Two Weeks to Fall in Love

"Well, aren't we just a bloody little ray of sunshine?" Ron moaned to Harry as the black-haired sixth-year threw back the hangings on his four-poster. "Just let me sleep some more." He pulled the covers back up over his head.

Harry laughed lightly. "You've overslept." He checked his watch. "Breakfast starts in about five minutes, so if you want to get there in time for the 'important announcement', you'd better hurry."

Ron rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that it's terribly important," he muttered sarcastically, quickly changing into his robes nonetheless.

"You sure are in a hurry if you don't find Dumbledore's announcement that important," Harry told him jokingly, a smile playing across his features. "Or is it simply because you're in a wonderful hurry to get down and see a certain Hufflepuff..."

The red-head chucked a pillow in Harry's direction, then headed towards the door. "Come on, you were the one who was complaining about being late."

The common room was empty when they hurried through it, as were the halls. Apparently most people were more excited about the news than Ron was, and Harry kept on prodding him along. "Another three seconds won't kill you!" Ron finally snapped at Harry, who backed off suddenly.

Arriving in the Great Hall, they hurried to their seats, followed by the gaze of several students. "Well," Dumbledore said in an amused voice, "now that our last two students have decided to join us, I believe that all of you would like to hear the news." He paused, letting the noise die down. "I have noted that although many of you have made fast friendships inside of your house, there have not been many outside of it. I do realize why- you do not share common rooms, nor do you share a lunch table. At lessons, I hope that you are too involved in studying to be chatting too much." There were a few chuckles from the teacher's table at that point. "So, your professors and I have decided to pair everyone up. The names have not been selected randomly. Some are boy-girl pairs, while others are not. None are from your own house. For two weeks, you and your partner will become best friends. You will go to the same lessons, sit at the same table during mealtime, and share the same common room, which will be either yours or your partner's."

There were many gasps from students at that point. "Don't worry," Dumbledore assured them, "it has been arranged so that everyone will be taking the same lessons as they were previously. We have not been year-specific with your partners, either. Some of you will find yourselves with younger partners, some with older."

Harry grinned- he could only hope that he would be paired with Cho. Cho, please, Cho. "Abbot, Hannah and Boot, Terry- Hufflepuff. Adkins, Joseph, and Quirke, Orla- Gryffindor. Bones, Susan, and Parkinson, Pansy- Slytherin."

The list went on and on, and Harry watched as people from different houses paired up, some giving each other evil looks. The list was extremely long, and he busied himself with a bowl full of porridge. "Granger, Hermione, and Malfoy, Draco- Slytherin." Harry turned his head to look at Hermione, who let out an extremely loud groan. He could understand her despair. Just so long as he didn't end up with a Slytherin...

"Who's gonna get Potter?" he heard a Hufflepuff girl whisper behind him. "Whoever she is, she's gonna be lucky... Just so long as it's not a guy- all the girls would hate Dumbledore for it."

Harry felt a flush rising over his face, and glanced up in time to see Hermione step up to Malfoy, who sneered at her. "Potter, Harry and Perks, Sally-Anne- Gryffindor." He looked around, unable to see who Sally-Anne was as a few more students passed in front of him, the two Patil twins heading over to two slightly chubby Hufflepuff boys, both girls looking rather peeved.

Ron coughed slightly and nodded to Harry, who turned around to see a girl who had to be Sally-Anne. In his year, probably, with light brown hair and blue eyes. "Hi," she said in a soft voice, grinning shyly. "No need to ask if I've got the right person, I suppose."

"Probably not," Harry said, standing up. "So, you're Sally-Anne."

The girl nodded, and Harry gestured to the seat that Hermione had left vacant. Ron grinned at Harry from across the table, and the black-haired student felt like punching his lights out. Sally-Anne was perhaps a bit attractive, but she was no Cho. Definately not. "You can just call me Sally, if you want," she suggested. "Sally-Anne takes too long to say whenever you're in a hurry."

Harry nodded. "So, you're in Ravenclaw? A sixth year, right?"

She nodded slightly. "Yeah, I've been in a few of your classes in the first few years. Charms and such. I've been in some of Hermione's classes lately, like Arithmancy, but I can't say that I'm really going to enjoy going to Divination with you."

About to make a reply, Harry hesitated. "I thought that Dumbledore said that everyone would be taking the same classes that they used to. Does that mean that you're dropping Arithmancy for Divination?"

