A/N: Don't hate me! I've had this written for a while and I could have sworn I posted it, but I just realized I hadn't. So sorry!
"What's wrong with you, Potter?" Lisa asked him a few days later. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the question and it wasn't the first time he'd tried to shrug it off. The twins' revenge had kicked in with full force, and while every other student celebrated with peals of laughter and victorious cheers, Harry couldn't force himself to even pretend to appreciate all the work and research they'd insisted had gone into it.
And there had been a lot, Harry could tell. It couldn't have been easy creating a different punishment for every Slytherin, even with the help of Lee, Hermione and "certain unnamed sources." That first day, when Crabbe and Goyle nearly burst into tears, lamenting loudly that everything tasted like ash, Draco had sent Harry a narrow glare, then stood and left the room in his usual flurry of robes.
He couldn't laugh. He wouldn't cry. He'd taken to maintaining a blank expression, but it attracted more worry from Hermione. She'd asked him about it, during his final fitting in the common room. He'd given her some sort of bland answer that she didn't buy even for a moment. After a few minutes' silent study of his puffy sleeves, picking at a loose hem, she finally asked, "Does this have something to do with your girlfriend?"
Harry had been glad he'd been only standing. If he'd been moving, he was sure he would have tripped. Even so busy, with her mind preoccupied with the play and the props and her war on the Slytherins, Hermione was still the most perceptive person he knew. She was watching him carefully, so he sighed, too tired to lie again, especially when he could tell she wouldn't believe anything but the truth. "It... isn't going well," he confessed softly. "I don't want to talk about it."
Something in his face, and Harry was betting it was the tears he was still fighting back, got through to Hermione and she bit her lip, nodding a little. She didn't say anything else and Harry was grateful. But before he headed upstairs to change back into his own clothes, she pulled him into a hug, patting his back a little before letting him go. It was good to know that no matter how busy his friends were, they were always still there, ready to offer their silent support. It made him feel a little better. Not much, but still better.
Still, the constant questions- "What's wrong, Harry?" "Alright there, mate?"- became really irritating. Harry was glad when Fred and George's antics began to take attention away from him. Lisa though was a true multi-tasker, her mind always covering many different topics and ready to zoom in on one at any given moment. It was why Harry figured she'd be good friends with Hermione. That and her tenaciousness. "Well?" she prompted, refusing to let Harry back out of the conversation. She watched him carefully, then shook her head. "Things are going badly with your Juliet, I suppose," Lisa sighed and rested her chin in her hand.
Harry crossed his arms and buried his face in the crook of his elbow. Part of him appreciated Lisa's discretion in not using Draco's name, they were in the library after all, but the rest of him wished she'd drop the subject. He didn't want to think about Malfoy ever again. "I tried to tell..." he paused, not quite sure how to continue.
"Juliet," Lisa supplied, leaning closer to hear him.
Harry nodded a little, still not looking up. "Yeah. I tried to tell Juliet how I felt, but it came out all wrong."
Lisa waited patiently. After a few silent minutes, she asked, "What did Juliet say?"
Harry pushed his head further into his arms. He lifted one and ran his hand through his hair. "That we could never be friends," he explained softly, brushing his fingers over his forehead. He could feel the headache coming on.
"That's strange," Lisa murmured, leaning back in her chair and playing absently with the tips of her dark hair. "I would not have bet on that response." Lisa bit her lip thoughtfully. "What exactly did your Juliet say?"
He sighed. As if he could forget. The words ran through his mind at least twelve times an hour. "Juliet can't see us being friends." There was a pounding now. It was still soft but Harry could tell, in minutes it would become a full-blown headache. He wondered absently if Hermione still had any of her headache powder. "I didn't know what I was doing the whole time we were hanging out. I still don't know what to do. You're smart, Lisa. Just tell me, okay?" He wasn't begging. He was too tired to beg, too wary of the coming migraine to bother pleading.
