VII. A THEORETICAL DATE
The weeks flew by and clumped together in Sirona's mind as a dizzying whirl of homework, library study sessions and indolent prefect patrols around the castle. She and Roger had never been a fan of the latter, and as such, anybody idiotic enough to be caught wandering the castle afterhours by prefects who wouldn't so much as pick up their pace when they saw a student running from them honestly deserved any detention they received.
"No. Wait. Stop," Roger said in a bored monotone voice as two young Hufflepuffs ran from the pair of them one night, though neither of them so much as moved. "Whatever will I do if I don't get to give out a punishment?" Sirona, who was just as unbothered as she picked a fuzz off her robes, just smiled at his teasing.
"Honestly," Roger continued, "I have Charms homework to finish, but I have to be doing this instead. Who cares if students are out of bed? We're students out of bed, aren't we? Who's giving us a detention?" Sirona quirked a brow.
"I think I could technically give you one if you want," she offered.
"Oi, you two!"
Sirona's eyes rolled so far back into her skull at Michelle Connelly's voice that the strain almost hurt. She and Roger watched the Head Girl stalking towards them from the direction that the Hufflepuff students had just come from.
"Are you even bothering to do your job?" she asked in a shrill voice. "Why did I just see two underclassmen leaving from here?"
"We tried; we really did," Roger lied, "but they were just so fast."
"We did tell them to stop," Sirona added, "but they ran right off. What would you have us do? Stupefy them?"
"Heard Moody's going to teach us more on the Imperius Curse tomorrow. Perhaps, we could get clearance to use it on wee first years who wander about at night," Roger drawled.
Michelle Connelly muttered something about "insubordination" and "underqualified prefects" before marching away to resume her own patrol. Sirona turned to Roger once the Slytherin girl was gone.
"What do you mean about Moody teaching us more about the Imperius Curse?" she asked. She hadn't been a particularly big fan of the first lesson they'd had with the newest professor. They needed to know about the Unforgiveable Curses, for sure, but she didn't think demonstrating them in classroom (even if it was only on a spider) was the proper way of going about it.
Roger simply shrugged.
"Just what's going about the rumour mill."
Sirona frowned.
"Oh, come on, you aren't still miffed about that first lesson, are you?" he asked. "I think the man's a genius — unorthodox, maybe, but a genius no less."
"He shouldn't be teaching children," she replied.
"Well, neither should Snape," Roger pointed out, "but that doesn't stop Dumbledore from bringing him back every year."
"Yes, well at least our potions master isn't demonstrating illegal curses in the classroom. And it wasn't just our class; it was all of them, even the first years. Poor Mona. She's the type of person to carry bugs outside and release them rather than squash them. How d'you think she felt watching that man torture and kill that spider right in front of her? Luckily, Mara had the class with her," Sirona said.
"You're just angry that he made your little sister cry," Roger said in a disinterested tone.
"So? Is that not a good enough reason?" she snapped, her voice rising just a bit. Roger held his hands up in surrender.
"What do I care if you hate the man?" he asked. "Doesn't bother me any."
Sirona crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the stone wall of the corridor with a huff. Roger smiled at her.
"You do have to admit that you wish you could've been there to see him turn that Malfoy prat from Slytherin into a ferret," he said, trying and succeeding in coaxing a smile from the girl.
"George says Ron calls him the Amazing Bouncing Ferret," she said, trying to imagine the Slytherin boy being bounced around as a little ferret. "But it only proves my point that Moody shouldn't be a teacher."
"Any more than we should be prefects," Roger said. They were meant to actually be patrolling, but they'd been stationary for almost fifteen minutes now. Sirona looked down at her wristwatch.
"Shift's over in half an hour. What do you say we patrol our way up to the common room," she said, pushing off from the wall. Roger only nodded his head in agreement, and the pair made their way to the nearest staircase.
They had originally been on the second floor and had only managed to go three floors up before a loud bang sounded off not far from where they were.
"Who's on the fifth floor tonight?" Sirona asked, and Roger shrugged.
"I do well to remember our schedule, never mind anyone else's."
