A/N: It took me a bit to find two characters that fit my criteria for this story, but everything considered, I managed to find people whose name I could I actually recall. I'll take that as a victory.

A million thanks and virtual cookies to LittleMissXanda for helping me with the story.

Enjoy.

Word count: 2,301 (according to MS Word)

QLFC Finals Round 2 – Chaser 3: Ten Second Pimple Vanisher

Extra prompts:

1. (dialogue) "Stop fidgeting so much!"

4. (word) hypothetical

14. (restriction) No Gryffindor or Slytherin characters

"Stop fidgeting so much!" said Mandy Brocklehurst, holding a small wad of cotton near her best friend, Lisa Turpin's face. "It's going to sting a little, but you know I'm not going to hurt you. Hold still."

"Okay," Lisa replied, her voice unwavering; however, the trembling of her hands made it clear she was not entirely comfortable. "Just… just a bad habit."

Mandy let out an inward sigh as she tapped the white material to the sickly crimson scar next to Lisa's lips, which resulted in a hiss from the brunette, whose face contorted involuntarily.

Now that Hogwarts was under the reign of Death Eaters, scenes such as this were everyday occurrences for the two of them. Some days were worse. There had been times when Mandy had to drag Lisa—or the other way around—to their dorm half-unconscious; some days were fine, both of them surviving with mere scratches. Being lowly, half-blood Ravenclaws had its perks and disadvantages.

Half-bloods… well, technically. No one had to know about the secret that Mandy carried around with herself every day—no one but her and Lisa.

"All done," Mandy declared, casting an Incendio at the cotton, watching until the flames burned out and only ashes remained. It was all a safety measure. "That scar will be healed in no time." She was careful not to mention any of the other scabs and cuts that marred their bodies.

"I wish," came the curt reply. Lisa took a strand of her hair and twisted it between her fingers—a habit of hers when she was trying to calm herself down, Mandy had learned. "For how long will we have to endure this?"

It wasn't a question Mandy could answer, nor was it a question that Lisa expected an answer to. Still, the former felt obligated to break the silence.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head with more force than intended.

Lisa cast down her eyes, clasping her hands on her lap. This constant fidgeting, this ceaseless twitching, was another recently attained habit of hers.

"This isn't what I thought it was going to be like when I got my Hogwarts letter," Lisa said finally, dropping another stone on Mandy's already heavy heart.

"Would you have refused?" Mandy inquired, glancing at her restless friend. "If you'd known?"

"Who knows?" Lisa replied, letting out a shaky sigh. "Hypothetically, if I had, I'd probably be dead now. Riddle me this: Which one is better? Having your entire family killed while you survive by a stroke of luck, or dying with them?"

Mandy didn't answer, but a bout of guilt did wind through her gut. After all, it was partly because of her that Lisa was in this split state of being, wishing to be alive and dead at the same time. She was sure that if she had her bag on her shoulder right now, it would feel heavier than usual.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, a miserable expression etched onto her face.

"Not your fault," she heard Lisa's distant voice. "If it wasn't for your father, I'd be in Azkaban right now. I mean, how did he even get a hold of those documents?" She chuckled, the noise sounding unfamiliar, artificial to Mandy.

"Sometimes, being an unnoticeable, half-blood Ministry worker has its advantages," Mandy replied, fixing her gaze on the little tube of Ten Second Pimple Vanisher that lay peacefully in her bag.

Of course, Mandy knew that if anybody ever found out that her father had stolen official papers on Lisa's heritage and forged fake new ones, he'd be killed on the spot—or fed to the Dementors. Still, she had this sense of gratitude, since if it wasn't for him, Lisa would have been persecuted as soon as the Death Eaters found her, and if there was anything Mandy didn't want to happen, it was that.

As for the documents having been transfigured into this stupid tube, which Mandy kept with her at all times… As long as no one found out, all of them would stay alive.

"I've always wondered, though," Lisa interrupted the other's thoughts. "Why the Ten Second Pimple Vanisher? It's a Weasley product, and you know how Death Eaters are with those."

"They don't know its origin, that's why," Mandy said, taking the tube out of her bag. "I removed the trademark, which isn't all that noticeable anyway. Besides, we're teenage girls. No one will bat an eyelash if I keep something like this with me, because it's an effective beauty product and all, and 'those bloody teenagers are obsessed with their looks for some reason,'" she continued, her voice a notch louder while she drew quotation marks with her fingers during the last part.

"Huh," said Lisa, her gaze wandering to the window. Mandy dropped the tube back into her bag, then zipped it up, making sure it was out of the way of any harm.

"Yeah." She nodded. Neither of them said anything for the rest of the afternoon. There was nothing more to talk about.

~oOo~

Mandy had once asked Lisa why she was so hell bent on keeping the evidence instead of burning it like they always did with the antiseptic cotton after cleaning up their wounds. After all, it posed more danger than solace. When she had mentioned it, Lisa had bitten her bottom lip, shifted her gaze sideways, and had said she wasn't sure herself. It was the first time Mandy had seen her so emotional after Lisa's family had been killed.

She had said that it was a hypothetical guess, that it sounded stupid, and it was stupid, but maybe she was clinging onto it because it served as a reminder of her past and her family, so she was reluctant to let it go. She had also said that it was possibly the first time in years that she had let her emotions take over her Ravenclaw rationale. War had irrational effects on people, she had concluded.

Mandy had agreed. The rise and reign of You-Know-Who had changed Lisa. Mandy had always admired her for being so independent, but the war had reduced her to an insecure, distant shadow of herself.

This was one of the reasons why Mandy had promised herself she would do anything in her power to protect the secret of the Ten Second Pimple Vanisher.

