Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

This was, without a doubt, this most annoying experience Amelia had ever had at Hogwarts. She had tolerated giggling girls in the library, she had confiscated Fanged Frisbees, and once, she had even managed to keep herself from killing a group of third year boys who set off a stink bomb in the common room of Ravenclaw tower right before she stepped through the door. But this… this day was the worst.

It was Peeves who was to blame. Amelia and Peeves had never had a particularly good relationship – who had good relationships with intolerable poltergeists? – but he had usually kept his tormenting to verbal assaults that centered around the fact that she was always alone. ”No friends, Miss Lyons? Have you scared all the ickle Ravies away? Maybe you should try making friends with the Gryffies – they might be brave enough to withstand the Ice Queen.” This was usually followed by some sort of pun about her last name being more fitting of Gryffindor than Ravenclaw, which Amelia ignored, the same as she did all the rest of Peeves’ stupidity.

But today he had stepped it up a notch. The poltergeist had found her in the very back section of the library where she was sitting alone. At first, he was only mildly annoying in that he was distracting her from her studies. He kept opening the window that was only a meter or so away from the table Amelia was sitting at, which let the cold air in and made Amelia uncomfortable. Several times she got up without a word and closed the window, refusing to let Peeves get to her. After the fourth time, however, Amelia could no longer feign tolerance and she snapped her head up to look at the Poltergeist now floating above her table after opening the window for the fifth time.

“What exactly is it that you want?” Amelia had demanded furiously.

“To see if the rumors are true,” Peeves had said cryptically, smirking deeply enough that Amelia wished she could hex him into oblivion.

“And what rumors would those be?” Amelia had asked, not knowing what Peeves had in mind.

“The rumors that your touch can turn water to ice!” Peeves had shouted, and before she knew what was happening, he had dropped a shower of water on her, soaking her books, clothes, hair, and the essay she had been working on. And before Amelia could turn her wand on him, Peeves had disappeared in a fit of cackles, leaving the redhead standing soaking wet.

The essay was beyond repair and would have to be rewritten, and Amelia knew the books would take time to air out, so she had merely put a sealing charm around them to keep them from leaking onto the rest of her things and then slammed them with unnecessary strength into her bag, absolutely fuming to herself. She had taken to pacing back and forth, stomping from one end of the table to the other as she pointed her wand at her clothing, attempting to dry it out, when the librarian had come upon her and asked her to leave immediately. The old crone of a woman had had the gall to lecture Amelia on practicing water spells in the library, and no matter how Amelia had tried to explain, the woman had hastled her out and closed the door firmly in Amelia’s face.

Still soaking wet and fuming, Amelia had stomped her way down the stairs. There was some sort of party going on in the Ravenclaw Common Room – she had heard some boys talking about it earlier that day – and she wasn’t about to go walking through that sea of questions. Instead, she headed to the Great Hall, which would be mostly empty now. It was a late dinner hour, one most people did not take on a Friday night, and Amelia was grateful to find the hall empty when she came in. As she sat down in the middle of the Ravenclaw table, she let her bag fall to the ground, hearing the squelch of the still wet books inside of it as she did. Then, she took out her wand and began the process of drying her clothes again, cursing Peeves, the librarian, and anyone else she could think of as she moved over her tights, skirt, and sweater.

After fifteen minutes, she had moved from soaking wet to damp, and Amelia had just moved her wand toward her hair to dry the tangled tendrils when she heard the door to the Great Hall open, and she turned to see who was coming to disturb her soggy solitude.

((Cue Peter))

(The poltergeists line made me laugh at loud! That was brilliant! XD)

Peter was bothered. He was not sure by what, but he knew something was getting to him, something was frustrating him. Every time he had been around his friends, he had felt so impatient and exhausted by them, he could feel the good feelings he had deluded himself into associating with them waning, just fizzling out. And he could not explain it. Not even to Adam, the one he knew was his friend.

He wandered the halls and suddenly, two of his friends came up to him. They all were obsessed with talking French when surrounded by Hogwarts kids, but loved speaking English so much that they did when there was no one to impress. Ivan, a tall, mysterious but handsome boy said, “'Ello Peter! Why are you walking alone?!”

