We left Hagrid about two hours before dinner and slowly made our way up to the school. I was concerned over what Mrs O'Leary would have done while we were away. She had started to leave the school via shadow travel and was now taking herself out for walks. This tendency annoyed me to no end as it meant I often could not find her when I needed her, or just wanted to check up on her.
"It was good to see Hagrid cheer up a bit," Alice said as we passed through the sundial garden.
"Yeah. I feel so sorry for him, having this family secret revealed so publicly," Hermione said.
"He got what he deserved," Draco said, stepping out from behind a tree, a half dozen of his hangers on following, "the disgusting lump. My father is talking to the Minister about having him removed. Good thing too…"
"Silenco," I whispered. Draco carried on talking, but no sound came out. As soon as he realised this he pointed at us red faced and shouted, but he was still muted. His goons looked on, utterly confused. Draco was throwing a silent temper tantrum.
"Are you quite done?" I asked. Draco glared at me. I glared back.
Draco drew his wand and cast a spell on himself. "How dare you silence me, you pathetic little…!" I silenced him again.
Draco once again unsilenced himself. "Stop that!"
"Make me," I said as I drew my wand.
"Get her!" Draco shouted.
"Mr Malfoy!" McGonagall said as she appeared, apparently she had been wandering around as a cat and had decided to intervene before someone (Draco) got hurt. "All of you, with me," she gestured at the Slytherin students, "I am going to take you to have a word with your Head of House." She looked back at me. "Ten points to Gryffindor Miss Harker for standing up for Hagrid against overwhelming odds."
We watched as she frogmarched the Slytherin students out of the courtyard."What overwhelming odds?" I asked when she was out of earshot. Alice giggled.
"Maybe one of them was secretly a great duellist?" Alice suggested.
We had lost the others, we wandered around the garden, looking at the flowers of the blossoming daffodils.
"I doubt it," I replied.
"You never know," Alice said with a smile.
"She's probably happy I stood up for Hagrid," I sighed. "It's a shame that that seems to be a rarity around here, standing up for someone because it is the right thing to do."
"What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right," Alice replied.
"Einstein," I said with a smile.
"Yeah, my Dad sent me a book of inspirational quotes at Christmas," she said as we sat down on a bench.
"Oh? That sounds interesting. Might I borrow it at some point?" I asked, snuggling up to her, resting my head in the crook of her neck.
"Of course," she said with a smile as she kissed the top of my head.
I reached down and picked a daffodil. I threaded it through her hair, just above her left ear. "There, something colourful that's nearly as beautiful as you are."
Alice giggled."Thanks, it's lovely."
"It's nice out here tonight," I said happily.
"Yeah, it's finally starting to warm up," she said distantly as we watched the sun start to set.
"I meant because you are out here with me," I said, winking up at her, "although, that would make any situation warmer."
Alice blushed. "You flirt." She smiled, kissing me on the lips.
We sat out on that bench snuggling together as we watched the sunset colour the sky oranges, pinks and yellows. "Next year, I'm going to bring my art supplies and paint this sunset."
I smiled up at her, "and it will be beautiful."
She sighed and gestured lazily at an arc of a cloister nearby, "I think I'll paint the view through that window, the sunset glistening on the lake, I'll do it in the autumn, so I can get the orange leaves of the forest." She smiled slyly, "and I think I'll need a beautiful girl to be in the foreground, reading a book."
"How will you paint yourself in the scene?" I asked with a wink.
She gave an over exaggerated sigh, "I'll have to find someone, I wonder if Ginny's interested."
I snorted, "I doubt you'll get her to sit still for that long."
"Or away from staring at Harry," she said with a chuckle.
"Hmm, maybe Luna would be up for it?" Alice suggested.
I laughed, "it would be harder to get her to sit still than Ginny."
"Well, it'll have to be you then," she said, snuggling up to my side, "I just didn't want anyone to think you're meant to be an angel."
I blushed, "tease."
She giggled softly and leaned closer, before taking me by surprise and spinning me round into another kiss, this one deeper than our last, she pulled me closer, before the pair of us misbalanced and went tumbling into the bush behind the bench.
I landed on Alice and blushed when I realised that my head had landed on her... upper chest.
