerness. She loved her mother, and AJ too, albeit in a much more complicated, sisterly way, but Hogwarts was home.
The King's Cross designated apparating zone was predictably packed, and she fought her way through the mass of animal cages, trolleys and trunks as she headed straight for her favorite train in the world. With her apparating license, she no longer needed muggle transportation, and she knew that for many wizards, the Hogwarts Express was the last train ride they ever took. But Pepper liked the idea of trains; Simon said that she romanticized them. But the idea of a train ride filled her with a tug of longing for adventure, and maybe it was because that's where the adventure had first started for her: on the Hogwarts Express.
Like the platform, the train was similarly packed, with children running up and down the halls in search of their friends and nervous first years anxiously searching for somewhere to sit and, most importantly, a friendly face. The trolley lady was already being hounded by a group of second years that felt all too big and important now that they were no longer the newcomers to the school. A rush of excitement shot through Pepper, and she breathed it all in: the smell of smoke, magic, of fading summer and the leather of school trunks.
With her deliberate pace and confident push through the crowds, Pepper was quick to find the usual compartment she shared with Simon.
Only the compartment slid open before she reached it, and the last person she expected to see swanned out: Callista Brown. Her golden hair fell about her shoulders in a spill of highly methodical waves, catching the sunlight streaming in through the closest window. She wore a simple summer dress of pink and white linen, and even Pepper thought she looked like a summer daydream.
Pepper blinked a few times, as though the motion would cause Callista to disappear like the mirage she resembled, but it didn't. Callista spotted her, smiled awkwardly—even offered something kind of like a wave—and then quickly left, hurrying away from her in the opposite direction, golden curls bouncing in a way that was so slightly unnatural Pepper had to smirk; just how many spells did the girl use to achieve her perfection? When she peered into the compartment, she was equally shocked to find that it really was her best friend sitting, if in a daze, near the window.
"Hi…" she said slowly as she entered the compartment, dragging her things with her. She was afraid to move too suddenly, lest he frighten like a cornered baby bird.
"Hullo," Simon said hesitantly, clutching at his book bag. It was settled determinedly in his lap, his finger white knuckled where they twisted into the fabric and gripped hard.
Pepper peered at him suspiciously as she took the seat opposite him. His neck and ears and cheeks were flushed.
"So what was…?"
"Yup," Simon said quickly. He adjusted his glasses with one hand—they where laughably askew, after all, though his hands quickly shot back down to clutch at is bag when it began to slide to the floor.
"And she was here because…?"
"Erm, to apologize," said Simon said, like he himself couldn't believe what he was saying. "Callista Brown searched the Hogwart's Express for me so that she could apologize for snogging me and for James Potter trying to hex me last week,"
"Uh huh," said Pepper, her eyes focused on her friends unruly hair and wrinkled shirt. There was just the hint of a bubblegum pink stain at his collar. "…and?"
"And nothing," said Simon, cheeks burning a furious pink in a way that was to say, there was indeed something. He ruffled his hair three times and fixed his glasses again tapping the sides. "Just, you know, she snogged me again,"
"Oh my Godric," said Pepper, and somehow the surprise was overwhelming even though she had put together the evidence long before he'd uttered the words aloud. "That's twice now—I think its assault at this point, Si,"
"I wasn't exactly pushing her away," Simon defended. Pepper had to quickly rearrange the expression on her face. "Granted, I had no idea what was happening either times, but…"
Simon mistook her scandalized expression, looking away quickly. But Pepper had just put together why his bag was in his lap, what it was likely hiding, and she chuckled uncomfortably. Sex wasn't a topic that they approached, at least not unless it was in an entirely theoretical or hypothetical sense
"What the fuck?"
It took Pepper a while to put together that, for the first time since they'd arrived at Hogwarts, the Back to School Feast was buzzing with talk of them. Gossip was always flying around; that was the standard, which Pepper had always thought was very sad at a school of magic, and that September 1st kicking off their seventh year was no different.
"…hexed him. Apparently it was some four way love triangle gone wrong," she heard a fifth year whispering a few seats down from where she sat with Simon. "Potter was dating Brown but messing on the side with the Peppercorn girl, who was actually dating the scrawny one with the glasses who was also snogging Brown on the side,"
"That's not a triangle, you idiot," whispered her friend furiously. "And besides, who even is that Peppercorn girl? I've never met her. And I hear that guy isn't even hot,"
"My cousin shared a dorm with him. His name is Silas," the other girl said importantly. "And besides, he is hot—in like, a Ravenclaw sort of way, d'you know what I mean? Like imagine him with a bit of eyeliner, yeah?"
