"Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark," Harry said his lines with as much feeling as he could muster as he fumbled slightly with the empty bottle that represented the poison. "Here's to my love," he continued, and pretended to drink, hardly noticing that the hall and all the students in it had fallen silent during this oh-so-important dress rehearsal. "O true apothecary," he stumbled over the words, as if talking were becoming difficult. Lisa had suggested it would make the scene more effective. "Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss, I die." He let his arm slip from beneath him, falling to nestle next to Lisa on the wide table that represented the still unfinished monument.
He listened as Baddock and Stewart Ackerly, a Ravenclaw a few years younger than him, held the conversation between Friar Lawrence and Balthasar. They certainly sounded better than they had several weeks ago, he noted absently. But then, so must he. Then he felt Lisa move at his side, but kept his eyes carefully closed. He was supposed to be dead after all, even if it went against his better nature not to react.
"Oh, comfortable friar," Lisa started her lines well enough, but they sounded strange, a little choked. Then she stopped in the middle of her recitation, and started crying. Harry sat up, watching as the girl pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, though her cheeks were already damp. "I'm sorry," she mumbled more than once, shaking off Harry's hand when he tried to comfort her.
He wasn't entirely sure what was wrong, but it seemed to be affecting other girls in the room. Cho and Hannah were leaning on each others' shoulders, at once sobbing and trying to calm the other down. Even Hermione, turned half away in the shadows near the curtains, wiped discretely at her eyes. Only Pansy Parkinson seemed unaffected and she exchanged a confused look and a shrug with Draco, standing calmly to her left.
"It's just... you're too depressing, Harry!" Lisa finally managed and choked back another sob.
"Perhaps we should break for a few moments," Binns suggested to a teary-eyed Trelawney. "It would give the ladies time to collect themselves." She only nodded and waved her hand as the girls began to move away from the stage.
Lisa half-turned on her perch, turning her full attention on Harry for the first time in days. He could tell what was coming. He'd been trying to avoid this confrontation. How could he tell Lisa, after all the advice and support she'd given him over the last few weeks, that his moment had already passed, that he'd never really stood any kind of a chance with Draco Malfoy? "What happened, Harry? You were fine last time we talked," she said, keeping her voice low as she swiped at her eyes.
Harry shrugged half heartedly, not quite meeting Lisa's piercing gaze. But she was persistent, nudging his side with her elbow. When he still refused to answer, she leaned closer keeping her voice a whisper as she threatened, "If you don't tell me what in bloody hell is going on with you, I swear on Merlin and all his ancestors, that I will stand on this table and shout your secret to the world." It didn't seem like something she would do, and the look Harry gave her said so. So he was completely surprised when she lifted her heavy skirts to the side and clambered up onto the table, mouth open as she took a deep breath.
"Alright, quit it!" he insisted, not bothering to hide the panic in is voice. He pulled at her skirts until she sat back down, earning himself a fierce glare and a short but stern lecture from Hermione. "He's in love with someone else," Harry muttered when Hermione finally stalked away, eyes intent on the pair of Capulet servants scuffling playfully at the back of the room.
Lisa's brows lifted to her hair. "Really? Who?" she asked, swinging her legs back in forth beneath the long red skirt of her costume.
Harry hesitated but Lisa's move to stand again wrenched the words from his mouth. "You. He's in love with you, Lisa."
The girl laughed. Actually laughed! Harry's heart felt as if it had been torn from his chest and trampled by a herd of stampeding centaurs and the girl who had become his friend and advisor was laughing. "You're joking," she concluded, but something in Harry's face wiped away her humor. "Oh, come on. You cannot be serious. The boy hasn't spoken to me in weeks! That is not the usual behavior of someone in love, alright."
"He's a Slytherin," Harry reminded her needlessly. "They don't go about things in the usual way." He looked down at the ends of his shoes, the clunky white tips so at odds with the rest of his costume, but Hermione had decided to simply transfigure them before the actual performance. After all, the shoes weren't quite as important as the tunics and dresses.
