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16

OF GOOD GIRLS AND BAD INFLUENCES

MUSICAL MOOD FOR THIS CHAPTER: EZRA FURMAN - EVERY FEELING

"Don't get me wrong - he's lush as fuck, but he's not worth it."

"Seth!"

The sound of my name echoed in my head and, with a jolt, I realised that I had fallen asleep. I struggled against the drowsiness that made my head feel heavy, blinking rapidly as the concerned face of Bernice came into focus, hovering only centimetres above mine.

"Katie!" I spluttered the first thing that came to my mind; how could I have fallen asleep when my best friend was missing? "Where's Katie?" I scrambled to an upright position in the wingback chair in which I had settled last night, fully ignoring the painful back spasm as I threw off the blanket that had probably been provided by one of the house elves.

"She's upstairs." Bernice frowned, her thick eyebrows moving like sluggish caterpillars. "In her bed."

"What?" I almost fell from my chair as my foot got tangled in the blanket. "Are you sure?"

Bernice was still looking at me, traces of concern pulling at her angular face. "Did you sleep down here?"

"I - yeah." I had finally managed to disentangle myself from the blanket and tossed it onto the chair, still grappling with finding my bearings. "What time is it?"

"Eight."

"What?" I practically shouted at my roommate even though this was hardly her fault. Around us, people were shooting curious glances at us as they passed us by on their way to breakfast, but I barely noticed as the shock of adrenaline pushed the remaining traces of sleep out of my system. If it was really eight o'clock, I had barely half-an-hour to get ready for my morning classes.

"Maybe you can get Katie to wake up," Bernice said as she watched me pull on my bathrobe over the flannel pyjamas, my wand tucked safely into the front pocket.

I raised my eyebrows at her, not sure I had heard correctly. Sure, my best friend wasn't exactly a morning person, but she was a Ravenclaw first and foremost and oversleeping on school days was entirely out of character for her. Something was definitely wrong and I could feel my stomach turn at the wealth of horrible scenarios that immediately began to play out in my head.

"Ursula and I tried to shake her awake but she just grumbled and told us to piss off."

"Oh, okay, I'll check on her," I said, pushing down the pending panic attack as I crossed the room to get to the stairs. "Thanks for waking me up."

"Sure, no problem!" Bernice called after me but I was already sprinting up the stairs with my heart hammering in my chest.

Katie was fast asleep when I drew back the thick curtains around her four-poster bed; her hair was sticking up from her head in wild curls and her sparkly dress, which had dusted her sheets in teal glitter, was wrinkled and looked oddly out of shape. Other than that, however, she looked unhurt and I felt the muscles in my neck relax a little.

"Kat." I crawled onto her bed and hovered above her, poking her shoulder. When she didn't react, I properly grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little harder.

"Katie! You've got to get up!"

She stirred and finally turned towards me, squinting through the mess that - just a few hours ago - had been her perfectly done make-up. She looked scary, really, with thick streaks of black on her cheeks and red stains from her lipstick all over her chin and jawline.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" My eyes darted to the ominous trail her lipstick had left, leading straight down to her collarbone. "I've been looking for you!"

"Ah Seth, stop shouting, will you?" She croaked miserably and covered her ears with her hands. "I feel like I was hit by a truck. Or two."

She looked like it too, but I bit back the remark and instead repeated my initial question. "Where were you? Did you get lost?"

She shook her head, finally sitting up slowly in her bed. "I ran into this group of guys and they showed me how to do Bertie Botts bean shots."

For a moment I only stared at her blankly, trying to make sense of what she had just said. "Bertie Botts bean shots?" I arched my eyebrows at her in disbelief. "Are you saying you ditched me for disgusting shots?"

Surprisingly, Katie blushed violently - something that never happened - and quickly peeled herself out of her bed, obviously avoiding my gaze. "Don't be so melodramatic. I didn't ditch you. I just - I couldn't find you anymore when I came back."

"But," I said bewildered, watching her as she tried to rub off the clumps of mascara that had glued her lashes together. "I didn't move. I was right there where you left me."

"Rubbish." She shook her head as though I had just said something completely outrageous, and then stumbled into the bathroom to wash her face, but I wasn't going to let her off the hook this easily. There was something off about this conversation and I needed her to tell me what the hell was going on.

"OK, where were you the entire night? I was worried sick." I had pushed into the bathroom behind her, watching her smeared face in the mirror as she began to rub at the stains with a cotton pad.

