This chapter is going to focus on Roxanne Wealsey, who was briefly introduced in an earlier chapter as James' best friend/partner-in-crime. I felt it was time she get a little more development as a character. The premise of this chapter is that Roxanne is forced to hang out with James' girlfriend Chelsea, who she hates, for reasons that I will not delve in to just yet. She's also having some issues in her relationship with her own boyfriend. Read on to find out what happens!

Disclaimer: JKR owns Hogwarts and the Wizarding World and (most) of these characters, not me.

Roxanne Weasley's Terrible Sunday

or

A Trip to Hogsmeade

It was Sunday afternoon, and after she slept off her hangover and had some lunch, Roxanne Weasley had plans to go down to Hogsmeade with her best friend James to pick up some supplies for their latest prank. Grayson Macmillan (Roxanne's boyfriend) had insisted he come along, which meant they were also bringing along Chelsea Creevy, making it a double-date kind of thing.

Roxanne hated Chelsea Creevy. She and James had been going out since the end of last school year, and Roxy had been sure they would break it off during the summer, but they hadn't. Roxanne thought Chelsea was bitchy and whiny and annoying, and had told James that she thought so, but he didn't really care. He liked her, and apparently that was enough to get past the fact that Roxanne (and all of their other friends, might I add) hated her.

She had tried to convince Grayson that he shouldn't come, that it was really okay and she and James could just go alone. Because as soon as Chelsea had heard that Grayson was coming along, she whined to James that she just had to come too or else it wouldn't be fair.

But Grayson couldn't be swayed. He was a little bit clingy and a little bit needy and had insisted that it would be fun and that he'd be super bored and lonely if she left him in the castle by himself. Because, for some reason, he couldn't just hang out with his friends.

She was probably going to have to break up with him soon.

There was just no spark between them, you know? At first, she thought maybe she felt something verging on a spark between them, though she realised later that this was probably because he was attractive and they got along well together. He was tall, he was tan, he was muscular. And he liked her. Who wouldn't want that?

But now that they'd been going out for a little while, she realized that she mostly just found him boring and annoying. She spent about as much time dreading having to hang out with him as she spent enjoying his company, and she took that as a bad sign.

The only reason she hadn't done it already was because of their friendship. She and Grayson had been friends for far longer than they'd been going out. And she really liked him much better as a friend than as a boyfriend. He was less needy, easier to be around. She prefered a more casual relationship. But, now that they'd gone out, she didn't think they could go back to being mates. It would never be the same, and she'd end up losing one of her best friends. And she really didn't want to do that.

In any case, now she was stuck heading down to the village with her annoying boyfriend and her best friend's ridiculous girlfriend. At lunch she tried to convince their friends Eli Davies or Michael Wood to come along- maybe liven up the mood a little bit, give her a reason to ignore Chelsea or something- but they'd both blown her off.

Wood said he had a day-date with some random Slytherin girl. And Eli had mumbled something weird about the library and run off. Very suspicious.

Pretty much ever since they'd come back to school Eli had been acting really weird like that. She'd been thinking maybe it would just wear off or something, whatever it was, but it didn't seem to be. She'd have to figure out what was up with him later.

Right after lunch, she and James and Grayson and Chelsea set off for the third floor, in search of the passage behind the statue of Gunhilda the Gorsemoor that would let them out in the cellar of Honeydukes. It was their favorite passage to take, even though it took about an hour on foot.

Roxanne had the Marauder's Map, and James had his dad's invisibility cloak- the two things that made everything they did possible. Usually these items were an extremely well kept secret, but Grayson, as one of their best friends, had learned about them a while ago- back in third year, when they had needed help with a prank. Then, James had slipped and told Chelsea a little while after they started dating, because she'd begged to know the secret behind their awesome pranks. Roxanne had begged him not to tell her, and hadn't talked to him for a week after she found out that he did.

Once they got to the right spot in the hallway, James whispered the password, "Dissendium." The hump on the back of the statue rose up to reveal the slide that lead down to the tunnel. Chelsea gasped and took a step back.

"We have to go down there? It's filthy!" she exclaimed, and Roxanne resisted the urge to laugh.

