6.4 Old and New Rounds

The prefect patrol schedule that Yates had drafted over the summer had seen heavy revision at the hands of Acantha Zabini before finally being passed to the prefects. To hear Yates talk about it, however, he had created the current schedule with his own clever quill and was single-handedly responsible for everything the prefects were doing right. No one bothered in correcting his posturing; Rose didn't because people gave her an exasperated look that suggested her correction was born out of jealousy, but everyone else just didn't care. He was careful not to brag in front of Zabini, and people were content to let him take credit where he could.

Rose preferred the schedule as drafted by the Head Girl, although admittedly, she'd never had a chance to critique Yates'. Granted, the sixth year prefects spent more time in the corridors than the fifth and seventh years, but with extra studies necessary for OWLs and NEWTs, that was as it should be. The Hufflepuff sixth years, Alice Puckeridge and David Otterburn, had complained about Saturday night assignments, but Rose was unfazed. Someone had to keep an eye out on Saturday night, especially as the students seemed especially inclined to wander the halls after hours over the weekends.

Tonight, a Monday evening in early November, Rose and Yates were assigned to patrol for the first hour after curfew. It was always an uneventful shift, and they typically only encountered students scurrying back from the library or office hours with a professor. If it had been a bit more eventful, Rose might have been able to get away with ignoring Yates as if she was patrolling on her own. For the past few weeks, since her resolution to sabotage his chances at Head Boy, Rose had been forcing herself to respond to his attempts at conversation with brief, polite answers. She didn't invite conversation, but there was no need for him to realize how much she loathed him. Not if she hoped to go undetected as she worked against him. Yates didn't notice that she was marginally more polite than she'd been before their confrontation in Hogsmeade, a point for which Rose should have been more grateful. Instead, she was baffled by him. How could someone react in exactly the same way to steady ill will as he did when that ill will vanished? Was he so completely oblivious that he didn't see a change in her behavior, or was his persistent need to invade her personal space something that had nothing at all to do with how Rose reacted to him?

It had been two weeks since her Hogsmeade resolution, but Rose was disappointed in her inability to come up with a decent plan. Yates was a scoundrel, but she was incapable of proving it to other people. In other circumstances, Rose could create a detailed list of major goals comprised of manageable smaller ones out of thin air, and she took great pleasure in checking items off as they were completed. For this, however, the list simply said "Ruin Yates" and the rest was blank. It showed a decided lack of effort and drive on her part. If she waited much longer, it would be Christmas, and mid-term grades would be entered and everyone would be leaving for the holidays. If she was going after his grades, Rose needed to act soon. And December would be a wash with everyone so loved up on the idea of holidays. January would be the same, with people smugly content over time off and food and presents. If she was going to act, it had to be soon. Now.

"You're quiet tonight." Yates hesitated on the landing at the third floor, debating whether to continue all the way to the ground floor or to start their patrols here. Rose had a very clear opinion on the most effective way to do their rounds, but she didn't care to share them at the moment. Quiet? Try silent as death. She was still furious with everyone involved over the scene in the common room, and her head continued to throb from hitting it on the table. Lily had been out of line, but Al and Jayne had been the major disappointment. And whereas normally Rose would take her rage away to a quiet place where she could either logic her way through it or break something into a million pieces, she was stuck with Yates instead. And he wanted her to be chatty.

He was lucky she wasn't planning ways to break him into a million pieces.

"But then, I suppose you're quiet every night. Seriously contemplating all the locations we might find the devilishly clever out-of-bounds student? Or are you mentally completing your end of term project in History of Magic?" It was too much to suppose that Yates would respect her mood and fall silent himself. Instead, he seemed to have taken up outright mockery, all said in casual tone that suggested they were having a jolly time bantering. If banter only went one way. Anyone who ever dared to combat a tone like that was treated like a social moron with no sense of humor. Rose had no interest in falling into that carefully laid trap, and so she continued to sulk her way through their patrol.

"Rosie..."

"I actually prefer Rose now." To her credit, Rose managed a very calm and rational response, especially considering all the baiting. "It's been a long day. Maybe we don't have to talk."

He grunted his agreement, but by the time they'd passed the landing at the second floor and shoved aside a tapestry to take the last short passage to the first, Yates had forgotten their agreement to be quiet. For one brief moment, Rose had been tempted to appreciate Yates for his gift of silence, but he pulled through in the end, as he always did. Yates was incapable of silence. "Do you remember the first time James and Fred took us down to the kitchens? It was after curfew, and you complained the entire way down about how we were out of bounds and breaking the rules. Once we were there, though, you informed the elves that you had to have hot cocoa in a thermos, so you could bring some back to Hugo and Lily. They must have packed three full baskets for us. Do you remember that?"

