"Alright!" Abby Walker, second year, Gryffindor, Muggle-born, soon to be one of the youngest Beaters ever (when Abby was determined, she usually got her way), James Sirius Potter's best friend, party organiser, called. "Time for Spin the Bottle!"

Emi Kubo, another Gryffindor Muggle-born, groaned.

"It was fun until now," she said. "Spin the Bottle always means I have to kiss someone awful."

"What's Spin the Bottle?" Fred Weasley, who happened to be Jay's cousin (and who he happened to be avoiding), asked.

Abby grinned evilly.

"I'm glad you asked!" she said. "Spin the Bottle is a Muggle game, of course, but not one for babies like most of the others we've been playing. You have a bottle, like this," she found an empty Butterbeer bottle and set it on a clear bit of floor in the abandoned classroom she and Jay had found, "and then you spin it, and you have to kiss the person it lands on, no matter what."

"What if you're related to them?" Lucy Weasley asked, nervously eying her cousins Fred and James.

Abby shrugged. "I had to snog my cousin over the summer. You still have to kiss them even if they're your twin."

She winked at Emanuel and Emmet Emerson, identical twins who, James felt, resembled each other just as much as the little Scamander boys did.

"I'm in," Fred said gamely.

And once a Weasley had given the game a vote of confidence, everyone else agreed.

"Right," Abby said, kneeling beside Jay and looking around the haphazard circle with a predatorial glint in her eyes. "I'll go first, to show everyone how it's done."

She reached out and span the bottle. James, who had had quite a lot of sugar and the fizzy drinks Abby had brought this year to Hogwarts ("Butterbeer is all very well, Jay, but I need my Diet Coke!"), watched it whizzing past, feeling dizzy and slightly sick.

The bottle landed pointing at Fred, who shot a nervous glance at Jay.

"Uh… What, uh, now?" he asked.

"Now I have to kiss you," Abby said, getting up. "On the lips, but there doesn't have to be tongue. Then you get to spin."

Fred shot another glance at James. The Potter wasn't entirely sure why his cousin seemed to be asking his permission – it was the game, after all, and Abby could kiss whoever she wanted – but he rolled his eyes and grinned as Abby passed by him.

"Right, spin," Abby said a few moments later, settling down again as though nothing had happened and as though half the students weren't now snickering at her.

Obediently, Fred span. This time Jay looked away. The constant giggling and seeing his best friend snogging his cousin wasn't helping his nausea.

"Ooh!"

James glanced back at the chorus. The bottle, which had been slightly tilted when it landed on Fred, was pointing straight at Zack Thomas, and neither boy looked thrilled.

"I don't have to kiss him, do I? He's a boy!" Fred cried.

"So?" Abby said admonishingly. "You landed on him, you have to kiss him. If I had to kiss my cousin, you have to kiss the boy who isn't even related to you."

"Go on, Fred!" Lucy called, laughing. "Don't be like my Dad!"

Spluttering in outrage at the insult, Fred reluctantly dragged himself across the circle and pecked Zack lightly on the lips, before retreating as fast as he could. Jay didn't know why he seemed so upset about it; it looked like a much more pleasant experience than Fred and Abby's kiss – although, admittedly, he might be biased. Fred was his cousin and Abby was practically Jay's sister, of course he thought it looked weird to watch them snog. That had probably been why he'd felt so funny seeing Victoire and Teddy together on the platform. Yeah, he thought, feeling oddly relieved, it was just because they were both family to him and it was basically incest. That was it.

Zack got Emi, who gave Abby a dark look before allowing him to kiss her. Emi got Kai Ronalds, who got Fay Smith, who got Cerise Boyce, who got Horace Fairfax, who got Lucy, who, to her visible disgust, got Fred again. Fred got Nareli Cooper, who seemed much more happy to kiss Dove Bradford, possibly because Fred had accidentally turned her hair a horrible neon blue a couple of days ago and it still hadn't completely faded. Dove got Emmet. To Fred's apparent disappointment (Jay thought he had heard him mutter something like "revenge" when the bottle had spun to point at the poor half-blood), Emmet didn't get his brother – he landed on Abby and they shared a chaste kiss.

"Right, my go again," Abby said as Emmet retreated, his cheeks pink.

She spun the bottle forcefully so that it wobbled a little away from its position in the middle and kept spinning.

Jay had been watching the proceedings with something between amusement and disgust. Horace and Lucy's dramatic display (probably designed to wind her cousins up), in particular, left him feeling ill again, although not out of cousinly protectiveness. Though Fred had given the pure-blood boy a very dark look as he'd returned, dazed, to his seat, Jay knew that Lucy could take care of herself. Despite her father, Percy Weasley, being the most rule-abiding member of his family, his younger daughter had inherited her uncles' love of mischief and mayhem. Lucy and Fred could often be found hexing or pranking someone they thought deserved it, or because they were bored.

Now Jay stared in horror as the bottle slowed, wobbled, and halted, pointing directly at him.

"Uh," James said.

Abby winced sympathetically at him.

"The rules are the rules," she said. "It won't be so bad, Jay."

It was so bad. Although it probably lasted a couple of seconds, it felt like forever to James. Abby's lips were unpleasantly wet, probably from Emmet's spin, and she tasted weirdly of fake cherries (the lip gloss she'd persuaded her stepmother to buy her, possibly). He was uncomfortably aware of how close she was to him. Her hair tickled his face. He could hear the rest of the kids catcalling and jeering, as they had for every kiss, and he could feel his cheeks flushing from embarrassment.

"Your turn, Jay," Abby said at last, pulling away.

She sat back down and Jay took a deep breath, resisting the urge to wipe his lips on his sleeve – at least until he'd lurched awkwardly forwards and spun the bottle (pretty feebly, but he was in a bit of a crisis after having been forced to kiss his best friend).

The bottle drifted to a halt on Felix Carter, a Muggle-born with cute brown curls and green eyes. Jay's stomach gave a little flip as the other boy's eyes met his; then Fred started laughing and Jay's heart sank as he remembered his audience. Why had he let Abby talk him into this?

She gave him a shove now, and he stood up and walked over, his legs wobbly from all the time sitting down and – no, just all the time sitting down.

"Come on then," Felix said as James stopped awkwardly in front of him. "I've been waiting long enough."

Jay wasn't sure if Felix meant he'd been waiting long enough for James to kiss him or for the bottle to land on him and let him have a go, but it didn't matter, because he was reaching out to tug Jay down and then they were kissing.

It wasn't anything particularly dramatic. Felix's lips were dry and chapped and tasted of Butterbeer and Diet Coke. His hand was still fisted in the front of Jay's robes and Jay was bent over awkwardly so that he could reach the other boy's mouth. It didn't go on much longer than James and Abby's kiss.

Jay retreated back across the circle and sat down. Abby raised her eyebrows at him. Jay glanced back across the circle to where Felix sat, watching. He smiled shyly and was rewarded with seeing Felix's lips – the lips I just kissed – quirk up.

Maybe Spin the Bottle wasn't so bad after all. Even if Abby would definitely be interrogating him later.