Dysfunctional Equanimity

Joey gulped. A very audible gulp, to be precise. The very audible gulp of a fifteen-year-old boy who was standing practically stark naked in front of roughly five hundred people whom he had never seen before in his life, to be even more precise. He couldn’t recall one singular incident during which he had been more embarrassed, save for that humiliating sixth birthday party... but he preferred not to dwell on that.

"Er," he managed to squeak out, putting one hand to his face and realizing that his cheeks were reddening effulgently; height and freckles weren’t the only genetic tendencies granted to him through his mother’s side of the family. He was faintly aware of Linda nervously twisting one braided black pigtail around her finger on one side of him and Bobby shaking with laughter like an out-of-control popcorn machine on the other, but the primary focus of his attention at that particular moment was willing his recently-departed clothing back onto his body, an action that would have been a great deal more effective if he had any sort of idea what to do. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know where his clothes were--

"Finite incantatem," he heard Linda mutter.

The sudden decrescendo in the cacophony of girlish giggles made Joey look down again, realizing much to his relief that he was, thankfully, once again attired. His shirt was slightly wrinkled and his sneakers were untied, but the fact that his boxers were no longer visible to the entire Great Hall made him sigh in relief. He bent down, and proceeded to retie his shoes.

As he did so, the moans of disappointment that had been issued by the females-- most notably at the Slytherin table-- when the spell had been broken died down, and the giggles started up again.

"Honestly," said Linda in quiet exasperation, pulling Joey up by his whitish-blonde hair. "Some people... no tact whatsoever..."

Joey rolled his eyes, and muttered a few words under his breath to tie his shoes. Nervously, but less so than before, he took a good look around the room. For the first time, he realized exactly how many of the students in the hall were girls: tall girls, short girls, girls with all colors of hair, girls with glasses, girls in groups, girls all over the place. The most disturbing revelation was that most of these girls were looking at him with small, secretive grins on their faces, in a way that he definitely was not used to. Above all, he was uncomfortably aware of a small, red-headed girl at the aforementioned snake-table staring at him in an all-too-appraising manner.

Fortunately for the three-- especially Joey, who was certain that twin holes were being burned into his cheekbones-- Professor Dumbledore chose that moment to address them. "Ah, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Potter, Mr. Weasley, why don’t you take seats over there--" he pointed to the Gryffindor table-- "and watch the Sorting with the rest of the students?"

Linda nodded, and gratefully led the way over to the directed seats. There was enough attention being paid to them already without the added burden of a full explanation as to why they had suddenly burst into the hall, one-third of them without the benefit of clothes. It wasn’t as if the students were ignorant as to who they were-- after that summer’s events, their faces had been plastered all over the Daily Prophet-- but any remaining vestiges of anonymity were guarded unremittingly.

Taking an unseen cue, Persephone quickly shooed a bunch of gossiping third-years out of their seats, and patted them in indication. Linda plopped down in a chair next to Kaites, as Bobby fell in across from her and Joey sat to her right. They had barely gotten themselves settled in place before the doors swung open once again, and a towering figure led a group of trembling first-years into the room.

"So, what gives?" asked Persephone, as ‘Atkins, Julia’ was Sorted into Ravenclaw. "Why the bloody hell are you here? Not to sound unwelcome," she added quickly.

"Right, it’s not as if dearest Persephone has a lot of tact or anything," said Kaites sarcastically. "So, why are you here?"

Linda launched into an abbreviated explanation of the events that had led up to their entrance into the Great Hall, conveniently leaving out the part about her parents having it off on the living-room couch. As she spoke, Bobby and Joey both came to the independently formed conclusion that she had blocked that event from her memory entirely, banishing it to the place in her brain where other incidents-- such as throwing up her dinner in the dining room at the Plaza, accidentally calling Ms. Radial ‘Mom’, starting her period in the middle of the sixth-grade play, and wearing a madras plaid skirt in the middle of a rainstorm-- lay forgotten.

When she had finished, Kaites laughed. "How interesting," she commented. "Joey, if I may ask, how ever did you manage to turn that woman into a goat?"

Joey shrugged. "Adrenaline? Anger? Temporary possession by the spirit of Shirley MacLaine?"

