Welcome to the Light Side

Author's Notes: Thanks to hogwartsduchess of MuggleNet Fan Fiction for beta reading, and thanks to all those who have reviewed; I appreciate the encouragement. Chapter Three is dedicated to the folks over at the HP Lexicon, who have quite possibly contributed even more to this fanfic than thesaurus.com, a feat that I never would have believed possible.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"... and besides, you personally were complaining about the cost of the rent just the other night! If we just let him move in, we would each be paying only two-thirds the Galleons that we pay now. Not a bad deal, in my humble opinion. Hate to say it, mate, but neither Auror training nor the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad carry hefty salaries, and we do have room for another person ..." Whenever I'm feeling completely irrational, Terry always has to show his logical side, doesn't he? Most of the time, I forget that he too is a Ravenclaw, and moments like this one make me want to scream.

"I know I said a third roommate would help with the costs," I groaned. "But I didn't mean Zacharias, of all people! I was thinking along the lines of Justin, maybe ... or Michael, even better ..." By telling Zacharias that Terry was immersed in his job and he and I still needed to talk and simultaneously telling Terry that Zacharias was preoccupied with the emotional trauma of an identity crisis and wasn't at all interested in the results of our discussion anyway, I had managed to stave off the moment when we would have to discuss the housing situation for a full week. Unfortunately, the time had arrived when we needed to hash out the inevitable, and the direction of the conversation was not looking good for my cause.

Terry shook his head. "Smith's not a bad guy, really. I mean, I suppose I might have my gripes with him if we worked together, I have to admit - but why are you so dead-set against him? He's not going to smuggle a load of firewhiskey into the flat or anything, and even if he did, it wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing in the world for a couple of mortifyingly innocent twenty-year-olds like -"

"Oh, come off it," I grumbled. How on earth do you explain to your best friend why you don't want one of the most obnoxious, repulsive people on the planet as a roommate if your best friend doesn't understand what makes the person in question so obnoxious and repulsive in the first place? I don't even know exactly why I had such a bad feeling about Zacharias; I just didn't want to have the guy in my quarters, and that's all there was to it. "Don't you think living with someone is sort of ... I don't know ... intimate?" I ventured. "Reckon it's one of those things that's best kept between close friends?"

Terry raised his eyebrows sceptically, then burst out laughing. "I don't know what you think's been going on between us, mate, but I don't think sleeping under the same roof is all that intimate. It's just shelter. And money," he added as an afterthought.

"Not physically intimate, you prat! It's just that we don't know what his habits are like. We don't know what time he wakes up. We don't know what he eats - he might be one of those health food nuts or a vegetarian or something. We don't know what sorts of women he dates, and whether we want them anywhere near our private domain. What if he routinely comes home from the Hog's Head completely drunk at three o'clock in the morning? At least we'd know what we were getting into with Michael, since we shared a dormitory with him for seven years and everything! C'mon, we should at least look into his and Justin's living arrangements before we make a commitment...."

Terry rolled his eyes. "Justin's living with Ernie, as you well know - yeah, yeah, sorry to so rudely interrupt your wishful thinking - and Michael's got some sort of hot-shot career at the Department of Magical Games and Sports. He doesn't need to split costs with anyone now and he'll be filthy rich and married to Cho Chang or some other witch of equivalent beauty by the time he hits thirty."

A tinny whistle suddenly sounded from somewhere in the apartment, and I clapped my hands over my ears. Terry whipped out his wand and dashed off to his room, where I could hear him tapping something and muttering spells and incantations furiously. He emerged a couple seconds later and walked over to the window, pulling back the curtains and peering down to the alley below as he shook a rattling metal device vigorously.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded, watching Terry survey the street and crossing the room to join him at the window. After spending seven years as Filius Flitwick's favoured student, Terry seemed to have acquired a taste for experimental charms; nine out of ten times, the strange noises, gases, and odours that emit from his room do not elicit any sort of response from yours truly these days.

"Apparition sensor. It's supposed to detect when people are Apparating nearby so you can mentally prepare for a visitor, you know, but it's quite finicky. I installed it the other day, but I'm not even sure whether I set it up right; it keeps getting set off by house-elves and the likes, and the charms to turn it off only appear to work sporadically ..." He rapped the object sharply against the windowsill. Where wands and potions fail, violence will prevail.

"Wonder what sorts of weird gadgets Zacharias will bring with him," I muttered darkly under my breath. There are so many issues involved in bringing strange people into your home. I manage to tolerate my friend's idiosyncrasies for the sake of all his positive attributes, but in most instances, I find that the person in question does not bring enough good to the relationship to balance out the oddities (incidentally, I never understood how Ravenclaw House got a reputation for elitism).

Terry clearly wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention, or else he was doing a good job ignoring me. "Yes, I think it worked this time, definitely a wizard ... oh, I think it's Padma!" He looked over at me. "Were you expecting her to come by?"

"No ... I wasn't. She must have had one heck of a lousy morning at work - she never has good news when she wants to have lunch with me on a weekday. It means she either wants comfort or an audience that's guaranteed to listen to her complaints."

