I know I know, you're all going to kill me. I have SO MUCH HOMEWORK but I decided to put it off to do a little writing. Though, I would write more if I got more reviews, you know……..Well, enjoy guys!

Chapter Eleven

When she woke up, she was starving. Her stomach rumbled loudly and she rolled out of bed, moaning in protest. The clock told her it was past noon. "Shit," Pepper mumbled her eyes suddenly popping open. As she raced to the lavatory, a note hanging on the wall mirror with a piece of Spellotape caught her eye and she stopped to read it.

Pepper-

Professor Dumbledore gave us the day off. He had our professors send us a list of assignments. They're in my common room; that's where we all are, if you would like to come join us.

-Hermione

"I am going to have so much work to catch up on," she sighed, flinging the note into the rubbish bin as she entered the lavatory. The mirror above the sink told her that her face looked absolutely awful. "Fabulous."

Once she looked presentable, Pepper went to the Heads' common room in hopes that they had smuggled some food from the kitchen. Luckily they had. Unluckily, Harry and Ron were not in the common room. Hermione was sitting on one of the couches, across from a couch laden with Blaise and Draco. This looked like an intervention.

Uh oh.

Blaise looked positively surly. Damn.

"Hey Pepper," Hermione said, smiling at her. "Are you hungry? Come sit."

Tentatively, Pepper approached the couch, not looking at Blaise. She felt so naked when she was around him, and she pulled her robes closed, trying to block out the nakedness. The place Hermione had designated for her to sit was directly across from Blaise. This had to be an intervention.

"Pepper, Draco and I were just wondering what happened between you and Blaise," Hermione said in a voice that resembled that of a mother talking to a small child.

"What makes you think something happened between us?" Pepper asked innocently, keeping her eyes trained towards Hermione, and not the other sofa.

"Maybe the fact that you've been completely avoiding one another for days now," said Hermione, clearly impatient. Pepper got the feeling that Hermione had already grilled Blaise.

Pepper turned to Draco and said, miffed, "I thought that Blaise already filled you in on all of it."

"He just told me you two snogged," Draco shrugged.

"What?" Hermione exclaimed. Draco looked amused. "Draco, why didn't you tell me this? Pepper! Why didn't YOU tell me this?"

"It's not my business to tell, Hermione," said Draco coolly. "You're the one that has their knickers in a twist over this; though, I must admit, I'm a little curious as to why there's been some major tension for the past few days."

"Well, it could just have been the snogging," Hermione said.

"You know the two of us are sitting here," said Pepper sarcastically.

"It's more than snogging," Draco continued. "Two people don't avoid one another for a mere snogging session. It could have been an argument."

"We shagged," Blaise interjected casually, his expression unchanging.

The color in Pepper's face drained at this statement, but Hermione just began to laugh. "Like that would ever happen!" she giggled.

Pepper finally met Blaise's eyes. She fought the blush that was rising to her blanched cheeks. "Can I talk to you?" she asked boldly, her voice cracking from nervousness. Hermione stopped laughing when the question left Pepper's lips, and the truth of the words finally dawned on her. But before an angry exclamation could be made, Pepper and Blaise were outside of the common room.

Pepper was standing on the other side of the corridor from Blaise, against the wall. She wanted to be as far away from him as possible. She averted her eyes from him again. There was an awkward silence for a moment before Blaise said, in a very un-Blaise-like way, "I'm sorry, Black."

Pepper was extremely taken aback by this. "What do you mean, I'm sorry?"

He looked up at her and Pepper felt the heat rising to her cheeks again. She refused to look away from him. "I'm trying to apologize here, Black, it's not something I do very often."

"What are you apologizing for, Blaise? The other day?"

"What else would I apologize for?" His arms were crossed and he was leaning against the stone corridor wall, looking very attractive. Pepper was surprised how much her body and emotions reacted to him.

"Blaise, there is no reason for you to apologize," said Pepper quietly.

It was Blaise's turn to look shocked. "Black, we had sex."

"I'm fully aware of that fact. But it was consensual, Blaise, in case you weren't there." Her voice then dropped to a whisper. "Blaise, we both wanted it." She looked at him, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth until it nearly disappeared. She was more nervous right now than she would ever like to admit.

"But it wasn't even our real selves, Black," he pointed out.

"That's the only part of it I regret, Blaise." The sexual tension building in the corridor was becoming overwhelming. "I really fancy you." He crossed the hall, invading her desired personal space, and put his hands on her hips. The hairs on Pepper's neck were standing on edge. "This is where you're supposed to respond."

"I really fancy you too, Black."

That was what she wanted to hear, and in response to that, she leaned forward and kissed him, smiling. She had no idea how much she had been looking forward to this moment since the night they had sex up against a shower stall.

Blaise seemed to be smiling into the kiss as well. Pepper pulled away and looked at him. "Are you actually smiling?" she wondered. Blaise never smiled.

