A/N: I probably could've gone on for another two hours with this one, but I know I'm a little late with updating, so I'll just put the rest in the next chapter. (: Alright, hope you like it. I'm thinking that there will probably be much more drama in the next chapter, and even more loose ends tied up.
"Jane, can I talk to you about something?" Jane's sea green eyes popped open in surprise and she nodded slowly, completely sure that Seamus Finnigan was about to proclaim his undying love for her. Seamus sighed, pulling out the wooden chair next to Jane and sitting in it heavily.
"I really like -," Here it was, he was about to say it. "Aly. I know, I know, she's not interested. But you can't blame a man for trying, can you?" Jane sputtered unattractively for a moment, trying to think of the right words to say to him. She set her pink pen down, tapping her French-manicured nails on the desk top anxiously.
"And I know she's, well, she's something to Lee," Seamus continued, "It's just really complicated, you know?" Jane only nodded, swallowing hard. Seamus didn't even pause for breath as he continued on.
"I really should just leave her alone. She's bad news, at least, that's what Dean told me. It's just something about her. I wouldn't expect you to understand Jane, as you're a bird yourself, but it's there, trust me." Jane shook her head.
"Seamus, you can be so thick sometimes," she scoffed, turning to him and taking his face in her small hands.
Watching Jane with wide blue eyes, Seamus gulped visibly. "Jane…"
"Oh, shut up." Wetting her glossed lips with her tongue, Jane leaned into him, sealing her lips to his. He may've missed every other signal she'd given him, but this one seemed rather obvious.
"Who's that?," Becca whispered conspicuously to Audrey as they sat down for dinner. Audrey frowned, looking around the dining hall, searching for the new face.
"Who?," she finally asked, finding no one new in the sea of familiar faces. Becca sighed, rolling her eyes.
"That guy." She pointed her finger and Audrey's eyes followed it, landing on a handsome boy with curly brown hair that she'd never seen before. He looked kind of familiar, but Audrey was sure she'd never seen him before.
"I don't know. I think he's new. He's not in our house is he?," Audrey asked Becca, who was carefully reapplying her makeup, staring one-eyed into her small compact mirror. She paused, a small brush caked with brown eyeshadow dipped into the crease of her closed lid. "You like him, don't you, Bec?" Becca snorted, pushing a strand of short hair behind her ear. She rolled her eyes unconvincingly.
"I don't even know the guy, as we've already established," she drawled, moving onto her other eye. Audrey only smiled knowingly, twirling the spaghetti on her plate around a fork.
"He's kinda cute, don't you think?," Becca asked self-consciously, running her fingers through her hair in an attempt to make it more presentable. Audrey covered her mouth with her hand so Becca wouldn't pick up on the fact that she was holding back her laughter.
"Sure, he is, Bec. I think you should go talk to him," Audrey suggested emphatically. Becca gave her a look, a pale red eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, maybe I should."
Gini practically tore Colin's dorm room door off its hinges when she opened it, her eyes a direct reflection of her anger. Colin's head snapped up from where it had been, face down on his desk, as he slept, drooling onto a World History essay. He wiped the back of a hand over his mouth quickly, blinking sleepily.
"You have got to stop bursting in like that, Gin," Colin slurred tiredly, trying to flatten out his brown hair with his hands.
"Did you video tape us having sex?," Gini demanded, hands on her hips in an intimidating manner.
"Excuse me?," Colin blurted out. "I expected a 'Sure, I'll be more careful with your door'. Not that." He shook his head. "What's gotten into you? I apologised about the picture already. You're not being paranoid, are you?" Gini's hands were still on her hips and she only sneered at Colin in her frustration. He gulped, scooting back an inch in his chair. Recognising his frightened look, Gini sighed.
"Sorry, Colin. I just.. I guess I'm just stressed." She covered her face with both hands, wishing they were a pillow she could scream into. Two thin, though strong, arms wrapped around Gini, and she felt Colin's chin as he rested it on her head.
"What's stressing you, pet?," Colin asked, his voice an octave lower and ultimately comforting. Gini felt the pinprick of tears in her eyes and she wiped at them hurriedly, unsure of why she was crying.
