Doesn't Ring a Bell

Emma wondered where she would find Katrina after she had stormed out of the pub. They had shared a dormitory for four whole years, but had never really become close. Emma had always had the feeling Katrina thought she was a little weird - not that that was unusual, given that she was, but Katrina seemed a bit of a misfit as well.

Still, Emma had gotten to know Katrina a tiny bit, since neither of them enjoyed talking to the other girls in their dorm. Alice was always cooing about Frank and the other three girls were just obsessed with pink . Awful colour, in Emma's opinion. She supposed Lily was alright but she always seemed a bit stuck up. So she had a vague idea where Katrina might be. Katrina was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, as a Beater, so the first place Emma thought to look was the Quidditch pitch.

And indeed, she found Katrina furiously hitting Bludgers at the poor wizards trying to put the new goalposts up.

"Oi! Do you want these new posts or not?" shouted one of the wizards, who had just narrowly avoided falling off his broom dodging one of Katrina's well aimed Bludgers.

Emma grabbed one of the unused brooms the men had brought with them and flew up to hover next to Katrina.

"Hey, why'd you storm off like that?" she called over to her.

"None of your business," Katrina snapped back at her, ferociously hitting a Bludger at her head. Emma was forced to race around to Katrina's other side to avoid it.

"Come down, I want to talk to you!" Emma tried again. "I know we were never close friends, because, well, I wasn't really anybody's friend, was I? Come on, maybe we can chat a bit, get to know each other?" Emma suggested hopefully.

After hitting one more Bludger and having it bounce back off the post the men were putting up with a huge ringing sound, Katrina turned to Emma with a thoughtful yet begrudging look on her face.

"Alright then, if you're really that desperate for friends," she muttered, and flew down to where Emma was already standing, returning the broom she had borrowed from the workers.

"So why'd you rush out of the Three Broomsticks like that? I mean, you did tell Sirius you didn't want a Valentine's Day gift, and he is a guy; you can't really expect him to read your mind, can you?" Emma asked curiously.

"It's not that, it's just, well, I know how popular he is with girls, and seeing him getting all those flowers, and winking and flirting with all those girls, it just pissed me right off, you know?" responded Katrina.

"Yeah, I could see how that would happen," Emma said, thinking to herself how glad she was that Katrina was a Beater; she seemed like she had a lot of rage issues...

Katrina sighed. "I guess I'm just over-reacting, he's perfectly within his rights to flirt with other girls. I should go tell him I'm sorry and that all is forgiven and forgotten, I'm over it, thanks for all your help, Em." Katrina walked off.

Emma stood there in confusion, then shrugged. She didn't feel she had said very much but if Katrina felt she had helped, that was fine with her.

As Katrina walked off to find Sirius, she mulled things over in her mind.

Hmm... they'll probably have gone back to the common room by now, it's getting cold out...though I'm sure Sirius could help one of those girls he was hitting on to stay warm...

No, she wasn't over it, it wasn't all forgiven and forgotten, but she didn't want to lose Sirius over something as stupid as him flirting with other girls, not after she had been after him - secretly - for so long. She would just pretend everything was alright, even if she hated lying to him - and herself.

"Hey!" yelled somebody behind her.

Katrina turned around to find Emma running towards her. When Emma reached her, she let her catch her breath before asking what was up.

"You're not really over it, are you?" asked Emma softly.

Katrina looked surprised, but nodded slowly.

"Hey, you don't have to forget about stuff straight away, you know - just explain to him why you rushed out of there, I'm sure he'll be glad to know what he's done wrong," Emma said reassuringly.

Katrina smiled. This Emma chick was alright - she knew what she was talking about.

They heard a yell from the Quidditch pitch.

"Shit!" swore Katrina. "I forgot to put that Bludger away!" She ran back to the pitch, apologizing to the men as she wrestled with the Bludger. Emma figured Katrina could handle it from here - both the Bludger and Sirius.

