AN: So a month isn't too bad, right? All things considered, updating with a month between chapters isn't half bad, right? I've been super busy, but let me tell you it PAID OFF! I am pleased to announce that I got accepted to my second choice college and will hear from my first choice before Christmas! Now I just have to make it through the rest of the current school year...

Also, I originally planned to take this chapter all the way to Christmas again like I have in the past, but we're finally in third year (yay!) and the plot is going to get a little thicker, I hope, so I'm paying more attention to some details. And this chapter is all over the place, too. It's crazy. I'm not sure what happened. It's over 5,000 words, somehow. I do know that I am UPPING THE RATING TO T FROM HERE ON OUT because they're teenagers and sex jokes and bad words are a given. So PLEASE BE WARNED!

Third year was the year all young Hogwarts students eagerly awaited since at least halfway through their first year. The reason was simple: electives. At the tail end of second year, each student met with their respective head of house to decide on what extra classes they wish to undertake as they move forward in their education. Marina herself chose Ancient Runes, Divination, and Arithmancy. As she discussed with Professor Flitwick, she enjoyed figuring things out in the process of learning rather than being fed information with little mental engagement, which generally ruled out Muggle Studies and Care of Magical Creatures (this is also part of why she felt so bored during History of Magic) and left only these three classes. In a letter from home, her mum highly recommended Divination and Arithmancy, and her papa gave his full support of whatever she chose to study.

In September, Marina returned to the castle with much anticipation for her first elective classes to begin. But first, the feast. She and Annie split from Quincy and Gideon to find seats at the Ravenclaw table near Artemis and Lark. Unfortunately, Artemis and Lark had decided to sit on opposite sides of the table today, and seemed content sitting closer to some older Ravenclaws than the boys in their own year—one of which was Alfred Smith. The table was quite densely packed with the whole house in attendance; there would be no maintained physical distance like they could normally keep from him. Marina shuddered. One of them would have to sit next to the over-inflated balloon-ego boy.

"Well, shall we draw straws?" Marina suggested to Annie.

"With what straws?" Annie asked. "I'll just sit next to Alfred. I'm much better at ignoring him than you are."

The girls parted to walk down either side of the long table and climbed over the bench seats. Lark immediately pulled them into a conversation about the new dog her family got over the summer, claiming it was part crup—whatever that meant. Marina knocked into Evan White as she got settled into her seat.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said quickly, glancing over.

"It's no problem!" he replied. "It's a cramped spot, after all." And then he smiled at her, and Marina felt her face grow warm, and she smiled quickly back and then spun back around to face her friends and face away from him.

Lark had been watching the exchange across the table with a single raised eyebrow, even as she continued chattering on about Gingersnap, her dog. Annie hadn't seemed to notice, focused as she was on not looking in the boys' direction.

"He's taking Runes," Artemis said quietly.

"Um…how—how did you find that out already?" Marina asked. Was she stuttering now? She didn't stutter. Quincy stuttered. She could feel that her face was probably still flushed.

Artemis shrugged. "It isn't my fault if boys don't know how to control their conversational volume," she muttered, returning her attention to Lark.

Luckily, Marina did not have any of her elective classes the next day. As the previous two years had passed, the Ravenclaw girls ignored the boys as much as they possibly could in their core classes, especially Alfred. Unluckily, the second day of classes saw Marina in Arithmancy right before lunch with Artemis and Alfred bloody Smith, of all people. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Emmeline Vance, two of the Gryffindors, were there too, as well as a couple Hufflepuffs and a few Slytherins. In such a small class, Marina feared there would be no way to avoid Alfred. Unfortunately, she was right: he picked a seat directly to her left.

"We Ravenclaws should stick together, you know!" he said as he produced the textbook from his bag and positioned it on his desk.

Marina was fairly certain she had never heard any Ravenclaw assert that they should stick together before. In fact, she was convinced after her first two years that Ravenclaws didn't care about their house identity as much as the other houses did. Slytherins existed in exclusive packs, and Quincy refused to even tell Marina where the entrance to Gryffindor House was in the castle. Hufflepuffs seemed generally generous and accepting, but Marina knew they were a tight-knit bunch. Ravenclaws, however, seemed more like individuals co-existing in a shared space than a firmly bonded house. She even saw students she was sure were from other houses in the common room from time to time. Therefore, she felt her reaction to Alfred's statement was completely justified.

"What are you on about?" She furrowed her brow and scowled in Alfred's general direction.

