Match

by dabow

Match. by mental Ze Meridian has a serious problem: despite the skirt, everyone seems to think she's a boy. Desperate to prove that having short hair, a bloke for a best friend, and a serious obsession with sport does not mean she's *full summary inside*

36. The Art of War: Part Deux

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

---

'Fear is the most elegant weapon; your hands are never messy.'

- Jenny Holzer

Chapter 36:The Art of War: Part Deux

Madame Digweed was not amused.

Shortly after James Potter had executed the world's first Rescue by Grooming Accoutrement, Professor McGonagall stormed the portrait hole and lay about with the Freezing Charms, which had proved only slightly less effective when it came to smiting than the generally preferred jawbone of an ox. Whilst most of the house later agreed that Minerva McFab was indeed a symbol of Gryffindor cool, certain persons were less than pleased by the way things turned out. After all, James had not had the chance to properly liberate Lily, who plummeted from the ceiling shortly after one of McGonagall's ubercharms decimated the chandelier support. But, aside from that small hitch in otherwise normal broadcasting, the world did managed to return to its basic state – which was to say, utter and complete panic. The sound of their head of house's voice thundering off the walls had summoned the besieged Gryffindors from the safety of their dormitories, but the sight of the dreaded socks – still circling the ceiling in a cloud of their fluffy offspring – had re-induced pandemonium as everyone ran for safety, shelter and cameras.

On the fringe of the melee, torn between duty and desire, Sirius and Ze had exchanged a look which contained much baring of souls, burning of eyes, and possibly the unabridged version of Taliesin's Lover's Lament. 'Tomorrow,' Sirius had ground out, his fingers tightening around his wand.

'Tomorrow,' Ze agreed. 'Tomorrow night.'

It was the sort of promise that sets fire to one's heart – and, in the case of adolescent hormones, various other bits of the anatomy as well. It was sad, really, that Serena missed it (if nothing else, she could have acted as chaperone) but Ze and Sirius had eyes only for one another and didn't miss her at all. There had been a further moment of soulful staring, interrupted by a mighty war cry as Professor McGonagall valiantly vanquished one of the marauding socks with a well-aimed laundering charm. After that, things had gone rather rapidly to purgatory. But, as this was a step up from where they had been, no one really minded.

Except for Madame Digweed. Now that the battle was over the majority of Gryffindor house was queuing out her doors, awaiting treatment for injuries ranging from scorched eyebrows to cracked skulls. 'Socks?' she kept muttering under her breath. 'Socks and sodding pixies?'

The girls of Gryffindor seventh wisely kept their mouths closed – even if they hadn't been the ones to smuggle the pixies into Gryffindor tower they still had no desire to be drawn and quartered for unleashing the little buggers on the common room. They had been in hospital for ages, certainly long enough for the nurse to work her way down from the critical cases to the merely serious, and were doing their best to keep out of sight. Presently, they were clustered around a bed which held Dorcas, whose head was enswathed in a rakish bandage – only a flesh wound – as she reclined on the pillows, waiting for a dose of Skele-grow to heal the nasty break in her arm. Serena, seated beside her, had a steaming hot towel wrapped round her head, and was smoking faintly at the ears courtesy of the Pepper-up potion Madame Digweed had poured down her throat to "ward off the chill." Lily's nose bore an enormous plaster and a great deal of cotton wadding, but as she had informed Professor McGonagall, her pride was more injured than anything else. Ze alone was calamity-free, although she did have a number of mild abrasions and bites, which the matron had told her would have to wait. Ze, who neither knew nor trusted pixie opinions on dental hygiene, had smiled politely and pinched an antiseptic and some cotton swabs the moment Digweed's back was turned.

She looked up from the task of cleaning out her wounds at the sound of Lily's furious voice saying, 'When I catch whoever put those pixies in our dormitory…' The redhead was glowering – an expression which would have been threatening if she hadn't been squinting around the massive bandage on her nose.

A quick glance between Dorcas and Serena, gimlet-eyed and smoking at the ears, showed that they were every bit as angry as Lily was. 'I think it was Grace,' Serena hissed, barely keeping her voice to a whisper as the leant across Dorcas's knees. 'That vicious, evil c-.'

'Where would she have got pixies though?' Dorcas interrupted, only to fall silent as Ze snapped the privacy curtains closed around them with a flick of her wand.

'What was that –'

'It wasn't Grace,' Ze interrupted Serena's question.

'How can you be sure?' Dorcas asked, her own eyes narrowed with suspicion.

'Aside from the fact that she wouldn't risk destroying her own things?' Ze shot back, brows raised. 'It was Rob,' she added flatly. 'He told Sirius he'd done it.'

'What?' three voice chorused disbelievingly. 'Why?'

'Because girls like fairies,' Ze replied in a mocking, sing-song voice. 'Boy rubbish, as usual. He meant them as an, er, as a token of…affection,' she managed to say, and if anyone noticed her shifting uncomfortably in her seat, they didn't mention it.

'In your bed?' Dorcas asked immediately, gaze sharpening.

'I don't think he knew which bed to put them on,' Ze was quick to explain, 'so he just chose a random one. I think it's more like, well, like he…knows….um, like he knows – '

'Like he knows it must be a girl in Gryffindor who's sending him those letters, and he's trying to discover who it is by drawing her out with gifts?' Lily suggested helpfully.

'Yes, exactly!' Ze said, shooting her friend a grateful look before turning back to Dorcas. 'You sent him the chocolates – a gift that wasn't really a gift – so he's sending you something back to let you know he's onto you. Or that he's interested. Or…something.'

'Hmmm,' Dorcas murmured. 'So he still doesn't know it's me…'

'No, or he would've put them on your bed, wouldn't he?' Ze replied, wondering if this counted as an outright lie, or a just a not-telling-of-the-truth.

'Who's daft enough to give something as awful as Cornish pixies for a gift?' Serena asked in tones of deepest contempt.

'Well, Rob, for a start,' was Ze's wry reply.

'Where did he even get them?' Lily asked suspiciously. 'It's not like they just come flying through the window a hundred times a day.'

'Stole them, probably,' Ze sighed, settling back into her chair and wondering how she was going to bring up the subject she really wanted to talk about. 'My guess would be off Kettleburn. Apparently he keeps them for detentions – a nice little twist on old-fashioned sadism.'

They all sat silently and took a moment to recall the pandemonium in their dormitory: everything that wasn't nailed down flying through the air as the pixies pelted them with their own possessions. And then they relocated the scene to a thestral stall which needed mucking out… 'Eughg,' was the collective response.

'That wasn't a gift,' Lily said darkly, folding her arms across her chest. 'That was bloody revenge.' Ze breathed a sigh of relief: the topic was bringing itself up. Brilliant.

'Which means I've got him just where I want him – furious,' Dorcas was saying gleefully, looking positively piratical beneath her bandages.

'Yeah,' Ze agreed hastily. 'Which got me thinking…' She glanced around to see if she had everyone's attention, and was greeted by three pairs of bright, curious eyes.

'About Rob being furious?' Serena asked archly.

'About revenge,' Ze replied, leaning in and lowering her voice. 'And about Grace.'

There was a low chorus of 'Ahhhhh.'

'Am I correct in assuming,' Ze asked, 'that none of us is very fond of her?'

Serena snorted and flexed her hands. 'Do you have to ask?'

'Right, well…' Ze let out a sigh and worded the next bit as carefully as she could. 'Let's say that we aren't the only ones who feel that way – and that we aren't the only ones who might be interested in doing something about it.'

'Is this about the other night and –' Lily began, but Ze lifted a finger to her lips and slid her chair back to peer between a break in the curtains.

Satisfied that Madame Digweed had forgot completely about them, she cast a quick muffliato and returned to the bed, gesturing for the others to lean in. 'I'm going to tell you a secret, but before I do I want to be clear that it isn't my secret – which means I'm trusting you not to take advantage of it. I'm not saying you'll have to pretend I haven't told you because, trust me, that's going to be impossible, but…'

'Don't tell anyone else?' Lily suggested. 'And don't gloat about it?'

'Yeah,' Ze nodded. And then fairness made her add: 'Well, don't gloat too much anyway.'

'And this secret is?' Serena prompted a moment later when Ze was still trying to work out how to say it.

'The secret is…' She blew out one final breath and said, 'The secret is that Zeke, Rob, Peter, Sirius, James, Remus and Allister made a bet to see who could go the longest without sex.'

There was a long pause, and for the second time that night three voices cried "What?" in perfect harmony.

'That's ridiculous!' Serena said on a snort of laughter.

'They haven't given anything up,' Lily agreed with a scornful chuckle. 'None of them were having sex to begin with.'

'Well, maybe Zeke and Sirius,' Serena allowed with a shrug, ''Cos they had girlfriends. But the rest of them…'

'They didn't just give up shagging,' Ze explained patiently, 'by "sex" I mean all sexual activity – no snogging, no groping…no tossing off…' she added with a meaningful look. Three grimaces bloomed immediately in response to this.

'Mental image I'll never get rid of,' Lily muttered darkly.

But Serena was already breaking into a smile. 'They can't – they haven't - that's brilliant,' she cried, a gurgle of laughter following the words. 'That's absolutely hilarious.'

'Not to mention very useful,' Dorcas agreed evilly, all but cackling. 'And it explains everything.'

'Yeah, like why Potter's IQ is dropping faster than Celestina Warbeck's knickers,' Lily sniggered, eyes narrowing and mouth curling as all the possibilities flashed before her. 'Oh, this is going to be fun -'

'Okay, well, before you break out the miniskirt and the bustier, could I just point us back to the whole vengeance theme?' Ze said pointedly.