I expect that my sigh was a touch too heavy or my groan was slightly too audible or my grimace was a little too pronounced, because Terry shot a sidelong suspicious glance in my direction. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "Are you getting tired of it after four years? Because if you are, I reckon you should break things off with her soon as possible, mate - we're going to be hearing the wedding bells for Ernie and Hannah quickly enough, and I'll bet all the gold in Gringotts that she's going to be looking for more than a boyfriend as soon as our friends start getting married."

"I don't want to -" I began, but my words were cut short when the apartment door burst open and Padma briskly marched in.

"Hello, Anthony, good afternoon, Terry ... goodness, you lucky thing, you won't believe what you missed at the office this morning! If you don't mind, I'll make a cup of tea; it's absolutely freezing outside ..."

"It's sunny," I said, looking out the window, completely nonplussed, as Padma hung up a soaking wet umbrella and cloak on the hook on the back of the apartment door.

"Yes, dear, but you do have an enchanted window," Padma explained patiently. "I'll admit that someone has done a very good job on it; you can still see the street as it is, but the weather is never going to change as long as you keep looking out that thing. So let me just -" she flicked her wand and a tea kettle and mugs appeared on my kitchen table; again, and they zoomed across the room. Mental note: Terry must tell me when he's doing something funny to our joint property in the future. Looking like a stupid idiot does not earn brownie points if your girlfriend happens to be an intellectual snob.

"What happened at work today?" Terry asked somewhat edgily. He works the afternoon shifts with the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad while Padma works the mornings; he's prone to getting extremely uptight and developing stomach cramps ("I'm a laid-back guy - it has nothing to do with my career!") whenever Padma reports on any sort of bad morning situation that might involve him modifying a couple of memories or tracking down some people to sign paperwork or doing any variety of real, actual work in the afternoon.

"I swear, kids are getting worse and worse by the year," Padma said vehemently. "Three fourth-years attempting illegal Apparition in Hogsmeade this morning! They got splinched, of course, and Cadwallader and I had to go sort them out and bring them back to the school ... well, it will be a sorry thing on their record, at any rate - cutting class, going into the village when it wasn't even a designated weekend, Apparating without a license ... It was a group of Gryffindors, obviously; they have always seemed to think that the laws don't apply to them. At least no one from our House has put us through that sort of shame yet. It will be a pathetic day indeed when a Ravenclaw sneaks out of school to try one of those risky daredevil stunts."

"You know, they're really lucky that they only got splinched," I frowned. "I mean, not that looking down and seeing that your legs and an ear are gone is a pretty scenario for a fourteen-year-old or anything, but if this is the student attitude toward the government, things could be a heck of a lot worse from a legal standpoint. Paperwork and warnings are a frustration for everyone involved, but once you move beyond the territory of the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad and start edging into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement ..."

"Exactly my point," Padma nodded curtly. "And I'm honestly surprised by all of this hanky-panky going on at Hogwarts," she added in a very affronted way. "Minerva McGonagall was a lot of things while we were at school, but a pushover wasn't one of them. I would have expected her regime to be at least as rigid as Dumbledore's, if not more so. Then again, she can't be everywhere all the time, and the other professors do have to take some responsibility over the students.

"I attribute all this nonsense to Rubeus Hagrid - I thought that promoting him to Head of Gryffindor was an odd move when we were in seventh year, and in this instance I believe that time has proven me right. All of the students causing trouble are in his House, and there are going to be real problems soon. Like you said, Apparition is one thing, but just you wait until the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery is being breached on holiday and then the Ministry will be forced to take a more active legal stance!

"But I suppose I should stop ranting on about this; I clearly interrupted your conversation and it really isn't fair for me to barge in on you with loads of work stories when you're trying to enjoy your morning off, Anthony. So, you two are heading over to the Ministry later this afternoon, then? You can go back to talking about whatever you were talking about before. I was thinking we could all go to lunch, but you probably don't want to leave the apartment since it's raining and everything. Maybe we should just stay here.

"Oh, but before I forget - the problem this morning was in Hogsmeade, Terry, so you won't have to deal with the Obliviators and modifying the Muggles' memories or the like, but if you could just nip up to Hogwarts and get a signature from Minerva ... the Ministry is not going to press charges against the students, but all the same, we need to ensure that some sort of disciplinary action is taken, because next time the law will not be so kind. I have the forms in my cubicle, so when you go back to the Ministry you can just go find them. They ought to be in the top right-hand drawer of my desk," Padma concluded, finally abandoning her monologue.

"So ..." I said, quickly casting around for something to say, as Terry was now staring at Padma looking slightly shell-shocked. I decided that a dramatic and immediate change in subject was in order to remedy the mental effects of her recital. "Terry and I got owls from Ernie Macmillan this morning asking us to go to a benefit party at St. Mungo's in two weeks. Were you guys also invited?" Padma lives in an all-Wizarding apartment complex in Bristol with Parvati and Lavender Brown; I've never quite understood how Lavender fits in with the Patils' social life because she is a bit of a dim bulb, if you'll excuse the turn of phrase, and she never seemed to get past the awkward-crush stage of adolescence to develop real relationships of any sort. "Are soup and sandwiches okay for lunch?" I added, crossing the kitchen and starting to take dishes out of the cabinet.

