Year 7: Meant to Be
Chapter 69: May 2018
Once May hit, the seventh years discovered that they were quickly losing their minds. There was so much to study, so much to remember, and so little time to do it in. Everyone was on edge, and most everyone was close to their breaking point.
This was especially noticeable in the dormitories. Victoire specifically had noticed that tensions between her dormmates had risen exponentially since the start of their final term, and even more so now that they were closing in on their N.E.W.T.s. Of course, Caitlin and Brianna had always had their issues, but their confrontations were becoming more and more numerous and harder to diffuse. Altercations had also started rising up between the rest of them, even Kara resulting to raising her voice once or twice.
Finally, one night nearing the end of the month, the situation finally came to a head. It was late, and all the girls had been studying down in the common room until the wee hours of the morning. Caitlin had been upstairs for about fifteen minutes when Victoire, Kara, and Brianna packed up their notes and decided to call it a night.
Weary and ready to sleep, the three girls trudged up the stairs, eager just to fall straight into bed. Victoire didn't even have any intention of brushing her hair or teeth before collapsing, that was how tired she was.
They entered the dormitory to find Caitlin climbing into bed herself. She was just pulling the curtains of her four-poster closed when Brianna let out a frustrated growl and rounded on her.
"How many times do we have to tell you?" she demanded at a near yell. "Put your damn laundry down the laundry chute!"
It was an old argument. One that the girls had addressed with the help of Professor Longbottom a long time ago. Caitlin had been pretty good about putting her laundry where it belonged since then, save for the occasional messy day, but as N.E.W.T.s approached, it seemed her messy tendencies had been rearing their ugly heads again. And Brianna was fed up.
"Forgive me for not having the energy to walk all the way over to the bathroom with them," Caitlin groaned from her bed. "I'll take care of them in the morning."
"You can take care of them right now!" Brianna all but screeched. "They're practically touching my trunk."
"Just kick them under my bed if you don't want them near your stuff," Caitlin said, the exhaustion apparent in her voice. "It's not the end of the world."
It was right about then that Victoire saw a shift in Brianna. The girl snapped, lunging at Caitlin and ripping the covers off her bed, exposing her to the air.
"What was that for?" Caitlin demanded, jumping up in anger. Whatever tiredness she'd been feeling, it was all pushed aside as she filled with adrenaline, ready to fight.
"Call it motivation," Brianna declared, tossing the covers to the side. "Now that you're up, you can take care of your smelly laundry."
"You do not want to start this," Caitlin warned, moving to the offensive.
"I think I already have," Brianna pointed out sarcastically.
"Well, if you want to talk about people leaving their things lying around all over the dorm, then maybe you should take a look in the mirror," Caitlin accused.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Brianna demanded, hands on her hips.
"I think you know exactly what I mean," Caitlin declared. "You leave your clothes all over the place, and your trunk is always a mess. So maybe before you start accusing other people of things, you should look at your own behavior."
"I'm not leaving my clothes lying around the dorm on purpose," Brianna cried. "It's that kneazle that's always getting into my trunk and messing things up and strewing my stuff all around the room. So, if you want to get mad at someone, it's Raina you should be talking to."
Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Raina chose to step into the dorm, pausing in the doorway to take in the scene.
"Talk to me about what?" Raina frowned, not immediately picking up the tone of the situation.
Brianna immediately rounded on Raina.
"Your kneazle," she spat. "Ever since you got him, he's targeted me. It's only my clothes he likes to pee on, only my trunk he likes to rifle through, only my notes he likes to destroy. Why is that, do you think?"
Raina shrugged, clearly confused as to why this was being brought up now. It had been years that Ricky had been living in their dormitory and he and Brianna had (mostly) made peace. "Maybe he just likes your smell?" she suggested.
"And whose fault is that?" Brianna demanded angrily.
Even more confused by this newest comment, Raina looked to Victoire and Kara for some context, but neither could offer any. They had no idea why Brianna had chosen this particular night to lose it, nor where she was going with her numerous accusations.
"Well think about it," Brianna insisted. "Maybe if his owner smelled a little better, he'd prefer to spend his time in your trunk, and with your clothes instead of mine."
"Maybe if you kept your trunk locked, he wouldn't be able to get into your stuff," Raina retorted.
"Maybe if you kept him locked up, he wouldn't be able to get into anyone's stuff," Brianna threw back.
Stepping further into the room, Raina's face changed. It seemed that she too had been pushed over the edge.
"Ricky is a living creature who needs to be free to roam about and do as he pleases. How would you like it if we locked you up in a cage?" she demanded.
"Ricky is a kneazle. I'm a person," Brianna pointed out. "Animals deserve to be put in cages."
"Just like you think animals should be de-clawed?" Raina challenged.