Elle, a shorter, pixie-like character linked arms with Peter. “Eet iz a beautiful day and you are brooding! I do not theenk eet iz becoming of a boy of your stature! Of our stature!”

Peter stopped in his tracks, causing the two of them to continue forward a few steps before realizing he had stopped. They turned, cocking their heads, their hairs falling and catching the light from the window. Both had shocking blue eyes, but when Peter really looked the blue seemed so vapid... So empty and insincere. “Stature? And what stature iz zat?”

Elle laughed. “Oh, you know Peter! We are everything everyone here wants to be! We have a job, to not let eet make us somezing we are not.”

Ivan nodded. “We have money, we have good grades, we have looks, we have friends.. People like us, zey want to be us. Eet is important we do not wander like anyone.”

Peter felt his lips tighten, his face contract. “If you really knew me, you would know I do not have money. And good grades are somezing I work for. And I'm beginning to doubt I meet that last requirement.”

He walked off, leaving Elle and Ivan astonished by his words. He shook his head as though to clear his thoughts and continued on, shoving his hands into his pockets and chewing on his lips, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration as he walked. He descended down into the castle, not thinking about where he was going. He had not eaten a large lunch... his mind stuck on food, he made his way to the Great Hall.

He slipped inside and immediately, someone met his gaze. The blue eyes that met his was enough to make him stop, to freeze his thoughts about food, to forget about his friends, to make his stomach do some weird sort of flip. He shook his head again, his eyes looking down at his feet as his heart dropped just a bit.

He had messed up with Amelia Lyons. He was not sure when, how, or what, but he knew he had. He had to think that it had started with the bookstore... But something else. Maybe the Yule Ball? He had wanted to ask Amelia to dance but had thought it had been better not to, for her. But was he right? He thought he had been...

He couldn't take it anymore. He needed to talk to her, see what was going on that caused them to suddenly be distant. He made his way over to her, and sat across from her, opening his mouth with confidence... and noticing her wet hair. “What happened?” he asked distractedly, pointing at her hair. He shook his head, realizing he was allowing himself to get distracted. “Never mind... I...” He bit his lip and stared down at his knee before slowly looking up at her. “Amelia.. Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? I don't know, I just feel... like there's something wrong...”

For a moment when he first walked in the door, Amelia’s eyes locked with Peter’s, the awkward Beauxbatons boy with whom she had shared an inordinate amount of conversation – at least by her standards – over the past few weeks. As soon as he saw her, he seemed to freeze in the doorway, apparently unsure of whether or not he wanted to stay now that he knew she was here. Amelia looked away just as Peter did, not wanting her eyes to betray any of what she was thinking, even at this distance.

Just my luck… Amelia thought defensively, putting up her mental barriers that were constantly ebbing and flowing depending on the level of company Amelia was keeping. For a few minutes, she had been able to let her guard down because she was alone in the Great Hall. Now that Peter had arrived, she had to go through the trouble of raising them all again.

It doesn’t even matter, Amelia’s subconscious reminded her, and as if to prove this to herself Amelia turned her wand back on her hair, commanding it to release a stream of hot air that would hopefully solve the problem of the droplets of water still falling onto her shoulders and upper back. Her mane was sure to be a red mess when she was done drying it, but at least it wouldn’t be making a mess of her freshly dried clothes.

Although Peter had shown signs that he might just leave after seeing her, he seemed to have changed his mind, and after a few seconds his torso appeared in her line of vision, replaced quickly with his shoulders and face when he sat down across from her at the table. Without thinking, Amelia looked pointedly to her left and then right, as if to highlight the fact that the table was completely empty aside from her and that there were plenty of other places for him to sit. After a moment, though, she felt slightly ashamed of this behavior, though she assured herself she only felt that way because Antoinette would not have approved. She was looking down when Peter questioned about her hair.

