A/N:

Happy Christmas/Happy Boxing Day, darlings, and here's the 4th chapter!

It's unbeta-ed though, because Adel hadn't been up for about two days, but I've already sent the chapter to her, but anyway, I'm posting this version for you guys as my Yuletide present to all of you! Hope you do like it...

Oh, and this chapter is um, for the Asian Tsunami 2004 victims. Let's hope that they will stop dwelling upon the past and look towards the future with hope.

CABOT ACADFEMY

Chapter 4

Schedule of classes for Evanne Remington

Monday: The Art of Heroine Making (9am-11am), Bitches 101 (11am-1pm), Lunch (1pm-2pm), The Culture of Ball-Busting (2pm-4pm).

Tuesday: Badboy Studies (9am-12pm), Lunch (12pm-1pm), The Art of Hero Making (1pm-3pm).

Wednesday: Bimbos 102 (9am-12pm), Villainous Villains (12pm-1pm), Lunch (1pm-2pm), The Culture of Ball-Busting (2pm-3pm).

Thursday: The Art of Heroine Making (9am-11am), Badboys Studies (11am-1pm), Lunch (1pm-2pm), Bitches 101 (2pm-4pm).

Friday: Villainous Villains (9am-12pm), Badboys Studies (12pm-1pm), Lunch (1pm-2pm), The Art of Hero Making (2pm-4pm).

Note: Weekday evenings are class-free unless requested by the professor(s). Saturday and Sundays are used for extra-curricular activities and "rest days" for the students.

It was her second month at the Academy, and yet, Evanne was still losing her way about the school at an alarmingly frequent rate. Thank Goodness that Adel had the same classes with her. At least she wasn't lost alone. Currently, though, they were hurrying through the intricate maze of hallways and passages to try –try is the key word- to get to their first class in the morning, Badboy Studies.

"Oh, no," Adel panted, brushing an unruly dark brown curl behind her ear impatiently, and remarked with a tinge of anxiety, "Evie, I think we passed this tapestry a while ago."

Evanne groaned and leant against the cool marble wall, her arms aching from carrying her huge stack of notes –she had recorded every word the lecturers had instructed them on their various subjects, in fear of forgetting them in the future- and tilted her face up towards the ceiling, "Ugh. I think you're right... What now?"

Adel shifted her own stack of notes –which was of similar thickness- and dropped her head onto Evanne's shoulder, sighing. "I don't know either. The only thing that I'm certain of is that we're most definitely late for Badboy Studies. It's twenty past nine. Professor Wilkins is going to have a fit for sure. Again."

"Damn." Evanne rested a hand on the white shoulder of a life-size replicate of Michelangelo's David absently and sighed. "Maybe we should—Jesus!"

She had rested too much weight onto the sculpture's shoulder and it sank slightly, revealing itself to be a hidden mechanism of some sorts. Both Adel and Evanne gasped in dismay, certain that that latter had ruined the statue. Evanne had barely started tugging upon the plaster limb before the wall they were leaning onto swung inwards, bringing the two girls, as well as twin shrieks of terror into God-knows-where.

The wall swung back again, devoid of all signs of life, and David's shoulder sprangback in place.

"Oh, my God!" Adel gasped as they fell, flat onto their backs into some room. Evanne rubbed the back of her head and winced, she fancied that she could feel a slight bump there. Staggering onto her feet, she grasped Adel's hand and hauled her up with a hand, the other dusting herself down.. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Adel wheezed and patted herself, checking for injuries. Evanne crouched down and gathered up their notes, turning her head this way and that to make sure she didn't sprain it. Straightening, she starred at Adel's back in surprise. The taller girl had an air of curious stillness about her. "Adel? What is it?"

"Evie?" Odd, Adel's voice sounded... strange to her. It was rather strangled and stilted, as though Adel was well, reluctant to talk. "Evie, um, turn around."

And Evanne turned, frightened that there was a monster behind her or something like what Harry and his friends –why were they popping into her head so frequently this days?- had encountered in the third-floor corridor in their Hogwarts... what was his name? Ah. Yes. Fluffy.

But even though what that was behind Evanne and in front of Adel may not be a three-headed dog or some other kind of monster, the reality was not very nice, either. Oh, no. They had fallen in a classroom. And given their luck, well...