"What, do you think they clean the secret passageways?" she asked, and Chelsea glared at her. James also gave her a look, one that read "please be nice." Yeah, right, James.

Grayson didn't mind the dirt at all and slid down first, with Roxanne not too far behind. James stayed up at the top to persuade/console/assure his stupid girlfriend, and so, after some convincing, she was the next one down. James followed suit, and soon they were all standing in the dark.

Roxanne casted a quick Lumos charm, as she was the only one who ever thought of practical stuff like that. The rest of these losers were perfectly content to just stand in the dark, waiting for something to happen. The tip of her wand let out a dull glow, but it was enough for them to see what they needed.

They started walking along down the tunnel, and it wasn't long before Chelsea started whining.

"What is that smell? It's so gross down here! How far does this bloody tunnel go, anyway?"

"It's about an hour walk," James said consolingly, taking her hand. Roxanne had to force herself not to gag.

"An hour?"

"Yep, an hour."

"And we've been walking for how long?" Grayson whispered conspiratorially to Roxanne.

"Feels like an hour, at least," she whispered back, and they both snickered quietly. Not quietly enough, apparently, because Chelsea narrowed her eyes, knowing they were laughing at her.

"So I heard an interesting story at the party last night..." she began, waiting for them to show interest in what she was saying. James was the only one who seemed to even remotely care. "My friend Olive apparently had a conversation with Conrad Jordan."

Something about the name caught Roxanne's attention, and Chelsea smiled triumphantly.

"Oh, man! Conrad! I haven't seen that chap in forever!" James exclaimed, reminiscing on old times. Roxanne stared at him in confusion.

"James, we literally have three classes with him," Roxanne said, and now it was James' turn to look confused.

"We do?" he asked, and Chelsea cleared her throat loudly, wanting to get the conversation back around to where she'd intended it to go.

"Anyway…" she said in her whiny voice, and Roxanne rolled her eyes. "Olive was talking with him- who knows why- and it turns out…" she paused for dramatic effect, "that he's totally in love with Roxanne!" James started laughing, like this was ridiculous. Grayson, on the other hand, was suddenly taking this conversation very seriously.

"He's what?" James asked, still laughing a bit.

"Apparently he just wouldn't stop talking about her! He didn't come right out and say it, but Olive could tell, obviously. She knows about these kind of things."

Roxanne didn't want to be a part of Chelsea's stupid gossip- she didn't want to give her the satisfaction- but she couldn't help her curiosity. "What was he saying?"

Grayson turned to Roxanne. "You know this chap, do you? Are you friends with him?" He was being very accusatory, as if he had any reason to question her faithfulness.

"Will you calm down? I used to know him, alright?" she brushed it off.

"Yeah, we used to be mates with Jordan, before Hogwarts," James supplied the necessary background.

"A long time ago," Roxanne added, to reassure her obnoxiously protective boyfriend. Grayson mulled this over.

"Is this Jordan like Lee Jordan?" he asked, as if this had just occurred to him. Lee Jordan was rather famous radio personnel, most known for his Quidditch commentary and radio comedy program. He was also a close personal friend of Roxanne's parents.

"Yes, Jordan as in Lee Jordan," Roxanne confirmed. "And River Jordan," she added as an afterthought. River Jordan was Conrad's younger sister, a fourth year, who did all the commentary for the Quidditch games. She was quite enthusiastic about the whole thing, and started commenting right as soon as she got to Hogwarts, replacing Kyle Millinger- the fairly apathetic announcer who had come before her.

"And I've never heard of him before because…?" Grayson asked, causing Roxanne to sigh deeply with aggravation.

"Because you don't pay attention?" Roxanne replied, and James laughed again. This did not help improve Grayson's mood.

"So..." Chelsea butted in again, "did you know he fancied you?"

Actually, Roxanne had basically known that Conrad Jordan fancied her ever since their first year at Hogwarts. They were pretty good friends before coming to Hogwarts, and a little ways into their first year. Conrad was sorted as a Hufflepuff, however, and this caused them to drift apart as they started their time at school.

