Every Other Time
Chapter Nine: Never Let You Go
Dove: So, you thought it couldn't possibly get any better. And then there was this chapter :big grin: Among many other things, Echo kills a plant, Draco gets some of his good humour back, our protagonists have a… moment… and Su gets called a sex-starved firecracker. Not necessarily in that order, mind you.
Thalia: Score one for Warrington, by the way. Yes, he is always this evil. One should look at who made him eyebrow raise. Anyway, aside from all those, poor Tracey. Except, not really. And I really would like it to be "pounce a bad boy week" :smirk:.
Disclaimer: We own sexy male Slytherins. They plan a hostile takeover of our minds. They, being Slytherins, succeed. We get arrested for doing eeeeeeeeeeevil things while under their control. No net access in jail. From the fact that this fic exists, I suppose you can logically assume that we don't really own them :shifty eyes:.
"There's every good reason
For letting you go,
She's sneaky and smoked out
And it's starting to show…
I'll never let you go,
I'll never let you go,
I'll never let you go,
I'll never let you go..."
-Third Eye Blind, "Never Let You Go"
There were certain things Su Li had to put up with, all things considered, once she resigned herself to the fact that she was crazy about a Slytherin, particularly since he was the most difficult species of Slytherin, and she could not really predict him at all. As it was his move to determine the outcome of… everything, there was a great deal she was forced to put up with, with a smile on her face.
Tracey Davis was not one of these things.
Accordingly, shortly after the group siesta also known as History of Magic, the small Ravenclaw girl pulled the curly-haired Slytherin aside by the sleeve, not so much as giving a reason for her behaviour. Tracey, being bright enough to realize one did not upset a Prefect without good cause, followed along, wondering what on earth could be going on.
Having pulled Tracey around a corner, Su released her sleeve and looked up at her, her eternal smile in place and her eyes shooting sparks. Like it or not, Tracey began to think that following along without raising a fuss had been the wrong thing to do, after all. She still didn't know what this was about, so she lifted a hand and twirled one on her curls around her finger. "Yes, Li?" she asked.
"I could call you a vile, despicable vixen of a wench," Su said matter-of-factly. She paid no mind to the immediately offended expression on Tracey's face, and instead continued. "I, however, have more class than that, and therefore will simply tell you this: if you were Susannah Caligo, or even remotely in the same class as Susannah Caligo, I might let this pass." She smiled brightly as she looked up at the other girl, who was only of medium height and still managed to be a deal taller. "You, on the other hand, are no match for her, physically or mentally, and certainly no match for me in the mental respect, and therefore, I had thought I'd warn you."
"Of what?" Tracey said, very offended. Honestly, what right did this little girl have to talk about her style? She had been emulating Susannah for years! Certainly she must have had it down by now!
"Of a little thing called property," Su said, leaning in a little, causing Tracey to involuntarily take a step back and press her back against the wall. "Namely, if you poach on mine, you are asking for an early and horrific death."
Tracey now had a fair idea what she was talking about, and tried to laugh it off, but the expression on the small, delicate face was not a funny one. "Are you threatening to kill me over Cassius?" she said, giving half a smile and crossing her arms in front of her for the sake of protection. "How juvenile."
"Oh no, I'm not threatening to kill you, at moment," Su said matter-of-factly. "That would be a waste of my time." She shrugged. "Now then, let me clarify. Cassius Warrington had better not exist as far as you are concerned starting… now. If you choose to ignore this warning, you will get one more, in the guise of an anonymous letter to your parents detailing a certain scene I walked in on in the Astronomy Tower which I let slide… involving, as I recall a certain very non-Slytherin boy who, on top of all other faults, is Muggle-born." Su's smile was predatory. "If you choose to ignore this warning as well, the next will be something slipped into your shampoo bottle which will cause all those lovely curls to fall out, against which there is no protective potion. Finally, if walking around bald doesn't hinder you, then I will threaten to kill you, and mean it. Do we have this clear?" She patted Tracey's suddenly very white cheek and said, "Good girl. Now then, there will be not a word of this spoken to anyone. Run along and behave."