At this, Rosalind Weasley managed to choke on a breadstick. "Shirley MacLaine?"

"It’s been known to happen," said Aaron Barrett, peering at Joey curiously.

"Ah, but where are my manners?" asked Persephone suddenly, looking around their little section of the table.

"Sitting at the bottom of the English Channel," answered Kaites dryly.

Persephone glared at her twin. "It was a rhetorical question, nitwit. Anyway, moving on to subjects that do not involve belittlement by the snobby Francophone alien who is in no way, shape, or form related to me, I’ve forgotten the introductions."

"Allow me," cut in Kaites icily. "We can’t have you do it, Perri dear, as you refer to everyone as ‘Hey, you’."

"I do most certainly not ref--"

"Er, yeah," interrupted Joey impatiently, "I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but you want me to do it?"

"NO!" said both twins, with such vehemence that ‘Bakersfield, Samuel’ jumped, making the Sorting Hat fly off his head. Neville and Parvati temporarily halted their bickering to deliver icy glances to their twin daughters, then quickly resumed their spat (which had long since passed breadsticks and had now moved on to the condiment stage).

"Okay," said Persephone, "everyone, this is Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Ducklings, this is everyone." She turned to Kaites with a cheeky grin on her face. "See? I told you I could do it."

Kaites moaned. "I have, to be simple, the worst karma of anyone I’ve ever met. I must have been something terrible in a past life to wind up with you as my sister."

Persephone shrugged. "Not my fault that you used to be Zsa Zsa Gabor."

"Oh, and who were you, Mother Teresa?"

"Actually, I was Eva Peron, but that’s really semantics," replied Persephone, not missing a beat.

"Je la deteste," muttered Kaites surreptitiously. "Anyway, as I was saying before, this is Linda Potter, Joey Malfoy, and Bobby Weasley. You know all about them anyway, so I will not bother to explain any further, because to be honest I am lazy. This is Aaron Barrett, Dan Regan, Amy MacNamara, and Al and Rosalind Weasley. All fifth-years, as I assume you will be. Incidentally, the Weasleys are your cousins," she finished, motioning to Bobby and Joey.

Waves and handshakes were exchanged, and all went smoothly, until "Clairsworth, Jessica" was summoned to be Sorted.

"Oh, God," moaned Persephone, burying her face in her hands, "there’s another one."

"Another what?" asked Joey in confusion.

"Another member of the Clairsworth family," explained Rosalind. "They’re positively awful, I tell you. First, there’s Lilac Clairsworth, the eldest. She’s a seventh-year, that one over there--" she motioned to the Slytherin table, where a black-haired girl sat with an imperious look on her face. "She’s a Prefect, and she’ll do just about anything to get anyone in Gryffindor in trouble. She once accused my brother Dale-- he graduated last year-- of fixing a Quidditch match! Dale didn’t even play Quidditch! He was asthmatic!"

"Good old Wheezy Weasley," commented Aaron fondly. "Always good for an excuse for being late to class..."

"You can say it, you’re not related to him," said Rosalind dryly. "Next, there’s Wendy Clairsworth. She’s a sixth-year, sitting next to her sister. Bloody inseparable, I tell you. See her up there?" Next to Lilac, a girl with short white-blond hair was happily chatting with a few others. "Wendy isn’t as bad as the rest, but she’s still not really what I’d call a decent sort. I’m skipping the third eldest, as saving that unscrupulous bitch for last is most satisfactory. Continuing, the fourth Clairsworth child is Basil, he’s a fourth year. Has nothing better to do with his time than to beat up innocent first-year Hufflepuffs who don’t know any better to stay out of his way."

"I was about to murder him when he made Sally cry," broke in Dan, motioning down the Gryffindor table to a group of second-year girls. "She’s my stepsister, you know, Sally Kipper-- that one there, on the left-- and she might be a pain, but she doesn’t deserve to have little shits like Basil Clairsworth pick on her." The stout boy narrowed his eyes in the direction of aforementioned ‘shit’, who was in the center of a cluster of Slytherin boys. The expressions on the faces of all the boys was akin to the ones they would have worn if they had just stepped in the residue of a bean-eating dragon.