"Oh good Godric," hissed Pepper. She leaned in closer to Simon. "Everyone knows—or, well, thinks they know,"
"Know what?" he asked, looking up from where he'd been busy constructing a teepee with the left over bones from the chicken drumsticks from dinner. Charming.
"Listen," urged Pepper. "And look,"
Sure enough, eyes were darting towards them every so often, and her survey of the rest of the Gryffindor table revealed that someone had been glaring at them, perhaps for a while. When she caught his eye, he stabbed his fork violently into his steak.
James Potter.
"Oh, great, just great," said Simon. His fingers began to shake to the point that his half-built bone teepee fell apart. "How is this happening to us? Oh yeah, you had to go and hex the shit out of wizarding society's Golden Boy,"
"Oh please, I barely touched him, he was too drunk for me to have taken advantage of like that," Pepper argued back. "I just, you know, disarmed and defended with style,"
"Oh, because that's so much better," Simon snapped back.
"Um, excuse me, Mr. I-Go-Around-And-Snog-People's-Girlfriends," said Pepper.
Simon squared his jaw. "Fair enough,"
Her snark vanished as a worrisome thought crossed her mind. "Do you want me to sleep with you tonight?"
Simon jammed his elbow into the butter dish, hard enough that he hollered out in pain; when he yanked it out, he knocked over his goblet of pumpkin juice and the three plates nearest him, including the bowl of mashed potatoes that tipped into Pepper's lap.
"Merlin's sake, Si!" Pepper screeched.
Unsurprisingly, James Potter and his friends were the loudest of all the laughs, which was saying something, as most of the hall was laughing.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Simon said anxiously. "Pep—"
"It's fine—Godric you haven't been this clumsy in ages," laughed Pepper, because even she thought it was a bit funny as she Vanished the mess with a flick of her wand. Then, noticing that James Potter was still staring at them, Pepper made a show of using only her middle finger to swipe the little bit of mashed potato that had landed on her cheek facing Potter and his friends so that she was flipping him off; then she sucked the mashed potatoes off her finger and let her finger go with a pop! so that it was unmistakably thrust in his direction.
Potter cocked his head to the side as though to say, really? as his eyebrow shot up, lips parting slightly in surprise. Simon made a strangled noise.
"That is not going to help rumors," groaned Simon.
"What, me flipping him off?" asked Pepper, turning back to him in confusion.
"You flirting with him, you mean?" snapped Simon.
"Flirting?" Pepper asked in disbelief. "Did you not just see—"
"Merlin, Pepper, I know you're dense about these things, but you can't just go about and suck on your fingers—don't you know anything about blokes?" Simon asked in annoyance.
Pepper's cheeks heated up, and she eyed her friend with a rare bout of anger; she didn't like the feeling she had right now, like she'd done something wrong. "I'm pretty sure James Potter didn't just look at me and see anything but the person he hates flipping him off, Simon,"
Simon merely grunted in response.
"As I was saying before," Pepper went on stubbornly. "If you want, I can crash in your dorm—Merlin knows it's going to be a hostile environment, what with Potter and his idiot lackeys,"
"What—fuck's sake, Pepper, I know this might seem like a foreign concept to you, but I actually am capable of looking after myself," snapped Simon.
Pepper watched in shock as her friend stood abruptly grabbed his cloak, and left dinner without her.
What the hell?
Pepper went straight to bed after that, arriving long before her dorm mates. Her trunk was at the foot of the bed, but she didn't care about unpacking anything more than her pajamas and getting Cinnamon out of his cage. She never fought with Simon, at least never seriously; Pepper grabbed her pillow and placed it over her head, screeching into it until she felt better.
In the end she gave up. Her throat hurt and now she felt worse.
James fucking Potter, Pepper thought to herself darkly. This was his fault, and the fault of Simon's stupid list, because things had been fine until that stupid party. And you know what? It was Simon's stupid fault too, because why had he decided things had to change? They'd spent the last six years of their lives living in the shadows of people like James Potter and Callista Brown—why was he so set to mix things up? Things had been perfectly fine before!
