Chapter Two

We fuss, we brawl
We rise, we fall
He comes in vain
But it's okay

-Addiction 

Truth Hurts featuring Rakim

*

               "Unbelievable! This is unbelievable!" cried Keith, slamming the ten-pound (at least) History of Magic textbook down on the table in the Gryffindor common room. He slammed his thick wad of scribbled shorthand notes down next to the textbook and collapsed in the chair. "Three feet…" he groaned. Marie drew her ruler out of her bag and slapped it against his blank parchment.

               "It's not that bad," she said.

               "Yes, it is," insisted Smith.

               "No, it's not."

               "It is, Marie," Tonks broke in, taking the ruler and measuring it against the few paragraphs of large print that she had managed to salvage from her notes. "I only have a half a foot of big writing and I'm already out of material!" she reached over and grabbed Keith's notes, angling them on the table so that they could both see the pages upon pages of spindly writing at the same time. "You take much better notes than me," she said, drawing out a new piece of parchment and detailing the points of her essay based upon what Keith had written. Smith leaned over so that he could benefit from Keith's scholarly-ness also. Marie drew her own 2-½ foot essay from her bag in a very annoying way and arranged them on the table in front of her. Smith came around the table so he could sit next to Marie, craning his neck so that he could see both papers at once.

               "You're going to fail your O.W.L.s," Marie said. "I'm not going to be there for you to cheat off of when you take the test, Smith."

               "No, but you're here now."

               "Live for the moment!" Keith said, smiling and switching from looking at his notes to looking at Marie's almost finished essay. She finished it off in a big scrawl and measured it.

               "Two feet, 11 inches," she said, her eyebrows drawing together. Then she smiled, picked her quill back up, and signed her name with flourish on the bottom of the parchment.

               "You're name's on there twice," Keith pointed out to Marie as Tonks accidentally spilled her inkwell, and hastened to blot it off her Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. The front cover of the book now boasted a large, shiny black splotch.

               "I don't reckon Professor Kendall will like that very much," said Smith, drawing his finger through the still-drying puddle.

               "I don't reckon that Professor Kendall likes anything I do very much," said Tonks.

               "Is there any chance that that's because you slipped and cursed him at the beginning of last year?" Marie suggested, pushing her paper towards Keith so that he could finish.

               "Maybe," Tonks admitted. She didn't like thinking about that incident. Kendall had been sent to the hospital wing for four days with two feathery chicken wings sprouting out from under his armpits. "It was an accident," she said feebly.

               "It was hilarious," Keith said, measuring his parchment for the third time in the last minute. "Nobody likes Kendall, save a few Slytherins. You're our hero, Nymphadora." Tonks gritted her teeth but didn't say anything, trying to concentrate on her essay. "I don't know how that guy's held his job for two years running," Keith rambled. "Everyone hates him and we've barely learned a thing. We had a really good teacher the year before him, but no, he had to leave too, so we're stuck with Kendall…"

               "Silencio," Tonks whispered, pointing her wand at Keith from under the table. It took a second for Keith to realize that he wasn't making any sounds anymore, even though his mouth was still moving. His face screwed up as he looked wildly around him to see who had put the spell on him. Out of pity, Tonks took the spell of after five minutes.

               "You SUCK!" Keith yelled at Tonks. The rest of the Gryffindor fifth years turned around from their tables, yelling at him to shut up. Someone threw a spare quill at him, which conked him in the head. "Expelliarmus!" Tonks wand flew across the room. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Keith said, keeping the wand hovering in the air halfway across the room. He snapped his wand forward; causing the wand to hit the boy that had threw the quill at him in the head. "Ha!" Keith said, summoning the wand back to him with a twitch of his own. "Sweet, sweet revenge."

               "Give me my wand back," Tonks said. Keith only held it farther away, twirling it between his fingers playfully. Tonks smiled sweetly at him, threateningly fingering the half-empty inkwell that she had spilled earlier. She tilted it above his parchment. Keith gave her the wand back and put his hand protectively over his hard-copied two feet of writing. Tonks slid the wand back into her robes and once more bent over her essay.

               "Two feet, six inches," she said, enlarging her writing on the next sentence and glancing once more at the notes. "What does that say?" she asked Keith, pointing at a smeared phrase. Keith squinted at the writing and leaned closer.

               "I think it says, 'was arrested and sentenced to.'"

               "So, it says, "was arrested and sentenced to three years at the Ministry of Magic?"

               "I dunno, maybe it says 'put on trial at,' or something."

               "Why do we have to learn about this?" Tonks said, measuring her parchment again. "I can guarantee you that some Gringotts robbery in 1512 isn't going to affect the course of my life in any significant way."

               "Yeah, he only made off with a Galleon and a few Sickles," commented Smith.

               "And a Knut," said Marie, lounging back in her chair. "Three Knuts, in fact."

               "Wow," said Keith.

               Tonks signed her name at the bottom of the paper. "There," she said in a satisfied way. Keith grinned and wrote K E I T H in spiky letters along the bottom of his paper.

               "I don't do script," he said.

               A few moments of silence passed as they slid their parchments back into their bags. "I wonder how Greg's doing," Smith said as he wrote his last sentence.

               "I don't imagine that he's doing very well," said Tonks, snapping the clasps of her bag shut.

               "I guess not, not with that Rachel person," Keith said, looking across the room into the fire. "Hey Smith, I challenge you to a game of chess." He looked at the two girls. "You guys play each other. Winner plays winner."