"Suppose at least one of us needs to pretend to care just in case this time it's a teacher that catches us shirking our duties," Sirona said with a sigh.
"RPS you for it," Roger said quickly, clearly wanting to ignore it and walk straight up to Ravenclaw Tower. The friends each balled one hand into a fist. They simultaneously shook their fists in the air three times, and upon bringing them down the fourth time, Sirona stuck out two fingers, but Roger's hand stayed closed.
"Fuck," she cursed under her breath as Roger hit her hand with his in triumph.
"You know there are two other options besides scissors, right?" he teased. Admittedly, scissors seemed to be Sirona's default unless she thought to switch it up a bit.
"Shut up," she mumbled as Roger walked backwards towards the staircase, waving goodbye to her with a grin on his face.
"Have fun."
Sirona rolled her eyes, spinning on her heel to head in the direction that the noise had come from. Hopefully, whoever had caused such a ruckus had had the brains to leave the scene by now; she didn't feel like having to walk some moron back to their common room, especially if they happened to be a Hufflepuff or Slytherin, whose common rooms were in the complete opposite direction of her own.
Sirona rounded the corner of the corridor, seeing that a pile of desks had been being stacked into what would have been a pyramid in front of the door if one of the desks hadn't crashed to the floor, bringing a few others with it.
"Lumos," Sirona said, flicking her wand and illuminating the corridor in a bluish-white light.
"All right, come on out, whoever you are," she said in a dull tone. Of course, the hallway remained silent. Admittedly, she could have tried harder to find the culprit rather than asking them to show themselves; after all, someone could've been standing just behind one of the crevices in the ornate stone wall and she wouldn't have seen them because of her refusal to move, but Sirona was tired.
She had half a mind to turn around and pretend she'd seen nothing; after all, this could've just been Peeves, and Peeves was an entity far outside of her jurisdiction. However, if this were actually Peeves' doing, he'd probably still be here; he wasn't afraid of a prefect, especially not her. So, in an attempt to actually do her job — even if it was a job she never wanted — she walked over to the pile of desks and started to pull some of the ones on the top down to the ground.
Sirona managed to get two down without incident, but when she tugged on the third one, it refused to budge, which was odd since it didn't seem to be caught on any of the other desks. She tugged at it once more, and again, it refused to move from its spot.
"I would ask you to stop dismantling all my hard work, but it's really amusing to watch you try."
Sirona jumped at the voice, which came from further down the corridor. She let go of the desk, lifted her wand and made her way down the corridor a few feet before the light illuminated the familiar face of Fred Weasley, a wide grin on his freckled face. She rolled her eyes and pointed to the pile of desks, most of which were seemingly stuck like that.
"Why?" was all she asked of him. He merely shrugged.
"Professor Babbling gave me a detention for disrupting class, so I thought I'd leave her a little gift."
"You don't even take Ancient Runes," she pointed out.
"That explains why she thought I was being disruptive, I suppose."
Sirona rolled her eyes.
"Put them back," she said, unamused at his current antics.
"Hey, just because I know how to cast a sticking curse doesn't mean I know the counter-curse," he said in a matter-of-fact voice. Sirona threw her hands up in defeat; this was more than she bargained for; she should have just went up to the common room with Roger and ignored the whole situation.
"Forget it. I don't care this much about this job," she said. She turned to walk away from the mess before she heard the tapping of fast-approaching footsteps. Wonderful. Someone else had heard. She turned back to Fred and raised her voice a bit and said in her best scolding tone, "Now, I hope you've learned your lesson this time!"
Fred's face showed no signs of confusion at her sudden outburst, and he nodded, trying to sport a grave-looking facial expression.
"Yes, I absolutely have," he replied as Gary Bishop rounded the corner, huffing and puffing. Sirona turned to look at him.
"Heard the crash from the floor below," he said through large gulps of air. Sirona quirked a brow.
"So, you ran here?" she asked, unable to fathom herself ever doing such a thing for her prefect duties of all things.
"What's going on?" Bishop asked, ignoring her comment.
