Flash! Ahhh! He's a miracle!

Never let it be said that Jenna Boot-Corner wasn't generous. She didn't have to tutor anyone. She was sure this someone sounded like a match made in hell. That was why she'd insisted on using the Room.

It wasn't that she was embarrassed about being seen with him. Or maybe she was... she wasn't sure just yet. But Jenna couldn't deny there was something interesting about the Baker boy and that worried her. Boys were not usually so interesting.

The older Zabini had been interesting too, of late. Jenna could not fathom it, he wasn't even particularly pretty. Nice skin, nice hair but that was about all you could say. Lord, why was she thinking of boys when she had preparation to do?

The Room at least had it's mind (could you call it a mind) on course. It was decked out with long rows of bookshelves, corkboards and blank sticky notes. A towering pile of flashcards sat in the corner, though Jenna hoped they wouldn't have to use them. Flashcards. So boring.

He knew this should have been embarrassing. Being tutored was an embarrassing thing, especially when he had made such a point of not caring about his grades for so long. Too suddenly care showed how scared he was of his fast-approaching future, and caring or being scared was so not what was cool for teenagers. It was nonchalance. Not that Ducky put much effort into trying to be cool, or thinking about what was cool - but he knew it was a change of character to suddenly care.

However, facts has to be faced. He would be following in the Baker side if he didn't graduate, and he really did not want to be another cliche kid who turned to crime. So he had to care.

Finn had pretty much given up. Feelers for a new tutor had been sent out and and Jenna Boot-Corner's name had been tossed into the ring. Finn claimed it was because Jenna was smarter and not so close to Ducky. They both knew she had just burned out. He was a project.

He had forgotten all about his first study session, so he had dressed in the clothes he would be wearing to a secret party in the Gryffindor common room later that evening. He had snuck down to steal some sherry from the kitchens when he remembered the appointment. So, sherry shoved in a magically enlarged pocket Molly Weasley had charmed for him, nice button up shirt covering his broad chest, he hurried up to the Room of Requirement, certain he was late, and certain the prefect would not be amused.

He paced quickly, muttering his purpose under his breath, and the door appeared. He flung the door open, closing it quickly behind him as he said, "Sorry, sorry, I was, um... Busy." He turned around, eyes falling on her, and a smile graced his lips, always happy to see... well, most people. "Hi." The smile widened. "Thanks so much for meeting with me. It's- you're a doll, really."

Damn. She hadn't expected him to go to any effort. Jenna certainly hadn't; she was still wearing her uniform from earlier in the day.

Then the word "busy" passed his lips and she knew exactly what had been going on. Her lips pinched together momentarily.

"I can see that," she replied. "I just hope you gave her enough time to put herself in order before you disappeared."

Jenna assumed that whoever the girl was, Ducky hadn't told her what he was doing this afternoon. He wasn't the kind of guy to be that invested in one girl at a time.

"Well, come in then," she crossed to a large desk, swamped in the sunlight that streamed through the high arched window, although the Great Hall's ceiling had been overcast all day.

She sat, poker-backed, on the edge of one of the desk's chairs.

"Are you having trouble with a particular subject, or just remembering in general?" she asked.

Jenna already had some ideas about Ducky Baker.

He hovered in front of the door, not quite ready to approach her and drop into one of the chairs. That would mean getting to work. And that would mean the smile on his face would soon be gone.

And he would be lying if he didn't admit that Jenna was intimidating. He didn't dislike the girl - he didn't dislike many people. But she was a bit scary.

He blinked at her words and smiled, as though laughing along with her joke, but confusion furrowed his brown and complicated the smile. "I... what? No, I was just... I was just about."

Why would she assume... Okay, he knew why. But... what?

She sat at the desk and he hesitantly followed, walking with his jaunty step, swinging his hands in front of his body and clapping, trying to look more enthusiastic than he was. He sat at the desk, his eyes scanning the shelves...

So.... many... books.

He felt the sting of her comment, but smiled, guessing that she either was irritated at having to tutor him, or maybe just had one of those dry senses of humor... He cleared his throat. "Um, most subjects. Okay with the more practical stuff. Okay with Defense... Transfiguration is killing me. And Charms. And Potions. And... I don't even want to talk about History of Magic."

He needed a team of tutors.

Jenna dipped her head and squinted hard at the boy. It was what she thought, or close enough as made no difference, anyway.

"Transfiguration, charms and potions are all practical subjects," Jenna pointed out. "Mostly."

