Professor Trelawney is only delighted to give Marjorie extra credit work; Marjorie gets the impression that not many people actually take an interest in Divination. Armed with a dream journal that expects some truly invasively detailed description, Marjorie sets off the Defence Against the Dark Arts with a new spring in her step -- the extra credit dream journal is sure to get her a decent enough grade in Divination, so at least she knows she'll be passing one subject.

Professor Moody's classroom is full of intimidating Dark detectors, spinning and whirring all the time as cloudy faces peer out of the fogged glass. On her way to her desk, Marjorie accidentally knocks over a Sneakoscope and winces as it emits a shrieking high-pitched whistle as it hits the stone floor.

"Sorry!" She cries out and tries to chase it down as it rolls across the classroom floor, under desks and between legs. Some people laugh out loud, though others wince at the noise and scowl at her.

"Leave it!" Moody snaps, and snatches it up as it rolls out from under a desk. "Sit down, Longbottom."

Face hot with embarrassment, Marjorie sinks down into her desk. "Sorry." She says again, but quieter this time. She thinks she would quite like to sink into the floor right about now.

"Nice one."

"Very smooth."

Marjorie stiffens, her eyes growing wide. Slowly, she turns in her seat and looks over her shoulder. Sitting at the usually unoccupied desk behind her, are a grinning Fred and George Weasley. "What are you doing here?" She whispers at them, casting a nervous glance to Moody, who's begun teaching already.

"We're in this class." George whispers back to her with a laugh, echoing her words to them from Charms the previous day.

"Why are you sitting there, I mean!"

"For a refreshing change in perspective, of course." Fred says cheerfully, leaning back dangerously on his chair.

"But-"

"Longbottom." Moody barks, and Marjorie whirls to face him. "Got something you want to say?"

"No, sir!" Marjorie squeaks, terrified. She ignores the quiet laughter from the twins and focuses determinedly on Moody as he turns back to the blackboard.

They're working on jinxes and counterjinxes today, much to the class's excitement and Marjorie's dismay -- she's never been very good at spells, and in practical demonstrations she usually finds herself being the guinea pig for other students to practice on. Luckily, today Moody has them practicing on wooden dummies rather than each other. All the same, it's a long lesson full of tricky spellwork that Marjorie can't get the hang of, and Moody roaring what he probably thinks are encouragements but actually just sound like threats.

By the time class ends, Marjorie feels as though she's fit to crawl to the Great Hall for lunch. Two girls shoulder past her on the way out of the classroom, engrossed in conversation, and Marjorie can't even summon up the energy to feel annoyed about being sent stumbling into the wall. She's so tired that she thinks it'll be a miracle if she even makes it to the Hall.

Then she feels two presences just behind her, and she suddenly finds the energy to speed up until she's practically power-walking down the corridor.

"What the-? Hey, hang on!" One of the twins calls out to her, laughing despite the surprise in his voice as she darts around a couple of second years. "Hey! Longbottom!"

"Shit, shit, shit," Marjorie chants, panicked. What the hell do they want with her? All those years of careful avoidance have apparently gone up in smoke, now that they're hot on her heels. She has a horrible feeling that if she stands still in front of them for too long, they'll do something awful to embarrass her.

She nearly careens head-first into a seventh-year Ravenclaw, though she manages to just barely avoid him -- despite not touching him, he roars "Watch it, Longbottom!" after her.

Merlin, this is so embarrassing, she thinks, ducking around a huddle of first years and edging her way closer to the entrance to the Great Hall -- she's so close, only a few meters away-

"There you are. Blimey, you're fast."

The gaggle of first years squeak and begin to disperse, startled by the appearance of the twins. Whether they're startled because they know who the twins are or if it's just because they're older students is unclear, but they cast them several curious looks over their shoulders as they go. Majorie turns slowly to face the twins, who are breathing a little heavily. One of them (she thinks it's George) is leaning against the wall in what would be a casual stance if he didn't appear to be winded, and the other (Fred?) is standing with his hands on his hips, chest heaving.

"Oh," Marjorie says as though she had only noticed that the twins were following her just now, "Did you want something?"

George starts to laugh, a little disbelievingly. "Uh, yeah. You left your school bag back in the classroom."