Then, around the middle of their first year, Roxanne got her first boyfriend. His name was Bradley Finnern, and he was really nothing more to her than a boy she held hands with and kissed a few times and walked to classes with for a couple weeks.

Conrad had gotten really upset with her when she started liking Bradley, and would say all this terrible stuff about him and try to convince her not to go out with him. When they actually did officially become a "couple," Conrad stopped talking to her. And Roxanne, being the naive little girl that she was, hadn't understood why.

She asked her cousin Victoire, who was a sixth year at the time, for advice. Victoire told her exactly what anyone who had eyes could see- that Conrad fancied her. But she didn't feel that way about Conrad, and because she was too nervous to confront him about it and was afraid of hurting his feelings, she avoided him. And they hadn't really spoken since.

The truth of the matter was that Roxanne had skyrocketed into popularity when she came to Hogwarts, and Conrad had… done basically the opposite. These days he spent most of his time alone, or with his cat named Dobby (after Harry Potter's house-elf friend who was famous for starting the campaign to free all house-elves, of course).

"No, I didn't know," she lied. "And what was he saying about me?" Chelsea scoffed, like Roxanne was the one being annoying.

"Like I would know! I wasn't even the one who talked to him. You should ask Olive." Roxanne once again rolled her eyes. Like she would ever in a million years talk to Olive Bennett. The girl was in love with Grayson, and hated Roxanne's guts (for obvious reasons). In fact, she was probably making up the whole Conrad thing just to get under her skin.

"I bet you Olive's making it up. She probably doesn't remember anything he said, either, she was so hammered." Chelsea looked offended, and James shot Roxanne another pleading look. Why did he have to bring her along?!

"She wouldn't just make it up! And I had the same amount of drinks as her, so I know how drunk she was." Roxanne and Grayson both shot her a pointed look, and she blushed dark red. "Oh, sod off! Stop pretending like you know anything about me!" She crossed her arms and huffed, skulking off down the passageway into the dark.

"Honestly, mates?" James said to them before hurrying after her.

"Honestly, James?" Roxanne mumbled, and Grayson sighed in agreement.

Sound traveled far in the tunnel, so even though Chelsea probably thought they were out of earshot, they could hear everything she was saying.

"I didn't even have that much to drink!" she was complaining to James. Yes she did. "You were with me the whole night, you know!" No he wasn't. "Why do you let her pick on me like that?" Oh, sure, I pick on you. Uh huh. "I was just trying to make conversation! I only want them to like me!" Yeah right.

James sounded very sympathetic when he responded. Roxanne found it hard to determine if he actually believed her or if he was just faking it. James was usually pretty fake around girls so they would like him, but he was also very kind to people he cared for. And she really wasn't sure which one Chelsea was. Was she just another girl, or did James actually really like her? And if that was the case, why?! Why her?

Chelsea and James walked ahead for the rest of the way down to Hogsmeade. Once they got to the ladder that led up to the cellar of Honeydukes, they debated on whether or not they should use the cloak. They knew they didn't all fit under it, so there was a small argument over who should take it. Everything seemed like an argument between them, these days.

Eventually they decided that James would go with Chelsea under the cloak, because Chelsea was too afraid to go without it and too afraid to stay behind, and no one but James would go under it with her.

Turns out they didn't need the cloak, however, as it was Sunday and Honeydukes closed at 1 on Sunday's, which it was now past. They crept up the ladder and to the main floor, which was dark and abandoned. They snuck around to the back door and Roxanne used Alohomora to unlock it.

Once out in the street, they made their way over to the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. There was also a Zonkos Joke Shop in Hogsmeade, but they most sold the old-fashioned stuff. James and Roxanne were more about the new. They wanted to be innovators in the world of pranks, just like Fred and George had. Besides, being not only a Weasley, but the daughter of George Weasley (the founder of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and a variety of other shops operating under Fred and George Enterprises) himself, she got an 80% discount on all in store items.

On the way over, Chelsea asked- "So what is this prank again?"

