A buzzing, on her upper leg.

Audette ignored it and instead snuggled her face deeper into the warm place she was.

Equally in intervals it repeated, and finally her wand lost it's patience and sent an electric shock into Audette's adductor muscle. She gasped awake; it was six-thirty, and the room smelled like cologne and farts, and a small gremlin voice was murmuring foul notions somewhere below Malfoy's bed.

She raised her head slowly from his toned chest, pulling up her lip when she noticed his arm around her waist and his hand flat on her backside. Yikes...

Listening carefully over the tenor grumbles of the magical monster lose in the room, she deducted that no other sounds aside from snoring suggested all of the hungover Slytherin boys were sound asleep. A quick escape would be plausible - in a perfect world.

Audette detached herself from Draco who was out like a light after such a disruptive evening, sleeping misleadingly angelic with his hair over his eyes. She drew aside his curtains and pulled on her petite slippers that had somehow survived the rummaging of the gnome.

She bolted, only to slide on a discarded pair of boxer shorts and land right on her back.

Utterly winded she laid there with her brain swirling in circles.

She heaved in air, staring up at the ornate ceiling that had a hundred, tiny green glowing orbs bouncing along it as a nightlight feature.

Alright, no one woke up, she thought gratefully, until the bloodthirsty garden gnome discovered it's next victim.

She heard the meaty patter of it's bare feet on the wooden flooring before it started to yank on her hair painfully, probably assuming it was tall grass to be played with.

"Ra, ra, ra! Ra, Ra! Ugly bitch with weeds!" it rudely barked in her ear, it's rancid breath making her gag.

Audette pawed at it's face trying to push in it's eyeballs enough to back it off. She had to whisper in plea under her breath, "Stop, stop, stop, please."

"Ra! Ra! Ra! Filthy whore with dull teeth!"

Audette winced, trying to locate the slit of her nightgown pocket but it had rotated below where she was conveniently sitting on her wand, "Well...maybe your teeth are just too sharp. Ever considered that bedposts are not meant to be edible?"

Although it seemed that no one had woken up, a flash of red light lit up the entire room like a firework. Suddenly the badgering gnome flew face first into the wooden door, sliding down like butter and flopping unconscious into a doll position.

She sat up dizzily, and turned around to see that Theodore had pulled aside his curtains and put his rectangular reading glasses on. His wand was outstretched, and his expression was extremely unreadable.

With messy brown locks and in a clean white shirt he looked positively adorable and nerdy, just how she remembered him during sleepovers.

His dark blue eyes held the same dramatic intensity as the first day she'd met him. Even though the manner in which his eyebrows hung low and flat tended to make him look angry all of the time, she knew better.

Except, in that particular moment - he might've actually been angry that morning at the sight of her in their living space.

They stared at each other, and Audette inhaled shuddering breaths at the realization that he now had direct confirmation she'd been sleeping in Draco's bed. Then he was gone again behind a shroud of green velvet, and the mysterious moment replayed in her mind's eye all morning.

Ergo it was already turning out to be the worst possible Saturday; no sleep in, an embarrassing run-in with her felicitous ex-boyfriend, and then five hours with Professor Snape and a bunch of mangy Flubborworms.

Forced to sit at a bar stool of uncomfortably tall height so Snape could keep his beady black eyes on her, Audette strapped her tie across her nose in a futile effort to drown out the stench of Flobberworms crawling around in the bucket in front of her like animated bowl movements.

Behind a cobwebbed podium at the front of the classroom Snape perched himself like an unfriendly bat, his eyes moving between his notes and Audette, imitating a creepy portrait in a haunted mansion.

Not a word was said nearly the entire time until Audette caused an accident.

More than once as she squeezed and scraped hazardous mucous from the worms they revolted with high pitched squeals and emitted gunshots of fluid in random directions. Mostly she took it straight in the face or shirt, spluttering and dry-heaving to avoid losing her guts and making the situation worse.