Sally nodded again, biting her bottom lip. "Dumbledore asked me if I would mind, and I told him that it would be no problem. I don't know why he asked me, but he did."

"Weasley, Virginia, and MacDougal, Morag- Hufflepuff. Weasley, Ronald, and Chang, Cho- Gryffindor." Harry could feel the color draining from his face, and stared at Ron, who's mouth was open. Dumbledore finished calling out the names, then said, "Any of you who have not yet paired up with your partner, please do so now."

Cho tapped Ron lightly on the shoulder, and he swiveled around to face the dark-haired girl. "Hi," she said, brushing her hair back behind her shoulder. "I believe that we're going to be partners?" she asked, grinning at Harry- no, wait, she was grinning at Sally-Anne, he reminded himself. "Got ourselves a couple of Gryffindors, Sally," Cho remarked jokingly to the sixth-year girl, who offered a smile in return. "Hi, Harry."

"Hi," he managed to choke out after several seconds of silence. "Hey, Sally, first class today is potions. I think that we should get started."

Ron stood up quickly, pulling Harry aside with a muttered excuse to Sally and Cho. "Harry, we've got to swap partners. Surely Dumbledore will let us, there's no way in hell that I'm going to partner with Cho. Especially if we'll both be in Gryffindor..."

Harry shook his head. "No. I can deal with it, and besides, Dumbledore wanted me with Sally-Anne for some odd reason." The words came out thickly, and Ron could tell that Harry didn't believe them. "Let's just go to potions."

Potions was a nightmare. Hermione, Harry, and Ron were still all in the same class, but they couldn't sit together. Harry discovered that trying to cut a shrivelfig into several exact pieces was not a good idea whenever he was staring at the back of Cho's head. "Ow!" he exclaimed softly, quickly wiping his cut finger on his robes. Sally looked at him, concerned. "I'm fine," he reassured her quickly, and tossed the pieces of the shrivelfig into the simmering cauldron.

"Potter, I would appreciate it if you would pay more attention in class," Snape said in his icy-cold voice. He looked down at the potion. "A point from Ravenclaw, Miss Perks, for not telling him that he wasn't doing it right."

Sally-Anne's blue eyes smoldered, but she looked back down, adding crushed Wolfsbane leaves to the potion. "For a truth potion made by two supposedly advanced sixth-year students, and one in Ravenclaw, I don't think that looks quite satisfactory. Perhaps we should test it on someone..." His eyes cast around the room, and landed on Hermione. "Miss Granger, if you wouldn't mind voulenteering..."

"I do," she snapped at Snape, who glared at the frizzy-haired student.

"Ten points from Gryffindor for insubordination," Snape said, "unless you'd care to try it."

Hermione steeled herself. "Yes, sir." She took a long breath, and stood up from beside Malfoy, who had a smirk on his face. "I will."

"But Professor, we're not done yet!" Sally-Anne said in an innocent voice. "We haven't completed the recipe. It would be useless if you tried to test it now."

Snape smiled coldly at the Ravenclaw girl, who met his gaze firmly. "Well, Miss Perks, I appreciate your honesty. The point lost is returned to you."

Harry glared at Sally-Anne as Snape turned away. "Why did you tell him that?" he hissed at her sharply. "Now Hermione's secrets are going to be bare for the whole world to see, and the Slytherins aren't going to be quite happy with that."

Sally-Anne glared back, meeting his green gaze with her blue ones. "I like getting good grades," she told him evenly. "And I don't like letting teachers get mad at me just because I didn't tell him something that should have been told."

Curses were racing through Harry's mind, ones that he dared not say for fear that Snape would hear him and take off more points from Gryffindor. He leaned back and let Sally finish the potion, not even bothering to look at her. How could she be so inconsiderate? Letting Snape get the better of someone just because she wanted good grades. She was worse than Hermione- atleast Hermione didn't sacrifice everything to get good grades.

At the end of class, Snape whisked over to Harry and Sally-Anne's table, Hermione following weakly behind him. Just as he was about to draw a cupful of the steaming clear liquid, Sally-Anne sneezed violently, her head bumping against the cauldron. She watched, seemingly satisfied, as it spilled all over the table and onto the floor, but the expression vanished when Snape turned his gaze on her. "Ohmygod Professor, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to, I swear..."

