Scorpius. Ravenclaw common room. Not words I would've stitched together.
I was skipping when I led him into the common room. It didn't feel like breaking the rules (of society or school). It felt right. Scorpius belonged here, swollen nose or not.
The common room wasn't as crowded as it was five days a week. Most Ravenclaw's tended to chill in the library or outside during the weekend.
I turned to Scorpius half expecting him to make some remark about the bronze and blue interior but instead, I found him scanning the common room taking in every detail like it was an open book.
"What do you think?" I asked interrupting his thoughts.
"It's nice. Much nicer than the Slytherin common room," he said, a grin stretched across his face.
"Finally," Abby jumped up from her armchair and hurried over to us. "I heard about Scorp's little accident."
"Abby, this is Scorpius undercover." I stood on my tip-toes and pushed a stray hair back into place.
"No way," Abby said.
"Yes, way," Scorpius and I said in sync.
"Scorpius, we're twins!" Abby shrieked holding up a lock of her brunette hair to Scorpius' hair. It freakishly matched Scorpius' new do.
"Will you all get up here?!" Lily's voice rang out from the entrance to the boy's dorm. "We're wasting time. Not only do I have Rose to transform I've got do Abby as well."
"I said nothing about transforming!" Abby marched over to the stairs shaking her fist. "I only wanted to know if your cherry lipgloss tastes like a real cherry."
I looked up at Scorpius his silver eyes started to look a bit wary. I slipped my hand into his giving it a squeeze.
"It's less of a drama than I thought it would be," I said looking around the common room. No one was the wiser to who I was actually holding hands with. They were all too busy with games, books and Abby's argument with Lily at the bottom of the stairs.
Scorpius smirked, "I'm disappointed. I was looking forward to the pitchforks and wands. What does Lily mean by transforming you?"
I batted my eyelashes furiously at him and said in my most whispery voice, "Lily's going to make me pretty for Valentines tomorrow."
Scorpius laughed.
"What?" I asked putting my hands on my hips. "You think I can't be pretty and… pink."
"You're already pretty enough. If you got any prettier I think my world would explode but pink, sparkly things aren't something I can picture you in."
I couldn't picture myself in pink sparkles. I don't think I ever wore pink sparkles in my life. My parents were never big on style, the rule in my family was to wear what was practical and comfortable, no fuss or hassle involved. Surprisingly none of those clothes happened to be pink. All of a sudden I was overrun with the desire to prove him wrong. I can wear pink sparkly things just as well as Percilla Goyle and every other girl in the castle. I'll make them drop to the floor with my pink glow and Scorpius' world explode.
"Get a plate ready 'cause you're about to eat your words," I announced leading him forward. I was more enthusiastic than ever to get my sparkle on.
"As long as you don't go around whining afterwards." He replied.
"Whining? When have I ever whined?"
"When have you ever not whined? That's a better question."
I had never been inside the boy's dorm before it looked almost identical to the girls but didn't smell like apple flavoured shampoo. Kenny's surprising knowledge when it came to fashion and trends was enough to make him Lily's new best friend. Lily had set up her 'equipment' in the boy's dorm so he could act as her assistant. That pesky slip and slide charm when a boy stepped foot on the girl's dorm staircase still stood making the empty boy's dorm our headquarters.
"Ew!" Abby exclaimed jumping from the bed she was kneeling next to.
"Abby, stop looking through people's things," Kenny scolded. He had kicked his trunk under his bed out of sight less than a minute before her yelp.
Abby ignored him and ducked back down again, "Rose, cover your eyes, it will destroy your innocence."
Scorpius clapped his hands over my eyes.
"What innocence?" I said swatting Scorpius' hands away getting into a petty slapping war with him. "I'm the one with the boyfriend if you've forgotten."
Abby pulled out a box covered tiny blue teddy bears wearing Santa hats from under the bed. Its lid was nowhere in sight.
"You and Scorpius are very old fashioned."
"Old fashioned?" I repeated.
Abby's head popped up again from behind the bed.
"I doubt you two do anything besides hand holding."