"I'm sorry you were worried," she said, dousing her face with more cleansing gel when the make-up refused to come off. "But I'm fine, OK? I just need a shower."

I wanted to protest, but before I could even open my mouth, Katie had edged me out of the small bathroom and closed the door in my face. For a moment, I was too perplexed to move and so I stared at the wooden door in disbelief as the muffled noise of the shower filled the dorm room.

As Professor Hockanum strode among the backrows, I chanced a subtle glance at Katie; she was bent low over the saucer in front of her, listlessly taping her wand against it to add a couple of flowers to the pattern. We hadn't spoken all morning and it felt not only uncomfortable but also unnatural. We had only been fighting once; in the summer before our fifth year, when she had introduced me to Kevin and I had asked her if he had been hit by a Bludger several times in a row.

This, however, was different. We weren't actually fighting. Katie was simply giving me the cold shoulder even though I didn't know why, and - because I was unreasonably stubborn - I followed suit.

"That looks lovely, Miss Woodley." Professor Hockanum had picked up my blue-patterned sugar bowl which, at the beginning of the lesson, had been a mouse, and scribbled something on his parchment. "Good work."

"Thank you, Sir," I mumbled, glancing over at Katie again, waiting for her to give me a massive eye-roll and call me a nerd, but she didn't even seem to have heard as she continued to stare at her transfiguration work.

When the lesson finally ended and everyone was pushing out of the classroom to get to the Great Hall for lunch, I hung back a little awkwardly, waiting for Katie to pack up her things. She seemed to take extra long to sort her books into her bag and looked almost surprised that I was still standing there when she finally swung her bag over her shoulder.

We walked out into the corridor in silence, but it wasn't one of those comfortable silences that had settled between us; it was tense and strange and I felt my insides twist into tight knots as I acted as though nothing was wrong.

"I'm starving," I said when I couldn't stand it any longer, trying to sound cheerful, but it came out awkward and strained. "Aren't you?"

Katie didn't answer; she didn't even seem to have listened to me but was only staring at the Entrance Hall ahead that loomed at the end of the corridor.

"Katie," I finally sighed, feeling thoroughly exasperated. This was ridiculous and I wasn't going to just put up with this weirdness between us. "Can you please talk to me? What's going on?"

But Katie had stopped walking abruptly, a deep frown creasing her forehead. "I just remembered, I need to check something in the library." And she simply turned on the spot, leaving me behind in the bustling corridor, feeling completely helpless.

A pale sun was shining from the cloudless sky, making early November almost feel like April as it dappled the patches of heather and brown grass at the banks of the Black Lake. The wind that brushed through the golden sea of leaves at the edge of the Forbidden Forest was crisp, however, shattering any illusion of summery warmth.

Not that something so trivial as weather really mattered to Ted Lupin.

Hardened by extreme conditions from six years of playing Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, he seemed to think that the only kind of physical activity that counted was physical activity outside, preferably in the rain.

"Alright ladies." He threw a dazzling smile into the group, his turquoise hair rippling in the soft breeze. "Today we're going to do some running." A collective groan resounded, but Lupin, as usual, brushed it off with a brilliant smile that never failed to conjure up a few moony grins. He definitely was too handsome for a teacher. "Now, last time it didn't work out that well..."

At that, a couple of girls exchanged sheepish glances and a few suppressed giggles erupted from the group. Lupin had insisted we each have a 'running mate' to keep us motivated and push us, which, naturally, had ended in everyone ambling around the lake, chatting away happily to their friends like a group of old ladies in the park.

"So today," he continued, producing a list from the pocket of his joggers, "I have taken the liberty of personally assigning your running mates."

Desperate shouts of protest rose immediately, led by Demeter Notte who insisted Lupin re-assigned her running mate after being paired with Chelsea Best, a scrawny Ravenclaw with beady eyes that looked like a strong gust of wind might carry her off.

Instinctively, I turned to grin at Katie, but she was staring straight ahead, her mouth not even twitching. I had actually forgotten that things were weird between us for a second, but her behaviour towards me hadn't changed after lunch and I so stubbornly reassembled an icy expression to match hers.

"Woodley and Carrington," Lupin yelled, successfully tearing me away from my thoughts, "you're next!"

I looked over to find my cousin standing among her usual group of friends who was consoling Demeter as she was crying a few fake tears in an attempt to sway Lupin yet. After the Quidditch Kick-Off, Vala and I had - in proper Woodley fashion - gone back to our usual routine of polite disregard towards each other, which had just seemed more natural within the castle walls.

