Full Strength Twattery
Johnny was stretched out on the sofa in the Gryffindor common room on a Saturday morning in mid-October, having a deep think about life and his place in the universe, particularly in relation to the girls in said universe, when his sister came downstairs and interrupted him in her usual rude way.
“Oi, tosspot,” Dora said cheerfully. “You’re taking up the whole bloody sofa, budge over.”
Since he knew Dora would just sit on his shins if he didn’t, and that she had a bony butt that hurt like hell when she did that, Johnny sat up and made room for his sister. She had a handbag with her and promptly started digging through it, eventually coming up with a tiny mirror which she set in the air in front of her and examined her face carefully, smoothing down her dark red hair.
“The lighting’s so much better down here than in my room. I’m having a really good hair day, it’s fantastic. What’s wrong with you?” Dora asked, eyeing him sidelong when he didn’t say anything to her.
“Why doesn’t Hazel McGregor like me?” he demanded, more of the universe in general than of his sister in particular.
“Because you’re the world’s biggest git,” Dora responded immediately.
He brushed this off immediately since it was patently false. “No but really. Why wouldn’t she like me? She said I’m obnoxious.”
Dora rolled her eyes at him as she plucked the little mirror out of the air and stuffed it back into her handbag. “You are obnoxious, you donut.” She gave him a once-over. “Are you really bothered about this?”
“No. Shut up.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slumped down into the sofa.
“Whatever. I’m going to get something to eat before we go to Hogsmeade.” Dora set off without a backward glance, and Johnny sort of wished she’d come back and talk to him.
Johnny talked to his sister all the time, if you could call arguing and calling each other names talking, but he didn’t talk to his sister. He probably wouldn’t get a chance to at Hogsmeade, either, because Dora would be surrounded by her little crowd of friends, half of whom fancied him. Dora hated that, and Johnny therefore flirted with her friends every chance he got. He knew better than to actually snog any of her friends, because then Dora would make his life miserable in the way only a little sister could. And you couldn’t really fight your sister. Remus and Johnny just punched each other whenever they were out of sorts, but Johnny couldn’t hit his sister. Dora didn’t hit him, either. No, Dora waged psychological warfare instead. She’d managed to send Remus fleeing to his dormitory on more than one occasion. Dora was excellent at finding weak spots and aiming straight for them. Remus had a lot more weak spots than Johnny did, so Dora liked him better.
And she’d probably tell their mum, too. Dora was underhanded like that. Maybe he didn’t want to talk to her after all. There was no one else to talk to, though, if he was feeling out of sorts with the world in general.
By the time he got down to the main part of the castle, most of the students were milling about, dressed in their weekend clothes. Everyone from third year up would be going into Hogsmeade today, so there was an air of excitement hanging around the corridors as students dashed about from one cluster of people to another, making arrangements and plans for the day in the village. The first and second years looked envious.
Everyone greeted him as he walked past. Johnny smiled at them, but he had a bit of a hollow sort of feeling. Maybe he was coming down with something. He didn’t feel on like he usually did in front of a crowd.
“Johnny!”
He glanced down the corridor to his left and saw his younger brother and his cousin running toward him. Both boys had big smiles on their faces.
“Hi Johnny,” Ramses exclaimed breathlessly as they drew to a halt next to him. Ramses was his favorite cousin, partly because it was so very obvious that Ramses idolized him. Liam was likewise his favorite sibling, because Liam did whatever Johnny told him to.
Johnny smiled at them, but even the happy, shining looks of admiration coming from the two of them weren’t enough to chase away the hollow feeling he’d had since Hazel had told him she wanted nothing to do with him.
“Oi,” he said, trying to summon his usual confidence. “I’m going to breakfast.”
Both of them nodded enthusiastically, obviously ready to follow him.
Johnny set off for the Great Hall with Liam and Ramses tagging along behind him. Ramses did a little skip every few steps. Something about their eagerness as they followed him gave Johnny a melancholy feeling that he didn’t like. Normally he’d just give them some marching orders for the day so they’d go away, and because it was fun to tell his brother what to do, or let them follow him around while he told them a few of his Greatest Hits stories, but he couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for that. Not even for ordering his little brother and his cousin around.
Why did they even want to follow him around?
“Don’t you have something you should be doing?” he asked, stopping in his tracks to turn on them.
Ramses nodded. “Probably.”
“So what should we be doing?” asked Liam.
Johnny stared blankly at them for a moment, unable to come up with a response. Eventually he said, “Do whatever you want.”