Marjorie only notices the bag in his hand when he holds it out to her, and she takes a moment to stare at it in mute mortification. Oh. They hadn't been planning on doing anything horrible to her at all. If anything, she had just humiliated herself by making such a big deal of sprinting away from the two of them in the hallways.

"Thanks." She says in a very small voice, taking the bag from George and slinging it over her shoulder. She hopes that her face isn't as flushed as it feels, though she has a feeling that that particular hope is in vain. "Uh. Thanks."

You said thanks already!, her brain screams at her. Unable to cope with embarrassing herself any further, Marjorie turns on her heels and begins to march away. To her dismay, the twins begin to follow.

"Woah, wait!" Fred says cheerfully, skipping a few steps closer to her as George closes in on her other side. "How'd you find that lesson, then?"

Marjorie squints at him, then at his brother, wondering if they're trying to make some sort of a joke -- anyone who had so much as looked her way in that lesson would have seen that she had struggled with the spellwork. "Are you making fun of me?"

The twins share a look. "No," George says slowly, "We're just wondering."

Still side-eyeing them, Marjorie shrugs. "It was okay."

"Okay?" Fred repeats, nose scrunched up. "Only okay? Don't you think that his lessons are incredible?"

"They're fine." Marjorie says quickly, flustered by their sudden attention. If anything, their past inattention is made all the more obvious by the fact that they don't seem to realise that Marjorie struggles miserably in that class. "I think I preferred Professor Lupin, though. He was very kind."

"Sure, Lupin was great." Fred says, "But Mad-Eye is just- he's really seen it, hasn't he?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose he has." Marjorie agrees, wondering vaguely what exactly it is that he's supposed to have seen. They reach the entrance to the Great Hall, and she sends them a tight smile. "Well, bye."

"Hang on, we're going to the same table, aren't we?" George laughs, effortlessly keeping pace with her even as she tries to scurry away to the Gryffindor table.

Marjorie just glances at them; their continued presence is making her nervous, and she can't help but feel that they're up to something. "Was there something you needed from me?" She asks carefully, trying her best to remain polite and avoid offending them.

Her politeness is apparently very amusing to them, as they both share a lightning quick look between them and begin snickering. "Do you have such a low opinion of us, Longbottom?" George asks, affecting a ridiculous parody of a posh accent that Marjorie supposes is mocking her own.

"Yeah, Longbottom, can we not just be friends?"

Marjorie's gaze swings between them, desperately confused. They're making fun of her, she knows it, she just can't figure out the joke. Annoyed and a little hurt, she narrows her eyes and clenches her jaw and says, "If you actually meant that, I think it would be lovely to be friends, but there's no point in saying things like that just to wind me up, you know! It's not a very kind thing to do!"

The boys blink at her, faces painted with identical expressions of surprise as Marjorie turns on her heel and hurries away over to the Gryffindor table, where Neville is laughing at something that Dean Thomas is saying. She prays that no one else heard her mini outburst -- she's embarrassed herself enough for one day! Before the twins can catch up and say anything more to her, she burrows into the tiny space between Neville and Dean.

Neville shifts aside easily to allow her space to sit, never faltering once in his conversation. Dean spares a moment to offer her a small smile and a "Hey, Marjorie," but other than that they both remain immersed in conversation about Quidditch. Marjorie's grateful for their distraction, if only because it means they don't ask her any questions.

Marjorie jerks awake, mouth open in a silent scream that's cut off by a choking, rasping cough. She lays on her back, staring up at the dark canopy above her as she gasps for breath. Her dream, awful though it was, slips from her memory like smoke.

The room is quiet, the silence broken only by Katie's familiar heavy breathing; after five years of sharing the same dormitory, the sounds of the girls sleeping nearby are usually comforting. Tonight, however, the sounds just grate on her nerves and it doesn't take long for her to realise that there's not much chance of her being able to get back to sleep.

The stone floor is cold against her bare feet as she climbs out of bed, though it's not until she slips out of her dormitory and into the dark staircase that she fully feels the chill of the night air. Shivering a little but remaining undeterred, she pads down the stairs and emerges into the common room, breathing a little sigh of relief when she sees that the fire hasn't gone out yet. She guesses it must be sometime around two or three in the morning.

