~*Every Other Time*~
Chapter Three: The Humour of the Situation
Dove: Wheeeheeheeee! Characters from all over the place! RPG characters, the return of the ubiquitous Calista, and of course… have you noticed that in every single one of the fics we write, together or separately, at some point, Mrs. Norris ends up blue? Why should this time be any different? And I have to say… I feel kind of bad for the Slytherin boys. Anticipatory… but bad.
Thalia: The battles have begun. Who shall win? Ravenclaws vs. Slytherins... and at times, it seems as though the latter house has Gryffindor (read: stupidly courageous) tendencies. Key word being "SEEMS". Of course, everything remains to be seen, and as usual, there's snark of gargantuan proportions. R/R!!
Disclaimer: …How thick can you get?
"When you walked in, I said with a grin
That we were just talking about you
We all had to lie because you would cry
If you knew we were laughing at you
In the momentary lull before the band begins to play
There's an overwhelming stench of alibi
Come on now, now
Come on now, now
Enjoy the humour of the situation…"
"The Humour of the Situation" - Barenaked Ladies
The last class of the day finished with the toll of a bell, and the door to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom opened. Sixth year Ravenclaw students, their arms full of books and notes, filed out, discussing the information learnt in the day's lesson.
A few minutes later, Su Li was greeted by a rather surprising sight in the hallway.
On the way to the Great Hall, walking together and apparently engaged in a civil conversation, were Cho Chang and Fleur Delacour, their new Defense professor. The former was quite politely discussing their recent lessons on the Patronus Charm... which, as Su recalled, had been a particularly sore point with Cho last year. Not to mention, their Seeker had hated Fleur. But now... the two were walking together... and Cho was even smiling.
Odd... and quite intriguing. There had to be some reasonable explanation for all this... an explanation that Su was quite determined to get, as soon as possible.
She managed to catch Cho only an hour later, leaving dinner. Greeting her friend, she began walking beside her towards the common room. They conversed on frivolous topics before Su brought up her true reason for approaching her friend. "I saw you speaking with Professor Delacour today," Su commented. "I'm surprised no one died."
Cho smiled slightly. "I see. That's what this is about." She shrugged. "What can I say? Our point of contention has been settled." Seeing that Su was confused, which happened so very rarely, Cho giggled slightly. "So we decided since we can't be enemies anymore, we might as well be friends."
Su shook her head. "I missed something," she said dolefully. "How can I be covertly evil if I don't even know what's going on in my own House?"
"I wish you all the best, and feel confident you can have Warrington hanging upside down from the ceiling before he knows what you're about," Cho said as they climbed the stairs. "That is who you're after, isn't it? I expect nothing less from you."
At the stair landing, Su made a passable curtsy with a giggle, spreading her robes wide. "Why thank you," she said. "But your flattery doesn't mean I'm not going to hound you until you tell me what's going on."
"I'd expect nothing less than that, either."
Shortly after Cho and Su walked out of the Great Hall, they were followed by Calista Green of their house, conversing with Ginny Weasley of Gryffindor. The redhead had a most incredulous expression on her face.
"You're... with... who?!"
"Blaise Zabini," Calista answered calmly. "He's really quite nice when he wants to be."
"You..." the Gryffindor girl looked at her with half-horror, half-admiration, "A Slytherin... but that's daft. Or you're very brave. But wait... you're not in Gryffindor. And Gryffindors and Slytherins don't get along. That's... daft. No offense meant," she added on hastily.
Calista grinned, "None taken. I get that a lot."
As if on cue, an aristocratic male voice drawled, "What are you doing here, Weaslette... aren't you supposed to be in Gryffindork Tower, mooning over His Royal Potheadedness?" Draco Malfoy was coming down the hall, a sneer on his face.
Calista smiled wryly and whispered, "They're not all like that... at least, not all of the time..."
"I bloody hope not," Ginny muttered, before turning towards Draco with a sneer to match his own. "Oh, it's you, Mal-ferret. Don't you have anything better to do than obsess over Harry or me because you're jealous? Oh, wait... you don't have anything better to do. Your so-called friends are about the size of trolls, with half the intelligence and the same smell. I'm so very sorry."
"At least my friends have a proper roof to sleep under when they go home, instead of sharing a bed with very likely all six of your siblings and maybe your parents under some sort of leaky thatch. Come to think of it, the living arrangements are probably why you people breed like rabbits." He smirked, never seeing the resounding slap coming until his pale face sported a bright red handprint.