Now that was a question he surely did not want the answer to. Amelia likely wouldn’t have given it anyway, both because she couldn’t have given a succinct description of why her hair was a soggy disaster without going on a rant about Peeves, and because it was really none of Peter’s business. It wasn’t anyone’s business what she did or what happened to her or what was going on in her life. Everyone seemed to understand that, except for a select few individuals – typically male – that took it upon themselves to try to push against her walls.

Peter didn’t wait for a response, which was in his best interest because judging by how defensive Amelia was getting mentally, he wouldn’t have received one anyway. Instead, he shook his head, letting his long hair fall into his eyes. Long hair. That must be one of the traits of young men that ask too many questions and are far too persistent.

With the shake of his head, Peter had changed the subject, presumably to the one he had meant to address in the fire place. Amelia doubted very much that he would have taken the trouble to sit near her only to ask why she looked as though she had fallen into the lake, so this stuttering question of what he had done to offend her must have been his motivation to sit down.

Great… Amelia’s subconscious responded with sarcasm, He can’t even take my silence at face value.

The last time Amelia had seen Peter, it had been at the Yule Ball. It had been a brief exchange, nothing of any real note, and she hadn’t stayed long at the ball anyway. She only attended those things to appease her parents, and when she had put in her required face time, Amelia had left without a word to anyone. Was that what Peter was talking about?

My bet is on the fact that you’re just a generally sour person to be around, and that even though he has a smile plastered to his face during all waking hours, the smiling muscles in your face don’t exactly get a daily workout. Just a guess, though. Her subconscious. Dry and scathing as always.

“Something wrong?” Amelia repeated after a few seconds, mostly to stall for time. She had heard his question, she just didn’t know how to answer it, “You um…”

You ask too many questions. You stand too close. You persistently spend time with me even though I have given no conscious indication that I desire human company. You are friends with people that gossip incessantly and are inexplicably tan in the middle of the winter. And your hair is long enough to remind me of the last boy that behaved exactly the way you are behaving now.

“No, you haven’t done anything in particular,” Amelia lied, though why she spared Peter was unclear even to her. To anyone else, she would have just rattled off the list that her mind had provided without fear of retribution. Maybe her mother’s lectures on developing a verbal filter were finally starting to take root.

“I just…” Amelia paused here, looking down at her wand on the table, which had sat idle in her hand since Peter started talking.

“I don’t really play well with others,” Amelia finally settled on, using a phrase that her primary school teachers had used to describe children that hit other kids or bullied their classmates. Amelia didn’t fit those descriptions, but it was clear from her past encounters and attempts at relationship building that she wasn’t really designed for human contact.

The old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. How very cliché.

Peter stared at her. She seemed cold, angry, distant. All of the above, a combination, and he just felt hurt and confusion. Had he ever done anything to purposefully hurt her? Had he ever tried to push her into something he knew she would not like? When he had seen her at the Yule Ball he had been almost overwhelmed by how beautiful she had looked and yet he had not acted on any of his feelings, because he knew she would appreciate it more if he did not. He had always been a nice guy, but he was human. Usually, his feelings came first. But he had thought of her.

Her answer was not something he liked. It was not something he believed. She had been stalling as he stared at her, eyes screwed up and determinedly set on hers, bearing the weight of what he knew could be her answer. That he was dumb, weird, like Quidditch, was too obsessed with pirates, had obnoxious friends, followed her around like a lost puppy. He wanted an answer, though. He wanted honesty and truth. What did he really like about Amelia? Her honesty. That was what he wanted- needed- right now.

He sighed and said, "Amelia, I know thees." He smiled slightly. "But eet was never a problem before. We had fun, I zought, hanging out and going to ze bookstore and whatnot. I zought we were getting along quite well. Maybe I'm overzinking it, but eet's just..." He struggled for words, wanting to say what he felt but also ever conscious that she would not like him for doing so. "Eet's just-"

"Peter!"