Seated and pacing in front of the classroom were the entire Badboy Studies class and their professor respectively, who was surely going to call them by their last names again before giving them a good old-fashioned dressing down about how punctuality was a virtue and— Wait a minute.

For the past month, their lecturer had been one surly Professor Rob Wilkins, object of Adel's steadily increasing ardour. But today, the lecturer pacing about the front of the room with his hands behind his back wasn't a young man dressed in biker clothes. Rather, he was clad conservatively in an expensive-looking black turtleneck and blue jeans. In short, it was not Professor Wilkins as their designated teacher today. It was, well, one Professor... Slater.

Paul Slater.

Who was currently looking at them with an amused smirk on his face and a hand in the pocket of his jeans. Which, Evanne noted absently, looked pretty nice on him. Hmm. His legs were relatively muscled, no doubt from the tennis that Meg (Cabot, not Meg with the Previously-Purple-And- Now-Green-Hair) was had wrote that he always played.

Evanne blinked and forced her eyes up his face, certain that he must have saw her staring, but his own gaze was focused on Adel. Who looked as though she was hyperventilating, though silently, with only the rapid heaving of her chest as indication.

Silence reigned the classroom, only to be broken by the sound of Adel remarking, rather dazedly, to Evanne, "Is it wrong to ogle a professor's butt if it's so nicely moulded in a pair of Levi's?"

Paul's—Professor Slater's smirk merely widened farther upon hearing that comment.

And Adel, well, Adel fainted away at the glorious sight of it.

It was lunch time, and Evanne was hungry. In fact, starving, due to the running about the school she and Adel did directly after breakfast to find the errant classroom for Badboy Studies and carrying Adel after she fainted back to their dorm room. All by herself.

Professor or no, Paul Slater had better watch out now, because Evanne would be waiting for every chance to get him back. Couldn't he have thought of a better punishment than making her lug her comatose roommate with only her two hands, no stretcher, no nothing, back to their dorm room, which was practically on the bloody other side of the bloody school? Hadn't he heard of writing lines before?

Evanne envisioned herself shoving the bleeding sod's head down one of the lavatories and smirked blissfully, cracking her knuckles and flexing her fingers. She would hold his two hands against his back and shove his head down like this—

"Ow!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Adel!" Evanne removed her hand from her roommate's neck with the utmost haste and blushed. Adel sat up slowly, nursing the slight bump at the back of her head with one hand and her throat with the other, croaking, "Evie, were you— were you trying to kill me?"

"N-no! Of course not!" Evanne's face turned even redder with embarrassment. How to tell your roommate that you were thinking of murdering her object of fanatical devotion and accidentally administered the actions upon her? "I was just... I was just daydreaming a-about something."

Adel blinked at her, a doubtful expression on her face, but she let it pass with no further questions. Tilting her head and frowning in puzzlement, she asked Evanne, "Why are we in our room, anyway? Weren't we in the Badboy Studies classroom? I remember that Pau—I mean, Professor Slater looked really drool-worthy.".

Evanne rubbed the back of her neck and said gamely, "Well, Adel, we were at the classroom, but... you fainted. So the Professor made me take you back to our room."

The look on Adel's face was priceless.

"W-what?" she was practically hyperventilating—again. Flinging aside the covers –which Evanne had drawn slightly over her—she swung her feet onto the tiled floor and stared at Evanne in horror, pushing her dishevelled hair behind her ears frantically. "I fainted?"

"Well, yes." Some sadistic devil in Evanne compelled her to add, "In front of Professor Slater. You slammed into him, as a matter of fact."

Adel clapped her hands over her ears and let loose a shriek any banshee would have been proud to claim as her own.

Evanne sat down besides her and slipped an arm around her, patting her shoulder gently. "It's not that bad, really, he caught you—"

"I fainted in front of him... I actually fainted like a stupid, overheated, corset-bound, silly little debutante in front of him!" Adel moaned rocking back and forth and ignoring Evanne's pathetic attempts to comfort her. Flinging her arms around the smaller girl, she whimpered into Evanne's shoulder, "I will never, ever be able to look him in the eye again, oh, no..."

"But Adel, he actually caught you and steadied you, you know, so really it's not that ba—" Evanne sucked in a breath as Adel's gripped tightened until it nearly bordered on painful. "He what?"