'What has this bet thing got to do with us getting back at Grace?' Serena asked, bemused. 'Aside from the fact that she chucked Sirius, which means he's not getting any, I don't see what she's got to do with it.'

'Sirius could be getting some if he wanted it, trust me,' Ze muttered, and ignored the way brows darted north. 'But the point is that Grace knows everything I've just told you – and no one's made her promise not to tell.'

'And she's not exactly been in a good mood lately, has she?' Serena said slowly. 'So this is…'

'Only to be expected?' Lily finished off for her, eyes narrowed in speculation rather than anticipation now. 'So she knows – and, presumably, she's going to tell. Who cares? Potter and the rest are always humiliating one another – and other, innocent people as well,' she sniffed righteously, clearly not having forgotten (or forgiven) the Great Knicker Debacle. 'Maybe it's time someone else had a go.'

'Yeah,' Dorcas agreed, the light of what Ze could only describe as bloodlust glittering in her eyes. 'Like us…'

'I'm not saying the humiliation's the problem,' Ze managed to get out before anyone could suggest a temporary alliance with the vituperative blonde. 'I'm saying Grace is the problem – mostly because she always wins,' she explained, recalling what Sirius had said on the subject. 'No matter what happens, she always comes out smelling of roses, perfect and so – so - bloody smug it drives me mad.'

'Well when you put it like that,' Lily murmured into the ensuing silence. When Lily said nothing else – and neither Serena nor Dorcas spoke up either – Ze heaved a sigh and played her last card.

'Look, I know you've never really rated James,' she said to Lily, 'and I know you'd like nothing more than to see Rob publicly humiliated,' she continued, turning to Dorcas. 'But I'm not doing this for Rob or James, I'm doing it for Sirius – and I think you all can guess why. You can tease me about that later,' she added, raising a hand when they all began to grin, 'but right now I need to know if you're willing to help me. Because Grace doesn't deserve to win, and while I'm happy to help you get yours back, I'm not going to let her do it for you. I've got a plan, whether you're in or not.' She swallowed. 'But I'm really hoping you're in.'

Lily rolled her eyes, immediately dropping her "convince me" expression. 'Of course we're in – we were just waiting for you to tell us your real reason for asking.'

'And that'll be five sickles each, please,' Serena added, waggling the fingers of her outstretched hand at both Dorcas and Lily.

'What?' Dorcas cried in outrage. 'But your money was on tomorrow –'

'It is now,' Serena consulted her watch, 'twenty minutes past midnight which, I do believe,' she grinned, 'makes it October twenty-first.'

This was greeted by much grumbling and Ze, utterly gobsmacked, looked on as Lily said, 'I'll get it when we've gone back up –'

'You had a bet?' Ze squawked, finding her voice at last. 'On me?'

Dorcas blinked at her. 'Well, yeah,' she said, the "of course" implicit in her tone.

'Just on when you'd finally admit you fancied Sirius,' Serena explained breezily. 'Lily's money was on this past Monday and Dorcas was sure you'd last at least another week, but I knew better,' she added, smiling smugly.

'But,' Ze began, her eyes darting to Lily, about to reveal that she'd already revealed. She was silenced, however, by the knowing half-smile Lily flashed – an expression Ze found herself returning. Lily had called Monday, and she'd been right…she'd just cared more about keeping Ze's confidence than collecting the money. 'Maybe I should open a bookies,' she mumbled with a shake of her head. 'Seems like there's loads of money to be made.

'You can work on that after we've decimated Grace,' Dorcas agreed. 'Now, tell us everything we haven't figured out already.'

'Er…' Ze began.

'We know that Grace knows some unsavoury things about this bet, and is threatening to reveal them,' Serena surmised. 'And that someone from Hufflepuff is involved.'

'Colin Cross?' Lily guessed immediately.

'No,' Ze denied, 'no, he hasn't got anything to do with this. The Hufflepuffs – there are actually two of them – are Zeke and Allister's girlfriends. I think Grace's original plan was to make the whole bet thing sound as sordid as possible, just sort of start rumours about it and let them get out of control. Ellie and Riya – that's Allister and Zeke's girlfriends – would've been furious.'

'Instant grounds for chucking them without a second chance,' Serena nodded sagely. 'She's always been good at things like that.'

'I know,' Ze agreed. 'What I can't figure out is why she didn't do it right when she found out. She's known since the weekend, so why wait? Why give Alli and Zeke the chance to explain themselves and save the relationship?'

Lily and Serena exchanged a knowing glance. Finally, Lily shrugged and said, 'Maybe she was waiting to see if anyone else got a girlfriend. She could've caused the fastest break-up in Hogwarts history with that kind of news.'

'You're talking about me and Sirius,' Ze said, realisation dawning. 'You think she was waiting to see what would happen between us.'

'Exactly,' Serena said with a rueful smile. 'But why waste time waiting for you to get together if she wasn't going to be able to break you up?' she continued, warming to the topic as she puzzled the matter out. 'If she knew about the bet, why wouldn't you? So she tested you, on Sunday night - she dropped a hint and you went running straight off to tell Sirius.'

'Which told her that you were getting closer to Sirius by the day,' Dorcas finished off as she adjusted her bandages. 'But it also told her that she was going to have to come up with something else to cause trouble.'

'So now she's threatening all of us,' Lily murmured, standing to pace the short distance between the curtain and the bed. 'That comment about running round naked wasn't aimed just at you, Zaz. Somehow she's found out that we were out of bounds on Tuesday night.'

'Well at least that's got her away from spreading rumours about the bet –' Ze began, only to be interrupted by Serena's hollow laugh.

'Don't be so hasty,' the brunette said with a shake of her head. 'Just because she can't use the information to take Sirius away from you doesn't mean she won't find some other way of exploiting it. Grace is the most devious person I've ever met – and she hasn't got even a hint of a conscience. If we want to stop her, we need to figure out who's she after.'

'Well that's obvious,' Ze said bluntly. 'She's proper furious with Sirius, and the three of us as well. The problem is, she can't really do anything to Sirius besides embarrass him – '

Lily clicked her tongue against her teeth, shaking her head much the way Serena just had. 'She could destroy Sirius with what she knows right now – she's not waiting on that.'

'What do you mean?' Dorcas and Ze exchanged a grimace in the wake of their chorus.

'She means that Grace could get to any one of the guys in on it,' Serena explained. 'I'm assuming that by now some of them are out, yeah? Of the bet?'

Ze tipped her head and reluctantly admitted: 'Zeke, Allister and Peter are out.'

'So that leaves Potter, Black, Lupin and –'

'Rob,' Dorcas finished for Serena.

'Not that Rob matters,' Serena continued. 'At least, not for what Grace would want. She would go after Lupin or Potter – probably Lupin,' she murmured darkly, fingers clenching, 'and either seduce him right in front of Black, or do it in secret and then make sure Sirius found out about it at an opportune time.'

Ze shook her head. 'No way,' she said staunchly. 'Wouldn't happen – Remus would never do that to Sirius, I don't care if Grace showed up in his bed wearing nothing but a manicure and a blush.'

'He's wound tighter than a bow string, Ze,' Serena said gently. 'He wouldn't be able to resist.'

Ze gave this brief consideration, and then shook her head again. 'You don't know Remus. But it doesn't matter,' she added, 'because it isn't going to come to that.'

'Ah, yes,' Lily murmured. 'Your infamous plan.'

'I've only mentioned it once,' Ze shot back, 'so it can't be infamous yet. I might settle for nefarious though.'

'I hope it isn't too complex,' Dorcas interjected, pushing her glasses firmly onto her nose to signal she was ready to plot. 'I'm at a very critical point in Operation Rogue.'

Serena and Lily exchanged an eye roll at this, but Ze just beamed. 'Cheers for that Dorcas, because you're part of my inspiration.' Dorcas looked vaguely flattered at this, and Lily arched a curious brow. 'See, part of what bothers me about Grace is the fact that she always seems to know things,' Ze explained.

'Well, yeah, she is the biggest gossip in the school,' Serena pointed out in snide tones

Ze tipped her head back and forth indecisively and said, 'Well…not exactly. I mean, she does always know what's going off before the rumours start - but if you think about it, try as hard as you like to remember her telling you something nasty, you're never going to be able to trace an actual rumour back to her. If I woke up tomorrow and people were saying the four of us were involved in some all-girl ménage á quatre, I would bet my last knut that it was Grace who started the rumour -'

'Or Rob,' Dorcas mumbled.

'Well, you know what I mean,' Ze waved off. 'My point is, we would all know it was Grace who said it first, but we'd never be able to prove it because we don't know how she found out about us being out on Tuesday night in the first place. Unless she's learnt to tell the future in that bloody mirror she's always staring at, I don't see how she manages to know everything she knows without ever getting caught out. Or how she manages to start people talking without every seeming to say anything.'

Serena glanced at Lily and Dorcas sheepishly, and then turned her gaze on Ze. 'That I can explain,' she admitted. 'It's sort of…look, being one of Grace's "friends" is sort of like being a handmaiden to the queen – you get to borrow a lot of nice clothes and everyone watches everything you do, but you're only important when she's paying attention to you and you spend all your time knowing other people don't really like you. It's actually the most miserable experience of my life and –'

'And this is why you keep a diary,' Lily interrupted with an impatient roll of her eyes.