Turning her back on Tracey, she walked away with a carefree expression on her face. She knew when she had won.
That evening, there were a few noted absences from the Slytherin table during dinner. If Cassius Warrington had noticed that Emma Dobbs, Susannah Caligo, Pansy Parkinson and Tracey Davis were all gone, he certainly didn't say anything. The Head Boy sat in seeming obliviousness with his teammates, sipping pumpkin juice and flipping with interest through a new book on Chaser strategies, taking an occasional bite of his meal.
It was only when Montague, who had certainly noticed his girlfriend's absence, prodded him with the blunt end of his butter knife and remarked "Your little Ravenclaw is sending some very triumphant looks in your general direction," that Cassius looked up. His expression was very blank.
"I can't imagine why... she hasn't bothered me today," the Head Boy declared. "Perhaps she has found some easier target whose life she has effectually made miserable. Good for her."
It was a partial fabrication.
A wincing house-elf, carrying a huge tray of chocolate ice cream, chocolate brownies and mugs of hot chocolate (one special glass imbibed with a dose of tranquility potion), appeared in the Slytherin common room and headed towards Susannah Caligo, who had a very long-suffering expression on her face and whose lap held a head of flaxen hair which was emitting some most unpleasant wails and loud sniffles. "Here, Miss Caligo, Lindy is bringing the chocolate for Miss Davis, and..." the House Elf set the tray down on the coffee table in front of Susannah, and pointed to the green mug.
Susannah sighed and gave a nod. "Thank you, Lindy. That will be all." Lindy nodded, gave an odd little bow, and disappeared with a pop. Susannah looked down at the hairy mass resting in her lap, and gave it a delicate pat. "Tracey, dearest, do stop crying and eat some chocolate. You will feel better."
Tracey's head slowly emerged from the older girl's lap, her nose a most unbecoming shade of red and her eye makeup running down her cheeks in rivulets. Susannah gracefully handed the fifth year a handkerchief and nodded at the tray of delectables on the table. "Now, tell us, what's the matter?"
As Tracey blew her nose loudly into the delicate lace handkerchief, Pansy rolled her eyes at Emma and muttered out of the corner of her mouth, "What's the matter is that she doesn't realize that if she were to shed tears while wearing makeup, she should at least hit the mascara with an Impervious charm first..." Emma bit down a snigger, and put up a sympathetic, innocent face as she, too, looked at the still-sniffling Tracey with an expectant expression.
"She's... that horrible Ravenclaw bint... she..." Evidently, Tracey could not find enough words in her vocabulary to properly vocalize just what calamity had befallen her poor, hapless head compliments of a Ravenclaw.
"All right," Susannah picked up the green mug of hot chocolate and handed it to Tracey, "take a little sip and calm down. We can't understand you if you're crying so hard."
Quite a few not-quite-ladylike, shaky gulps later, Tracey turned her dejected, pouting face towards Susannah and mumbled something about evil fifth year Prefects who actually had the audacity to think that they owned a Slytherin... Li didn't own Cassius, did she!
Susannah rolled her eyes expressively over Tracey's bowed head, and answered in as patient a voice as she could muster. "Well, my cousin's business is his own, and not mine. But then, he's not really your type, I'd say, dear... he's not exactly the type who would be the most docile and mild-mannered of boyfriends, I daresay..."
"But he's Head Boy!" Tracey whined. "If I couldn't make Prefect this year, at least I should be sha—"
"Oh, Tracey," Pansy butted in, "please don't tell me that you'd shag anyone or anything that was a Head Boy. Why the deuce didn't you shag Weasley two years ago, hmm?"
Tracey gave her roommate a watery glare and immersed herself in the chocolate ice cream. Emma, a patented look of innocence on her features, handed Tracey a brownie.