Her fellow dorm mates had made it up from dinner a while ago and, from the whispering going on around her bed hangings, had assumed she had gone to sleep or simply did not care if she heard them. Every once in a while she caught Potter's name, but it was impossible to tell if it was the usual gossip going around about him, or if it involved her and Simon. Not that it mattered. Pepper wasn't listening; she was simmering with anger still, thoughts growing wilder as they chased each other round and round in her head. She could only picture how every other night of September 1st had been spent sneaking through the school grounds with her best friend, laughing, eating Chocolate Frogs and dancing to music only they could hear as they dodged patrolling Prefects and evaded Peeves.
If Simon Llewellyn thought he could snog Callista Brown and then suddenly turn into an angsty mess of teenage hormones, well, he had another thing coming.
"That's it!" declared Pepper, wrenching her bed hangings to the side so violently Cinnamon darted off her bed and under another.
Four heads swiveled in her direction, looking at her in surprise. She ignored them as she grabbed her wand off her nightstand and searched under her bed for the boots she had discarded little more than an hour ago.
"Um, are you all right, Hastings?" Amoli Patil asked hesitantly. Her best friend, Ginger (who so wasn't a ginger) Vane, shot her a look. Ginger had never liked Pepper for reasons still unbeknownst to Pepper, and typically forbade Amoli Patil from being too friendly with her. Pepper was pretty sure Ginger was simply terrified that Amoli would one day realized that Ginger was a massive bitch and find better friends, but what did she know?
"Peachy," Pepper grunted back. She didn't hate her dorm mates, but Pepper also didn't have much more in common with them than the room that they shared to sleep in. Amoli Patil was a very pretty, very quiet girl who seemed mostly subservient to her best friend, Ginger. Ginger Vane wasn't as pretty, but she might as well have been a Slytherin in disguise and, as rumor had it, had mastered love potions back in second year.
Then there were the Weasley girls. There were a total of four seventh years in the Potter-Weasley clan, Freddy Weasley, James Potter, Dominique Weasley, and Molly Weasley. All four were in Gryffindor, and all four were very popular. People coveted their friendship more than they did a passing grade in their NEWTS.
Both Dominique and Molly kept to themselves. They were friendliest with Amoli, who's mother was on good term with their family, but mostly they whispered into each others ears about what it was like to be a beautiful and smart and have perfect hair... or so Pepper assumed. Molly Weasley was their new Head Girl, and Dominique Weasley, though beautiful and soft looking, was impressive on the Quidditch field as one of Gryffindor's prolific Chasers. Both girls were frustratingly well-rounded, and they reminded Pepper of the Twins; maybe that was why she went out of her way to avoid them.
Molly was watching Pepper through disapproving eyes; it was obvious that the Head Girl did not like what putting on a pair of boots after curfew insinuated, but she remained mercifully tight-lipped and silent. Dominique Weasley, on the other hand, lifted her eyes from the bottle of nail varnish she was balancing on her bed to shoot her a strange smile.
"Are you off to duel my cousin, by any chance?" she asked cheerfully. Pepper paused, eyeing her shrewdly. Was this some sort of joke? Was Dominique going to hex her first if she said yes?
"Only if he gets in my way again,"
Dominique smirked, blowing on her nails. They were a brilliant red-orange. "In case you hadn't figured it out yet, he favors his right side, you know, when he duels,"
Pepper had noticed that, which was the only reason she knew that Dominique wasn't lying to her. But she remained suspicious, even as Molly Weasley shot her cousin a dirty look. Why would Potter's cousin want to help her—not that she was about to go embarrass the bloke again, but still.
"He's also really into his hair!" Dominique called after her as she stomped her way down to the Common Room.
Perhaps shockingly, Pepper had only ever gone up to the boys side of the dormitory a handful of times and not since fifth year, when she'd walked up the stairs to find Simon and instead found a naked first year. She'd screamed, he'd screamed, she'd never gone back.
But now, spurred on by anger, she stomped her way up the stairs, not caring when the occasional boy on the stairs tried to question her presence or made a lewd comment at her. When they saw the wand in her hand, they all backed away quickly, and for the first time in the last few hours, Pepper appreciated the speed with which rumors spread. It seemed that after six years, people were learning not to fuck with her.
The Seventh Year dormitory was located right at the top of the tower, much like her own, and she burst in unceremoniously, not caring if anyone was sleeping, if anyone was half naked (though she prayed to Merlin all the important bits were covered up) or that she might get yelled at. She just needed to set Simon straight.
"Hey!" squealed Freddy Weasley. As seemed to be a recurring theme with him, he was barely clothed, standing only in silky blue boxers. "Oh, hey," he smirked, realizing who she was.
Pepper was not amused.
