Layla paced furiously in front of the familiar wall, fuming. She went to kick the door of the Room of Requirement open, but her injured foot caused her to fall on the ground in front of it, instead. She pulled herself into a ball, her back against the door and her face on her knees, and gave way to her tears. Sobs shook her thin frame, as she sat on the cold ground. Hurried footsteps came around the corner, and Layla was able to make out the blurry form of Ella.
"Layla? What's wrong? Are you okay?" she asked, kneeling in front of her distressed friend.
"I don't know… I just don't know anymore…" Layla replied in a whisper.
"What'd you do to your ankle? I just got out of the Hospital Wing, and now I have to go right back there," Ella said good-naturedly, pulling Layla to her feet.
Twenty minutes later, after a slow trip to the infirmary and drinking a horrible tasting potion, Layla could walk without limping. She had thanked Ella for helping her, but then said that she needed to be alone to think. Her friend had understood, and had only asked that Layla not take her rage out on the innocent walls.
With a sigh, Layla began to wander around the castle. She didn't have a particular destination in mind, she just needed to walk and think, and it was too cold to walk outside. It shouldn't affect her so much; after all, it was just her sister and Audrey sleeping together in the same bed. They hadn't had sex or anything, so they must have just been talking and became tired and fell asleep; a perfectly logical explanation.
Shaking her head angrily, Layla returned to the Room of Requirement. She couldn't talk to her sister about her feelings towards Audrey, since that would just spark another argument and Ren would side with Audrey. That thought caused Layla to mutter a few curse words in French, scaring the two First Year girls that she was walking past. That was one of the things that aggravated her most about all of this. If the twins had an argument about anything related to Audrey, Ren would instantly side with the older girl. Layla, despite years of being Ren's best friend and now her only family, would be pushed to the side.
Layla stayed by herself, writing angry rants about Ren and Audrey, until lunch. She hadn't seen James yet that day, and knowing Ella, he would know about what had happened this morning and would be worried about her. Feeling much calmer after venting her feelings out on paper, she went down to the Great Hall and sat next to Ella. A few minutes later, she sensed that she was being watched and looked up, meeting James' gaze. He looked concerned, so she shot him a reassuring smile and turned back to the conversation that she was having with Ella, determined not to think about her sister.
After a few minutes, though, Layla felt anti-social again and decided to leave. She carefully avoided James' eyes; looking at him made her feel like a hypocrite, since she was so bitter about Ren and Audrey yet she experienced the same thing with James. As she exited the Great Hall, however, all of those angry feelings returned at full force, like a slap in the face. Audrey and Ren were walking past her into the Great Hall; Audrey's arm was around Ren's shoulders, and Ren's arm was around the other girl's waist. They were holding each other very closely, and Ren was smiling contentedly. Layla glared at Audrey before turning her angry gaze towards her sister, the sister who ignored her to spend time with this girl, leaving her to feel guilty that she might be doing the same thing. At least she had tried to spend time with her sister; Ren made no effort to be around her. Ren caught sight of her twin and slowed down, disentangling herself from Audrey for a moment. The two sisters kept eye contact for a few seconds, before Ren turned and walked over to Audrey. Layla stormed away from the huge room alone, her mind unable to form coherent thoughts anymore. All she could feel was anger, jealousy, and most of all, a horrible sense of loss.
She returned to the Common Room and collapsed in one of the dark red armchairs near the fire. The flames entranced her; she just sat and watched the fire burn, fighting back tears. After about twenty minutes, she realized that her sister would probably be coming up to the Common Room with Audrey soon, and decided it'd probably be best to leave. Just as she was about to leave the Portrait Hole, she realized that she had homework that she could work on; it'd let her be much more productive than if she ranted to herself about Audrey and Ren. Turning quickly, she ran up to her dormitory and grabbed her school bag. As she entered the Common Room again, Ren and Audrey came into the room from the Portrait Hole. The sisters walked past each other without a word.
Layla stormed to the library, throwing her bag onto her usual desk with such force that it slide off the other end of the table. She threw out her arm angrily as she went around the table to pick it up, knocking over a chair in the process. As she went to pick it up, a tan arm and hand crossed her vision to raise the fallen piece of furniture and restore it to its proper position.
"Thanks, James," Layla sighed, collapsing into another chair and putting her head in her hands.
"No problem…" he replied, sitting in the chair he had just picked up. " Now, what's wrong? Ella told me about the incident with the wall earlier… why'd you kick it? You only kick things when you're really upset…"
His hand closed over one of hers, and he pulled it away from her face so that he could see her better. He let their hands rest, entwined, on the table, and lightly ran his thumb over hers. The small, caring gesture calmed Layla enough so that she could talk without yelling or cussing.
"It's Ren… we've been fighting. She's in love with a Seventh Year Gryffindor, and has been completely ignoring me to spend time with her. Whenever we are together, it's just for classes, and she'll only talk to me about Audrey and how wonderful she is. She doesn't care about me anymore, it's just Audrey this and Audrey that. Call it jealously or sisterly protectiveness, but I can't stand it. I don't like Audrey at all; she's stealing my sister from me. I feel like a hypocrite for saying that, because of how I feel about you, but at least I try to spend time with Ren. But whenever we're together, she's wishing Audrey was there, and whenever Audrey is there, I'm pushed to the side and ignored, like a third wheel. I just… I hate it. I wish she had never met her."
James pulled her closer and hugged her, whispering soothing words in her ear until the tears that had threatened to spill from her eyes had disappeared. The two spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, making up things to put in their Dream Charts for Divination. Professor Trelawney, the Divination teacher, was rather young, and hadn't been working at the school for a long time. Most of the students agreed that she wasn't much of a Seer, but merely made up predications. James and Layla were among those students, and out of laziness decided to use their teacher's method of work and make up their answers to homework. After finishing their work, James began told Layla about different dialects of Arabic until dinner.
