Disclaimer: I owned none of the characters (JKR owned them), except for a few of them which is created by me.

Mask of Dawn, thank you so much. Actually, I am planning to make a bit of match-making between other HP characters and Eve's best friend... I could hear Bertha screaming to be, telling me keep out of this... but it's fun writing, so whatever, I AM going to write about them. Please let me know which one you want to read first --- Bertha or Miranda. Thanks!!!

Please read and review.

Never had a dream come true

Chapter 16 Meet the Friends

It was the morning after the ball. Everyone was tired, as it ended quite late last night, but everyone was excited, because it was time for them to go home for holiday.

As Eve's friends offered to pick them up at the King's Cross Station, Eve and Severus decided to go on Hogwarts Train to King's Cross Station. They got a compartment near the back of the train, away from the students.

"Eve, how are your friends like?" asked Severus, afte Eve had finished her breakfast. She woke up late and missed breakfast in the the Great Hall.

"Well, where should I start?" She sipped from the mug of hot chocolate Severus bought for her on the train, "Fayanna, I met her during secondary school. She is always the pratical and careful one among us. I doubted she planned the whole thing of meeting us here in London all by herself. She always had a way of making me go out with her on holidays, which you know I tended to sleep through holidays. By the way, she and her fiance, Ben, grew up together. She didn't tell us they were together, until Ben proposed to her, so you could imagine how shock we were. Afterwards she said she didn't want to make it official before he proposed to her, she didn't tell us."

She drank from her mug again.

"Bertha... sigh, sometimes I really doubt how we become best friends sometimes."

"Why?"

"I give you a clue, how would you deal with a female version of Remus?"

Severus didn't know what to answer.

"I know, well, the first time I saw Remus, his image is purely gentleman," Severus sneered at this, which Eve punched on his arm, "but in reality he is a troublemaker. Bertha is exactly the same. She looks like a fair lady, I mean from her looks, she is not the kind of person you would expect to shout and scream, but mind you, she screams, shouts and swears, and she has quite a colourful vocabulary on swearing in Cantonese, which we have no idea where she gets it from. She still blamed herself for what happened to me, for not figuring out what Pablo was up to, and she attempted to do a lot of stupid things on Pablo for revenge at that time. For two months, we had to keep an eye on her closely to make sure she didn't do anything stupid. Anyway, she is a really sweet girl, and an extremely loyal friend. I tell you what, she could be a live idol for Hufflepuff."

Severus laughed a bit for her last comment. "So, how about the last one? I think it's Miranda."

"Yes, well... Frankly, I am not quite sure how to describe her." Severus was shocked by what she said. "I am not kidding. Well, she is the most quiet one among us. She doesn't talk most, but everytime she does, would shock everyone of us, as it would be right to the point. She gives you advice on what to do if you ask for them, but she will not make you do according to her advice, unlike Fayanna. She is really really patient. She could sit and listening to her sister grumble to her on the phone for two hours, and still didn't lose her temper. I only see her lost her temper wih Betha, whenever Bertha wanted to swear. In some way, she is quite traditional too, well, me too, I would say. You know drinking is kind of common between people of our age, but she never drinks. None of us drink actually, I mean we have always seen drinking as a waste of money, just like smoking. I hate the smell of alcohol, Bertha and Fayanna are allergic to it, and guess why she doesn't drink? She said 'Good girls don't drink.' We just sat there and thought she was kidding."

Severus chuckled.

"Anyway, don't need to worry. I know you don't have much people you considered as friends, but you are definitely going to like them."

"I hope so."

**********************

They arrived on time, and Eve was looking for her friends on the platform. As there were so many people, it was quite difficult to look for people, and it seemed that Severus had better eyes than Eve. "Eve, there are three girls coming from the left towards us. Are they your friends?"

She looked at the direction Severus pointed at, and those three girls and a guy had already rushed towards Eve, and screamed and hugged her, and talking in a language he didn't understand. After they had calmed down, the girls finally noticed Severus.

"Eve, Who is he?" asked Fayanna.

Eve went over, holding his hand. "This is Severus, my... boyfriend."

"Thank goodness, you finally said that." Severus mumbled. Eve gave him an elbow.

"How do you do? I am Fayanna. This is my fiance Ben."

"I am Bertha."

"I am Miranda."

"So, we know each other now. Shall we go?"

*********************

"Where are we going, Eve?" Severus asked, sitting next to Eve in Bertha's car.

" We are going to the house we are stay for the next ten days, which was owned by the four of us." Answerd Eve.

"It is also the house we lived in when we were studying here." Added Miranda.

"Here we are!"

Severus and Ben helped with the luggages while the girls got out of the car. It was a really big house, with a big garden. "I can't believe that it is still the same when we graduated." Eve said.

"There are more surprises inside." said Fayanna, and the girls ran into the house with Severus and Ben coming behind.

"Severus. There is something I need to ask you. Well, actually, me and the girls wanted to ask you."

"And?"

"How much did you know about her past?"

"Everything."

"Including Pablo and Tom?"

"Yes."

"And you are serious with her?"

