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"Check mate."

"Not again!" Harry slammed his fist on the table.

"Harry, this is boring, I don't want to play wizard chess anymore." Ron sighed, looking very tired. "Tania, what do you suggest we do?" He looked to Tania who sat beside Harry. She had been helping him navigate his pieces to avoid another loss. It didn't work.

She picked up her head from where it rested on the table. "I don't know."

Ron rolled his eyes. "A lot of help you are."

She glared at him. "You know, we could go study or do homework. Oh wait, that would be the smart thing to do-why would you ever do a thing like that?"

Harry started to chuckle, but then stopped as he noticed the gleam in their eyes, both so bored it had driven them to madness. "Uh. You know, studying sounds good, I think I'll go do that now."

Tania leaned back in her chair. "No, I'll leave, it's okay. See you guys tomorrow."

She went upstairs to the dormitory, changed, and then lied down in her bed.

Two other girls Tania had come to know were in the dormitory as well, chatting away, as usual.

"Oh, hello, Tania." One of them smiled over at her.

Tania let out an exasperated sigh. "Hi, Lavender." Lavender Brown was a nice girl, but Tania could only take her in very small doses.

"What's wrong?" asked the other girl-her name was Parvati Patil. Her twin sister, Padma, was in Ravenclaw.

"Everything." Tania responded, making no effort to clue them in on what had been going on.

"Everything?" Parvati asked. They both got up from Lavender's bed where they had been sitting and talking. They made their way over to Parvati's which was right next to Tania's.

"How can everything be wrong?" questioned Lavender stupidly.

Tania tried to control her temper. She sighed. "I meant that, right now, I'm just kind of not. Liking my life. I mean, I know things will turn out okay in the end, but that doesn't help me now."

Lavender sighed. "Well, what's going wrong now?" A look of realization spread across her face. "Oh, is it Hermione?"

Parvati gasped. "It's Hermione, isn't it? I knew you two had something wrong. When did you guys start fighting?"

"Just a few days ago."

"Why?"

"Because she was talking about how I was better at her in transfiguration, even though that's the only class I'm better than her in, and not by much, let me tell you."

"Well, you know," said Lavender, "Hermione does have quite a big ego. She's so particular about everything."

Parvati nodded. "You're telling me! If you put so much as one toe out of line when you're around her, she'll jump all over you-either that, or tell a professor."

Tania sighed. In a way, she liked hearing that she was right, but in another, it just made her feel worse. "Well," she tried to get off the subject of Hermione, "things aren't going too great with my sister either."
"How's that?" They both asked anxiously. It was always good for Tania to have it in with the third year students, and they wanted to know all they could.

"She just broke up with her boyfriend-the same day I had that fight with Hermione."

"Who's her boyfriend?" Lavender asked, unconcerned.

"Oliver Wood."

They both gasped. "How could she!" Lavender shrieked.

"Well, you'd kind of have to know him to understand, but-"

"But nothing!" said Parvati. "He's so sweet and cute and-ooh, that just makes me so mad!" She pounded her fist into a pillow on the bed.

"Hey, wait a second! You've never even talked to the guy!" Tania objected angrily. "You don't know anything about the way he was acting around my sister-"

"What's there to know?" said Lavender. "Your sister obviously has some serious problems if she dumps a guy like him."

"No, listen!" This wasn't helping at all-it was just making things worse. "He cared more about Quidditch than he did about her! She had to break up with him."

"I don't care!" said Parvati. "She's lucky he cared about her at all with the crowd she hangs out with!"

"What does that mean?" Tania growled angrily.

"I mean, those Weasley twins and Lee Jordan. They always have to be playing a joke on someone or-or disrespecting the professors. And they've never even gotten expelled! I can't see where they would be good friends at all-they're just stupid pranksters."

Tania gaped at her. "If you could see how sensitive and caring those pranksters really are, you would only hope to have friends as good as them." She rolled over onto her back, seething with anger, wanting more than anything to hex them.

Parvati and Lavender gaped at her and scrambled back to Lavender's bed, whispering frantically, no doubt about how awful Tania was.

It was one thing to insult her when she was there-but to talk about people they didn't even know like that just made Tania want to scream.

Without even thinking about it, Tania grabbed her wand on her bedside table and pointed it at herself.

"Silencio!" she jabbed at her own mouth, took a deep breath, and then screamed as loud as she could. Nothing came out. She couldn't keep from grinning as she mouthed the word, "Articulo!"

She sighed happily. That had made her feel so much better.

"How did you do that?" She heard Lavender say.

"Oh, it's just a little something I picked up from my sister." Tania said smugly.

"Your sister? But silencing charms are fifth year material!" Parvati squeaked.

"Yeah. I know." Tania nodded. "I'm sure you can get Oliver Wood to show you, though. Oh wait! No you can't, because you don't know him!" She looked at their shocked faces. "Well," she smiled, "good night girls. Have fun talking about me behind my back." She waved sarcastically, then rolled over away from them, smiling to herself as she fell asleep.

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