The boys exchanged a glance. Liam and Ramses had been hanging out since they’d been born, and had a lot of the same mannerisms because of it. There was something almost birdlike in the way they turned their heads to look at each other. And they followed him around like baby ducklings.
It felt a little pointless.
“Do whatever you want,” Johnny repeated, and then went inside the Great Hall for breakfast.
Behind him, Liam and Ramses looked very confused.
*
“Have you noticed Johnny Lupin acting strange lately?” Tink demanded without preamble, throwing her bookbag onto the little study table.
Hazel tried to squash a sense of guilt. She’d actually gotten to Johnny, and she didn’t know why that made her guilty, because it was good that he was being less of a prat. He’d been quiet and oddly introspective recently. She hadn’t run across him in a corridor doing a backflip, or speaking Mermish over lunch, or showing off in any other way that she’d noticed over the last three weeks since she’d called him obnoxious out on the lawn.
But that was good. It was good.
Squirming a bit, she shuffled the pile of parchment paper Arithmancy notes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s strange, that’s all I’m saying. He hasn’t even been talking during Defense, and you know normally Professor Bartlebaugh just lets him tell any story he pleases, so I don’t think it’s because she told him to stop.” Tink began unloading her own notes. “And you must’ve noticed how quiet he’s been in Charms. Professor Winpenny seems to be waiting every day for Johnny to interrupt the lesson, but he hasn’t been doing it lately. Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“I suppose so,” Hazel allowed. “But I’d rather concentrate on homework than on Johnny Lupin.”
Tink looked amused. “Well, you’re the only one. Have you already started on the Ancient Runes essay?”
After all her homework was complete, and Hazel had gone up to her dormitory for the night (leaving Tink to flirt with one of their classmates), she curled up in bed and wondered why on earth if someone was finally going to get through to Johnny, it had been her.
Johnny didn’t care what she thought. He barely knew her.
And she definitely preferred him being quiet. Definitely. Her stomach squirmed again. She did prefer it, didn’t she? He was hardly himself when he was being quiet, and that was what she’d wanted. Johnny not acting like Johnny.
Oh bugger, maybe she didn’t prefer it.
I think I broke Johnny Lupin.
Hazel winced as she stared up at the canopy over her bed. She’d drawn the curtains closed so it formed a lovely little cocoon of blue velveteen around her, the soft light from the reading lamp attached to the bed frame making the bronze detailing on the frame shine with the deep luster of decades of polishing. It was supposed to be her refuge, and it usually was, where she could relax and read things that were fun instead of things that were educational.
She did not normally spend her time thinking about boys this much, especially that boy. But it did seem that she really had put a big pinprick in Johnny’s monumental ego. He wasn’t acting like himself. It was what she’d thought she wanted.
But she didn’t like it after all.
He’d get past it in time and go back to being Johnny Lupin, the king of the school. She didn’t want him back to being his usual obnoxious self, but seeing him be so quiet lately was unnerving. Surely he was capable of a happy medium, if he would just put his mind to it and try. The one thing that could be said about Johnny, for all his annoying personality traits, he was very smart. He should be able to learn to behave if he’d only try.
Why can’t he just be normal like everyone else?
He’d get over it, though. She just had to wait it out and he’d go back to being his usual annoying self, and then she’d miss when he was quieter.
*
Halloween brought with it unseasonably warm weather, and so a peaceful afternoon saw Hazel sitting outside with a book, enjoying some solitude under the tree on the section of lawn with the lovely view of the lake, when once again she was interrupted by a Lupin. But this time, it wasn’t Johnny.
Dora Lupin sat down cross-legged in the grass beside Hazel. Her long red hair was braided with a gold ribbon through it in a show of house spirit. “You’re Hazel, right?”
She eyed the girl warily. “Yes. I know who you are.”
“I reckoned you would,” Dora responded. She was examining Hazel as if she were evaluating her for possible weaknesses. Probably growing up with Johnny had made that a natural reflex. Dora was pretty and popular, a combination in girls that always made Hazel a little wary. Those were the sort of girls who put a metaphorical knife in your ribs, and she wasn’t sure if Dora was on her side.
After all, just because she had always liked Dora Lupin, that didn’t mean Dora liked her.
“Can I help you with something?” Hazel asked, wondering what on earth Dora wanted with her.