Rosalind, the designated guide, continued. "There’s a bit of a gap here-- only God knows why the parents didn’t stop earlier, must be bloody sadists or something-- and the fifth Clairsworth child is obviously that one, Jessica, the one that was just Sorted. Into Slytherin, of course," she added disgustedly. "I often wonder why they don’t take all the Slytherins at Sorting and throw them into the lake."

"Because they’re rather fun to pick on," said Al, peering over his glasses. "Without them, we’d be reduced to harassing our siblings, which, while admittedly fun, isn’t as satisfactory as irritating those bastard snakes."

"Finally," said Rosalind, "there’s Cassandra Clairsworth, the worst of the whole damned bunch. She’s a fifth-year, and has been a thorn in the side of us Gryffindors since we boarded the Hogwarts Express four years ago. She’s an elitist little snot, but that doesn’t stop her from consorting with the entire male population of the school on a daily basis. She’s got her sidekicks, Elisabeth Parkinson-Nott, a girl who can’t say boo unless Cassandra tells her to, and she somehow managed to get poor Heidi Tandell under her thumb-- don’t know how that came about-- and of course, her faithful entourage of males following her wherever she goes."

Amy snorted derisively. "And God forbid you be Muggle-born. She refused to work with me on a Potions project, claiming that she didn’t want ‘that Mudblood filth’ within a fifty-foot radius of her."

"Which one is she?" asked Linda, who had been oddly silent throughout the whole conversation.

Rosalind pointed to a part of the Slytherin table where a small red-head was seated, flanked by a chubby blonde and a tall brunette. The blonde looked nervous, the brunette looked bored, and the red-head-- obviously Cassandra-- had a smirk on her face. Incidentally, her gaze was fixed on their section of the Gryffindor table... specifically one person...

At once, Linda’s defenses went up. She stiffened noticeably in her chair, pursed her lips in what she hoped was an intimidating expression, and narrowed her eyes menacingly. The overall effect was rather frightening and would make any teenage boy wet himself and run home screaming (as Bobby had proven one day last March), but it did absolutely nothing to dissuade Cassandra Clairsworth from ogling Joey Malfoy like he was an Orange Julius in the middle of the Sahara Desert. In fact, she seemed to be amused. She shifted her piercing stare to Linda, who was still in Full Metal Bitch mode, and actually winked, if it was possible to wink in such a cold, hard, challenging way.

At this, Linda unconsciously moved her chair closer to Joey’s. So close, in fact, that her bare shoulder was rubbing against his plaid shirt and one of her straw platform-sandaled feet was intertwined with one of his beaten-up Adidas running sneakers. She silently prayed that he wouldn’t notice.

Of course, Joey noticed. As constantly maligned by Linda as his intelligence was, it would have taken an idiot with a brain roughly the size of a Clementine orange not to notice how she had practically shifted herself into his lap and had managed to clamp her right hand firmly around his left arm. While not an entirely unwanted action-- in fact, he was rather liking the way her knee had bent slightly and risen to rest on his thigh-- it certainly merited questioning. He opened his mouth to inquire, but she silenced him with a finger to his lips.

"Listen, just don’t ask," she muttered under her breath in a distressed tone, as Joey’s eyes widened in confusion. "Just don’t." She removed her finger from his lips and once again commenced to stare at the Slytherin table with enough fire in her eyes to burn gaping holes straight through the wood.

Joey snickered. "The staring finally gotten to you, hasn’t it?"

Linda turned to look at him, surprise written all over her pale face. "You noticed?" She silently cursed Cassandra; she hadn’t even met the girl yet and had already marked her name down in the column in her mind labeled ‘Mortal Enemy’.

He laughed. "How could I not? He’s only looking at you like you’re an open check-out line at Wal-Mart during the holidays." He shook his head in the general direction in which she had been looking. "I don’t think that guy’s ever seen anything quite like you before."

Linda returned to scanning the Slytherin table. "Joey, what are you tal-- oh."

Her eyes had rested on whom it was he had been referring to, definitely different from whom Linda had been talking about. Apparently, Joey wasn’t the only person to be of interest to a Slytherin.