From time to time, Mandy would think and reflect on recent events. During these moments, she would often feel a crippling sense of guilt wash over her. As if what had happened to Lisa was her fault. She knew it wasn't, and she knew there was little she could have done, but it was so easy to blame herself for her best friend's suffering.

It was during one of these moments, while hurrying down the corridors, that she misstepped and fell headfirst onto the floor, the contents of her bag scattering in every direction.

In a fracture of a second, she realised that her—or rather, Lisa's—secret was in danger; her eyes darted around the place frantically, trying to locate the tube of pimple vanisher before anything else. At times like these, she was glad that her peers were too scared of torture to do anything but stand. No one said a word. No one snickered, but no one moved an inch to help Mandy gather her belongings either.

Fortunately for her, she found what she'd been searching for lying a few steps below her; she extended her hand and clutched it tightly before shoving it into the deepest depths of her bag, away from prying eyes. She did not care if the act seemed peculiar—grabbing a one-of-a-thousand beauty product before anything else—she wanted the item safe.

She noticed the furrowed eyebrows of Professor Vector as she picked up her textbooks and quills, one by one. She hoped the professor wouldn't ask about it, just this once. Mandy could also feel the gaze of Lisa on her back, asking her to please be careful, but also worrying, trying to decipher if Mandy was okay. The latter tried to keep herself composed, tried not to cave in under the stress of having messed up.

She wasn't asked about the incident by anyone, and she wasn't regarded with suspicion either. It seemed her aversion tactic of choosing an innocuous object to transfigure the documents to was working, but there was a nagging, lingering pang of fear in the back of Mandy's head. What if they were found out? Would she ever be able to face Lisa again? Would she see her again at all?

~oOo~

In the afternoon, a couple of days later, while Mandy was tending to her best friend's freshly reopened wounds and was telling her to stop fidgeting so much yet again, Lisa gripped her shoulder all of a sudden.

"Hm?" Mandy moved her eyes from the other girl's arm to her face.

"You're the one trembling," the brunette said, motioning towards Mandy's visibly shaking hand holding the usual wad of cotton. "Is something the matter?"

Mandy shook her head, maybe a bit more forcefully than she should have. "I'm fine. Just… the usual, I guess."

She didn't want to talk about her emotions, which had gotten out of hand as of late. It will eventually get better, she told herself.

"You're usually not this jumpy," Lisa noted, her own voice as calm and collected as ever. Mandy bit her lip, trying to keep herself under check, and supplicating the rational half of her mind for help.

Wanted or not, it would not do good to bottle up her feelings. She was not that kind of girl. In this whole bloody mess that the two of them had gotten into, their honesty towards each other was the only thing that kept everything afloat, after all. What would it be like to be the one consoled, rather than the one consoling, for once?

She sighed, burying her head in her palms.

"I'm afraid," she said, wary of elaborating further.

"Of what?" came another question. "That we're going to get caught?"

Mandy nodded.

"Me too," continued Lisa curtly. "Me too," rang her voice, weaker than the first time. It seemed as though she wanted to say more, but the sounds had gotten lost halfway through. Tears were blurring her eyes, but she fought them back, keeping her gaze fixated on the window.

Lisa didn't like crying, so she had always tried to substitute it by staring at the nearest object until the urge had gone away. Alas, she hadn't always succeeded, so during the weeks following her escape from her family house, Mandy had often found herself conjuring a handkerchief for the tear-stained face of her best friend.

Those times, the two of them wouldn't exchange words; they'd sit side-by-side, only the occasional sobs of Lisa interrupting the silence. For Mandy, it was all natural—Lisa had always stood up for her in the past, so it was her time to return the favour.

Watching her friend fight the tears, Mandy instinctively reached for her bag. It was a habit she'd picked up, much like Lisa's never-ending twitching. Whenever she was close to losing her nerve, she checked if the tube of pimple vanisher was still there, and since it had always been, it gave her a momentary sense of calmness.

Except this time, the object was not there. No matter how frantically Mandy searched, each tug at the bottom of her bag more and more hysterical, it never showed up. It had vanished.

An icy feeling of fear settled in Mandy's stomach, her heartbeat speeding up to the point where her breathing turned to hyperventilating. Not that she noticed any of these bodily symptoms; her mind was fixated on something different.

Her father was going to die. Lisa was going to Azkaban, and Mandy herself was possibly going there as well. These images of horror flashed through her mind repeatedly as she clutched her bag until her knuckles turned white from the effort. The guilt that she had gotten used to ever since the Turpin family's murder surfaced again; it was stronger than ever, consuming Mandy's entire being.

All because of a damn tube of Ten Second Pimple Vanisher. How ridiculous was that?

Next to her, Lisa sat, watching, and in that moment, Mandy couldn't quite tell what the other was feeling. Was it the same kind of fear? Was it resentment towards her? Was it the face of silent agony that she had been wearing for the past few months? Mandy couldn't tell because her friend looked… empty. As if all her emotions had been drained. As if she was nothing more than a shell of what she had used to be.

"Lisa?" Mandy asked through the prickling tears that were pooling in her eyes. The other didn't cry; she locked her gaze onto her mess of a best friend, then lifted her face, staring out at the window, her eyes turning bitter, sour, and dejected with every passing moment. Maybe she hadn't digested the weight of the information yet, and that's why she kept silent. Maybe she was readying herself for the numbness that would protect her from what was to come. Maybe it was her usual coping method surfacing again.

Mandy didn't know. She didn't know if she would ever be able to look into the eyes of her friend once again. She also had no idea who it was that had stolen the bottle, the evidence of Lisa being a Muggleborn. She wasn't interested in hearing what would happen to them next.

She only knew, as the two of them were dragged out of their dorm minutes later, that the disappointed, accusing glare on Lisa's face was meant for her, and that it was well-deserved.