"This prank is over!"

The Slytherin girls looked up from painting their toe-nails as Millicent stormed into their dorm room. Pansy was conspicuously absent, which made perfect sense if she had access to the Gryffindor Common Room again.

"It's broken. He's broken. I'm done."

Daphne flicked a brush across the nail of her middle toe, leaving it shell-pink. "We're not the ones you have to convince," she said languidly. "And Pansy's not going to let you out of this that easily."

Millicent shrugged the comment aside. "Pansy won't notice," she said. If she was lucky, it would be true.

Daphne lifted her head, tapping the nail-polish bottle against her thigh. "Oh, yes. Her crush. How is that going?"

Millicent shrugged. She tried to have as little as possible to do with that whole mess. Pansy was going to spend ages stalking her crush, never actually admit anything, deny it emphatically if questioned and then be devastated when her wooing technique failed. "No idea, but it will probably keep her busy. So long as no one reminds her about this train-wreck of a prank, we should be able to bury it quietly."

"What happened?" asked Tracey. "You were looking forward to it this afternoon."

"That was before I realised that Weasley was insane," said Millicent. "And when I thought that the prank was going…" She broke off, frowning to herself, because she'd known that the prank wasn't going well. It was easy enough to pretend that it was; none of the other girls had any reason to believe otherwise. But it wasn't working, and it hadn't been for days. If that day out near the Shrieking Shack with Fred hadn't convinced her that her priorities were out of whack, the next day with George should have. For Merlin's sake, she'd kissed him and he'd been fine with it, and then they'd gone swimming. There wasn't any recovering from that. She should have cut her losses then.

"Anyway," she said, shaking herself and scowling. "It's broken now. I need to extricate myself."

"It's not going to work," said Daphne. "I don't care what else is happening, Pansy's not going to let this prank go."

"I suggest that you do what you can to convince her," said Millicent. "I'm out. And Pansy might be a complete bitch when she's thwarted, but that's nothing on what I'm capable of."

Tracey leant forward to get a bottle of shimmery gold polish. "What's changed?" she asked. "I've never seen you this rattled."

Millicent huffed out a breath and slumped onto the bed. "Everything's changed. He's a creep and I don't ever want to see him again."

Daphne frowned, twisting the lid back onto her bottle and tossing it aside. "Did he feel you up under the table?"

"No, I felt him up under the table," said Millicent. "With my tail."

"Ew," said Tracey.

Daphne made a face. "That's disgusting."

"I know, right?" agreed Millicent fervently. "It should have been amazing. He should have shrieked like a banshee and fallen out of his chair, right?"

Tracey stared at her, mouth twisting in concern. "Did he not?"

"He probably liked it!" Millicent exclaimed. "He probably has a hex-tail fetish! That's probably why he gave me one."

"You're not making sense," said Tracey. "What makes you think he's into tails?"

A wave of hysterical dizziness washed over Millicent at the recollection. "He stroked it!" she choked out, voice hoarse with horror.

Daphne spluttered, eyes wide with revulsion. "He what?"

"When I touched him with it," Millicent wailed. "He started patting it. Who does that?"

The other two Slytherin girls stared at her, transfixed with shock.

"It gets worse," said Millicent, scowling.

"How can it get worse?" asked Daphne. "That's already a Colin Creevey level of creepiness."

All three girls shuddered.

"Still," said Millicent, steeling herself. She lifted her chin and glanced from Tracey to Daphne. "I eavesdropped on a conversation he was having with his father. Honestly, I don't really want to repeat it, but from now on if we see either of the twins you will hide me."

It was a pity because Millicent had liked Ginny. Damn it all, she'd liked George until he'd turned out to be a complete freak.

Daphne narrowed her eyes. "I think you're going to have to tell us the rest," she said. "What did this conversation consist of?"

There were some things that Millicent didn't want to relive and that was one of them. "It was creepy," she said. "You don't need to know the rest."

"Need to? No," said Daphne. "You're resilient enough that I'd take your word for it. But there is the matter of curiosity to be addressed. I will not sleep if I don't know the details."

"Oh, yes. Spill," said Tracey, shuffling forward on her bed and hugging a pillow to herself as though waiting for a bed-time story.

Millicent sighed, rubbing her head. Tracey and Daphne would keep asking if she didn't explain, so she took a breath and gave them a run-down of the conversation she had over-heard. When she'd finished Tracey and Daphne stared at her in open-mouthed disbelief.

"What does he mean by saying that he's liked you for months?" asked Tracey finally. "I thought he screamed every time you came near him."

"That's Fred. George is the one who locked himself in a Cocooning Charm. Probably because he was overcome with happiness at me having accepted him." Millicent shuddered before shaking herself briskly. "Alright, I need to find a spell to get rid of this tail. I'm going to the library."

"Mill." Tracey leant forward on her bed, frowning. "There's nothing weird about a guy liking you…I mean…"

That was so far beside the point that Millicent stared at her for a moment. "He's considering children!"

"He comes from a big family. He doesn't know any better," said Daphne with a casual shrug. "I think what Tracey's saying is that you're fun to be around; and the Weasley twins are into fun. It isn't weird that he'd like you."