She was frowning back at me by now, her dark, straight ponytail swishing back and forth in the breeze and I stupidly wanted to catch Katie's eye again, but she had already walked away towards Bernice.

Great. This day couldn't possibly get any worse.

It felt strange running next to Vala. Our footsteps were out of sync, pounding an uneven beat on the packed earth, struggling to find something remotely close to a rhythm. The path that wound around the Black Lake was narrow and partially obstructed with prickly branches that caught on my sweatshirt and snagged the cloth on the sleeve, making it harder still to settle into a comfortable pace as my lungs reluctantly adjusted to the surplus of fresh, cool air. The sun was blazing from the sky, ripples of light shimmering on the dark surface of the lake, but the season was too far gone for it to banish the crisp chill that lingered in the shades.

"I got a care package from Mum."

I looked up from my feet, slightly confused as I stared at my cousin: her eyes were trained on the path ahead and her ponytail was whipping back and forth like a ferocious pendulum. "Rice crackers and those new diet protein pills," she said and her lips pressed together in a bitter grin. "Apparently Grandmother thinks I should lay off the Yorkshire pudding for a while. You'd think that they learned their lesson after Cassie."

It took me a moment to answer; mostly because I hadn't expected Vala to strike up a conversation, least of all one like this. She was still not looking at me - like eye contact would make what she had just admitted to me worse somehow - and so I focused on Morgana Evensong's pink windbreaker instead, watching it bob up and down with her bouncy movements a couple of meters ahead of us. "That would mean actually admitting that they were wrong."

From the corner of my eye I could see Vala turn her head towards me, her hair still swinging in tune to her footsteps. "Which we can't be, of course."

"We never are, haven't you heard?"

Vala snorted and I felt a smile pull on the corners of my mouth as I glanced at her. At some point, our steps had aligned and the clumsy awkwardness from before had fizzled out a bit.

"I saw you yesterday. I always thought you didn't like parties." It wasn't a question and I bit the inside of my bottom lip to keep myself from contradicting her when she hadn't said anything wrong. Had she seen my pyjamas too?

"I wasn't there for long."

"Long enough to hang out with James Potter."

I stumbled, my foot snagging on an exposed tree root, and I barely just managed to regain my balance before I would have tumbled to the ground. The way Vala had said it sounded weird - like there was more to it than just a few meaningless words exchanged at the bar - and I began to shake my head slowly.

"I wasn't hanging out with Potter." I couldn't help the snort that pushed out with my ragged breath. The mere thought of it was simply ridiculous. "We barely even get along."

Vala raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, bearing an alarming resemblance to our grandmother. "Didn't look like it."

"That was - it's not-" I trailed off because I didn't know what to say, hoping that Vala would mistake the red blotches on my face for signs of exhaustion rather than embarrassment. "Slughorn asked me to tutor Potter. That's all."

I didn't owe my cousin an explanation - after all, we hardly even talked to each other - but something about this bothered me more than it should have. James Potter bothered me more than he should have, and I couldn't even talk to my best friend about it because she was giving me the silent treatment for whatever reason.

"He's bad news," Vala suddenly said and I tore my eyes away from Katie who had fallen into a fast stroll behind Bernice, her auburn curls fluffed up by the breeze.

"What?"

"James." She squinted at the glistening sunlight and it seemed as though she was watching Demeter Notte who had ditched Chelsea Best and joined Morgana and her Slytherin partner instead. "Don't get me wrong - he's lush as fuck, but he's not worth it."

My cheeks felt like they were glowing, though I wasn't quite sure why. "I'm not -" I was going to tell her that I definitely wasn't into Potter anyway and that she had entirely misinterpreted the situation, but before I could make my case, a fierce whistle pierced the air, cutting me off mid-sentence.

"Oi! Woodley!"

I stopped and turned my head towards the small mound that rose next to the lake, shielding my eyes from the blinding light as I tried to locate Lupin. He was waving an arm over his head, clearly beckoning me over, and for a moment, I thought he was going to tell us off for chatting, but then I suddenly realised that he wasn't alone: standing next to him, hands stuffed casually into the pockets of his uniform trousers, was none other than James Potter.

I practically sprinted all the way back back, forcing my burning legs to climb the slight slope as I pushed down the exertion-induced nausea that threatened to take me down before I had reached the top. This could mean nothing good. Everybody knew that Ted Lupin wasn't one to take cardio lightly and the fact that he called me back only 15 minutes into the lesson didn't bode well.