Serena expelled a massive breath. 'Right. Sorry. What I was trying to say is that when you're in that position, Grace is the only person who makes you feel important and appreciated. She can be really charming, when she wants to, and you'll tell her anything to make her pay attention to you. And since you know no one else likes you, you don't care that you're telling her all these nasty little things about people, because you know they're doing exactly the same thing to you. And Grace listens, and she nods, and she tells you that this is going to be your little secret, and she goes off to brush her hair. But a week later she's taken something you told her and fitted it together with something someone else has told her, and suddenly she's figured out this massive secret. So she comes along and tells you just enough of what you didn't know to get you to figure it out, and once you know you've got to tell people because it proves how much Grace likes you that you were the one she came and told. And then it's this really horrible rumour that's got started.' Serena's face was shuttered now, and she glumly concluded with, 'And you know it's all your fault.'

Dorcas reached over to pat Serena's shoulder supportively as Ze dragged a hand through her hair and cursed. 'What?' Lily asked quietly.

Ze, elbows planted on knees, lifted her head and shook it. 'Just realising this is going to be complicated. Or, more complicated than I thought. If Grace gets all her information in bits from first-hand sources, that means one – or more - of her little informants has got to be someone we know. Someone we know well,' she groaned. Tapping her thumb against her knee, she tried again to put the facts in some order that made sense – except there didn't seem to be one. 'The only people who knew about that bet were the guys who made it, Clive and me,' she thought aloud. 'We were the only ones…'

'Don't need to ask if any of you told her,' Lily murmured, gazing into the middle distance as she thought. 'What about Clive?' she asked after a moment. 'Could he have told –'

'He doesn't think he said anything Claudia might have picked up on,' Ze interrupted, knowing Lily wouldn't be offended, not when it was the most efficient course. 'And frankly, Claudia's so up her own arse I doubt she would have noticed if he had.'

'What about Zeke and Allister?' Serena asked, surprising them. 'Sorry – I was listening in,' she explained when they both jumped. 'But really, could one of them have told their girlfriends?'

'They did,' Ze affirmed. 'But only after we knew Grace knew. I made them tell Ellie and Riya because I thought Grace would already have started spreading rumours. Same with talking to Clive – I only asked him about Claudia on Monday.'

'And you're sure neither this Ellie or Riya would have known before then?' Dorcas asked sceptically.

'I mean I guess it's possible,' Ze allowed. 'But the fact they demanded I help them go after Grace for threatening their boyfriends indicates they probably aren't keen on telling her secrets.'

'Demanded?' Lily repeated curiously.

Ze shrugged. 'It seems Hufflepuff loyalty extends to the formation of death squads.'

'Good to know,' Serena murmured.

'They're the ones who originally suggested revenge on Grace,' Ze admitted. 'They came to me because they thought I might have a plan. I didn't at that point,' she said in answer to Lily's raised brow.

'But you're going to invite them to join us,' was the redhead's deduction.

'Yeah, if that's okay,' Ze nodded. ''Cos if trying to find Grace's source of information is going to be this complicated, we'll need all the help we can get.'

'I'm telling you,' Serena broke in, 'it won't be just one person. Grace's whole reputation rests on the fact that she's the only one who knows everything – that's the only way she's stayed on top for so long.'

'You make it sound like a military dictatorship,' Ze muttered.

'We're girls,' Serena sneered. 'We're too civilised to stoop to physical combat.' Three heads turned her way, brows arching with the sort of synchronisation usually found in vaudeville tap-dance routines. Serena dug up a credible blush and said, 'Well, you know what I mean.'

Lily snorted, but said, 'So what are we looking for, Oh Wise One?'

'Someone she's pleased with,' was Serena's immediate reply. 'She's always nice to you when you've given her something good. Look for who she sits with at lunch, who she makes a point of talking with between classes – find the ones who look smug.'

'The list of who it could be won't be long,' Ze added, glancing around at her friends. 'It's got to be someone with access to Gryffindor tower, and someone who knows the quidditch team.'

'Not necessarily,' Dorcas pointed out. 'That might be true of whoever told her about the bet, but it could be anyone who saw us Tuesday night.'

'What, someone just happened to be looking out the window at half three in the morning?' Serena snorted.

'McGonagall was,' Dorcas replied, unfazed.

'She's right,' Lily agreed. 'Whoever saw us then could have been anywhere in the castle. Getting up to have a pee, to get a glass of water, to shag her boyfriend in some out-of-the-way corridor – there are a hundred reasons a girl would be out of bed and near a window.'

'That's assuming it was a girl,' was Ze's contribution.

'It will have been a girl,' Serena said darkly. 'Grace always says you can't trust anything a man tells you.'

'You can't trust anything Grace tells you,' Dorcas corrected in acid tones.

'Yeah,' Ze acknowledged, 'but if it had been a boy who saw us there'd be pictures circulating by now.'

Three heads cocked to the side. 'True,' they agreed. 'Sad, but true.'

'So what do we do once we've found this mystery source? Or sources,' Lily added when Serena's mouth snapped open. 'Threaten to feed them to the giant squid?'

Ze jerked slightly, having forgotten that she was supposed to be relaying the plan. Thankfully, this bit should at least be easier to explain. 'We're girls, remember?' she said lightly. 'We're too civilised to stoop to physical combat. And anyway, this will hurt much, much worse…'

*.*.*

When Madame Digweed swept aside the curtains surrounding the bed a half hour later, she nearly leapt out of her skin to discover that there were still four students sequestered inside. 'Merlin's hairy left –' cutting herself off just in time, she wheezed, 'elbow! What are you doing here?!'

Had she not been fighting off the onset of cardiac arrest, she might have noticed that all four pairs of eyes were suspiciously innocent. As it was, Madame Digweed barely blinked when Lily stood and, very politely, said, 'Sorry Miss – we all have a bit of a headache, so we cast a silencing charm on the curtains. We hadn't even noticed everyone else had left.'

'They've all gone back up to bed,' the nurse said, rather redundantly.

'Yes,' Lily said slowly, arching a brow at the empty room. 'So we see. We were just waiting for you to look in on Dorcas's arm – you said you would need to check before she left to be sure the Skele-grow had worked.'

'Oh,' Digweed murmured. 'Of course.' She didn't quite bustle, because women like Hedgepeth Digweed don't bustle, but she did manage to make enough of a fuss to suit even the most sensitive of patients. Dorcas, whose arm had been healed for the better part of two hours, delivered a brilliant performance as the Cringing Invalid, and was discharged into the capable hands of her friends for the long and frightful walk to Gryffindor Tower.

Madame Digweed slammed the doors directly on Ze's heel, and they all heard the snicking of the lock – a definite sign that unless you managed to bleed enough for it to run under the door and across the room to her office, the matron was closed for the night. They waited until they had turned the corner to be sure, but once they were out of sight Dorcas dropped her cradling hold on her arm and three pairs of eyes turned on to Serena.

'Did you get it?' Dorcas hissed. ''Cos I'm not letting her whack me with that hammer again.'

There was a faint clinking of glass and the glimmer of a vial was produced from inside a sleeve, echoing the higher glimmer of teeth in a self-satisfied smile. 'One dose of Somni Soli – guaranteed dreamless sleep.'

'Brilliant,' Ze murmured. 'Who knew larceny was this much fun?'

*.*.*

Lily had fully expected to return to a smoking ruin, and in certain ways Gryffindor tower didn't disappoint. The common room still looked like a war zone, but the fires were out and there were house elves moving efficiently through the wreckage as Professor McGonagall ordered students up the stairs to bed in an effort to keep them out of the way. When the four girls clambered through the portrait hole the deputy headmistress glanced up and exhaled a sharp little sigh.

'Thank heavens,' she said impatiently. 'You're the last ones in. We've been waiting for you Miss Evans,' she added, handing over a list of names which Ze assumed included the whole of Gryffindor house. 'Mr Potter is in charge of recovering lost property and now that you are here to see everyone to their beds I shall see to it that none of the rest of the school has caught fire.'

'We didn't smell any smoke on the way up.' The impertinent words had popped out of Ze's mouth before she could stop them, and the glare they earned her from McGonagall practically left blisters on her nose. 'Right, cheeky comments best kept to self,' Ze mumbled, edging back to allow McGonagall to conclude her conversation – or, rather, dictation – with Lily. Tapestry repair and pixie-rescue weren't terribly interesting subjects, however, and she found her eyes scanning the room. They quickly caught on a group of figures clustered at the base of the boys' stair, and Ze, catching Serena and Dorcas's eyes, cocked her head to indicate that she was walking in that direction. Through the fine haze of smoke in the air Ze could distinguish Peter's sandy locks and the glint of James's glasses; and where there were two Marauders, there must be four. Well, one hoped.

'You alright?' she spoke when she was just behind Peter, nodding to a frowning Remus over the shorter boy's head.

She had expected James to reply with something flippant, but then Peter turned, lower lip quivering dangerously as he said, 'Th-they've taken my socks,' in impossibly mournful tones.

Well of course they've taken them – the Wizengamut is probably drawing up charges of disturbance of the peace and crimes against humanity as we speak. Clearing her throat, Ze decided to go with, 'Ahh, Pete, that's awful.'

'Yeah,' he mumbled, wiping conspicuously at his eyes. 'Still, every battle has its casualties, right?'

'Er, right,' Ze managed, looking confusedly over his head at James and Remus. Both of them just grimaced hopefully back as if to say "anything you can do would be a help". 'Did they, um, did they at least let you say goodbye?'

'Yeah,' was the reply, issued with a jerky nod. 'Yeah, they did. Those socks were my favourite ones, you know?'

