- Chapter Sixty-Five -
"But you don't love me anymore?"

"YOU WERE RIGHT."

She appeared out of nowhere. There was beside them and then suddenly she had materialised in all of her glory, short curly blonde hair with smooth, soft porcelain skin and glistening blue eyes reflecting the ceiling charmed to look like the sky outside of the castle. The downturned, bow-shaped lips that were painted red were deformed from her usual smile into a small, worried frown.

Amber González looked like a deer trapped in headlights as she turned with a mouthful of ham sandwich to face her friend, eyes wide and eyebrows drawn together in slight confusion as the girl frowned at her. Sherry looked very apologetic as she placed her hands on one of Oliver's from across the table and squeezed it tightly with a troubled expression; Oliver and Louis exchanged glances with one another.

"I'm having the worst day." She whined, letting go of Oliver's hand and tugging a plate towards her piled with sandwiches before she started to eat them like everything was normal. Amber smiled at the fact that there was no longer any discourse between them.

"What happened?" Louis asked, raising his eyebrows as Sherry stuffed her face with a sandwich like she hadn't eaten in days. Sherry put a finger up, telling him to wait a moment whilst she chewed the bread in her hand.

"So first..." Sherry gulped, putting a hand to her chest as she did so before looking at her friends again. Amber finished chewing her food too, now sat watching Sherry curiously. "Was that whole thing in Defence with the patronuses-"

"That was adorable, the little snuggling that the animals did." Oliver chuckled, a goblet in his hand as he drained the last of the drink. Louis was shaking his head from next to him, pursing his lips as Oliver continued to chuckle. "What?"

Sherry grabbed a sandwich from the centre plate and threw it at his head, the triangle sandwich bounced off of Oliver's head and clattered back down to the table, leaving breadcrumbs and a little bit of butter in his strands of hair.

"Hey!"

"Anyway," Sherry brushed off her hands, clearing her throat as Oliver pouted at the breadcrumbs in his tresses. Louis smirked and pat him on the back as Sherry continued explaining. "So after that, I rushed out obviously because how embarrassing was that lesson. Then Lily comes around the corner, flushed cheeks, eyes glancing everywhere and she sits next to me. And do you know what she says?"

"She told you that you and James are soulmates?" Amber guessed, raising an eyebrow.

"No, she told me that Potter and I were-" Sherry cut off her words immediately, turning to face Amber with a small pout; the girl grinned and brushed her own hands off after finishing the sandwich. "How did you know that?"

"Remember that whole argument we had this morning?" Amber trailed off, pretending to think back to the morning but Sherry didn't let her finish speaking, instead scoffed and waved her off. The girl in front of her grinned at the action. "Yeah, exactly."

"So after mine and Lily's conversation, I went to the toilet to hide away for the rest of the period because why not and then as I'm pissing I'm thinking wow I'm really bored and I kind of did something and someone kind of saw and now everyone's gonna know and..." Sherry rambled and then went quiet, glancing up at Amber who was watching her confusedly. "And, you know, Potter's gonna be...upset."

"What did you do?" Louis asked slowly, glancing around at the others whilst Sherry grabbed her goblet and began to drink the last of it guiltily and quiet. "Sherry."

"Well, I maybe, kinda...had sex with Evan." Sherry said quickly and then tried to quiet down her friends as all three of them gasped, choked and exclaimed sat the same time. Oliver laughed despite the food in his hair and Amber put a shocked hand to her mouth. "Guys-"

"Sherry!"

"I needed a distraction-"

"Evan? Really?" Amber asked, giving her a pointed look and Sherry rolled her eyes as she adjusted her tie and cleared her throat once more, trying not to seem as guilty as she was. "I thought that stopped ages ago!"

"It did." Sherry raised her hands in surrender before flipping her short hair behind her shoulder and scratching it awkwardly, trying not to meet eyes with Amber as she stared at her in shock. "Then it kind of continued the next day."

"You've been hooking up with him all this time?" Amber asked, stuck between a shocked expression and a smile that Sherry wanted to coax out of her.

"I was gonna tell you, then I just...didn't." Sherry shrugged apologetically, smiling awkwardly as Amber shook her head and turned back to her food. "But the point is that somebody caught us in the broom closet and now the whole schools gonna know and I don't care about that but just...ugh, Amber you ruined everything I thought I knew."

She dramatically flopped down onto the table in front of her, arms on the wood first before she rested her head on them. Amber rubbed her back as she groaned into her arms, patting it whilst shushing her like a mother quieting her young child.

"You're worried that James is going to be upset." Amber concluded, receiving yet another groan from Sherry who then started to bang her head on her arms in a pattern. "I take that as a yes. Look I'm sorry for this morning Sherry but I had to tell you, what if James is your soulmate and you're not allowing yourself to make that connection with him."

