Dysfunctional Equanimity

*

You change your mind/
Like I change the time/
That I was gonna call you/
Or say I was about to...

--mxpx, "my life story"

*

"If you don't give me that potato scoop right now, I swear on the grave of Joey Ramone that I'll lop off your ears with a nail file."

"Linda, that threat is about as empty as Darryl Strawberry's wallet after a visit to a crackhouse, and you know it." Bobby Weasley's grip on said potato scoop did not budge as he shoveled the equivalent of an Idaho farm's annual crop yield onto his plate. "And don't whine. I don't feel like hearing it."

"I'm not whining," whined Linda, adding a helping of corn to her plate. The vegetables teetered precariously on the ledge of a surface already sufficiently covered with three rolls and a huge slab of Salisbury steak. "I promise, I'm not whining. Really. I'm not. It's just--"

Bobby sighed, dropping the potato scoop. "Let me guess. It's either your grades, Quidditch, or something about your hair, right?"

Linda glared at him as she visciously deposited a pile of mashed potatoes on top of her steaming entree. "Someone's been channeling Jeane Dixon," she replied acrimoniously.

"No, I've just been listening to you go on and on about the same damned thing for the last month," replied Bobby, adding a dollop of cranberry to his dish and heading back to the Gryffindor table. He continued as Linda trotted along behind him. "First, it was the marks you're getting."

"Yeah, so?" said Linda, setting her plate down on the table and sitting down. "You've seen it. I'm getting, like--"

"You're getting B's, Linda," groaned Bobby. "Welcome to Normalcy, population: six billion."

Linda pretended not to notice. "I'm doing terrible." She ignored Bobby's derisive snort, instead holding up a section of her long, black ponytail. "And-- look what I found this morning!"

Bobby examined the strands she was holding. "Yes, Linda. In most civilized countries, we call that ?hair'..."

"LOOK AT THE COLOR!" she shrieked, attracting the attention of the other early diners. "It's-- it's--"

"Hey, Dad!" interrupted Joey Malfoy cheerily, plopping down next to Linda and pretending to examine her closely. "Oops-- wait a minute-- maybe not. It's just that grey hair, Linda, it's making you look just like my father--"

"Splat," said Mr. Spoon, as he launched a glob of mashed potato directly at Joey's obnoxious grin. Linda examined her handiwork thoughtfully, then turned back to Bobby.

"Anyway, as this jackass has so thoughtfully pointed out," she continued, smugly noting Joey's struggle to wipe the potatoes off his face, "my hair is turning grey. I don't know why-- maybe it's the damned English weather, do these people ever get any sun?-- but I don't like it." She halfheartedly took a bite of Salisbury steak. The brown sauce ran off the top of the meat as she pounded it for emphasis. "Plus, it's always raining. Every day, I wake up at the asscrack of dawn, and what do I see?"

"Kaites in whatever she sleeps in? Preferably, nothing?" asked Bobby hopefully.

Linda rolled her eyes. "No, genius. I see rain. I swear to Brendan Behan that it's seeping in the windowframe... all the Sids under Persephone's window look waterlogged. Or they could just be high, but that's beside the point," she added as an afterthought. "And all this water is getting to me. My hair is frizzy--" she once again held up a chunk of hair to emphasize the point-- "my skin is pale, and I'm starting to resemble-- ugh--"

Joey stopped chewing momentarily. "Cher?"

"Yeah," agreed Linda resignedly. "A really fat, angry Cher without the benefits of plastic surgery and personal stylists. Ugh." She took a sip of her tea. "And plus, I'm freezing all the time. Stupid Quidditch. Haven't these people heard of heated indoor arenas? Or practicing when, y'know, there's light outside?"

"Oh, shut up. You're just pissed because you spend half the time in the mud," retorted Joey. "Which reminds me. I expect to see you out there at seven sharp tonight. We have practice."

Linda stopped in mid-slurp. "We had practice this morning. What the hell is Mark holding another one for?"

"Mark's not holding it," replied Joey, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. "I am."

"You're fucking kidding me." Linda blinked. "Who died and made you captain? They just announced the list yesterday."

"Linda, I don't want to hear another word about it," said Joey in an uncharacteristically no-nonsense tone. "You're out there at seven o'clock tonight, and if you're one minute late I'll have you doing suicide sprints up and down that field until you're puking this--" he motioned to Linda's now-empty plate-- "up. Understand?"

