Written for the Fanatical Fics Writing Competition

The Prompts:

Main Character: A Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw from Harry's year
Item: A cup of Tea
Plot Point: The characters listen to a muggle pop song
Max Words: 2,000
Min Words: 500

Funerals, even wizard funerals it turned out, were dour affairs. They were particularly uncomfortable when one did not know the deceased well, but did know their daughter better than practically anyone. At least that was Justin Finch-Fletchley's hypothesis, after having to watch Hannah cry into her older sister's shoulder from six pews back.

After the service, there was a luncheon at the Abbotts' house. Justin and Ernie offered stilted condolences to Hannah, her face much pinker than usual, like they weren't her very best friends. She gave them the most pitiful look before hugging Justin and then Ernie. She sniffled into Ernie's chest for a whole minute while he awkwardly but gallantly patted her back, and Justin stood idly at his elbow. The rest of the hour, Ernie's parents made small talk with other adults, and they sat silently sipping tea from Hannah's mum's best china and eating butter biscuits in a forgotten corner of the den with of all people, Terry Boot and Zacharias Smith.

The Hufflepuffs were all being uncharacteristically quiet, and Terry tried to make up for it, trying to engage Ernie in a conversation about Potions.

"I didn't know what to expect with Slughorn, but he's a whole lot better than Snape...I'd never seen any of those potions before—read about them, of course," Terry said between bites of biscuit. "I was really interested in the Amortentia."

"Whatever you've been giving Susan not strong enough anymore?" Zach said acerbically.

Terry ignored him.

"It's unlike any other love potion. They usually make you unnaturally obsessed with the giver for no good reason. But Amortentia mimics real love as closely as possible. It makes you see things you already love in the giver. That's why it smells different to everyone. It smells like the things—or person that you're already attracted to."

Justin supposed he was the audience for this explanation since Ernie was in the class, and Zacharias was, well, being himself.

"I hope you smelled Susan, or you're in a sticky wicket."

Susan Bones—who had been dating Terry since mid-April (How Terry had Susan, Michael Corner had had Ginny Weasley and Cho Chang, and Anthony Goldstein had captured the attention of half the girls in the D.A. could only be chalked up to some ancient magic of Rowena Ravenclaw herself.)—was sitting in the living room with Hannah and her sisters. Justin could just get a glimpse of them through the doorway, Hannah, with her head resting on Susan's shoulder, while Susan petted her hair. She appeared to be making a much better pass at comfort than Justin or Ernie had. But then Susan had lost her aunt the same way over the summer and was the only one of them who could know how Hannah felt. Justin wished he had anything more to give Hannah than the constant gnawing anxiety that increased with every attack. Every Daily Prophet headline seemed to scream you could be next.

"Call me a sap." Terry shrugged, but he had a smile on his face, trying to play it cool in the face of the horrible charge of actually liking his girlfriend. "What about you, Ernie?"

"Rest assured, it wasn't Susan." He said indifferently. "I was more interested in the Felix Felicis personally. It is the more difficult potion."

"And of course, Potter got it." Terry rolled his eyes.

"If Harry is the Chosen One, I'd wager he needs more luck than the rest of us," Ernie said loftily, though Justin remembered Ernie returning from his first potions lesson in a bad mood. Justin did not contradict him.

"I'm not sure what he's waiting for, if he's the real deal." Zach nodded to the other room where Hannah's family was. "What with everything that's going on."

They looked at one another uncomfortably.

"It's getting bad. Everyone's parents are thinking of pulling them. Padma's parents want to," Terry said. "And Anthony's dad already decided. He leaves Friday."

There was a clink of china as Ernie spilled some of his tea on himself. Zach snorted, and Justin handed him a napkin.

"W—when was that decided?" Ernie said, dabbing at his robes.

"Dunno. A few days ago." Terry shrugged.

"No one should be leaving. There's nowhere safe as Hogwarts," Ernie asserted. Justin was not so sure of that, but he knew he did not want anyone, Ernie or Hannah especially, to leave him.

Hannah thanked them for coming, teary-eyed, and again hugged them both ever so tightly. Neither had been brave enough to ask when she was coming back to school, though Justin desperately wanted to.

He would have to ask Susan about it later.

"What do you want to do now, laddies? I know Professor Sprout has excused you from classes for the rest of the day, but I understand if you want to go back early." Mr MacMillan said within minutes of they had flooed back to the MacMillan's house.

"I think we're going to stay here tonight, Dad."

Justin looked at Ernie. They hadn't talked about spending the night. They hadn't talked about much since Friday, since Hannah left.

"Not looking to skive off prefect duties, are you, Ern?" Said Mr MacMillan.

There were always prefect meetings on Monday nights and it wasn't like Ernie at all to miss them, but maybe Sprout had excused him from that too.

"Ernie," Mrs MacMillan chided Mr MacMillan—whose first name was also Ernest. "Don't you think these boys deserve a break?"

"Can't have them neglecting responsibilities or getting behind, Love," Said Mr MacMillan with the same imperious tone Ernie sometimes took on.

"They've only been at school two weeks. They've time to catch up, and they've had a rather long day." Mrs MacMillan said and—though Mr MacMillan grumbled something about "making Head Boy"— that was that.