               "What's the loser have to do?" said Marie, not moving from her comfortable seat in the armchair.

               Keith looked at Smith. "Loser has to run around the floor in their underwear," he said, grinning wickedly.

               "Fine," Tonks said. Marie looked apprehensive.

               "Underwear?" she said.

               "C'mon, it'll be fun," Tonks said, grabbing her friend's arm and pulling her out of the chair and towards the four seats by the fire. They set up the board, Tonks playing the black pieces and Marie the white pieces. She jumped a knight over her pawns for her first move. The knight cracked his knuckles menacingly as he looked at the military line of black pawns at the opposite side of the board. Tonks sent a pawn two spaces forward, opening up a move for her bishop. The boys were playing a much noisier game next to them.

               "KILL THE PAWNS!" yelled Keith. Marie rolled her eyes and moved her queen forward. The games went on for a long time, an hour and a half at least, before Tonks finally cornered Marie's king in a checkmate. Keith had beaten Smith at least forty minutes ago, and the two boys had amused themselves by setting off Dungbombs in the far corner of the common room where some first years were sitting.

               "C'mon, Keith, we don't got all night!" Tonks yelled across the half-empty room. It was getting late, and students were starting to wander up the stairs to their dormitories.

               "We have eternity," Keith said, jumping over the back of the armchair and landing in the seat across from Tonks. She repositioned her black pieces on the board. The game was violent and furious but Tonks had Keith's king checkmated within twenty minutes this time. She leaned back and sent a gloating smile across the board at Keith.

               "Ha," Smith said. "C'mon, Keith, you agreed."

               Keith got up and followed Smith out the portrait hole. Marie and Tonks climbed out after them. The castle was silent and brooding in the dark. The sky was navy blue velvet outside the windows. Stars gleamed randomly through the glass, giving the halls an eerie glow. Keith tossed his robes to Tonks. "Can I keep my socks on, at least?" he asked.

               "What do we say, ladies?" Smith said, turning his head to face the pair of girls that were leaning against the wall next to the Fat Lady's portrait.

               "Let him keep his socks," Tonks said.

               "You heard her," Smith told Keith, who took his shirt and Muggle-style baggy jeans off. Marie giggled. Seeing Keith, the guy you joked around with all day, every day standing in the middle of the hallway in the black of night in his boxer shorts was pretty funny, Tonks thought. She smiled.

               "Bye," Keith said awkwardly, turning to run down the hall. They could hear the slapping noises of his socked feet turn the corner, and soon the noises died away. Tonks slid down the wall to sit on the floor, and soon Greg and Marie were sitting too. When Keith had been gone for ten minutes, Tonks began to change her hair to amuse herself. Her hair was dandelion-yellow and in braids when Keith came back into sight. He did a little victory wave as he ran towards them, but he slipped in his socked feet and slid headfirst into a coat of armor. The helmet fell of first, and then the whole thing collapsed, clanging excellently and echoing around the halls. Keith swore and sprinted towards them.

               "Quick, get in, before Filch comes!" he said when he was ten feet away. Marie opened the portrait hole and Keith dived into it as an angry roar and a meow echoed through the building. Tonks fell in after Keith. Smith and Marie piled in after them, laughing hysterically. Marie slammed the portrait shut as Filch let out another yell. "That was good!" Keith said. Smith slapped Keith on the back as they disentangled themselves. Tonks tossed Keith his robes back. He wrapped them around himself and sat down in the fire.

               "How was it?" Smith asked.

               "Well, I felt really stupid the whole way through, and then I got really cold, but I didn't meet anybody except there was this one really close call with Peeves." Keith said in one breath. "I feel exhilarated! That was fun! You shoulda come, Tonks," said Keith, grinning at her. Tonks punched him playfully on the shoulder.

               "Well, I'm going to bed," said Marie, already on the landing of the steps leading to the girls' dormitories. Tonks followed a few minutes later.

               Marie remained quiet while Tonks changed her clothes and then her hair. "Keith looked good," she said quietly.

               "What?!" Tonks said, turning around so fast that she almost hit her head on the four-poster. Her clumsy body contented itself with falling onto the bed.

               "Yeah. He did," she said. "Not that I like him or anything, but it's really weird, I've never thought about him that way, I never dreamed that I would, but he's so cute, y'know…" her voice trailed off. Tonks bit her lip, not knowing what to say.

               "Whatever floats your boat, Marie," she said, climbing under the covers. "I guess its not too weird…lots of people date…"

               "Not people like me with people like Keith, Tonks," Marie said, exasperated. "I can't seem to sort myself out lately."

               "Welcome to my world," Tonks said. She thought she could see a grin from the pillow across the room.

               "Well…g'night…" Marie said, closing her eyes.

               "'Night," said Tonks.

               She didn't fall asleep, though. For some reason she kept thinking about Marie and Keith. They were nowhere in the vicinity of being like each other, but maybe that was just what a good relationship needed. She didn't know. She had never had to think about this stuff before and she hadn't expected to have to think about it now.

               A glint of sun began to show above the trees of the forest when she finally drifted off to sleep.

*****

A/N- hope ya like. Read and review. Tell your friends.

Disclaimer- I forgot to add that the title of the story is the title of a song that Rob Dougan wrote for The Matrix: Reloaded. It belongs to Mr. Dougan.