DISCLAIMER: Teddy Lupin, Victoire Weasley and all the other Harry Potter characters are property of JK Rowling, not me; no copyright infringement is intended.

The Art of Being Subtle

Chapter Four – Roxanne

Gryffindor Common Room – 12th July – 1:22am

The party had been going on for nearly six hours now, and it showed no signs of stopping. The Seventh Years were on all drunk, either alcohol or happiness at the thought of finally leaving school, and most of the Fifth and Sixth Years were somewhere along the infamous Hogwarts drunkenness scale from Slightly Tipsy to Completely Rat Arsed.

Roxanne sat on the sidelines and observed.

This was only the second Graduation Party she'd been to – the only other had been when she was in her first year, and she'd gone to bed at eight thirty – but it was following the same set of formulaic, unwritten rules that the rest of them had: that the teachers knew about what was going on, but, as long as no-one's behaviour was too raucous, they couldn't kick up a fuss; that the houses took it in turns to host the party and that it was open to fifth years and above (though, technically, there was nothing to stop the lower years attending when the party was being held in their Common Room, as Roxanne had done in her first year, the only other time the party had been held in the Gryffindor Common Room in her school lifetime).

It wasn't a very exciting party, that was for sure. Perhaps she was missing out on something because it wasn't her graduation party and she still had two years left of school, but she'd enjoyed the party earlier in the year for Gryffindor winning the Quidditch Cup a whole lot more.

She'd danced with her cousins, and with her younger brother, Fred, just to embarrass him, but other than that, Roxanne Weasley had sat firmly on the edge, preferring to watch and analyse what was going on rather than participate in it.

Frankly, there wasn't much to analyse – the party itself was a pretty formulaic one. The graduating Seventh Years drank and danced the night away, squealing and hugging people they'd barely spoken to in the past seven years, but with whom they were now apparently unable to imagine a life without now that school was nearly over for good.

The sixth years hung around near them, but not with them, clearly envisaging their own leaving celebration in a year's time. The fifth years drank shots of firewhiskey and pretended that they liked it, so they could imagine that they, too, were old and grown up.

Her family were easy to analyse as well – Weasleys weren't very good at hiding their emotions. James (technically a Potter), Fred and Louis, Gryffindor Second Years, were slumped in a corner together – barely able to keep their eyes open, but unwilling to give up their cool image by going to bed early.

Fourth years Lucy and Dominique had experienced a slight anticlimax with the first proper party they had ever attended – they had expected it to be a grand event, but it had turned out to be girls in not very much clothing dancing with boys who looked exactly the same as they always did, in a Common Room rather lazily decorated with a few streamers and non-burstable balloons. However, they hadn't let this deter them, and had thrown themselves into dancing with as many guys as they could (though it was pretty obvious that the only guy Lucy was interested in was Jeremy Finnegan, who'd been dating that Ravenclaw Fifth Year for six months now, and that Dominique had her eye on that Hufflepuff with the blonde hair and the eyebrow piercing).

Molly had spent the whole night dancing with Evan Wood, her boyfriend, Roxanne noticed with a sense of smug satisfaction. Though the two of them were in their Fifth Year, Roxanne was a Gryffindor and Molly was a Ravenclaw, and throughout most of their first four years of school they had hung around in different social groups and consequently weren't that close. A shared meltdown over the OWL exams had lead to the pair of them becoming much closer, and now they were almost inseparable. Back in March, Molly had blushingly whispered to Roxanne that she had a tiny crush on Evan, one of Roxanne's friends, and she had (quite unsubtly) set them up together, something which had worked out quite well, she thought to herself, rather smugly.

She prided herself on being able to set people up and work out who was dating who, sometimes even before the couple themselves had realised it. She wasn't talented at Divination (she'd spent the past two years randomly making stuff up whenever she was asked a question, and was looking forward to dropping it next year . . . not that she really expected to get a good enough grade to carry on anyway), but she could spot a relationship a mile off.

Like Teddy and Victoire.

(Mind you, the pair of them were being so obvious that she wouldn't have been surprised if her brother had worked it out already.)

Each of them had been consciously avoiding each other for most of the night – deliberately dancing with the entire cohort of Sixth and Seventh years but the other one, deliberately not talking to each other, or looking at each other, staying as far apart from each other whilst still being in the same room . . . until just now.

Puh-lease.

Who did they think they were kidding? Doing their goodbye rounds within thirty seconds of each other? It was so obvious, what they were really up to. Honestly. If she timed it right, she'd be able to see the pair of them sneaking around the Hogwarts grounds late at night. She glanced out of the window.

Well, OK, it was raining heavily. So they probably weren't outside. But she would put all her savings on the fact that, were she to trawl all the empty broom cupboards, disused classrooms and other clichéd locations within the school, she would find the pair of them playing tonsil tennis or whatever.

James, Fred and Louis were more secretive when they were planning an enormous prank to play on you. And the three of them could be read like a book. Honestly. Someone needed to teach the two of them a lesson in subtlety. Perhaps she should have a word with them and—

"Roxanne? Wanna dance?" Christopher Macmillan (hottie extraordinaire) smiled charmingly at her offered her his hand.

She took it, accepting his offer with a smile of her own, and pushed all thoughts of Teddy and Victoire from her mind.

Because really, who could think of what they were up to in the snogging department (which, frankly, was a bit blee) when she could be getting some snogging action of her own?

A/N: Thanks for the reviews – I really appreciate them :) Hope you liked this chapter – I tried to do something a bit different. Let me know if you think it worked, won't you? :D