- Chapter Sixty-Three -
"Just stop, Amber."

"I'M SO OVERWHELMED."

Sherry Opal was lay on her bed with her back against the covers. It was the morning after the Quidditch Party, bright and early, and Sherry had been up all night staring at the ceiling of her dorm, thinking over every word of the conversation she had with Potter. Although it was less of a conversation and more of Potter just talking at Sherry and her stuttering in between each monologue he made.

Amber was sat at the end of her bed, decked out in her fluffy white pyjamas and keeping hold of her dressing gown around her body, staring down at Sherry on the bed almost acting like a mother with her sick child. Her soft hand was rubbing Sherry's leg carefully in comfort, Sherry's own fluffy pyjama pants warming up her hand.

Despite it being earlier than their usual wakeup time, Amber had woken up to a banging sound and then faintly heard a quiet exclamation of pain from Sherry who had banged her elbow on her bedside table. Unable to get back to sleep, Amber had come out of her bed, slipped her slippers on and shuffled over to open the curtains of Sherry's bed.

The girl hadn't been there to see or hear the large momentous conversation that had plagued Sherry's mind but Louis and Oliver had been more than eager to explain it to her whilst Potter practically cried to Remus about his own stupidity. Amber had a little conversation with a drunk James about it, but didn't bother to ask him any big questions that his drunk mind couldn't handle.

"I know, hon." Now here she was, comforting Sherry whilst the girl spoke into her soft pillow. Barely heard and yet Amber could understand every single word she was saying. A war was waging in her mind of whether she should take her emotions into her own hands and put it to Sherry straight or not. "It sucks."

"He sucks." Sherry took the pillow away from her face, makeup smudged onto the white pillowcase as she hugged it close to her chest instead, staring up at the ceiling. "And yet I cannot get myself to hate him again, no matter how hard I try. God, he ruined my fucking life and as soon as he starts not apologising all the time and giving me space, I'm open to like be his friend again. It's the bare minimum that he did."

"Maybe you're just a very forgiving person. I mean, all that stuff with you mum..." Amber trailed off, wincing a little as she squeezed Sherry's leg, smiling as encouragingly as she could.

"Have I ever told you about Cheyenne Sturgis, my best friend for like a couple of years?" Sherry asked, sitting up slightly and using her arms to support her as she tilted her head over at Amber, who shook her head slowly and pursed her lips. "Exactly."

Sherry then flopped back down and kicked her feet frustratedly, Amber's hand quickly coming of Sherry's leg so she didn't get hurt in the process of the girl's freak out. She then took the pillow off of her chest and held it on her face again, groaning. "I just want to hate him again. Why can't I hate him? It's like everything I do to try to hate him, just doesn't work. Which I don't understand because Sirius fucking Black ignites this rage in me that makes me want to shove his head in a fucking guillotine."

"Maybe...maybe you never really hated him, Sher."

"What do you mean? Of course I did." Sherry removed the pillow from her face again and Amber reached out to grasp the soft cushion from her hands, bringing it to her lap instead so Sherry wasn't constantly fiddling with it. "I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns, I wanted to fly him up to the highest point I could go without losing my breath and drop him from there. Boom. Splat. Dead. Not bothersome at all."

"Scooch over." Amber stood, shuffling over to the head of the bed so she could slip in beside Sherry who moved over and let Amber put an arm around her shoulders and take the duvet so it could cover both of their legs. "Okay, I'm going to say something and you might not like it, but you're in my grip now so you can't leave..."

"That's ominous."

"There is a," Amber took a deep breath, taking a moment to make sure she kept Sherry in her hold whilst the girl snuggled into her neck and cuddled up to Amber. "There's a fine line between love and hate...and I think that maybe...you've, y'know, crossed it."

It was silent for a moment and Amber was torn between gripping tighter to keep her best friend in place or moving her hand to Sherry's neck to make sure there was still a pulse there because the woman was deathly still. Her hands had previously been resting in her lap and they still definitely were, but her fists were slowly and slightly clenching.