"We're blowing up the broom shed," Roxanne replied simply, not much wanting to dive into the details of why they were blowing up the broom shed. When Chelsea asked the inevitable "why," however, James was more than happy to supply the necessary background.

"Well, first off, because we hate Madam Hooch," he began.

"Why?" Chelsea asked, "She's not so bad."

"She's fine if she likes you- but she hates us. I guess she had some issues with my granddad. You know, the first James Potter? I don't know for sure, I never got the details, but I just know that she groaned and said 'Not another James Potter!' when she first met me.

"Anyhow, she was very rude to us during first year and forced us to ride the school-provided trainer broomsticks, which are actually much harder to control if you're an experienced flyer, which we were at that point.

"Then, during fourth year, when we had this brilliant idea to start a Flying Club, where basically students would just fly around the grounds for fun- you know, because flying is right fun- and she completely shut us down! She refused to be our moderator and convinced Headmistress McGonagall not to let us have the club. For 'safety reasons'" He put air quotes around "safety reasons," making Grayson laugh.

"It would have been perfectly safe if we had a moderator with us!" Roxanne repeated what they'd said a million times after their idea had been rejected to make themselves feel better.

"Exactly!" James agreed before continuing. "Then, just last week after the welcome ceremony me and Rox were taking our annual back-to-school flight around the castle, as we do, and she spotted us with her creepy hawk-eyes. So of course she turned us in, and we got in heaps of trouble and now have another month of detention to add on to our 5 carry over months from last year."

"5?" Chelsea asked disbelievingly.

"6, now," Grayson corrected her, and they all glared at him.

"It was a busy year," James shrugged.

"So we're blowing up her shed," Roxanne stated again, disliking how un-mysterious the whole thing was now. She loved being mysterious- the girl who blows stuff up for reasons unknown and gets away with it- but James was perfectly happy blabbing and ranting about all their schemes to anyone who asked. A vast majority of their detentions resulted from his blabbing.

When they got to the shop, they were greeted with a warm welcome from the staff. When she was a first year Roxanne had told the manager, whose name was Martin, that if he was good to her she could talk him up to her dad, and possibly get him a serious promotion (and raises for all of his employees). Martin had wholeheartedly believed that the eleven year old girl could help advance his career, so he'd ordered the entire staff to be nice to her and give her whatever she wanted. Now, even though he had yet to get his promotion, she and Martin were like old friends.

Their good standings with the staff were also a bonus because it helped them get ahold of any off-limits-to-students items they wanted. There was a whole section of the store that contained products that were considered "too disruptive, harmful, or dangerous when placed in the hands of students," by the headmistress, and were therefore off-limits. Usually when these products were used at the school, it was blamed on students bringing items from home or having items mailed to them- which the school did little to regulate. Though there had been a handful of times when ambassadors from the school had come down to the shop, inquiring about which students had bought the "Screaming Banshee Rockets," or the "Turn-Clean-Floors-Into-Sludge Spray" (patent pending). Martin and his staff never snitched.

They went around the store looking for: "anything that explodes," in the words of James. In the end they bought far more explosives than they would ever need for one tiny shed, and a few other new items that looked interesting. The broom shed would do far more than just explode: it would go up in colorful flames, make a variety of loud and obnoxious noises, and probably let off a series of fireworks in different multicolored shapes. It was going to be glorious.

They were excited to see that their "Hee-haw!" spray was now a fully operational and high selling product. They had pitched the idea to Roxanne's dad, and it had been his job to get it to actually work. Well, he had a team that did that for him now, but you get the picture. He was still the final tester of all the products before they were put on sale. The "Hee-haw! spray basically made people make random involuntary noises for a few hours if you sprayed it in their face and they inhaled it.

They'd made a few other pitches to George, but none of them had gone over that well. They were either impossible, impractical, or downright dangerous. They were still working on their idea-development skills, but they were getting better.

On the way back to the passageway, and back to the school, they debated stopping at the Three Broomsticks. Roxanne was tired and wanted to get back so she could lounge around for the rest of her Sunday. Grayson had a paper to write by Friday that he wanted to get a head start on (which was probably nothing more than a lame excuse to get out of spending more time with Chelsea). But Chelsea was craving a butterbeer. And James just wanted to keep Chelsea happy- presumably because when she was in a mood, she was the worst possible kind of company.

