Disclaimer: I don't own one hair on Harry Potter's head. It all belongs to JK Rowling. The Cynic's Dictionary (source of the definitions for monkeys, accidental magic, chic and dances) belongs to Rick Bayan. The Devil's Dictionary (source of the definitions for lunatic, Lunarian, clarinet, noise, beauty and dancing) belongs to the venerable Ambrose Bierce. The literary free-for-all that is Elizabethan spelling belongs to Elizabethan people: Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson, Shakespeare, et al., and seems to be dependent on how they were feeling that day and what colour doublet they were wearing.

A/N: A big thank you to my fabulous SQ beta-reader Igenlode Wordsmith, who is (as the phrase 'fabulous beta-reader' might suggest) both my beta-reader and fabulous.

Keep an eye out for Coffee, the sequel to Cheese! Coming soon (I hope).

Chapter Four - Cheddar

Who would have thought it? Sylvia Fawcett, victim of a Christmas romance.

Well, maybe victim isn't the right word. Participant, perhaps. Partaker. Accomplice. Yes, that one's good. Sylvia Fawcett, accomplice of Edmund Stebbins in the Dreddfulle and Moste Tragycalle Mysterye of the Yuletide Romaunce in Ye Olde Worlde Lounge Belongyng To Pryfecttes.

Definitely not girlfriend. Only people like Cho Chang and Sabina are girlfriends - you know, the nice, normal people that hold hands in the corridors and feed each other strawberries covered in chocolate. Cynics aren't girlfriends. We're partners in crime, co-conspirators, accessories - not girlfriends.

Well, except on social occasions.

This was the sort of tricky definition question I was pondering when I made my way back to my dormitory that afternoon. If I was inclined to that sort of thing, I might have said I was in a post-snog daze. I, Sylvia Fawcett, whose only claim to fame was having a far more attractive twin sister, was a girlfr - an accomplice. I, who was quite prepared to think I'd die old and alone in a draughty cottage in Cornwall with thirty pet Kneazles to keep me company, had a boyfr - a partner in crime.

Yes, all right, maybe I was in a post-snog daze. It's the only excuse I have. Under normal circumstances, I never would have been distracted enough to allow myself to be pounced upon by two rabid monkeys the moment I entered the dormitory. Some arboreal animal that makes its home in genealogical trees, anyway. It was Nydia and Juno, ape women extraordinaire.

"Where have you been, Sylvester?" Nydia screeched.

"We've been so worried!" Juno shrieked.

"You could have been eaten -"

"- by a cockatrice -"

"- or a gargoyle -"

"- or a Dementor -"

"- or Snape -"

Accidental magic of the emotion-based, variety, while virtually useless when one's opponent is armed with a wand and the words Avada Kedavra, is not without its advantages – the principal one being that it is accidental and hence unexpected. Both Juno and Nydia went flying backwards and landed (disappointingly) on my bed.

"Damn," I said, standing up and brushing myself off, "if only I'd left my Chinese torture knives on the bed instead under it."

Juno sat up. "Seriously, Sylvia, where have you been?"

I've been making out with Edmund Stebbins in the Prefects' Lounge. Yes, that would be a very good thing to tell Juno and Nydia. If I want it to be published in the Daily Prophet tomorrow.

"Not here, obviously," I replied coolly.

"But where?" Those two were incorrigible, really.

"Elsewhere."

Nydia sat up too. "Ooooh, Sylvia, who's the lucky boy?"

Puréed Merlin on toast.

Stay cool, Sylvia, stay cool. They do not have Monitoring Charms in the Prefects' Lounge. There are wards against that sort of thing.

"Why on earth," I asked loftily, "would there have to be a boy involved?"

"There's always a boy!"

I shot Nydia a Look. "You expect any self-respecting male in this school to put up with me for more than five minutes?"

She looked thoughtful. "Hmm. Good point."

Fawcett Rule #1 For Dealing With Nosy Dormitory Mates: When said NDMs get far too close to the truth for your own comfort, change the subject.

"You do know it's five o'clock, right? And the ball starts at eight?"

"BOLLOCKS!"

When it comes to dealing with NDMs, I've only ever needed one rule. Distraction is a better weapon than a wand any day.

I've never really understood how it can take Nydia and Juno three hours to get ready for a dance. I mean, who are they going to see? Exactly the same people they see everyday. So why spend that amount of time getting ready? Some mysteries I will never fathom.