Artemis leaned forward to see around Marina. "The other houses are families, Smith," she said. "We only claim to be a community."

"Even a community must come together," Alfred replied, looking smug with himself.

When Marina got annoyed with the way Alfred was smiling down at the quills he was straightening on his desk, she turned to look at Artemis, who had narrowed her eyes at the far wall. "There is no adversity here," she said at last.

Alfred looked up, one eyebrow quirked in a funny-looking expression of slightly worried confusion, or at least that's how Marina interpreted it. "Of course not. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Communities need only come together in times of adversity."

"Well, perhaps the adversity is nothing more than a mixed group of outsiders to the community," Alfred argued. "Then, in order to maintain the integrity of the community, its members must gather together." He was back to looking smug, and Marina hoped Artemis had another remark up her sleeve.

The other Ravenclaw girl swiped her hand up to quickly push a bit of her short hair behind her ear. "Rejecting new influences is a sure way to weaken the community. The best way to strengthen any group is to introduce new life to it."

"Ooh, like a vaccine!"

Marina, Artemis, and Alfred turned to look behind them. A Hufflepuff boy with very blonde hair froze under the three stares. "Er—I'm sorry to intrude—just—my mum's a nurse, and all…" he said.

"What's a vaccine?" Artemis asked.

The boy—Marina thought his name might be Eric—opened his mouth to explain, but before he could get any words out, the classroom door slammed shut behind them, and all the students in the room turned their attention to the tall, hawk-nosed woman storming her way to the front of the room. Her robes were a strict gray-colored wool in a plain design, and her white hair was expertly coiffed into a smooth twist under a very proper-looking black hat. Despite the foreboding figure she cut, Marina could see laughter lines around her eyes as she swept past the desks to take her place behind the stone podium.

The professor—for this must be the professor—cleared her throat in a way that reminded Marina a little of McGonagall. "Welcome to Arithmancy," she began in a very smooth voice. "I am Professor Agrippa Sigma. Starting this year, you will learn the beauty of divination by numerology. We will examine the methods of many ancient cultures and the modern methods perfected and used today. There will be no guesswork; this is arithmancy, not the other nonsense you learn in Divination, and I think you will find it challenging, but rewarding work." Professor Sigma turned to begin writing in chalk—not using her wand, Marina noted—but turned at the last moment. "Oh, and I apologize for the door. There's a draft."

When the hour of class was up, Artemis and Marina moved quickly to outpace Alfred and get to the Great Hall for lunch.

"I like Professor Sigma," Marina commented as she and Artemis dodged between students in the lunch rush. "What do you think?"

"She writes like a muggle." Artemis glanced over her shoulder. "That isn't a bad thing, just interesting. And she takes her class seriously. We've lost him."

"Oh thank Merlin," Marina sighed. "What other electives have you got this year, again?"

The girls slowed their steps somewhat as they neared the stairs, and Artemis paused for half a moment to readjust the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "Divination and Care."

"Quincy's taking Care. So is all of Gryffindor, from the sound of it."

"It's a class for hands-on learners, certainly."

Lunch went well, as the girls sat far from the boys. Quincy took the time to pop over and mess up Marina's lengthening hair on the way to his seat, which got an eye roll considering her place halfway down the Ravenclaw table was quite out of the way of his place somewhere at the Gryffindor table. After lunch they all went to Transfiguration with the Hufflepuffs, and Professor McGonagall jumped right into class with an essay "to tell me what you remember from your last two years." Then it was History of Magic, and Marina took the opportunity to have a nap. Annie woke her five minutes before the end of class just in time for Marina to catch the reading assignment over the troll wars. It seemed their core classes cared very little for the fact that this was only the second day of term.

"We'll see you later, Mina," Lark said quite loudly, probably louder than necessary, after class ended and Binns dismissed them. "Have fun in Ancient Runes without us! I hope you'll be able to find your way there…"

Marina tilted her head in confusion. "Why are you—"

"You should walk with us, Marina," Evan White said, unwittingly cutting off Marina's question. "Xavier and I are taking Runes too."

Immediately, heat flared up in her face. "Oh, alright, yeah, that would be lovely," she said, tripping a little on her tongue.

The walk across the castle yielded very little meaningful conversation, but it was full of pleasantries. That is, it was full of pleasantries until Evan said something along the lines of "it's going to be harder this year" in reference to Transfig.

"That's what she said, mate," Xavier snorted.