"That's not…" Millicent protested before cutting herself off and trying to figure out how to put her jumbled thoughts into words. "It wouldn't be creepy if he'd only just started liking me. I mean, even with the prank and everything, I guess I've let bits of my personality slip through, so sure. But he's liked me for months? What the hell has he liked? Most people think that I follow everything Pansy says and never bother to think for myself. I'm pretty sure that the Ravenclaws doubt my ability to read. They keep offering to teach me at least."

Daphne pursed her lips, tilting her head to the side as she considered Millicent's statement. "From his perspective you have nothing going for you," she said. "You're not good-looking and you've always tried to hide anything that might make you seem interesting."

"And I've done a damn good job of it," agreed Millicent hysterically. "The only person who's ever tried to hit on me was Creevey."

All three girls shuddered once more.

"Face it," said Millicent. "There are two possible reasons for George Weasley to be interested in me based on what he knows of me."

"One," said Tracey, leaning back into her pillows. "His self-esteem is so low that he'll take anything he can get."

Millicent grinned sharply and nodded. Everyone knew that whatever the twins might lack it wasn't self-confidence though.

"Two," said Daphne, voice slicing through the air as sharp as a rending curse. "He thinks that your self-esteem is so low that he'll be able to make you do anything he wants."

"That's the one," said Millicent, pointing at her. "So, again, this prank is over. Parkinson is a non-entity in this equation. I'm done."

Tracey glanced across at Daphne; eyes dark with uncertainty. Daphne reached for a new bottle of polish, ignoring her friend.

"I'm going to the library," said Millicent.

"Mill," Tracey put her pillow aside, face creasing into a frown. Her voice was sharp with worry.

Millicent scowled at her. She'd had the damned tail too long already. "What?"

Tracey huffed out a breath and turned to Daphne once more, creasing her nose when Daphne didn't take over.

"Merlin's sake, fine," snapped Daphne, slamming her bottle down. She glared at Millicent as though she blamed her for the fact that Tracey was being weird. "Were your feelings hurt by this strange turn of events?" she almost snarled. When it came to talking about feelings she was almost worse than Pansy.

Millicent frowned. "Okay, so I've never had a prank go sour before, but I think I'll recover…"

"Millicent!" Tracey protested, throwing her hands into the air. Unlike the others, Tracey was really, really good at talking about feelings. She tended to drag other people into it though, because Pansy, Daphne – and on very rare occasions – Millicent could get violent when confronted with things involving emotion. "We know," she said now, voice sharp and unhappy.

Daphne laughed shortly. "Pansy can be stupid about things that are ridiculously obvious sometimes," she drawled. "But you're not as good at hiding things from us as you are from the rest of the school."

"We know how sneaky you are," said Tracey, a smile touching her lips.

Daphne flipped her hair. "We also know that you came back with a tail two nights ago; but you didn't have a story to tell about it."

"If you'd made a move on one of the twins and he'd hexed you in retaliation you would have told us everything," Tracey pointed out.

"So he hexed you for a different reason," said Daphne. "And whatever the reason was, you didn't want us to know."

"How long is this going to take?" asked Millicent impatiently. She wanted to get rid of her tail as soon as physically possible in case Weasley really did have a tail fetish – a theory that didn't seem too far-fetched right now.

"You could tell us everything – and I mean the truth about everything," said Tracey. "That would save some time."

Millicent glowered at her.

Daphne stretched out her lithe frame, studying Millicent with a distinctly bored air about her. "Fine. We'll just have to guess then. Trace?"

Tracey grinned sharply. "You were freaked out before you went to visit the Weasley in his Common Room. I could tell when I was doing your make-up. You never sit that still normally."

After that stupidly impudent kiss. God, maybe Millicent should belatedly scour her lips clean. She should have known that Tracey would have noticed something even if Pansy didn't.

"But the Weasley left here without a mark on him," said Daphne. "So whatever happened between you, it wasn't enough for you to hit him or knee him or set him on fire."

Millicent was grateful for the layers of caked on make-up. Hopefully it would cover the violent colour that she could feel flushing through her face.

"You were looking forward to tonight," said Tracey.

"And you did get dressed in those horrible robes that honestly look as though they were inspired by bile," added Daphne. "But Trace and I noticed that you didn't force the Weasley to meet up somewhere shamefully public. Like, say, his Common Room. Or the Great Hall."

"Get to the point," Millicent snarled. She could have turned and walked out. But that would just give them a reason to start the conversation up again when Pansy was around. And they knew what they knew, that was fair enough, but Millicent didn't want Pansy knowing it too.

"We're not pretending to know what's going on with you," said Tracey.

"Obviously," agreed Daphne, shuddering in disgust. "Because your thought processes are evidently screwed at the moment."

"Very screwed," Tracey seconded emphatically. She creased her nose and shrugged her shoulders. "But, obviously there's more to this than a prank. So you are…You are okay with him turning out to be…"

"Psychotic?" Millicent dropped the word into the blossoming silence.

Tracey cringed but Daphne nodded happily.

Millicent considered the matter. "Bit annoying," she said. "But what can you do?"