The Annals of Terry Boot

Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;

The second love was water, in clear white cup;

The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;

And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

~Dorothy Parker, "Pictures in the Smoke"

March 3rd

6:15 am--Wake up.

Alone.

Leave it to me to be the last one up. Anthony and Michael probably down at breakfast.

It still smells sweet. Smoke lingers. Thank God no-one else comes in here.

6:18 am--Eyeliner. Lipstick.

The glory of Me.

Still get mistaken for a girl. Maybe it's my name: TERRY.

What a godawful name. Of course, the makeup must not help.

Lisa Turpin is standing in my doorway, hand on hip, blond hair combed back from her forehead. "Boot." One word. Why is it always enough?

"What?"

"You stole my homework." She steps into my room, pauses, makes a face. "What's that smell?"

I ought to ignore her one of these days. At least, I should stop answering her questions. "I don't have your homework. Cannabis sativa-I mean, incense. What smell?"

She shakes her head. "Un-bel-IEV-able."

Aren't I just?

I pull out her essay and hand it to her. "Don't worry. I didn't copy it exactly- I changed a few things. Binns won't notice, anyway."

She says "Unbelievable" again and leaves.

I study myself in the mirror. Half of me is exclaiming, "Damn, I'm gorgeous." The other half tells me I need mental help.

Barely enough time to nick Mandy's Transfiguration homework before breakfast.

And-

Damn. I am gorgeous.

6:45--Go down to breakfast.

Eggs and sausage.

They really are trying to kill me.

6:46--Get made fun of.

Really. You'd think Stuart Ackerly would have moved on by now . . . Don't tell me he's never seen a bloke in makeup.

Oh well. He can go to hell.

6:47--Tell Stuart Ackerly to go to hell.

I've got the handbasket ready.

6:48--Other boys check me out.

There's no denying that. I look up and about four of them all look away quickly- all over the Great Hall. Even Ernie Macmillian.

It's positively delightful.

If I wanted, I could have my pick of the lot. If I wanted.

Hermione Granger, however, has yet to acknowledge my existence.

Has life just become devoid of meaning?

7:45--Herbology.

Double period with the Gryffindors. Yum.

Am partnered with Weasley, as usual. He's afraid to look at me directly. I think he's still under the impression that I fancy boys . . .

Well, I don't fancy him.

Hermione's working with Mandy.

Weasley avoiding conversation. As usual. As if I'm incapable of making innocent small talk. He should have known the lingerie question was hypothetical. And now communication lines are down between us.

I realize I have to start them going again. He's my only real connection to Hermione. Ergo, he's the only one who can help me get her attention. Don't know why I make him so bloody nervous.

"So, Weasley, what's your favourite colour?" I ask with nonchalance. Padma says when I use that voice, it sounds like my tongue drips oil and honey.. I've decided to take that as a compliment.

He darts me a very suspicious look. "Green."

"Green's a great colour," I lie. "Like- ah- my left eye?" Of all the green things on our green, green earth!

He seems very cold at that notion. "No."

"What's Hermione's favourite?" I deserve some sympathy; most people have matching eyes. My right eye is yellow--it fucking glows!

He glances at her, turned pink. "Red, I think. Or fuschia. Magenta, maybe? Yeah. Why do you care?"

I give him my most innocent smile. "Just being friendly. What do you do for fun?" Figure if I stick to the most boring questions on earth, he can't claim I'm hitting on him. Like last time. For God's sake, I don't like boys . . .

"For fun?" He looks like the concept of fun fairly turned his stomach. "Chess. Comic books. The usual . . . Why? What do you do?"

Painted myself into a corner again, haven't I? Ah, well, as they say, when standing at the edge of a cliff, you may as well jump. Just don't look down. "I read French poetry aloud and smoke pot." I bite my tongue- Aren't I clever? Telling things like that to a prefect! Ah, wait . . . I'm a prefect as well. (I was surprised; we'd thought it would be Anthony, but although he's quite bookish, he's not very clever.)