"I don't know," she groaned, wrapping her arms around his waist. "I'm just overwhelmed. I have prefect duties, and then study sessions with the fourth years – don't even get me started on those- and I'm expected to help organize the Halloween dance, and it's just too much." Gini could feel the vibrations of Colin chuckling and she hit him lightly in the chest. "Why are you laughing at me?"
"I'm not laughing at you." Colin snorted, hiding a smile. "Seriously. I just don't understand why you feel that you have to do all of this… stuff. If it's too much, just tell the Headmaster. Really."
"But I have to," Ginny whined. "I know it sucks now, it really does, but I'll deal with it. I'll just have to find some way to calm down, some sort of stress relief." Colin smirked at her innocent words, taking them in an entirely different way.
"Well, I can certainly think of one or two ways…" Gini punched him in the chest again, but this time she was smiling.
"Okay, now I know you're completely off your head," Anthony Goldstein said from the doorway of Violet's dorm, staring at her with a bemused look. She paused, bottle of baby powder held, top down, over Becca's box of tissues.
"You are a mastermind of revenge," Anthony continued. "Making the girl sneeze… how evil of you." Violet rolled her eyes, shaking the container so that more white powder fell out and into the tissue box.
"That's not my revenge, you idiot," she said boredly, tapping the bottle until there was nothing left to come out. "She has such a problem with my little habits? Well, let's see how she likes a little white powder on her nose." Anthony eyes widened with realization, and he shook his head in amusement.
"So what? You're gonna make her look like the junkie?"
Violet frowned. "I'm not a junkie. I only… well, I don't do it that much. I'm not addicted or anything." Anthony raised an eyebrow but thought it best not to say anything to his favourite customer.
"This is just the beginning, Ant," Violet continued in an effective change of the subject. "Today, baby powder. Tomorrow, rat poison."
"We are not roommates anymore, Lavender Brown!" Aly slammed the door to their dorm open, surprising Lavender so much that she fell off the bed, where she had been engrossed in painting her toe nails a sparkling red. She snorted once she gathered her senses.
"You can't just disown me from being your roommate," Lavender said with a scoff. "I mean, changes had to be made within the first two days, so I guess you're stuck with me now." Aly's hands curled into fists by her sides and her cheeks reddened in an angry manner. Looking at Aly with a raised eyebrow, Lavender sat on her bed again, returning to painting her nails.
"How could you, you bitch? How could you tell? Do you know how much trouble Lee and I will be in if the Headmaster finds out? And you call yourself my friend," Aly growled through gritted teeth, her fingers stretching before folding into fists once again.
"We were never friends, Aly," Lavender said in a voice full of sarcastic sympathy. "You just assumed we were. I'm sorry that you're just figuring that out now."
It only took Aly a second to cover the space from the door to the bed, her hands already reaching out to grab Lavender's highlighted blonde hair in a death grip. Lavender shrieked, reaching out to claw at Aly's face with her still-blue nails. Letting out a war-cry, Aly used all of her force to throw Lavender from the bed, ignoring the scratch marks now going across her cheek.
"What the hell's going on in here?," a new, unfamiliar boy's voice spoke from the doorway. Aly felt wide hands grasp her hips and forcefully pull her away from Lavender. She struggled to break free, flailing her arms and legs as she was lifted through the air and held against what was obviously a boy's body. Lavender, with tear-filled eyes, stood up from the bed, running out of the dorm, covering her bloody lip.
"What the hell was that?," the curly-haired boy repeated. "Was she your roommate, or just some girl that you dragged in here to attack?" Retracting his arms, the boy let go of Aly, gazing at her with mixed wonder and fear. Aly turned to face him, chest heaving as she panted from the exertion. She tugged at her loose black v-neck, which had become twisted in the scuffle.
"That slimy monster was my roommate," Aly spat out, still angry, crossing her arms over her chest. She gave the boy a good once-over and paused. "Hey, you're cute."
"That compliment would be much more meaningful if I wasn't afraid of you right now," the boy said with an uneasy smile.