"I will marry her now if she is willing to."

"Thank God she finally gets the right guy." Ben mumbled.

"Are you all worried because she didn't tell you all I am her boyfriend before?"

"Yes, and also something is coming up and we need to make sure she gets a guy to plot a revenge for her behind her back."

"Huh?"

"Bertha's plan the most of it actually, but we need to keep Eve from knowing about the revenge part. We'll tell you later tonight, but we need to make sure she had gone to bed."

"She might sleep the whole day through. She had a really busy month, but I'll make sure she won't wake up until the next morning."

"By the way, give you some expectation. When I and Fayanna got together, the girls had a mini court trial on me and Fayanna. But I think you will go through easily, if you really mean you will marry her."

****************

It was nine o'clock at night, and Fayanna, Bertha, Miranda and Ben were in the living room watching television.

"Is she asleep?" asked Ben, who saw Severus coming down from upstairs, where the bedrooms were.

"Sound asleep. I gave her a sleeping potion, just in case. She really needs to rest after holding the disco." The he sat down on the sofa near the window.

Bertha switched off the television, and asked in amazed, "She arranged a disco? Playing the music?" The others looked at him like he was naked.

"Yes."

"Mr. Severus, you will be my idol from this day on." Bertha said.

"Don't be surprised by our reaction. We tried so hard to get her back to 'normal' for two long years, but you succeeded in four months." Miranda answered.

"I mean not just the disco thing, but she also starts taking photos again, and kni..." Bertha was disturbed by Miranda, whom gave her a signal --- say no more.

Severus looked amusingly at them, decided not to think about what Bertha was about to say, said with a small smile, "Because she has finally found her confidence back, and believe that there is someone who really loves her."

"You are serious." Miranda looked at him.

"I will marry her now if I can."

"You passed the trial." announced Bertha.

"Why do I feel like I am meeting the parents?" Severus said.

Ben laughed at this comment, and said, " Told you. You should have seen that time when it was my turn, it felt like I was about to be sentenced to death." Everyone laughed at the metaphor.

"Right, Ben told us that you knew about everything about Eve's past." Fayanna started.

"Yes."

"Now where should we start?" asked Fayanna.

"The revenge." Severus pointed out.

"Okay. The whole thing is because I have arranged to held the first alumni gathering sine our graduation, and I have also invited that son of a bi..."

"Bertha, LANGUAGE!" Miranda said. "I know you regretted for letting him hurt Eve... but please, mind your language!"

"Okay. I have invited everyone including Pablo, who is obviously going to attend the gathering with Jenny, Eve's cousin. So we are planning to have a little bit of revenge for Eve at the gathering, and now the problem is we don't know how to persuade her to go back to Hong Kong in Easter. If we tell her straight away that we wanted her to go to the gathering with us, she would suspect something would be happening, which is not a good idea, as she hated these gatherings even before the 'incident' had happened." Bertha sighed.

Severus said, "I can take care of that, but I might have to ask Lupin and Black for help then. Miranda, Bertha, have you got a boyfreind?"

Both of them shook their head, and Miranda asked, "Why?"

"This is my plan. Lupin is a colleague, and Black is his best mate. Well... Lupin is Eve's so-called-godbrother, and he knows about what happened to her from the headmaster, so he threatened me once that he would kill me if I hurt her like Pablo again. So the situation is, I could ask Lupin to do an act with me, in order to persuade Eve to go back to Hong Kong for Easter Holidays. But the thing is he will want to go to the gathering too, to witness the revenge. And, Black, he won't lose a chance to see me embarrassed or something like that. So, he would want to go too. As I know, only people related to the gradutes could go with them, so is it alright if I ask Lupin to be your boyfriend for one day, Miranda? And Black with Bertha?"

"That will be fine with me, as long as you can get Eve to be there on time."

"Why did you insisted me with... whoever that is? Black?" Bertha asked.

"Because you and Lupin both are too fiery, I think it would be better to have Miranda to keep an eye on Lupin. Black still owes me a favour. He could keep an eye on you from doing anything dangerous."

"Oh, okay, fine. That part is solved then. Frankly speaking, Severus, you are not really handsome, but you draw people's attention very easily, of course, the attractive way, if you are going to be there, you would attract all the attention. It would make him angry because he always thinks girls are all over him. He would be more angry, if he knew you are Eve's boyfriend. As for the revenge, our professor is going to do it. Mrs. Crew knew Pablo's dissertation was not his work, but she had got no way to prove it because she had no idea when she had kept her copy of the final draft of Eve's dissertation, which was handed into to her for final check-up. I still have kept contact with her, and last month, when the professor was clearing her stuff to prepare for retirement, she found the final draft that Eve had handed in to her. She was more than willing to come for the gathering, as she was invited too. She said she would bring the draft and the one handed in by Pablo with her to the gathering, and cleared Eve's name."

"Excellent, but I can make it even better if Pablo and Jenny confessed eveything." Severus smirked, imagining the situation in his head.

"But how?" asked Miranda.

"Secret, but I promise it will work."

TBC

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