"Say something like that again, and I will kill you," Ginny hissed. "With my bare hands, Malfoy, don't think I won't." She stalked away with that, Calista following behind her, making pacifying noises.
Draco was left alone in the hallway, hand to his slapped cheek, a startled and rather contemplative look on his face.
***
Assignments of Prefect rounds that evening were a trial. Generally, they tried to set up pairs of the same gender, to prevent "any bending of the rules", but that night something had gone skewed, and Warrington found himself setting out next to a seraphically smiling Su Li. Which, come to think of it, had very likely been the original intent, since it had been the Ravenclaws who had insisted on going together, leaving Warrington and Angelina to scramble to find another "safe" boy/girl pair.
Wandering down the dark hallways, watching for unnecessary movement, they were quiet, except when Su greeted one portrait or another, not always in English, in that falsely soft voice.
"What's your game, Li?" he finally asked, curiosity getting the best of him. "What are you playing at?"
She looked up at him, those eyes remarkably guileless. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, Warrington. Cho and Zachary asked to go together tonight. I daresay they're talking about Lisa. She hasn't been well. How could I have had anything to do with it?"
"Because you're you, little girl. Which is not at all the person everyone else thinks you are."
He was treated to a brilliant smile. "Exactly."
"You know... it's sad, really," Warrington said rather thoughtfully.
"Oh? What is?" Su glanced up at him, still smiling sweetly.
He peered at her for a long moment, then smirked, "The general stupidity and lack of... perception that most people here have."
"Why, what a harsh accusation," Su tutted. "Whatever did they do to deserve such vicious censure?"
"I'm not being vicious," Warrington rolled his eyes good-naturedly, "but... for almost all of them to see you as... some little angel. They must be stupid."
"Well you certainly seemed to think that I was some 'little angel' when you so rudely carted me out of Knockturn Alley," Su remarked, all sweetness, baring her teeth slightly as she gave him another wide smile.
"Oh, don't deceive yourself, Li," he shot back, "I thought that you were a rather small, impulsive, unworldly little girl..." Su abruptly turned away to hide her furious expression... "But any little girl who would voluntarily go down to Knockturn Alley and poke around a Dark Arts shop... is no little angel." He gave her an infuriatingly smarmy grin, saying silkily, "Don't fret, kid... unlike the rest of them, I do not suffer from the delusion that you're harmless. The image you so eagerly maintain."
"Oh, but see, this way, I can drive those with slightly more intelligence than a slug-like yourself, and slightly, I say, don't smirk at me-crazy when no one believes them every time they try to reveal my true nature." She shrugged. "And as for unworldly… don't underestimate me, Warrington, just because I look the way I do. People that make that mistake are… not happy afterwards."
"I'm shaking," he said blandly.
"No," she disagreed softly. "But you will be." She turned her head slightly, tilted it as though she was listening, and called out towards a shadowy corner draped with a tapestry, "Stebbins, you've been caught before, you know. I'm no nicer than Snape, as Sarah will tell you… Sarah, you should really know better. Out. Immediately, if you please."
A minute later, a very sheepish Johnny Stebbins followed by a Sarah Fawcett who was clearly terrified extracted themselves from behind the tapestry, where it looked like there was an alcove. "Su-" Sarah started.
Su only raised a brow at her, yet Sarah wilted a little under that gaze, though she was a tall girl, certainly a head above Su, and two years older to boot. "You're being terribly stupid, for a Ravenclaw," Su said, completely ignoring the Hufflepuff who had also been involved in the transgression. "Haven't we talked about this? Ad nauseum, I recall."
"Yes," Warrington said with another smirk. "If you're going to, at least do it so you don't get caught."
Su turned to grimace at him. "Why thank you, Warrington, for that extremely moral comeback." She turned back to them. "Common rooms. Now. Stebbins… go ask Snape for a detention tomorrow, please. And make sure to tell him why. Sarah… oh, I don't even know what to say to you anymore." She sighed. "Yes, fine, go see Madam Pomfrey first, you idiot. Why you're in Ravenclaw, I'll never know. Tomorrow, report to Flitwick. Ten points from each of you, and so help me, if I find out more of this has been going on on school property, I will tell the headmaster exactly what's been going on, instead of the very edited version Cho's been giving." She looked at them, her face expressionless in the silence. "Well? I thought I made myself clear."
The two headed off in the same direction, Sarah for the infirmary as Su suspected, and Johnny towards the general direction of the Hufflepuff common. Before they were out of earshot, they heard Johnny mutter, "I thought she was the nice one."