"Enjoying yourself?" She asked mischievously as I was still frozen, my brain only partially processing what was going on. She began stroking my hair, which broke me out my stupor.
I sat up rapidly, my face so red that I must have shone for miles around, "eep, I, er, well, um..." I stammered, unable to string a sentence together.
"You don't have to make excuses Janet," she said with a wink, "you looked so comfortable there."
My blush did the impossible and deepened. Alice laughed at my situation, "you're welcome there any time."
At this point I think my brain might have stopped functioning because I began making a series of strange gibbering sound, which made Alice laugh again. "For such a powerful witch, you're so easily defeated by anything vaguely sexual," she said.
I could not string a sentence together, or even think in anything approaching a coherent sentence. "So prudish, yet here you are, straddling me in a bush in the back of a courtyard. Who knew you had such an exhibitionist streak? It's always the prim and proper ones."
I gave a strangled squawk and looked down, when we had fallen I had indeed ended up straddling Alice's legs. I tried to get off her, but she pulled me down and forward, so that our faces were just a couple of inches apart. "You aren't going anywhere my dear," she smiled, her breath warm on my skin, "not while I have you where I want you."
My brain was finally catching up with my situation and my embarrassment was subsiding, "what're you going to do with me?" I asked.
"Kiss you of course silly," she said, pulling me down into a kiss.
We returned to the Common Room still a little breathless about half an hour later, our uniforms still ruffled, although we had made an attempt to appear less dishevelled, and our lips bruised. Neville was the only person present from our year, he blushed when he saw us, "oh, um, hi Janet, hi Alice, how're, um, you?"
"Just great," Alice said with a small sigh.
Neville wouldn't meet our eyes, "oh, um, that's good, I guess."
"How're you Neville?" I asked.
"Oh, um, I'm good," he stammered.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"You look like you've, um, had a tumble in a bush," he squeaked out the last bit.
I blushed and ran my hand through my hair, pulling out a leaf that I had somehow missed earlier, "oh, oops."
He gave a nervous laugh, before his eyes flicked to the mantelpiece, where a carriage clock sat. "Oh, look at the time, I'm meeting Lavender before dinner, she had something she wanted to show me on the seventh floor." He quickly got up and hurried out.
"Maybe we should freshen up for dinner," I suggested, looking down at the grass stains on my formerly white shirt and some hand prints that I hadn't noticed before.
"Yeah," Alice agreed.
When we got to our dorm I grabbed a change of clothes and headed to our bathroom. (Whilst the boys dorms are arranged in a sort of barrack style, as Godric was a military man, with them all sharing a room and a bathroom per year, the girls dorms were added later and so after first year are two to four girls to a room (depending on year size) and one bathroom per room. The girls rooms were added later because Godric did not consider that a girl would exhibit the same courage as a boy from an early age, believing that girls' courage was a later bloomer and as such would not be appropriate for his house. It's in a chapter Hogwarts, a History about the characters of the founders).
I was nearly done with my shower when Alice walked in wearing nought but her underwear, I quickly scrambled and held up a towel as a screen. "Alice!" I shouted at her, blushing scarlet from head to toe.
"It's not like I haven't seen it all before when we've been changing at camp," she said with a shrug as she retrieved something from the cupboard that I could not see, "and you've seen me naked plenty of times, I've always made sure of that."
My blush deepened and I frowned at her, "that's different, this is me naked in the shower, somewhere I expect privacy."
"All that's different is the amount of time that you're naked and that you have soap," she said with a grin that bordered on lecherous.
"Alice," I said warningly.
"Janet, trust me, you have nothing to be ashamed of," she winked and then turned and walked out in a way that I can only describe as strutted, I could not tear my eyes away from her.
After completing my interrupted shower I flounced back into our room and found Alice reclining on her bed still in her underwear. "Shower's free," I said grumpily.
"I'll get one in the morning," she replied, getting up and wrapping me up in her strong arms. I found myself relaxing against her, letting her envelop me. She leaned in and kissed the top of my head, before moving on to my lips, where I took the initiative and pushed her up against the wall, she gasped in surprise before smiling at me. "Someone's excited."
"Shut up and kiss me beautiful," I replied, our hands wandering over each-other as we made out.