Scorpius replied, "That's because we believe in a thing called privacy. What's so ew?" He got up to investigate. He moved over to Abby and her mysterious box.
Scorpius and Abby burst out laughing.
Lily stood alongside her many bottles and tubes of makeup organised by size on Kenny's bed. They were like an army. She frowned at the laughter, "Can we please take this seriously!?"
"It says… property of ERIC LONGFORD!" Abby cackled falling to the floor barely able to get the words out between laughs.
I moved in hurrying across the floor.
"No, Rose!" Scorpius stopped put out a hand to stop me. "It's absolutely disgusting."
Abby laughed harder at this.
By then Kenny had abandoned his job reorganising the high tech looking hairbrushes and was standing beside me on the other side of the bed to Abby and Scorpius unaware what in Merlin's name they were so secretly crouched on the floor looking at.
Lily sighed, "Will everyone please stop behaving like five-year-olds? You'll get lines on your faces from all that expression pulling."
"Let me see," I said clambering across Eric Longford's bed to get a look at the box pulled out below. "OH, MY MERLIN!" I shrieked hanging upside down from the bed to get the best view possible, all my blood rushing to my head.
"What?" Kenny called. Kenny had found sense and rejoined Lily sorting through makeup. "Describe!"
"Vaguely if it's truly disgusting," Lily added.
What was in the box wasn't what I expected. No wigs or magic hats, just pages and pages of cut-outs from magazines stuck onto parchment. Longford was a scrapbooker. I didn't think a dick like him could appreciate such a fine art. Crammed in beside the pages was a half full cream coloured perfume bottle with an even creamier coloured liquid inside.
"This is strange. I'm scared to guess what all of this is for." I called back. "It's just photos and a bottle of something, possibly milk."
Abby picked up the bottle and examined it, her mouth dropped open, "Oh my god, it looks like freaking expensive perfume. What kind of milk are you drinking?"
Scorpius said, "That's because it is 'freaking expensive perfume'. Made in the dessert by goblins over a course of a hundred years."
"How do you suddenly know all this?" I raised my eyebrows.
"Jesus, Rose," Abby said reading the back of the bottle. "He's pureblood. How could you forget? He drinks this stuff."
"Perfume is not drinkable." Kenny voiced. "It's toxic."
"I basically drink it, my mother soaks in it every day," Scorpius wrinkled his nose. "She doesn't shut up about how good it is. You can smell her coming from miles."
Abby sprayed it onto her wrist, inhaled and coughed, "Smells like a fancy skunk."
Merlin, it was powerful. I could feel it creeping up my nostrils and down my throat. Lily had appeared behind Scorpius with her hands on her hips.
Lily said in a business-like tone,"Witch Weekly rated 'Gairdín Álainn'-"
"What's that?" Abby asked shaking the slender bottle. She watched bubbles float to the top of the bottle and fizz.
"The perfume. Witch Weekly gave it 4.9 stars out of five. They never give anything above a 4.5 that perfume made history. Abby, it's not some fancy skunk and it's not milk." Lily looked pointedly at me.
"I'm stealing it then," Abby announced giving the bottle another shake.
"Do you really need to steal Longford's perfume?" I asked like the goody two-shoes I am. My thought process was: that perfume is the enemy, it'll stink out the dorm. I'd never sleep at night with that smell hanging in the air.
"When you put it that way it sounds like such a fun crime to commit!"
Lily ended it by marching over to Abby and pulling the bottle from her claws. She looked over the bottle herself and sighed, "I'm saving for one of these, but I guess it will have to wait." She tucked it back into the box next to the scrapbooking and she pulled a face, "No taste here. These are the unfortunate half cloak trend of 2016. Someone, please burn this once we're done with our Hogsmeade preparations."
Lily kicked the box back under the bed gracefully with the heel of her pointed shoe.
"Makeup time," she grinned pulling me up and leading me to the other side of the room. "I'm delighted you brought Scorp now we can find out what he likes."
"It's up to me," I stated.
"I feel so important and loved," Scorpius waved at me.
"It is, but in my experience boys have vivid imaginations. They tend to imagine girls in all sorts of different clothing. It usually works when they're not exaggerating." Lily lectured with ease. She was a pro when it came to this stuff.