It sounded familiar, although more like a story that had happened to someone else, and Rose shrugged. "The part about the rules sounds like me. I guess I remember that."

Yates sighed. Whatever response he had hoped for, her disinterest failed to meet that expectation.

"What about it?"

It was his turn to shrug. "I don't know. Just remembered what it used to be like. We were friends once." That much was true, and she certainly remembered a time when Yates had been as much a part of her life as Jayne. But things changed. People showed their true colors.

"We were." But they weren't anymore.

Yates sighed again, letting Rose know quite plainly that she was failing at this conversation, in spite of the fact that she had no clue what he was hoping to hear from her. "And Al and James and Fred were my friends too. It seems sort of crappy that just because you stopped being my friend, they did too."

That gave her pause, simply because Rose hadn't noticed that her family had abandoned Yates when she had. Perhaps his goal was to make her feel bad, but instead, it served to patch up some of the skinned areas on her heart from the earlier scene in the common room. Occasionally, her family let her down, but it was good to know that they were firmly entrenched on her side of the pitch. She might annoy them with her bouts of bossiness or make them groan by insisting on following the rules to the letter, but they were hers. It warmed her considerably, and Rose was even able to smile at Yates.

Again, not the response he was expecting.

"Don't you think we could be friends again? It seems stupid that we have to spend all year doing rounds and working together as prefect, but that we can't even manage to be friends." The problem was Yates' definition of friends didn't match hers, and Rose didn't want to spend more time with him than absolutely necessary. She dug her hands deep into the pockets of her robes and hunched her shoulders up around her ears as she considered his question honestly. Did she want to be his friend? Not a bit. Did she need to put a good face on things in order to get close enough to do real damage? Absolutely.

"I think we could... manage to be friends." It was a remarkable feat not to roll her eyes or gag over the words, but she managed it only feeling the slightest bit dirty. Al always said that in spite of her words, the truth was usually written all over her face, but Rose had proven him wrong. She could lie too.

At the first floor, they crossed to the staircase leading into the Entrance Hall, and both Rose and Yates peered over the side, checking the shadows for lingering couples trying to get in their last few kisses before being sent back to their common rooms. Monday nights were slow, however, and the entire school felt empty. Occasionally, they would happen upon Filch and his current incarnation of Mrs. Norris, but the corridors were deserted today. Yates pulled himself up on the railing and leaned out into space.

"If we were friends, you would save my life right now." He lifted his hands and tilted wildly.

"If we were friends, you wouldn't put yourself into danger casually. Imagine the trauma I'll suffer if you break your face and I start seeing thestrals." Rose didn't reel him back in, however, and Yates soon sat up again. He scowled in her direction. "What? I like rules more than I like you. We're newly friends, remember?"

"Be friendly, then." He herded her in like a lamb, using his leg as the crook, and when Rose was close enough, Yates snagged her. Rose, in the confusion of pretending to care more than she did and pretending not to be disgusted by him, found herself slow to react. She also found himself within the circle of his arms, a situation she wasn't sure how to handle. He might offer boundaries, but it was just like Yates to break that promise.

"This isn't the kind of friends I meant..."

"Don't be stupid, Rosie." Yates ignored the way her eyes flashed, or else he was truly oblivious to it, proceeding to smile at her as if he was sharing a great secret. Why did Yates forever insist on calling her stupid? "Next year, when we're Head Boy and Head Girl, we'll be working closely all the time. I think you ought to reconsider the kind of friends you want to be with me. It'll make our working relationship much more pleasant." He rubbed her bare arm with his fingertip, making her skin crawl.

And now it became very clear to her why she'd stopped being friends with Yates. He was a fool if he thought she was going to sneak around during their patrols, letting him paw at her while she ignored her job responsibilities, and Rose was a bigger fool for not seeing he had an ulterior motive hidden behind his forced charm. Her hand came up between them, pushing Yates back a few inches to give her breathing room. The flip side, however, was that she did need Yates' good will, at least until the Head Boy decision was announced. And if he was willing to behave like the scoundrel he was in her presence, Rose was more likely to find an opportunity to expose that behavior for everyone to witness.

"What do you think?"

"I'll... think about it." She couldn't promise more than that at the moment.