As she draws closer to the fireplace, she's startled to see that the common room isn't actually empty, as she had first thought; there's a mass of bushy dark hair sticking up over the top of one of the couches. It seems that Hermione Granger has fallen asleep in front of the fire, with a pile of knotted wool in her lap. Marjorie creeps closer, and reaches out to place a hand on the other girl's shoulder. "Um, Hermione?"

Hermione jerks awake with a throaty surprised sound, her head swinging around to look at Marjorie. "I- what? Oh." She blinks, her face sleep-creased and uniform rumpled. "Marjorie?"

"Hi," Marjorie says awkwardly, beginning to second-guess her decision to wake her now. "Er, sorry. I just thought you might get a crick in your neck if you slept like that."

"Oh, yes, of course." Hermione sits up, straightening her uniform fussily. "I was just so focused on getting this hat finished, for the house-elves, you know-" She cut herself off suddenly, squinting up at Marjorie as though seeing her in a new light. "Have you joined S.P.E.W yet, Marjorie?"

"Have I joined- what, sorry?"

"S.P.E.W! Hang on, I have badges!" Hermione dives for her bag, pulls out a handful of brightly coloured little badges, and promptly launches into an impassioned tirade about the welfare of oppressed magical creatures.

Marjorie nods along, wide-eyed and a little overwhelmed, but interested all the same. "You're right, that's awful." She says earnestly once Hermione has paused for breath. Coming from an old Pure Blood family, she's embarrassed to admit that she had never put to much thought into the structural inequalities within the Wizarding World. "I'd love to join S.P.E.W, I think it's a wonderful idea!"

Hermione beams, looking almost incandescent with joy. Marjorie thinks that she probably would have joined even if she thought it was a terrible idea, but it was definitely worth it to see such a look of joy on Hermione's face. Once they sort out the payment, Marjorie is the proud new owner of a shiny S.P.E.W badge and Hermione begins chattering about how she plans to use the money collected from the badge sales to fund the production of informational pamphlets.

Marjorie smiles along even as her eyes glaze over a little, nodding every few moments when it seems as though Hermione wants a response. She lets her gaze travel around the room as she tries to stifle a yawn, but as she glances towards a dark corner by the portrait hole she finds herself stiffening, every ounce of tiredness vanishing at the sight of a dark figure standing there.

The figure is tall and thin and shrouded in shadow, but Marjorie thinks it's a woman. Her breath catches, and her mouth drops open in horror as she leans forward to get a closer look.

"Marjorie?" Hermione's voice causes her to jolt; for a second, she'd forgotten she was there. "Are you alright? You've gone quite pale."

"Yes. I just-" Marjorie wheezes, her gaze darting back to the corner.

There's nothing there.

Marjorie stares for a long moment, before she tears her eyes away from the empty corner and forces a smile. "Sorry. Just tired, I think."

"Of course, it's late! I'm sorry for keeping you," Hermione turns to fuss with her bag and her knitting. She doesn't seem to notice the way Marjorie keeps looking around the empty common room like an overly-spooked horse. "I'll see you in the morning. And I'll keep you updated on any S.P.E.W updates, of course!"

"Great, thank you!" Marjorie tries to sound upbeat and enthusiastic, but she has a feeling she misses the mark quite miserably. All the same, Hermione offers her a little smile and a wave before disappearing up to the dormitories.

As soon as she's out of sight, Marjorie whirls around and peers around the room properly. It is completely and decidedly empty, though the waning flames from the fireplace cast flickering shadows over the walls. There's nothing and no one there. Marjorie thinks that tomorrow she might feel foolish for jumping at shadows, but at the moment her vague dream is lingering in the back of her mind and the figure had seemed so real.

Suddenly, being alone in the common room so late at night doesn't feel like such a good idea at all. Marjorie turns and follows Hermione's lead back up the stairs, clutching S.P.E.W badge to her chest. She's being stupid, just jumpy from her bad dream, but still -- it's probably better to be safe than sorry.

A/N:

Okay so i'm having a loooot of fun writing this story! if you're reading and enjoying it, i'd really love to hear from you! it can be hard to motivate yourself to write when it feels like you're posting into a void.

i hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy! <3