"Professor," I panted, bending over as I tried to catch my breath. There was still a chance that I might throw up and I wasn't particularly keen on spilling my breakfast all over James Potter's trainers.

"Miss Woodley, are you alright?" Lupin frowned, somewhat wondrous, as he watched my pathetic attempts at getting it together enough to breathe properly. The cold air stung in my lungs as I inhaled too much of it, but I pushed myself upright nonetheless, fully aware that my face was slick with sweat.

"Yes. I'm good," I said, although my sweatshirt felt hot and sticky and my head was spinning. I rather would have died of hyperthermia, though, before stripping down to my sports bra in front of James Potter. I glanced at him briefly - as he stood there, watching me with that perfectly crafted smirk that could have meant anything - and I wondered what the hell he was doing here.

"The headmistress wants to see you." Lupin indicated the folded piece of paper in his hand and then passed it to Potter. Even through the wrinkles, I could discern McGonagall's typical green-inked writing and my stomach twisted. "You should probably get your things. Jamie can help you."

"Sure." James still looked vaguely amused, like he thought it was funny that I had been summoned by the headmistress, and I felt the familiar prickle of irritation flare up. "Let's go, Woodley." He nodded towards the changing rooms by the Quidditch pitch, his grin only widening as I glared and marched past him. "Oh, and Teddie!" he turned around to Lupin again. "Pick-up game after dinner with the lads."

"Right." Lupin grinned and touched two fingers to his forehead in a casual salute before turning back to observe the sixth year girls' progress around the lake; most of them had fallen into idle walks - one pair had even settled on one of the jetties - and he whistled furiously again, his voice carrying across the grounds. "Oi! Get a move on, will you?"

James was leaning against the wall of the changing room, watching me with mild interest as I stuffed my uniform skirt into my already bulging sports bag, not bothering that it was probably going to be wrinkled for the rest of the day. After all, I had much more serious things to worry about than creased clothing. It was rarely good news to get called into the headmistress's office in the middle of class, even as a Prefect, since it usually meant you were either in serious trouble or something tragic had happened to your family.

"You can change, you know. I don't mind." I could hear the grin in James's voice, even without looking at him, and was glad for the haphazard chunks of hair that had escaped my hair tie which hid the treacherous red blotches that were blooming on my cheeks.

"No thank you." I yanked on the zipper, forcing it to close over the unshapely bag, and then slung it onto my shoulder. "Do you know why McGonagall wants to see me?"

James pushed himself away from the wall and uncrossed his arms, his eyes flickering towards the standard school sports shorts for a moment that had slid up my waist. Probably I had gigantic sweat stains on my bum. "No idea."

"But, maybe she hinted at something?" I followed him outside, my badly packed sports bag bumping against my hip as I struggled to keep pace with him. I was fully aware that I sounded pathetically anxious, but it was hard to keep my cool when I had already played out every horrible scenario in my head, barely managing to not succumb to the pending panic attack. "What did she say exactly?"

"Will you relax, Woodley?" James snorted and then simply crumpled up McGonagall's note and, quite unceremoniously, stuffed it into the pocket of his uniform trousers. "Honestly, you're worse than Aunt Hermione." He suddenly swerved, abandoning the path that led up to the castle entrance, and I stopped dead in my tracks, feeling thoroughly confused.

"Hey! Where are you going?" I called after him but he merely grinned in response and so I reluctantly followed him to the group of brilliantly orange ash trees close to the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

"It's pyjama girl!" Freddie Weasley shouted, his arm raised above his head in greeting. Around him, the usual knot of glamorous 7th years who habitually orbited around him and James were sprawled lazily over blankets in the grass, soaking up the late afternoon sun. "Come on, have a butterbeer!"

"What - What's going on here?" I turned to James who was pushing up the sleeves of his uniform jumper, looking supremely unbothered. "What about McGonagall?"

"Ah, the good old 'the-headmistress-wants-to-see-you' trick." Freddie had gotten up from his comfortable lounging place next to Genie Patil and handed James a bottle of butterbeer. "Granted, it's a little old-school but works every time." He held another one out to me but I shook my head, not exactly feeling like having a drink right now.

"You lied?" I asked, ignoring that Athena Notte snorted into her bottle and rolled her eyes at Benji Thomas. I had spent the past ten minutes worried out of my mind, thinking that something terrible had happened, just to find out that Potter and his friends had played a practical joke on me.

