Life Coach
The day after Hazel agreed to be Johnny Lupin’s friend, he was waiting for her outside Ravenclaw Tower when she started downstairs for breakfast.
Startled to see him in the corridor outside her common room, Hazel drew to a sudden halt. Johnny was waving and smiling and saying hello to everyone who passed him, looking quite back to his usual cocky and obnoxious self.
Oh, bugger.
He grinned broadly when he caught sight of her and loped over, his robes swirling around his long legs. “Good morning.”
She had no idea what to do with him. It was like having an excitable puppy jumping on her. A tall, handsome, ginger puppy. His hair fell across his forehead in a very interesting way, and the morning light made his blue eyes brilliantly sapphire. It made her stomach flip infuriatingly. “Oh. Good morning.”
His smile looked rather expectant, like he was waiting for her to do something. After a moment he asked, “So?”
Oh, bugger, what did he want? “So…?” she echoed.
“What do I do, Hazel? I thought we would get started.”
People were looking at them as they passed, making Hazel feel uncertain of herself. Pull yourself together, she told herself sternly. “All right, how about after class? You can meet me in the library or something. Try not to act like a twat until then.”
“Right.” Johnny snapped out a sharp salute and a silly grin, and then jogged away, waving to people as he left.
Hazel sagged against the wall, clutching her bookbag. She really had agreed to be Johnny Lupin’s life coach, and he was taking it seriously. Insofar as he took anything seriously. This was probably a wickedly bad idea, but she didn’t think getting out of it was the right decision. And she really did want to see if she could have any sort of permanent effect on that astoundingly gigantic ego of his. She wasn’t entirely sure anything could, but it seemed she was going to try anyway. And now she had until after her classes to think of what to do with him.
Tink emerged from the common room and pulled up alongside her with a bright smile. “Oh, you didn’t have to wait for me.”
She hadn’t been, but that was a good excuse, so she didn’t disabuse her best friend of the idea. “Let’s go down to breakfast, shall we?”
Tink spent the walk to the Great Hall chattering away about Lucas, the Gryffindor boy she fancied, and as they found a spot at the Ravenclaw table she wiggled her fingers at him flirtatiously. Lucas was sitting with a few other sixth and seventh year Gryffindor boys, and one of them gave him a push, making him lurch forward over his plate. Hazel watched the brief scuffle that ensued with amusement while Tink smiled at them.
“I think we can safely say he fancies you,” Hazel told her in a low voice.
“I think so. He ought to ask me out, then.”
Hazel waved this off. “Boys are stupid. Ask him out if he can’t figure it out on his own.”
Tink shrugged, but she still looked delighted. “I want him to ask me.”
Hazel chuckled. “Well, please yourself, dear.”
They ate breakfast in companionable silence after that, and Hazel considered the problem of Johnny Lupin.
She didn’t actually know how to be a life coach. And she wasn’t sure what he expected one to do, aside from ordering him around. For that matter, she wasn’t sure what orders to give him. ‘Stop being a twat’ seemed a little simplistic, and she had a feeling he was going to need more instruction than that to actually stop. In five years of sharing classes with Johnny, he hadn’t stopped being a twat the entire time, so most likely she was going to have to design a step by step program to teach him how.
That felt like a little firmer ground for Hazel, who’d been to therapy several times now and rather thought with the right books she could probably diagnose a few personality disorders in Johnny. She certainly knew what sort of questions therapists liked to ask when you were a new patient of theirs.
Now that was an idea. She could design an intake form for Johnny, ask him a few questions like a therapist would to give herself a knowledge base about what made him a twat, and then figure out how to get him to act like a normal person afterward. She wound up spending half of Ancient Runes jotting down ideas for an intake form, and then spent her lunch break designing the form so she was ready for Johnny when she met him in the library that afternoon.
He arrived with a little gaggle of first years following him, including his younger brother and his cousin who’d been sorted into Hufflepuff. When he saw her, he gave them all a shooing gesture, and they ran off giggling and shoving each other while Johnny swung into the seat opposite Hazel.