It wasn't a question, not really, and even if it had been Ze would have had no idea how to answer it. James and Remus were looking horribly out of their depth, and Ze found herself thinking wildly. 'Well, you know, I, ah, I really don't think the…socks,' she paused to swallow an hysterical giggle, 'would want you to, ah, mourn. You know. They would want you to be strong. Carry on. Chin up.' She punctuated these last thoughts with encouraging pats to the arm.

At last Peter looked up, blue eyes blood-shot and shimmering with unshed tears. 'You think so?' he whispered. If Ze opened her mouth she knew she wouldn't stop laughing for days, so she merely nodded as solemnly as she could. 'Right,' Peter said manfully, drawing himself up. 'Right,' he repeated. 'Chin up. I'm going to bed then,' he added. No one commented on the fact that he had to turn around twice to find the staircase behind him; they were all simply relieved to see him climbing said stairs, a broken man no more.

'Thanks for that,' Remus said with heartfelt gratitude. 'We were beginning to think we'd have to buy flowers.'

Ze waved this off in favour of, 'So they actually caught them then? The socks. Without anyone losing a limb?'

'It was Mrs Norris and Popsy,' James revealed. 'They got them cornered and Filch came in with a butterfly net.'

'A butterfly net?' Ze repeated, her past experience with the socks in question making her a trifle sceptical about this.

'Apparently a previous headmaster crossbred monarchs with manitcores,' Remus shrugged.

'Good thing goblin-forged steel never rusts – although the catapult was a wee bit rough around the gears,' James agreed. 'Worked in the end though. They've been taken to the Department of Mysteries,' he added, flashing an appropriately sinister face, 'or so I heard.'

'Which means he's making it up,' Remus said wryly. 'Although it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to investigate what the hell went wrong with those things.'

'Besides being on Pete's feet for most of last winter? Nothing at all.' James, noticing that Ze was glancing around, obviously looking for someone called Sirius, took pity on her and said, 'He's upstairs. His he- er, he decided he'd go on up so that Pete would have someone to talk to.'

'You were about to say his head's still bothering him,' Ze sighed. And then, feeling slightly embarrassed that she was so transparent where Sirius was concerned, she looked around and realised that, instead of following her, Dorcas and Serena had gone upstairs to bed and that the room was now empty of humans excepting themselves and Lily. 'Looks like everything's pretty much taken care of here,' she said with a shaky smile. And then, because her vocal chords really just seemed in the mood to torture, 'Probably I should go and join Sirius.' The moment her tongue formed the words, she was smacking herself in the head.

Remus swallowed a laugh into a thick, hacking cough.

'I mean, I should probably go to bed with him,' Ze blathered, now completely unable to stop the humiliation. 'Like him. Not his bed, of course - my bed and -' Well aware that her face and ears were practically on fire, she spat out, 'What I'm trying to say is that I should probably do the same. Go to bed, I mean. Like Sirius. So you can tell him that. Not that I'm going to bed – ah, that I'll just catch him up tomorrow.'

'Right,' James said in an odd, tight voice.

'We'll let him know,' Remus added, his mouth twitching madly.

Glowering between them, their amusement as obvious as their ears, Ze just pulled a sneer and said, 'Oh, piss off.' And, leaving her two friends to smirk knowingly after her, stomped off in the direction of her much-mentioned bed.

She had only got halfway across the room though before Lily intercepted her. The head girl simply clamped one wrist in an iron grip and held Ze prisoner as she turned to a house elf to request that the diminutive servant leave abandoned homework assignments for their owners to clean up. Once finished she turned a bright, sharp smile on Ze and said, 'Going somewhere?'

Ze swallowed reflexively. 'Uh – bed?' How had that become a question? Lily arched a brow. Ah – that was how. '…Not to bed?' Ze said, trying a second guess.

'Not until you've told me why Rob is leaving pixies as gifts for you,' Lily agreed politely, leading Ze over to a corner as far from the house elves as possible. Why, Ze thought, can't I make friends with people completely lacking in deductive reasoning skills? 'And don't try to say that it was just random chance it was you,' Lily continued when Ze opened her mouth. 'Sirius wouldn't have told you it was Rob who left them unless it had something to do specifically with you.'

'Look,' Ze said, glancing up the girls' stairs just in case anyone was listening, 'it's really complicated and Dorcas cannot find out, okay?' Lily gave a nod that was as ironclad as a promise and Ze sighed, resisting the urge to pinch away the headache between her brows. 'Rob thinks I'm Madame X.'

'What?' Lily hissed, her grasp around Ze's wrist tightening painfully. 'Sorry, sorry,' she apologised when Ze winced. 'But - what?'

'I know, it's bollocks,' Ze said miserably. 'But he's convinced – to quote his opinion on the subject "who else could it be?"' Shaking her head as her shoulders slumped, Ze added, 'Rob's not stupid, but he's not too keen on deep thinking either.'

'But –'

'But it would kill Dorcas to find out he's mistaken her for me. The thing is, her letters are actually working,' Ze explained earnestly. 'Well, not really – it's not like he's suddenly being nice or anything – but at least he's paying attention. And if I tell him I'm not Madame X then he'll probably decide she's in Ravenclaw or something…'

'Which means no more "gifts" for Dorcas,' Lily murmured, lips pursed in frustration. 'Why are boys so stupid?' There was a pause as this weighty and oft-parsed query floated up towards the ceiling. Just when Ze was expecting a heavenly answer, including punctuation-by-thunderbolt, Lily suddenly said, 'What if we wrote him a note? You know, to say thanks?'

It took a moment for this to sink in, but the further it sank the cleverer it felt. Lily sounded so jubilant Ze couldn't help but catch her enthusiasm. 'What – like "I really enjoyed your little present – glad to know we're evenly matched"? That kind of note?' she asked hopefully.

'Exactly,' Lily nodded, eyes bright. 'Dorcas has been using school owls to deliver the other letters, so we can send it the same way. We'll just have to copy the handwriting – she's using a charm to disguise hers anyway, so that won't be hard. There's no way he'll be able to prove you're the one who sent it, not since we were all upstairs when you "received" his gift.'

For the first time since the pixie cage had exploded Ze felt the knot in her stomach loosen. 'But he'll know someone in our room got the message, so he's aiming in the right direction,' she breathed. 'You, Lily Evans, are the best friend in the world.'

'I know,' Lily agreed. 'Which is why you're going to tell me why you've been avoiding Sirius since you tried to kill him this morning.'

'I didn't try to kill him!' was the immediate – and emphatic – response. When she saw Lily's lips twitch in a smile, Ze sighed and reigned in her temper. 'And I'm not avoiding him – he told me about Rob, remember?'

'Yes, but that was in the heat of battle,' Lily said dismissively. 'Everyone knows the heat of battle is for last confessions, death geases, and emergency marriage proposals. Since he isn't dead and you haven't got a ring, I'm assuming you two didn't cover anything important.'

Ze rolled her eyes, but couldn't help cracking a smile. 'Not by your standards, no. So we're having a chat tomorrow. When there's more time.' And no one can come charging in with a lint roller, she added to herself.

'Ahhhh,' Lily nodded. 'One of those chats.'

'Oh, I don't plan to talk to him for very long,' Ze replied, trying her best to smile mysteriously. She felt her mouth move, but was left with the nagging feeling that she looked a trifle constipated. Clearly, innuendo wasn't her long suit. Lily seemed to agree, because she was looking confused; Ze sighed yet again and clarified. 'Hopefully he won't argue when I say "I'm about to snog you", so the conversation bit should be over fairly quickly.' She didn't mention that she was hoping to leave a bit of free time after in case Sirius decided that running away screaming was an even better idea than arguing. If that happened, she was definitely going to need some time alone to figure out how to cast Obliviate on herself.

And if he didn't run away – or argue (well, too strenuously) – she was planning on finding out what he looked like naked. That is, if she didn't lose her bottle. Or get pecked to death by a revenge-seeking bluebird. Or – okay, probably she should just save herself time and cast the Obliviate now. Oh, wait, must tell Lily what to inscribe on the grave marker –

'Right, well, glad you got that worked out,' Lily was saying cheerfully, her tone completely at odds with the look in her eye as she stared across the common room. 'Now be a dear and go to bed so there aren't any witnesses when I decide to kill Potter.'

Hm – so not the time to mention the epitaph. Maybe she would just write it down and carry it in her pocket; also, a copy of her will. Memo: write will. Glancing across the room, Ze noted that Remus was toiling up the stairs towards his bed, and so she nodded, smiled at Lily, and faked a massive yawn. Which then turned into a real yawn, causing her to pant in a most undignified way once it was over, as she hadn't been prepared for that sort of oxygen deprivation. 'Ngh-night,' she coughed, and went racing up the stairs.

Below her, Lily earned full marks for a mysterious smile as she stared across the room at James Potter. So no sex for weeks, eh? Ooooh, but revenge was going to be sweet…

*.*.*

Sirius slept well.

Perhaps it was knowing that Peter's socks had been taken away in chains to be interrogated and subsequently unravelled. Maybe it was the fact that Grace was about to get a taste of her own medicine. Or it could be the memory of wide eyes and hastily licked lips, of the way Ze's breath had caught when she'd known he was about to kiss her. Not that he'd thought about it. Or dreamed about it. Or considered purchasing a pensieve just so he could keep the memory fresh and forever.

Unfortunately, James didn't seem to be faring so well. 'Evil,' he was mumbling, his eyes still shut in spite of the fact that he was well out of bed. 'Evil evil evil – '

Sirius reached over and snatched away the shirt James was presently attempting to don in lieu of his trousers. 'The socks are gone,' he said soothingly. 'McGonagall promised.'