Lisa rolled her eyes not that Harry, mired too deeply in self-pity, noticed and the exasperation was plain to hear when she told him, "You jump to conclusions entirely too quickly, and without the evidence to support them. So Harry, unless you heard that boy say, in no uncertain terms 'I love Lisa Turpin', and I would bet every O I received on my OWLS that you didn't hear something even resembling that, then you've once again reached the wrong conclusion."
Harry looked at her wide-eyed. She was right of course. He'd only heard that Malfoy expected Lisa to come to him at some point it the near future, but that didn't mean he wasn't right as well. He opened his mouth to tell her, to show her that he did have evidence for this particular assumption but Lisa held up one hand and shook her head. "No, Harry, I don't want to hear anything more. I don't know if it's because you're a boy or a Gryffindor that you're acting so stupidly, and I don't really care. I've told you everything you need to know and you've refused to act on it. I can only assume that you don't value my input and so, I won't give it to you anymore."
Lisa hopped down from the table, straightened her dress and flipped her braided hair over her shoulder before turning back to look at him. "If I am wrong in this assumption, then you are welcome to prove it. In any case, out of the entirely irrational fear that stupidity may be contagious, I don't want to speak with you outside this play until you've come to terms with your Juliet." That said, Lisa spun on her heel and strode towards Trelawney and Binns, leaving Harry sitting alone on the table as several girls, tears gone from their eyes and having witnessed the soft argument, broke into excited gossip.
Which made the rest of rehearsal both awkward and bordering on torturous.
Even worse was when Harry looked over Seamus' shoulder to find that, just as Malfoy had said, Lisa had gone to the blond Slytherin and appeared in deep discussion with him and the ever present Pansy Parkinson. All of whom looked his way more than once before Lisa and Draco clasped hands and shook. It just didn't bode well for him, Harry figured and sighed.
Lisa stayed true to her word. Aside from Juliet's lines to Romeo, she said absolutely nothing to Harry and wouldn't listen to him long enough for even an apology, though he really believed there was nothing he needed to apologize for. Even worse, and thanks in particular to Lavender Brown, the entire school had been made aware that Harry was having troubles with his "girlfriend" and seemed intent on either offering advice or torment, depending on the house. If any Ravenclaw ever thought to become a Slytherin, Harry figured it might be a good change. Who knew they could offer such creative insults in the defense of one of their own? And though protecting one's own was an admirable quality on most days, Harry wished it hadn't driven Lisa's house to join forces with the Slytherins, who relished the extra torture they could provide to their lion adversaries with the remarkable increase in numbers and intelligence.
All of which seemed horridly unfair to Harry. After all, they hadn't even been dating!
Not that anyone, even the members of his own house, would listen. And since none of the calming tactics he'd tried seemed to have any effect, all Harry could hope for was that the ill humor that had been plaguing most of the school since the start of the play would disappear with it's close.
Hogwarts was a war zone, and because Harry suspected it amused Dumbledore, none of the teachers seemed in any rush to put an end to it. The play opened on Friday night and part of him worried that half the crew wouldn't make it that long. Besides, it was hard to be patient when even Hermione's spells couldn't shield him from the well-aimed egg thrown at his back during lunch, which of course shattered, spilling yolk all through his hair and scattering shell down his back. To make matters worse, and to add to the general feel of misfortune he'd suffered the last few days, it all seemed resistant to being washed out, leaving him with the uncomfortable sensation of raw egg down his back until McGonagall took pity on him and finally spelled it away.
Not for the first time since he'd been cast as Romeo, Harry couldn't wait for it all to end, and he didn't have anything more to do with the Slytherins or Ravenclaws. When all he had to deal with was his own house, and the sort of insanity that was acceptable among the lions.
A/N: Yeah, I know I took forever on this and I'm sorry for the wait. Even so, I hope you all liked it! Send me some reviews and let me know please! Also, for all the lovely reviews last chapter, thanks to DarkWiccanPrincess, whitelonewolf, Horseygirl7, AlineDaryen, Ibbet, magnusXalec, SunshineAndDaisies, purplerawr, emiliexox, Lady-Umbreon, L., YYWKMN, DMbranolaHP, Argo, Caldonya, Lia-Lily, LyricallyInspired, paintupurple, RisingPhoenix1835, SexySpeedDemon, and If The Bunny Was Dead.