Harry wasn't sure whether Sally-Anne was serious or not, but he felt that she hadn't knocked it over on purpose. As they picked up their books and left the classroom, he glared at her. "Why'd you do that?" he asked her angrily.

"Do what?" Sally-Anne shot back. "I'm sorry if I try to keep Professors from hating me and still do the right thing. Some of us really care about house points, and can't pull off winning the cup by getting a few hundred points a few days before the presentation!"

"Oh, yeah?" he asked, searching to come up with something better. "Well, maybe if some Ravenclaws took it upon themselves to try and do some of the things I did, the world would be a much better place! Maybe they could have used their brains to come up with something to defeat him in the first place, so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore!"

Sally-Anne didn't say anything, her mouth slightly open in astonishment. Harry stood there, half-wishing that she would insult him again- which she did. "Don't you get it, Harry? You're 'special'. No one could ever do what you do, simply because You-Know-Who is after us all."

"Call him by his real name," Harry said through gritted teeth.

The brown-haired girl took a step closer to him, to where they were only a few inches apart, lifting her head up to where their eyes met. "Fine. I'll call him Voldemort, just so we can make the famous Mr. Harry Potter happy. 'Cause that's what everyone seems to want, except some of the Slytherins who would rather insult you than make you feel good. Is that all that you want? Someone to make you feel good? Then run back up to your dormitory and find Ron- or, better yet, go looking for Cho. I'm sure that a little talk with her is all that you need to cheer yourself up!"

With that, Sally-Anne turned on her heel and ran, leaving Harry behind.

"Can I sit here?"

Words. Extremely forced words.

Harry didn't even need to look up- he already knew that he would find the unsmiling, unlaughing, and unshy face of Sally-Anne- the exact opposite of what he had seen earlier that day. "I don't think that I have much choice, do I?" he replied, glad that Ron was sitting across from him. Atleast he would have someone to talk to.

"Unfortunately, no."

Harry heard Cho's whisper from across the table, directed at Sally-Anne. "Are you okay? Lunch has been going on for fifteen minutes now. Where were you?"

"I was trying to get back into the Ravenclaw common room, but the passwords have been switched around. The stupid statue wouldn't even let me in." She paused, casting a cold glance at Harry. "And no, to your first question. A resounding 'no'."

Harry quickly decided that he was going to let Sally-Anne ruin his day. "I thought that you were lucky in the beginning," Ron whispered to him. "She's not that bad-looking, and seemed kinda nice. But now... How's it going with her?"

The dark-haired student rolled his eyes. "Bloody awful," he groaned, taking another bite of his orange slice. "She's driving me up the wall. We've already gotten into a huge fight over potions class, and I can't say that I'm sorry for it..."

Ron glanced at him strangely. "Why? You must not have seen the look on her face after she knocked the cauldron open. She looked happy with herself, and glanced at you a couple times if you got the point. I don't think that you did."

"All she wants is points for Ravenclaw," Harry muttered darkly. "And I can understand that she wants to win the house cup and all, but there was no reason to get in a fight with me about it."

Glancing over at the two conversing Ravenclaws, Ron lowered his voice. "Don't you get it?" he hissed to Harry. "It was obvious that Dumbledore wanted you paired with her for a reason, right?" Harry nodded. "It's because you two are so alike. Neither of you is going to give in on this arguement if each of you think that you're right."

"I am right."

"That's what you think. Anyways, this isn't going to be like us in our fourth year- nothing is going to happen that is going to compel that girl to say that she's sorry, unless you do first."

Harry snorted. "There's not any chance that I'm apologizing to her. She shouldn't have even suggested that she was going to let Hermione take that potion. If she'd gotten to know me better beforehand, she would have known that I wouldn't stand for that."

"If I remember correctly, you were too busy staring at Cho to even try and get to know her," Ron hissed back. "And how much do you know about her?"

He paused. "Chaser for the Ravenclaw team. Sixth year. And..." Ron looked at him. "That's it."

The readhead shrugged, taking a large bite of pie. "No way in hell I'm admitting to her that I was wrong, or that I'm sorry." He folded his arms in front of his chest. Ron didn't say anything more to Harry, and turned to Cho and Sally-Anne, striking up a conversation with them.

Harry shoved food in his mouth as fast as he could, ignoring the three conversing students as he plowed his way through lunch. First Ron and Cho, now Sally-Anne and he were in a fight... He doubted that much else could go wrong.

Except for the fact that he had another thirteen and a half days of torture.