She’d chosen a small study table in the back corner in hopes of being unobtrusive about meeting with Johnny, but of course he wasn’t able to be unobtrusive. Almost as soon as he sat down, several people walked past and greeted him.
“Oi, you lot,” he said easily, then flashed that wide, cocky grin of his at Hazel. “Ready for life coaching?”
Hazel picked up the sheets of parchment she’d jotted her questions onto, shuffling them into order. It gave her a moment to calm her heartrate. It was silly to feel nervous, since Johnny didn’t look at all concerned. If anything, he seemed eager for her to start telling him what to do. She wanted to take it seriously, to see if she really could change him.
This is to help him, she reminded herself. You’re not bossing him around for fun. And it’s not as if you’re giving him a potion to change him. Human experimentation is illegal, anyway. This is just giving him orders, which is much safer.
It might be a little fun, too.
“I have a few questions so we can get started,” she told him. “Sort of a life coaching intake form.”
“Oh, like at therapy,” said Johnny, to her surprise.
“You’ve been to therapy?” she asked in astonishment.
He gave her a look. “Hazel, I was kidnapped by serial killers when I was three, of course I’ve been to therapy.”
Oh, one of her least favorite of his stories, the serial killers. That diverted her from the questions she’d meant to ask. “Do you actually remember what happened? Or is it memories from your family telling the story?”
“I remember most of it. I have a really good memory. I remember what they all looked like, what the house they took us to looked like, and the sound the harmonichord made when it crashed to the floor, and when they threw me to the ground and I broke my arm.” He grew uncharacteristically serious then and added, “I remember what Auntie Rose’s face looked like when she was scared they were going to kill us both and she was trying not to scare me too.”
She didn’t remember him telling it quite like that when she’d heard the story before, but it still gave her a shiver of unease. He really had been almost killed by some rather infamous murderers, and that had to have been terrifying for a little boy, even if he usually made the story into a tale of adventure. She shook it off and picked up her parchment.
“Right, then, let’s get started.”
She jotted down the basic facts about him as he rattled off his answers to her questions. He was the second of eight children, a Leo, and a pureblood. She’d already known all of that about him, but it seemed the thing to do to get it officially on paper, since she was pretending she knew what she was doing.
She flipped her parchment over to the next page, where her more leading questions began. “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Famous,” Johnny answered confidently.
Hazel frowned at him. “Famous for what?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Doesn’t matter. Just famous.”
She sneered a bit at the vagueness of his answer, when she had her life plotted out until she was thirty. Doesn’t matter? “What, even if you have to do something horrible to accomplish it?”
“No.” Johnny looked like he couldn’t decide if he was offended or not. “No, Hazel, I wouldn’t.”
He made her nervous when he grew serious. She moved on to the next question before he could unsettle her.
“And what are your goals for the rest of school?”
He was back to his cocky grin at that question. “Winning the House Cup this year and next. Undefeated Quidditch years. And I’m going to be Head Boy next year.”
“You’re not a prefect,” Hazel informed him, scribbling down his answers with the addition, thinks bloody highly of himself. “Seems unlikely.”
“You don’t have to be a prefect. Anyway, I’m Quidditch captain, cause of my good leadership skills. Why wouldn’t they want me for Head Boy?”
Well, he wasn’t wrong about the leadership skills. He definitely had those, though in his case she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“I think you might be more of a bad example than a good leader,” she told him, and he laughed.
“People like to follow me. And they like to watch me. My uncle James used to say that I should have my own show on the Wizarding Wireless Network,” Johnny said proudly.
“God, that’s terrifying,” Hazel responded with a slow shake of her head.
“I am a good leader, anyway. And a good teacher. I taught my cousin Ramses to heel when he was a baby,” Johnny told her with a grin.
Hazel eyed him sidelong. “People don’t heel.”
“Ramses did.”