Linda rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure, whatever."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

"Didn't sound like it."

"Tell me where it's written that everything I plan on saying has to be ultimately approved in content and tone by you before I say it."

"The United States Constitution, Amendment 18, Article 21."

"Nice try, but we're in England, Joey. And pray tell, how does any of this relate to the prohibition of alcohol?"

"That was the nineteenth, Einstein."

"Eighteenth."

"Nineteenth."

"Oh, Joey, shut up, it's the eighteenth," cut in Bobby. "Even I know that, and I flunked U.S. History. Three times."

Linda fixed Joey with a smug glare. "Should have listened to me."

"Do I ever listen to you?"

"No, which is why half the time, you end up doing shit that could get you on When Good Pets Go Bad."

"Are you implying that I'm an animal?"

"Good call, Sherlock."

"Only in the bedroom. Rrrow!"

"Oh, please, stop flattering yourself."

"You know you want me. My pants are like a mirror-- you can see your reflection in them."

Linda snickered. "Not only are you absolutely ridiculous, you messed that up. No wonder chicks avoid you like white after Labor Day."

"No, I didn't," retorted Joey. "That's what it is."

"No, it's not," said Linda, exasperated. "It's, ?your pants are like a mirror-- I can see myself in them.'"

"A-ha!" yelled Joey triumphantly. "So you admit it!"

Linda sighed. "Try your Romper Room flirting act on someone you have a chance with, as in, not me."

"Oh, yes, sorry, I forgot. You only go for snakes with bad dye jobs. My bad."

"Joey, I have better things to do with my time than argue about this with you."

"Oh, yeah? Like what?"

There was a pause. "Oh, hell, I don't know."

It was Joey's turn to wear the Smug Hat. "Ooh, yeah. Score this, Bobby. Malfoy, one; Potter, none."

"Yeah, I'll mark that down in that little book where I keep track of everything really important, like the acreage required to hold Linda's shoes and how many times we catch you with your pants down," said Bobby caustically.

"What's the running total on that last one, Bobby?"

"Seven in the last three months, I believe," replied Bobby, pretending to consult an imaginary pamphlet.

Linda settled back into her seat. "That's what I thought."

Joey coughed. "Yes, anyway, moving along--"

"Actually, Joey," ventured Bobby, "I've been meaning to ask you-- why were you doing that last night? You know--"

"Shut up," hissed Joey, eyes widening and back stiffening. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Linda, however, wasn't about to let him get away that easily. "Bobby, dear, please continue. What was Joey doing last night?"

"Oh, nothing, really," protested Joey, sweat forming along his hairline. "Nothing at all..."

Bobby rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I suppose, if your definition of 'nothing' is equivalent to 'playing air guitar to Meat Loaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" in your boxers at ten o'clock at night.' Really, Joey..."

"Was not." Joey stuck his tongue out in an obvious display of maturity. After a pause punctuated only by the sound of Linda falling off her seat in a prolonged spasm of laughter, he continued. "You know, you're lucky she's laughing too hard to make any wiseass remarks that could cost me my masculinity. Otherwise, you'd be wishing you were wearing a codpiece..."

Linda's giggles had momentarily subsided, but quickly returned at the utterance of the word "codpiece." She fell back to the ground and proceeded to roll under the table, much to the surprise of a few first-years who had looked rather curious as to what a codpiece was and what function it served.

Joey glared at his smirking cousin. "See what I mean?"

Bobby said nothing, and managed to suppress his grin until Linda returned from the dark recesses under the table. She was smirking.

"All right, I needed that." Linda smiled bitterly. "I just don't know what's wrong with me lately. That's the first decent laugh I've had in weeks."

"Maybe," replied Bobby thoughtfully, "you need a change."

"Yeah, Linda, you've been wearing that kinda stuff for three days now," cut in Joey, motioning to her battered green O'Neill surfing sweatshirt, ripped-at-the-seams Gap flares (that had been noticeably bigger when she'd bought them a few months before), and purple Chuck Taylors with checkered laces. "It's starting to smell like--"

"I said a change, not to change," hissed Bobby, well aware of the fact that Linda had shot Joey a glare so cold that the furnaces might well have gone off. "Like, I don't know. Your hair or something."