"Don't worry, Bishop. I've already docked the appropriate amount of house points and given him a stern talking to," she lied.
"Well, it's a relief to see you actually doing your job for once. You hardly ever meet your quota," the older boy said.
"Prefects don't have quotas, Bishop; we don't get paid," she reminded him.
"Where's Davies? Isn't he supposed to have the same shift as you?"
"He felt a bit queasy, so I sent him up to the common room," she lied again. "As it were, I was just about to escort Mr. Weasley back up to his own common room; can't have him wandering about the castle any more tonight. Since you're here, you can start cleaning this up. I'll send someone down to help if I run into anymore prefects on the way up."
"But—"
"Thank you for helping out a fellow prefect, Bishop. It really should have been you that got the Head Boy position," she said, grabbing Fred's arm and pulling him away before Bishop could respond to her faux flattery. Saying the words had made her skin crawl, but sweet words worked well on Bishop, and it was probably one of the reasons he didn't get the job of Head Boy. Nicholas Langley didn't sway so easily to flattery of any kind.
"Look at you, acting all prefect-y," Fred teased once out of Bishop's earshot. "It makes me sick. I still can't believe that you managed to fool anyone of authority into thinking you were a rule-abiding student."
"It's not like I wanted to be a prefect. Trust me, if it were up to me, I'd chuck this badge right in a trash bin. But I suppose you're lucky that you have someone to get you out of trouble at least some of the time. By the way, where's George? Surely, he would've helped you with this."
"He is editing a very important letter," Fred said, shoving his hands in his pockets as they walked down the hallway.
"Bagman again?" Sirona asked. The twins had told her weeks ago about how Ludo Bagman had paid them their winnings from their bet on the World Cup in Leprechaun gold. "What a twat."
"My thoughts on him are far harsher than that. George thinks we shouldn't be too accusatory just yet, says it could still be a misunderstanding," Fred told her.
"If this were a misunderstanding, he would've replied to your first letter," Sirona said as they climbed up a set of stairs.
"My thoughts exactly, but I think George is just hopeful."
The two walked in silence for a bit before Sirona remembered something that Roger had mentioned earlier that night.
"Have you heard anything about this upcoming lesson with Moody tomorrow?" she asked. "Something about the Imperius Curse?"
"Oh, no, not this again. Every time you talk about Moody, you're left in a foul mood," Fred said. "Change the subject."
Sirona rolled her eyes but spoke no more on the subject. Fred, however, did not like the silence.
"Oh, I know!" he said, now grinning from ear to ear. "How much do you actually know about the Triwizard Tournament?" he asked after a short while. Sirona shrugged.
"A bunch of people died, so it died. Great-great-great Uncle Jean-Luc lost his left pinkie finger. Other than that? Nothing."
"Well, I did a bit of research the other day—" Fred started, and Sirona gave him a look that clearly told him that she didn't believe he'd ever researched anything in his whole life, "—okay, Lee did some research the other day. Do you want to know what the dress robes are for?"
"A wretched ball," Sirona said disdainfully. "Caroline's already informed me."
"Knew you'd be thrilled," he quipped, taking obvious pleasure in her metaphorical pain.
"I suppose the only bright side is that I think Chambers still thinks we're 'together,'" Sirona said thoughtfully. "Though, he's bound to figure it out before Yule time. He's not that thick."
"No doubt he'll ask you to go with him as soon as they announce it," Fred agreed, and Sirona let out a frustrated groan.
"And if I ask someone to go with me before it's even announced, I'll look desperate and pushy," she complained.
"The way I see it, you've only got one option."
"Death?"
"I'll make you a deal," Fred started, ignoring her dramatic answer. "Since I'm such a wonderful person, and since you're a very dear friend, in the event that Chambers asks you to the ball before you've gotten a chance to find a date for yourself, you can tell him that you're attending the ball with me."
Sirona quirked a brow.
"If I lie to him, and end up going with someone else later, he'll be crushed because then he'll know I just didn't want to go with him," she said.
"Well, it won't be a lie, dummy. I really will go with you."
Sirona became suspicious at his words and narrowed her eyes at him.
