Disclaimer: JKR wrote the books. I'm just having fun. Daphne, Seventh Year
"Look at me, Astoria," I said coldly, sounding exactly like our mother. My sister's fists were clenched and her shoulders were tight. She didn't look up. Her shirt was improperly buttoned - a result of a very rushed job of dressing - and her skirt wasn't straight. My lip curled. I crossed the Common Room with long strides and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look me in the eye.
Her bright green eyes were hard, and her blonde curls were messily pulled back. There were tearstains on her flushed cheeks, but she showed no signs of listening to me. She jerked her face away from my hand and spoke. "Well, Daph?" she demaded, sounding on the edge of hysteria. "Are you happy now? You've humiliated me yet again! At least this time you're sober!" She gave a humorless laugh.
"You're raving like an idiot," I informed her, my voice cool and calm. "I've done nothing whatsoever to embarrass you."
She laughed again. "Oh, of course not! You've just walked in on me snogging my boyfriend - the only one in this bloody place who cares about me at all - and hexed him! That's perfectly fine!" She was waving her hands in the air angrily.
I sneered at her. "Blaise doesn't care about you one bit. If you'd bothered to look at him you'd see that." Astoria took a step back as though I had slapped her.
"You don't know what you're talking about!" she shouted. I sighed, suddenly old and tired, certain Blaise was listening from the top of the boys' stairs.
"I've known him since we were eleven. I know him better than you seem to think. Blaise doesn't care about the girls he dates. Ever."
She shook her head, in denial. "You're jealous that he doesn't fancy you. You want to mess it up for me."
I gave a bark of laughter. "We tried that in fourth year, and trust me, there was nothing. Literally. He doesn't feel anything, Astoria. Nothing."
Her shoulders slumped, and for an instant I was sure I'd gotten through to her. Then she folded her arms stubbornly. "Yes, he does. He feels love. For me." She turned and went to her dorm. I rubbed my temples and pulled a bottle of firewhiskey from my bag, exhausted. Walking in on my half-dressed fifteen-year-old sister snogging Blaise Zabini had not been a welcome sight. And in the Common Room, for Merlin's sake. Had she no dignity? She had no idea what she was doing, that was the problem. If it had been me getting hurt... well, I couldn't care less if someone was using me; my sister was a different story altogether.
I sat down in an armchair and took a swig of the alcohol, relishing the initial burn and smoky aftertaste, turning the bottle in my hands, looking at the slogan. The answer to all your problems! I could just imagine a perky blonde witch reading the words for an advertisement. Disgusting. And a complete lie. Drinking had yet to answer any of my problems. At least it made me forget things, though. Killed my liver, too, if what the Healers had told my father was true. Messed with my brain cells. Did things to me no spells could fix. And at the rate I was going through bottles, I'd be dead by the time I was twenty.
Oh well. Life was overrated anyway.