This threw Brianna off for a moment. "What?" she frowned, puzzled.
"I know about the research you were doing back in second year, looking for a spell to declaw poor little Ricky. Thankfully, I saw the book that would have given you the correct spell on your nightstand and returned it to the library for you before you got a chance to read it. Declawing animals is cruel," Raina declared.
"You went through my stuff?" Brianna screeched angrily.
"Oh calm down, I took one book, and it wasn't even yours, and I got it back to the library way before it was due," Raina waved a hand in front of her, indicating that she didn't think this particular issue was important.
"You invaded my personal space!" Brianna screamed. "You stole from me!" She rounded on Victoire then, and Victoire opened her eyes wide, like a deer in the headlights. "Victoire, you're Head Girl. Discipline her."
While Victoire stammered out an excuse for why she wasn't going to punish Raina for an action she'd undertaken over five years ago, she heard Caitlin scoff derisively.
"Sorry, what was that?" Victoire asked, narrowing her eyes in Caitlin's direction.
"Oh nothing," Caitlin said, holding up her hands innocently.
"No, you clearly have something you want to say," Victoire insisted, not in the mood for games.
"Well if you insist," Caitlin conceded. "I was just laughing because your position as Head Girl is so comical to me."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Victoire demanded angrily.
"Just that after everything that happened last year, you really shouldn't even be a prefect, let alone Head Girl," Caitlin replied.
"What I went through last year is none of your business," Victoire shouted, tears springing to her eyes. How dare Caitlin bring that up now? It had taken Victoire a long time to heal after what had happened that Christmas, and yes, she'd slacked on some of her prefect duties, but she was proud of how far she'd come since then, and she knew that part of the reason she'd been appointed to Head Girl was that the teachers had also seen the change in her and the complete shift in priorities that the whole experience had provided her with.
"I beg to differ," Caitlin insisted. "You made it our business when you spent a month moping around the dorm, practically refusing to leave even for class. Life happens. Bad things happen, but the rest of us don't just shut down like that. We move forward."
"I dealt with what I needed to deal with, and I got through," Victoire defended herself, now full on crying. "But if you want to talk about not dealing with things in healthy ways, then maybe we should talk about how you handled not making the Quidditch team back in third year. You moped around for days, going on about how you were a failure and would never amount to anything. You still had four more years to make the team for Merlin's sake. And you did!"
"Well I didn't know I would at the time, now did I?" Caitlin demanded. "And besides, I moped around for a couple of days. You moped for weeks!"
"At least I showered," Victoire retorted.
"I shower!" Caitlin threw back.
At this point, Brianna jumped back into the fray.
"Not as often as you should," she declared. "As a Quidditch player, you should really be showering multiple times a day."
"Now that's just excessive," Caitlin insisted. "Once a day is enough. You only shower once a day."
"But I don't spend half my day flying around the Quidditch pitch and running laps around the castle," Brianna retorted. "And if you're only going to shower once a day, then for Merlin's sake why wouldn't it be after you've done your physical activity?"
"I like to shower in the morning," Caitlin crossed her arms. "It's part of my routine."
"Well you stink up the dorm," Brianna declared. "And it's disgusting."
"You're one to talk about stinking up the dorm," Caitlin threw back.
"Excuse me?" Brianna demanded, clearly offended at the thought that Caitlin of all people had a problem with her smell.
"All that nail polish and do you ever think to open a window?" Caitlin demanded.
"Sometimes it's too cold to open a window," Victoire insisted. "We'd all be freezing, and then you'd be complaining about that."
"If it's too cold to open a window, then it's too cold to paint your nails," Caitlin insisted. "I don't need to be up half the night unable to get the stench of chemicals out of my nose."
"It really is a strong smell," Raina agreed with Caitlin. "It gives me a headache."
"You really want to talk about bad smells?" Brianna demanded, rounding on Raina again. "Because I think your fertilizer wins for smelliest thing in the dorm by a long shot."
"I haven't kept my fertilizer in the dorm since Professor Longbottom gave me a workspace in the greenhouses first year!" Raina cried. "So, don't go yelling at me about smells."
"The fertilizer may not be here in person, but the smell comes in on your clothes," Brianna insisted. "It's disgusting."
"Did you just call my fertilizer disgusting?" Raina demanded.
"Yeah, I did," Brianna confirmed. "As it's a fertilizer."
"My fertilizer is not disgusting, it's revolutionary," Raina defended.
"Revolutionary. Ha! I bet it doesn't even work. You just needed something to occupy yourself to distract yourself from the fact that you don't have any friends here," Brianna said meanly.
Tears pooled in Raina's eyes and her expression hardened.
"I don't have to defend myself or my fertilizer to you. At least my father didn't go away to jail for five years," Raina screamed.
