"Andy, get up."

"Mehhhhhhhh…" Andy groaned. "It's not time yet."

"GET UP!" Cho smacked her in the back of the head with a rolled up piece of parchment. Malfoy has been standing in the corridor for the last half hour demanding to see you, and you're crazy if you think I'm going out there to talk to him."

"Ugh… Fine…" She rolled out of bed and made her way to the door, still in her pajamas. A seething platinum blonde was outside to greet her, his arms folded across his chest. "What do you want?" she asked groggily, rubbing her eyes.

"Pansy Parkinson was falling all over me last night, prattling on about some letter I supposedly passed her, saying that she wanted to know my big secret or something like that. I'm assuming it had something to do with you." His grey eyes were focused on her so coldly that it seemed like he was attempting to stare a hole through her brain.

"Oh, yeah. That." She stretched her arms above her head and tried to wake herself up more fully. "I was just trying to save your relationship. It doesn't seem to be going so well, from what I can see," she said as innocently as possible.

"That's because there isn't one! I can't stand to have her hounding me all the time, and you've only made it worse!" Even in her half-conscious state, he could tell that she had known exactly what she had been doing. Overcome with anger and frustration, he took her by the shoulders and pinned her to the wall roughly. "I am going to ask you one more time to get your mudblood nose out of my life." His voice was quiet but sinister. "Do you understand me?"

"Please take your hands off me." Andy tried to keep her voice calm. He had startled her, and the longer he stood touching her, the angrier she got.

"Don't tell me what to do! For the past two days, you have been doing everything in your power to make me miserable, and I will not take orders from a mudblood!"

She could feel her skin growing hotter with each passing second as she lost her temper. "I'm serious… It's not that I care what you do, but-"

"OW!" He pulled his hands away from her sharply. Andy could see blisters starting to form on his palms, and immediately felt guilty. "What have you done to me?" A look of fear spread across his face.

"That's what I was talking about. I'm really sorry; I can't help it. When I get upset, I just…" She rubbed her temples and sighed. "I've got some burn healing paste in my dresser. I'll be right back." With that, she disappeared back into the dorm.

Draco could have run to Professor Flitwick and tried to get her put in detention, but for some reason he just stood there in the corridor waiting. He reasoned that things wouldn't go in his favor with Flitwick, considering he had been the one manhandling a lady. After a moment, she popped back out of the door with a little jar in one hand. "Let me see," she said quietly, her eyes down. She reached out to touch one of his hands; he recoiled for a moment, but the pain in his hands finally convinced him to comply. "That's nasty. I'm really sorry," she added as she smeared the stuff into his palms.

The situation was so strange that Draco could hardly wrap his mind around it. Wincing as the skin of his hands repaired itself, he tried to comprehend what had happened. "It's fine. I shouldn't have forgotten my manners," he replied. The phrase sounded so pathetic coming out of his mouth, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. She had frightened all the surliness out of him. "What was that?"

Andy closed the jar of paste and nervously rocked back and forth on her heels. "I just… Have outbursts like that sometimes. When I get fired up… I really get fired up. In my defense, I tried to warn you." He nodded dumbly. They stood there in silence for a moment, both unsure of what to say. "Your hands are fine now. You should get back to whatever it was you were doing before you came up here to harass me." She smirked a little bit, trying to lighten the mood.

"What? Uh… Yeah. Right." He smoothed out his robes. "I'll be seeing you around, mudblood."

She let out a long, exaggerated sigh. "Is that the only thing you can come up with?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Ever since I got on your bad side, it's been 'mudblood this' and mudblood that,' occasionally peppered by you just insinuating that I am, in fact, a mudblood. I think you called me a mudblood bitch one time, but that was the only break in the monotony. I was just thinking, you know, that maybe you could come up with a couple more colorful insults, kind of spice it up a little."

His brow furrowed. "What are you playing at?"

"In short, you're starting to bore me," she said simply. "I feel like you're not putting any effort into this little rivalry we've got going on." She said it as if she was slightly insulted by his lack of enthusiasm.

Draco scoffed. She's insane. "I'll get right on that, Dennington. In the meantime, why don't you get back in your common room and get dressed so you don't look like such a troll." He then turned his back on her and walked down the hall.

He watched her from across the room at breakfast; she spent most of it arguing with Chang about something over their plates of scrambled eggs. Whatever it was, it was clear that she thought it was hilarious while her friend did not. Paying closer attention, he could hear bits and pieces of their conversation, making out the words grabbed, burned, troll, and scuttled off, followed by really big trouble, don't know what you're getting into, and come after you. He assumed that they were talking about what had happened that morning, and Chang was worried about him cooking up a plot to do something awful in reciprocation. That honestly wasn't a bad idea; if he could cause some havoc in her life, then they would be even, and perhaps she would learn her lesson and leave him alone. As far as she was concerned, this was some kind of game. Maybe it was something people in America did for fun, starting feuds with each other until one of the parties involved gave up. That was the only explanation he had for her strange behavior. When she'd burned him earlier in the morning, she had seemed truly penitent about it. So, despite her obvious distaste for him, it was obvious that she didn't mean him any real harm. Was she irritating? Yes. But she wasn't malicious. Draco found this puzzling.

He spent the duration of potions class watching her particularly closely, trying to make sure she didn't have a mind to pull another one of her tricks. As far as he could tell, she wasn't up to anything, but he couldn't be sure as he could only see her black bun bouncing around on the back of her head as she stirred her cauldron. When the class was over, she tossed a piece of parchment at him on her way out.

Captain Ferret,

Cho has been relentlessly hounding me to apologize to you for the Pansy thing, and she's decided she won't talk to me until I do. I'm really not sorry about that because I personally thought it was hilarious, but I hope you understand my predicament. Meet me in the library after dinner.

Signed,

The Troll

Her small, delicate cursive handwriting was elegant but difficult to read. After weighing the pros and cons of a forced apology from his new nemesis against another evening of Pansy fawning over him, he decided to go with the former. At least Andy understood that he couldn't stand her. He spent the rest of the day trying to think of a few good insults, remembering her comment from earlier.