Evan paused and chuckled, jabbing at his friend with his elbow, before picking right back up with the conversation. Marina almost stopped him to ask what in Merlin's name that was about and who "she" was, but decided against it. She didn't want to look like an idiot in front of Evan.

Marina furrowed her brow at her own thoughts as they entered the Runes classroom. Why should she worry about looking like an idiot? It wasn't her fault for never having heard this joke before. And anyway, what did she care about something Evan and Xavier seemed to find funny between themselves?

Professor Traduce was a very round, very short man, though not as short as Flitwick. He seemed cheerful and fascinated with what he taught, which was always a good quality to have in a teacher, Marina thought. What she liked most was his very casual personality. Rather than standing the entire class, he sat on his desk to speak to the students, and he spoke to them like adults. Unlike any other professor, he talked about his wife and his adult children. Marina was slightly shocked; she hadn't been aware that their professors had lives outside of the school.

"You will need to study for this course, of course," he said at the end of the introductory hour. "This is a language you'll be learning, and a dead one, at that. I won't ask you to speak it, but you'll learn to read it and write it and translate into and out of it by your OWLs in fifth year. Hopefully I'll be able to tie in a little charms and transfiguration theory while I'm at it, since spellcasting is built around the ancient runes. But anyway, you'll have to study it quite a lot to reach the level I know you all can achieve."

Marina thought she would like Professor Traduce quite a lot.

Then it was Friday, and Ravenclaws had double Potions in the morning. The girls, of course, followed the usual routine for waking Lark last. Double Potions, as always, was a blast—Toni Zabini blew up the first potion of the year, and Slughorn hovered around her workspace as she and her partner tried to clean up, commenting on the similar failures and inspiring successes of her older siblings. Potions was followed by Divination, and Marina wasn't sure whether she would end up liking the class or not. The ancient woman who must've been at least three hundred years old seemed nice enough, if a little creepy, and she did get to see Quincy and Gideon. Only, Professor Sigma's words about guesswork kept returning to her, and Marina wasn't so sure she wanted to take a class that relied on guesswork rather than solid solutions.

Up in Ravenclaw Tower after Friday's dinner, the third year girls claimed a study nook to institute this year's homework lists. Lark used the pretty calligraphic handwriting she'd learned over summer to title one sheet of parchment for each class they were all taking, even electives, though the girls were in charge of their own electives. It was actually slightly daunting to look at all the homework they had already accrued even so early in the year. Marina held Maia in her lap so the cat wouldn't bat at Artemis's quill as she started on the Transfiguration essay. How would they survive if the workload was already so much?

In addition to her own classes, Professor Flitwick added another responsibility to Marina's plate: tutoring. On Monday, after Charms class was over, he asked her to stay behind for a moment.

"It won't take long," the little man assured her, straightening some papers at his desk.

Annie told her they'd talk more at lunch (they had been discussing the likelihood of attending another Gryffindor Quidditch tryout this year, as Quincy and Gideon had apparently mentioned it in Care last week, even though term had just started a few days ago) and headed out of the room with Lark and Artemis. Feeling reasonably confident that she couldn't be in trouble, Marina approached her head of house's desk. Flitwick, of course, asked if her year was starting well or not in his slightly awkward way before jumping right into the issue at hand.

"I wondered if you might like to take on a few more students under your tutelage," Flitwick asked—stated?

Marina tipped her head to one side. "Oh. Well, my schedule is busier this year—"

"Of course," he nodded, "of course."

"I suppose it depends on how many students you have in mind. And, if you don't mind my asking, how can you tell already what students need help?" Marina felt a little proud that she hadn't just blurted out her possibly disrespectful question and instead phrased it with a little more tact.

Flitwick folded his small hands. "I don't mean to cut into your own studying time, of course. Perhaps some time on the weekend would suit you better?" He smiled under his mustache when Marina nodded. "As for the students, Professor Sprout contacted me about the girl you saw towards the end of last year, and I have one or two students in mind based on last year's exam grades for my class. I don't expect you to give anything more than some guidance with charms for those individuals, of course."

"Sounds alright to me, Professor."

"Lovely!" He grinned, delighted. "If you could look into your schedule and let me know what days are best for you, I'll take care of everything else. I don't want to take more than an hour of your time each week, of course!"

Marina smiled. The enthusiasm for teaching students that radiated from him was one of the reasons that Flitwick was her favorite professor. "Anything else?" she asked, trying very hard not to sound snappish or impatient.