"Why? What do you get out of this arrangement?"
Fred rolled his eyes and waved his hands around dramatically.
"Why is it that you always think I want something in return when I choose to do something nice?" he asked in an exasperated tone.
"Because you so often do want something in return!" she pointed out.
"Well, this time, you can chalk it up to me being the nice person that I am."
Sirona gave him a sceptical look. She felt as though he were planning something — he seemed to be scheming — though, she couldn't imagine what it could be. Admittedly, as far as dates were concerned, she could do a lot worse than Fred Weasley. After all, they were friends, and at least she knew she wouldn't be bored out of her skull; quite the contrary, it could actually be rather fun to go with Fred. Plus, it saved her the hassle of scrounging to find a date before Chambers inevitably asked her himself.
"Well, I don't quite believe you, but either way, it's not an offer I'm willing to pass up. Just know, I'm going to hold you to this," she warned. "If you're under the impression that I'll find another date before then, don't hold your breath; I'm far too busy with schoolwork to delve into the frivolity that is the dating world."
"Sometimes, I wonder why you're in Ravenclaw, but then you say things like that, and I'm reminded," Fred teased. "All right, it's a theoretical date."
"I mean it, Fred. Don't promise this with the hopes of getting out of it," she said, as they climbed the last staircase before they would part ways to go to their respective common rooms.
"I wouldn't dream of it, love," he said. "I swear, if you've found no one to go with before Chambers asks you—"
"Which I won't," she interjected, more so as a warning that he wouldn't be getting out of this if he agreed to it.
"—I promise to take you myself. Besides, I think we'd have fun. I'm quite the dancer, you know. I'll have you swooning by the end of ball," he told her in a confident voice. She rolled her eyes.
"I suppose we'll just have to see about that. Now, get back up to Gryffindor Tower before I actually do dock points from you," she teased.
"You wouldn't dare," he said knowingly.
"Don't assume to know what I would and wouldn't do," she said with a sly smile on her face. "Now, go on!"
Sirona reached out her right hand and gave Fred a shove in the centre of his chest to push him in the direction of his common room. He stumbled back one step, but suddenly, his hand grabbed hers before she could retract it, and he made a show of twirling her around before pulling her into him. Sirona's heart skipped a beat; whether it because of the sudden motion or for reasons not quite known to her, she didn't think too much on. She pushed out of his hold.
"What was that for?"
"Just practising," he said, grinning down at her happily, a mischievous tinkle in his eyes. Sirona only shook her head, ignoring the slight burning in the tips of her ears as she turned on her heel and made her way to the Ravenclaw common room.
True to his word, Roger was sitting at a desk in the common room, finishing his Charms homework. Caroline was sitting near him, chatting away as he worked. Sirona grabbed a little wooden chair from a reading table and pulled it to the spot that her friends were, plopping down in it backwards so that she could use the back of the chair as a place to rest her arms and chin.
"How'd it go?" Roger asked, not looking up from his paper.
"I got a date for the dance thingy that Caroline told us about," Sirona said, shrugging as though this were an entirely reasonable outcome of having performed one's prefectly duties.
"What? Who?" Caroline asked immediately, her tone jealous, and Roger even pulled his eyes away from his unfinished schoolwork.
"Fred. He's decided to take me so that I can avoid breaking Chambers' heart too much."
Caroline and Roger exchanged looks that Sirona couldn't quite comprehend before shrugging their shoulders and going back to what they had previously been doing.
"Hang on!" Sirona said. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Caroline asked, feigning ignorance.
"That! That look. What was that for?" Sirona demanded to know.
"Well, it's just — you've been awfully friendly with him lately," Caroline said. Sirona didn't understand what was so strange about this.
"I'm mostly always friendly with him," she said, "seeing as how we're friends and all."
Caroline shrugged her shoulders as though she didn't quite believe her friend.
"I just think that ever since you snogged him at the end of last year, things have been different between you two."
Sirona's eyes went wide.
"What— How do you know about that?" she demanded, and Caroline rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest, visibly annoyed.