So for the remainder of that afternoon I lounged around casually on my bed reading The Acharnians by Aristophanes (I was up to the bit where they put the dog on trial. I'm a big fan of the A-man: he's got a great sense of humour). Meanwhile. Nydia and Juno ran around like lunatics (one whom the moon inhabits: not to be confused with Lunarian, one who inhabits the moon, or Luna Lovegood, rather strange third year Ravenclaw who will happily tell you that the moon is made of Wensleydale cheese) with hairbrushes and nail varnish and, obscurely, a stuffed purple dragon called Floogle.

"Bollocks!" Juno moaned. "Hengist will never look at me again if I turn up like this!"

I looked up. "You're going with Hengist? As in Summers?"

"Yeah." Juno's eyes glazed over.

I couldn't help it. Much as I tried to stifle it, the snort of laughter emerged.

Juno gave me a Look. "Exactly what is wrong with Hengist Summers?" she snapped.

"You didn't see him after he took the Aging Potion." My sides were shaking with silent laughter. When Sabina and I had got there on the night she tried to submit her name for the Triwizard Tournament, McGonagall and Sprout were trying to bodily haul a wizened, dwarven Summers away from the Goblet. From memory, Summers had been shrieking and wheezing like an asthmatic kettle, but both Sabina and I had been laughing too hard at what he looked like to notice exactly what he was saying. Even after Sabina had tried to cross the Age Line herself and had also failed spectacularly, she hadn't looked quite as stupid as Summers had. Certainly, her beard had been a much nicer colour.

Nydia sighed. "I'd rather go with Hengist Summers than my date," she grumbled.

I quirked an eyebrow. I wasn't going to gratify her by asking who she was going with. Exhibit A: Sylvia Fawcett, the one and only clinical cynical Hufflepuff.

She sighed again and answered her own question. "Kevin Quindle."

I couldn't help it. I almost keeled over laughing. Nydia, Witch Weekly Quiz Taker Extraordinaire, reduced to taking Kevin Quindle to the ball. What's wrong with this picture?

Nydia humphed. "Well, it's not like YOU have a date, Sylvia!"

"Not through lack of offers, though," Juno added. "She turned down Kevin and Kenneth Towler, remember!"

"I don't know why you rejected Kenneth Towler," Nydia said, looking rather cross. "I'd have gone with him in a second."

"I would have gone with him as well," Juno said. "I mean, I would have hired a lion tamer to tame his hair first, but I would have gone with him. But you just made up a stupid excuse about going with someone else!"

"But I am going with someone else, you idiots!"

Juno and Nydia both looked at me with one of those looks that says 'What on earth are you talking about?'

"What do you mean you're going with someone else?" Juno finally spluttered.

"I mean, I'm going with someone else! It's not like I hate Kenneth Towler or anything - I actually am going with someone else!" Honestly, for two girls so constantly in tune to the grapevine, how could they miss that one?

"Who?" Nydia asked, still looking slightly shell-shocked.

"Edmund Stebbins!" I replied exasperatedly.

"WHAT?"

"How did you not know that?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, you could have told us! That might have helped!" Juno said huffily.

"Honestly, you two knew that I told Kevin to bugger off before I even said it! How could you not know that Edmund and I were going together?"

"Well, it's not like you told anyone, is it?"

"And Edmund certainly didn't tell anyone!"

"And there were obviously no witnesses!"

"We were in the bloody library! Someone must have heard!"

Juno and Nydia looked solemnly at each other. "Some people have all the luck," Nydia sighed.

"What?" I asked.

"Edmund Stebbins is goooooooooooooorgeous," Juno moaned.

I snorted. "No he's not. He's gangly and he has a hairy back and he'll be grey by the time he's twenty-five."

Nydia looked at me suspiciously. "And just how do you know he has a hairy back, Sylvester?"

Bollocks.

"I may or may not have walked in on him in the Prefect's Bathroom while he had his shirt off," I said primly, trying desperately to maintain my poker face. Ah, bad, bad excuses. How bad this one was.

Juno sighed again. "That would have been the best Christmas present in the entire world! And you still persist that you hate Christmas!"

"That's why they call me a cynic," I replied, before returning to The Acharnians.

Honestly, is Edmund Stebbins the only person that has come anywhere near close to understanding me?