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s get back on track, shall we? How is your relationship with your parents?”
After questioning him about his interpersonal relationships with his parents, siblings, and the rest of his family, and getting only assurances from him that he was everyone’s favorite person (which was probably true, because he did always seem to be beloved by all, the self-assured little rat), she tried asking him about his closest friends.
“When you have a secret to confide, who do you tell it to?”
Johnny blinked in confusion. “What d’you mean?”
She looked up in surprise, her quill still poised in the air above the parchment. “Like if I had something I couldn’t tell anyone else, I’d tell Tink.”
Johnny looked, for the first time she’d ever seen it, totally nonplussed. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “No one, I guess.”
Hazel could only blink silently for a moment. No one at all? “Who do you talk to when you need advice or a sounding board?”
Once again he seemed confused by the question, and she thought it might be because he never needed a sounding board. Surely everyone did, now and then? But Johnny was always so monstrously confident, maybe he never second-guessed himself. That did make sense with his personality, but at the same time it made her wonder.
Johnny always had a crowd around him, but those crowds were an audience. They weren’t his friends. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she ever saw Johnny with someone who seemed to be his peer. She couldn’t think of anyone that she would say was close to Johnny the way she and Tink were close. He didn’t have a regular group he hung out with, he had the entire school. It was always his fan club, not his friends. Did he not have any of those? That couldn’t be right.
Everyone loved Johnny. He was the most popular boy in school, the star of everything he did. Everyone knew him, and he knew them, and if you asked him he’d probably say they were his friends. But he had no one to confide in if he ever had a secret?
Famous, he’d said. He wanted to be famous. He already was, at least at school. But it made him alone in a way, despite always being around an audience for his stories and performances and general showing-off.
Maybe he really didn’t have any real friends. Just hangers-on. Admirers. Minions. The occasional hater, like Alcide in Slytherin who was probably actually jealous of Johnny. And then his siblings, a mixed bag of haters and admirers who would all throw down for Johnny if it came down to it. Dora might think he was a twat, but when she’d caught that Calliope girl spreading a rumor about Johnny last year, she’d put her up against the wall by the throat. That was probably the closest thing to a friend he had, but Dora didn’t hang out with him. Remus hadn’t either when he’d still been at school. Johnny didn’t truly hang out with anyone, now she thought about it. He flitted from group to group, from audience to audience. People followed him, damn his bloody leadership skills, but he didn’t have a Tink of his own.
Johnny had no friends. It was sort of sad, really. While she was teaching him to not be a twat, she was going to teach him how to have friends, too. Humanizing Johnny Lupin, that was her project for the year. She jotted it down at the bottom of the page of parchment she was on.
Teach him how to have a friend.
She wanted to have a deep think about what to do with him next, given what she’d learned about him today, but it was hard to think when he was watching her with that big smile and expectant look, waiting for marching orders. She didn’t have any to give him yet.
Hazel stuffed the parchment and her quill into her bookbag. “Look, I think I’ve got enough for now. You run along and tomorrow we can start working on stopping you acting like a complete pillock all the time.”
“Yeah, all right,” Johnny agreed immediately. “But I can sit with you at dinner, right?”
Oh bugger, she’d forgotten dinner. “I already told you no.”
“Yeah, but that was before we were friends. Then you said I could sit with you.”
“Are we friends now?” she asked sarcastically. She had told him that, hadn’t she?
He gave her a wide, mischievous smile that made her feel like a hot summer breeze was blowing over her. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
*
Johnny went back to the Gryffindor common room after leaving Hazel in the library, feeling quite chuffed. He whistled a bit as he strolled down the corridor and smiled at the Fat Lady, who blushed and giggled as she demanded the password.
He gave her a flirty wink. “Oh, you know it’s me, do you really need the password?”
“Oh, go on then, you naughty boy,” the Fat Lady said with another giggle.