"Well, first of all, as your best friend, it is my job to know about all of your embarrassing drunk indiscretions, even if you do try and hide them from me," she said, and Sirona could tell that her friend had been waiting to say that for quite some time. "Secondly, I'm in charge of the gossip column in the school paper, so every bit of juicy information inevitably makes its way back to me. You're welcome, by the way, for me keeping it out of the paper."
"Lee Jordan told her," Roger said, answering Sirona's question, since it didn't seem like Caroline was going to get to that part anytime soon. Sirona rolled her eyes.
"I didn't snog him," she said. "It was one kiss."
"One kiss you didn't bother to tell me about," Caroline said.
"It was a stupid dare after far too much Firewhiskey," Sirona admitted to her friends. "Nine Sickles were at stake. It didn't mean anything."
Roger let out a small hum, as though to say he wasn't so sure about her statement.
"It didn't!" she whined loudly as Roger's quill scratched away at his paper as though he were completely unmoved by her stance on the subject.
"Not so sure Fred feels that way," Caroline warned in a sing-song voice.
"Now you're just being ridiculous. Of course, he knows it didn't mean anything," Sirona assured.
"How do you know?" Caroline inquired. "Have you talked to him about it?"
"I think he would've said something by now if he felt differently than I did on the subject," Sirona said irritably, confused as to why her friends were choosing to blow something that happened over five months ago this far out of proportion. "He's only had all summer to do so, and we've been back at school for over a month now."
"I'll take that as a resounding 'No,'" Caroline said in answer to the question Sirona had avoided.
"I haven't got to talk to him about it," she exclaimed. "Fred's a very straightforward person, in case you haven't noticed. If he had those sorts of feelings for me, I think I would have figured it out by now. He's not one for subtlety."
"He's not subtle; you're just oblivious," Roger quipped, flipping the page of his Charms textbook. "Weasley flirts with you every chance he gets."
"Fred doesn't flirt with me," Sirona denied.
"'Hey, Rona, wouldn't it be funny to make Chambers think we're dating?'" Caroline mocked.
"'Hey, Rona, I've got no one to sneak off to Hogsmeade with. Come to the pub with me?'" Roger continued in the same mocking tone.
"'Hey, Rona, come help my brother and I with this prank, but don't worry because I'll personally make sure you aren't caught even though this isn't a courtesy I would extend to anyone else,'" Caroline added.
"'Hey, Rona, come to the Yule Ball with me, even though the school hasn't even officially announced it yet, and I'm really just making sure I get to you before anyone else does,'" Roger said.
"That's enough!" Sirona said. "That's not flirting. That's just how Fred is. It's how he's always been!"
"He's probably always had a thing for you and the kiss just sealed the deal," Caroline told her.
"Do you two even hear yourselves?" Sirona asked. "Fred Weasley? Fancies me? I've never heard a more laughable notion. Either you're playing the most elaborate, well-thought-out joke or you've both gone completely mental!"
"We're only calling it how we see it, mate," Roger said.
"No, you've taken something as stupid and meaningless as a drunken kiss — that only happened one time — and blown it so far out of proportion that the force of the blast has clearly lodged your heads in your arses."
"Say what you want, Rone," Caroline interjected, "but if it was as 'meaningless' as you claim it was, why keep it secret from us?"
Caroline's dark eyes bore into her, and Roger stopped his writing so that he, too, could turn to focus on Sirona's answer. Sirona furrowed her brow. She could see the point her friend was trying to make, but she just didn't really think it was as deep as Caroline and Roger seemed to think it was. After all, she and Fred had been friends since first year. She would know if he had feelings for her.
Wouldn't she?
"This discussion is giving me a headache," Sirona said, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'm going up to bed now. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I hope whatever sudden onset brain damage you two seem to be suffering from will have worn off."
Neither Caroline nor Roger tried to stop Sirona as she stood from her seat; though, Caroline had a smug look on her face, clearly taking Sirona's departure as some sort of admission of defeat. Sirona only pretended as though she hadn't seen it as she turned in the direction of the staircase that led to the girls' dormitories.