When they turned a corner, Su turned defiantly to Warrington. "Thank you kindly for your wonderful help. You're Head Boy how, exactly?"
He gave a light shrug, grinning slightly. "Hell if I know... it might eventually become apparent." He did not seem at all concerned with this, or with her disapproval of his lack of Head Boy-like behaviour thus far. Git.
"But really... they shouldn't do it in a bloody tapestry of all places. Marginally better than the Astronomy Tower, which I still don't understand why is such a popular trysting place. It would be rather... cold... to shag up there, I'd say. The Muggle Studies classroom would probably be best... supposedly there's even Muggle furniture there. But then, most people around the school are just very uncreative. And then, most of them also do not know how to cast a bloody Contraceptive Charm. Sad, really..."
Su looked at him, seething internally. Yes, he was completely missing the point. Yes, it was deliberate. Yes, he was fully aware that he was brassing her off. And yes, he was taking huge and inordinate amounts of enjoyment in this.
She wondered if, still being underage, she would be able to get away with murdering him and stuffing his corpse into a suit of armor...
And then she decided that no suit of armor deserved such a disgraceful fate.
***
It was very early the next morning, and Ginny Weasley was eating breakfast at the Ravenclaw table, as coaxed by Calista Green, who had assured her that her housemates wouldn't mind. Indeed, of the Ravenclaws up and about this early, half were studying and the other half waiting blearily for coffee, and the two small girls were largely ignored at their end of the table. At the moment, Calista was in the process of listening to Ginny rant in a quiet but deadly voice about bleached ferrets and how they deserved nothing less than being torn limb from limb by raging wild horses. Calista nodded along with the older girl's tirade and somehow suppressed her giggles.
"-in the hallway!" Ginny finished. "He's so… so… argh!" she tossed up her hands, then took a vicious bite of her muffin. "Insufferable," she finally finished.
"Yes, well, boys tend to be, don't they?" Calista said, eating her own buttered muffin without any hint of violence. Ginny was beginning to think the small Ravenclaw girl very nearly always appeared calm. She was also, however, realizing that many Ravenclaws that she had previously dismissed out of hand as being studious or boring actually had more layers than an onion and an ability to quite twist one's mind around before the unfortunate victim had any idea what was happening. She found that she rather liked this quality. She herself was too fiery-tempered to do so, so she appreciated it in others. "In any case, they'll grow up two days before they die," Calista continued breezily. "My grandmother used to say that the day a man matures is the day to begin planning his funeral." She took a gulp of milk. "I'm not entirely sure she was wrong."
Despite herself, Ginny giggled. "Yet you handle one of the most difficult cases in the school with ease, apparently," she said with a sigh. "I wish I could do the same." She blushed, realizing what she'd said. "I don't mean-no! That would be just terrible! I mean to get him to leave me alone!"
Calista giggled and shook her head. "It's terribly easy, really. You put him in his place and keep him there." She smiled angelically. "It's simple enough. Boys, while undeniably insufferable, are simplistic, really. They haven't a clue what you're doing until you've done it, if you're careful."
"Easy for you to say," Ginny sighed, still fighting a losing war with the delicate skin natural to redheads. She would be blushing over the git, wouldn't she?
A very small girl with Asian features and the not-entirely-sure air of a first year settled across the table, her eyes glittering in what looked remarkably like malice. Calista looked at her, sighed, and greeted her with, "Echo, you shouldn't let him get to you like that."
The waiflike girl muttered something unintelligible, foreign, and by the sound of it quite nasty, and picked up an apple. "One of these days," she said with an elusive sort of accent, "I will hang him upside down and watch while he is flayed."
Su, who had just entered the Great Hall, was already there, patting the girl's shoulder and saying, as soothingly as she could, "Darling, you'll make him sorry he was ever born."
Calista sighed in exasperation. "Am I the only one able to handle a Slytherin, for Merlin's sake?"
"Slytherins," said three voices in perfect unison, "are pigs."
Ginny looked at the two Asian girls, the first year looking murderous and the Prefect amused, and saw the humour in the situation. She began to giggle. Soon, the other three joined her, and the day started with laughter. More than one pair of eyes turned in the direction of the mirth, quite a few of them Slytherins, and more than one of them male, but only Blaise Zabini had the good sense to be frightened.
At the Slytherin table, a first-year boy by the name of Benedick Jeunet was somewhat discontentedly rubbing an ink stain on his hand, and peering at the Ravenclaws out of the corner of his eyes. "What's they so happy about, I wonder?"
