The last mini-chapter! Though I can't promise how long the next one will be, I can promise that it won't be fluff or intro. Promise.

Chapter 8 – Lyra

Girl Talk, It's a Necessity

November 2009

Lyra walked into her room on Saturday to find Emma stretched out on her bed writing a letter, probably to her mum. True to her muggle mum, Emma was using lined notebook paper and a muggle pen. She loved to argue with those raised by wizards that pens were better than quills because you couldn't spill ink and you didn't have to wait for it to dry.

Emma looked up just then to see Lyra. "I'm almost finished. Then we can have our talk."

Despite having different friends, they were each other's best girl friend and made an effort to have a good long talk every weekend.

Lyra sat on her bed cross-legged while she waited for Emma to finish.

Emma finished her letter with her usual curly signature before folding it up and putting it in an envelope. "Done. Walk with me to the Owlery and we can start our talk on the way."

"All right. How's your week been?" Lyra said.

"Quite good. Professor Sinistra says I'm top of our year in Astronomy."

"Probably because you were raised with a telescope attached to your face."

"Probably. But how's your week been?"

"Exhausting," Lyra sighed, clearly still tired.

Emma giggled at that, saying, "I know." At Lyra's questioning look, she continued, explaining, "It's kind of hard to miss that fact that every night this week, you've either fallen asleep in the common room with your books all around you or in bed with your books all around you. Both after staying up into the wee hours of the morning trying to finish your homework after spending every evening this week in detention with Professor Longbottom after you cursed Avery with something we're not supposed to have learned yet."

At that last comment, Lyra looked gleeful. "But it was worth it," she sighed happily. "The look on Avery's face after I cursed him was bloody brilliant."

"I dare say it was, but you need your sleep Lyra," Emma responded, with her usual mothering tendencies.

Lyra simply nodded at that, not wanting to worry Emma but knowing it would probably be happening again very soon. She couldn't help it after all. O'Malley may have made her promise not to get in fights with Avery for calling him a mudblood, but she was well within her rights to curse him for calling her, 'that filthy mudblood's girlfriend'.

Emma continued saying, "You should know by now that responding to his provocations doesn't help anything. It just makes him and everyone else believe that you really are O'Malley's girlfriend."

"First off, you sound like Professor Longbottom during my detentions. Secondly, you know perfectly well that O'Malley's one of my best mates, not my boyfriend," Lyra said forcefully before Emma interrupted with an exasperated, "I know."

Lyra continued as though Emma hadn't interrupted, saying, "And thirdly, it's not a matter of me being called O'Malley's girlfriend. It's him using that filthy word. O'Malley made me swear not to get in fights for Avery calling him that, but that's not stopping me from getting in fights when the insult is directed at me."

"I know. I know. You've told me this before. I just don't like seeing you in detention so much. And it's not making the other girls in our year like you anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Emma started, "you spend all your time with the three best looking blokes in our year and yet don't seem to fancy any of them like the rest of them do. And I know one is your brother but everyone expects you to get with Teddy or O'Malley. And despite O'Malley having a different girlfriend every week, he doesn't really talk to any of them. He just snogs them for a week before moving on. You're the only girl he actually talks to. And Teddy is completely oblivious to how much the girls like him, so he's practically a lost cause. And your brother is incapable of putting two words together in a coherent sentence in front of any girl, excepting you as his sister and me as your friend and the only girl in our year that isn't completely in love with him." Finally seeming to reach a conclusion after listing all this evidence, Emma finished with, "So all the girls are wickedly jealous of you for getting to spend time with and really talk to the best looking blokes in our year."

"Wow. I can't believe you just said all that in one breath."

Emma looked exasperated and possibly capable of murder.

Lyra continued before Emma could do anything about those thoughts. "I know they're jealous. But it's not my fault they aren't capable of acting normal around the boys. I know perfectly well that they're a good looking bunch. I just don't let it affect how I treat them."

"Fine. I give up. You are officially destined to only ever have me as a girl friend while here at Hogwarts."

"And I'm okay with that. I really am."

Mostly fluff with pretty much nothing happening but it does reveal a few things I thought important, like Lyra's friendship with Emma.