He whipped around and came face to face with a wall of beautiful people, smiling at him. Before he could object, there was two people on either side of him, and a girl and a boy sitting on either side of Amelia. Amelia was pinned between a brother and a sister- Constantine and Aimee. On Peter's left sat a couple who were still glued to the face- Jean and Adele. And on his other side were two girls- Collette and Nicole. Behind him, two of his male friends- Gabriel and Richard- sat speaking in undertones, looking at Amelia as though weighing their chances.

They immediately began talking in his ear, jabbering away and he sighed, his eyes sliding out of focus slightly before he cleared his throat. "Hello, all. Zeze ees my friend Amelia. Amelia, zese are some of my friends. Collette and Nicole here, Jean and Adele here. On eizzer side of you is Constantine and Aimee. And zose fools behind me are Gabriel and Richard."

((feel free to godmode all of the NPCs. Sorry this is so delayed.)

Amelia’s eyes lingered on the table, rather than look up at Peter to see his reaction to her words. She would have liked to believe that it was the same lopsided grin he gave to just about everything else she said, as though he were sharing in some kind of private joke with her, but she was too rational to hope that was possible. Clearly, Peter had noticed someone a little bit off about Amelia, and the only surprising thing about it was that it had taken him this long to realize it.

She heard the sigh first, and was forced to wonder for a few seconds if Peter was going to bother following it up with actual words. Amelia was throwing up her walls full force now, pushing Peter away harder than she did most people because he was actually getting to her. What he was saying about the time they had spent together, about them getting along… he wasn’t wrong. She would never have admitted to being genuinely happy in the situations she had spent with Peter, but she hadn’t been unhappy either. She hadn’t wanted to crawl inside herself or felt the need to run away during every moment in his presence. That had to count for something, right?

And maybe it did, but in the realm of relationships, Amelia didn’t know how the points added up. How many points did someone have to gain to overcome a series of disappointments that had made the Ravenclaw girl as reclusive as she was? How many tickets did you have to trade in for a smile, how many tokens did it cost not to have to ask twice in order to get to spend time with her? Amelia’s mind was thinking about it like algebra, but in trying to fit the variables, she realized, as she always did, that nothing about relationships was so straightforward.

Peter seemed to be struggling for words now, as though he were going to say something really poignant, and Amelia finally looked up at him, trying to read what he was thinking before he could say it so it wouldn’t come as a surprise. Before either of them could arrive at a conclusion, however, a voice from across the hall broke Peter’s train of thought and sent his head swiveling on his neck to see who had shouted.

Amelia made to lean around to see past Peter to find out who it was too, but as soon as she did, she immediately wished she hadn’t. Coming toward Peter was a gaggle of Peter’s friends, each more gorgeous than the next. All of them could have been off-duty supermodels, walking together and hanging on each other’s arms as though they were even now filming a commercial for high-end merchandise. The high pitched laughter of one of the girls reached Amelia’s ears at a deafening frequency, and the Ravenclaw girl cringed automatically at the sound, raising a hand to her ear as if anything in the world could block out that noise.

If his friends noticed Amelia’s discomfort, though, they didn’t do anything about it, instead exasperating the situation – and Amelia – by joining Peter and herself at the table as though this were a natural occurrence. Amelia was jostled as a tall, skeletally thin girl with stick straight black hair sat down next to her, reeking of cherry lip gloss and too much perfume, and a boy who must have been her relation sat down on Amelia’s other side, caging her in at the table. The boy’s dark black hair was wavy and tucked behind his ears, and he had dark green eyes that might have been brown, but Amelia didn’t look up long enough to investigate. She would liked to have fled the scene immediately upon sight of Peter’s posse, but now sitting shoulder to shoulder with the most popular students in Hogwarts, it didn’t seem likely she was going to escape.

Feeling overwhelmed, Amelia closed her shoulders in, trying to make herself as small as possible. One couple sitting next to Peter were sucking each other’s faces off, which was only adding to Amelia’s discomfort. Two other girls had sat down next to Peter, both of them looking like they could have been the Olson twins, though much, much too tan to pass as either Mary-Kate or Ashley. They were speaking a mile a minute, and although Amelia tried to tune out their high-pitched squeels of delight, she unfortunately caught enough to realize they were talking about highlighting their hair, and trying to get Peter’s opinion about it. At 20,000 hz and 100 decibels.

