Chapter 24
"So what are you doing for Christmas holidays?" Rebby asked me. We, Rach, Rebby and I, had broken off from the guys and Becca, who said that if they did anymore shopping for the moment they would have to shoot themselves in the head then jump off a very large cliff while beating themselves over the head with a large rock.
Well, Becca said that, but the guys nodded in agreement and went off to the Three Broomsticks with her while the rest of us girls kept looking for dresses. Rebby and I didn't really want to be shopping either but, unlike Becca who had found the perfect dress instantly and bought it without a second thought of trying any others, we had yet to find the perfect dress, or any dress really, to wear to the ball. Rach on the other hand had found about a million, then found a million more in every shop we tried. Apparently she was having fun trying on dress after dress after dress. Quite unusual; she never liked shopping either.
"I'm not sure really. I'm supposed to be going home to see my family, but I'd rather not, they're a pain in the buttocks. My mother and Father and always running around saying 'my baby girl is so special, my baby girl is so brilliant' to their neighbors and friends and business associates and telling them how I go to this school for gifted children, child prodigies if you will, hidden away in northern Britain. When I'm alone with them they treat me like a third shoe, useless because there's only two feet. My sister does nothing but scowl at me when my parents blather on about how brilliant I am and ignore me when they aren't unless some sudden wind of kindness crosses her and then she tries to be nice, but we have nothing to talk about that doesn't make her angry or jealous or envious or make me the same." I shook my head in disappointment. "Honestly, spending time with my family is the last thing I would call a vacation or a holiday. How about you?" I asked Rebby back, holding up a purple dress I had found to see if she approved of it.
"Oh, I'm off to see my parents as well, all four of them." she gave me the 'it's okay' sign with her hand, flattening her hand horizontally, palm facing down, and rocking it back and forth as if to say 'either or'. "Becca's parents are like my own, I've known them for so long, so I'll be going to visit hers first with her, then she'll be coming with me to see mine."
"Well that's fun, it's always good to see someone with a proper family." Rach walked up behind me while I spoke.
"How about this one?" she asked, holding up a blue dress "or this one, or this? Maybe this one?" she held out about six or seven other dresses of varying colors.
"Um, Rach, what gives? Why are you so Pro-shopping today?"
"I don't know, just, in the mood I guess." she said, wiggling a yellow dress at Rebby only to receive a gagging gesture in response from her.
"Would this happen to have anything to do with one Remus J. Lupin?"
"It imight/i." she replied giving me a wink and running off to try on a couple of the dresses she had picked out.
"Well, that's interesting." I replied, smiling. But my smile only lasted until she turned away. After that, a frown stuck it's place on my face instead. I turned to Rebby and said "Remus needs to tell her, soon."
"Hm?" Rebby cocked an eyebrow at me, 'tell her what?' it said.
"He needs to tell her about his furry little secret, and soon."
"What for?"
"Didn't you see the look on her face? She doesn't just like him anymore, she's fully and completely smitten, head over heels in love, that girl is. He needs to tell her before she finds out he's been hiding it from her on her own and crash lands in a mine field."
"Oh." Rebby looked a tad depressed at this notion.
"I've got an idea. I'm going to go and find the guys and Becca, have a quick word with them, then pop back over and meet you all, and bring the guys with me. We'll meet you at the next store, I don't see anything I really like here anyways. Keep Rach busy while I'm gone, we don't want her suspecting anything now do we?"
"But, hey! How come I can't be the one to go and talk to him! Hey! Come back here! This isn't fair!" Rebby yelled out the door after me as I sprinted towards the tavern.
It only took me about ten minutes to get there, it was relatively close and I'm a relatively fast runner. I burst through the doors out of breath, dashed over to the table surrounded by a swarm of girls and shoved my way through them. Then I plopped down on James's lap and drank his entire glass of butterbeer before any of them had a chance to say 'hello, how do you do' or in James's case-
"Hey! I was going to drink that you know!"
"Yeah, well, you'll live." I turned to the swarm of girls trying to drag Sirius, Remus, and James off into dark corners to snog them senseless, or something to that extent, and got ready to say something to them that was going to be relatively scathing to get them to vamoose, but Becca got to it first.
"Scram you bunch of blood sucking sluts, I'm not in the mood." She growled, shoving her way through the mass of girls, not caring if she elbowed them in the face or stomach or 'accidentally' poked the one trying to physically removed Sirius from his seat in the eye. The girls all gave her the evil eye and glowered and mumbled at her, but she turned and gave them a stern glare and literally igrowled/i at them, a deep guttural growl that you'd hear from an extremely angry wild dog with rabies, and that was enough to make a few turn white and the entirety of them run away scared.
"You've learned well my young grass hopper." Sirius said, bowing at the waist to her, a difficult feat when one is sitting on a bar stool.
"She didn't learn that from you, she learned it from the pack of wolves she grew up with," I said, rolling my eyes "By which I mean her male cousins. But really, she's been doing that, growling at people that is, as long as I've known her. It's her thing. When she's angry, she either growls a bit and swallows it, just swallows it, or when she's truly pissed off she loses her temper and, well, you know what happens then." I said, eyeing Becca nervously. She'd been a bit touchy about her temper recently.
