Messy Break-up

December 25th, 1994/Mid-March, 1995
Sixth Year
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December 25th

"Promise me something?" Jo asked, as the girls flaked out on their beds after leaving the Yule ball early, their dorm-mates Skye, Megan and Jeannie probably wouldn't be back for a while.

"Hmm?"

"If he ever hurts you, you tell me."

Leili turned her head and looked at Jo, "I promise."

Four months later in Mid-March:

They were fighting again.

It was all they seemed to do these days and Leilani hated it. It turned her stomach into knots, but he was trying to control her again, like he'd control the hoops on the Quidditch pitch and she wouldn't let him. She'd learned that lesson. Letting him take control made her inner voice scream that she shouldn't be doing whatever it was.

She aimed to dissolve their arguments before they got into screaming matches; generally this was accomplished by her walking away—he didn't like that.

She was ignoring the problem, she knew, but she always intended to deal with it later when she, at least, was calm again. Unfortunately, it didn't always work that way. In fact, it never worked that way.

He'd seemed so nice when he'd asked her out the first time and then to the Yule ball. He'd also appeared a bit cocky and kind of full of himself at first, but he was a good Quidditch Captain and girls probably swooned the second they heard his accent, which, she had to admit wasa delicious accent, one she'd taken to imitating—in private, of course.

She'd watched him with his team during practice and he was nice, especially to Harry. She couldn't understand why he had to be different around her.

At first she thought she could fix him, like she fixed everything for her firsties: homesickness? No problem.

Homework trouble? Easy peasy.

Her own pain in the butt boyfriend? Not so easy.

Kids were easy to help, slip an encouraging, anonymous note in with their books and watch their face light up when dozens of them fell out, a note from every Hufflepuff who had noticed.

But him? She didn't know how to help him.

She thought she'd be able to bring out the good she saw in him when he was around Harry, but she'd been wrong. Instead he'd gotten only more controlling, kept trying to isolate her, kept vying for her relationship with Jo. If he couldn't have it, he didn't want it to be there.

The jealousy had been cute at first. Endearing. Amusing. But now it was just stupid and annoying. There was no reason for it, she didn't hang out with other boys; she avoided Marcus just so Oliver wouldn't get hot and bothered, but she couldn't always do it. She tried not to do anything that might upset Oliver and that included flirting with him—the few times she'd tried it, things had gone too far and trying to put the genie back in the bottle had been hard.

He took interest in the things she did, often following her from one place to another, even when she didn't ask. While he asked her about her latest book, she always had the feeling he was being polite. He didn't really care what she was reading or doing in class but he did care about Quidditch. He insisted she go to all his practices and that he watch all of Hufflepuff's.

It seemed normal at first, he loved Quidditch, but more and more lately he seemed too interested, like he was memorizing how Hufflepuff played. When she'd said she didn't want to go anymore, he'd been upset. They'd fought. She'd retracted her reluctance.

They were walking together when Leili's bracelet began to heat up, "I've got to go, Jo's calling," she smiled.

"Stop hangin' oot with Mon'gom'ry," Oliver demanded. He'd broached the subject once before but had gotten distracted by the shortness of her velvet skirt.

"Never gonna happen," Leili told him with a patient smile. "I'm told I have an 'Unhealthy dependence' on her."

"Then stop hanging oot with Flint."

"That'd be hard, since they are dating and are often together as a result," she told him. "Besides, he's grown on me."

"Then choose, them or us," He'd been thinking about this particular ultimatum for a while.

Leili stopped, a choice between someone she loved like family and a boy that seemed more and more a jerk?

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that. Now, Jo needs me, so I'm going to go find her," she began to turn away but he caught her wrist.

"You didnae choose."

Her eyebrows shot up, blinking incredulously at him. "No, I didn't," she frowned down at the hand around her wrist and pulled her arm free. She decided she needed to stop running away from this problem; she needed to do something about it, now.

"I'm choosing her, because I'm done with this juggling act. I've known Jo since I was 9, she is my best friend, she's like my sister and you are just a boy I thought I liked," Leili said. Oh! It felt good to get that off her chest. Wow!

SLAP

Her head snapped to the side and her jaw dropped. Small sparks of electricity danced across her skin, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end. She tried to process what had just happened, but her brain was screaming too loudly for her to think; so instead of standing there for a moment longer, she turned and ran back to her common room.

Jo was halfway up the stairs by the time Leili burst in the door. "Jo!" she called as she rushed past Professor Sprout's empty desk.

Jo had known something wasn't right; her fears had worsened when Leili never reactivated the protean charm. When they met in the middle of the common room and she saw the red mark on Leili's cheek, everything clicked into place.

He'd hit her.

The bastard had hit Leili! Jo stalked angrily past Leilani and tracked down Wood; she found him out on the Quidditch pitch.

"Wood!" Jo snarled marching up to him.

He turned and gave her that self-same cocky grin he'd used on Marcus at the Yule ball.

This time, she didn't pull her punch; she rammed it into his gut. While he was bent double she growled between clenched teeth, "If you touch her again, I will kill you. Do you understand? You don't screw my family."

Oliver coughed and looked up at Jo, conceit simmering in his eyes and collecting in the smug lines of his smirk, "Too late," he coughed.

Her wand flashed and she was joined by a pack of very large, and very angry looking—possibly feral—dogs.

Her eyes narrowed as she whispered a single word: "Kill."

She watched as the beasts charged forward, watched as Oliver Wood ran screaming for his life in the direction of the Forbidden Forest.

Meanwhile, Leili sank against the wall of their shared dormitory and pulled her knees to her chest trying not to cry. She closed her eyes and tried to control the lightning arcing over her body.

"Leilani."

She jumped about three feet in surprise at the male voice in a girls' dormitory, before she opened her eyes to see the house ghost hovering silently in front of her.

"Friar! You scared the bejeezus out of me! You've gotta quit the sneaking, you're gonna give somebody a heart attack."

"Well, what you like me to do? I can't very well walk louder," he smiled.

"Rattle some chains or something?" she offered.

"What happened?" he asked gently.

"I got into a fight with my boy—or well, ex-boyfriend now I suppose—and he hit me. Jo's off maiming him now," she said, almost flippantly.

She was not in a mood conducive to talking, or even thinking about her feelings, so she changed the subject.

"Hey, can you put your hand here?" she asked, pointing to the red mark on her face.

The ghost obliged and Leili sighed, reveling in the feeling of the cold against her burning cheek. As she calmed down, so did the lightning. When she was once again safe to approach, the Friar left. In his wake came Jennie and Skye, carrying a quilt from the back of the largest coach in the common room. The honeycomb pieces were fashioned in Hufflepuff colors, shades of yellow and black.

The girls sat down beside her and draped the quilt over their knees. Knowing full well how Leilani hated the sound of dead silence, they filled her ears with idle castle gossip while the sobs hit. They rubbed her back and passed over boxes of conjured tissues.

Back on the Quidditch pitch, Marcus came to stand next to Jo and they watched Wood run screaming into the Forbidden Forest, a pack of very rabid looking dogs hot on his heels.

He looked at Jo and said, "I cannot tell you how long I've waited to see that."