"To get you out of class, yes," James said as though it should have been obvious and then took a swig from his butterbeer.

"Blimey, James." Freddie arched an eyebrow at his friend. Unlike him, he at least had the decency to look slightly uncomfortable. "Pyjama girl doesn't seem chuffed."

Freddie Weasley was right - I wasn't. And not only because I felt wholly uncomfortable skipping class, but also because James Potter had taken the liberty to decide that I should, simply assuming that that was okay.

"Well, pyjama girl is leaving now," I snapped, hoisting the slipping handle of my heavy sports bag further up my shoulder. Maybe I could still make it back in time for Herbology.

"What - No." James gave me a sort of patronising look, the grin still in place like he thought I was being unreasonable. "Come on, Woodley. It's alright - you're not going to get into trouble."

I shook my head at James, feeling wholly out of place as I tried to ignore the weird looks I got from his friends. Athena and Genie had started sniggering by now, shooting very obvious glances at my pit-stained sweatshirt and the strands of sweaty hair that blew into my face, and I crossed my arms in front of my chest. Now that the after-effects of running had worn off I was starting to shiver in my damp work-out clothes that did absolutely nothing to shield me against the frigid air.

"I need to go," I said curtly and, after throwing a quick nod at Freddie, just turned around and began to walk away.

"Woodley! Wait!"

"For Merlin's sake James, let her go!" Athena's voice rang out loudly and I could almost hear the massive eye-roll that surely accompanied her words. But James had come after me, falling into step as I walked up the slight slope towards the castle.

"OK, what are you doing, Woodley?"

"I'm going back to class," I said simply, refusing to look at him as I walked even faster. "If I hurry I can take a shower and change before Herbology."

I could see James look at me from the corner of my eye, an infuriating lopsided smile tugging on his mouth again. "Come on, it's just a bit of fun. Don't be such a nerd."

"But I am." A strangled sort of laugh pushed up my throat as I remembered the countless times Katie had called me a nerd. Had she even noticed that Lupin had called me back and that I had left with James? "I don't skip class. Ever. And I don't appreciate being tricked into doing it either."

I had stopped walking by now, mostly because my bag was heavy and I was out of breath. James had come to a halt in front of me and I almost had to laugh again when I saw the perplexed expression that had replaced the confident smirk from before. He looked as though he couldn't believe I had actually just said this.

Clearly, we were living completely different lives at Hogwarts.

"You should go back to your friends."

"Woodley-" He began, but I quickly shook my head, not sure I even wanted to hear what he had to say. All of this - the party invitation, our conversation yesterday, getting me out of class - it was all just too weird and I didn't know what it meant; if it meant anything at all.

"Goodbye, Potter." I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder and then pushed past him to climb the remaining distance to the castle entrance.

He didn't follow me this time.

Soft rain was tapping on the library window, lulling me into a sort of stupor as I stared down at my half-finished Arithmancy essay. Usually, Katie and I spent our Friday evenings together, finishing off whatever was left of our homework and eating the sweets we had snuck in. It was strange to not be sitting here with her, listening to pieces of Hogwarts' latest scandals floating in the air while flipping through dusty pages, not really reading anything anyway.

She hadn't been to dinner and I had taken some soup up to our dorm room just to find the curtains around her bed drawn shut. I could hear her move, though, and I had already grabbed a piece of the cloth, ready to yank it open and force her to talk to me; but then I had remembered the way she had ignored me all day and I had dropped my hand again. I still hadn't figured it out - why she was acting like this towards me; like I had done something awful - and it tore at something elemental that made everything else that was going on seem absolutely ridiculous in comparison.

"Elizabeth Woodley?"

I snapped out of my spiralling thoughts and pushed the heavy book off my lap in the process. It landed on the floor with a dull thud but I barely registered the noise as I looked around me.

I was completely alone.

Confused, I shook my head and bent down to pick up the book again. Maybe I had dozed off without noticing. It was getting late after all and the day already felt like it had been dragging on forever. I already wanted to pack up and leave, when, suddenly, there was a rustle behind me - cloth brushing against the shelf - and I spun around, staring at the neatly arranged rows of books, my heart thumping in my ears. "Who's there?" I pulled my wand from my bag for good measure, still failing to locate the source of the noise.

"There's a plot against you." The voice was barely louder than a whisper but I was sure by now that it belonged to a girl. "You have to be careful."