"Hullo, Pepper," Malachi Thomas greeted from the bed closest to her. He was dressed in respectable Gryffindor-themed pajamas, at least. That didn't distract her from how he'd just used her first name; so they were chummy now, were they?
"Thomas," she returned, annoyed but unable to be outright impolite to him. He grinned back at her. Freddy had moved to lean against his four-poster bed, his dark skin rippling a bit as he flexed. Pepper fought the urge to gag. The hangings were drawn shut around the bed next to Thomas's, and she was certain it belonged to Kiernan Wood; the Puddlemere United bed hangings were a dead giveaway. There were two other beds; one a neat one with a trunk at its foot, and the one in the furthest corner had collected an array of clutter: she imagined it to be Potter's bed. The neat one was clearly Simon's.
"I'm here for—"
"Oh, we know what you're here for," Freddy said with a suggestive wink. "Go ahead and make yourself comfortable—he's just gotten in the shower. Might be a while—unless you want to go and join him, which I doubt he'd mind, really,"
Pepper scowled at that; she had expected an immediate confrontation, not to be kept waiting or to have to interact with Freddy Weasley of all people, and she muttered under her breath as she stalked over to Simon's bed, moving to sit against the headboard, her legs kicked out in front of her. No matter how upset she was at him, she knew that Simon would kill her for having shoes on his bed, and so she kicked them off, leaving her in her mismatched socks.
Freddy let out a wolf-whistle, making a show of kicking up his own bare legs. Pepper's scowl deepened, and she ripped the bed hangings shut, tuning out his laughter with a quick wave of her wand.
Simon took forever, and she knew his condition-shampoo-condition-again routine was to blame. She teased him about it often, and he defended himself saying that he had curly hair; when she pointed out that she too had curly hair and five times the amount he did and yet she still took a third of the time he did in the shower, he simply reminded her that there was a reason his hair looked better than hers.
At some point, the lights were turned off, and though she couldn't hear it, she felt the movement of the boys in the dormitory getting into bed. The longer she waited the more tired she grew, her anger dissipating along with her energy until her eyes were fluttering shut. The bed didn't smell like Simon yet; it was still the ambiguous scent of the Hogwarts laundry.
She dozed off.
Something was moving, and Pepper didn't like it. She snuggled further into the warmth of the blanket beneath her and away from what was disrupting her sleep, murmuring incoherently about bowtruckles and tree sap.
"This is certainly new,"
"G'way," muttered Pepper, turning away from the voice.
"First you crash my party and now my bed,"
"S'tup Si," she mumbled.
A sharp slap to her arse caused her to shriek and sit upright. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, her arm was held upright immediately, wand aloft as she searched for danger. A light went on, and she met the crackling green eyes of James Potter.
"I know you did not just smack my arse, Potter," she growled.
"I know you're not about to hex me for getting into my bed!"
"Excuse me?" screeched Pepper. "What the hell makes you think I'd ever want to get anywhere near your bed? I happen to enjoy being disease free, thank you,"
Potter's eyes narrowed furiously. For a split second, Pepper was distracted by a pearl of water dripping from his still-wet hair that trailed down his bare chest, towards an exceptionally defined V shaped pointing to a red towel wrapped securely around his waist. She clenched her jaw, resolutely looking away. Now was so not the time for raging teenage hormones to make their debut.
"Then. Why. Are. You. In. My. Bed?" he all but growled. She saw that the commotion had woken up his bedmates, and that they were all peering blearily at them.
"James, mate—" Thomas tried to say, but Pepper's exclamation drowned out his words.
"Your bed. Oh gods—I'm going to have to take a shower in fiend fyre just to get clean—where's Simon?"
"Who the fuck is Simon?" he exclaimed.
"Ugh, you're such a prick!" exploded Pepper. "How do you not know the name of your own dorm mate, especially when he apparently snogs your girlfriend better than you can?"
"Oh, shit!" exclaimed Freddy Weasley from somewhere behind them. "No, Malachi—I swear to Merlin, you let this play out!" There was a commotion as Freddy leaped from his bed to Malachi's, tackling the Seventh Year Prefect to the ground. Potter didn't even bat an eye at the crashing noises. Kiernan Wood didn't even stir from behind his curtains.
"Are you looking to get hexed again?" threatened Potter. Pepper laughed darkly as she leaned down and began shoving her feet back into her boots.
"You're joking, right? I know you were piss-drunk last time, but you didn't touch me," snapped Pepper.