Weasley sort of shakes his head.

I figure that's the end of the conversation for the day, and I'm just getting ready to start in on those Blazen-Tongue Toadstools, when Finnigan suddenly says to Weasley, "Look here, Ron, Terry's just Terry. Ignore him."

Whatever was that supposed to mean? And why did Finnigan think it was all right for him to wink at me? Did I give him a Winking Permit?

Am I being unreasonable?

"He's not going to go away," Weasley shoots back at Finnigan. "We're repotting Firetongue Mushrooms." Ah, so that's what we're doing.

"You make me sound like a gnat," I tell him coolly. "Or one of the godawful earworm songs that gets stuck in your head for days on end, like 'So Happy Together.'"

Weasley stared at me as if I had sprouted a second set of arms.

I suppose this was when Prof Sprout stopped the class for an impromptu lecture on mushrooms or the suchlike.

Still staring, Weasley falters, "You're fucking insane, Boot. Just . . . were you flirting with me or what?"

"Oh, yes, that's exactly what I was doing," I cry, my voice rising with every word. "I harbour deep, unquenchable lust for you! A fiery passion burns in my loins, Weasley! I'm hot for your freckles and orange hair and that giant spot on your chin! I lie awake at night, gnawing my knuckles raw and pining for your touch!"

I'm suddenly aware of what feels like a thousand eyes on me.

Why can't I be like Longbottom, one of those quiet, levelheaded blokes that doesn't suddenly fly off and start screaming?

Padma and her twin are fighting back laughter.

Mandy and Lisa look aghast.

And Hermione seems close to disgusted.

I have several options: 1) run like hell, 2) shoot myself, or 3) . . .

Smiling winsomely, I announced, "Sorry, everyone, I had, ah, Ron confused with Hermione."

I grin at her, but she had me confused with a cockroach, I think.

To this, there is only one solution: G.O.D.

Get Outta Dodge.

8:17 am--Bash head against wall.

At least she's noticed me now, and she kind of knows I like her.

Downside is, she thinks I'm a freak.

And quite possibly hates me.

8:19 am--Run into Prof Snape.

He demands to know why I'm not in class.

I tell him I have an emergency.

He doesn't believe me. Asks what my "emergency" is.

I say I've done something stupid and need to fix it, which is as much of the truth as anyone will ever get from me. He asks what else is new. I then proceed to blurt out, in my typical foot-in-mouth style, "Have you ever been in love?"

I'm given that look that seems reserved for me exclusively. It clearly evaluates me for the loony bin. Snape sneers something about how no human alive needs that much eyeliner at one time.

This conversation could lead to another screaming outburst . . .

8:29 am--Given three nights' detention.

Either Prof Snape hates me, or he hates being insulted. Either way, I'll be seeing more of him than I needed to. I can't seem to be nice to the people I hate.

Time for a little soul-searching.

I have four very good points:

1. I can be quite clever when the mood seizes me. (Just because it hasn't doesn't mean it won't.)

2. I've only once in my life suffered acne, and it only lasted two days.

3. I've got lovely hands. Very artistic-looking.

4. I can fend for myself. I don't need anyone else.

On the other hand, I have-unfortunately--four pretty bad points as well:

1. I'm told I'm a tad superficial.

2. I'm lazy and get my good marks from copying everyone else's schoolwork.

3. Padma once likened my personality to that of Draco Malfoy, and both Lisa and Mandy seconded the notion.

4. I've never made a decent friend, and sometimes I think I'm halfway to being a bonafide pothead. All in a very elegant, glamrockstar sort of way, of course.

Damn. My bad points really do outweigh my good ones. See if I ever search my soul again.

Now I might throw myself off the Astronomy Tower.

Noon--Lunchtime.