He dismissed her cheerily, and even wrote her a note in case their conversation made her late for Arithmancy, her next class. She made it on time, but she appreciated his thought all the same.

—

By October, Marina had settled into the groove of third year. Despite what Flitwick had originally said, he and Marina decided that at least for now, she should give each second year an hour a week. She had the time, certainly, or else she would make time. It was fine; she felt like this was important and worthy of working around. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Marina had a free hour instead of an elective class at the end of her day, so she decided to dedicate those times to tutoring. On Tuesdays, she saw Rachel, Wednesdays were for a Slytherin boy named Randy, and Fridays she met with a Ravenclaw boy, Levi, that she often saw in the common room. The tutoring thing was going well, all things considered. Rachel was doing better than last year where thinking on her own was concerned, and she had already identified that Levi was simply too distracted by things more interesting than Charms homework—he was much more fascinated by brewing potions. Randy, the Slytherin boy, was polite but very reticent. He started off ignoring her presence but for asking a couple quiet questions during their hour, but Marina hoped he would warm up to her yet.

What was really remarkable about the beginning of October was the beginning of the Quidditch season. During Divination on a chilly Friday morning, Gideon and Quincy plopped into their seats behind Annie and Marina, almost vibrating with excitement.

"Mina, you have to come support us tomorrow morning! Gid and I are trying out again," Quincy announced.

Annie brushed some dust off the crystal ball sitting at their table. "You two made real spectacles of yourselves last year. Have you improved much since?" she asked.

"I—well, we, uh, practiced over summer—quite a bit," Quincy replied. Marina heard his chair against the carpeted floor behind her; he must've been fidgeting.

"Beater and Keeper, yeah?" she asked, turning in her seat to face the boys.

Gideon nodded, auburn hair flopping around his face. "I've been practicing with Fabian for Beater a whole lot. He says I might have a shot if the team needs a new one this year."

Their conversation was interrupted by the beginning of class, and Marina spent the whole time thinking about Quidditch, something that came as quite the surprise to her. She hoped Gideon and Quincy made the team, since they wanted it so much. On the other hand, Quidditch was a dangerous sport, and she hoped neither of them made the team. Gideon at least made the team, since his brother was on it. She wanted Quincy to be happy, too, but she was afraid of him making the team. It was a dangerous sport, Quidditch, and she wasn't sure what she would do if he was maimed or seriously injured. Since Marina was seven years old, Quincy had somehow stuck around with her and she with him. It was concerning, was all. Honestly, though, Marina was prepared to support her friends no matter what they ended up doing.

Farther towards the front of the room, Irving—she wasn't entirely sure what his last name was—sneezed rather disruptively in the middle of whatever the Divination professor—she wasn't entirely sure what any part of her name was—was saying. Irving was one of the Ravenclaw boys in her year, which would be unremarkable except for the fact that he shared a dormitory room with Alfred Smith. This was so very unfortunate, and Marina truly did not understand how anyone would survive living with Alfred Smith. Additionally, Irving shared a dormitory room with Evan White. Also Xavier Whatever-his-name-was, but he wasn't as important to Marina's thoughts as Evan was at the moment. Marina wondered if Evan would try out for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. She might feel compelled to attend matches if Evan would play in them.

Annie kicked her under the table in time to catch the old woman say, "Gaze at the balls, children. We'll take the rest of class today to practice using them." For whatever reason, this prompted Quincy and Gideon to snicker behind her, and Marina was reminded of the odd joke Xavier and Evan shared. She'd forgotten until now.

Pretending to focus on her crystal ball, Marina waited until the ancient professor nodded off to sleep as she often did. Then, she glanced over at Annie, who seemed to be genuinely focusing, and whispered, "What was so funny?"

Annie blinked a few times before whispering back, "Haven't the foggiest. Ask them after class."

So Marina did. She also asked them if they knew what was funny about "that's what she said." The boys eyed each other, smothering smiles, and asked for context.

"I don't even remember. It wasn't like they said anything out of the ordinary as far as I could tell. I think we were talking about schoolwork?" Quincy laughed, and Marina rolled her eyes. "What, does my ignorance amuse you?"

"You really don't get it?" Gideon asked.

"I'd also like to know," Annie said. She paused, and looked at Gideon another moment. "You need a haircut," she announced.

Gideon raised his hand to his hair and exchanged a look with Quincy. Suddenly, neither seemed especially keen on explaining the jokes. Quincy coughed, and his eyes darted away from the others, while Gideon ruffled his hair and looked down at his watch.