"Naughty Gryffindors." Rose pulled away from Yates at the sound of Nera Zabini's voice as she came up the stairs, nearly sending him over the railing to the floor of the Entrance Hall below. The Slytherin prefect continued her way up the stairs, light glinting from her spectacles and masking her expression. It wasn't a surprise to run into Zabini here, as she and Apollo Burke had the next patrol. Burke waited at the bottom of the stairs looking disinterested.

"I want to talk to Weasley." Nera flicked a finger at Yates, dismissing him, and Rose watched with envy as Yates wandered down the corridor to give them space without an argument. If only he dismissed so easily by her own hand. He scuffed his shoes along the stone floor, pausing once by a suit of armor as if deeply interested in how the metal was joined together. Something in Zabini's posture suggested to him that he keep moving, and Yates continued on to study armor at the furthest end of the corridor.

Rose attempted to arrange herself casually against the banister, although there didn't seem a good place for her arms. "We weren't actually..."

Zabini held up a hand to stop her. "Unnecessary. Just tell me if I'm correct in assuming we have a mutual distaste for your co-prefect."

It was news to Rose that anyone actively disliked Yates as much as she did. Perhaps passively disliked him on principle, but not enough to create a fan club about it. It felt like a trap. If she told Zabini that she disliked Yates, could the information somehow be turned around to be used in discrediting her? People would fall in behind Yates if it came down between the two of them.

"Relax, Weasley. I'm proposing a temporary alliance, not asking for your first born." Zabini leaned in slightly, her hair falling as a curtain around her face. "I figure you'll do anything to keep him from getting Head Boy, and I feel the same. That puts us on the same side."

The same side against Yates, perhaps, but not the same side in the battle for Head Boy. Surely Zabini wanted Burke as Head Boy to her Head Girl. Could they possibly align themselves now, knowing full well that they would be on opposite sides in the future? Could Rose trust that Zabini wouldn't take advantage of Rose if she could? Maybe she couldn't trust the Slytherin girl the length of a Quaffle toss, but when Rose considered that she had absolutely no idea where to start in her subterfuge, she found the idea of working with Zabini a surprisingly comfortable one.

How had that happened?

"Fine." Rose started to offer her hand and then thought better of it. Even from the end of the corridor, Yates would recognize that sign of complicity between the two girls. The best part about Zabini's plan, aside from the fact that Rose didn't have to come up with it herself, was that no one would suspect the two of them to work together on anything. "We work together against Yates, but we don't owe each other anything otherwise."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Zabini smirked.

The walk back up to the common room was more silent than the walk down had been, and Yates didn't even try to interject his thoughts into Rose's pensive silence. She was grateful to Zabini for that, as well; clearly, the girl had spooked Yates in the long term, and she was able to ponder all the way back to the seventh floor. It wasn't until they paused at the common room door that Yates spoke again.

"I didn't realize you were so chummy with that lot."

"What lot?" It took a moment to struggle out of her own thoughts and back to the moment at hand.

"Malfoy's friends." Being seen with Nera Zabini did more to cement the idea of Rose and Malfoy than anything previously, at least to Yates. It must really be a thing if even his friends were putting up with her. "What do you see in him anyway?"

"I'm not talking about personal things with you. Is that what all your 'friends' stuff was about? You want something that belongs to Malfoy?"

"Now you belong to him?"

Rose growled in his direction, which was rather unfriendly, but he'd earned it, and she shouted the password at the Fat Lady. Without pausing on her way through the common room, Rose headed up the stairs toward her dormitory. There was no real reason to stop, anyway, as there was no one in their house to which she currently had any desire to speak. Especially not if Lily was still around to throw one of her screaming fits.

Still, she was glad to find Jayne curled up and snoozing on her bed, obviously waiting for Rose to return. She startled when Rose sat down next to her, but Rose simply rearranged the pillows under Jayne's head. "Get out of my bed, you lazy lump."

"What? Oh, oh, Rose." Jayne yawned and stretched, looking just like a cat in a patch of sun. "I'm sorry about earlier. And Al says he's sorry too. Lily was such a beast, and we were in shock about it all, and then you were just gone. Al was worried maybe your feelings were hurt. Were they?"

"Not in the least." She shoved Jayne's leg off the bed in order to stretch out her own across the thick comforter.

"Al says he was being a prat." Jayne whispered it with amusement, and it was amusing. Al was generally lacking in the self-reflection department.

"It's okay. I'm used to him. Now can you do something about my head?"