"Warrington probably has his hands full anyway, even if he weren't shagging Li," the small Slytherin girl remarked soothingly. "I mean, Quidditch, Head Boy duties, strings to pull, minds to manipulate... that sort of thing..."
"Meaning, he's out of your league," Pansy muttered under her breath, before saying aloud, "Stick to someone your year, Tracey. Then you can shag him again next year without him having to sneak into your dormitory from outside the castle. How about Theodore Nott? Oh... and I'm not letting you borrow my face powder any more if you're just going to weep it all over the place."
As the girlish tête-à-tête was going on in the common room, Benedick Jeunet, exultant over homework completed, had poked his head into the common room, wondering if anyone was up for fencing.
Hearing the wails as soon as he reached the entrance, the boy grimaced. Bloody mad girls... sneaking in on tiptoe and grabbing the closest foil off the rack by door, he gave a heavy sigh and walked back out. Now, to find an empty classroom or something of the sort...
Three floors up and down a dusty corridor, he decided he was far enough from anyplace any female of his house could possibly find him. Ravenclaw Tower was somewhere around here, but clearly, no one really used this hallway. He picked a room at random and pushed the door open.
He was greeted by the rather odd sight of a small girl balanced precariously on the windowsill in an anatomically improbable position, talking in a quietly furious voice at a dying flower in a jar. With her long black hair pulled up in two buns, it took him a moment to recognize the tiny Ravenclaw he had knocked to the ground sometime near the beginning of the year and who had since been giving him poisonous looks each time they met. She was wearing a leotard in pale rose and pink tights rolled up to her knees. Her right leg was up along the window frame in a way he didn't study too closely in fear of becoming ill. "Iie! Hana no baka!" she hissed. "Naze? Naze desu ka?" The droopy flower chose this moment to drop another petal onto the windowsill.
It was all rather comical, really.
His idea to walk away and close the door behind him quietly was shattered as Echo looked up and saw him in the doorway. Her eyes widened and she attempted to extricate herself from her position on the windowsill. The roll of her tights got caught on the lock, she flailed a moment, then flipped onto the ground head first, taking the flower with her. The jar shattered, water splattered all over the neat wooden floor of the room, and the flower, giving up its last legs, was crushed under the arm she put out to stop her fall.
Benedick wished dearly he could repeat her next phrase, which was no doubt enlightening.
She stood, every bit as pink as her leotard, attempted to brush most of the water off of herself, and glared up at him. "What you want?" she demanded, this time in English. "If just to call me a clumsy idiot, get it over with and go away!"
"That wasn't exactly my plan for the evening," he said, struggling not to laugh. He lifted the hand which still held the foil. "I was just looking for someplace to practice."
"This is my spot to practice," Echo said heatedly.
"That was practice?" he said curiously. "What were you practicing; how to kill flowers by suggestion?"
Now she was considerably closer to purple. "Shut up, baka Slytherin. Go find someone else to torment." Her voice held tears, but her face was all anger. She picked up a pair of heavily worn satin slippers from the windowsill and waved them wildly at him as though she held a weapon. "Stay in dungeons and rot," she said angrily. "Go on! Why are you still here?"
"Is there a reason you hate me so much, or is this the way you treat anyone who walks in on your… unique… study habits?"
She threw a toe shoe at his head. He caught it easily with his free hand and raised an eyebrow at her in that patented Slytherin fashion. "All right, little demon, you win, I lose, I'm leaving," he said airily as he dropped the shoe on the floor. "There are enough hysterical females in my own house for me to deal with you, too." He turned and walked out the door and, closing it behind him, added, "Make sure none of the glass pierced your skin." There was the sound of the other shoe thumping to the floor after hitting the closed door. He shook his head, decided he would never understand females, and went off in search of an alternate location.
Cassius Warrington walked out of the Headmaster's office with a meditative sort of expression on his face. He'd just had a brief conference with Dumbledore about the upcoming Christmas activities of that year, and had parted with Angelina towards the front entrance, as the Head Girl muttered something about her Potions homework and went off towards the Head student quarters.
