"You what?"

It was morning and Beth, rings around her eyes from lack of sleep, had just informed her friends that she had accepted Tom's implied apology. Her friends had become a more solid group, now. Sway and she remained distant friends but, now that Beth knew most of the history surrounding the groups people were in, they had little to speak of.

"Marcus, please, try to understand…"

He held up his hands, refusing to listen. "No. No way, not him!" He reached down, scooped up his back and almost ran from the hall. Bec sighed as Emily took off after Marcus.

"Don't worry, he'll get over it. You have the right to chose your own friends, he knows that."

Beth stared at her hands clenching in her lap. She was close to tears by his sudden and abrupt anger. Even when she had fought with him, Beth had never seen him quite so furious. She swallowed and nodded, smiling up at Bec.

"Yeah. Yes, you're right."

She was wrong.

"Beth, this is Razzy."

Tom watched nervously as Beth smiled unreservedly at Razzy.

"Nice to meet you."

Razzy seemed nice enough. During the hour she spent with Tom and Razzy, Beth gradually grew accustomed to their love-hate relationship.

As Beth started to spread her wings a little, with her new and very conflicting friendships, she also started to suffer. She had already received status of sympathetic ear, so when someone had a problem, they'd go to her. Unfortunately, most of the time the problem was with someone else. Marcus constantly complained about Tom and vice versa. The two boys hated each other with a vengeance and Beth had, unwittingly, thrown herself in the firing line. Day after day each boy criticized the other, sometimes the condemnation rubbing off on her.

"How can you be friends with him, are you blind?"

It was times like this that Beth sighed and just kept her mouth shut until the tirade had finished.

Emily and Razzy hated each other, almost as bad as the Marcus and Tom dispute. Joe disapproved of everyone and, given a chance, would tell Beth so, sparing no details on how he felt.

By her fourth month at Hogwarts, Beth was a mess.

She felt like a stone wall between two countries. Each country kept trying to shoot the other, but instead of the bullets hitting the enemy, they pelted into the wall. Deep down she knew that, very soon, if this didn't stop, someone was going to shoot the stone at the very bottom and the entire wall would collapse.

Some days were a haven.

She would sit with Tom, late at night, and just talk about anything and everything. He pulled out his wand once and waved it in front of her nose, showing off.

"Yew. Unicorn hair. Eight and a half inches…"

Beth smiled impishly. "Dear, don't you wish something else was eight and a half inches?"

"What makes you think it isn't?"

She held up her hands in mock terror. "No, I don't want any proof, shut up, I'll believe you!"

"Alright… See Flint today?"

"Oh, no, please, I don't want to hear it. Not tonight," she looked at him imploringly. Her entire body was weak with the exhaustion of constantly defending everyone.

He grinned. "Ok… for a kiss."

She stared at him. "Huh?"

"One kiss and I'll shut up about it." He leaned back in the leather sofa and smiled, pleased with himself. "On the lips."

"Tom, give me a break…"

"Just one, that's all I'm asking."

Beth sighed and got to her feet. She walked over, leaned down and kissed him gently, her lips only just brushing against his. She pulled away and looked down at him. His eyes stayed closed for a second and, when he opened them, the familiar smirk lit up his face again,

"Not bad."

"Don't smirk. And that's a once only, so I hope you cherished that one."

"I did."

"Good to hear."

"Ok."

"Fine."

Tom was sitting in the common room a week later. As Beth jumped the last three stairs and bounded into the wide, cold room, she frowned at the sight of him. He turned blearily, blinking hard as if to force his eyes to focus. Beth cautiously approached him then backed off at twice the speed.

"You're drunk!"

He grinned and nodded. His shirt was traditionally open, his tie draped around his neck. Seemingly unaware of the chill in the room, he lazed back in the sofa, lifting up the bottle dangling from his fingertips and using the dark neck to acknowledge a very appalled Beth.

"That… would be right," he slurred, his head lolling around and his eyes shutting of their own accord. "But seeing as I don' need to be sober no more, there ain' no poin' in stayin'… sober."

She reached out for the bottle and gently pulled it from his grasp. "Why don't you need to be sober?"

"Razzy… dumped me for that… I don' know, one of 'em. She 'as too many boys…"

Beth sighed and hauled Tom to his feet. "Come on, you need to sleep this off."

Bit by bit she heaved the drunken boy bodily up to his dorm and, in anger and frustration, dumped him on the bed where he immediately began to snore.