Puddings and roasts do little to entice me, when I know that everyone who was in the greenhouse with me will be there. So I nick an eclair from the kitchens and go up to the library.

Finnigan's by my favourite shelves and I don't have time to hide before he spots me.

Waving me over, he laughs, "You're a real piece of work, Terry."

"What the hell do you say that for, Finnigan?" I snap.

"Because you are," he answers with good-natured ease. "Aren't you?"

"I suppose, as long as it's a compliment." We aren't remotely friends. Why is he even talking to me?

"Why Hermione?" His smile was far too curious. "Taken a liking to her?"

"What's it to you if I have? You've got Lavender, and or Thomas." I arch an eyebrow haughtily.

He makes a face. "Actually, I haven't got either at the moment, but that's beside the point. It's just that Ron likes Hermione, as well."

"And I suppose he gets seniority, just because he's her best friend? Typical Gryffindor chivalry."

"Well, yeah, generally speaking. Look, mate, to be honest, she doesn't think much of you."

"Why not?" He's suggesting she thinks more of Weasley than of me? That's just illogical, that is.

"You're not in her definition of 'admirable,' I'm afraid." He shrugs apologetically.

"And Weasley is?" I smirk.

Finnigan shrugs again. "Just think you're aiming too high. If this is where you're aiming."

"Too high?" I repeat. "You think I'm below her?" If anything, it was the other way around.

"Think a lot of yourself, don't you? All right, aiming too . . . wide, then. She's smart, pragmatic, and not altogether into dark purple lipstick." He chuckles. "Or blue nail polish."

"Fuck off, Finnigan." I glower at him. Why is he still here? Why had he been here in the first place?

"It's just that you don't look like the type of person to fall for Hermione Granger," he explains, as if it were that simple.

"What type am I, then?" I challenge.

He laughs. "Oh, I don't know . . . maybe the type of person to fall for Mick Ronson."

Who?

March 4th

9:00 am--History of Magic, again with Gryffindor.

I can't remember ever spending so much time with the red-and-golds.

Apparently Binns has made the realization that when he's up there mumbling to himself, he's not just passing time, he's actually teaching a class. Fancy that!

So he's given us an oral report.

We're supposed to work in pairs on something about famous warlocks of the fourteenth century.

Lisa and Padma are arguing over me.

"I had him last time," Lisa protests. "It's your turn."

"I'm not dealing with him," Padma explains. "I haven't got infinite patience. Let Mandy be his partner."

Whoever says there isn't enough of me to go around?

Finnigan whispers something to Hermione, and she stands up and walks over to me.

"We'll work together," she informs me briskly.

My eyebrows shoot up. "Really?" Oh, please, Jesus, don't let this be a delusion.

"Just as long as you promise to do your half of the work," she warns, giving me a dark look.

I knew there was a catch. Work. Ugh.

"And keep a two-foot distance from me at all times," she continues sternly, edging away a bit, as if I was trying to touch her already. "We'll do our report on Thrudgelmir the Couth."

Who? "Fine, whatever. Do you want to meet somewhere tonight? Like maybe my dorm room. No-one else'll be there, so it'll be . . . quiet." And empty. This two-foot rule has to go sometime.

"All right, then. Seven o'clock."

"The password's Papaver somniferum." I try out that winsome smile again. It still needs work.

"Papaver somniferum?" she repeats. "I'll be there."

I watch her walk back to Weasley and Potter and try to look to pleased with myself. After all, that wasn't the hard part. But . . .

Thank you, Jesus!

Half Past Noon--Playing interior decorator.

It comes down to this: Will Hermione like my room? Will it possibly encourage her to fall madly in love with me? Or, at very least, let me do things with her that the Pope probably wouldn't condone?

No. No, it wouldn't. Something about my decor or lack thereof . . . Well, the posters aren't awful.

Oh, yes, they are. They're tacky. And ugly.

Are not. Are they?

"Are they what?" someone asks from behind me.