As he watched Angelina leave, Warrington reflected, rather wryly, that at the moment, perhaps his rival captain might be one of the few relatively sane females left in the school. Certainly, a good percentage of girls in both Ravenclaw and Slytherin seemed to be... acting peculiar... as of late.
As if on cue, he spotted a small, blonde figure walking towards the main doors. Speeding up his pace slightly, he approached her, a slight smirk on his face.
"And what might you be doing?" he asked when he got within ten feet of her. "Sneaking out, are you?"
Su raised an eyebrow in unconscious imitation of him. "Quidditch practice, if you must know," she replied.
Warrington walked towards her at a leisurely pace, as she stood still with her back against one of the columns by the door. "Where are your teammates, then?"
"Probably arriving soon, except for Cho, who is probably already out there," she replied evenly. "Are we to continue talking about Quidditch with you waiting in vain hope that I might drop some team secrets, or shall we move onto other, more interesting things?"
"And what 'other, more interesting things' might you suggest?" he asked silkily. He was about two feet away from her now, eyes sweeping lazily over her face. "Shall I be expecting more blatant sexual advances upon my person, with or without the added benefit of a convenient closet?"
She almost growled at the completely cool manner in which he remarked upon that incident. He had an infuriatingly sardonic expression on his face, and for one mad moment, she debated either taking his challenge, or perhaps slapping him again. Heaven knew he deserved it, the bloody pillock...
But instead, she raised her chin, almost defiantly, and gave him a beatific little smile. "Now, now... that would be utterly terrible of me, would it not? After all, there seems to be that pretty little blonde in your house and my year, who pines for you so..."
"So that's why Tracey seems to have suddenly developed Ravenclawphobia," Cassius replied, unconcerned. "I hear from my cousin that she made quite the scene last night. Sad, isn't it?"
"Sad? I wouldn't say that Tracey Davis whining is a sad phenomenon. Rather a boringly predictable one."
"Not that." He stared down into her face. "It's merely so sad... all these silly housemates of mine. So many seem to have been infected by a contagious infatuation bug and are acting in such ridiculous ways..." And perhaps, it wasn't just Slytherins.
She gave him a piercing, challenging look and crossed her arms. "And I suppose that you think that you're immune to that, just like you're the exception to every other rule?"
He'd reached out his hand in the middle of her retort, his gaze fixed upon her lips as she snapped at him, and when she finished speaking, settled his hand upon her shoulder. When her eyes widened a bit, he stepped even closer, tempted for a moment to give her a taste of her own medicine, when an even more diabolical idea sprung up in his mind.
Deliberately, he moved in upon her, so close that their robes brushed, well aware of the advantage he had due to height and size, and slowly, moved his hand inward towards her face, fingertips brushing against her neck. As his hand cupped her face, she froze, eyes wide, and he felt a savage sense of satisfaction even as he used his hand to tilt her face upwards and leaned in.
Her breath caught in her throat as his face came closer to hers, a strange glint in his eyes and his hand, surprisingly warm, held her chin in place. And when she could feel his breath stirring her hair, she lowered her eyelashes.
But he merely brushed his thumb slowly over her parted lips, and smirked as he whispered into her hair. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
And then, before she could react or even move again, still reeling over their proximity, he'd pulled away, and her eyes snapped open to watch his retreating back disappear down the hall.
It took Su a good ten minutes to recover herself. Damn him! She even began wandering aimlessly in the direction of her common room to think this out in peace when she chanced to look out the window and beheld tiny blue-clad figures whizzing around above the pitch. Quidditch Practice!
Mentally growling, she took off running down the stairs, and appeared, wheezing and huffing, a good quarter-hour late. After bearing Cho's stony glare, which promised her a severe talking-to later, she clambered up on her broom and took to the air.
Clearly, her mind was not in the game, as a Quaffle thrown by Zach Turpin which any first year should have been able to catch got her straight in the midsection and nearly sent her spiraling off of her broom. She was narrowly rescued from this fate by Terry, who dropped his Beater club to catch her by the scruff of the neck and set her back on her broom with a reproving look.