Linda looked pensive. "You think?"

Bobby shrugged. "Don't ask me. I've had the same haircut since I was three."

"Well," said Joey smugly, smoothing his own blond tresses, "I don't know about you two, but my hair is just perfect-- hey! Wait! What do you think you're doing?"

"A little redecoration," replied Linda, grabbing a jar of peanut butter from the middle of the table and liberally spooning globs of it into Joey's silvery locks. "Joey, your hair hasn't changed one bit in the longest time. I think it's time for something different, don't you agree?" She stood up, admiring her creation from an aerial view and struggling to stifle giggles.

"It's missing something, Linda," said Bobby carefully, motioning to his own mashed potatoes.

Linda grinned. "You're right," she agreed, and quickly brought the plate up to Joey's face, instantly covering him with what he had struggled to remove before.

Joey squeezed his eyes shut-- out of anger or to keep the mashed potatoes from sliding into them, Linda and Bobby didn't know. "I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You," he said evenly, moving to rise.

"Can't if I'm in the girls' bathroom," retorted Linda quickly, scampering through the Hall and out the doors as quickly as she could manage, muttering "excuse me"s and "sorry"s as she went.

Sighing, Joey sat down and faced Bobby, who was snickering into what was left of his own mashed potatoes. "Is it really that bad?" he asked self-consciously, suddenly aware of the fact that a large number of students were pouring into the Hall for dinner while he sat, looking for all the world like the "before" half of a soap advertisement.

"Well," started Bobby, "it does give your hair a certain-- texture, I guess. And with the potatoes hanging from your nose-- yeah, I'd say you're a chick magnet, hands down." He laughed loudly.

"And to think I call you family," replied Joey darkly, wiping a checkered napkin across his face.

"You don't. As a general rule, you refer to me as ?Bobby'," his cousin replied. "I don't think I've heard anyone calling their relatives "O, cousin! O, family!" lately. That style of speech got old when Shakespeare was still getting laid by women that weren't Gwyneth Paltrow."

Joey scowled and conjured up another napkin. It removed some of the residue, but an unfortunately sticky mashed potato recipe (damn economical house-elves, he thought) was working to his severe disadvantage as he attempted to wipe it out of his eyebrows. Bobby was still chortling when the other fifth-year Gryffindors came over with their plates loaded and eyebrows raised.

"Joey, dear, you look like the Pillsbury Doughboy threw up all over you," commented Amy MacNamara, taking her usual chair. "What gives?"

"Linda," supplied Bobby, as Joey's face had gone as red as Professor Trelawney's lip liner. "Double attack-- potato catapult and peanut butter bomb." He motioned to the door. "Stealth movements. She left."

"Yeah, I saw her hanging about in the bathroom," said Persephone Longbottom. "Doing something with her hair..."

"At least she doesn't have to get peanut butter out of it later," moaned Joey, nervously venturing a hand up to touch his ruined hair. "This is going to take forever to get out."

"Ouch," said Al Weasley, settling down with a copy of Particularly Nasty Hexes for the Everyday Evil Minion, by Keith Fraser. "Bloody well sucks to be you."

"Good call," replied Joey, in a tone so saturated with sarcasm one could squeeze it out and bottle it for market retail. "I didn't realize that before."

"Right," murmured Al absentmindedly, head buried in his tome. "Say, did you know that you could do this with a broomstick?"

"What?" asked his twin, peering over his shoulder. "Ooh. That guy's going to need asprin..."

"Shove off, Ros," growled Al, "I'm reading."

Rosalind rolled her eyes and returned to her seat. "Fine by me. Boring bookish prat," she muttered to Aaron Barrett.

Aaron shrugged. "Your family."

"Thanks for the reminder."

"Not a problem."

"Auuuugh..."

Bobby coughed. "Please. I just sat through one round of Sexual-Tensionball with Joey and Linda, I don't need more."

Rosalind, Aaron, and Joey all turned on Bobby at once. "SHUT UP, BOBBY!"

"Jeez, just an observation." Bobby picked up his plate and stood. "Don't know about you people, but I'm going back up to the Tower. Blasted Divination essay due tomorrow and I've got about an inch done. See you."

"If you see Linda, give her a good kick for me, will ya?" called Joey as he left the Hall. "Damn. Don't think he heard me."