A few seats down, Warrington looked up from a copy of N.E.W.T.S: How to Survive Unscathed and glanced at the young boy, shrugging lightly. "Probably plotting the downfall of the universe as we know it," he answered, not seeming the least concerned. "Adclaro!" he waved his wand at the boy's hand, and the ink cleared away.
Benedick raised an eyebrow, smirking slightly. "Well... how much harm can they do? The little one..." he gestured discreetly at the first-year Ravenclaw girl who had been threatening such gruesome things earlier to her housemates, "Was hurrying... and bumped into me in the hallway. Splashed me with ink, too. Seems harmless enough..."
Blaise Zabini sighed and gave the boy a patient, if slightly patronizing look. "They all do, kid... they all do."
"The proper way of dealing with it all is to infuriate them as much as possible and yet remain unmutilated, of course," Warrington said breezily, closing his book and taking a sip of coffee. "Good morning, Malfoy," he greeted the Seeker as the latter plunked down between Blaise and Susannah Caligo. "You look rather... unrested. Dream much?"
Malfoy muttered something about nightmares and redheads, and the Head Boy sniggered, "Perhaps you should get a cold shower, hmm? Might... ah... wake you up?"
"If you're suggesting what I think you are, then you should also know that your life is in imminent danger..." Malfoy half-groaned, half-snarled.
Warrington looked wholly unconcerned, and grinned, "I get that a lot. Thank you."
***
The pairs for Prefect rounds were always shifted around, and with the system he and Angelina had worked out, no one pair should have been working together on any two nights running. It was a system brilliant in its simplicity.
Which was why Warrington didn't quite understand why he was wandering the corridors with Li for the fifth time in two weeks.
"You'd think they'd get tired of booby-trapping the Potions classroom in hopes of somehow murdering Snape," Su said exhaustedly, for they had just undone a rather nasty series of hexes and curses arrayed around the Potions classroom.
Warrington, still racking his brain about the mix-up in the perfect schedule, nevertheless managed an infuriating expression and shrugged. "They seem bright enough not to be caught. It's an exercise in counter-curses. Aren't you supposed to be good at Charms?"
"Bite me, Warrington," she said, having long-ago given up the pretense of innocence around him. Bantering was much more… satisfying.
"I never thought you'd ask," he said, with a smarmy sort of smile. "Unfortunately for you, I don't rob cradles."
"Unfortunately for you, if you touched me, I'd have to kill you," she said.
He laughed at that. "Unfortunately for you, if I wanted to, you'd have very little chance. I've manhandled you before, and I could certainly do it again. You're too small to make a sizeable dent in me."
"Does it hurt when your ego is twice the size of your body? It must be terribly uncomfortable."
"You flatter me," he said. Bantering with her was rather entertaining. Better than running the rounds with Malfoy, who whined about that Gryffindor girl, as teasing him was bound to get old after a while. After all, he wasn't able to properly snap back, as Su obviously could.
"You'd think they'd get creative, anyway. If you want to prank Snape, go for his Potions stores, or the supply of hair oil he must have hidden somewhere. If you want to prank Filch, go for-"
"The cat?" Warrington suggested. Just then, said creature came skulking down the hall, her eyes narrowed at them. She wasn't calling for Filch though-she must have known they had a perfect right to be here.
"Yes, Mrs. Norris," Su said, caught up in the planning. "After all, it's his most precious possession, Merlin knows why, with those eyes. Nothing to hurt her of course," she didn't approve of cruelty to animals, "but just something bound to hack Filch off indefinitely. Something like…"
"Capillus mutare puteulanus," Warrington said, waving his wand lazily at the cat in front of them. The creature looked as though it hadn't noticed the spell. Mrs. Norris was now, however, a violent shade of blue. "This?" he asked.
Su looked at the bright blue Mrs. Norris and struggled not to laugh. "Why blue?" she demanded. "I realize Ravenclaw is the superior house, but-"
"It's so they blame you, of course," he said, neatly cutting her off. "What Slytherin in his right mind would prank a cat another house's color, after all?"
"I fully agree about you being out of your right mind," Su said as the cat trotted off. "And oh, you'd like to think you're so very clever."
"Correction, Li. I know I'm very clever."
"You are, perhaps, a slight bit above your ridiculous housemates," she said. "But you've nothing on me, you smarmy Slytherin. I'm a Ravenclaw for a reason." She looked at her watch. "Rounds are up. See you in the morning." With that, she ran off towards her common room.
Neither was entirely sure who had gotten the last word.