Scorpius joined me, "What's the point in doing this now? Hogsmeade is tomorrow."
Lily laughed, "Trial run. We have to rehearse for Valentines. Practice makes Aurors."
"Doesn't make sense to me," Abby added in her sing-song tone now rooting through Longford's trunk.
Lily called back, "It works that's all you need to know."
Lily got to work straight away pulling out her list. I frowned at the length of it.
"So no big reveal tomorrow?" Scorpius asked. "No surprise."
"We're not getting married," I replied trying to downplay the possible disaster this could turn out to be. No need to raise expectations. I rolled my eyes at my vanity blooming. I wasn't a girl like in Lily's Witch Weeklys, I was here to prove that I could be pretty in pink and to accomplish that I had to look remotely good in a bright colour. Easy, right?
Abby yelled, "BEGS MAID OF HONOR AND GODMOTHER TO THE CHILDREN!"
"The children part is bringing up my breakfast." Scorpius shook his head.
"Yeah," I agreed. "A mini versions of us running around would do the world no good. But a mini-Rose with your hair and teeth..."
"No, no and no."
Lily raised an eyebrow, "I'm the maid of honour and the godmother. No 'begs' is going to change that. I brought them together. I was the one that helped Rose realise she was in love with Scorp."
I poked Scorpius' shoulder teasingly when I saw a red spot of blush on his cheeks growing by the second.
"We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. Okay, first things first the hair."
"Good luck. You're never going to make this straight."
"Be positive," Scorpius said.
"If this doesn't work can I be the maid of honour, godmother and an aunt?" Abby grinned from Longford's bed.
"Abby, we've never talked about getting married," I said.
"Or having children," Scorpius added and chewed his lip at the thought.
"Aww," Abby cooed. "You'd have the world's most adorable strawberry blonde haired children. Even me and Kenny have talked about what our children would look like."
Kenny looked repulsed, "You talked about it. I didn't. There's no 'we'."
"Right!" Lily interrupted. "Rose, I won't be making your hair straight I'll make it wavy."
"How?"
"This deep intense untangler potion along with my favourite hair solution potion."
"Sounds painful," Scorpius grinned. He gave me a pat on the back for encouragement. "Do it for mini-Rosie."
Lily smirked, "You'll be calling all your children Lily Jr after you see my success."
"Have you decided on names?" Abby beamed. "Kenny and I have named all our fictional children after Disney princesses. Ariel, Jasmine, Aurora, Elsa, Anna and Meredith. Oh and one boy Rex, 'cause it's a dying name. "
"Muggle references, I'm guessing," Scorpius said confused. "But a lot of children."
Kenny shook his head, "I feel overwhelmed even though it's fictitious."
"How do you think I feel? My body's destroyed!" Abby moaned
"To the bathroom," Lily said untieing my hair while Scorpius pretended to faint at the sight of my uncensored curls. She added to Kenny, "I'm guessing it's clean"
Kenny chuckled, "I think the house elves came this morning."
"So we'll find out for ourselves," Lily said gathering a few bottles and cradling them in her arms.
"Scorpius, stay here," I warned.
"Why?" He asked pulling at a strand my hair.
I raised an eyebrow, "There will be an explosion. A girl explosion."
"Sounds fun." He laughed.
"Rose," Lily called, already inside the bathroom. "Hurry up!"
"Coming!" I called back. "Put the ice pack on your nose it's swelling a bit."
"Want to kiss it better?" He said low enough so only I could hear.
I giggled and teasingly pushed him, "Maybe later... What have we become?"
"I don't know but I like it."
And I hurried into the bathroom where Lily was waiting.
Lily was humming with a smile stretched across her face, so big I could see nearly all her teeth. She was applying her final touches. I wasn't allowed to turn around to look in the mirror or touch (scratch that, I wasn't allowed to touch at all) until she was done. My hair did feel lighter and it didn't feel scratchy or bulky against my face so I supposed that was something good.
"We'll give it a bit more volume tomorrow. It literally takes forever to brush out but it's worth it. You look like a shiny new galleon. Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione will have to look twice to recognise you."