Snape chuckled under his breath at her misery, until one of the worms angled fiercely when she pinched it's abdomen the wrong way and a glob of clear goo blew across the dank room at the speed of light. It took out at least a dozen glass lab jars filled with bright green concoctions, and soon the shelf next to Snape had transformed into a waterfall of foaming destruction.

At this he'd snapped his quill down, coughing from the ensuing vapors. Audette twirled on the stool, chewing on the inside of her lip with dread.

The smell of burning sulfur fumed in all directions like rotten eggs, and Snape pointed a dirty, cracked nail at the door, "You have approximately...ten seconds...to disappear from this room Bellarose, before I ensure that you disappear from this planet altogether."

Audette didn't need to be asked twice.

She dropped the insubordinate, ten-inch long clitellata in her hand and scattered out of the room like a cockroach.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Outside in the hallway she shuddered upon taking inventory of her appearance; covered in putrid slime from her eyebrows down to her stomach, some of it already hardening into a thick, opaque paste. It was horribly suggestive, and many of the students she passed hissed vulgar insinuations about what substance was all over her.

She spent thirty agonizing minutes scrubbing secretions from her beautiful hair and face. The next day, she would return in a hazmat suit, even if she had to sew it out of her own bedding and cut holes for eyes, she predetermined.

Fresh as a daisy and posh once again she bounced to the Great Hall for a well deserved lunch in one of her Edwardian dresses.

Today's green gown was pinafore in style over a white blouse, schoolgirl-ish with a full skirt to her ankles. Audette had curled the ends of her silky hair and tied a white bow into the back. On the outside she was dollish and youthful, but inside she wanted to die from lack of sleep.

On the first floor loud chatter and the smell of appetizing food grew in volume to the great satisfaction of each her senses. Before she could take off in a hyper speed walk an offensive barrier in the form of someone's arm blocking her way made Audette let out a rather goosey cry.

Cheeks aflame at the ludicrous noises that had just escaped her lips she craned her neck up to Theodore's deep and abysmal eyes, and just like that her mood swung to the bottom of the sea with them.

His hand was pressed firmly against the jagged bricks to her left, and he took another step to trap her in place. Audette turned her face to the side shyly, inspecting his tight blue suit and Corinthian leather shoes.

Oh, the sweet smell of Cedar Wood and Eucalyptus wafting from his warm clothing - she almost sniffed the air like an unhinged weirdo.

Only the day before she had still felt comfortable enough in their fallout to hug him without invitation, but after spending the night snogging Draco everything had changed with the flip of a coin.

Any moisture in her mouth had packed it's bags, and all she was left with was a parched desert of a tongue to work with. She croaked out his name, expecting he'd come to accuse her of the worst, "Theodore."

He waited a long moment, studying her face before saying anything. Audette wanted to run her arm around his neck until he opened his mouth to speak and that desire dissipated like smoke, "So, the entire school knows what you did to Malfoy last night, including myself. Have you realized yet how infectious his reputation is? Because if you haven't heard what they're saying about you, it's going to be a shock."

"Oh pfft, what did I do to Draco?" Audette defended, but her tummy was begin to constrict. She'd kissed him and groped him, big deal.

I cannot lie, Draco had repeated to her twice last night in caution.

Nott shook his head, his nose pulling back in disgust, "I found it especially interesting that he was so brutally honest about a happenstance every man conceivably fears admitting to, especially because we're talking about Malfoy. That was naturally, until I discovered you swindled him into an Unbreakable Vow in advance. How assiduously Machiavellian, coming from the Audette I once knew, designing such a humiliating admission for him to wake up to."

Audette sucked in her lips and jaw, as his face was only inches away and not exactly welcoming. For all she knew from the venomous look in his features he might strike out and bite her nose off.

Now he was definitely angry, specifically with her.

Theodore was solemn and melancholy on a good day, but on a bad day he was as corrosive as Bromine, using his intelligence as a weapon to utterly annihilate.