James's eyes snapped open at the sound of Sirius's voice, but his gaze didn't focus. 'All that skin,' he whispered. 'Bends over and all that skin….So white and so evil, evil, evil…'

Sirius stared as James wandered off toward the toilet, wearing only his socks, shorts, and fully knotted tie. 'Does he have an audition for Eros's All-Wizard Revue, or am I just missing something?' Sirius asked a freshly-showered Remus.

Rather than a pithy comment or a bit of ageless wisdom, the only answer this received was a surly grunt. If James had approached dressing as a form of minimalist expression, Remus obviously considered it anger management therapy. The sandy haired boy was all but karate chopping his clothes as he jerked them on, somehow managing to connote furious frustration merely by doing up the buttons on his shirt. 'Right,' Sirius mumbled. 'So it's one of those days. Again.'

*.*.*

Ze had expected it to be one of those days. Again. And it was – but at least she wasn't in it alone. In Transfiguration Lily earned a reprimand for not paying attention…because she was shooting come-hither glances (there was really no other way to say it) at James Potter. James had got his reprimand for falling out of his seat just a few minutes later. His excuse, when asked, was that he had been trying to look up Lily's skirt. He'd be out of detention in roughly six months. In Potions, Remus was actually called down – a first in seven years! – for talking back to Slughorn when the professor commented on his work. Serena got a lapful of juice at lunch and Dorcas had to stay after in Charms to be cured of the Incurable Hiccoughs. Professor Flitwick had apologised for mispronouncing the spell during his demonstration, but it hadn't made drinking three litres of water upside down any easier.

Not that Ze really noticed any of this. She was too busy avoiding windows and writing death threats to the Brothers Grimm. It started in Transfiguration, when a puffy, fluffy, unreasonably cute chipmunk darted onto the ledge of the window just beside Ze's desk. She might not have noticed it if hadn't started knocking on the windowpane with one dainty paw. Staring in horror, Ze had looked out at that furry little face with its bright black eyes and thought I am going to kill myself. And after that, I'm never taking the seat by the windows again.

Thankfully, the chipmunk was a solo performer - those contortions had to be either extreme epilepsy or interpretive dance – but it wasn't precisely inconspicuous. Neither were the bunnies that followed her out of the greenhouses, or the squirrels that formed a can-can line outside the Divination window. Ze didn't think anyone had seen her bludgeon the screech owl with her juice goblet at lunch, and she was frankly too disturbed to care. Had she been sentient enough to notice, she would have been rejoicing over her friends' bad luck – mostly because it would mean they weren't paying any attention to hers.

Somehow Ze made it to quidditch training without being arrested by an animal rights group, and these days that was a fair showing. Courtesy of a few well-aimed curses on her way down to the pitch, the rabbits had departed to groom their singed tails and the squirrels were likely rethinking their position on French line dancing. By the time Ze had mounted her broom she was even beginning to feel that the "cross me and I'll hex you to buggery!" she'd shouted to any birds within a twelve mile radius might have been overkill. Quidditch, it seemed, was a sacred place, free of the trials and tribulations that plagued ordinary life.

Then Clive failed to grace them with his presence. Everyone looked to James for a proper team captain shit-fit, but James (who seemed to actually be wearing his training gear over top of his school uniform) had simply said, 'If he pulls this on Saturday, I'll feed his balls to a doxy nest,' and got on with things. At that moment Ze had been fifty feet in the air, and from that vantage point had had a very nice view indeed of the ring of small furry animals closing in on the quidditch pitch. Staring at the ranks of bunnies and chipmunks and fawns (were deer even breeding at this time of year? didn't that defy the Laws of Nature or something?) picking their merry way through the vertiginous verge of the not-so-aptly-named Black Forest, she thought, I could probably make it look like an accident. A Wronksi Feint gone really Wronski.

This thought was more or less the last stand of sanity before the red haze of frustrated rage set in. Taking her aggressions out on the game, she flew with the sort of frenzy even a shark in a bathing pool might envy. Within minutes, the rest of the squad were just doing their best to keep out of her way. Rob, bless him, thought she was flirting – at least, right up until she broom-tackled him into a goal hoop. He was slightly worried by the level of physical violence for about half a minute, and then he recalled that girls always found ways to touch the guy they fancied. He just wished Ze hadn't been quite so affectionate: it was going to be murder getting Madame Digweed to put those teeth back in.

James, who was too busy attempting to untangle his school robes from his broom bristles, missed most of the fray, and so practise ended when Ze divebombed a small white rabbit hopping innocently across the pitch, missed by a hair, and tumbled off her broom and onto the ground. She was up and on her feet before any of the others could land, and they wisely allowed her to stalk off (muttering murderously under her breath) towards her shower without interfering. When James – his alertness somewhat restored by a quaffle blow directly between the eyes – emerged from the changing rooms after his shower, it was to find Sirius staring perplexedly into the distance. Slightly confused by both his friend's befuddled expression and physical presence, he meandered over, saying, 'What're you still doing here – I would have thought you'd be off with Ze by now.'

Sirius slowly shook his head, still absorbed in a sight further along the footpath leading to the castle. 'Not just yet,' he mumbled cryptically.

James, ever the quickest of fishes, said, 'Well someone's got to calm her down before she gets her hands on a battle axe, and you know none of the rest of us can do it.'

This time Sirius's head moved slowly in a nod. 'Yeah,' he said musingly. 'Thought I'd give her a bit of space first…'

Finally James could take it no longer: praying he wasn't about to get an eyeful of Rob pissing into the underbrush, he turned to follow the direction of Sirius's gaze. The sight that greeted him had his feet reflexively taking a step back even as his head moved forward to give his eyes a closer look. Some way ahead on the path Ze was stomping her way back toward the castle, her steps dogged by…animals. More specifically, James's confuddled brain finally managed, by a crowd of assorted woodland creatures. The small white rabbit was back, along with what looked like an entire warren of cousins, and there was a skipping, jumping horde of squirrels; a small flock of birds twittered and swooped around the ears of a gangly-legged fawn while a pair of fox cubs darted playfully round a badger and – sweet Circe – was that a yeti?

Every few steps Ze would whirl round and wave her arms manically as she shouted at the menagerie following her along. James and Sirius were stood too far back to catch anything except echoes, but the words "fuck" and "off" seemed to recur with alarming frequency. As James watched the fox cubs – in a daring if idiotic manoeuvre – scampered forward and mischievously wove their way through Ze's legs as she walked. This proved to be too much. Throwing her bag to the ground, Ze swept out her wand and attempted to decapitate the nearest furry bundle of joy. Predictably, the foxes gambolled out of the way, thinking this was some new game. Ze, roaring unintelligibly, discarded her wand and snatched up a handful of rocks, hurling them with almost as much violent vim as the curses spewing out of her mouth.

But there weren't enough pebbles in all of Scotland to satisfy her rage, and the farce soon escalated: Ze, having laid hands on a sturdy yew branch, was swinging away like a demented cricket player batting in hell, aiming for everything from birds to Bambi as she chased the foxes and a limbo line of rabbits in an endless circle, kicking wildly at anything on four legs as she went. 'I'll kill you all, you bloody rodents!' she was shouting at the top of her voice. 'I'll tear you limb from limb!'

From the relative safety of a hillside away, James nodded slowly. 'Yeah – space might be nice…'

*.*.*

When she reached the abandoned Alchemy classroom on the sixteenth floor of the North-North-Southwest tower, Ze was the picture of calm (that is, if Calm happened to pant breathlessly as though it had just climbed a marathon's worth of stairs). It was cathartic, really, to let all the anger out. Almost Zen. Well, it probably wasn't Zen to run screaming after defenceless bunny rabbits, but it had still felt right. If the way that yeti had gone pounding into the trees was any indication, she wouldn't be facing any more torture from the Friends of the Forest. And if she did, she could always borrow the Staff for Warding Off Unexpected Wildlife from Dorcas in a pinch.

Smiling the smile of the recently avenged, Ze pushed the door to the classroom open and found herself enveloped in a cloud of dust. Over the sound of her own violent coughing she could just manage to hear Lily's voice say, 'It isn't even clever.'

'Clever?' Ze croaked, feeling her way blindly away from the doorframe as she tried valiantly not to inhale.

'Someone's charmed the door so that whoever opens it gets an entire face full of dust,' Serena explained, coming forward to press a damp flannel into Ze's grasping hand.

'Security measure,' Lily said wisely. 'Alchemy's fiddly stuff, so anything that would discourage people from coming through the door must've seemed like a good idea.'

'Yeah, but what about the alchemists?' Ze hacked daintily, waving a hand to indicate the hanging haze. 'How could anyone see through all this to work?'

'That would definitely explain why they were always blowing themselves up,' Lily murmured.

Serena brushed at the shoulders of her robes and glanced at Ze. 'You're sure you gave them proper directions?'

Swiping the last of the dust from her face, Ze had a moment of confusion, thinking Serena was referring to the long-exploded alchemists. 'Oh,' she shook herself, realisation dawning. 'Yeah – I gave them the same directions Lily gave me. They ought to be here any –'

Creak…poooof. 'Ughghg – bollocks!'

'What the –'

Once the dust was disposed of, Ze pretended the moment wasn't terribly awkward and made introductions. 'Lily, Serena, this is Riya and Ellie – they're Zeke and Allister's girlfriends…'

There was quite a lot of lip-pursing and sizing-up as the four girls circled one another like prize fighters for a good ten seconds. Pleasantries taken care of, Riya and Ellie folded their arms in unison and set their ear-rings swinging as they tilted their heads. 'So what's this about?'