Amelia might have been able to handle this situation – maybe – if all of it had been happening only around her, and not to her. Although Peter’s group of friends had descended on her, most of the girls hadn’t taken more than a few seconds to look at her and, Amelia assumed, decide that she wasn’t of much interest. The kissing couple hadn’t even looked up. But the boys standing behind Peter weren’t oblivious to her presence; not at all. They had been watching her ever since they arrived, whispering back and forth to one another in French, so Amelia could neither hear nor understand them. Perhaps it was her paranoia at being surrounded by so many people, or just her general annoyance with the company Peter kept, or the confirmation that was all but obvious now that she and Peter came from completely different worlds, but whatever it was, she squirmed under the looks of the taller, muscular boys whose eyebrows had raised upon seeing her and hadn’t lowered since.

Trying to breathe, Amelia looked down and away from the boys behind Peter, trying to close off her mind to what was going on. But it was too difficult; it was sensory overload, between the perfume, the smell of self-tanner, the pheromones wafting off of the hormonal pygmies, the screeching from Mary-Kate and Ashley, and the movement of the table that hadn’t stopped since they all sat down, Amelia couldn’t seem to shut the world out.

Peter, at least, seemed to sense that Amelia was getting overwhelmed, and his voice cut through the noise to give a quick fire round of introductions, pointing to each of his friends in turn and giving their name. Amelia had an exceptional memory in most cases, and it was even likely that under this much stress she could have remembered all their names, but she couldn’t get it out of her head that they were all more or less carbon copies of one another. That combined with the fact that she had never met any of them before made it nearly impossible to recall any of the names a mere 15 seconds after Peter had said them.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” one of the boys behind Peter said – Richard or Gabriel, she couldn’t remember which was which – placing special emphasis on the word ‘pleasure’, and raising his eyebrows suggestively as he did so.

“Yes, it’s a pity we haven’t met before,” the other one said, nudging the boy who had spoken first, “You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Bellard,” he added, squeezing Peter’s shoulder and giving him a playful shake, though keeping his eyes on Amelia the whole time.

“It’s not as if we’ve missed much,” the girl Peter had introduced as Collette chimed in, her voice not without sarcasm. Her eyes rested heavily on Amelia’s mess of curls that were still half-damp from Peeves, not bothering to hide the judgment in her eyes or her words.

“Like hell we haven’t,” one of the boys muttered, smirking as he returned the nudge his partner in crime had given him earlier.

“She doesn’t even speak,” Nicole added, as though continuing the thought Collette had said earlier, as if they each were housing one half of a whole brain.

That would explain a lot…

Sensing that there was a spectacle being made, even the kissing couple laid off, turning to stare at Amelia to see what she would have to say to that remark. In all honesty, Amelia had never wished more that apparition was possible within Hogwarts, if only to get herself out of this situation, but she couldn’t see how right now. She’d have to say something. Anything. Think of something.

“I ap- I apologize,” Amelia stuttered, her eyes darting between the other students sitting at their table, frequently going back to meet Peter’s eyes, as though he could save her from all this. Her social ineptitude was even more glaringly apparent among all these young socialites, “It is… nice to meet all of you as well,” Amelia managed, though not with the amount of conviction necessary to be entirely believable.

Get me out of here…

Peter could not help but feel a growing discomfort around his friends. He and Adam had discussed it a bit as well. It was difficult. Peter had spent time with them because... well... he wasn't sure. Because they had accepted him? Because they were sort of the same? But none of them had sisters who were constantly in the hospital, near death. None of them were actually somewhat poor and having to compensate for it. None of them actually enjoyed books rather than lip gloss. None of them were sort of goofy and strange. None of them felt insecure around the opposite sex. None of them looked for a real connection.

He was learning he just was not like them. And really... he did not like them.