"Are you still on drugs?" she asked bluntly.

She took it for granted that he had been on drugs last year. She'd never caught him actually doing it, but then, Jenna was a lot more selfish than people gave her credit for. Catching anyone doing that would be inconvenient for her, too, so she made sure she never patrolled the parts of the castle or the forest where they liked to go for a smoke.

"Off the record," it suddenly occurred to her to add.

Her point was... valid. The sheepish grin the unfolded across his face revealed his embarrassment. That he really did not have any saving grace to his failure. And she sure was quick to correct, to remind. "Right.  Yeah, right. So, yeah. I'm a bit hopeless."

"Are you still on drugs?"

The grin slid off of his face. He was full-force reminded that Jenna was a prefect, that she was poised to expose him. If she decided to act, he could get expelled. However, if he didn't work well her now, he'd almost definitely fail all of his NEWTs. So... he didn't know what to say.

"On drugs," he repeated, scoffing a bit, a smirk on his face. "Look at my eyes, love, I'm not ooon anything."

"Off the record."

And he shouldn't have just trusted her. But he was a nice guy. A trusting guy. One who liked to plunge in blindly and hope things worked out.

The laugh left him and he cleared his throat, looking a bit more serious. "But, yeah, I still do drugs. Here and there. Now and again." Yesterday. Probably tonight. Then not 'til the weekend. But that was because he needed to restock.

"My dad had a potions addiction," Jenna's reply was casual, as though this was the kind of thing she told people every day, but she was watching Ducky closely to make sure he understood.

It wasn't that Jenna was worried about the outcome, should Ducky go blabbing that information to anyone. There was no way he could know which dad she meant (the upsides of being part of a rainbow family) and besides that, all the people who mattered already knew.

No, the outcome didn't worry her. But the way her parents would react if they found out she'd been putting this information around the school? That certainly did. Michael was always quicker to anger, and she knew he'd be furious. Terry though, wouldn't even mind and that was what worried her more. He'd never tried to hide what happened, except at the time (or so she'd been told), and Jenna hated the constant feeling that he was undertaking a lifetime penance for one mistake.

"I suppose you have other hobbies?" she asked.

A grimace flashed across her face as the next step in her plan came to her.

"Quidditch and the like?" she suggested. "There are a lot of interesting charms used in quidditch and if you're taking History of Magic, the snitch has a history that's frankly remarkably stupid."

"Addiction. I mean, that's a-"

He was so quick to latch onto that word, onto the fearful implication that Jenna thought what he had was an addiction. That was dumb, of course. He hadn't been alive long enough to develop an addiction. That was for old people, with jobs, and responsibilities for their addictions to take away from.

And then he realized that Jenna probably wasn't considering the implication against her, but more the fact that she was revealing some rather vulnerable information about herself. The sentence died in his throat with an "Oh...." And his eyes blinked a few times before dropping from her gaze down to the table. He cleared his throat.

"Right," he said, still considering the strangeness and the suddenness of this information. "That must have been really hard. My family-" He laughed, reminding himself that he did not talk about family. That laugh got him out of a lot though.

"Yeah, Quidditch is good," Ducky said, glad for the chance to veer off course. "What's that about the snitch, then?"

Jenna didn't bother to correct his misapprehension. He'd heard enough.

She cleared her throat.

"Haven't you ever wondered about the snitch?" she asked. "Unless the teams are radically outmatched, which for any sports aficionado makes the game boring to watch anyway, the amount of points awarded for catching the snitch nullifies all the other goals scored."

"So why use the snitch? Wait-" Jenna interrupted herself.

"We can do this better. I can teach you the history and critical thinking at the same time."

"That's when you use your own brain to work out the answers for yourself, so you don't have to just take it for granted that whatever the professors say or books tell you is right," she explained.

She summoned a piece of parchment from nearby and wrote the question on it.

"Why use the snitch?" she repeated. "Well?"

He could honestly say he had never questioned why Quidditch was the way it was. He had developed strategies, he compared players, memorized rules, and he knew how to play the game to the best of his own abilities. It had never seemed pertinent or important to actually question the games' logistics.

And he had never thought that to be an entertaining way to consider the game.

But it did startle him that he simply did not know an answer to what seemed like a really basic question. Why did a certain ball, and a certain position, even have to exist? Or why did the other ones exist?

His face scrunched together in frustration. "I mean, you need something to end the game. But... why not just make it a two person game fighting for the Snitch. 'Cause it'd be boring. So is everything else just... a distraction?"