"Oh, help me won't you?" Katie whined, holding her quill and parchment towards Angelina. "Please, Angelina? Look how bloody difficult it is!"

Angelina looked lazily up from the Gladrags catalogue that she had been idly flipping through. "I don't remember anything from that class. Why did you take NEWT Arithmancy, anyway?" Lying on her stomach on her bed in the girls' dormitory, Angelina looked more at ease than she had all week. "Rune Translators don't need to take Arithmancy."

Katie sighed, and dropped her arms to her side as she rearranged herself on the floor. "I got an E on my OWL. So I figured that I might as well try for the NEWT class." She tried once again. "Oh, please? I want to go out with Roger tonight. This is the night that I'm going to get his playbook." Her eyes shone with an unreadable expression. "I can just tell."

Angelina leveled her gaze at her friend for a moment before dropping the catalogue. "Fine. I'll help you. But only because you need to be at tryouts tomorrow, and not doing homework."

Katie whooped, and flung herself onto the bed next to Angelina. Once again she resumed her cross-legged position. "See? Look. I plotted the numbers, but personality-wise it just doesn't make sense."

Angelina thought for a moment and pulled a quill from her bedside table. She scanned the parchment quickly, before drawing an 'X' through a line of work. "See? Right here. Four times one is not five. It's four." She looked over the numbers splayed on the paper, before beginning to fix Katie's work for her. "Who are you plotting, anyways?"

"The Weasleys." Katie answered easily, raising her arm to write but finding Angelina's hand in the way. She frowned. "Angelina, dear, could you possibly write with your other hand? This doesn't work when we're sitting next to each other."

Angelina raised an eyebrow at Katie. "I can only write with my left hand. I think you're confusing me with Lee."

Katie frowned, and brushed Angelina's arm away so that she could finish the calculations. "Lee can write with both hands? I could have sworn that it was you. Remember when you threw that amazing goal last year? That was with your right hand, wasn't it?"

Angelina squinted her eyes as she thought back. "It was with my right. But I can throw with both hands. As can both you and Alicia."

Katie barely had enough time to mutter an, 'oh yeah', before Angelina went on. "Lee's the ambidextrous one. He's only been working on it during History of Magic for about six years. The twins bet him that he could never do it, back at the beginning of second year."

Katie 'hmmm-ed', then looked at her final answer. Circled at the bottom of the page was a six and a three. "Let's see what New Theory of Numerology has to say about them." She pulled out a book and flipped to a dog-eared page.

"On Fred…," Katie searched the page, before putting a finger on a paragraph and snorting, "Oh, this is rich." She read aloud, "'The six represents harmony, family, and friendship. The natural six is loyal, reliable, loving and quite artistic. A six is not advised to go into business, as their kindness may be taken advantage of. They adapt quite easily to new surroundings, but are quite gossipy and vain.'"

"Well, he's loyal," Angelina put in with a grimace. "And quite self-important. You've gone and hit that on the nose, Kate."

"I told you that I'm quite good at this," Katie sniffed, with an eyeroll. "And now for the other one." She flipped back a page and once again read to Angelina. "'The three represents completeness and wholeness. The natural three is talented, energetic, and humorous, adapting to all social situations. Mostly highly successful, the three is easy-going and most agree that they are 'naturally lucky'. But threes tend to be materialistic, unfocused, and quite easily angered.'" A look of thought crossed her face. "I haven't gotten them mixed up, have I?" Katie looked back to her paper, then back down to the book. "Strange," she murmured.

"Arithmancy is just another fortune-telling technique, anyway. Like palm-reading." Angelina rolled her eyes at the book. "Were you there when Alicia tried to read my palm? Of course not. Anyway, both of my life-lines were short, and she said that I only had about a year to live. That was a God-awful experience. Then Trelawny came over and read my palm the exact same way. After that I wasn't worried at all, that toad is always--"

She was cut off by Katie. "But Angelina, listen to this. It's ever so strange. You see, in the case of twins, you add the numbers together. If they're two-digits, then you keep adding them. But it's no matter here. Added together, the twins' number is nine!"

Angelina gave her a blank look and Katie's jaw dropped. "You have to remember! You took Arithmancy for a few years. Nine is the perfect number! Three times three! Listen," And once again, Katie turned to the book. "The nine represents achievement and completion to the fullest degree. The natural nine is a hard-worker and an inspiration to others. The nine can also be arrogant when things don't go their way."

"That is strange," Angelina agreed with yet anothereye roll. "But you did listen to my story about the palm-reading, right? That it's not precise?"

Katie gave her a blank look. "What are you talking about? When were you palm-reading? I thought that you hated Trelawny."