"Joe, you might want to go wash that off," said Amy, motioning to the smorgasbord that still covered most of Joey's face. "It's not exactly what I'd call flattering."

"Right." Joey pushed his chair back. "Good idea, Ames. See you guys later."

*

"Cass-and-dra, why can't I have any butter?"

"Because you're too goddamn fat," replied Cassandra Clairsworth carelessly, picking at a piece of lettuce. "I refuse to hang about with anyone who looks like a bloody baby elephant."

Elisabeth Parkinson-Nott's lower lip trembled, along with several other flabby recesses of her body, which was indelicately concealed in a lacy white tank top and microscopic mini-skirt ensemble that was altogether rather impractical for the British Isles in October and, indeed, for anyone who had to spend a half-hour sucking their stomach in sufficiently so that the skirt would fit. "B-but, Cass--"

"Oh, shut up, will you?" snapped Heidi Tandell, waving a hunk of Salisbury steak in Elisabeth's face menacingly. "Don't even think of crying at the table, you'll make us all look like fools."

"Well said, Heidi," said Cassandra, ignoring the sarcastic tone with which Heidi had uttered her remark. "She's right, Elisabeth. We can't afford to look like-- ugh-- Gryffindors." She rolled her eyes, motioning to the enemy table. "I mean, look at them-- fashion victims, the whole lot." This last portion was uttered with a fair amount of disdain, as if one dressed in a faux-fur sleeveless turtleneck dress in a hideous shade of pink-- as she was-- had the authority to designate another as a "fashion victim".

"Right!" chimed in Elisabeth, eager to worm her way back into Cassandra's good graces without failing to satiate her enormous appetite. "Just look at what Rosalind Weasley's wearing. Are those--" she wrinkled her nose-- "dip-dyed denims?"

"Yes, Lissy, spot on," responded Heidi derisively. "God forbid she wear anything with more than one shade of blue at the same time." She coughed into her hand. "And just look at that jacket--"

"Positively disgraceful," added Cassandra. "Who actually wears that?"

Heidi decided to let the fact that Cass herself had worn that particular item of clothing-- same color, same style-- last week slip.

"And just look at the rest of them," Elisabeth was saying. "Would someone please tell Persephone Longbottom that those boots belong in the infantry? And her sister's no better-- that hairstyle went out three years ago!"

"That's why you were wearing it this summer, right?" muttered Heidi.

Elisabeth nodded. "Exactly!"

Heidi rolled her eyes, and returned to her meal. More than ever, she was thankful for her drab and unoffensive khaki wardrobe.

"Ugh, just look at Amy MacNamara's glasses," Cassandra was groaning. "Thick frames. Does she realize that the Buddy Holly geek-chic thang was over last decade?"

"If you think that's bad, did you see what Linda Potter was wearing earlier?" pestered Elisabeth. "She looked like a bloody surfer. This is England."

"Good call," muttered Heidi. "Didn't expect you to be aware of that."

"Elisabeth, you can't expect her to have any fashion sense at all," reminded Cassandra. "If she had any, she wouldn't have put on all that weight." She tsked. "Shame. The girl had potential before, I tell you, but now? Shot to hell."

"I just knew she'd run to fat," agreed Elisabeth exuberantly. (It took a considerable amount of effort for Heidi to withold the flood of comments that was dying to burst from between her lips, most of which involved hippopotamuses in tutus.) "No one could possibly ever look that good for that long. Except you, Cass," she added quickly.

Cassandra opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted.

"Elisabeth," said a new voice, "stop kissing ass. You'll give yourself a goddamn cankersore, and the entire dungeon'll have to hear about it for a week. And I, quite frankly, have not the patience nor the stomach to put up with it."

The sardonic and heavily American tone was all too familiar to the leader of the troupe, who cursed several times under her breath as she turned in her seat. "Oh, it's you. How... unpleasant." She tossed her long French braid over her shoulder with the intent of hitting the newcomer with it.

Dave Lawrence ducked out of the way just in time. "Cass, as much as you want to engage in kinky sex-play at the table, I really don't go for redheads anymore. You should know that by now."