"Less chance of getting caught then," I said reaching up to pat my hair, Lily swatted my hand away.
"Look but don't touch. The same goes for your very touchy feely boyfriend." Lily scolded. "Treat it like a new book, you don't want to break the spine, do you?"
"You know me well, Lily. Can I see now?" I pleaded, desperate to see my reflection.
Lily works miracles. She brought me and Scorpius together after all. I tried to picture what I would look like with wavy straightish hair but I couldn't. I never had hair like that even though as long as I could remember I've always wanted hair I could flip in the wind. The kind that would sparkle and shine in light drawing all the eyes in the rooms to it for the right oh-my-merlin reasons. I've always put books and quidditch hating first, but that didn't mean I didn't have space in the back of my mind to dream of looking like girls like Lily.
"Yes," Lily said. "But don't faint. I can always try something else if you don't like it."
I spun around so fast it took a second for my vision to focus on the girl in the mirror. At first, I thought it was someone else standing behind or in the way but my face was still the same. A dead giveaway. My hair was no longer an 'it'. My hair was unmistakably hair. Still a vibrant red but straighter with waves that measured up and made my hair longer. It shined in the light of the boy's dorm bathroom and, for once, framed my face. My hair was on my side and I was loving how light and fresh I was feeling.
"Well?" Lily asked watching me with a knowing expression.
I realised I hadn't spoken. I was speechless by my hair! This wasn't the usual Rose Weasley and definitely not what I expected. I owed it all to Lily. She was truly magical.
"Thank you!" I said over and over each time louder than the last.
"Stop thanking me!" Lily finally said. "We have to show the school and the entire magical population! I'm going to take a picture and send it to Witch Weekly. They'll definitely make you front cover. Talia Abbot eat your heart out."
I flushed in excitement and shook out all my limbs.
"Now I believe," Lily whispered to me. "That an unexpected entrance is the best entrance of all. Ignore Abby's fireworks and dragon crap. Classy and elegant is the way to go. Less is more-"
"Lily, if I don't do this now I don't think I'll ever come out of this bathroom."
"Yes, use your nerves and adrenaline to make you glow. Follow me." Lily with a spring in her step opened the bathroom door. Three voices from outside filled my ears. They were talking about the most important thing in the world.
"The Ravenclaw team captain couldn't stop talking about my smack down throw! That's going to be my ticket onto the team."
"What about your actual playing?"
"I've practised my butt off. Kenny, tell him. I flew circles around you last time."
"Technically you did fly in circles around me."
"You fly, Kenny?"
"Kind of. I guess it's fun Abby forces me up there. Prefer the ground though."
Lily trotted in and I followed. Scorpius was the to first notice me from his position on the floor petting Pumpkin who was snuggling next to him curled in a ball purring, his orange eyes shut.
"Rose?" He spluttered, jumping up. He almost stepped on Pumpkin's tail. Pumpkin hissed at the close call and Scorpius ignored him.
"Who do you think?" I smiled trying to keep elegant and classy like Lily said. His hair had faded back to its usual blonde colour.
Abby stood up as well from her spot on one of the beds with Kenny and started clapping enthusiastically. Her eyes were brimming with pride like a proud parent. Kenny gave me a thumbs up.
"You..." he grinned coming over to me. He immediately reached out to touch my new-do. Lily instantly swatted away his hand.
"She's not a dog," Lily butted in on our moment. "Look don't touch."
"That's going to be hard," Scorpius said withdrawing his hand like a wounded animal.
"Better?" I asked.
"I like it both ways." He replied.
"Awwww! It's so cute!" Abby's squealed.
"Well, you don't usually hound me when I enter the room, Scorpie," I said. I couldn't help but grin.
Scorpius suddenly became very fascinated with the floor, "Because this is new and different."
"Translation: you're gorgeous." Lily beamed skipping past us to her makeup kit.
"Exactly," Scorpius agreed, wrapping his arm around my waist.
"Abby's next." Kenny laughed.
Abby crossed her arms, "No way, you're next. Lily will make you look like a young Zac Efron."