He hadn’t bothered learning the passwords since fourth year, having learned instead that he could tease and banter his way past the portrait guarding the door through sheer charisma. Sometimes the Fat Lady didn’t even ask him and just let him into the dormitory, especially if she’d been drinking with her friends in the other portraits.
On the sofa in front of the fireplace, Dora and two of her little friends were gossiping over a copy of Witch Weekly. She looked up when she saw him, made a rude hand gesture, and then turned back to her friends.
The two of them looked distracted by Johnny, and he smiled at them as he sat in the armchair next to the sofa, propping his feet up on the low table in front of the sofa.
Dora looked at her friends as they smiled at her brother and then glared at him. “Go away,” she told him.
Johnny smiled at his sister, unbothered by her annoyance. “It’s my common room, too. Hi Angela. Hi Cliodna.”
Angela and Cliodna blushed and giggled in the way so many girls did around him, and Johnny turned a smirk on his sister then winked at her friends.
“I hate you,” said Dora.
He didn’t believe that for a second and laughed, making his sister scowl. “I’m sitting with Hazel McGregor at dinner tonight,” he told her.
“Here I thought she had brains enough not to like you,” sniped Dora, while Angela and Cliodna looked disappointed. “How’d you manage that?”
“She’s going to be my life coach.”
Dora gaped at him, and the smiles returned to her friends’ faces at hearing Hazel wasn’t his girlfriend. Johnny took a moment to enjoy the look on his sister’s face, and then she sputtered, “I’m sorry, what?”
“Hazel’s my life coach. She’s going to teach me to not be a twat.”
“Oh, you’re not a twat, Johnny,” Angela assured him breathlessly.
“Of course he is,” snapped Dora. “Johnny, what the hell are you on about?”
This really was fun. He didn’t mind the idea of Hazel telling him what to do, and had deeply enjoyed watching her face while she questioned him in the library, because there were few things Johnny liked more than talking about himself and watching the reactions he got, but telling his sister he had a life coach was entertaining as hell. What a great side benefit to having a life coach to begin with. Who would’ve known? “I’ve got a life coach. So I’m going to sit with her at dinner.”
Dora regarded him suspiciously. “Is she really going to teach you to stop being a twat? Shut up, Angela. And you’ll do as she says?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Hmm.” Dora’s face was still filled with distrust. “Well, I hope she can manage it. You’re such an enormous twat, I don’t know how she’d ever get you to stop. Shut up, Cliodna,” she added when her friend opened her mouth.
“She’s a Ravenclaw. Brains for days. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.” Johnny slapped his hands against his thighs and stood up. “I’m going to go wash up before dinner. I’ll see you down there. Ladies.” He threw another wink at her two friends, enjoying the blushes and smiles he immediately got from it, and the scowl from his sister.
“I still hate you,” Dora called after him as he dashed up the staircase to the boys’ dormitories.
*
When Hazel arrived for dinner, Johnny was already there sitting beside Tink at the back of the Ravenclaw table. They looked like they were having a grand old time, chatting together. Hazel slid into the seat beside Tink rather warily.
“I told Tink how you said I could sit with you,” Johnny said with a cheeky smile.
“I did say that,” she agreed, wondering what had possessed her.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” Tink said brightly. “You know I think Johnny is super fun.”
He gave Tink a toothy grin. “Thanks, Tink. I think you’re fun, too.”
“Oh, I know I’m an excellent time,” Tink agreed cheekily. “A superlative dinner companion.”
Hazel had the urge to hex her. “Don’t egg him on,” she said severely. “I’m trying to train him to be less of a twat, not more.”
Tink burst into laughter. “Training him to be less of a twat? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Hazel is my life coach now,” Johnny told her.
Tink looked like she was going to explode with amusement. “You’re joking,” she managed to sputter. “That’s amazing. Hazel, you really are entirely too much.”
“I am not. I’m going to help him.” She couldn’t help chuckling at Tink’s amusement.
“She promised she’d be my friend, too,” Johnny put in. His expression was somewhere between smug and amused, and Hazel threw him an exasperated look.