So they decided to split up. Thank goodness. James and Chelsea went off to have their butterbeer, and Roxanne and Grayson started the walk back together.

The split up turned out to be a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing, obviously, because they didn't have to walk back with the most obnoxious girl on the planet. But it was a curse because Roxanne and Grayson had to be alone together. And talk to one another. And they ended up in a fight.

"So do you actually have a paper to write?" Roxanne asked, trying to start a casual conversation.

"No, I just wanted to get away from her." He shuddered a little bit, and while she was glad that someone agreed with her on how terrible James' girlfriend was, she was still annoyed at him.

"You know it's your fault she even came."

"What? How is it my fault?"

"Because you insisted on coming, and so she thought it was like a 'bring a date,' thing and she thought she had to come too!" Roxanne was half-serious half-joking, but Grayson was taking it completely seriously. He took too many things seriously. That was another thing she couldn't stand about him.

"What do you mean, I insisted on coming? I thought it would be fun for us to hang out together." Roxanne rolled her eyes.

"Oh, please! We hang out literally all the time. I told you not to come!"

"You didn't tell me not to come! You said: 'you don't have to come if you don't want to,'" he put on a girl voice that was extremely irritating.

"Which is how you nicely say 'please don't come!'"

"If you really didn't want me to come, that's what you should have said!"

"And how would you have taken that? 'I really don't want you to come, Grase, please stay here.'"

"Well, for starters, I probably wouldn't have come, and then we wouldn't be having this stupid fight!"

"Oh, so this is a fight?"

"That's what it seems like you want." Now she was really getting mad.

"Please, Grayson! You're the one who's always trying to start fights. What was all that earlier when she mentioned Conrad, huh? You were all 'Who's this? Should I be threatened by him? Are you talking to other chaps who aren't me?'"

"We're back on that now?"

"Well, yeah! Because you were acting ridiculous and it needs to be addressed. I am allowed to talk to chaps who aren't you. And I do. All the time."

"What was that?!"

"What?"

"That, 'I talk to other chaps all the time," stuff! Are you trying to make me jealous or something? Because I don't care if you talk to people who aren't me, Roxanne!" This was a lie.

"Oh please! You can't stand it when I talk to other guys. You get so jealous all the time! It's like you don't trust me."

"It's not that I don't trust you. It's that I worry about you."

"Well stop worrying about me! I don't need you to worry about me. I can take care of myself. I also don't need you nagging me all the time!"

"Nagging?"

"Yes! Nagging! You whine and you nag at me all the time!"

"I do not! Name one time."

She barely hesitated to come up with an instance. "Ok, like every time you asked me to hang out this summer. Any time I'd say I had something else going on you'd be like- 'What are you doing? What could possibly be more important than spending time with me? Just drop it and come over.' And then when I'd be like 'I seriously can't,' you'd get all mad at me."

"That's ridiculous! I'm not going to apologise for wanting to spend time with my girlfriend!"

"Wanting to spend time with me is one thing. Insisting that I drop whatever I'm doing just because you're bored is another thing altogether!"

"That's not what I do! I just want to hang out with you and you just come up with excuse after excuse to get out of it. It's like you don't even want to be around me!" Roxanne hated the fact that this was a little bit true.

"Do you ever think that maybe I'm not 'coming up with excuses,' but that I actually have stuff going on in my life that you aren't involved in?"

"Of course you have your own stuff going on, and I get that, but you never even try to make time for us."

"It's just that I literally see you every single day- I'm sorry if I don't feel like I have to make time to see you, because I feel like I do nothing but see you. Again and again and again. There you are."

"I'm talking about alone time, Rox. Just you and me."

"Why, so we can fight more? As soon as we were left alone we started arguing. How is that supposed to make me want more alone time with you?"

"This fight is stupid! It doesn't have to be like this! We used to like being alone together."

"Yeah, I wonder why that stopped." The way she said it wasn't serious, however. It was sarcastic. And it ticked Grayson off.