"There is no connection." Sherry sat up, looking exasperated and like she believed nothing that was coming out of her own mouth. "We're not soulmates, we're not meant for each other because life isn't some fairy tale where the girl gets the guy and everybody gets a happy ending. Life is heartbreaking, it crushes you as when you rebuild yourself back up, there's a risk of crushing it again and I don't wanna take that risk!"

"But James loves you Sherry and at the least, you care for him as well." Amber said and Sherry went back to the table, shaking her head on her arms. "Feelings are hard, babe, I know. But they don't have to be."

"My mother always says never give anyone the satisfaction." Sherry mumbled as she sat up again, gloomily grabbing another sandwich and beginning to dig into it. "So I'm not going to. Not you, or Potter, or the teachers or Dumbledore or anyone. I'm just plain old me."

"Since when have you ever listened to your mother?" Louis asked softly, giving Sherry a knowing look. The girl turned to Louis, then to Amber and then to Oliver to find that all three of them were staring at her in the same way. "I think you know what you need to do."

Sherry looked down at her lap, her lips turning down into a frown as her friends surveyed her for any sign of sadness or even anger. Amber didn't want to the girl to explode on her again but she also didn't want Sherry to never confess to James, because no matter what the girl said, Amber knew that the two were meant for each other. Their patronuses knew it, everyone in the school knew it, even James knew it. The only person who didn't was Sherry, but only because she refused to accept it.

"You're right." Sherry turned to Amber, nodding her head and amazed at her giving in, Amber began to get excited. "I need to go get shit-faced drunk."

•*•*•*•*•

"Oh, sing with me, sing for the year, sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear!"

"This is ridiculous." Amber grumbled, arms crossed as she and Louis sat side by side on one of the Ravenclaw sofas whilst Sherry and Oliver drunkenly sang Dream On by Aerosmith, surrounded by people from other houses that had heard about the last minute party Sherry had decided to throw.

A lot of people weren't drinking because it was a school night and a lot of people had already left to get to bed because of the same reason, but Sherry had been determined to get out of her mind and Oliver had been more than happy to join her on that. That just resulted in the two of them on top of a coffee table, singing to one another with bottles of alcohol.

People were stood by them, watching and giggling at the behaviour of the two. Passionately singing their hearts out to each other, they kept repeating Dream On in horrifically bad voices whilst head banging and playing air guitar. Remus Lupin was one of the closest ones to the table, staring up at Sherry with his hands stuck deep in his pockets.

She turned to sing to him just as the high note hit and the two completely butchered it, drawing in boos from the other students. The high note got a laugh out of Louis, although he was trying to stay serious with Amber, he just couldn't help it. Two parties in two days had made everyone a bit delirious.

"Soon out on vinyl." Sherry slurred, raising her drink towards the crowd around the coffee table as people laughed. She then tried to get down which required the help of Remus so she didn't break a bone. "Hey."

"Hi." Remus raised his eyebrows at her as she stumbled onto her feet before him, liquid almost spilling out of her bottle. Luckily, it didn't and Remus counted his lucky stars that it didn't ruin the red dress she was sporting. "Last minute party?"

"Needed a distraction." She admitted, shrugging her shoulders and glancing around the Common Room. Remus followed her gaze, furrowing his eyebrows. "From that."

His eyes eventually landed on his friends sat on one of the comfy sofas around the fireplace, James and Peter were sat talking with one another. The whole group, minus Sirius, had decided not to drink all that much at the party since it was a school night and the full moon was the next day too; Remus managed to only just drag himself out of bed and was thinking of leaving soon anyway because of the noise banging on his skull.

"Oh yeah, probably best not to go over there after today- and she's gone." Remus turned around to see an empty space before him instead of the girl that had been there a second before, he looked around to see her approaching James and winced at what was about to go down.

Despite the fact that he was close with both sides, both a brother to Sherry and a brother to James, he had absolutely no idea what had happened between them. It was like they had worked together to confound him and everybody around them with their trivial love story, he knew the basics like James' drunken speech to Sherry and the patronus class but they hadn't talked to him about their feelings so he couldn't play Cupid even if he wanted to.

Everything was always messed up between the two of them and he would've hated to be in any of their minds. Sherry upset about James speaking to her at the Quidditch party, James upset that Sherry ran out of the patronus lesson, both of them upset that the other hadn't given them space because they're physically incapable of staying away from each other no matter how much they tried.

It was painful to him how much they loved each other, so for once he decided to walk away. In the midst of their argument maybe their real feelings would expose themselves to one another, at least he hoped. He couldn't deal with another moping James right before he wanted to sleep.

Meanwhile, Sherry Opal stumbled over to James Potter who sat lounged on one the sofas, sitting up straight when he noticed her approaching. Peter Pettigrew glanced over his shoulder and made a hasty exit at the sight of her, rushing over to Amber and Louis to make conversation. Potter stared at her, silent and cautious as to what the drunken girl would say.