Well, I actually did get ready for the ball, but I won't detail that experience here. Somehow, an account of me, Sylvia Fawcett, making herself look chic (read: considered smart without the deadening implication of intelligence) would not be in keeping with the cynical quality of this story.

But, believe it or not, I do know how to use makeup, and, if I do say so myself, I looked rather good.

Apparently Edmund thought the same thing. Or maybe I was just imagining that clunking sound when his jaw hit the floor.

"Hi," I said to him when he met me at five to eight. "Shut your mouth, you're dribbling."

Thankfully - because while a handsome and cynical dance partner is one thing, a handsome, cynical and dribbling dance partner is quite another - he snapped out of it and put on a look of mock affront.

"You're not supposed to speak to the future Minister for Magic like that, you know!"

I made a show of looking around. "Harry Potter? Where?"

He laughed and offered me his arm. "Let's move over here so we don't get trampled."

"Attempting to be all genteel, eh?" I commented as I took his arm.

"That's me," he replied. "Refined genteel Edmund Stebbins. Look, there are some flying pigs over there."

"No, that's Draco Malfoy's date." Malfoy's pug-faced woman, whoever she was, was wearing something very frilly and very pink, while the Talentless Git himself was wearing black velvet.

Edmund chuckled. "He looks like a priest with a clarinet stuck up his backside."

"There are worse instruments than a clarinet, you know."

"Yeah. Two clarinets."

"Champions over here, please!" McGonagall's voice sounded over the top of the random noise. Ah, noise. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.

"Let's go and be normal, darling," Edmund told me, pulling me along with the rest of the school as the teachers herded us into the Great Hall like so many buffalo.

"If you keep calling me darling, this relationship will be going nowhere fast," I warned him, grinning.

He pretended to sob. "But I thought you said I was the only one who was allowed to call you darling!"

"Yeah, well, be grateful you aren't dead yet."

He laughed. "I'll keep it in mind."

I won't deny that I was pleased to see Kenneth Towler had managed to get himself a date. Cynical and cold-hearted as I may generally seem to be, I wouldn't want to have scarred the boy for life or anything by rejecting him. Though I must admit I didn't think much of his date's dress sense - orange robes aren't my style.

Edmund and I stood off to the side as the four sets of champions began to dance. Harry Potter looked incredibly short in comparison with the others. His date was steering him like a broomstick. Poor boy.

Edmund snickered. "Look who Fleur Delacour snaffled as a date!"

"I don't think I'll ever look at Roger Davies the same way again," I murmured to Edmund. Delacour and Davies were snogging as if there was no tomorrow in the middle of the dance floor, making McGonagall's lips go so thin that they looked in need of medical treatment for anorexia. Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang, apparently about an inch from snogging as well, had settled for staring lovingly into each other's eyes. They'd obviously been reading too many soppy romance novels.

Krum, as usual, looked like an utter thicko - does anyone else apart from me think Krum is as thick as a brick? - but his date looked very pretty. Ah, beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

"You do realise we're going to have to dance, don't you?" Edmund whispered to me as the champions' dance ended and McGonagall marched in to separate Davies and Delacour.

"I only accepted your invitation so I could leap about to tittering music with you. How could you ever think otherwise?"

The band struck up some kind of music - which, thankfully, contained no clarinets. And we danced.

The thing about all dances is that despite the fact they're supposed to be romantic, and romance is something that has no allegiance to the God of Things As They Are. Which means that dances are, on the whole, sickeningly sweet and horribly dishonest.

Which is why Edmund and I spent a good part of our night outside. If there is one thing cynics aren't, it's sickeningly sweet and horribly dishonest.

Most of the time, anyway.

"You know, I never gave you your Christmas present," Edmund remarked. Time had passed, considering the Yule Ball was due to end in, oh, an hour.

Note that we had spent a lot of time prior to this conspicuously not talking. Which might account for the fact we were standing behind a rose bush. I leave the rest to your imagination.

"Well, I did get you a Christmas present," I told him, "but it was a clarinet, so I decided not to give it to you."

"Not giving me a clarinet is a far better Christmas present than giving me a clarinet," he replied. "They're archaic instruments of torture."

"That can only be operated by someone with cotton in their ears?" I added dryly.

He grinned and pulled out his wand. "Accio!"

A few seconds later, I was knocked forwards into his arms as a flying box hit me in the back of the head. "Thankyou very much," I said dryly, as he set me back on my feet. "Is this where you ask if I had a nice trip and I groan at the agonisingly bad pun?"