"You can be a real bitch sometimes," he said, stalking off down the tunnel.

"Fuck off, Grayson!" she called after him, but he was already gone.

When she could no longer hear his footsteps, she started to cry.

Roxanne Weasley was not the type of girl who cried very often, so this was kind of a big deal. It was the result of an accumulation of things- her fight with Grayson, the fact that it seemed like James would take Chelsea's side over hers, how tired she was. Once the first tears slipped out and she didn't stop them, her emotions flowed over until she couldn't stop if she wanted to.

When she got back to the school, she was still crying. She stopped and sat against the wall outside of the statue of Gunhilda the Gorsemoor and wiped her eyes again and again, trying to calm herself down.

Though she hadn't altogether stopped crying, once she felt a little more in control she got up and started the walk back to the Common Room. On her way up to the seventh floor, because ridiculous things like this seemed to always be happening to her, who should she see walking down the stairs around the fifth floor but Conrad Jordan himself. He had his same lanky build and his same curly hair and his same thick glasses that he'd always had. She hadn't thought about him in such a long time, and found it weird that she still recognized the way he walked.

She was hoping and praying that he would just keep walking, pretend like he couldn't see her. No such luck.

His steps faltered when he noticed her a little ways down the stairs, and he slowed down his pace as he approached her, as if he was afraid.

"Roxanne?" he asked, and the way he said her name brought on a bunch of painful memories that made a few more tears slip out. "Are you okay?"

She couldn't resist- "What a stupid question to ask someone who's crying."

"I'm sorry," he said as he got closer, and he sounded like he genuinely meant it. "Would it be another stupid question to ask why it is you're crying?"

"Probably," she admitted, wiping her eyes again. She could feel how red and puffy they were.

"Okay, then." That was all he said. And then he stopped next to where she stood and sat down on the steps. She looked at him, and he looked at her, and they said nothing. And then she sat down next to him and cried a little bit more, because she couldn't help it.

After a while, when she had calmed down a bit, he decided it was okay to speak again. "Is this one of those situations where you want to be left alone?"

"Well, if it was, you're already here, so…" she shrugged.

"Right." Conrad always had been a man of few words.

Roxanne was fully prepared to feel extremely weird around him. Their shared past, plus the fact that rumors were circulating about him fancying her, made this the perfect recipe for an awkward situation. But, for some reason, it didn't feel awkward. Everything about Conrad felt comfortable, like a worn-in glove. Which was strange in of itself.

"Are you alright now?" he asked after she'd stopped crying altogether.

"Honestly?"

"If you prefer."

"I think I'll be fine." Her voice was scratchy and thick.

"You don't cry very often. It must have been bad, whatever it was." He said it with no judgement in his voice.

"How do you know?"

"Remember when we were 8, and you fell of your broom and broke your arm? You didn't cry then. And that was really bad." She smiled lightly.

"Of course I remember that. Burned into my brain." He chuckled- an oddly familiar sound.

"I actually think I was the one who cried," he joked.

"That's right! You were so squeamish around blood. Are you still like that?"

"Of course. But I've been trying to get over it. I donate once a month." She stared at him in amazement.

"Once a month, really? How very Gryffindor of you." He froze for a second, but then shook it off and smiled. She remembered suddenly how much he'd wanted to be sorted into Gryffindor, and how disappointed he'd been to be a Hufflepuff. She still wasn't sure how much of that was due to her influence.

"Thank you," he said, and she nodded. After another minute or so of silence, Roxanne moved to get up. Before she even could, Conrad shot up and offered her his hand. She took and he pulled her up.

"I guess I should go," she said.

"Alright." It seemed like that was all he would say, so she smiled gently and started walking up the stairs again. "Oh, and Roxanne?" She turned around again to look at him.

"Yes?"

"I get that you don't want to talk about whatever it was that made you cry, but if you ever need somebody to… you know…" he rubbed the back of his neck.

"To talk to?"

"Right. To talk to. I just want you to know that I'm here. Whenever."

She smiled. "Thanks, Conrad."

"Anytime," he said, and then he turned down the stairs and walked briskly away. She watched him go, feeling an overwhelming wave of regret come over her.