“Well, I think that’s bloody amazing,” Tink told him with a grin. “You can be my friend too, Johnny.”
For a moment, Hazel was going to put a stop to that, but then she remembered her goal of teaching Johnny how to have friends. She didn’t exactly want to absorb him into their twosome, but maybe it would be a good example to him to see her and Tink’s friendship. He could learn how to have friends from them.
He was mostly well-behaved throughout dinner, though he had abysmal table manners, talking with his mouth full and reaching across people to dish up more food for himself. Tink seemed amused by his poor manners more than Hazel would’ve expected.
“My mother would be so horrified by the way you eat,” Tink told him as he spooned into a raspberry trifle.
Johnny wiggled his eyebrows at her. “I bet she’d love me, though.”
“I bet she would,” Hazel agreed dryly. Everyone did.
“Maybe you could teach him to eat like he’s not a barbarian while you’re training him to not be a twat,” Tink suggested.
“I do know how to have good manners, it just seems pointless to bother with all that at school,” Johnny told them, taking a huge bite of the trifle.
“If you eat with us again, you have to behave properly at the table,” Hazel said. She was trying not to focus on the little bit of raspberry jam at the corner of his mouth. “This is borderline twat behavior.”
“Is it? I should write that down.” Johnny picked up a napkin and wiped the jam away. “I’ll do better tomorrow. Promise.”
Somehow she had a hard time believing that, but she supposed it was good that he was willing to try. Maybe she’d manage to teach him to be human after all. “I’m going to go,” she announced, getting to her feet. “Tomorrow we’ll have some proper life coaching.” After she’d read a little of the book she’d found that afternoon in the library about techniques in psychological Healing. It was the closest thing she could find to a manual on life coaching.
Johnny jumped to his feet as well. “I’ll walk you back to Ravenclaw Tower,” he offered.
Hazel eyed him with the direst suspicion. “I’m not your girlfriend, Johnny. You don’t need to walk me anywhere.”
His expression was all wide-eyed innocence, and he held up both hands to placate her. “As friends. Just as friends. I know you’re not my girl.”
Tink’s eyes were bouncing back and forth between them, a smile beginning to spread across her face. “Oh, just let him walk you back, as friends,” she told Hazel. The smile turned into a smirk.
Hazel looked daggers at her best friend. “Why don’t you ask Lucas to walk you back?”
“Oh, do you fancy Lucas?” Johnny asked in surprise. He turned to the Gryffindor table. “Oi, Lucas!”
Lucas Fernsby turned to look, and when Johnny motioned to him to join them, he got to his feet and trotted over. Hazel watched this with amusement. She was well aware that even the older students were under Johnny’s spell. Lucas had a big open smile, blonde hair, and dark eyes, as well as that same puppy dog energy that Johnny had.
“Hey Johnny,” he said cheerfully.
“Lucas, Olivia here needs an escort back to Ravenclaw Tower,” Johnny told him, gesturing at Tink. Hazel wasn’t surprised that he remembered Tink’s real name, though she rarely used it. He always knew everyone’s names.
“I’d be happy to walk you back,” Lucas said immediately, turning the easy-going smile on Tink.
She got to her feet with a happy smile, threw a wink at Johnny, and left the Great Hall with Lucas at her side. Hazel watched them go and then turned to Johnny with one eyebrow raised.
“Piece of cake,” he told her with a grin.
Everything was, for him. Hazel sighed. She had to admit, the way he’d got Tink the boy she wanted made her like him just a little bit better, though the way he’d done it, as if it was as easy as snapping his fingers, was a little annoying. “I’m going back to Ravenclaw Tower. If you’re coming along, then let’s go.”
“Do I still annoy the piss out of you?” Johnny asked as he followed her out of the Great Hall.
“Yes.” Not entirely, she had to admit.
“Good thing I have a life coach now so I can stop being annoying,” he told her cheerfully.