"Practice is over for the day," came Cho's clipped voice. This was unusual, as they had the pitch for another ten minutes at least, but no one seemed inclined to argue with her. "Su, stay behind, please."
As everyone else went to the showers, Su lowered to the ground, her head hanging in shame. She had never played this badly. She said nothing, waiting for the older girl to join her.
"What is wrong with you, Su?" Cho asked in a tone considerably less angry than could have been expected under the circumstances. "I've never seen you like this."
"Cassius Bloody Warrington," Su said, clenching her teeth. "I'm sorry, Cho; I won't drag the team down again."
Cho sighed. "Go get your shower." As Su went off, a very determined glint could be seen in Cho's eyes. "This is going clearly out of control," she said under her breath.
That night, Cho was the first to show up for Prefect rounds. As soon as Warrington, followed by Draco and Susannah, appeared, she took hold of a fistful of his robe and said evenly, "Warrington, you're with me. Come on."
With that, she dragged him off, to the amused, "What's with the Ravenclaws lately?" from Draco.
After a few moments of stony silence as the two of them descended towards the dungeons, Warrington chanced a very odd look at his companion before speaking. "Okay, I realize that I am devastatingly attractive and irresistibly charismatic, but isn't it enough that one mad little Ravenclaw Asian is complicating my life? What is this, pounce a bad boy week in your house?"
Cho stood and looked up at him. Her foot was tapping ever so slightly on the stone floor. He could have sworn her eyes were glowing. "What did you do to her!"
There was no explanation whatsoever needed as to who she meant. Warrington raised a brow at her and told the truth. "Absolutely nothing."
"You utter bastard," she said.
Warrington grinned down at her in his most charming fashion. "Why thank you."
There was a sharp intake of breath from Cho, and then silence. She appeared to be counting to ten. Finally, she spoke in a terribly calm voice. "Why didn't you do anything!"
Now Warrington was slightly confused. He regarded her quizzically. "First I'm told I'm molesting a young girl in Knockturn Alley when I am rescuing said young girl from almost certain doom. Then, when I do absolutely nothing to said young girl and am, in fact, the very essence of the word 'gentleman', I am asked why I did not throw her on the ground and have my way with her? Is that what you're asking me?"
"Are you always this difficult?"
"No, generally I'm far worse," he said honestly. "Not that any of my… dealings with Li have… anything at all to do with you."
"Since I assume that means you haven't heard of friendship," Cho said evenly, "I'll give it to you in terms you will understand. Su nearly fell off her broom in Quidditch today and might have been seriously injured. That aside, she has been distracted, irritable, and late for practice. Even without my personal relationship with her, surely you can understand how I dislike such things happening to my Quidditch team."
"So now you're telling me my not throwing Li down on the floor and et cetera… is sabotaging your Quidditch game?"
"If that's the only way you can wrap your twisted mind around it," Cho said evenly.
"All right, so basically you have a sex-starved firecracker on your hands, and thus your Quidditch game is an utter mess. And what you want out of me to remedy this is..?"
A small muscle was twitching near Cho's eye, but her voice was calm. "You either care about Su… or you do not. Make up your mind, will you, and get on with it. Stop playing with her."
"By playing, do you mean—"
"Stuff it, Warrington, I'm very serious."
"Let me remind you she's been playing with me and everyone else in the castle since the beginning of the year," he countered. "She's only getting a taste of her own medicine. And she really doesn't need you to defend her."
"No, she doesn't, but she has me, anyway," Cho said. "And… seriously, Warrington… trite as this is, someone like Su doesn't come around every corner. Despite her utterly evil nature and her marginal insanity… well, what am I talking about? Those are probably the things you like about her." She swallowed a laugh. "Don't mess with my Chaser's head, Warrington," she said. "Now, go to bed and put your brains in order. Night."