"Good thing I'm not plastered this time, eh? Think you can still beat me when I'm sober?" challenged Potter.
"I know I can duel circles around you any time, any place, Potter—with a hand tied behind my back!" Pepper exclaimed. She stood up abruptly, at the same time that Potter stepped forward and her head snapped right into his face.
"Oh, fuck!" he exclaimed, holding a hand up to his nose as a fountain of blood gushed out of it.
"Serves you right—ever heard of personal space, Potter?" she yelled at him as she backed away from the gushing blood. She hadn't meant to injure him, but somehow she couldn't find it in her to feel bad-or offer up an episkey spell.
"Personal space—you're the one in my bloody bed!"
"It's certainly bloody now, isn't it?" Pepper said sweetly. "Now, where's Simon?"
Potter had snatched a shirt off the edge of his bed and was using it to mop up the blood on his nose; as he did, his eyes scanned the length of her.
"My face is up here, Potter," she spat at him vehemently. "Now what did you do with—"
"And that's my Mum's face on your pants!" he shouted back at her.
Pepper glanced down at the boxer shorts peeking out past the large t-shirt she wore; sure enough, Ginny Weasley's face was a repeated motif in bright red-orange. "They were a gift! Now tell me where Simon is, you self-serving, narcissistic prat!"
"HE DOESN'T LIVE HERE!" roared Potter. "And it's a good thing too, because the next time I see the skinny git, I'm hexing him into the next bloody century!"
"What do you mean he doesn't live here?" snapped Pepper. "I realize you're so up yourself you probably can't recognize anything but your own arsehole, but he's a seventh year Gryffindor, and this is the seventh year dorm so—"
"Pepper," Malachi called, his expression sheepish. Pepper wasn't even sure how he was speaking let alone breathing through the headlock Freddy Weasley had him in. "James is, uh, James is right. He doesn't live here. He hasn't since fifth year, "
"Then where the hell does my best friend live?!"
Pepper skipped breakfast, darting in during the last few minutes only when she was certain that not a single seventh year boy was in the Great Hall. When she dubbed the coast clear, she rushed over to Longbottom for her timetable and a half-hearted discussion about her course load.
Her first class of the day was Potions, as though things weren't already bad enough for her. Now she had to start her morning with her worst subject. When she did arrive to Potions, she was quickly waved down by Simon, who was sitting in a seat near the back of the classroom, away from Professor Grey's hawkish gaze.
"Did you oversleep? I grabbed you a croissant, hope it's not squished, it's been in my bag for like twenty minutes—sorry for snapping…at…you…last…night?" Simon trailed off as Pepper, holding her chin up high, walked straight passed him and took a seat two tables behind him. His look of surprise made her stomach drop uncomfortably, and so she stared steadfastly forward, having pulled out a roll of parchment and a fluffy purple quill.
As Professor Grey stood from her desk and moved to the chalkboard to write the day's lesson on the board along with a page number, Pepper realized that her silent treatment wouldn't last long; they were the only two students sitting alone, and Professor Grey would probably match them up as partners, which was probably all the better because Pepper wasn't entirely sure how to be upset with her best friend, even if he had for whatever reason, lied to her for the past year.
"All right, class—"
The dungeon classroom door banged open, and two boys entered, drawing Professor Grey's ire at their tardiness.
"Sorry, Professor," said James Potter, flashing her his signature, charming smile. He held up a small roll of parchment. "We were in the hospital wing,"
"Already?" drawled Professor Grey, snatching the parchment from his hand suspiciously. She scanned it quickly. "You're excused, Mr. Potter. You, however, Mr. Weasley, are not mentioned in this note,"
"I promise I was with him, Professor! Had to help my cousin, didn't I?" said Freddy Weasley, flashing his own version of the charming smile. Pepper rolled her eyes when the two girls sitting closest to the front, a pair of simpering Ravenclaws, nearly expired on the spot. Disgusting.
"Mr. Potter needed assistance finding his way to the hospital wing after all these years for a broken nose?" Professor Grey asked archly.
"Moral support, Professor. We tried fixing it last night, see, but my episkey needs work, and it was all sorts of crooked when we woke up this morning," said Freddy. "And Jamsie is very about his looks—he was a blubbering mess, wondering if that perfect face of his would make it—he might not look it, Professor, but he's an ugly crier,"
"Yes, lot's of tears were involved. Wouldn't have made it without dear Freddy here," Potter said flatly, evidently not amused by his cousin's telling.