"Hi." She said simply, sitting down in the comfy armchair, taking her red high heels off and bringing her legs up to sit with her on the chair.

"Hey." Potter smiled a little as she attempted to fix the hair that had flown over her face, he didn't quite know how she felt about the previous nights argument so he was trying not to overstep. "I like your new haircut."

Sherry grinned, a drunken smile that put her teeth on show and crinkled her eyes at the side. It made a small smile poke up on Potter's lips whilst she played with the ends of her curly hair, pursing her lips before grimacing a little and turning back to him. "You don't have to act like you care."

"I do care." He insisted, furrowing his eyebrows at her words. Sherry averted eye contact and looked around the room, finding Lily Evans dancing with Marlene and wrinkling her nose up at the memory of her and Lily's conversation. "I care about you. And...what you do."

Sherry looked back at him, her eyes boring into his for a couple of silent seconds. It was so still and so quiet despite the blaring noise around them that Potter was scared to move as her gaze pierced through him, travelling down his body before it went back up to his face. A frown was forming, only a small one and Potter shifted at the change in her emotion.

"But you don't love me anymore?"

"What?" Potter choked on the water he had dared to drink under her stare, widening his eyes at her and squeaking his words out in disbelief. She didn't seem to think anything was wrong with what she said, just stared at him.

"You've been ignoring me for days." She said, bordering on a whine but cut it off short with a large gulp of her drink. "And then...you yell at me at the Quidditch party and then in defence, you- you looked so disgusted by our patronuses. I can see it. You don't love me anymore."

Potter sat there, stricken with shock as he looked at her whilst she gulped down her drink again. Sherry wasn't staring at him anymore, instead looking down at her legs and scratching her skin gently for something to do whilst she waited for him to respond. For a moment, he opened his mouth to respond, but then he closed it again and said nothing.

"You were the one who ran out of the classroom." He said to her but her face was completely blank as she redirected her attention to him. "What is wrong with you? I'm sorry Sherry but what the fuck is wrong with you? You can't play with my feeling like this...y-you can't fuck me over!"

He made sure not to raised his voice too loud, he kept himself at a steady volume and even going low into a whisper when he felt like he wanted to yell but didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

"And I can't keep having this argument anymore." He said, sounding pained. "I tell you I love you, you tell me you don't love me back, you tell me goodbye and that you never want to speak to me again, so you don't. So I try to leave you alone, try not to overwhelm you and then you smile at me in the corridor and act like everything between us is normal?"

"This...what we have isn't normal and it will never be normal. I fought for you, I cheered for you, yet I make one little mistake by getting drunk and getting agitated and letting some things loose at you because I'm so sick of the hidden glances and not being able to do anything about it. Then the patronuses, you run out of the classroom because you refuse to acknowledge your feelings. I know you said you didn't but damnit Sherry, I can see that you love me!"

Still quiet, still calm, but his words still had a heart-breaking affect on the girl in front of him. Even in her drunken state, Sherry didn't know if his yelling or his calmness was worse. She felt so pathetic and shameful of herself that her vanity was set aside for even a moment and she didn't care that she could feel the mascara streaks on her face hardening with every passing second that she didn't wipe them away.

She wasn't the only one crying. Potter had wet eyes too, stinging and glassy. He was exhausted, of her games, of her indecisiveness, of her ability to shut everyone out no matter the situation. He was tired of her, but in everyday school life he still put up with her enough to love her. If he had been yelling at her, Sherry didn't think she'd be feeling this shameful of herself.

It hadn't been his intention to make her cry or feel these things, she knew that even when she was out of her mind drunk. He would never purposely make her cry, would never hurt her beyond words more than he already had, Potter had learnt from his mistakes and grown into a better person. Sherry had not. His composure was making her realise that, she wasn't in the wrong but she wasn't in the right either.

"And I don't even know if you know you're doing it but you crush my heart into thousands of pieces." He continued to Sherry whilst she hovered in between a rock and a hard place. "Then you have the nerve to ask if I still love you. Sherry, of course I do. I'm never going to stop, that's why I hate it when you so blatantly refuse to acknowledge everything I have ever shown to you."

Sherry said nothing, only stared at him with an apology on her lips and an apology in her eyes but he didn't give her a second to force it out before he had stood from his chair, gave her one last smile and walked off from her, out of the Common Room.

Alone, Sherry gulped back a small mouthful of bile that had worked its way up her throat because for once in her life, she knew the decision she had to make. She just didn't know whether she should give him the satisfaction.

•*•*•*•*•

A/N: I'm so sorry this chapter is really bad and rushed and bad because I haven't updated in a while and I am sorry for that, exams are everywhere so I will not promise a scheduled update.

thank you for being patient, I'm sorry things are getting repetitive, there will be some proper plot stuff soon! x