"That is none of your business," Brianna said, her voice getting dangerously quiet.
"Is it true he killed someone?" Raina demanded.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Brianna insisted.
Trying to step in before the situation got completely out of control, Kara held out her hands, as if to try to calm the girls. "Alright, we've all said a lot of things tonight, but I think we should just – "
"Oh, and don't even get me started on you," Raina spun around so that she was facing the least confrontational of the group. "Always pretending to be the better person. You're just as bad as the rest of them. You never tried to be my friend either. You left me out just like they did, and now you act like you're the peacemaker?"
"I'm just trying to – "
"What about the time you fell out of bed?" Raina demanded. "What was that about? Or were you just looking for attention?"
"Hey! That's none of your business!" Kara insisted.
Victoire, feeling protective of her non-confrontational friend, and upset that Raina would throw her medical emergency back in her face like that, rounded on Raina.
"What about the time you let a Shrivelfig attack us all in our sleep?" she demanded.
"What about the time you accused Ricky of destroying your stuffed bear?" Raina threw back.
"He did destroy my bear," Victoire cried.
"Well it looks fine now," Raina raged, pointing at L'Ourson laying against the pillows on Victoire's bed.
"Because Teddy mended him for me," Victoire returned. "What about the time you added your fertilizer to our potion and destroyed my cauldron?"
"I paid to replace that!" Raina insisted. "And you still got a good grade on the assignment."
"I had to do an extra assignment to get that grade," Victoire cried.
"What about the time Caitlin knocked over my Chizpurfle and it got loose in the room?" Brianna jumped into the fray.
"I wouldn't have had anything to knock over if you hadn't been stupid enough to take Care of Magical Creatures as an elective," Caitlin defended.
"Well I guess that's not going to be a problem anymore, because in a few weeks I won't be here anymore," Brianna shouted back.
All of a sudden, a strange and eerie silence fell over the entire dorm. Nobody had a comeback, nobody had an accusation to level, nobody seemed to have anything to say at all for a time.
Then, slowly and softly, Kara stepped forward, a sad expression on her face.
"Guys… this is it," she said. "This is the end. The year's almost over. Soon – soon none of us will be here anymore."
"I'll be off training with the Holyhead Harpies," Caitlin said.
"You made the team?" Victoire asked, feeling strange. Moments ago she'd been yelling and screaming at her roommates, and suddenly she was feeling incredibly sad at the thought that they were so close to going their separate ways.
"I'm waiting to hear back," Caitlin replied. "But I think I have a good shot."
"I'm going to start my own business," Raina spoke up. "Selling my fertilizer. I've already got some buyers interested."
"I got that internship at the Wizarding Wireless Network," Brianna announced.
"I've decided that I want to work with small children," Kara declared. "So I've applied to a few different programs and facilities."
"I've got a few applications in to work at different greenhouses," Victoire informed the room. "I'm going to be doing research and further study into herbology."
"We're all going to be moving on soon," Raina said sadly. "I can't believe we're not going to be living together anymore."
Victoire shared Raina's sentiments. After seven years of living with these girls, in this room in Gryffindor Tower, Victoire couldn't even imagine being without them. Sure, Brianna and Caitlin's constant arguments drove her crazy, and Ricky's presence had always been a little annoying. But despite everything she hated about living with Caitlin, Raina, Brianna, and Kara, she was going to miss them like crazy.
"All this arguing is so stupid," Victoire said. "We have barely over a month left and we're arguing about some laundry on the floor."
"It wasn't just some laundry on the floor, it was – " Victoire shot Brianna a look, and Brianna softened. "Sorry. You're right Victoire."
"I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think I'm actually going to miss you all," Caitlin declared.
"You guys were such an important part of my time here," Raina said. "We may never have been friends, but in a way… aren't we all kind of like sisters?"
There was a moment where nobody responded to that, but then Caitlin started to nod, and the rest of them followed suit.
"All these arguments we've had over the years," Kara spoke, "they've been numerous, and some have been vicious. Let's promise that tonight was our last one. Let's spend this last month as friends. Real friends."
"I'd like that," Raina smiled, her eyes watering.
"I'd like that too," Victoire agreed.
The three girls turned to look at Caitlin and Brianna. It all came down to the two of them. If they couldn't get along with each other, then there was no point to this pact at all.
Victoire was almost about to give up on Brianna, figuring that a cease-fire was too much to ask of her. But then she nodded her head in agreement, and to everyone's surprise, she stepped toward Caitlin and extended her hand.
"Friends?" Brianna asked, holding her hand expectantly in the air between them.
Caitlin looked down at the offered hand for a moment, and then grasped it tightly. Victoire could have sworn she saw a tear in the corner of the girl's eye.
"Friends," Caitlin agreed.