That night, Layla got ready for bed as quickly and quietly as she could. She was alone in her dormitory with her sister for the first time in weeks, and didn't want to risk talking; if she did, she knew that she'd mention Audrey and her twin would get mad at her.
"Why are you mad at me?" Ren's voice came from a few feet away, interrupting Layla's angry thoughts. Layla shrugged and said nothing, though she couldn't control the slight glare that she shot at Ren. "If nothing's wrong why do you keep looking at me like there is?"
"It's not you," Layla replied, sliding underneath her covers, but remaining sitting up. She tried to remind herself that it wasn't really Ren's fault; Audrey was the real problem here, so she couldn't be mad at her sister for that.
"You can tell me," Ren pressed.
"You'd get mad at me."
"You can't be one hundred percent sure of that," Ren said, her voice taking on a tone of frustration.
"Trust me, I know," Layla shot back, her voice now holding the same tone as her twin's.
"Seriously, what did I do?"
"I told you, it wasn't you!"
"But what's wrong?" Ren countered, growing impatient.
"Nothing! Just… never mind," Layla cried out as she quickly closed the curtains around her bed.
"Fine, hole up! Be a bitch like that! See if I care!" Ren yelled bitterly.
Layla buried her face in her pillow, the tears falling straight from her eyes to the cloth of the pillowcase. Before drifting off to sleep, she decided that she would tell Ren what was bothering her within the next week.
The next morning, Layla woke up early like usual. She glanced sadly at the scarlet hangings surrounding her sister's bed, before quietly going about her morning rituals. Deciding that it was better to give Ren time to calm down before talking to her again, she headed down to the Common Room. As she walked across the hard floor to the portrait hole, she glanced at the group of girls near the fireplace. There were about seven of them, all dressed up to go outside in the snow. Without realizing, she slowed slightly to listen to them.
"Come on, Audrey, come outside with us! We can have a snowball fight, four against four!" one of the girls pleaded.
"Nah, that's okay… I think I'm going to stay here for a while. You guys go ahead, have fun," a familiar voice said from the center of the group.
"Going to wait for that young girl you always hang out with?" another girl teased.
"Yeah," Audrey muttered, sounding embarrassed.
The other seven girls left, saying their goodbyes as they walked out. Layla waited for them to finish leaving before moving forward to follow them. She shot an icy glare over her shoulder at the redhead sitting beside the fire, before climbing through the Portrait Hole.
As usual, she knocked Ella over in a hallway near Gryffindor tower; the two always seemed to run into each other. Rather than go to breakfast, since neither of them were very hungry, the two Gryffindors wandered around the castle for an hour, talking about anything that came to their minds. In the middle of a conversation about how penguins were going to tame dragons and take over the world, Layla remembered that James had wanted to teach her to fly today; they had never gotten around to it before. After a quick explanation to her friend, she headed back up towards the dormitories, so she could grab a cloak.
Walking into the Common Room, her eyes did their usual sweep of the area, seeing who was there. The only other people in the room were Audrey and Ren, who were lying close together on a couch. Layla felt the tears coming to her eyes; she didn't know why she felt so hurt and betrayed. Though most of it was from her dislike of Audrey, she was also upset that her sister had never mentioned the new level of closeness that she had with the older girl. After months of pining after her, Layla had assumed that her twin would at least confide in her that Audrey was starting to show interest in her.
"Layla!" her sister's voice broke through her thoughts, and Layla saw her sit up and meet her gaze. Audrey sat up next to her, looking startled, and Layla froze, anger welling up inside of her.
"J'en ai ras le bol!" she cried out, running up the stairs and slamming the door to their dormitory shut.
Once upstairs, she grabbed a piece of parchment and a quill and scrawled a quick note to James telling him that she was trapped in her dormitory and couldn't come down. After whistling for Ella's stormy grey owl, Pierre, and sending off the message, she collapsed on her bed. It upset her that she was letting such a stupid thing get to her, but she couldn't go back downstairs and face her sister yet, no matter how much she wanted to spend time with James.
Five minutes later, she heard a faint knocking on her window; assuming it was Pierre with James response, she slowly got up and walked over to the frosty window, opening it to let the owl fly in. To her surprise, the owl didn't fly in; James did, on a broomstick. Her jaw dropped open and her eyes widened in disbelief.
"What, you didn't honestly think that I'd let you get out of your falling lessons that easily, did you?" he teased, his brown eyes shining with amusement.
"No, but I never dreamed I'd have a prince coming in through my window to rescue the princess in distress," she replied, running over to hug him.
Unprepared for the hug, James fell back onto the bed with her on top of him. The two stared into each other's eyes for a few moments, before he smirked lightly and rolled over, pining Layla underneath him. "You know I like to be on top," he said slyly.
She grinned at him, blushing slightly. "How can I forget? You like to show your dominance, don't you, my prince?"
"That I do, princess," he murmured, leaning down to capture her lips with his. All thoughts abandoned Layla's head at that point, leaving her to moan softly and feel James' lips curl into a smile in response. She ran her hands through his short dark hair, feeling his hands curling into her own dark locks.
After a little while, they pulled apart for air, and she stared at him, entranced. She had loved Jeff; of that she was sure. Yet somehow, James made her feel things that Jeff had never caused her to experience. Layla smiled, and hugged him tightly. Flying could wait until tomorrow; for now, she was content to just lie in his comforting embrace.