"Er—look at the time!" he exclaimed. "I promised Frank I'd meet him in the library during lunch! And—er—Quin's coming too!"

"Oh…" Marina was confused, annoyed, and a little offended. She watched the boys dash off in the opposite direction they had previously been heading in and rolled her eyes. Annie tsked beside her. "I guess we'll have to get our answers elsewhere."

"Lark has a lot of siblings," Annie said, "so maybe if it's a wizarding thing she'll have heard it from them."

On their way to lunch, Annie and Marina considered what in Merlin's name they could potentially be about to learn. By the time they arrived, they were still as clueless as ever and even more desperate for answers. Their curiosity and the suspense of not knowing was killing them. Somehow, they had been left out of a joke, and it was imperative that someone explain it to them.

"Lark, you have a lot of siblings," Annie stated as the girls sat down across from their roommates. "Do you know why the phrase 'that's what she said' is so funny?"

Lark froze in the middle of a bite of her sandwich, stunned for a beat, and then laughed. She laughed long enough for Marina to serve herself some pizza (thank Merlin she could get pizza at Hogwarts) and for Artemis to start staring back at the one or two Ravenclaws that were giving the girls weird looks. When Marina and Annie were still looking at Lark expectantly—and a little perturbedly—she stopped laughing.

"Wait," she said, eyes wide, "you really don't know?" Lark took another bite of her sandwich. "That's like one of the first dirty jokes you're supposed to learn!"

Marina blew out a sigh. "If we knew, we wouldn't be asking," she snapped.

"Boys think sex jokes are funnier than they actually are," Artemis said.

"That—what?"

"Merlin's saggy pants, you do know what sex is, right?" Lark asked, her eyebrows pulled upward in surprised concern as she looked between Marina and Annie.

"Of course," Marina said.

"No…?" Annie said at the same time.

Lark, Artemis, and Marina paused to turn and look at Annie with varying levels of shock, awe, concern, and disbelief. A small silence fell around the girls before Lark broke it, her cheeks a little pink.

"Where did you think babies came from?" she asked quietly.

Annie flushed red. "I…don't know?" It was odd to see Annie suddenly reduced to hesitance. It reminded Marina of when her friend was worried about her relationship with her parents, and then a thought struck her.

"Did your parents refuse to tell you?" she asked.

"They might've if I had asked, but I never asked," Annie answered.

"Okay, this is not a conversation to have in the Great Hall," Lark decided. "We'll explain everything tonight, including the joke, I promise."

Lark did explain everything in their dorm room that night, perhaps too well. Marina, for her part, was glad she finally understood and could now be on her guard for future jokes of the same genre, but Annie was still stunned into silence the next morning. As promised to their Gryffindor friends, Annie and Marina got up early to go watch the Quidditch tryouts, but the blonde barely even said "good morning" to Marina. When they met Gideon and Quincy walking into the Great Hall for breakfast, Annie blushed and avoided all eye contact.

"Will you be alright?" Marina whispered as they started heading for the Gryffindor table.

Annie took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah," she said, "I'm just, um…"

"Unintentionally imagining every boy in the room naked?"

"Yes."

"You'll get used to knowing what male bits are," Marina assured her. "I couldn't look Quincy in the face for days after my mum had the talk with me, but you're less shy than I am, so you'll get over it so quick you won't even realize."

The girls sat down so that Annie was between Marina and Becky Davies and they were across from Caroline Brown and Emmeline Vance. It seemed to help Annie a bit, sitting that way. Soon enough, Quincy and Gideon had yanked everyone into a discussion about Quidditch, professional Quidditch teams, the house teams, strategies, and all sorts of technicalities and terminologies that went right over Marina's head. She was okay with this. It was more fun to watch her friends so excited over a sport than to try and participate in the conversation.

"Marina, hi!" came a voice from behind her shoulder. She turned, and Peter Pettigrew and his friends were walking up to the table.

"Hey, Peter," she greeted. "How's second year going?"

"Good. I've been asking Remus for help, like you said last year."

Marina grinned. "Good!" She leaned a bit to one side to see around Peter. "Morning, Remus, James, Sirius."

"Marina, you're just the witch I wanted to see!" James exclaimed, pushing past Sirius to stand closer to the table. "I need advice and none of the girls in my year will help me without telling Lily."

"You need girl advice?" she guessed. Marina noticed Remus and Sirius had already claimed spots at the table and were waiting for their friends. She also noticed that her eggs were likely going cold. Eggs cooled quickly. "Why don't we talk during tryouts? You're going, yeah?"