I spin around. "Finnigan! How did you get in here?"

He smiles from doorway, leaning casually against the frame. "Your voice carries. Papaver somniferum?"

"Well. All right. But why?" I glower at him, hoping he'll leave.

"Mostly for the hell of it. Never been in another House's Common Room, and I thought I'd drop in while I was in the neighbourhood."

"You're lying, Finnigan," I retort. "And you're bloody awful at it."

He sighs, sinks onto the nearest four-poster. "So I'm told. So Hermione's your partner?"

"Aha!" I point at him. "That's it! You fixed that up, and now you want thanks! I knew you had an ulterior motive.."

He laughs incredulously. "No, I really didn't- All right, maybe I did. You don't mind, do you?"

Maybe I do and maybe I don't. I shouldn't mind. But he was getting into my business. I didn't answer.

"What's with the posters?" he asked, gesturing at my walls.

I shrug carelessly. "Some are free, some are stolen, and the rest were got cheap from a bin. Do you hate them?"

"Not all of them." He grins. "Most, but not all. Keep the Rocky Horror one. It was a good film."

Oh, so that's what it is. I just liked the lips. "Other than that, which ones would you get rid of?"

"All of them, actually. But you're not taking down Rocky. You're trying to make the place presentable for Hermione?" He stands up and peels off a shoe poster.

"You're too damn perceptive." I rip away a picture of a Caribbean cruise ship, watching the paper wrinkle and tear.

"Of course," he muses, "you can't have just one poster. Look, Michael has about six . . ." He paused to study Michael's wall decorations--mostly near-naked women. "Um, anyway, I'll loan you a couple of mine . . . Accio posters!"

Three zoom into my room a minute or two later.

He smooths out the first. "Ziggy Stardust."

I contemplate the thin, beautiful man in a white shirt-like-dress-like thing. "What's the circle on his forehead for?" I ask finally, at a lack of anything constructive to say.

"For? Nothing really . . . He's David Bowie." Seamus shrugs.

"I thought you said he was Ziggy Stardust!" At any rate, I've got to question Seamus now . . .

"He is- I mean, no, he isn't, he's David Bowie, but- Oh, never mind." He shakes his head. "You don't listen to much Muggle music, do you?"

"Never. What good is it?" I'll admit the last bit was more to annoy Seamus than anything, but he seemed not to be insulted.

Unrolling the second poster, he announces, a trifle dramatically, "Sherlock Holmes."

"Who?"

"The detective! Sherlock Holmes and John Watson? Conan Doyle? The Hound of the Baskervilles?" He looks surprised at my ignorance.

"No, sorry. Doesn't ring a bell."

He sighs. "Neither do you."

Maybe I should give up on the whole human race. They make no fucking sense.

1:00--Great Hall.

Michael asks me if I'm blackmailing Hermione. I ask him why he thinks that's the only reason Hermione would agree to work a report with me. He tells me that I'm notoriously lazy. I tell him he's notorious, period. He tells me to go to hell.

At least I'll be able to keep Stuart Ackerly company. Ha. Ha . . .

1:30--NEWT Level Potions.

For the six of us that scraped O's on our OWL's.

"I trust you'll remember to show up for you detention tonight, Boot," Snape sneers. Just because I was late last night--

Oh. Shit.

Hermione.

I glance involuntarily across the room at her. She's looking at me with an incredibly annoyed expression. She heard Snape.

"Tonight's not good, Professor," I tell him. "I have to do a report for Binns . . ."

Snape looks mildly surprised. "You mean, you're actually going to work? Well, I suppose there's a first time for everything."

"Professor?" Malfoy drifts languidly to my side. "Terry's doing the report with me, you see, and I didn't want him to weasel out of doing his share of the work." He smirks.

I have the good sense to keep my mouth shut.

"With you, Malfoy?" Snape smiled nastily. "Very well, Boot, I will not require you to be present tonight, but I'll expect to see you here every subsequent night through the tenth."