Sirius shuddered violently "Don't remind me. Never making her angry again in my life, let me tell you."
"So did you find a dress?" Becca asked, not showing any sign of hearing our previous conversation.
"Nope, took a short break to come over here and tell Remus that he needs to fess up to Rach soon before she starts hearing wedding bells and gets her heart ripped out when she finds out from someone else about his furry little problem." I gave him a stern glance. He paled a bit and nodded wearily. "Plus Rach has gone shopping crazy, for you may I add Remus, and it's driving me bonkers. She's actually having fun at it. I left Rebby with her all alone, but promised to return with reinforcements."
"Reinforcements?" James asked, looking at me over my shoulder "Is that all we are to you? Shopping reinforcements?"
"Right now, yes." I smiled at him, gave him a peck on the lips, then jumped off his lap and dragged him, Becca and Remus towards the door. "Take care of the bill, won't you Sirius?" I called over my shoulder. We all knew perfectly well that Sirius was filthy stinking rich and could handle it on his own. Besides, it was amusing to see him sitting there confused while the rest of us ran out of the store without him "Meet us at the little blue dress shop two lanes down, alright? Ta darling!" I yelled just as I ran through the door and down the street, the other three in front of me laughing as much as I was at Sirius's befuddled expression.
Ten minutes later Sirius found us at the dress store where Rach had finally decided on a dress and bought it and Becca had found some shoes and a cape. She had everything wrapped up in black plastic dress bags and refused to let any of the guys, especially Sirius, see it. Rebby found a dress at the next shop and I found one at the shop after that. With a second visit to a couple of the other shops we had gone in earlier we accumulated those little things that were needed to go with the dress, like shoes and capes and jewelry and such. Becca disappeared from our group at some point and came back with another black bag, though what was inside was a mystery to us since she refused to tell anyone what it was.
The guys had bought their dress robes or tuxedos or whatever earlier on their way to the Three Broomsticks apparently, so our shopping excursion was now complete. We decided to head back to the castle just as it started getting dark. The walk was long but made shorter by Sirius and James's lovely gift of butterbeer, a bottle for each of us, that they bought when we passed by the tavern and distributed as we walked. Though the butter beer wasn't enough to make any of us truly drunk or anything, it did make us all lighter of mood, the result being that by the time we reached the castle grounds we were all laughing like hyenas and nearly falling over ourselves. We walked up to the Gryffindor tower, still laughing, and inside the commons made plans to meet over by the window seat before the ball tomorrow. Then the girls and I ran up the stairs to figure out how we were going to do our hair and make last minute adjustments on our dresses.
"I'm a pretty pretty purple prince-princess!"
"Your dress is blue." Lily pointed out.
"Oh, so tis." I looked down at my dress and then, stretching out my arms, I spun round and round again, making the large skirt of my dress float out in the air and smack Lily in the face.
"Ow." she said glaring at me.
"Oops. Sorry bout that, my skirt's bigger than anticipated." I smiled at her cheekily.
"How very unfortunate for you." she replied, rolling her eyes.
"So what's in that bag? The little black one?" Rebby asked picking up the bag and pretending like she was going to look inside.
"Nothing!" Becca snatched the bag away from her and stuck it down the front of her dress.
"Anyone want to volunteer to go and get that from her?" Rebby asked the entire room.
"Um, no."
"Not really."
"How about... Not."
"Why don't you do it Rebby, she's your, what did you call it 'twin from another mother', you go and get it."
"Er... No thanks, I think I'll pass... Too easily misconstrued."
"Well then, if you're not going to make an attempt to get the bag from me, I'm going to go change back into my pajamas." I said, grabbing her night clothes and walking towards the bathroom.
"Me too, I'm tired." Lily said, yawning as she picked up her pajamas as well.
"Well, I think they're going to make us go to bed as well. So much for a fun night."
"Oh, shush, you're getting up early tomorrow anyways to help decorate." I said, coming back out of the bathroom in my p.j. Pants and baggy t-shirt.
"Um... We are?" asked Mickey, a puzzled look on her face.
"Well of course you are, because you're good friends." I nodded my head insolemn agreement with my statement.
"Er... Do we have to be good friends tomorrow? Can we be good friends for the clean up?" Win asked.
"Why?" I was curious now, usually they would just sort of sigh and agree.
"Well, you see, Win and I have an appointment to get our hair and makeup done tomorrow for the ball and so..." Mickey trailed off.
"Oh." What the? Since when do they two of them plan these things and not invite us along? Odd... "Well then, you get to do clean up I guess. Everyone else is helping decorate though!" I gave Rebby and Rach a glare that told them they had no possible way of escaping their fate, then hopped into bed. "Now, all of you, off to bed."
"Becca's right, it's bed time." Lily waved her wand at the ceiling and the lights all went out.
"Lights out!" I called.
There was a small chorus of indignant 'hey!'-s and 'lily!'-s, then a loud thump! and "Ow! You know a little warning, perhaps the lights out thing before the lights actually went out, would have been bloody nice!" Rebby growled. I heard her hop towards the bathroom and chuckled as I rolled over, put a pillow over my head, and drifted off to sleep.