"Mmhm," Padma said in a preoccupied voice. At this point I could tell that she would spend all afternoon contemplating whether Terry would actually get his lazy butt out of the office to have the paperwork signed, and the majority of conversation with her would be entirely useless until she had received official confirmation that the mission had been accomplished. "Yes, sandwiches are good. Oh - and yes, Parvati, Lavender, and I were invited to the party. Parvati is going with Dean Thomas. They seemed to take to each other very well. And of course Lavender is going with Seamus; it's only a matter of time before they realize that they have precious little in common besides the 'proud Gryffindor roots,' but I suppose it's pleasant for both of them while it lasts."

"It must be nice," Terry sighed wistfully, "knowing in advance that you're going to have a date to take to parties. I'm thinking of getting a girlfriend before Ernie's gig, myself. It's embarrassing, going to social events alone, especially with the rest of you lot paired off and successful and happy." He gazed melodramatically into the middle distance.

"You're 'thinking of getting one?' How do you reckon you're going to manage that?" I asked bemusedly, adjusting a cauldron in the grate. "Girlfriends aren't commodities, mate - you can't just buy them in Diagon Alley or pick them off trees or something. You could ask Susan to come with you if you want, or somebody at the office, but if you're hoping for a meaningful relationship to materialize within the next month ... well, I hate to disappoint you, but ... Incendio!" I directed my wand at the fireplace and flames leapt up from the coal.

"Oh, please, I can't find a date at the office!" Terry rolled his eyes. "All the people over twenty who are still part of the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad are weirdoes - Padma can tell you all about it. It's a stepping stone career, not the real thing that you want to stick with longer than you have to, and at any rate, your girlfriend's the only witch under twenty-five who works there. I'm going to submit a personal ad to the Daily Prophet's singles page. Check this out -" he said, raising a hand for silence, as both Padma and I had simultaneously opened our mouths in protest. "'Male, 182 cm, dark hair, brown eyes, handsome. Age twenty, London resident. Seeking a female date between the ages of twenty and twenty-two for a charity benefit ball. Hogwarts graduate, former member of Ravenclaw House, currently employed with the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes at the British Ministry of Magic. Enjoys experimental magic, music, and dancing.' What do you make of it?"

Padma and I stared at Terry, then glanced at each other in horror, completely dumbstruck. You have to understand that Terry is a very straight-arrow guy, the last person you'd expect to find searching for girlfriends by mail order. After several awkward seconds, I felt that someone had to say something, honest or not, and as Padma was still positively gaping at my roommate (very uncharacteristically reluctant to give opinion, might I add), I was the first to break the anxious silence: "Terry ... are you sure you've met all of your co-workers? I'm sure that you must have missed someone decent ..." I suggested lamely.

"Oh, you're too kind," Padma said impatiently, apparently regaining her voice. "Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Terry, you're a nice guy, but what the hell do you think you're doing? I know you're very sensitive and romantic and desperate for love, but there's a right way and a wrong way to find your life partner, and to be quite frank, there are many methods that are much better than sending a personal ad to the Daily Prophet. Ask a friend to come to the party with you - heck, ask one of the weirdoes at the office, and no, there are no decent people there, Anthony. Pay Ginny Weasley to act as your date for the evening; you know she'd never be able to resist the combination of the guy and the cold, hard cash. Or even go alone, if it comes right down to it, but you're not going through with this."

"Yes, mother," Terry said sarcastically. "I really do crave your advice terribly. Go on, Anthony, what do you think? Did I emphasize my dashing good looks and my lucrative career enough? If you were a witch, would you want to come to a charity function with this bloke?"

I shook my head, feeling slightly guilty. I mean, come on, no-one wants to be a bachelor forever ... and Terry's not a bad guy, really; he just has had an unfortunate history with females starting in fourth year when he did some funny spell at the Yule Ball and accidentally made Mandy Brocklehurst sprout whiskers or some other stupid thing. "Sorry, mate, but I'm with Padma on this one. You can't pick up dates through the Prophet - you don't even know who you're getting involved with! You could get some fifty-year-old Squib meeting up with you at St. Mungo's, for all you know. Personally, I'd rather go alone than with some stranger."

For a brief moment, Terry glared daggers at us (I am ashamed to admit that I found The Look considerably more threatening than the sparks now emitting from the tip of the wand clenched in his right fist), but just as suddenly as it rose, his temper subsided. "You know what?" he said slowly, with a curiously fascinated expression on his face, even more foreboding than The Look and The Wand Sparks combined, if you ask me. "I reckon you guys are right. There are better ways to find a date than the Daily Prophet. Ways that I will be ... investigating." And on that enigmatic note, he snatched up his cloak and walked out the door.

"He should've stuck around," I said to Padma after Terry departed, waving my wand over the cauldron sitting in the flames. "He drives me crazy, but I hate it when he's mad at me. I actually was about to agree to let Zacharias Smith move into the apartment with us to appease him. Poor bloke ... no sense of timing whatsoever ... dirty shame ..."

"You don't say ..."