Edmund smiled and handed me the box. "I'd say Merry Christmas, but I like my head where it is," he told me.

"Bright blue wrapping paper. Unusual," I said as I tore it off.

"Well, we don't have a great variety of colours in the Ravenclaw common room - apparently, we're too intellectual to think about trivial things like wrapping paper. It was blue or green with singing dancing Santas, which I didn't think you'd like too much."

"You're right. I wouldn't."

It was a book, but I couldn't see what it was. I pulled out my wand. "Lumos."

The words The Devil's Dictionary were scrawled across the front. I looked at Edmund. "Is this what I think it is?"

He grinned. "Open it."

I did. To Sylvia, From Edmund, With Love (see p. 112) was scrawled on the front page. "See page 112?" I said.

"Just look," he urged me.

On page 112, one entry was marked with a red asterisk.

'Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.'

I grinned at him. "Only you would buy me the father of all cynical dictionaries and asterisk the entry for love, Edmund."

He laughed and kissed me. "I'm glad you like it."

"I have a Christmas present for you too," I told him.

"Really? Where is it?"

"In my dormitory. Accio!"

The flying present landed neatly in my lap. "See, it really isn't necessary to knock people out when performing the Summoning Charm," I told him as I gave him the gift.

"Red and green paper, Sylvia?" Edmund quirked an eyebrow.

"Well, people in Hufflepuff are trivial enough to know that red and green are Christmas colours. Hence, it was the only wrapping paper in the common room."

He laughed. "Your much-vaunted intelligence won't help you when Charms Club starts up again, let me tell you."

I stuck my tongue out at him. "Just open the present, would you?"

"All right, all right!"

It was a block of blue vein cheese.

With 'Your Partner In Crime As A Piece Of Cheese' charmed into the top.

"I love it!" he exclaimed.

"It's cheesy," I admitted.

He smiled. "Delightfully cheddar."

I smiled. "Merry Christmas, Edmund."

And then the rose bush blew up.

I have to say, that was one of the most terrifying moments in my life. I thought, for one horrible second, that Edmund and I were both going to die, that the school was being attacked by Death Eaters left over from the seventies (though, in retrospect, they would have to be really dedicated to be hanging around for fourteen years.) I didn't think - not even about Edmund. I just ran.

"Ten points from Hufflepuff, Fawcett!" I heard someone snarl as I sprinted past, arms clutched round The Devil's Dictionary in an effort to protect it from our nameless attackers. "And ten points from Ravenclaw too, Stebbins!"

Snape. It was Snape.

I stopped. I had just been terrified out of my wits... by the only man with hair worse than Kenneth Towler's.

Sautéed Merlin served with a side-dish of radishes.

Edmund had caught up to me, cheese in hand. "Well," he said conversationally, "that was exciting."

I felt like banging my head against the nearest wall. "I feel like such an idiot," I moaned.

"Well, at least now I know why you weren't in Gryffindor," he said lightly.

I snorted. "If I'd been in Gryffindor, I would have done something really stupid like... oh, I don't know, hex back."

"That's bravery, Sylvia."

"Not when Snape is involved. That's stupidity."

On the pathway ahead of us, Snape blasted another rosebush. Two more innocuous snoggers hurtled away. "Ten points from Ravenclaw, Fawcett!" he bellowed after them. "And ten points from Hufflepuff too, Stebbins!"

I gaped. Edmund gaped. There was an odyssey of gaping as we attempted to process what we had just seen.

His brother. My sister. In a rosebush. Snogging.

"Well," I said at last.

"That isn't something you see everyday."

"Who would have thought?"

"Sabina and Archie."

"Fawcett and Stebbins. "

"Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff."

"Just like you and me."

"Except, obviously, that I'm in Ravenclaw and you're in Hufflepuff, while Archie is in Hufflepuff and Sabina is in Ravenclaw."

"And, also, that I am Sylvia and she is Sabina, and you are Edmund and he is Archie."

"Yes. Good point."

Silence. Babbling had its limits.

"And to think... " I remarked finally, "they were snogging in the next rosebush."

Edmund made a face. "I don't want to think about Archie snogging anyone, thankyou."

We both laughed. Snape continued blasting rosebushes apart. Edmund wrapped his arms around me.

We were together.

All was right with the world.

Except for the fact that our twins were also together, which was really rather twisted.

fin