A tall boy was sitting a few seats down from Cassandra in the kind of ramrod-straight, self-important way that made everyone in the room know just how highly he regarded his own person. He almost seemed to be suspended from the ceiling with invisible wire, his back was so erect. His blonde hair stood straight up in picket-fence spikes; the color made one think of ice layered upon fire. He was wearing a short-sleeved green tee-shirt, revealing arms with the sort of tan that is usually seen only on those who summer in the Caribbean. These arms were crossed, resting on the table; this relaxed position, however, did nothing to belie his perfect posture. He had the sort of streamlined shape of a swimmer, and the overall effect was enough to, if not induce severe shock and uncontrollable drooling, make Linda’s grip on Joey’s arm go completely slack. However, the most stunning feature by far of this perfect specimen of maleness was his eyes; even from a distance away, clear hazel marbles were easily visible, unwaveringly fixed on Linda.

"Oh... oh, wow," she breathed, mouth falling slightly open. "Wow."

Joey frowned. This was not the reaction he’d expected-- rather, he’d thought Linda would be as amused as he was. Then, she’d go back to hanging onto his arm and whatever it was her leg had been doing to his before her attention had been averted... but this obviously was not to be. "‘Oh, wow’ what?" he asked uneasily.

He didn’t receive an answer, although he repeated himself to the point that he was beginning to sound as if he was an obsessive-compulsive patient. This was due to the fact that Linda’s jaw had officially hit the table and she seemed to be unable to tear her eyes away from the mysterious boy seated across the room. Her communications skills seemed to have regressed to different inflections of the word "mmm", which she uttered repeatedly. It was during one of these long, low "mmm"s that Kaites turned to see what was going on.

"Linda? Linda? Peeves is ready to go flying into your mouth if you do not shut it." Kaites waved a hand in front of her face to get her attention. "Dear, you sound positively orgasmic, and I am afraid that if you don’t stop, some of the boys are going to have to leave the room to attend to some business..."

"Mmm," replied Linda, completely oblivious to what she had just said.

Joey blew his bangs off his forehead in total exasperation. "Who is that guy, up there? The one that Linda’s pretty much capturing all the flies over, I mean."

"That," said Kaites, "is Dave Lawrence. He’s a--" she stopped to look at Linda, who had now moved onto the not-blinking stage-- "and I think that’s all you really need to know," she finished abruptly.

Joey nodded curtly in response, his eyes moving in the direction that Linda’s were popping out in. The boy-- Dave-- was still staring at her, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Joey knew that expression all too well, from his own experiences with it. It meant that the wearer had really only one thing on his mind, and Joey knew exactly what it was. And it was indubitably not the kind of thing Joey wanted any strange boy to be thinking about in connection with Linda.

In an entirely deliberate move, he lowered his eyebrows, curled his lower lip upward, and bent his head like a charging bull. These combined aspects brought his face into the infamous Malfoy sneer-- the one that had been known to make grown men whimper in fear and pray for their lives. It had no bearing whatsoever on Dave Lawrence, however. Unbelievably enough, Dave’s reaction was to raise his own eyebrows and offer up a smirk in his direction.

Joey could feel his teeth grinding independent of commands from his brain; this nervous habit was a common reaction to stressful situations of any sort that he came in contact with. Unconsciously, Joey reached over and grasped Linda’s hand, oddly thankful for the fact that she was completely oblivious to everything around her. He squeezed it, hoping that Dave would receive the message he was attempting to convey.

This means war.

*

"Hesitation, concentration, it all leads to manipulation yeah. Mind over matter, illusions shatter, serve my heart up cold on a silver platter. Broken like the Sunday bread, I know you’re messing with my head, do what you want cause I’m not there to take it, anymore..."

Angry lead vocals, squealing brass, and mad guitar riffs drifted out the bedroom door, down the stairs, through the entryway, and straight into Ginny’s ears.

"What the fuck is that?" she yelled up the stairs, more out of habit than hope, knowing that she wasn’t about to get a reply. The loud punk rock, a recent musical derivation of Joey’s, held enough power of vibration to make the dogs on the next block spontaneously urinate; it was doubtful that the voice of a thirty-five year-old woman, no matter how skilled and versed in castigation she was, would carry over it in so much as a high-pitched hiss.

