A Lar by any other name

Title: Good Advice
Date/Challenge: Feb 11 - Love is only chatter / Friends are all that matter at 30_hath and 32 - Compassion at potterverse100
Claim: The Hufflepuffs (Susan/Michael, Ernie/Mandy, Megan)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1225

Michael was beginning to wonder what was so great about girls. Sure, they were pretty and smelled good and knew all kinds of interesting things that most guys never did figure out, but he was tired of having to deal with their tempers. Every other boy had a girl that cried. Why did he have to deal with the one girl who didn’t seem to possess tears?

“Why don’t you come out to the lake with me and Mandy?” Ernie asked after he found him all alone in the Ravenclaw Common Room. Since it was a beautiful Friday evening, most of the Ravenclaw house could be found unwinding in the library with their books, leaving this room blissfully empty.

“And be a third wheel? No, thank you.”

“I meant, why don’t you get Susan and the four of us can go?”

He glared at the other boy then, trying to figure out if he was being nice or if he was interfering. It was hard to tell with Ernie these days. He smiled all the time and felt obligated to make everyone else feel the same as he did. Unfortunately, Michael didn’t feel that deliriously happy was the emotion for him just now – or ever, for that matter.

“At least ask her,” Ernie pressured, after he’d been told no twice. “She needs to do something cheerful right now. To look at her, you’d think she’d forgotten how to smile.”

It was true. For weeks now, Susan had walked around in a fog that he hadn’t been able to penetrate. Every time he had worked up the courage to ask her what was wrong, something or someone interfered. “I don’t know if I’m the one to talk to her right now,” he muttered.

“And why not?” Mandy asked as she came up beside the two boys, running her fingers through Ernie’s hair. It certainly wasn’t meant to make it lay down sedately because it stood up more now than it had.

“Well, if you notice, she’s not with me right now. Every other person in this stupid castle is with their significant other and I’m sitting on this couch with nothing to do but rearrange Anthony’s shirts so they aren’t hanging in color order.”

“That was you?” Mandy asked, choosing to sit in Ernie’s lap instead of on the empty spaces on the couch beside either of the boys. “He’s convinced the Grey Lady has a thing for his clothes. Lisa thinks it’s a great haunting story and has been sending him documented proof of other famous hauntings. She’ll get such a laugh when I tell her it’s been you all along.”

“Yes, well, I get bored easily,” he said nonchalantly, leaning back against the comforting padding of the dark blue couch. Watching Ernie and Mandy interact was just another reminder that Susan didn’t want to be around him right now. If the pain of being around his friends when they were in “couple mode” didn’t feel slightly better than the gnawing ache of not being with Susan, he would have gotten up and gone somewhere less social. As it was, he was comfortable where he was and they were bound to leave soon on their date. He still had plenty of alone time tonight to brood about his stupidity.
****
“If you don’t leave me alone, Megan, I’m going to hex you into a frog. Wouldn’t be able to fly very high then, would you?”

Megan sighed and moved over to her side of the room. “You can’t say under your covers forever. Eventually, you’ll need to eat or piss.”

“Where did that come from, Miss Jones? I do believe you said piss,” Susan exclaimed with a hint of amusement underlying the sarcasm. She sat up and let the blankets fall away. “Am I rubbing off on you?”

“Doubt it. I’m just trying to give you back some of the same emotion you’ve been throwing around lately. Why are you in bed, anyway? Don’t you usually spend Friday nights swapping insults with Mr. Cheerful?” Megan gasped as she saw a tear trickle down her friend’s nose. That was definitely a first. “What happened?”

“We had a fight. At least, I think it was a fight. He’s too smart to let me get really angry at him. Most of the time, he talks me out of our fights and we go on like it never happened. This time, I wouldn’t let him.”

Considering Susan was constantly arguing with people (or, in her words, making sure they knew all the options before they did something stupid), Megan couldn’t imagine letting one disagreement send her to bed like this. Susan looked like she was devastated by whatever had happened.

“So go tell him you’re sorry. It’s not hard.”

“What? Admit that I was wrong? That he is really is smarter than the average Hufflepuff?”

At the explanation, Megan started to laugh so hard she started to topple off the bed. “Is that all?”

Susan brushed her hair off her forehead, looking first hurt, then defensive. “Of course, that’s all. How can I let him get away with saying something like that? I mean, first it’s that he’s smarter and then it’ll be that he’s better than us and then –“

“Hold on a minute. I’m not telling you to let him get away with saying that but he’s not altogether wrong. The boy’s got a lot of head knowledge, even for a Ravenclaw, but he’s also not very smart when it comes to other things. And he’s petty and a little mean. Not,” she hurried to say as she saw the hurt look creeping back into her friend’s face, “that it’s a bad thing, mind you. It’s who he is. Are you angry that he thinks he’s smarter than you?”

Susan shrugged. “I was more angry that he thought that about you guys.”

“Let us fight our own fights,” Megan told her, fighting off the urge to laugh once again. “The important thing is that you either accept what he said or you don’t. Either way you need to tell him, deal with it and move on.”

“I don’t know how to tell him.”

Now they were getting into things that Megan wasn’t sure about herself. “Fine, don’t tell him. Go jump into his arms and make him forget there had ever been a fight in the first place. It’s better than sitting in your room while he’s busy festering over what each of you both said or did.”

“Does this kind of thing work for you?” Susan asked with a touch of sarcasm.

Megan took a deep breath, staring at her fingers as they intertwined together to form a tight fist. That was what her stomach felt like at this moment. “If I did, do you think I would have been in here to talk you down from this ledge?”

It was a sadder but wiser girl who watched Susan throw on her favorite blue jumper and run out of the room. If there had been someone around when Megan had been under her covers, crying her eyes out at the words she’d said, once again, in anger, there might not have been anyone to help Susan. She certainly hoped they appreciated that her past foolishness was helping them out. It certainly was doing nothing for her.