Praying to every God she could think of, Amber kept her breath deep and controlled. The last thing she needed was a Sherry meltdown, or to be on the other side of a Sherry argument despite being the girl's best friend. Never had Sherry yelled at or spoken badly to Amber, but there was a first time for everything and she had just entered dangerous territory.

"You're insane." Sherry said, short in breath as she sat up out of Amber's hold, flinging the duvet off of their legs and beginning to stand up from the mattress. "Crazy lady. You know, that was actually hilarious, you should consider a career in comedy and opening night, tell that joke and the crowd will go wild. Because that is the most ridiculous shit I have ever heard."

"Sherry-"

"No, Ams, really, you're hilarious." Sherry didn't bother lowering her voice as she walked around the dorm room, having no thought or concern for the other girls in the room who were trying to sleep and slowly stirred at her loud talking. "Me. In love. With Potter? Absolutely not. No. You are off your rocker. Nuts. Mad. No."

"I am going to use the same analogy I used for him-" Amber started, sitting up and Sherry scoffed, beginning to collect her clothes from around the room. The other girls began to awaken and listen in to their conversations. "Boys pull girls ponytails in playgrounds because they want their attention because they like them!"

"False. They pull them because they're just dangling there and easy to grab." She said shortly, bustling around clumsily and Amber gaped, standing from the bed and walking closer to the girl across the room who was shaking his head.

"That is exactly what he said. Sherry, you're perfect for each other." Amber grovelled with her and the blonde turned around sharply to face her, eyebrows drawn low in some sort of confusion mixed with anger. The girl approaching stopped suddenly.

"Perfect for each other?" She spat, close to yelling and by this point the other girls were sat up and wide awake, watching the interaction closely and in awe of the two closest girls in Ravenclaw fighting. "Did you forget what he did to me? And you say perfect, Ams, you say perfect?"

"Of course I know what he did to you! But we've all moved past that! I never meant for you to get mad, I was just trying to make you understand why you were feeling the way that you were." Amber begged, stepping closer and Sherry didn't move but only glared at her friend that was talking. "Sherry, I know you don't like it. But I know it, I can see it. You love him."

"No, I don't!" She seethed in response, yanking her cut cloak from the end of her bed, crushing it in the pile in her hands and turning to exit the dorm but before she did, she turned to face Amber again. "How could I love someone like him? This confusion can just be cured if he maybe leaves me alone, I should've never have started being nice to him if it put ideas like this in your head."

"Sherry-"

"Just stop, Amber." Sherry raised her voice, it wobbled and it broke slightly and the other girl stopped trying to talk over her immediately as she could see that Sherry was confused and frustrated and mad and was feeling a lot of emotions. "Stop it."

The dorm rendered quiet as Sherry left and slammed the door hard behind her, Amber poked her cheek with her tongue and turned around awkwardly to look at the rest of the girls sat up in their beds with wide eyes at the argument that had just taken place. None of them said anything and Amber was slightly desperate to know whether or not they agreed with her or with Sherry...maybe it was better not to ask.

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"Boys, boys, boys, boys..." The words of Sirius Black disrupted the peace at the lunch table that came very rarely for the Gryffindors. It was a special thing that they were not often granted with Sirius Black and his friends roaming around so it was only expected that Sirius would be the one to break it in all his blissful chaos. "Boys."

"What?" James Potter asked through a mouthful of sandwich that he was eating, Remus Lupin scrunching his nose up at the boy across him as he sipped on the juice in his goblet. Peter Pettigrew sat beside him, peering at the approaching boy with curious eyes.

Sirius arrived at the table and straight away slid in next to James, bumping their shoulders but the other boy did not seem to mind, instead just continued eating his sandwich, licking his lips of the crumbs. Peter reached out to stop his goblet from falling over whilst the crockery shook from Sirius' harsh entrance and Remus simply rolled his eyes at the dramatics.