"The tenth?" I repeat. "You gave me three nights' detention! That'll be four, five . . . six? Anyway, it's more than three, and that's not fair, Professor!" Come on, did he take an extra Evil Pill this morning? "Just because you have nothing better to do doesn't mean I don't! I might actually have a life outside the dungeons."

"Through the twelfth, Boot, and I'd suggest you quit while you're ahead."

"You call this ahead?"

"Through the fifteenth."

Draco is holding back laughter. I hope his lungs explode. Little good-for-nothing Death-Eater-in-miniature. What was he up to?

"All right, Professor, but don't expect me to thank you." I paused. "That's probably why I'm so good at Potions. I spend half my life in detention with you."

5:00--Library. Bibliotheca. Whatever you call it, it's got books.

I'm trying to remember who Hermione said we were doing a report on. Well, it was a famous warlock from the something century. Thirteenth? Fourteenth? Fifteenth? I snatch up a couple of books with titles like Forty Fabulous Fellows of the Fifteen-Hundreds and Men Who Did Amazing Things. Real bedtime reading sort of stuff. The inventor of the magic carpet cleaner. An advocate for the rights of merfolk. Some guy who sat nude in the Ministry of magic for twelve months to get higher wages for Gringotts goblins.

Bloody hell, there were pictures. What kind of twisted perv wrote this book?

Speaking of which--although I wasn't--what was Seamus's game? Why was he suddenly being so helpful? He's never paid me any mind before, and now he's lending me posters and carrying on conversation and if he keeps this up I might have to strangle him. I'm just not used to that whole friendship game. Easier to have him dead.

Here, look, a book titled Fifty Ways to Hex Your Lover. I wonder if one of those would work . . . I pick up the book, but most of the spells seem to do nasty things to one's nether regions. Trying not to gag, I replace the book on the shelf.

Really, what sort of sadist invented the Confetti Curse?

6:57--Waiting for You-Know-Who.

For as nervous as I feel, I might as well be talking about the other one.. You know, the You-Know-Who that isn't Hermione. That one. But I'd prefer it if he kept fully clothed, thank you very much. Anthony and Michael are down in the Common Room, respecting my privacy, damn them. They just tell me to go easy of the eye makeup before I go blind and disappear.

Well, actually, first Michael snatched my eye pencil away and snapped, "You been at that for twenty minutes, bugger!"

And to think I call him a friend.

When forced.

"Terry?" Hermione is in the doorway of our dorm, with an armful of books and the dread I'd-rather-be-anywhere-but-here expression.

"Come on in!" I sounded far too jovial. Like I ought to be smoking a pipe and wearing suspenders. "I mean, here, I got a couple books, too."

She puts hers down and picks up mine. "These two are on the wrong century altogether," she informs me, "but this one could be useful."

Not exactly praise, but you have to start somewhere.

"How do you want to do this report?" she asks.

"Pardon?"

"Chronologically or categorically?"

"That means in the order things happened or by the type of things? Sure." I'm very agreeable. I'm very agreeable. Maybe if I keep thinking it, it will actually feel true.

"Which one?"

"Oh. Well, categoriful, of course." Like it's obvious. We haven't done anything and already I'm confused. This must be how girls do it. In thirty seconds flat, they've got your brain inside out, so then you'll buy whatever she says and won't even remember what your original purpose was. Hermione's actually got me thinking more about the assignment than her.

But don't tell me she wants that.

Have I ever wanted people to think more of schoolwork than me? 'Course not. What human would?

"Categorical. Fine." She foists a pair of enormous tomes on me. "You can research his social and economic impacts on the wizarding world. I'll cover the political and philosophical."

"Lovely. Who is he?"

"I told you this morning. Thrudgelmir the Couth." She sighs. "Is your memory really that short?"

"Yes."

She heaves a sigh.

This will take longer than I expected . . .