Heidi had to stifle another snort as Dave-- her Potions partner since first year-- threw her a subtle wink. Although the Tandell and Clairsworth clans had been irrevocably entwined for decades, thus securing the association between Heidi and Cassandra, the former preferred the company of the American expatriate son of Artemis and Lucas Lawrence over anyone in the Slytherin house. Dave had been sent off to Hogwarts because of his extraordinarily wealthy parents' dislike for Cassidy Quinn, the liberal headmistress of the Salem Institute of Sorcery, as he'd explained to Heidi on several occasions. Dave, in addition to making the female population fall all over themselves with his piercing eyes and gravity-defying hair, spent a great deal of time breaking the electronic-repelling forcefield around Hogwarts so he could watch Celtics games and other ESPN programming on his 13-inch Magnavox. The fact that he was the alienated ex-boyfriend of Cassandra only served to strengthen Heidi's positive feelings regarding the boy.

Meanwhile, Cassandra was rolling her eyes. "Girls, come on. The last thing we need are dogs sniffing around while we're eating." She disgustedly grabbed Elisabeth's arm. "Let's go."

"But I'm not finished!"

"I don't care," snapped Cassandra. "Heidi, are you coming?"

Heidi cast a quick glance at Dave. "I'll be along in a minute. I have to talk about that potion we were making in class-- you know, the one that strengthens a person's resolve?"

Cassandra glared at her ex-boyfriend. "Fine. We'll be in the dorm later," she replied before turning on her heel and stalking away, all the while dragging a whining Elisabeth behind her.

"Jesus Christ," said Dave, slipping into the chair previously occupied by Cassandra, "she hasn't changed a bit. Still the same stuck-up bitch, I see."

"You aren't the one around her all day," muttered Heidi, stabbing a cherry tomato. "Consider yourself lucky."

Dave grinned. "I am lucky. I just won a hundred and fifty bucks off my dad-- the Red Sox are killing the Diamondbacks in the World Series. Three and oh..."

Heidi looked baffled. "Bucks? Sox? Diamondbacks? Dave, is this some weird American sports thing?"

"It's not just any weird American sports thing, it's the weird American sports thing," replied Dave. "See, baseball is the American pastime for a reason, and it's this. I'm betting countless sums of money on the ability of a group of nine men in red socks to hit a ball with a stick of wood..."

"Dumbass."

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing. So what were you saying?"

"Oh, yeah. Anyway..."

*

Meanwhile, in an modern professional building thousands of miles away, while the church bells of Boston tolled just once, glass was flying as the window to one Draco Malfoy's ground-floor office was shattered by an object suspiciously resembling the butt of a Smith and Wesson .38 Special. Surprisingly, no sirens rang; this could be due to the fact that a whisper of "silencio" had gone up just seconds before. The other hand of the person wielding the revolver was clamped around a long, slim object rendered indiscernible by the falling shadows.

Yet more glass tinkled to the floor as the intruder hauled their frame through what had previously been a rather expensive window. The high three-quarter moon lent considerable illumination to the room, revealing a cluttered desk and not much else. Draco preferred to work out of his home office-- a fact not unknown to the prowler-- for smaller projects, meaning that only the big kahunas would be found at the headquarters of Almost Magic Computer Systems. However, the object the invader sought was unrelated to these major innovations, which was why he or she barely glanced at the blueprints for an operating system that would bring Bill Gates's monopoly to its knees before whispering "alohomora" and turning their attention to the contents of Malfoy's desk drawers.

Much like the surface, the interior of the workstation was disorganized beyond all comprehension, with old issues of Men's Health in the same area as, well, new issues of Men's Health. Intermingling with erasers and mechanical pencils were a few-- ahem-- suggestive photographs of a redheaded woman, one not unfamiliar to the individual now rifling through the desk. However interesting these items were, however, they were not what the intruder sought.

"Bloody hell," they muttered, "where the hell is it? It's got to be-- a-ha!"

Papers shuffled as a large manila envelope stamped with "Essex County" was lifted from the bottom drawer by black-gloved hands. The intruder-- with a wave of the object clutched in their hand-- closed and locked the opened drawers, tiptoed across the carpeted floor, and heaved their body out the shattered window. With an almost-inaudible "Reparo," the black-clad figure jumped into a nearby car. If one listened carefully, they would have heard a woman's voice mutter something angrily before the car-- bearing an out-of-state license plate-- sped off into the darkness.

*