"Next time you're late, it's a detention. Now find your seats and turn to page thirty eighty in your textbooks,"
Pepper's jaw practically dropped to the floor; she'd once gotten detention for sneezing too loudly, and it hadn't even been her fault, as they'd had to use peppercorn powder as one of their ingredients that day. Then something even worse happened.
Both boys turned to the class, searching for an empty table; as it happened, the only two empty seats were next to Simon and Pepper respectively. The blood drained from Pepper's face, mirroring the astonished look on James Potter's.
Freddy, quickly drawing the same conclusion, let out half a laugh. "With the utmost pleasure, Professor!"
Potter was hesitating; clearly, Pepper thought, she and Simon represented two evils, and he was weighing which of them was the lesser: the git that had snogged his girlfriend (did he even know that it had happened twice?) and the girl that had embarrassed him and then broken his nose not twelve hours before.
Pepper, who had never before considered herself an antagonistic person, winked at Potter. She couldn't help it. His fists curled at his sides.
It was Freddy Weasley made the decision for them. He plopped down in the seat next to Pepper, ignoring her scathing look when he scooted unnecessarily close to her and draped an arm around the back of her chair.
"You, my dear Pepper Hastings," said Freddy. "Must be sugar, spice, and everything naughty,"
From the seat ahead of them, Potter snorted in derision. Simon, his finger tapping out a nervous rhythm of threes against his textbook, glanced back at his best friend.
"This is your fault," she mouthed back at him scornfully. His eyes widened.
"How even?" He mouthed back. She glared.
"So tell me, Hastings," said Freddy. "When did dye your hair? Because James has snogged and shagged his way through just about every available ginger in school, but I don't recall ever seeing you around,"
Pepper studiously ignored him as she copied down Grey's notes. The Professor's wrote as fast as she spoke-which was disturbingly fast, and she was not about to fail Potions just because Freddy Weasley decided to chat her up.
"Though, I suppose, I don't really know what happened last night, before the rest of us woke up," went on Freddy. Pepper's quill threatened to tear through her parchment. "Now, you strike me as an honest girl, so tell me really—is James really all that great of a shag? You didn't really seem to be in his bed for long,"
"What?!"
Simon whipped around, as did the students nearest them; Freddy hadn't exactly been whispering. Even Potter cursed, tossing his quill down on the desk as he turned to scowl at his cousin.
And, very suddenly, Simon, gentle, never hexed a soul in his life Simon, was standing, his wand pointed at James Potter.
"You did what with my—my best friend?!" said Simon, stammering through his anger. Pepper stared at him in shock, as did half the class; even Professor Grey looked temporarily gobsmacked that Simon of all people had interrupted class to turn his wand on a student.
James Potter, however, was smirking. Evidently he did not appear threatened by Simon's wand. In fact, he was deliberately smirking as he sat back in his chair, spreading his strong thighs apart as he basked in the attention from the room.
"Well, to be perfectly honest with you, the boxers with my Mum's face on them were a bit off-putting, but then I was so distracted by those legs of hers—you know, she's got the this cute little birthmark on the inside of her thigh—"
"Mr. Lewis! Mr. Potter! Wands down this instant!"
Professor Grey's warning was ignored, because to the surprise of everyone in the room, Simon had fired off a hex. But Potter had been prepared; with his reflexes honed from Quidditch, he batted the hex to the side, rising to his feet so that he stood over Simon; Pepper had always thought that Simon was so tall, but standing next to Potter, she realized just how slim her friend was.
"WANDS DOWN, I SAY! POTTER! LEWIS!"
"It's LLEWELLYN!" Pepper and Simon called out in unison.
Pepper, shaking with fury at Potter's insinuations and the fact that even Professor Grey couldn't get her best friend's name right, grabbed her wand and quickly disarmed Potter. Potter threw her a glare as he had to physically dodge a hex from Simon and, as students screamed and ducked and a cauldron exploded somewhere, Freddy's maniacal laugh echoed in the dungeon classroom.
Things did not, naturally, end well.
In the end, three students ended up in the hospital wing; Simon, as it happened, was brilliant at Charms, but awful at dueling, and still couldn't aim for shit; his spells had gone wide and hit a few unstable potion ingredients and tipped over the example potions Grey had at the front of the room. Another pair of student were assigned detention for snogging in the ingredient's cupboard while chaos broke out in the classroom, and Pepper was left to wait anxiously in the hall with a still-laughing Freddy Weasley as Professor Grey tore Simon and Potter a new one.