He was understandably suspicious, and actively disassembling every part of her in front of him as if she were a hot dog machine that had malfunctioned and impossibly produced hamburgers instead.

Audette let out a heavy, shaky sigh, "Well I haven't the slightest what you're on about. I didn't design diddly squat, it was an accident. I thought we'd decided to stay out of each other's business anyways, Theo."

This answer was far from acceptable, because in an instant both of his arms were on the wall and she was in a full-body Theodore Nott cage.

His nose pushed into hers painfully, spitting against her lips with his long bangs in both of their eyesight, "What are you up to, messing around with Malfoy Audette? Did someone put you up to something? Because I will find out, might as well tell me now."

She was up to something with Malfoy, rather mild at that, and she didn't care to admit to it quite yet. Things were only getting fun.

She straightened her spine, the nerves in the posterior facet of her body reminding her of just how sharp the interior cladding of the ancient castle was, "Thank you for saving me from that thing this morning - you lot are living in a zoo up there. But really Theodore, my personal affairs are none of your concern." She tried to duck under his arm but he lowered it to block her chest like lightning.

Theodore hadn't blinked once, boring his oceanic eyes into hers like a terminator on a mission to extract vital information from her brain.

He puffed out minty breath in her face, "You know what is truly whimsical? I was of the impression he was toying with you, but now I suspect you have an agenda of your own. Either you have been threatened in which case you have my support, or you've grown into a poisonous snake that I no longer know."

He smacked the wall harshly and Audette tittered in shock under her breath, her eyes beginning to glitter with the formation of tears. Only seconds after he'd finished speaking he drilled her again, "What happened to the refined and courtly young woman I knew four months ago? I can't process the imagery of you tangling yourself up with him...even hearing you speak his first name makes me nauseated."

Audette ground her teeth, having reached her limit, "Now that's quite enough vilification from you. For all you know I genuinely fancy him. Say, while we're busy beheading each other - what happened to the loving and devoted boyfriend that I knew four months ago, who left me without warning and feels entitled to stride right back into my life and berate me as a total stranger?"

Theo flared his eyes at her, ostensibly caught on only the first portion of her response, "Fancy him? You would stoop so low in standards to fancy Malfoy? He's a hollow man, Audette. I hope you're prepared for a life of empty promises, trivial conversation, infidelity and inattentiveness. Forget I offered you extended protection while you transition from rose to thorn. I'm finished defending you."

She inhaled and exhaled in jagged, injured spurts, her heart melting into a puddle in her thoracic cavity, "You've brainwashed me to think that of him for years, haven't you?"

Theodore narrowed his eyes, "I know him better than you do. He has reason to target you - he and I are newly at odds, if that clarification will drive my point home. He'll never love you, Audette."

"And can you really say you did? Do I detect jealousy?" Audette said it out loud finally, her chin trembling.

Theo's jaw moved back and forth as one of his ringed hands closed around her chin and dragged her so closed they were practically kissing as he spoke, "If I wanted you back, I'd take you back. Don't hold your breath." He pushed her away gruffly and was gone, marching in perfectly square strides down the stairs she'd just left behind.

Audette boiled with rage like a forgotten cauldron over a fireplace, tears flowing down her cheeks as she hung her hair back against the wall.

"I hate you!" she screamed down the passage to his retreating back with such agony that people in her vicinity quickly scurried around her.

Maybe it was time to stop dating lousy, militant Slytherin men.

Theodore was authentically convinced that he could take her back when he wanted to - if he ever wanted to - as if she was a pathetic toy he'd put up in a pawn shop to come back for later. As if Draco Malfoy could never compete with him for her affections. As if she had no defenses or mind of her own.

If he thought she was some form of Harley Quinn, then he had another thing coming.

And the endless insults. The name calling.

Spanning four years of dating they had never spoken so viciously to one another. It was a fight that outlay any prior arguments. They were lost to each other; Theodore was right, they didn't know each other at all anymore.