Tales from the Auror Office

Log Entry #8 - A Revelation

November 29, 2015

One thing's for sure – if I ever become Headgirl, I'm going to make sure I get along with whoever the Headboy is. 

It was supposed to be a normal prefect meeting before supper, except for the fact that the current headboy Leon and headgirl Jessica seemed to now hate each other.

Okay, maybe that's being a bit harsh. We did spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting going through reminders like usual. But then Leon made some snappy comment and Jessica whipped right back. Before long, it devolved into a full-on argument. I noticed a few students slip out the back. Most of the others turned to their friends with confused looks or gossip-filled grins. Teddy got up from beside me and walked across the room to talk with one of his buddies in Slytherin. I turned to Elinor who just returned my same look of discomfort. She pulled an essay out of her bag and began to work on it in quiet defiance.

I glanced across the room to where I thought I had seen Charles slip in earlier. Sure enough, he was sitting in the back corner still, looking like he was deciding whether to leave. He looked this way and we locked eyes. I glanced back to the two head prefects then back to Charles before rolling my eyes. He shrugged in response. I motioned with my head to the vacant chair next to me. He shrugged again but got up a moment later and joined us across the room.

"Five sickle says they keep fighting for thirty more minutes before remembering the meeting," he whispered immediately upon sitting down.

"Deal," I retorted, "I'm pretty sure one of them will stomp out of the room soon anyway." We both chuckled.

"Pretty childish of them to fight it out like this in the middle of everything," he commented.

"Um, you two were doing the exact same thing until a month ago," Elinor accused, raising an eyebrow at the two of us. She was right - Charles and I had loathed each other at the beginning of this year.

Charles shook his head lightly with a smirk. "Well you see, the difference is we talked to other people about our issues, not straight to the other person's face like them."

Elinor rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, so much more professional." I laughed despite myself. Once again, she was right.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what had happened between me and Charles. It's not like anything really changed. He continued to act like he didn't care about anything. He effortlessly aced his classes while managing to talk to as little people as possible. He was still often late to patrols, during which he continued to teased me. But I suppose he does actually answer my questions now. And doesn't try to make things more difficult on purpose. Despite his aloofness, I guess he did try to be a good prefect.

And he and Teddy had become really good friends once Charles started hanging out with our friend group. They were always going on about quidditch and becoming aurors and whatever else boys talk about. So it wasn't like Charles was a recluse or creep who had suddenly transformed into a decent human being; he had clearly been like this all along, though he didn't always act like it.

I started to turn through the pages of my prefect journal. Maybe it was something that had happened during a patrol last month that triggered all this...

October 6th, 2015

I remembered that nothing had really happened that night except for running into Andrew Longbottom who was returning to his dorm from his father's office. Charles and I were making our way down the third floor hallway when he suddenly spoke up:

10:42pm
"Stop that," he chided.

"Stop what?" I whispered back, confused.

"Staring at me like that. It's written all over your face - how you have questions you want to ask me," he sighed. "You could at least be more subtle about it, you know."