He knew, deep down, they all had good hearts, but they were all mislead. And he just was not apart of them. It had been painstakingly obvious after the tournament had come to a close. Most of his friends had completed their studies and had no reason to return to Beauxbatons; EVERYbody who was ANYbody had come for the tournament. So they had all decided to stay. When they had been sorted, they all went to certain groups. But Peter was his only friend who went to Ravenclaw. Nothing had been said, but seeing them move to the other tables, having at least two other people with them, and having to walk, alone, to the Ravenclaw table... never had it been more apparent that Peter and his friends really were not one and the same.

There was a dull thudding beginning in his temple as it was lately apt to do hen all of his friends began to speak at once. He usually could pick up each thread of conversation and follow each without tangling them and keeping them as their own entities. However, it mus be his newfound lack of motivation to be patient with his friends that took the edge of this ability. He furrowed his brow, trying to maintain contact with Amelia, as though they could just be two people that happened to be surrounded by a bunch of idiots...

But Richard and Gabriel could not be ignored. He felt a bit of anger boil up in him but he pushed it down, reminding himself that he was the happy kid. But Nicole and Collette... They could be brutal. They all seemed to be piling on faster than he could help pull them out of the hole they were digging. "Richard, I do not theenk-" "Nicole, please-" "There is no need-"

They seemed to have taken off and there would be no derailing them. Peter tried to keep himself calm, closing his eyes. but they all shushed and he opened his eyes to see Amelia's staring back at his, almost pleading. He glanced around, alarmed, and saw some open hostility on the faces of his "friends" all directed at Amelia. He struggled, his eyes lost, and she spoke...

No. This isn't right.

He had been thinking it more and more. And not just today. Hearing how the girls talked about the other Hogwarts girls, like they were not good enough for anybody or anything. Hearing the guys talked about all the girls, how they were like things to be used up and tossed aside. He had been thinking it for too long without saying.

Only... he had said it.

His friends openly stared at him and he blinked, catching up to the fact that he had, actually, said that to his friends... finally. He cleared his throat and nodded. "No thees eesn't right. You all are being ignorant and rude and I do not appreciate it. Amelia ees a friend of mine and you can not talk to 'er like that. I will not allow eet. If you wish to be rude, you may leave, or we will. The choice is yours." He glared at them for a moment and then looked at Amelia, dropping his voice. "Are you okay?"

Although Peter had started off as Amelia’s idea of a safe haven, the longer she looked at him, the more his expression changed. He was initially a bit uncomfortable, probably because his world had come into a situation that didn’t exactly fit the scheme that these social climbers would consider appropriate. But the longer his friends talked, the lower his eyebrows crept, making deep furrows on his forehead and giving him a much more somber look than Amelia was accustomed to seeing on him.

It seemed counter-intuitive to Amelia, that while surrounded by his friends, Peter would seem nearly as ill-at-ease as she was. She kept looking to him to save her, but more and more Peter was looking like the one that needed saving. He attempted to cut across the former Beauxbatons students, but each one continued speaking, either ignorant of or simply ignoring Peter’s protests. The normally happy-go-lucky boy sitting across from her seemed to be at a loss. His eyes flicked back and forth between his friends, who were continuing their tirade of whether or not Amelia was someone worth noticing, and Amelia, who felt increasingly like she ought to stop putting so much pressure on Peter, that he might explode as a result of it.

And then he did. Explode, that is. No, not literally, but in a split second that Amelia could never have anticipated, the pressure that Amelia had watched building up inside Peter’s head came out of his mouth. It was carried by what seemed to be a stream of consciousness, a thought by thought breakdown of what Peter was thinking. And apparently, he was thinking much the same thing that Amelia was, only… he shouldn’t have been thinking it.

For however shocking his words were to Amelia, his friends were clearly more surprised to hear what Peter was saying. The longer he spoke, the quieter they got, progressing from believing what Peter was saying was the opening lines of some elaborate joke, to realize that he wasn’t joking. Not at all. He was being completely honest, and judging from the way Peter finished his speech, he hadn’t been aware of it at the time. So either he was a really good actor, or he had just said exactly what he was thinking, and definitely wasn’t going to win him any points with Richard, Mary-Kate and Ashley, or the rest of the gang.