Of course, the only sound that came to her was the incensed voice of Alicia Spinnet (the lead singer of the Electric Piccolos, Joey’s current favorite band for reasons unfathomable), whining thinly veiled heartbreak anthems which even Billy-Joel-loving Ginny knew were directed at the group’s trumpet player. The headlines had been splashed all over the papers and magrags that summer: "Spinnet/Zimmerman Heartbreak Tale", "Sex, Lies, and the Electric Piccolos", "Matt and Alicia: More than Friends? Or Not Anymore?", and one of the more popular, "And We All Thought He Was Gay: Zimmerman and Spinnet’s Off-Again Relationship".

Linda had been scandalized that her idol-- strong-willed, independent, tell-it-like-it-is Alicia Spinnet, three-time winner of Rolling Stone’s Most Likely to Kick a Man in the Balls Award-- had been as foolish as to pull a stupid stunt such as having romantic feelings for her best friend/bandmate/surrogate older brother, Matthew Zimmerman. No matter how many times the members of the Electric Piccolos-- trombone-playing lyricist/lead vocalist Spinnet, trumpeter Zimmerman, alto sax player Jeff Kowalzek, backup vocalist and guitar player Andy Campanara, bass player Jon deCaro, drummer Zeke Tartropolis, and tenor saxophonist Thomas Martinez-- had appeared in front of the press, proclaiming that no relationship of the sort had happened, the tabloid journalists persisted. Much to the dismay of Linda and other Piccolo lovers holed up in the attics of their parents everywhere, the world’s most famous underground punk-ska band was on the verge of calling it quits.

I’m almost glad, thought Ginny. Fewer records means less noise pollution. Sighing and giving up all hope of calling Joey down, she progressed to the kitchen and plopped down in a chair.

It was a full five minutes before she realized that the person playing music upstairs wasn’t Joey.

"What the hell..." she muttered, jumping up from her seat and walking quickly down the hall and up the stairs. Absently waving at the enchanted picture of her brother Percy’s children Rosalind and Dale, she turned a sharp right into Joey’s room, and promptly started laughing hysterically.

Although the appearance of Joey’s room-- entirely blue, with Pink Floyd posters on one wall and a shrine to his idol, Bobby Orr, on the opposite, complimented by such various odd items as a huge wooden fish, Mass Pike exit signs, a gigantic stuffed snake, and a ceiling mural of the cast of Saturday Night Live-- would have been enough to make any other person giggle out of sheer confusion, this wasn’t the sight that struck Ginny as funny. She’d been cleaning it for fifteen years, and the novelty of the items in it had worn off (although the huge butt with KISS written across it still made her giggle on occasion). No, it was the fact that, to the ordinary, passing observer, it would have looked as if Joey were in the room, sitting on the bed, crooning "EmPathetic" at the top of his vocal range.

However, the platinum-blond figure sitting on the blue-covered bed, wearing baggy cargo pants, a NOFX tee-shirt, and sneakers, was none other than Draco Malfoy. As in the same Draco Malfoy whose idea of a new wardrobe was to buy every pair of 32x36 Dockers in Filene’s at the Framingham Mall and who had been known to declare Pink Floyd to be the only music ensemble worth listening to.

Ginny quickly smothered her laughter, leaned over and switched off the sound system. "Draco, honey, what are you doing?"

Draco, who had been caught in the middle of "I don’t need you, I don’t have you, and I sure as hell don’t want you, I’m screwed up enough on my own," turned around quickly. "Er, nothing."

Ginny bit a berry-stained lip in an attempt to stifle a snicker. "Right, then. I’m sure."

He coughed. "Well, you see, I thought, you know, when you came home, you’d be a little lonely, because Joey’s always been here, you see, so I, er..." he trailed off helplessly, eyes widening and cheeks reddening. "Er, I... hey, do you want to have sex?"

Ginny gave up on her attempts to not laugh, and fell to the floor outside the room, giggling helplessly. "Draco..."

Draco was already in the process of dragging on a pair of khakis and a white polo shirt. "Seriously, you know, it’s not like I have anything important to do right now..."

Ginny didn’t answer, just picked herself up and walked away, still chuckling.

Draco ran out of the room, and watched her stroll off to the bedroom. "So, I take that as a yes?"

She stopped chuckling long enough to look him in the eye. "What do you think?" She entered their room.

Draco raised his eyebrows, his embarrassment fading. "Well, I think I’m going to go find out..."

*