“Look, my brother Johnny mentioned he had talked to you and you told him he’s obnoxious.” Dora frowned. “I’ve been telling him that my entire life but apparently he didn’t believe it until you said it. Liam, my little brother, he and our cousin Ramses think Johnny walks on water and they’re worried. Johnny’s not salty about you or anything like that, and I don’t think he said anything to the boys cause that’s just not him, but they’re so used to Johnny ordering them around and now he’s not doing that. They don’t know what to do with themselves. They want the old Johnny back. I told them I’d talk to you.”
“Why me?” Hazel asked, bewildered. “I can’t be the first person who’s told Johnny he’s obnoxious. Aside from his relatives, I mean.”
“You basically are,” Dora told her dispassionately. “Everyone loves him. It’s super annoying.”
Hazel stared at the girl in astonishment.
“He really took what you said to heart,” Dora went on. “Now he’s all... whatever the Johnny version of depressed is. Normal, I guess.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“Johnny being normal? No. Not for Johnny. Apparently not for Liam and Ramses either. So, I tried to tell him that it wasn’t just you, loads of people think he’s a git, but he didn’t believe me. I give up. He’s all yours.”
“I broke him, I bought him?” Hazel asked, feeling amused now in spite of herself.
“Basically.” Dora smiled at her. “I suppose you’ll have to get him back to his full-strength twattery somehow.”
“Or we could leave him being not a twat,” Hazel suggested.
“Liam and Ramses want him back to being a twat.” Dora made a shooing gesture at her. “Make it happen.”
*
Hazel happened across Johnny that evening in the corridor on his way back up to Gryffindor Tower. He looked a little worried when he saw her, but stopped as she approached him. Now seemed as good a time as any to address the problem Dora had set her to. Johnny straightened his shoulders, standing tall almost like a soldier at attention. The sharp outline of his jaw flexed just slightly. She was making him nervous, she thought with a bit of a thrill.
“Hi, Hazel,” he said, sounding just as wary as she had felt around his sister.
“Hi.” She wasn’t entirely sure what to say now she’d started this. Certainly she wasn’t going to apologize, because she didn’t think she’d done anything wrong exactly. He was obnoxious.
Maybe she could have said it without hurting his feelings, but honestly, she hadn’t thought he had those sort of feelings. But Dora had called him depressed, she thought with a twinge of guilt.
“I really wasn’t trying to get in your trousers, you know,” he said before she could think of how to talk to him.
“Then what did you want?”
He shrugged, spreading his hands wide. “Just to be your friend.”
Hazel swept her gaze over him, frowning a bit, and he looked down, avoiding her eyes. Had he really wanted nothing more than to learn a bit about her? That felt difficult to believe. He was so very different from her. Loud, ostentatious, popular, handsome. Scratch that last bit. She was introverted, dedicated to her studies, and would rather read a book than almost any other activity. She wasn’t going to be part of his fan club, but maybe she could talk to him now and then. It wasn’t like she had an excess of friends herself.
“All right,” she drawled with exaggerated annoyance. “I’ll be your friend.”
Johnny looked up again, hope dawning across his features. It was surprisingly gratifying. “Really?”
“Yes. But you can’t go back to being a total twat, all right?”
“I don’t know how I should act, then.”
“Like yourself, but not a twat.”
“What if myself is a twat, though?” He did not look at all ashamed about this.
“Well…” Hazel examined him closely. It wasn’t an act he was putting on; Johnny was simply that charismatic, that much of a natural showman. He couldn’t help being a twat. He’d probably been born that way. He probably had no idea how to be like everyone else. A little twinge in her conscience made her wonder if she even wanted him to be like everyone else.
“You could teach me!” Johnny leaned toward her a bit in sudden excitement. “You could show me how to be less twattish. You could be my life coach.”
Hazel regarded him with suspicion. “Your life coach. And you’d do as I say?”
“Sure.”
Well now, that did sound appealing. She liked ordering people around anyway, though she hardly ever got to do so outside of Charms Club, and ordering Johnny Lupin around would be extra satisfying. “Okay then.”
“Can I sit with you at lunch tomorrow?” Johnny asked immediately.
Hazel rolled her eyes. “Sure. Why not.”
A slow smile spread across his face, and his blue eyes seemed to dance. Not with mischief, as she would have expected. No, this was something else, and it gave her a little shiver. “And maybe dinner, too?”
“Don’t make me regret this,” she warned him.
Johnny picked up her hands in both of his, kissed her knuckles, and swiftly let go. “I’ll see you after Herbology.” He was grinning as he jogged away.
Oh bugger. She was already wondering if this was a mistake. Her hands were tingling where he’d kissed her. This was probably a mistake. But her stomach was full of butterflies and her heart was racing, so she wasn’t going to back down.
Oh bugger.