“I was just going back to my dormitory and I was going to look over the transfiguration,”

“Oh, don’t remind me,” he muttered. It was ridiculous the way McGonagall piled on the homework. Like they had nothing better to do than sit around and contemplate theoretical transfiguration? That was what Nigel did with all of his spare time. He actually pitied Lindsay and all the other non-Gryffindors in that class. It was probably not true, as Professor McG was too professional to actually do it, but he often felt that she took out her frustration with the sixth year boys of her own house in the form of long, complicated assignments. That was what he would do, if he were a professor. He’d give them impossible homework and then read out their wrong answers in front of the class. It was probably a good thing that he wasn’t planning on becoming a teacher.

“Oh, sorry. I just, um... I wanted to make sure,”

Nigel raised his eyebrows. “Why should I be avoiding you? You never did anything to me… unless we count that touching thing a few years ago, but you’ve made marvelous progress since then,” he added, encouragingly. He did notice her restraint, and he appreciated it. Most people didn’t bother thinking about whether or not he would want to be touched. At least Lindsay did. That was nice, but it also bothered him. She seemed to be the exact opposite of everyone else in their social group. Most of them were loud and brash and didn’t care about anyone else; if what they were or did bothered someone, then that someone could just bugger off and leave them alone. However, Lindsay was different. From what he could tell, she cared a great deal about what people wanted, and whether or not her actions would contradict those wants.

Actually, he didn’t know how she and Pete got together. They seemed like a very unlikely couple. If he and she were better friends, he might be concerned that Pete was walking all over her and taking advantage and stuff, and she was just going along because she thought that would make him happy, or whatever. However, as they were (in his opinion) only mild acquaintances, he figured she could do what she wanted, and it was none of his business. At the moment. His interests changed with the wind, and they were often complex and incomprehensible to others. Just now, he was interested in some mindless chatter to take his focus off of his problems.

“Do you have, um... hunches sometimes?”

“You mean, like, premonitions?” Nigel didn’t really think much of Divination as a reliable practice; he had never taken the class, but he had witnessed housemates completing their assignments, and by that, he meant: they made stuff up at the last second and turned it in for full marks. He was not much impressed. “Not really. But some things you can see coming from a long way off.” He, also, was in the expect-the-worst-and-you’ll-never-be-surprised camp. It wasn’t as bad now as it used to be when he was younger. With the occasional relapse (such as now), he had shifted his thinking somewhat. He no longer believed that people were intrinsically bad and would ultimately betray him because it was in their nature to do so. No, now his theory was based on the Muggle theory of entropy, which he had stumbled upon through his latest stepfather.

He really didn’t understand it, but from what he could gather, the Muggles believed that in all the universe there was a certain amount of energy, and the total couldn’t be increased or decreased, but sections could fluctuate. If you took some energy from one place, you had to add it to a different place. That was the way it was with bad things. Some people attracted nothing evil at all, and their lives were carefree and happy-go-lucky, or whatever, and what problems they did have were piddly little issues that they might agonize over for like a week. But to make up for those sort of people, there were other people who got all the stored up bad things dumped on them all the time, forever. Unfortunately, Nigel was in the latter category, though he thought most people fell somewhere in between.

“Sometimes I do my numbers. If you do a really good arithmancy reading then you can sometimes find really good news in there… I can do yours for you one day, if, um, if you want me to,”

He had been so lost in his own thoughts that her sudden change in subject startled him. Arithmancy was another subject he did not take, and he really had no idea what it was all about. “Is that like palm reading?” he asked. “I don’t really believe in that, and I’m pretty sure there is no good news to be found about my future, but…” He shrugged. “If you want.” After all, what could it hurt? He didn’t think she could find anything worse than what he was expecting. “How long would it take?” he needed to ask. “And what all does it entail?” If it was anything weird, he was going to have to back out.