The new arrival leaned in conspiratorially and instinctively, the other three leaned in too. Remus, who had previously been exasperated of the boys' actions, now had peaked interest in the huddle since usually this meant a prank was being planned. Peter became excited, he loved the pranks they pulled, he was clumsy enough to cause destruction, so the pranks were his specialty.

"Simmons and the González twins are sat on the Ravenclaw table without Sherry." He whispered, eyes flitting behind Remus' shoulder to stare at the long long table where a certain blonde was not eating her usual cereal at her usual place.

"That's weird." Remus admitted, twisting himself around to search for her himself, though all he caught sight of was Amber grouchily stirring her cereal. She was frowning and Oliver was rubbing her back whilst exchanging a glance with Louis. "Oh, this is bad."

"Why?" Peter asked, shovelling his own breakfast into his mouth with haste.

"Because if Sherry is not sat with them, that means that she is alone, and if Sherry is alone..." Remus trailed off, looking meaningfully at the boys around him. Peter sat looking at him cluelessly, milk almost dripping from his lips from the amount he had in his mouth and Sirius just squinted and waited for Remus to finish. But James...

"Something bad went down." James finished, wiping a hand over his face with a large sigh before lowering it down on the table and putting his hands on the back of his head. "This is all my fault for the shit I pulled last night. She's lonely and now she's-"

"Wearing pants." Sirius interrupted him and James confusedly sat up, looking over at his best friend with his eyebrows furrowed lowly and his eyes scrunched and squinted at what had come out of his friend's mouth.

But then he followed his eyeline and let his jaw drop at the sight in front of him and the rest of Hogwarts at that morning's breakfast. Sherry Opal was alive and well, looking as beautiful as ever beside Eleanor Zane, the second-year, stood in the doorway to the Great Hall. And they were both wearing pants and not skirts like all girls did. James had never seen any girl wear the school's pants and yet here Sherry was, with Eleanor Zane.

At first, it didn't look like Zane because instead of her beautiful long, silky hair that used to drape down to lengths any girl could dream of, there was a short blunt bob that didn't go past her shoulders at all. It was obvious that she was nervous because her eyes were flitting around every single corner of the room and her cheeks were flamed with a pink blush.

It was quite a big change. But despite this, James couldn't help but focus infinitely more on Sherry which was an every bigger change. She too was wearing pants although she still had her cloak cut shorter than average and the pants made her look outstanding, though James didn't want to keep staring at her legs like some kind of creep.

Luckily for him, Sherry decided to throw the school another surprise, taking her previously tied up hair out of it's ponytail and then shaking her head so the now-short and up to her shoulders blonde locks fell into place. James could swear he heard a couple of gasps somewhere but his own gasp was definitely the loudest, Remus raised his eyebrows high and Peter choked on his cereal.

Together, the two girls walked down the aisle in between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, drawing eyes from everywhere. Other second years at the Ravenclaw table began to scowl but Eleanor strut confidently beside Sherry, smiling sheepishly at a boy further along the Gryffindor table who blushed a wild red and ducked his head slightly out of the way of attention.

Sherry completely disregarded James as she passed, just like he expected she would but what no one expected was for her and Eleanor to completely ignore Amber, Oliver and Louis only to place themselves down beside Lily Evans and others at the end of the Gryffindor table. Eleanor sat down first and then Sherry did. Behind her, James could see Mrs. Greene smirking at the girls proudly.

"Holy shit." James mumbled, staring over at the bright blonde he could see very slightly but instead of fawning over her like he was, Sirius let out a sound mixed between a whine and a groan and lowered his head onto the table.

"What is it, Pads?" Remus asked, already back to chewing on his bacon. James was out of it and probably never going to re-join the conversation as long as Sherry was in the Hall, so Remus entertained Sirius and his dramatics for the time being.

"I was planning on cutting her hair for revenge." The boy pouted and Remus just smirked himself, Sherry didn't deserve any revenge so he was quite happy that she cut her hair herself. Sirius continued to whine so Remus turned to face James, looking like a lovesick puppy.

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