James pushed his glasses farther up his nose. "Uh, Sirius and I are going, but I think Remus and Peter wanted to stay behind and work on this essay we have due for Herbology," he said.

Marina briefly wondered why James and Sirius weren't also going to work on their Herbology essays, but she let it slide. "I'll talk to you later, then."

"Okay, thanks!" And he scurried off down the table with Peter.

Like the previous year, Annie and Marina ate, drank, and were merry with the Gryffindors until the Quidditch captain (last year's captain had been replaced, Marina noticed) rose and headed for the huge doors with the rest of the team. Annie chatted with Quincy as she wound her blue and gray scarf around her neck in preparation for the chilly October morning air, which was good because if she were still stupefied by last night's discussion then she wouldn't have been able to get any words out at all. In one big pack of scarlet and gold and a tidbit of blue, the Gryffindors and friends were off to the Quidditch pitch.

Just as Marina was regretting her decision to forget her gloves in her trunk, she was pounced on by twelve-year-olds. "So as I was saying," James began, and then he launched into a whole story about how Lily, who he had decided was the love of his life over summer, hated him, ignored him, etc., and how all he had done was this and that, and all he had said was such and such, and all he had called her was so and so, and how now he was convinced he was going to die alone and miserable and Lily would surely die happy and in love with her soulmate, whoever that would be, and how he hoped that soulmate certainly wasn't Snivellus, the kid she always hung around with, and how just the other day he had tried to talk to this Snivellus boy (Marina was fairly certain his real name was not Snivellus) had taken whatever he had said as a deep offense, even though all he had said was this and that, and all he had called him was so and so, and all he had suggested was such and such...

Marina began to stop listening to James ramble on and on, since letting him ramble on seemed to be all he intended to do for the foreseeable future. By now they had reached the Quidditch pitch, Annie was deep in conversation with Caroline, and Quincy and Gideon had already broken iff from the spectators to await their chance to try their luck and show off for the team captain. Sirius, James, and Marina climbed the wooden stairs that seemed like they should be quite rickety but never were, and found a decent seat a little removed from the whole crowd of supporting fans. All the while, James blabbered on. They sat with Marina between the two boys, so she leaned a little to her right, towards Sirius.

"How many hours a day does he go on like this?" she asked, voice hushed.

"Constantly, the bloody sap," came his reply.

"I'm shocked he's still going."

"The sheer volume of his foppery is astonishing."

Sirius struck Marina as an oddly old-fashioned boy, though she didn't have very much to go on. Out of all the four Gryffindor second years, she talked to James the most—or, he talked to her—Peter the second most, and Sirius a whole lot less. She talked to Remus even less than she talked to Sirius, in fact. But no matter what, Sirius always smoothly used little turns of phrase that Marina felt had a stuffier air to them, like they'd been pulled out of an 80-year-old hatbox. From what she could gather from Artemis and Lark, the ancient stuffiness was common quirk of the old pureblood families, and Marina extrapolated that even though Sirius acted like he had completely cut himself off from his past, it was still his past, and since his entire family likely talked like upper-crust Victorian socialites, so must Sirius, even if he didn't notice it. Marina often heard a little of the same in James too, though it was certainly a more modernized antique patois.

Mentally patting herself on the back for remembering the word "patois," Marina tried to jump back into James's stream of consciousness, and gathered that he was now talking at length about his plans to win Lily over. She decided it was high time to cut in.

"Alright, slow down," she interrupted. "What exactly are you asking me?"

James ruffled his hair absently. His pink hand made Marina think of her nearly numb fingers in her lap. "How do I get a girl to like me, I suppose."

"Godric's sake, just get over her!" burst Sirius. "She's only a girl. And we're only in second year, as well!"

"'Only a girl?!' Why, she's the most exquisite girl I've ever met!"

Marina rolled her eyes. "You're twelve. Get over yourself. Wait until you're a little older to start planning your future together, alright? And maybe just tone your devotion down a little. You come on quite strong," she said.

"But won't that make it easier for her to ignore me?" James asked, clearly puzzled beyond belief.

Mouth open to reply, Marina froze as a scream ripped through the air across the Quidditch pitch. It was quite high, and cracked and squeaked a little, but it was a scream nonetheless, and it was much too familiar. She looked out into the pitch and could've sworn her heart stopped as she watched Quincy hit the ground.