The afternoon was miserable. Justin was plagued by the thought of Hannah never returning. He did not tell Ernie though he seemed equally gloomy. After supper and Ernie's parents went to bed, they retreated to his room, where a cot had been conjured beside Ernie's bed. The bedside lamp dimly, but warmly lit the room.

"You can wear these," Ernie said, handing Justin a pair of blue-striped pyjamas from his dresser drawer.

"Thanks," Justin took them. They changed and then Ernie disappeared and returned minutes later carrying an extra blanket.

"Here," Ernie handed him the blanket. Justin was about to say he didn't need it when he saw the bottle tucked inside the fold. He pulled it out. Ogden's Old Firewhisky.

"Golly gosh, what sort of prefect are you?" Justin grinned.

"I might tell you I left my badge in my trunk at school, and my father has so many of these he'll never notice and—and I thought we could use it after today." Ernie sat across from Justin on the edge of his bed.

"It sounds like a marvellous idea."

There were no glasses, so Justin took a sip straight from the bottle. (What would his poor mother think?) There was a pleasant burn that seemed to warm him from the inside out. He passed Ernie the bottle, and he took a swig.

They did that a few times before Justin's cheeks began to heat, and Ernie's were already quite pink.

"You look like Hannah," Justin giggled to himself, pointing at his own face.

"Are you calling Hannah a drunk? I'll have to tell her that when we...if she's..." Ernie's smile sank, taking Justin's with it.

"She's going to come back." It would not be Hogwarts without her.

"Lots of people are going home..." Ernie said—when had they both laid down?—staring at the ceiling. He sounded terribly unlike himself. "And even Mum wants me home...Dad would never, but..."

There was a lull where he thought maybe he was supposed to speak, but no, no, no, he would not have this conversation. He grabbed the bottle and took another sip.

"What do you think about Anthony going home?" Ernie said something finally, though it was not what Justin expected.

"Anthony Goldstein?"

"What other Anthony?"

"Why?"

"I don't know. We've been seeing him an awful lot."

"He's Terry's friend. And we've seen lots of Terry. He wants to make Susan happy." Giggles came unbidden. "It's like ' If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.'"

"What's that?" Ernie said incredulously.

"You know!" Justin felt deeply upset that Ernie did not know. "'I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna I wanna really, really, really wanna zig-a-zig ah.'"

He was singing this time and trying to dance laying down, though something told him he looked more like a writhing flobberworm.

"Can't say that I do," Ernie said between hearty laughs.

"It was everywhere all summer!" Justin asserted. These blasted wizards never knew about anything. "The...the Spice Girls! My sisters like them."

"Spice Girls? What's that supposed to mean?"

"There are five of them, and they're all named after spices that match their personality. There's Ginger Spice—she's a ginger, and Sporty Spice—and Baby—"

"Only one of those is even a spice," Ernie said stubbornly.

"Like I was saying, Baby Spice. She's blonde with pigtails."

"Like Hannah!"

"Then Susan's Ginger Spice."

"Does that make Meg Jones Sporty Spice?"

"Righty-oh," Justin exclaimed and giggled. "There's still Posh Spice an—"

"That's you!"

"What? I thought we were doing the girls."

"Who is posher than the Honourable Mr Justin Finch-Fletchley?"

"You're Scary Spice then."

"Why's she scary?"

"Dunno. She's loud, I think?"

"You think I'm loud?" Ernie looked terribly offended, eyes wide, a ridiculous picture with his pink cheeks.

"No, no, no, only when you're going in on a first year," Justin shook his head exaggeratedly.

Ernie glowered and looked like he was about to lecture Justin about the duties and responsibilities of being a prefect.

"Yes, yes, I know prefect is a terribly difficult and important job. That's why you've decided to skive off the prefect meeting tonight." Justin raised the bottle in a mocking cheers.

The frown only deepened. A more sober Justin would have known not to say that.

"I am not—It's just—" Ernie's face somehow turned an even darker shade of pink. "The Amortentia and—you wouldn't understand."

"Amortentia?" Justin's brain was quite foggy. "The love potion—the one Terry talked about? What's that—"

"Anthony's going home," Ernie said simply, taking the bottle from Justin and sipping from it. "He didn't tell me."

Anthony was Ravenclaw's prefect. He would have been at the meeting Ernie was avoiding, but—

Oh. Justin thought, something cutting through to his addled brain. The realisation hit him like ton of bricks. He could only conjure up jokes about Rowena Ravenclaw's ancient love magic and how despite capturing the all the girls' attention Anthony hadn't actually done anything and Ernie's fawning admiration for Cedric Diggory suddenly seemed much more like Hannah's unabashed crush, and the lyrics to the blasted Spice Girls song, and all the times he had seen Ernie speak to Anthony, few of which he could even recall—but through the fog, he could see Ernie looking at him, quite, well earnestly, in the dim light.

"Maybe he didn't know what to say," Justin said, though he wasn't sure he was talking about Anthony. He wished Hannah was here, or maybe Susan.

Ernie frowned, taking another sip from the bottle.

"Forget I said anything. We should go to sleep. Dad's going to take us back early tomorrow." He said brusquely and Justin nodded uncomfortably, .

Ernie flipped off the light, and they laid there pretending to sleep, pretending they didn't know the other was doing the same.