When he still hadn't stopped laughing, Pepper delivered a swift punch to Freddy's gut.
"Ouf—what was that for? I was just having a laugh!" groaned Freddy, clutching at stomach.
"Hmph," sniffed Pepper. "And now so am I. You started that mess, Freddy Weasley. You set me up in there, and I'll bet you did that to get a rise out of Simon too—just like you knew I was looking for Simon when you sent me off to Potter's bed!"
"Merlin, you think I'm really that clever?" grinned Freddy.
"I think you're a prankster and a jackass and you should have been in Slytherin," Pepper said as scathingly as she could muster.
"Oi, you take that back!" said Freddy, sounding genuinely insulted.
The door swung open before Pepper could swing her fist back again, and an irate Potter came striding out of the classroom. His eyes landed on Freddy first. "I was going to kill you, mate, but I figure I'll just write my favorite Auntie Angie about how you've been watering down the family firewhiskey since you were thirteen,"
"Oh, come on! Does no one understand a good laugh anymore?" whined Freddy. Potter turned on Pepper and, because he was a jackass, stepped forward so that he was in her space, towering over her. Pepper's eyes narrowed at him dangerously. She refused to take a step back and let him think he was intimidating her.
"And you, Piper,"
"Pepper," she growled. "And it's Hastings to you, Potter,"
"Whatever," he drawled. "Your twitchy friend and that tight little arse of yours are going to wish you'd never popped up on my radar, understand?"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. I just got a month's worth of detention thanks to you—"
"Me? You and your cousin are the ones with the foul mouths—"
"—and I'm Quidditch Captain, so do you honestly think I have time for this? To polish silver all month over a couple of nobodies?"
Pepper smirked. "Oh, sweetheart, it must be eating you up inside that a nobody swept the floor with you in a duel, isn't it? But you know what, you're right—you were drunk. So just name the time and place and—"
"Okay," interrupted Freddy, looking genuinely alarmed for the first time. "Let's—James let's go,"
The door opened, and a red-faced Simon stepped out of the classroom. Potter shot them each one last scathing glare, before Freddy finally forced him down the corridor, towards the stairs. As they went, Freddy began lecturing Potter about the fine line between sexual tension and murderous intention; Pepper smirked when Potter swiftly punched Freddy in the gut, just as she had.
Pepper and Simon watched the two boys until they were out of sight before turning on each other and exclaiming at the same time:
"I can't believe you!"
"I can't believe you!"
"Me? What the hell did I do?" exclaimed Pepper.
"Really?" yelled Simon. "Really, Pepper? James Potter?"
Pepper flushed angrily. "You can't possibly think—"
"So you weren't in his bed? And he was just getting top marks in Divination to guess about the birthmark on your thigh?" countered Simon. He was redder than their Gryffindor ties. His posture was rigid, his index finger tapping one, two, three, one, two, three into the pocket of his robes.
"Well—yes but—how do you know about my birthmark?" she spluttered. Simon flushed.
"Summer—shorts—beach—So you were in his bed? Unbelievable! You, of all people—" he broke off, shaking his head. "What the hell is wrong with you, Pepper?"
Tears began prickling at the back of her eyes; tears of frustration. In the last twelve hours, she'd had her first fight with Simon, and now he was yelling at her for the first time in their entire friendship, and over something she had absolutely no fault in. She refused to let them fall, especially over the most vile accusation that had ever been thrown at her.
"Wrong with me? I was looking for you, you prick!" she snapped back. "But guess what—apparently you don't live there!"
Simon's face turned ashen, but then it regained color quickly, turning a blotchy, angry red once more. "Yeah, well, thank Merlin for that, or I would have had to listen to Potter and you shag—" Pepper purposefully drove her shoulder into his arm as she blew past him. Her entire body was shaking with anger as she walked away from her best friend, refusing to listen to him accuse her of shagging James Potter of all people. Had he struck his head while ducking for cover during his duel or had Callista Brown sucked out his brains when they snogged?
Her next few classes before lunch were a blur. Pepper sulked all the way through Ancient Runes and Herbology, content only with the fact they were all lecture based lessons that day and therefore she wasn't required to talk to anyone directly. Potter and Simon had both been in Ancient Runes, and so she'd had to find a strategic seat away from them; Simon had sat in a corner in the front, looking as miserable as she felt. Potter had looked between them suspiciously, choosing a seat in the back; Pepper had also chosen a seat in the back, unwilling to have her back to Potter, though she sat on the opposite side of him. In Herbology, Pepper lost Gryffindor five points when it became obvious she wasn't concentrating and had answered Bobbertubber puss when in fact Professor Longbottom had asked her to pass a pair of dragonhide gloves.