Evanne repeated patiently, "He caught you after you pitched forward and—"

Adel muffled the rest of her sentence in a bone-crushing hug. "Oh, Evie, really?"

Evanne's "Really" was muffled since her face was squished into Adel's shoulder, but the latter seemed to have heard her anyway. "Oh, I'm so happy! Let's go to lunch; I'm starving!"

"So am I," Evanne muttered weakly as Adel dragged her from the room. "So am I."

It was Saturday morning. Dawn, actually, because it was barely 6 in the morning. The sun was just a bare glimmer on the horizon, and all was quiet on the field expect for the chirping of crickets and three little figures in the distance.

Saturday was, in Evanne's opinion, a day of semi-rest. A day where humans right in their heads will spend sleeping. Well, for most of the morning, anyway. But the point is, Saturday, being the sister of Sunday, was a day of relaxation.

However, Evanne wasn't that lucky. Oh, no, far from it. The Divine Poppet Upstairs thought too highly of her; deeming her to be a cut above most mortals and thus not in need of relaxation. She was, as of the moment, staggering in between Alex and Lauren, with James drifting not far behind.

"Yew dears," Evanne slurred, head lolling and listing towards Alex in a state of where she was between sleep and reality, "Yer dears, lemme—lemme catch m'breath. I'm t-tired. Lemme sleep. Please, lemme..."

"Nope." Lauren said determinedly, hoisting Evanne's slipping arm high up around her. "We're gonna spy on Jesse if that's the last thing I'm gonna do."

"Woddaz that hafta do with me?" Evanne mumbled, leaning her head onto Alex's shoulder and closing her eyes, groaning softly. "I don't like Jesse a'tall. Just lemme sleep..."

Lauren shook her awake. "You are the most neutral Foot-fetish boy lover and Jesse-hater we have in our group; of course it has to do with you. We need people to help us be on the lookout for the other professors! What, d'ya think we'll bring along Hayley or something? She'll castrate Jesse or do something equally drastic the minute she sees him for sure."

"If... y'say so," Evanne grumbled, screwing her eyes up with her yawn. "No' really a Paul fan; jus' feel tha' he's misunderstood, 's all. No' as evil as everyone says...m-merely arrogan' and spoilt, 's all."

Alex snorted and murmured with a hint of disgust, "Paul Slater may not be evil, but he is definitely selfish. You can't say that there's nothing wrong with a seventeen-year-old boy who leaves his own little brother –who was little more than a child then— in an unknown realm with no instructions of how to exit said realm? He may not be kill small animals for his pleasure, but I do think that he really needs a therapist."

"Don't let Hayley hear you say that, or she'll castrate you." Evanne laughed sleepily at Alex, raising her head a little from the latter's shoulder. Giving another great yawn, she tugged slightly at Alex and Lauren –with whom her arms were entwined— and halted to a stop, twisting her neck for cricks and stretching to the tips of her toes. "All right, all right. I'm awake. Really, I am. God. It's dawn, you guys... couldn't you have chosen a more godly hour to spy on your darling Mr. Ghostie?"

James sighed resignedly and opened his mouth for the first time since the three of them had dragged Evanne out of her warm, inviting bed— with Adel being dead to the world, oblivious to the fact that her roommate was being dragged away by three wackos, "We would have done that, had Little Miss Lauren here not yanked us out of our respective beds –rousing my roommate and his er, bed-mate as well when she was in the process of waking me, screeching that she had heard from a reliable source that our Professor De Silva takes his daily horse ride at dawn."

Lauren shot a glare at him, and rolled her eyes, "Stop making it sound like you don't wanna see him for yourself too! It's wasn't as though you weren't practically jumping for joy when I told you."

James, having not taken The Art of Hero Making, a class which Jesse De Silva was co-in-charged with Michael Moscovitz, and All American Girl's David, hadn't seen the former-ghost before, and was eager to rectify that fact. He gave a dramatic sniff now, and walked to the right side of Alex, the left having been taken up by Evanne, for she was still practically lying upon Alex, for all her "I'm awake! Really, I am." proclamations.