"Are you new? I've never seen you around before," Aly continued, not disgruntled in the least by his comment. Let him be afraid.
"Yeah, I just transferred this year. I'm Andy," the boy said, holding out his hand. Aly only looked stared at it.
"I'm Aly. Now why the hell did you stop me?"
Kat stretched her arms over the end of the couch, her copy of Animal Farm falling to the floor. She sighed, making no move to pick it up. For the past two hours, she'd been hiding out from her roommates in the commons. She just couldn't get over the feeling that Pansy and Daphne were planning something big, and she was the victim of it.
Two tanned hands came over the end of the couch, clasping over her eyes. Kat snorted.
"Nice try, Blaise," she said with a sigh. "Remove your hands from my person before your girlfriend comes down and decides to disembowel me." Blaise, unlike Draco, had been much nicer to her since the underwear incident, and she felt like she could almost call him a friend.
"You're that scared of her? Come on, Kat, she's like two feet tall," Blaise teased, coming around the couch to sit on Kat's stomach. She exhaled a gush of air, groaning.
"Ugh, well you've just done her job for her- I think at least two of my ribs are now broken," Kat managed to say, even though it felt like her lungs were being crushed. Blaise moved off of her, chuckling.
"You remind me of my older sister, Antonella. She used to go here, but she finished two years ago." Kat raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "Our first game is tomorrow, you know. It's against our rival. You should come."
The blonde that she was currently trying to forget walked into the room at that moment, sitting down in one of the empty, worn-leather armchairs. "You should," Draco said, quieter than Blaise.
Kat glanced over at him, and then back at Blaise. "I don't know. I don't really like soccer," she said rather rudely, contorting around to pick her book up from the floor. She cracked it open to a random page and pretended to be reading.
"Oh, come on, Kat," Blaise said with a snort. "You love football. You can't lie about that; I saw your Madrid jersey lying on the floor of your dorm when I was with Daphne." Kat's cheeks flushed pink and she could feel Draco's eyes practically burning holes into her skin.
"I'll think about it, Blaise," she said with finality that he didn't challenge. Happy enough with the response, Blaise stood up and headed off, but not before ruffling her hair to a suitable mess. Kat made sure her eyes moved back and forth, like they would if she were really reading, as she avoided looking at Draco or giving him any kind of notice at all.
"Here." Kat looked over and was met with the sight of a pack of menthols, wrapped with a crude string bow. "A 'sorry' present. It was hell to find a pack. No one smokes menthols." Kat looked up at Draco, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. He held the cigarettes out to her, saying nothing more, his eyes successfully blocking out any emotion. She didn't take them, just continued staring. He finally rolled his eyes, offering her a small smile before tossing the cigarettes onto her stomach.
"And I meant what I said. You should come to our game tomorrow. I need a good luck charm." Kat picked up the cigarettes, her cheeks turning pinker as she avoided making eye contact with Draco. When she finally looked up, he was already gone.
"Whoa! Okay, hold on! A person deserves some warning before being shoved into a broom closet!," Sara exclaimed as the door slammed closed and she was met with complete darkness. She didn't have time to see who her captor was, but she silently prayed that it wasn't Ginny, because this enclosed space was just a little too small for another brawl.
"Oh, come on, I thought you'd like our new hide out," Harry said, reaching through the dark to pull on the string attached to the light bulb. The bulb flickered on, casting a dim light around the small closet. "I even cleaned it up a bit for you. See that bucket? Used to be in the middle. Moved it to the corner so we'd have room to stand." Sara stared at Harry as if he'd grown two heads. Was he high again?
"Not that I mind terribly, but why would you drag me into a broom closet?," Sara asked, shoving aside an empty crate with the toe of her sneaker.
"To show you a card trick," Harry said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "Actually, for this."
Sara didn't even have time to prepare herself for what was to come, as Harry's mouth descended on hers unexpectedly. Her eyes popped open and she had to fight the urge to pinch herself to see if she wasn't dreaming. His teasing words about having a make-out buddy were turning out to be not so teasing after all. It was only when Harry slid his tongue into her mouth that she ceased thinking and began kissing back, a much more enjoyable activity.