We were late for dinner, but arrived long before the main course had been cleared, we had dressed and I had used a spell for bruising to hide the evidence of our little session. Despite our best efforts though the others knew instantly what had happened. "Enjoy your evening?" Lavender asked with a knowing smirk as we sat between her.
"I have indeed," I replied politely to her, feigning ignorance.
"Enjoy the inside of your girlfriend's mouth?" She asked again with an impish grin.
"Enjoy the inside of Neville's?" I asked, suppressing a blush.
"I think he enjoyed mine more," she replied, completely unashamed as she reached over to rest a hand on Neville's leg, who jumped at the sensation, before realising who it was and resting his head on her shoulder like a loyal dog (like Mrs O'Leary, who was at that second resting her head on my lap, hoping for some table scraps).
"How far did you go?" Lavender asked.
"A lady doesn't kiss and tell," I replied.
"This lady does," she replied, locking eyes with Parvati, the pair of them began giggling.
"Doesn't mean I will," I replied. Lavender pouted but broke off to talk to Parvati, while Alice, Neville and I discussed class (mostly to save Neville from the embarrassment involved on hearing girl talk.
Unfortunately, ADHD makes tuning out conversations rather hard, so a couple of minutes later I caught Parvati say: "Goldsmith is probably the best kisser at Hogwarts," as my mind tuned back into Parvati and Lavender's conversation as Neville was discussing a very boring point of herbology. Apparently Parvati and Lavender had now veered into Parvati's testing of the boys, apparently being essentially stood up for the Yule Ball meant that she was now going through boys like they were going out of fashion (which if you asked me they were). "But that short French guy was even better, although he was too forward for me. I might like to kiss, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go any further."
"Neville and I had established our boundaries for now," Lavender said. She moved her hand on her boyfriend's leg slightly, causing him to jump, "and I don't think we'll be moving further for a while now." Neville nodded vigorously, before kissing her neck. "He is now a very good kisser though, it took a few lessons to get him to do it right-" I tuned her out about this point, I did not need to hear about Neville's kissing lessons.
"I wonder what it's like to have such inane things be the most important thing you can talk about." Alice said quietly.
"It must be nice, after all, ignorance is bliss," I replied, digging in to a good sized helping of Toad in the Hole (made the muggle way, without toad).
"Ignorance isn't bliss, bliss is being with you," she replied, I smiled at her, feeling my cheeks heat up.
"What do you two think?" Harry asked us, I honestly had not notice him and Hermione arrive.
"What do I think about what?" I asked, looking around Alice to where he had seated himself.
"About Professor Moody's teaching methods," Hermione supplied from across the table, rolling her eyes at Harry.
I raised an eyebrow, "I think Uncle Alistair is a very good trainer of aurors, he just sometimes forgets that he is teaching kids, not breaking in auror recruits."
"I think his methods are crude and barbaric, putting everyone under the imperius like that!" Hermione said angrily.
"Are you just embarrassed because he made you and Draco do a duet from Figaro?" Alice asked, recalling a Defence lesson earlier in the week.
Hermione blushed, "no, I just think there has to be better uses of our time."
"Training with the imperius makes you more resistant to compelling charms and curses of all kinds," I replied, "it's a very useful use of our time, particularly for the girls. I for one am happy that I am now resistant to having strangers casting spells that make me do what they want."
Hermione frowned for a second before realising what I was implying and immediately blushing and becoming very interested in her dinner, "I suppose it is teaching us to defend ourselves against a range of dark arts."
"One of the worst dark arts at that," I replied.
"What are you two talking about?" Ron asked, (I had fortunately not noticed Ron eating his dinner yet, which was good because he had made even more of a mess than normal) before turning to Harry, "mate, you know what they're on about?"
Harry shrugged, "haven't a clue mate."
"Thinking on it for a while," I replied.
Ron shrugged, telling Ron to think is the best way for him to get him to drop the subject, "defence again tomorrow, wonder what he'll make use do tomorrow."
"I can't wait for you to waltz Goyle across the classroom again," Hermione said with a laugh.
Ron blushed, "he's too creative to make us do the same thing twice."
"He could make you propose to a house elf," Alice said with a grin.
"Or do the splits," I giggled.
Both boys and Hermione cringed at that, "oh please no," Ron said, ashen faced before everyone else began laughing.