"It's nice that you have someone who cares so much about you, dear," a sweet old voice called out to her. She looked around until she located the painting that had spoken. There were three identical old women standing around a boiling cauldron. She wasn't sure which one had called out to her.

"He's quite a nice young man," said the one on the far left.

"Hard to find them these days, isn't that right?" said the one in the middle. They all had the same voice.

"Is he your boyfriend, dear?" said the one on the right. Roxanne shook her head quickly, glancing down the steps to make sure that Conrad was really gone.

"No, no he's not my boyfriend."

"Well he should be!" exclaimed the middle one, and the one to her left smacked her in the arm.

"Maybe she doesn't want him to be!"

"Well why not?" asked the one on the right. "He's a perfectly nice, considerate young gentleman."

"Why don't you want him to be your boyfriend?" asked the middle one.

"It's not that- I mean, I already have a boyfriend."

"And where is he?" asked the leftmost one.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?!" exclaimed the one in the middle- the loud one. The other two shushed her.

"Is he a perfectly nice, considerate young gentleman like that one?" asked the one on the right in a nicer tone.

Roxanne hesitated before answering. "Absolutely." She didn't really believe it, but she was a good liar.

"Well, that's just lovely, dear," said the one on the left.

"Yes," the rightmost one agreed, "you are quite lucky to have two kind, considerate young men fighting for your heart."

"Oh no!" Roxanne exclaimed. "They aren't fighting for my heart. Conrad's just an old friend."

"Who would like to be more?" asked the left one.

"Why does everyone think that?" Roxanne groaned in frustration. "We don't even talk to each other anymore."

"It looked to me like you were talking," said the one in the middle, getting another smack on the arm.

"We're sorry we upset you, dear," apologised the one on the right. "We just make observances, that's all."

Roxanne shook her head, as if trying to shake her thoughts out of her head. "No, it's fine. I'm sorry, I have to go."

As she took off up the stairs, she heard one of the old women call after her: "Visit us again some time, dear! We get a little tired of just talking to each other all the time." Or maybe that was two of them. It was hard to tell- they sounded just the same.

She got back to the common room feeling completely drained, and barely had the energy to climb up all the stairs to her dorm. She collapsed in her bed and didn't move until James came to her room a few hours later to drag her to dinner.

"Mm nah gon," she mumbled into her pillow.

"What?" James asked, and she was torn between wanting to yell at him and wanting him to hold her and tell her everything was gonna be alright.

"I'm not going to dinner," she said, more clearly this time, choosing to do neither and instead not looking at him.

"Why not?"

She went with the shortest version. "Grayson and I had a fight."

"What about?" He sat on the bed with her and patted her on the arm.

"Little bit of this, little bit of that."

"Anything serious?"

"Maybe."

He paused and contemplated before responding. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to bring you up some food?"

"Maybe."

"Alright. And then afterwards maybe we can go… blow up Madam Hooch's shed?" This idea seemed to brighten her up considerably, and she turned to look at him, smiling. "That's what I'm talking about." But then her smile started to fade, as if an idea had just occurred to her.

"Does Chelsea have to come?" James looked disappointed, but he seemed to understand.

"Not if you don't want her to. Besides, I don't think she'd enjoy it very much. It's not really her thing." Roxanne nodded gratefully.

"Just us?"

"Just us."

"Thanks, James. For making me feel better."

"Anything for you, Rox. I'd always do anything for you. And you and Grayson are gonna work this out, alright? I know it."

"You're probably right," she sighed. Truth was, she wasn't all that worried about it anymore. She and Grayson always worked it out, and they would again.

And now that James had reassured her that he was always on her side, there was only one problem left for her to deal with. Conrad Jordan.

So I hope you liked that chapter! Please please review if you did (or even if you didn't). As you may or may not be able to tell, I have some plans for Roxanne and a certain Conrad Jordan in the future! We'll just have to see where the story takes us. The next chapter is about Alice Longbottom, a character who I've talked about even less than Roxanne (before this chapter, that is). Read on to find out more!

-Maddie