Potter had snickered; she'd sent a hex at his tilted chair, causing him to fall out of it. Fortunately for her, Potter had blamed it on a suspicious looking root that had been inching across the Greenhouse 4 floor all lesson long. She might have shared a smile with Simon had they been talking, and the reminder only caused her to sour further.
"I heard a rumor," came the sing-song voice of Dominique Weasley as she took a seat next to Pepper at lunch. At first Pepper ignored her; she assumed that the strawberry blonde was talking to Molly Weasley, who had just taken a seat across from them. "Well, actually I heard a lot of rumors, and like three involve you, Pepper Hastings,"
Pepper's eyes shot to Dominique; yes indeed, perfect, beautiful Dominique Weasley was chatting with her openly, casually as she began to fill up her goblet with pumpkin juice. "Apparently when you sashayed off last night, it was to go fuck my cousin,"
"Dominique," groaned Molly "Language, please. I can't show blatant favoritism, especially around family,"
"Oh please, who's Pepper going to tell?" said Dominique, shooting Pepper a wink. Pepper rolled her eyes at the not-so subtle dig that she had no friends to speak of. Well, she had Simon. Sort of. Maybe.
Pepper poked at her potatoes disinterestedly.
"So, you didn't, right?" Went on Dominique.
"I'd sooner throw myself off the Astronomy Tower," muttered Pepper.
"Then tell me this ones's true: you're the reason he's got a month of detention," Dominique said gleefully. Pepper's interest piqued at her blatant delight at her cousin's misfortune. Pepper sat up straighter, shooting Dominique a dazzling smile.
"I wish I could take all the credit, but I think I was only the catalyst, so to speak," Pepper said modestly. Molly snorted, shaking her head as she pulled out a book.
"Oh, I knew I'd like you," purred Dominique. "You're hot, dangerous, and mouthy—you're going to absolutely ruin my cousin," Again, this was said with extreme delight, and though Pepper wasn't entirely sure what Dominique Weasley was going on about, it appeared to be somewhere along the lines of James Potter's ruination, and it was a beautiful, serene thought to her.
"If you ever need, you know, any tips, any dirt on him—well, you know where I bunk," said Dominique.
"Dom," groaned Molly. "He's our cousin, you know, and she wasn't very nice to him at all, considering—no offense, Pepper—and now you're taking things a bit far, don't you think?"
"No, I really don't,"
"No offense taken," Pepper added breezily.
"So," Dominique grinned. "Did you do anything about the hair?"
Pepper laughed. "No, I haven't touched him, really—well, the nose I did,"
"You're the one that broke my cousin's nose?" Molly accused.
"Guess he got in the way," smirked Dominique.
"It was an accident," assured Pepper. "Believe me, I'm not looking to get into it with him—he's the one that starts these things up, acting like the prat he is,"
"I believe it," Dominique nodded. "He thinks he owns this place—it's so disgusting. Tell you what, tip for the next time he pisses you off,"
"Dom," warned Molly, glancing up from her book.
"Jamie dearest has this bit of parchment, right. Old, frayed, when you see it, you know it. It's rarely never on his person, and it's very important to him, because it helps him get out of trouble,"
"A piece of parchment helps him?" Pepper asked skeptically.
"Dom,"
"Yes," said Dom, ignoring her cousin. "It's got information on it, like times when prefects are patrolling, where the roomiest snogging cupboards are, that sort of thing. He'd be a mess without it,"
Pepper hesitated. If this parchment was as important to Potter as Dominique and Molly were making it sound, than it sounded like stealing it was a bit like a declaration of war. Or worse, maybe it was all a trap, and James was having his cousin feed her false information. But when Pepper scrutinized her two dorm mates, she saw something that surprised her: they were being completely honest. Dominique had something against Potter, and she wasn't willing to fight him outright: she wanted to use Pepper to do it.
"…noted," said Pepper.
At least it was a good bit of intel for a rainy day.
Hope everyone enjoys this new chapter! Sorry it took so long; i have a few chapters written, but it was hard to get to this one to edit adn i tried to upload like four times and i kept losing it and the format was all over the place.
So what did you think of Freddy's shenanigan? The Pepper/James interactions? The Pepper/Simon fight?