'The note said you had a proposition to make – '

'And we assumed what you meant was what we talked about before –'

'But we thought we were meant to come up with the plan,' Riya finished.

Lily looked ready to make arrests over the grievous assault of proper syntax, and Serena's eyes were still darting back and forth in tennis match mode. So it isn't just me, Ze thought, relieved, and proceeded to reply. 'I have got a proposition, and it is about what we talked about before, and I've managed to come up with a plan so I thought I might see if you were interested.'

Heavily-lined eyes exchanged a glance. 'And the head girl just happens to want to help out of the badness of her heart?' Ellie asked sceptically.

'Look, just because I'm supposed to stop other people getting into trouble doesn't mean I don't get into it myself,' Lily said bluntly. 'We're all here because we loathe and despise Grace Harper – and since my taking house points from her won't solve the problem, we've had to come up with something else.'

'Yeah?' Riya said, looking only marginally mollified by this. 'What's your plan then?'

Realising that they were only going to have one chance to convince the two Hufflepuffs (since when was suspicion one of their house traits?) to join ranks, Ze put it as simply as possible. 'We're going to systematically destroy Grace from the inside out.'

'With what, a dung bomb pie?'

Serena grinned. 'Close, but not quite. We're going to find out every last one of her naughty little secrets and torture her with them until she's a great weepy blob of acute paranoia.'

At the mention of the word "torture" two sets of ears perked up. 'That's not bad,' Riya said slowly, her voice warming. 'Publicly humiliate the conniving slag – '

'Just like she's done to everyone else,' Ellie finished off.

Lily, Ze and Serena exchanged a glance. 'Not so much public humiliation –' Lily began, only to be interrupted by the door creaking open.

'Mind the –' three voices chorused, only to stop mid-warning as Dorcas stepped into the room without so much as a puff of dust raining down.

'That just isn't fair,' Serena mumbled.

'What's she doing here?'

It wasn't so much hostility as confusion that coloured the tone, but Ze still felt the need to make amends – particularly as the two Hufflepuffs were looking ready to whip out their wands at the next sign of ambush. 'This is Dorcas Andrews. Dorcas, Riya and Ellie – Zeke and Allister's –'

'Girlfriends,' Dorcas nodded. 'Pleasure,' she added with a stiff nod, purple bow bobbing.

'Dorcas isn't keen on Grace either,' Serena explained. 'Actually, we can't think of anyone who is – which is why there are six of us going in together on this. Well, we hope there'll be six of us – if the two of you agree, that is.'

Riya and Ellie exchanged another glance. 'You want to know if you can trust us?'

'Before you tell us anything else?'

'Basically yeah,' Ze said honestly. 'If you'd rather not get involved that's fine, no harm done.'

'But we could definitely use the help,' Lily added, leaning back against an abandoned desk. 'Our plan isn't exactly simple or easy, and we're going to need eyes and ears everywhere if it's going to work.'

'Speaking of which,' Serena said, turning to Dorcas, 'any news?'

'In the Restricted Section with Sophie Andros's boyfriend,' Dorcas nodded, holding up a chunky black apparatus Ze recognised as Serena's Polaroid camera (for "honest ensemble opinions and other fashion quandaries"). 'Evidence gathered.'

'You can see their faces?' Lily asked immediately.

'His,' Dorcas confirmed. 'And you can't miss her hair.'

'Wait, are you photographing Grace snogging someone else's bloke?' There was clear admiration in Ellie's eyes now, all hint of derision gone as the younger girl eyed Dorcas. When the be-bowed Gryffindor just nodded regally, she said, 'That's brilliant.'

'All part of the plan,' Lily said slyly, winking at Ze, who could practically hear the redhead thinking, cast and caught.

'So what precisely is the plan?' Riya enquired.

'Obviously, we're in,' Ellie nodded.

'Ze?' Serena prompted when no one immediately began to explain.

'Right,' Ze said, faintly nervous at having to be the one to do the talking. 'Well, as Serena's just said, we need to know as much about Grace as possible – everything from her Potions mark to how many people's boyfriends she's taken. The problem is, while Grace seems to know everything about everyone, no one seems to actually know anything about Grace.'

Another Hufflepuff Shuffle look. 'Minions,' Ellie and Riya said together in tones of deepest contempt.

'You know about them?' Serena asked, surprised.

'S'not hard to work out, is it?' Riya snorted.

'Bitchiest girl at school, but she's never caught doing the dirty work?' Ellie shook her head. 'Pathetic.'

'Pathetic or not, it works,' Ze said flatly. 'And we're going to have to do something about that if we want to bring her down.'

'Who cares about the Shazzas?' Ellie said impatiently. 'They're going to gossip not matter what you do.'

'Yes, but we can't have them gossiping to Grace, can we?' Serena pointed out. 'Our having information on Grace will only be effective if she hasn't got anything to fire back with.'

'Ergo, the loyalties of her minions must be changed,' Dorcas nodded, settling the camera onto a desk and crossing her arms to mirror Riya and Ellie's poses. 'None of them actually like Grace, they just flock to her because she's the oldest and the sneakiest. It's a "girl thing."'

'Our plan is a two-prong offensive measure,' Lily said, taking up the thread. 'The first tine on the fork, if you will, is dismantling Grace's information network. We've done a bit of thinking and come up with a list of names – mostly just the people she thinks of as "friends".'

'None of whom,' Serena broke in, 'can stand the sight of one another. It's one of Grace's oldest tricks, playing them off of one another –'

'Because as long as they're fighting amongst themselves,' Dorcas murmured, 'they're too busy to be going after her.'

'If they could call a ceasefire long enough to see that it's Grace who's sowing the seeds of enmity, they'd be the perfect allies,' Ze explained, noticing that is was now Riya and Ellie who were having trouble working out who was saying what. 'The second list – the one we're in the process of making – is of all the people, the proverbial small fish, who give Grace her information. We know at least one of them is a Gryffindor because how else would she have found out about the bet, right?'

'We've been thinking about that,' Riya nodded, dark eyes narrowed.

There was a pause. Serena finally prodded with, 'And?'

Ellie gave her a look as if to say, 'isn't there medication you can take for that?' 'And we haven't come up with anything.'

'Well, we haven't either,' Ze hastened to say, before a Situation could develop. 'And that's what we'd like your help with. You've got house connections with any Hufflepuffs who might be passing things along, and you also know the younger students a bit better than we do.'

'I don't know if either of you are friendly with Bridgette Carey,' Lily added, 'but she's one of the names on that first list – the one of Grace's friends.'

There was a joint shrug from the Hufflepuff contingent. 'Fifth year,' Riya said with a shrug.

'Cow,' was Ellie's contribution.

'So that's a no. Right, well, we haven't quite decided – ' read: figured out, Ze thought wryly, 'how to get Bridgette and the rest to keep their mouths shut, but Serena's working on it.' The look Riya and Ellie shot the brunette Gryffindor didn't have much in the way of confidence; Serena shoved her nose into the air and pretended not to care. 'We're asking you to do two things. The first is to keep your eyes and ears open – in class, in the corridors, in the toilet. We need to know where Grace's information comes from, who she talks to, when she talks to them, and where. We're going to sort out the Gryffindor feeding her information, but she's got more than one source and we want to know them all. The second thing is to keep an eye on Bridgette and anyone else in your house you think might be a problem. If you can talk with them without it looking weird, do it – you don't have to become their new best friend or anything, but casual acquaintances won't hurt.'

'We're hoping to start a shift in power,' Lily explained, using the phrase Serena had coined to aptly the night before in hospital. 'If you can get to the point where you can casually drop hints to your new friends, we'll be able to start a coup without firing a single shot.' No, thought Ze, no guns needed – not when we're belly crawling through the grass, slitting throats and hamstringing people in the silence of the night…. 'There's always going to be a hierarchy of popularity,' Lily was saying. 'We can't do anything about that – but we can take Grace out of it.'

'As soon as people like Bridgette Carey and Ffiona Fforde smell a change in the wind, they'll be clawing to come out on top,' Serena added. 'And if we offer to dispose of Grace for them, they're not going to ask any questions about how it happens.'

'So we just watch and chat people up,' Riya summarised sceptically.

'For now,' Ze nodded, expecting the younger girl to tell her to get stuffed, they'd come up with their own plan.

But all she got was a snappy nod and a 'Done,' said so vehemently she half expected Ellie to spit into her palm and hold it out for a shake.

'So what's the second prong on this fork?' Riya asked.

'Tine,' came Dorcas's voice. 'Forks have tines.'

'Whatever,' Ellie said sneeringly. 'What is it?'

'The second prong – tine,' Lily corrected herself, 'is the part where we go after Grace herself. We're going to gather as much information as possible – there's no way she can be so horrible without there being proof of it somewhere.'

'So what are you going to do, go through her knicker drawer looking for incriminating evidence?' was the facetious snigger.

'Well,' Serena said sheepishly, 'yeah.'

There was a long pause. Finally: 'You're joking.' When no one spoke up, Ellie swept a disbelieving gaze over them. 'You're really going to go through her stuff?'

'It isn't precisely honest,' Ze admitted, 'but then we're holding a secret meeting in an abandoned, booby-trapped classroom miles from anyone who might want to listen in – honest doesn't really apply.'

'But what do you honestly think you're going to find?' was Riya's question. 'A signed and dated confession, Dear World, I did it all?'

Lily and Serena exchanged a glance. 'Apparently Grace keeps trophies,' the redhead explained, and Ze's thoughts instantly flew to Sirius's t-shirt. 'Like a stamp collector.'

'Or a serial killer,' Serena muttered.