But Lisa patted his head, very much like an older, and thus wiser, sister. "Same advice, Potter," she smiled down at him. "You have to talk, and not whatever mumbling I'm sure you were doing that made a mess of this whole situation to begin with, but actual words." She leaned her head forward, resting her chin on the table to look him in the eyes. "You know what words I'm talking about? Just three," she waggled three fingers at him. "Go... to...hell." Then the Ravenclaw laughed at the look of shock that came over Harry's face. "Relax, Potter," she waved her hand at him. "I'm only joking. You looked so down, I just couldn't help it!" She giggled again. "You know what the words are, so you don't need me to tell you. Just find the right moment and spit them out. And, for God's sake, don't use your head."
Harry smiled a bit then. How ironic that a Ravenclaw was insisting on not using logic and reason, not that Harry ever actually relied on those particular traits to begin with... "Matters of the heart can't be dealt with using your head," she explained, ignoring Harry's grin. "You'll always screw it up because your head likes to point out things that could go wrong. Why do you think most Ravenclaws have joyless marriages?" she whispered and shuddered as if she dreaded such a future.
"They used their heads?" he guessed and laughed when Lisa nodded, clapping her hands cheerfully.
"Precisely, my dear lion. They used their heads. It's the same for a lot of Slytherins now that I think of it..." she trailed off and frowned a bit. Harry could tell she was running down a mental list of Slytherin and Ravenclaw alumnae. Then she shrugged, apparently losing interest. "In any case, you should know, there's going to come a moment when you find that you have to say those words. If you let that moment pass, and you don't do anything, you'll lose your Juliet. Then you won't get another chance. It pretty much sucks and then you have to move on, because there's no point looking back."
"Did that happen to you?" Harry asked, curious about the sadness that had come over the normally cheery girl.
She shook it off and laughed. "Of course not. I've got my Romeo. It was my sister. She's very depressing to be around these days and I'd rather that not happen to you or your Juliet. So make sure it doesn't." She stood, stretching her arms over her head. "Well, Potter, that's all for now. I have to say, if we continue these sessions, I'll have to start charging."
"Thanks, Lisa," Harry called as she turned to leave.
She smiled back at him. "Anytime, Harry. Now finish your essay."
It was such a Hermione thing to say, with such a Hermione expression, that Harry couldn't help but laugh a bit at it. And the threatening headache had stopped its approach, like Lisa's words had scared it away. He shook his head a bit, and leaned his chin on his hand, looking down at the blank parchment in front of him. "Finish it," Lisa called from the door, earning herself a glare from Madame Pince. Harry's quill started moving, almost of its own accord, and because what was coming out wasn't too terrible, Harry let it continue. When it seemed his quill had nothing else to say, Harry shrugged, rolled up the parchment and leaned his head on his hand to stare out the window next to him.
He straightened when he noticed Fred and George standing near one of the trees. They were leaning casually and it looked like they were talking. If he hadn't noticed Hermione and Ron seated on the grass a few feet away, pretending to study, he might not have paid any attention. But there was only one reason he could figure that Hermione would take a break from her busy schedule. Harry leaned closer, nearly pressing his face against the window as he scanned the students meandering about the grounds below. "Whoa…" he whispered, flinching a little at the gargoyle's sudden appearance. It swooped down and latched onto the shoulders of a Slytherin boy. Harry couldn't make out his face but even though the window pane, he could hear the boy's screams.
As the gargoyle rose higher into the air, the boy's flailing limbs and panicked cries attracted the attention of others in the library and soon Harry found himself surrounded by students gasping and giggling with delight. At least, until the boy squirmed his way loose and fell nearly twenty feet to the ground. "Oh, crud," Harry cried, and pushed his way through the crowd. It was just his bloody luck that the screaming Slytherin had managed to land on Seamus.
A/N: Thanks to supecoolfreak, SunshineAndDaisies, HeartofaGoddess2009, LyricallyInspired, DMbranolaHP, purplerawr, Angeena, October in a Box, Lady-Umbreon, Ibbet, SexySpeedDemon, Draco and Hermione is like PBJ, violetkitty02, AnimeFreak2468, YYWKMN, Caldonya, Lia-Lily, AlineDaryen, Horseygirl7, TayTai-BloodBlueRose, boredom is a crime, paintupurple, HiM'e'iTsu, and RebeccaMarieCullen for the lovely reviews. And again, I'm so sorry I spaced!