Most of them were staring open-mouthed at Peter, as though he had just spewed leeches instead of honesty. Some of the girls had their lips pressed into a thin, hard line, looking pointedly at each other and then back at Peter, as though silently plotting his excommunication. Under that kind of hostility, Amelia would likely just have left if she were in Peter’s shoes, but instead, he kept going, this time fully conscious of that fact that he was taking on what essentially amounted to his entire social network in one fell swoop. He was defending her, and it made Amelia blush and drop her chin to her chest, trying to avoid the icy stares it prompted from his friends.

When he had given his ultimatum, Peter dropped his voice and inquired of her well-being, which Amelia thought to be a very curious question under the circumstances, but she didn’t get a chance to answer it. As soon as Peter stopped talking, his friends erupted into babble, consuming them in conversation again, but this time, the heat was not only on Amelia.

“She must be very good in ze bedroom,” one of the boys was saying, as though that were the only reason Peter would side with Amelia over them. The other boy was saying something in agreement, but was drowned out by the high pitched voice of Collette.

“She has obviously given him some kind of love potion,” looking out derisively from beneath her perfectly arched eyebrows, “Unless frizz and freckles have suddenly become an aphrodisiac.”

At this, the girls burst into a fit of giggles, and the boys guffawed. As if by unspoken consensus, they all stood up, still laughing, and started to walk toward the door of the hall, still talking amongst themselves. The fact that Peter had just pointed out that he thought they were all immature, ignorant, and rude didn’t even seem to have fazed them. Instead, they seemed to be regarding this all as a joke, as if none of those adjectives could possibly be used to describe them.

“He’ll be back,” was the last thing Amelia heard before the gaggle left the Great Hall completely, the heavy door swinging closed behind them.

It was a few seconds of silence, the echo of the door closing dying away as Amelia and Peter were once again left alone with one another. Somehow, the silence seemed much more oppressive in the wake of all the noise Peter’s friends had caused. Amelia probably should have been feeling some kind of hurt about what the boys had implied about her, or what Collette had said, or everyone laughing at her expense, but all she could think about was what Peter had said. It repeated, over and over again in her mind.

Amelia ees a friend of mine and you cannot talk to 'er like that. I will not allow eet A friend of mine. A friend of mine.

Amelia had never had a friend before. Raoul maybe, but he was her relation. He didn’t count. And Raoul was also the only person she could think of that might come to her defense in the type of situation she had just found herself in. But now, Peter had not only told her that he considered her a friend, but announced it to the people that filled his world; the people that would think less of him for it.

“That was… unexpected,” Amelia said finally, if only to break the loop her mind was on, because no matter how many times she went over it, she couldn’t make sense of it. She didn’t know what she had done to earn Peter’s friendship, or even why he wanted hers. Or what would make him pick defending her over fitting in with his friends. It was all too much to comprehend.

“I um… I don’t really…. I know….” Amelia stuttered, pushing her frizzed out hair away from her face, still looking down at the table.

“… thank you?” Amelia sputtered out as her chin tilted up slightly to put Peter in her line of sight, the words sounding like a question because she didn’t know if thanks was the right thing to say right now. She didn’t know at all what to say at the moment, but that is what had come out, and with it between them, it at least didn’t seem like the completely wrong thing to say.

Peter was usually very easy going, but that bedroom comment almost drove him over the edge, causing him to stand up pointedly, making the bench scrape. His eyes met the boys and then Collette had the nerve to continue and his eyes dropped to hers. she was staring coldly back up, aware what she was saying and aware that he could not do anything to stop her.

He watched them go, wincing at someone's words, someone saying he would return to their group, and he new, if it was not for Amelia and his feelings for her, he might have came back to them, groveling. Now, he could not do that...

He just could not believe they had acted out like that, so crudely, right in front of him and Amelia. He knew they were not fond of outsiders to their group, but they had liked Chase when Adam had briefly dated her. Then again, Chase was peppy and girlie usually... Their kind of girl. Amelia wasn't. And if he really thought about it, this was not unusual behavior for his vain friends.