'The point is, there should be something - letters, keepsakes, anything really – that will give us a starting point,' Lily continued. 'We're going to talk to people as well – I'm going to see if any of the prefects has noticed Grace doing anything suspicious, and Ze's going to interrogate her ex-boyfriend.'

When Riya and Ellie turned surprised glances her way, Ze shrugged and did her best not to blush. 'Grace used to date Sirius Black – he might remember her doing or saying something we'd find useful.'

'We're fairly certain the majority of our information will eventually come from Grace's so-called friends,' Serena admitted. 'But they won't turn on her unless they can be sure she won't be coming back, so we're going to have to have something really fab – something convincing. Once we've got it, we'll be able to approach them and – hopefully – cut Grace off from her own army.'

'Just in case we don't find anything though, Dorcas is covering current events,' Lily concluded, nodding to Dorcas and her camera. 'The only thing we've got on film so far is Grace the Slag with a cheating boyfriend, but that's bound to be just the tip of the iceberg.'

Riya and Ellie were nodding slowly, their eyes full of begrudging respect. 'And I thought Slytherins were nasty.'

'Crossing someone without morals or a conscience is dangerous,' Dorcas said lightly. 'Crossing someone with loyalties to protect is just bloody stupid.'

The Gryffindors were used to Dorcas's little pearls of wisdom, but Ellie and Riya swallowed nervously in unison. Taking pity on them, Ze changed the subject. 'People will be less nervous talking with you if they don't think of you as being friends with us – it's sort of obvious we don't rate Grace, so keep your distance from us in public.'

'Right – the friend of my boyfriend is my enemy,' Riya nodded. Ze felt as though one of life's larger mysteries had just been explained – at least, for girls who were frequently friends with boys.

'That about covers it, I think,' Lily nodded. 'I've got to go meet Elena Jameson for patrols.' Serena grinned: Lily had spent most of the morning restructuring the patrolling timetables so that she would be paired with anyone who might know something unsavoury about Grace. 'I'll meet you back in the dormitory, yeah?'

Ze nodded. 'I'm going to have a chat to the guys about not telling them what's going on and then we're having a nice cup of tea before we go to bed.'

Serena and Dorcas both grinned wolfishly at this, and Ellie said, 'Tea?'

'With a bit of sleeping potion in it, if you're Grace,' Dorcas replied. 'We've all agreed she deserves a nice night's sleep.'

'Especially since we'll be mucking through her things,' Serena agreed cheerfully. 'I wanted to Stun her,' she confessed with a toss of her hair. 'But Lily said nothing that would leave visible marks.'

*.*.*.*.*

Riya and Ellie, newly disabused of their notions of Gryffindor kindness, had practically fled the classroom. Ze, who had requested that they not discuss the plan with Zeke or Allister, was relatively confident that the two girls would prove quite useful – if Dorcas and Serena didn't scare them off with poisoned tea and military metaphors. She was presently walking back towards the Gryffindor common room with Serena, Lily having departed for her patrol duty and Dorcas having returned to the library to complete her "research". No one had ever got up the courage to ask her just what she was researching – they only knew that it didn't involve schoolwork. Ze had a sneaking suspicion Dorcas was hatching schemes to take over the world via subliminal messages and potion-infused sweets, but had decided the best way to stay on the future dictator's good side was to not ask any questions until she was invited to.

In the meantime, she had bigger things to think about – like how she was going to start up a conversation about Grace with Sirius. Predictably, the only ideas she could come up with were complete rubbish: what was she supposed to say, "I'd really like to get your clothes off and lick chocolate off your stomach…but could we talk about your ex-girlfriend first?" Yeah, brilliant – exactly the sort of thing that would get her a one-way ticket to spinsterhood and a houseful of cats. Although, given the way birds and bunnies and bloody squirrels had taken to following her around, the cats might not be a bad idea…

'Ohmygod.'

The words were spoken so quietly Ze wouldn't have heard them if she hadn't been colliding with Serena's back as they were being formed. Without paying any attention at all, she had followed Serena through the portrait hole and into the common room, and would probably have followed her straight up the stairs to the dormitory if Serena hadn't decided to imitate a devoutly religious wall with no warning. 'What?' she asked, only it came out more like "whghghg", and she had to spit out a mouthful of glossy mahogany locks to repeat the question. Her only answer was a faint, desperate moan. Suddenly afraid that Serena might be having some sort of fit brought on by an excess of nerves, fears and hair products, she stepped around her friend to see what the matter was.

But before she could get a good look at Serena, she was distracted by one Very Important Thing: Remus Lupin was gorgeous.

Not boyishly good-looking or bookishly cute, but gorgeous – the kind of fit that leans against the bar with a packet of fags rolled in its sleeve, sneering as if to say "Yeah, that's my motorbike – what about it?"

'Oh,' she said, because now that she was standing even with Serena he was directly in her line of sight and she couldn't have looked away if she'd had one of Pete's socks bearing down on her. 'Oh.'

With sleeves rolled back and tie dragged loose, his jaw shadowed by stubble a subtle shade darker than his hair, Remus was sat on the settee in a pheromone-soaked sprawl, posture belying the tension crackling off his skin. In the firelight his features took on a slightly dangerous cast, the flickering light deepening the hollows of his face and darkening his heavily mussed hair. He looked just naughty enough to be nice, the kind of boy who only needs a bit of love and a lot of loving to save. Every female eye in the room was locked on him, girls surreptitiously licking their lips as though he were something delicious topped with whipped cream. And that fantasy would only require a trip to the kitchens.

Even as she berated herself for thinking that about Remus, Ze was turning to Serena to murmur, 'Who knew all that was hiding under –'

But she broke off when she got a good look at her friend's face, her voice dying off as she watched Serena…transform. There really wasn't any other way to put it: it happened right in front of her eyes, the change skimming down Serena's body until you couldn't imagine her looking any other way. Her hair was wilder and her lips were fuller and her eyes seemed to glitter with a lazy promise that radiated heat. Her posture shifted, and somehow she was suddenly sprawled languidly across a bed despite the fact she was standing straight up on two feet. Her head flicked and a wave of hair cascaded over her shoulders, a sleek, feline smile playing across her mouth.

'Serena?' Ze asked hesitantly, wondering if she should issue a warning about copulatory gazes in front of first years.

But she knew it was hopeless the moment Serena stepped forward and said, 'I think I feel a sin coming on.'

*.*.*

Remus Lupin was on the brink of exploding. He'd always given himself top marks in Self Denial, but lately he was wondering if all that practise had even made a difference. He had no idea how Sirius and James were managing to behave so normally. Well, actually, he did have an idea: they weren't werewolves. It was the bloody full moon. For Remus the problem was always the bloody full moon – and this time it was unbearable because he could smell everything. And there were loads of girls in everything – delicious and enticing and they got right up his nose - literally and figuratively.

Just being in the common room was torture, but he didn't trust himself to be alone. If he was alone he would do something he would regret, and he'd swallow silver bullets for England before he lost the bet without the pleasure of female company. Which meant he would be spending every waking moment enjoying the safety of numbers. Just not female numbers. Female numbers were dangerous and evil and out for –

Knees.

Knees, just there, close enough for him to reach out and touch, if he could manage to convince his beleaguered brain to outstretch a hand. Smooth, delicate, feminine knees, pale above the socks that stretched up over the calves. Lovely knees, just there in the middle of lovely legs, which bled into lovely hips and a lovely waist and really lovely –

'Hello Remus.'

His eyes, clouded and dazed, pupils blooming out to nearly obliterate the blue, travelled desperately toward the source of that voice. It was not a good face. It was a gorgeous, sultry, come-hither face atop a gorgeous, sultry, come-hither body and all Remus could say was, 'Nggghghh.'

She didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to think this was a perfectly acceptable line, because that dangerous smile curled tighter and suddenly Remus had no trouble forming the word fuck in his head. He probably should have taken the time to bemoan the fact that his longest-standing dream had wormed its way into his current nightmare, but he didn't have a chance. A hand, slender and graceful and sinfully alluring, appeared before his face, beckoning him on without moving at all. He knew he was an idiot and he knew he would regret it and he knew that if he had any sort of honour at all he would keep staring at those knees until she melted back into his fantasies. But her knees were just as gorgeous as the rest of her and that was really the crux of the problem. He heaved a shuddering sigh of relief as he reached out to take her hand.

*.

From her vantage point by the entryway, Ze watched Serena, smiling secretly over her shoulder, lead a dazed and hungry-looking Remus up the stairs toward the boys' dormitories and realised two things: the first, that she should just stuff this plan business and do the same thing to Sirius. And the second, that the boy Serena fancied did, in fact, know she existed.

'Are they doing a bit of revision, or did she just invite him to play mediwizard?'

The sound of Sirius's voice startled her, and she turned to face him, a cheeky comment on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed it down, though, because she didn't really want to invite James and Peter to play mediwizards as well. The three boys had migrated in her direction as the entire common room watched Serena and Remus disappear, eyes wide and mouths gaping. The moment the door to the boys' seventh could be heard closing a wave of chatter rolled across the room; Serena, it seemed, had just confirmed her reputation in one go. 'Just putting him out of his misery – she's a very charitable girl, Serena,' Ze murmured.

'Out of his –' James began, aghast. 'You mean she knows about the –'

'Bet?' Ze finished, voice low and eyebrow high.

'You told her?' Peter gaped. 'You told?'

'It was the only way to explain what was going on between me and Grace,' Ze replied patiently.

'What's going on between you and Grace?' James asked blankly.

Ze turned to Sirius. 'You didn't mention that I might be seeking swift and terrifying revenge?'