Suddenly, Lauren tugged hard on Evanne's left arm, jerking both the British girl and Alex –who had the former's other arm tucked in hers— to a sudden stop. She pointed excitedly at a tiny little figure in the horizon; a figure who was rapidly growing bigger as it was approaching them and cried in a hushed tone, "There he is! Omigawd, behind the trees, quick! We'll all be in deep shit if he discovers us!"

So it was behind the trees for them, naturally. And Evanne, who, being British and of a rather well-off family, was of course educated in the art of riding since a very young age, and had spent many a day racing about in Hyde Park with her friends, and sometimes her parents. But it was only that day she learnt that the only way to snog on horseback without one of the participants falling off –which was understandably undesired- was to have one sit side-saddle in front of the other -preferably sitting astride— and to twist one's head, already facing the side, another ninety degrees to meet the other's lips.

For there was not one, but two people sitting atop the horse. Or rather, to be more specific, one Professor De Silva and one Professor Simon. Who were, er, currently connected in a most intimate way.

A most intimate way, of course, not the most intimate way.

Lauren giggled maniacally (but softly, since she had no desire to be given detention for spying on the faculty); James drooled –well, not really, but he did make his envious reaction known quite verbally, although he did kept his voice down too; Alex gasped and blushed, training her gaze towards the sky, but nevertheless sneaking a peek towards the pair every now and then; as for Evanne... Evanne merely blinked. And leant her head against the particular tree she had chosen to hide behind, closing her eyes to take a little nap.

But sadly, it seemed that former-ghosts-turned-mediators have better hearing than mere mortals do, for neither one of the four of them had spoken in a tone louder than a whisper, and yet it was enough to make Jesse pull his horse up short –startling both the animal and his ball-busting Querida— and turned in the directions of the woods, calling, "Who's there?"

Evanne's eyes snapped open, Alex's gaze swung back to earth, and both Lauren and James immediately clamped their mouths shut. The four exchanged glances tinged with horror and embarrassment, and James spread his hands in a helpless gesture of What-should-we-do-now? Alex shook her head slowly at him and pressed a finger to her lips, mouthing Stay Still to the other three.

Obeying her command, they stood there, frozen as though petrified by the eye of Medusa, until the clip-clopping of hooves were heard, growing softer and softer into the distance. Even then, their breathing was controlled, and thousands of scenarios raced through Evanne's mind, playing and replaying what would happen were they caught. Over the past month, the faculty had made their protectiveness towards their privacy very vocal indeed, and students that were caught trying to sneak into the Staff Rooms or committed some other offence which had involved the intruding of the professors' privacy were dealt very harshly with.

Evanne had no intention of writing an essay comparing the pros and cons of the Princess Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles had towards the British Royal Family respectively, or scrubbing the floor of the cafeteria in the dark with a toothbrush and a bucket of water indeed— which were two of the memorable detentions the faculty had dished out to the students who did not value their teachers' privacy.

A hiss from Lauren broke through her brooding, and Evanne lifted her gaze from the ground to Lauren, who whispered, "Did y'all hear that? The sound of the hooves is completely gone now! I think Jesse and Suze decided that there's nobody here and went off!"

A sigh of relief went around, and the demeanour of all four became noticeably more relaxed, as shoulders slumped and tension eased. Alex gave a half-groan, half-laugh as she shook her head at Lauren, "Laursie, really. I'm never gonna join you on another one of your escapades again... It nearly took ten years off my life when I though Jes—I mean, Professor De Silva, had discovered us. I bet he'll tell us to go give Slater a foot massage as punishment or something."

The quartet laughed uproariously at that image—well, Evanne smiled in puzzlement, actually, because she had never figured out how the foot-fetish rumour came about— and continued joking as they strolled back across the field and into the shade of the cafeteria, which opened off into the field on one side. Ambling across it to reach the passageway on the other side, which would then branch off to their dorms, they pulled the double doors that served as entrance and made to exit it, when two figures stepped from outside the cafeteria, and—

"Good morning, Ms. Lauren, Ms. Alejandra, Ms. Evanne, and Mr. James," Professor Susannah Simon said pleasantly, with Professor De Silva glowering silently beside her. "And just where might you four be going, hmm?"

And Evanne knew that, well, to use an American expression that James had taught her the day before, the shit had hit the fan, and left rather spectacular patterns on the fan too, as a parting gift.

A/N: Heh, dare I hope that you guys will gimme reviews as a belated Christmas present? -hopeful-