"People are allowed to smile every once in a while, Black," he said, trying to make his face straight again, but not succeeding. "I'm allowed to be happy."

Pepper's smile widened and he entangled her fingers in Blaise's wavy dark hair and she pulled his face down to hers again. She hadn't been this happy in a while.

"Well, you two look cozy." Draco was suddenly outside in the corridor with them, disrupting their moment of sweet realization. "Pepper could you kindly explain to Hermione what exactly happened between you two? She's going absolutely nutters."

Pepper was happy to give an explanation to Hermione now that she knew she and Blaise were on the same page. Hermione was comforted by the fact that Pepper had finally told her and Pepper and Blaise weren't ignoring one another anymore, but she brought Pepper and the plate of food up to her room. There, she did a through motherly reprimanding of Pepper for having sex with Blaise.

Pepper sat on Hermione's bed and took the lecture. Right now, she was floating from happiness and it didn't matter how mad Hermione was at her. She thought that when she told Hermione what had happened she would get upset by the yelling and the anxiety of Hermione. Instead, she was barely paying attention to her friend.

"Pepper, why did you have sex with him?" Hermione asked for the tenth time.

"Hermione, I've already told you, it just happened," Pepper replied again. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it before, but I was afraid you would react like…well, like this. Sure, it wasn't the ideal way to lose my virginity…but after talking to Blaise, I definitely don't regret it. I think…I think I was ready for it, in a way. I feel like I should feel worse about this; for some reason, I don't. For some reason I'm perfectly okay with it."

Hermione collapsed onto the bed next to Pepper. "I want to have sex with Ron," she blurted out. Pepper looked at her in shock. "I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I think I'm ready." Hermione's face was redder than Pepper had ever seen it. "I love Ron."

Pepper wasn't sure what to say to this. Hermione had clearly switched from her angry persona to her interested one. "What was it like, Pepper?"

Pepper was smiling now, at the memory. How could she have ever worried that she had done something wrong? "It was kind of weird," she admitted. "I mean, it wasn't horizontal sex. I was up against a wall. And it wasn't our real bodies or faces. But other than that, it was amazing."

"What's going to happen with you and Blaise now?" Hermione wondered.

"Well, we established that we both really fancy one another," Pepper said. "But other than that…Blaise isn't really the type of person to have more than one girl at a time, so I guess we're a couple?"

"PEPPER!" Draco's voice drifted up the staircase. Pepper and Hermione hurried out of Hermione's bedroom and back to the common room, where Paige, Piper and Phoebe were standing. Now Pepper found her eyes involuntarily drifting to Blaise; quite the opposite of what they had been doing before. But now was not the time. She looked back at her aunts, who seemed to be rather dazed.

"What did you find out?" Pepper wondered, anxious.

"Not enough," said Paige, shaking her head and collapsing into and armchair. She glanced around the room. "Where're Ron and Harry?"

"Still sleeping," Hermione replied. "Why, should they be here to hear this?"

Piper looked rather distracted. "They're after you and Wyatt," she said.

This was rather shocking news. "Who exactly is they?"

"We're not really sure," Paige said. "We haven't gotten much information out of the lower-level demons."

"I don't even know how many we killed," Phoebe said. "I lost count."

"Why are they going after Wyatt?" Pepper asked, her face suddenly etched with worry.

"You two are destined to shift the balance of good and evil to the good side, apparently."

"You're kidding," Pepper gasped.

"According to evil, this means you both have to die," Phoebe said. "And according to us, this means that you both have to be on constant surveillance."

Piper elaborated: "We're keeping Wyatt at Magic School for the time being, under all of the teachers, and we're adding even more additions to our security around the school. We'll put crystals in your dorm, though we would appreciate it if Hermione could accommodate you in her dormitory for the time being."

"Of course," Hermione agreed quickly. "Anything I can do to help. I don't want anything to happen to Pepper or Wyatt."

Pepper was concerned at this point; not so much for herself but for her baby cousin. Who would go after a baby? Out of the corner of her eye, she locked gazes with Blaise, who was now standing. He, too, looked worried. Pepper fought the urge to let out a guilty grin: he was concerned for her?

"Is there anything we can do about this?" Pepper wondered, looking back at her aunts. "Who would want to hurt a baby? He's harmless. Except for that force field thing he can do when he's in danger."

"He conjured a dragon the other day, Pepper," Piper said blatantly. "Wyatt is in no way harmless; and the demons want to make sure they eliminate the threat of his growing powers."

"But what about Pepper's powers?" asked Hermione. "They're pretty developed, don't you think?"

"We're assuming that the demons were trying to transport you all, specifically Pepper, to a different plane so that she had no powers," Paige explained. "Luckily, it didn't work. But there's no guarantee that they won't try again, which is why we're enforcing the entire castle with crystal traps. You all need to be extra careful around here."

Pepper wanted a hug right now. In fact, she needed a hug right now; this was a lot to deal with at once.

"Perhaps we should get Harry and Ron."