'You weren't too clear on it when you told me,' Sirius shrugged. 'Didn't think it was something you wanted me to mention to anyone else.'

Ze considered this for a moment, and then eyed James and Peter. 'Well, I was coming to find you,' she finally said to Sirius. 'And I was going to have you tell them anyway, so –'

'Tell us what?'

Sighing, Ze glanced around and then tilted her head in the direction of the hidden alcove she and Sirius had sheltered in the night before. 'Come on then.' Leading the way, she ducked through the break in the tapestries and was relieved to find the tight space empty. 'Bit of a squeeze,' she said apologetically as the three boys crushed themselves in after her.

'Tell us what?' James repeated.

'Tell you that there's going to be a bit of tension with us seventh year girls. Well, there's going to be tension between Grace and the rest of us seventh year girls,' she amended. 'So you shouldn't worry if you hear screaming.'

'What, are you going to start a prank war?' Peter asked, aiming for curious and hitting somewhere around pantswettingly scared.

'Not quite,' Ze hedged.

'Well what's your plan then?' Sirius asked, confused at the deliberately vague answer.

'That I am not going to tell you,' was the cryptic reply.

'What?'

'Why not?' Sirius demanded, right on the heels of James's outburst.

'Because if anyone asks you what's going on, you'll be able to honestly say you don't know,' Ze said firmly. 'And if things get out of hand Veritaserum could be involved, so don't I'm just putting you off – the fewer people who know the details, the better.'

The three boys exchanged a look, mouths open to disagree. And then James said, 'Er, when you say tension between "you girls" and Grace, is Lily perchance involved?'

'We all are,' Ze said succinctly. 'And that's all I'm saying.'

'That's all you need to say,' James mumbled.

'Look, how can we help you if we don't know –' Sirius began.

'You aren't going to help us,' Ze interrupted, but her voice was gentle. 'This is a girl thing, Sirius – let us settle it, right?'

There was a tense moment as they watched one another, but Sirius subsided – still looking rather unhappy about it all. 'Are we supposed to keep this a secret?' Peter asked to break the tension. 'Because I think the rest ought to know as well.'

Ze shrugged. 'I'd prefer you not mention it to Rob or Allister or Zeke if you can help it. Serena will probably fill Remus in.'

'Yeah, after he's filled her in,' James sniggered with uncouth glee. Everyone else froze. Taking in their expressions – ranging from petrified-in-shock to I've-just-vomited-in-my-mouth – he grimaced. 'Too soon?'

'Never would have been too soon, Prongs,' Sirius said in tones of deepest revulsion.

'Sorry,' James said contritely, doing his best to look like the last sort of person to make jokes in questionable taste. Pasting on his Sincere Face, he looked back to Ze. 'So you just wanted to tell us that you weren't going to tell us anything?'

'No,' Ze immediately replied, shaking her head in turn. 'Sorry. Got distracted. Anyway – what I wanted to say is that in…working out our strategies, we've realised that Grace seems to know a lot of things she really shouldn't. Like the fact she knew about the bet. Which means someone we know – someone in Gryffindor – is passing her information.'

'Passing her information?' James snorted. 'You make it sound like a spy network.'

'That's basically what it is,' Sirius muttered, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.

Peter gulped and looked back and forth between Ze and James. 'How can you be sure? Couldn't she have just overheard us talking or something?'

Ze shook her head. 'Grace doesn't listen in on conversations – she's much too busy and important. And she's got people to do it for her. What we're going to do is figure out who those people are…'

*.*.*

Remus had always known his conscience was going to be the death of him, but today was really taking the biscuit. He could smell her and taste her and - and –

But it was wrong. So completely wrong. She didn't know what she was getting into, and she couldn't know, and this was always going to be a mess but he'd rather imagined it would be a mess with someone he didn't really care about. And now all he could think about was that he knew what her favourite colour was and he'd read her favourite book and he was about to take her clothes off – well, the rest of them off – and he'd never offered to tell her the same things about himself. And he never would. Because one confidence invited another, and it had to stop somewhere.

Preferably, the acidic little voice he hated so much said, before you get her out of her knickers.

He had to stop this. He always had to stop this. If his conscience had its way, he'd never get more than halfway through making a cup of tea because he always had to bloody stop. Before it was too late. Before someone found out. Before he and Serena… Well, the point was, he wasn't supposed to be here.

Somehow he managed to pull away, although it wasn't really away, it was just further back against the bed, and he knew that wasn't where he was supposed to be either. 'Serena,' he panted desperately, catching her shoulder to hold her back. 'Serena, I really think this is a bad idea.'

She was pushed up half on one elbow, her skin already sheening with sweat, her breathing as erratic as his own. 'I think it's a bad idea too,' she said, and he felt her thumb tugging against the flesh of his lower lip as it skimmed down his jaw. 'But at least we aren't acting without thinking.'

Aside from being tragically trite, this argument in no way involved logic. But one didn't need logic, Remus discovered, when one could merely smother one's opponent with one's hair. One's long, gorgeous, silky – and that was his hands in, and if his hands were there his mouth might as well be and really, if she was going to do that he ought to return the favour… And then she was pressing as far into the bed as he was and he realised that if the universe got any more serious about telling him not to stop, Serena was going to tear his clothes off with her teeth. So when he felt her incisors close around his collar he rolled them over and admitted to himself that he'd been wanting this for years, and that if he could learn to ride a bicycle he could bloody well learn to do this, too.

A half hour later, breathless and ebullient, Serena beamed at the ceiling and said, 'So that's what all the fuss is about.'

*.*.*

Below in the common room's Top Secret Alcove, Sirius was feeling heartily glad that Hogwarts was built of stern – and thick - stuff. Not that he begrudged Remus the right to shout obscenities or break bed-frames or anything else that might happen in the heat of the moment – he was just eternally thankful he didn't have to hear it. Doubly thankful, because he was standing next to Ze and he was fairly certain now was not the time to be getting ideas. Mostly because she was talking. Very seriously. He could tell because she was tapping her index finger against her thumb and she had that little line between her brows she always got when she was being serious.

Unfortunately, he hadn't really been listening for that last bit.

So when she said, 'All we need you to do is watch – we'll take care of the rest,' Sirius had no idea what he was supposed to be watching.

'So you just want us to keep an eye on who talks to Grace?' Oh bless you Prongs, bless you and your uberperceptive Best Mate Arse-Saving Sense…

'Yeah,' Ze said slowly, and for a moment she sounded so suspicious Sirius was sure she'd caught on to the fact that he hadn't been paying attention. 'Look, anything will be helpful, even inconsequential stuff. Grace manipulates people into telling her things, usually just little bits of information she can connect to other little bits of information. And lately someone's been telling her little bits of information about us.'

Peter flinched slightly at the dark edge to her tone. 'Are you sure –'

'How else do you explain it?' was the impatient reply. 'But don't worry, we'll figure out who it is,' she added, and the malice in her tone was positively anticipatory.

'If it's someone we know then they must not realise they're doing it,' James said reasonably. 'I mean, you said yourself that Grace is manipulative – you even agreed that she might have managed to get something out of Clive without him realising. So it isn't necessarily a betrayal –'

'I'm not saying it is,' Ze replied, her words all the more compelling because they were spoken quietly. 'It's entirely possible that no one actually told Grace about the bet. She's not stupid, she might have just deduced the facts based on the visible evidence – and Merlin knows you lot have provided plenty of that.' James and Sirius had the grace to look ashamed; Peter just nodded rapidly, seeming ready to agree to anything Ze said just to get this over with. 'But if someone did tell her James,' Ze continued, just as quiet and twice as serious, 'if someone did accidentally let something slip, they still know it was their mistake. They would've known the moment I came running up here to tell you Grace knew, and they haven't said a word about it. No, that isn't betrayal, but if you can't be honest with your friends then who can you –'

Peter let out a hacking cough. Ze immediately broke off and James reached over to thump Peter between the shoulder blades. 'You alright Pete?' he asked. 'Only you're turning a bit blue…'

Peter was indeed looking slightly cerulean, but he didn't appear to be choking – rather, he appeared to be in throes of what was either a massive asthma attack, or good old -fashioned hyperventilation. 'Iiiighg,' he gasped. 'Iiiigggh –'

'What was –' Sirius began, only to break off and change tactics. 'Just take a deep breath Pete, just let a bit of air in. There we are – see – just keep going or we'll have to get Digweed to do the kiss of life –'

Predictably, this didn't cheer Peter up much. Or maybe he was just unhappy to begin with – it would certainly makes sense considering the first thing he said when he got his breath back was: 'It was me. I-I told Grace. R-r-right after I shagged her.'

A/N –

so it was 6 days instead of 3 - the Euro Cup is on, and these things can't be ignored :) and hopefully chapter events will compensate for the delay...

to those of you already wondering will Remus be consumed with guilt? - of course Remus will be consumed with guilt. if there were an eighth deadly sin it would be listed as Remus J Lupin (Guilt). this just gives me an excuse to explore the ulterior motives for ulterior motives, as well as to wax poetic on behalf of Remus Lupin, Tragic Hero (since i have no Severus Snape or Draco Malfoy, i must work these themes of angst and inner-conflict out through someone...) also, who doesn't want Serena to have a bit of Remus? after all i've put her through, she deserves some fun ;)

and Peter. oh Peter. several of you predicted that final moment, so may i just say well done for reading the hints that've been dropped in the last few chapters. and of course there's still Rob, Clive, and a sleeping potion to sort out... chapter 37, anyone?

as always, thanks for reading and reviewing - it is much appreciated!