"What? Who are you?" I demanded, talking a little louder this time, but there was no response. Instead, a couple of books fell from the shelf next to me and I whipped around, my wand raised in front of my face, ready to defend myself, but once again, I was alone.

"What are you doing?" Madam Pince suddenly pelted around the corner, a look of fury on her heavily lined face. "Throwing around books! Desecrating the library! Shouting-"

"I - I'm sorry, really," I stammered and quickly began to stuff my books into my bag, ignoring the librarian who was hovering above me, basically shouting into my ear.

"I really need to go, sorry." I scooped up the mess of parchment and quills that was left on the table and then simply ran towards the exit, not daring to slow down until I had pushed through the heavy doors. My head was going to explode; I was sure of that. After everything, a bodyless voice telling me that someone was plotting against me really was the last thing I needed.

I literally burst into the room, dropping everything at once as I stalked towards the bed next to mine, and - maybe a tad too fiercely - pulled at the bronze drawstrings of Katie's curtain. One of the tassels came off and I stared at it in my hand before looking up at Katie who was leaning against the bed frame with her legs propped up and a copy of WitchWeekly in her lap.

"Dude." She blinked at me, her look of confusion heightened by the frizzy, lopsided ponytail, and I felt the sudden urge to laugh.

"Sorry," I said and then kicked off my shoes and crawled into her bed, sitting down on the spread of discarded magazines that littered the blanket. She didn't protest and, for a moment, I thought I could see the corners of her mouth twitch.

"James Potter got me out of sports today." The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. "I told him that I'm a nerd and then walked away."

"Wait, what?" Katie's magazine slid off her lap as she sat up straight, her mouth gaping.

"Sam has a secret affair with Hector Chang, which I actually shouldn't know about and, just now, a phantom voice in the library warned me that someone is plotting against me. I might be losing my mind."

"What?" Katie stared at me with such a familiar look on her face that I felt a warm, fuzzy feeling expanding behind my chest. Just sharing these things with her had taken away some of the heaviness that had weighed me down all day.

"I slept with Tarquin," Katie blurted after a moment before burying her face in her palms.

"You did what?" I was definitely gaping at her. "But that's gre-"

"Don't," She cried out from behind her hands, "say the word 'great'! It's awful! He shouldn't have!"

The grin on my face faded instantly as a horrible thought lodged itself in my head. "Did he make you? That little shit-"

"No." Katie groaned, peeking out at me from between the cracks of her fingers. "I made him; kind of."

"What?" I was properly confused by now, frowning at her as she dragged her hands from her face quite theatrically.

"Remember how I told you I ran into this group of boys at the party?"

I frowned at her. "The ones with the Berty Bott's shots?"

She nodded slowly, looking thoroughly miserable. "First I was flattered but I actually got bored pretty quickly and I went back to find you but - well - you were talking to James at the bar and he was laughing and I don't know... I kind of -" she trailed off and stared at her hands for a second before looking back up at me, frowning. "I guess I was a bit jealous."

"But-"

"I know," she groaned and slapped her hand against her forehead, "but I was drunk and weird and I left the party to go to the Hufflepuff common room party and, well-" she trailed off, her face glowing crimson by now.

"I still don't get it," I said into the silence, still struggling to catch on, "How did you make Tarquin have sex with you?"

"Well..." she sighed and grabbed her pillow, pressing it against her chest as she gave me a sheepish look. "I might have told him to stop being such a wuss when he insisted I was too drunk to make this decision."

"Oh Katie." I groaned and covered my face with my hand. I could practically see my best friend - a force of nature - telling a bewildered Tarquin to shut it and show her his dorm room.

"I know…" She let herself fall to the side and buried her face in her sheets. When she turned her head to look up at me, I knew that she was about to apologise but - finding that she really didn't need to - I only gave her a crooked smile and nudged her leg with my foot.

"So, Berty Bott's shots…"

The gesture was understood immediately and Katie simply grinned as I lay down next to her, our faces turned towards each other. "Blimey, they're awful."

A/N: I just want to say that I'm overwhelmed by all of your wonderful reviews and kind words for this story! And, at the risk of sounding like the sappy old cat-lady that I am, I can't even tell you guys how much every one of them means to me! All of your reviews are greatly appreciated, occasionally read out to my boyfriend (who knows nothing about fanfiction but puts up with my nerdy-ness nonetheless), and ALWAYS read aloud to my cat Hobbes.

You are all amazing people and the reason I am writing! I hope you enjoyed this chapter :)... more action is to come :)