She walked into the second floor corridor just in time to see a bunch of girls run screaming from the toilets, and Sirius walking out behind them, dusting off his hands as though he had just accomplished a very difficult task and grinning like a madman.

Emma shook her head. She would never understand why Sirius enjoyed using the girls' loos and smiling when they ran away screaming.

He grinned some more then noticed Emma standing there looking tired.

"Hey, where's Kat?" he asked her.

"Looking for you to tell you off," she replied.

The grin slid off his face like stinksap.

"Is this about Hogsmeade? 'Cause I swear I didn't know she wanted a gift - how could I have known? I'm no mind reader here!" he said, beginning to get defensive.

Emma sighed. She foresaw a lot of her going back and forth between Katrina and Sirius in the future, trying to help sort out their relationship problems. She was somewhat friends with both of them, so they could ask her a favor or two, or three, but they weren't such good friends that she could just flat out refuse and smile like it was all a big joke.

"Never mind, Sirius, talk to her later." She continued to walk up to Gryffindor Tower, Sirius following her.

"I'm bored," he stated. "Tell me a story."

Emma thought for a minute how childish he sounded, then remembered a dream she had had the previous night.

"Well, once upon a time there was a magical castle called 'Office Works'. All the little stationary children went there to learn how to become good stationary so people would buy them. The Calculator was very smart; he was the smartest in his year. The Four-pen was a bully; he thought he was so great because he could change to four different colors, and he picked on the Scissors and called her emo because she sat in the corner cutting all day long. The Ruler was a goody two shoes - he was straight as an arrow and picked on the poor Sharpener and Pencil because of their lifestyle choices. One day, Pencil came to school only to find that there was a new boy. The new boy's name was Rubber. He thought Rubber looked very attractive, which upset Sharpener because he thought Pencil was being unfaithful to him. Pencil reassured Sharpener that he would never leave him, and then Sharpener started sharpening him right then and there. Just then, Ruler walked by. He looked disgusted at the other desk objects' behavior, and ran off to tell the teacher, Miss Pencil-case. He ran past Four-pen, who was making fun of Scissors again, and stopped in his tracks. He had always liked Scissors. He thought of a way he could defend Scissors against mean old Four-pen, but was saved the trouble when Miss Pencil-case came out to see what was going on. She admonished Pencil and Sharpener for behaving inappropriately in the schoolyard, then put Four-pen in detention for bullying. Scissors smiled shyly at Ruler, and they went off into the old pencil tin that nobody used anymore. Four-pen stopped bullying Scissors because Ruler was bigger than him, and because Ruler was busy with Scissors all the time, he stopped making fun of Pencil and Sharpener. They decided they'd have a threesome with Rubber, and Calculator got with Miss Pencil-case. The end," Emma finished.

Sirius just stared blankly at her, and then curled up into a ball on the floor and started sobbing and rocking back and forth. Emma rolled her eyes. She hadn't thought her story was that horrible. She rolled Sirius all the way up to the seventh floor corridor, where she found Katrina waiting outside the portrait hole, tapping her foot impatiently. When she saw Sirius, her jaw dropped.

"What...what did you do to him?!" she asked Emma in a high-pitched voice.

"He asked me to tell him a story, so I did - you wanna hear it?" Emma responded.

"NO!" screamed Sirius from the floor, then he jumped up and ran back down the hallway.

"Great, I spend all that time and energy looking like an idiot rolling him up all those flights of stairs, and now he just goes and falls right back down them again," she muttered to herself, watching Sirius lose his footing at the top of the stairs and bounce all the way down the sixth floor corridor.

"I'm going to go talk to him now, thanks for all your help, and thanks for telling him that story...I think...Do I want to know?" Katrina asked fearfully.

Emma shook her head, smiling that scary insane smile she sometimes got. Katrina backed away slowly from her newfound friend, and almost tripped down the stairs too, but she caught herself at the last moment, turned slowly and ran down to Sirius. Emma just stood there and smiled crazily, and eventually went into the common room.