Playing With Fire * { Fred Weasley }

Valentine's Day

If I went to a different school, I imagine the approach of Valentine's Day might be heralded with flowers, candy in heart shaped boxes, and declarations of love. At Hogwarts, the approach of Valentine's Day was instead accompanied by a particular sort of mass stupidity that seized the student body with the enthusiasm of a hippogriff clamping onto a dead ferret.

The fourth years were the worst. They were the ones who I would find sobbing inconsolably in the bathrooms, corridors, and empty classrooms when they were supposed to be in class. The cause of their despair was almost always rather silly—fights that would blow over as soon as we were no longer in the shadow of Valentine's Day, slights that would heal if they just talked to the person in question, an entire array of misunderstandings and misperceptions that had blossomed into unforgivable offenses.

But as it turns out, I am good at balancing sternness with sympathy, which is a rather ideal combination for these sorts of problems. McGonagall discovered this during the previous year and began scheduling me for extra rounds to shepherd the various weepers and wailers off to wherever it was they were supposed to be in the first place. The week before Valentine's Day, I was not Cold Shower Charlotte so much as I was Cold Hard Truth Charlotte.

"Listen, I know you're upset," I'd say to a sniffling fourth year. "It's awful, being in this sort of situation. Merlin knows it's happened to me a few times. But you can't miss class so you can cry about it—and I'm not just saying that because it's breaking school rules."

I would pause here and take a deep breath, like I was about to impart some very serious wisdom.

"I'm going to take off my prefect hat for just a moment. If I didn't care a thing about school rules, I would still tell you not to skip class to cry. And here's why: because you're giving him too much power. You're letting him know that he's upset you."

This was usually the point where the sniffling would stop and their brows would furrow.

"Here's my advice: don't let the bastard get to you. Even if he does get to you, pretend that he doesn't. Act like he doesn't mean anything to you. He's nothing. Show up to class and act completely normal, like you don't even know his name."

This was when the idea would typically start to take root: jaws would harden, eyes would become focused and steely.

"Now, I'm really not supposed to do this—"

This was a lie: McGonagall had given me explicit permission to do this.

"—but I can write a note to your professor. I'll say that you got hit with a leg locker curse and we were sorting everything out and that's why you're late to class. We'll splash a bit of water on your face—I know a really clever charm that will help—and no one will be able to tell that you've been crying. What do you think? Shall we give it a go?"

In addition to a success rate of one hundred percent, this speech was generic enough that I could reuse it constantly—at most, I'd have to swap out some pronouns and a handful of other words. As far as a system goes, it was reasonably efficient and effective.

The problem was that these extra prefect rounds occurred at the start of every class, so I was missing the first ten to twenty minutes of all my classes and free periods. Though I faced no academic penalty, I was dedicating just about every spare moment I had to getting caught up with the material that I'd missed so that I could immediately fall behind again the following day. Every morning began with a strong cup of coffee and every evening ended with me dozing off at one of the tables in the common room, only to be woken at one or two in the morning by Bea, who had inevitably noticed I'd never come up to the dormitory (she has a strange sixth sense about that sort of thing).