"She does", came a voice from the door. Katie and Angelina looked up.

"Alicia, lucky you're done in the bath," Angelina said dryly. "I was just about to throttle Bell within an inch of her life."

Alicia stepped in front of the floor-length mirror and studied herself. "Oh, don't do that. Then you would have to find a new Chaser tomorrow as well as a Keeper. And then we would both have to train them. And that would just be a pain."

Angelina 'harumph-ed', and went to stand behind Alicia. "You look fine. Great. Fantastic. I don't know why you're so worried--" She paused, before crossing her arms. "Nice shirt." She scowled. "What's so wrong with your own things, anyway?"

Before Alicia could answer, Katie hopped up to join them. "Oh, Angelina, what is so wrong with Alicia borrowing your shirt? I mean, I have never seen you in this shirt. In fact, I don't think that you would ever wear this shirt, anyway. It's too lacy." She studied Alicia's hair in the mirror before winding a bit around her finger. She let go, and it went back to its previous stark-straight state. Katie frowned and attempted it again, to no avail. "Well, waves around your face would have been adorable." Something caught her eye, and Katie brushed back Alica's hair. Her lips set into a straight line.

"Nice earrings." She ground out, folding her arms. "They look extremely similar to the ones that a Ravenclaw named Mark gave me last year."

Alicia thought back. "Wasn't he the one with the extremely long ponytail?"

Katie frowned and put her hands on her hips. "Only before I told him to cut his hair. You two cannot keep holding that one against me!"

Angelina hooted and slapped a knee. "Ah, karma. Love it."

Alicia sighed, and turned once in front of the mirror. "Sorry, girls. I just want to look really nice tonight. Stephen and I are sneaking off campus again." She looked unhappily at herself in the mirror. "These pants make my ass look big."

Angelina groaned and slapped her forehead.

Katie ignored her and put an arm around Alicia. "You look gorgeous, dear. Your ass looks perfect. As to wearing my earrings, I'll even give my consent." She patted her troubled friend on the shoulder and whispered in her ear, "Just try not to be so hungover tomorrow morning, won't you? We have tryouts at two, and I daresay that Angelina will have the lot of us on the pitch at noon. I'm not dragging you out of bed."

Alicia bit her lip, and pulled away from Katie. "Okay then", she said with resignation. Spinning once again in front of the mirror, she pulled a robe from off of her bed. "Here goes nothing. Wish me luck girls."

"Wishing you good luck," Angelina told her grudgingly, while Katie blew her a kiss.

"Don't do anything that I wouldn't do." She called after Alicia.

"Which doesn't leave too much, does it?" Angelina muttered, as Katie leaned forward and examined her face in the mirror.

"That it doesn't!" Katie cheerfully answered. Backing up and rolling her school skirt up, she nodded in approval. "I have someone to meet. Thanks for the Arithmancy help. Talk to you later, yeah?" Without waiting for an answer, she threw a wink towards Angelina and strode from the room.

"I expect to see that bloody playbook, with all of the trouble that you've been giving me!" Angelina called after her. Tossing her braids over her shoulder, she hung her thumbs from the pockets of her favorite worn-out jeans. Without a second glance toward the mirror, she headed toward the common room with the express purpose of seeing with the twins and Lee were up to. And quite possibly joining in.

Author's Note: I have, quite obviously, decided to try and keep going with this fic. Only don't send me hate-mail and death threats if I don't update it way often, lol. Thanks for the reviews! Next chapter I'll respond.

Note on the Title: Yeah, about the title... Anyways, when Angelina, Alicia, and Katie are pretty much first introduced together as a team in CoS, it was when the Gryffindor team stood against the Slytherin team. And it went something like this (don't hold me to it, because I'm just going from memory.),

"There were no girls on the Slytherin team, who stood shoulder to shoulder, leering to a man."

That's the gist of it anyways, I'll check it later. But I never quite figured out what it meant. I mean, I got that there weren't any girls on the Slytherin team, and that all of the guys stood shoulder to shoulder. But what, exactly, is 'leering to a man'suppoused to mean? That they were intimidating? That it must have been really bad for the girls? Leering means to look at witha 'lascivious, knowing, or wanton look'. And what exactly does that have to do with the fact that there were no girls on the Slytherin team?

At any rate, it has always been a bit of an enigma for me. I've always figured that it had something to do with Angelina, Alicia, and Katie, so whenever I think of that line, I think of them. It is the title of this fic, because it shows thecrap that the girls had to put up with, as they were (once again) a group of girls in a male-dominated sport and how they had to fight for position in the Quidditch world. It sounds way deeper and more complicated than it actually is, lmao.