𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨-𝙧.𝙖.𝙗

𝟬𝟮-𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀

ALICE FORTESCUE FLOPS BELLY FIRST on Jo's bed one Sunday morning, grinning wide and dimples in her cheeks. "Care for a sweet, Jo?" she asks, holding up a brightly wrapped morsel of candy between two long fingers.

It doesn't take much convincing for Jo to abandon her Charms work and snatch it out of her hands, unwrapping the chocolate and shoving it in her mouth so quickly that she almost chokes on it. Forty-five minutes of studying alone up in her room and she hadn't gotten anything done. Jo figures it's better to just cut her losses. "Cheers, Fortescue," she grins.

"You look tired," Alice comments, taking in the heavy bags, the way her eyes are almost sunken in. "Getting any sleep?"

Jo has no intention of telling Alice, famous for worrying and doting and caring a little too much, that she hasn't been able to sleep at night. One word from her and she'd be rushing down to Slughorn's office, demanding some Sleeping Draught or worse, trying to whip it up on her own. "James has me out of bed at five in the bloody morning every damn day to go down to the pitch before classes," Jo tells her, leaving out the part that she's usually awake before she's beckoned by her brother.

"Take it he finally got you to go out for Keeper then?" Alice asks, grinning as she chews on the end of a licorice wand.

"Yeah, we'll see how long that one lasts," Jo snickers, and then turns towards her dorm mate with a coy little smirk. "What about you? Didn't hear you come upstairs till after midnight last night."

And from the way Alice lights up, cheeks red and eyes averted, Jo knows exactly what she was up to just the night before. "Surely I don't know what you mean," Alice dismisses with the candy still between her teeth.

Jo sighs dramatically, "I think someone was up all night snogging a certain seventh-year-"

"Oh shut it,"

"-and then when she came back in her room, giggled into her pillow!"

Alice freezes, redder than ever and whispers over Jo's rapturous laughter. "You heard that?"

"Alice," Jo says as her giggles die down in her throat, "I hear everything. Absolutely nothing gets past me."

The raven-haired girl tilts her head, looking at Jo with a devious little smile of her own. "Oh? You hear Jones is looking for you then?"

"She is?"

Alice gives her a shrug, suddenly paying much more attention to the tips of her fingers than to Jo. "Says she's got some good news to share."

A long groan falls from Jo's lips as she pushes her Charms book off her lap. "This better be worth it."

It is not worth it.

"Ivan Reed fancies you," Hestia rushes, a slight squeal to her voice as she beams up at Jo.

Jo blinks a few times, processing. "Reed? Hufflepuff beater? Fancies me?" she questions out loud, looking back and forth between Hestia and Emmeline, who are looking up at her with big, excited, matching grins. They're sat in the middle of the courtyard, cozying into the warm grass as the sun beats down on them. Jo is painfully aware of the other groups of students littered across the lawn, definitely close enough to hear.

Hestia nods rapidly. She leans a little closer and says, in a hushed and delicate voice, "Heard from Amelia Mildrup that he's thinking about asking you to go to Madam Puddifoot's with him on the first Hogsmeade trip, and she's dating Christopher Calcott, who's Reed's best mate, so it's a very reliable source."

Jo thinks of Ivan Reed. Tall, silent and blonde in yellow robes. They sit near each other in History of Magic. She recognizes his name from James's obsessive Quidditch notes but, other than that, there's not much Jo can say about the boy. "I don't think I've ever actually spoken to Ivan Reed."