At her words, Peter tipped her head. Yes, it was unexpected. but it was also long overdue. He wanted to say more but he felt breathless, unable to speak. She continued on, awkwardly stumbling through a sentence, and he lifted his head to meet her eyes. She said thank you and he shook his head.

"Please don't zank me. I feel terrible. Zey should have not zed any of zat, it was untrue, and unfair. I don't understand why I did not zee how bad zey were until this. And I feel awful zat you were a casualty of zeir cruelty." He shook his head, dropping his head, to ashamed to look at her.

When she spoke, Peter tilted his chin up to look at her, and Amelia could see the hurt and confusion in his eyes. The boy had just had a major world view change, and it had happened on her account. Or maybe Peter had been thinking these things all along, and this had just been the final straw? Amelia didn’t know. That was part of the confusion; Amelia knew so very little about Peter, they were still relative strangers though they had spent at least some time together now, and yet he had come to her defense at his own peril. Why would anyone do that?

Amelia shook her head when Peter told her not to thank him, closing her eyes against the hurt in his eyes, but she could still hear it in his voice as he continued talking. He seemed… lost, if that was the right word for it. He didn’t seem sorry that he had said what he did, but rather apologetic for the harsh words that had sprung from the mouths of his ‘friends’ after his sudden outburst. His apologies were sincerely felt, but Amelia wanted to bat them all down, push them away. It seemed illogical for Peter to be apologizing for what the others had said; he hadn’t had any control over it, the blame wasn’t his to take.

“Just stop,” Amelia blurted bluntly as she opened her eyes just in time to see Peter’s head drop to the table. She realized belatedly that her words had come out more harshly than she had meant them; her mind had been spinning so fast that she had forgotten to modulate her volume and tone before the words slipped from her mouth.

“Stop making apologies for them,” Amelia amended, speaking more calmly this time, her eyes darting from her hands to the top of Peter’s head, “What they said has nothing to do with you, except that they felt compelled to say it after you came to my defense. It’s probably just their insecurities coming to the surface because they feel threatened.”

Are you actually comforting someone right now? Amelia’s subconscious butted in, sounding like the epitome of skepticism. Who are you and what have you done with Amelia? Has someone cast a covert obliviate on you?

“Besides, I’ve heard worse things that are more true,” Amelia pushed forward, trying to ignore the fact that her subconscious was right; she was really stepping out of character here. She blamed Peter for that. “What they said has about as much power over me as the attack spell of a first-year in a dueling lesson.”

This wasn’t entirely true, of course. Amelia spent so much of her time trying to impress everyone and live up to everyone’s expectations that it was hard sometimes to separate the opinions that mattered from the ones that didn’t. Logically, she knew that what Peter’s so called ‘friends’ said about her didn’t matter one iota for her future success or personal happiness; on the other hand, she was a seventeen-year-old girl trying to figure out where exactly she fit outside the realm of her parents’ carefully constructed boxes and definitions. But Peter didn’t need any more berating about his choice of friends or their actions; he was doing that well enough for himself.

He had screwed up; the evidence of that rang in her one syllable warning, full of bubbled up emotions he assumed to be anger and irritation directed towards him. Stop pretending like it is okay. Stop pretending like ever being friends with such rotten people was forgivable. Stop pretending like he could fix this at all. What had happened was terrible. And there was no way to make it right.

He couldn't look at Amelia, but as she continued on, he realized she was not angry with him. She was telling himself to go easier on himself; that it was not his fault what they had said, that he could not control him, that their actions were not his responsibility, and that they were not worth the trouble anyway. Basically, Amelia did not blame him... He had not screwed up.

It still was not right. So he was not blame. It did not matter. To him, it was outrageous. "I still feel dreadful," he admitted glumly. He lifted his head to meet her eyes, looking at her sadly, his eyes full of apology, though she did not want to hear any more. "I feel zat eet eez my fault zey targeted you. You deed notheeng. I assure you, I will not be associating with zem any more. I 'ave been thinking zat for awhile..."