Chapter 8: The Dramatic Countdown

Okay on the count of three, we jump – Eric Yata

7:00 AM

Okay, the ball is supposed to start at seven in the evening. So here I am, and seven in the morning, staring at these bizarre creatures that I once called friends. They have now turned into shrieking…things…and somehow have an abnormally large amount of energy.

Hannah is jumping on Chaki's bed, singing 'All You Wanted' by Michelle Branch, a muggle singer. Actually she's more like shouting it. Anyway, Hannah loves that singer, and I have to admit, she is really good.

Monica is practically tearing through makeup that I never knew she had. I know she likes to play around with it, but I never knew she had so much. She's rambling about which makeup would go with which person. She's talking to Hannah, who's off in her own world, so I guess Monnie's talking to herself about makeup.

Chaki's a little bit better; at least she's not overly loud. But she does look overwhelmed, and she has a stack of hair magazines sitting next to her. She's also mumbling something, but I can't hear her because of Hannah.

Looking around, I can't find Elena. She probably got spooked by the sudden oddness of her roommates and relocated elsewhere.

That's actually a good idea. Relocating that is. If I want to get any more sleep, I'll have to go elsewhere.

You know the couch in the Gryffindor common room seems really inviting right about now.

7:23

Okay, so I snuck out. Well actually, it was more like I walked out while my friends were being freaks. Luckily I was wearing a long pair of pj pants, because the castle was dreadfully cold in the morning, and it was only October.

Another good thing was that I didn't run into any teachers. That was practically a godsend, because running into Snape first thing in the morning would not be fun. Especially since he'd probably deduct points for being dressed sloppy. Hey, I bet anything that anything I could possibly be wearing would be considered sloppy.

I finally made it to the Gryffindor common room and crashed down on the nearest couch. Luckily it was the comfiest couch in the castle. And I can attest to that because I've sat on all the couches, testing them for comfort.

Yes, weird, I know, but I decided I wanted to find the comfiest couch during third year, so I embarked on a great journey. Actually it was only two hours, but whatever.

So I snuggled into the couch's plushiness, and drifted into lala land.

9:52

"Okay on the count of three, we jump," I heard somewhere above me. I was too asleep to be able to tell who said it, but the voice sounded very familiar. Almost too familiar.

"One."

Okay so I needed to move. Quickly.

"Two."

They weren't stopping! I could hear the anticipation in the counter's voice through my half asleep daze.

"Three."

As soon as the word three was uttered, I rolled off of the couch and onto the floor before whatever they were counting for happened. Just to make it seem like I did it on accident, I quickly sat up.

"Whazz goin on?" I demanded sleepily. I rubbed my eyes and yawned and looked over to where I had been previously sleeping.

Charlie and Eric were sitting there with identical grins on their faces. They reminded me of two cute little kids who just got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Except they weren't cute. Well actually I should say Eric looks somewhat good, cause like it or not we're twins and I look a lot like him.

Damn.

Okay, so I guess my brother isn't that bad, and neither is Charlie. Heh, he's actually pretty cute. What did I just say that? Why the h-

"ASHLEY VOLTE YATA! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" I cringed as I heard my full name. I have no clue what Volte means, I think its fox in some language. My mom must have been really doped up on anesthetics when she picked out my middle name.

Hannah came stomping up to me, looking very annoyed. I think she just realized I was not in the room. That's sort of annoying, that she didn't notice me for however I was asleep. Two hours about I think. I'm not too good with time.

"I've been here since like seven 'cause you people were being scary. Way to hyper for that early," I said shaking my head.

"Hey! It wasn't early!"

"Mmmhmm. Tomorrow then I'll wake you up at seven. Oh yea, you'll probably wake me up yakking about your wonderful date. Which I still don't get why we have assigned dates. I think Dumbledore's finally gone off the deep end." I said, and promptly fell back onto the couch, which luckily Charlie and Eric had evacuated.

"NO! Get up! No sleeping!" Hannah cried as she yanked on my ankle and successfully dragged me off the couch.

"Fine," I grumbled and rolled off the couch for the second time that day.

"YOU FREAK!" Hannah screamed her favorite line. I swear she is in love with that line. She likes more than she likes my brother, which is really hard to believe.

I just gave a half hearted groan when she kicked me. I tuned out her shrieking until I felt someone picking me up. I was thrown over their shoulder and guess what immediately came into my view. A rear-end. A very nice rear end.

It took a few moments for my brain to de thaw but when it did, I had a lot to say.

10:01

After a bit of screaming, and whacking, I was able to convince Charlie to put me down. Yes that was Charlie who picked me up, that bastard. He has a nice rear though.

Yes I did just say that. But just because he has a nice ass doesn't mean I like him or anything.

Anyway, after he dropped me on my head I whacked him with a pillow for a bit until Eric told me to stop flirting and I attacked him. After ten minutes of frenzying attack, we finally pulled ourselves together and proceeded down to breakfast.

Which is where I am now, wondering why I even bothered with this whole ball crap. Chaki had drawn up a schedule for us to follow during the day to make sure we were all perfect and set to go before the ball. The schedule started at 12:00 which meant I had about two hours to kill.

First I have to eat.

10:18

Eating food is a very interesting activity. It involves putting odd smelling objects into a large cavern that is the source of all stupidity and mashing it all down into this lump of mushiness using overgrown bone.

Lovely isn't it?

And yes your mouth is the source of all stupidity; otherwise the world would be a better place. Honestly with all the moronic people saying moronic things without using their brains. The normal genius uses about 10 of brainpower, while the rest of us use about 5-7 and the morons use about 2. It's very sad because we could be using that extraordinary amount of brain power to do good things, like develop a skinless banana.

Okay so a banana has a peel, but that's beside the point.

Of course, when I mention how awful it is to waste brainpower to my dear friend Hannah, she looks at me like I'm a freak, which is so not true, and tells me to stop babbling.

I have such nice friends.

Anyway, after breakfast I wandered to my favorite spot in the entire castle. It's in an abandoned corridor on the third floor, which makes me wonder how such a beautiful place could be abandoned. At the corner of this corridor, where it turns, there is a window. Of course it's not just any window, its tall and it's always clear with a beautiful view over the lake. You can even see Hagrid's hut if you look hard enough. The window ledge is two feet wide, so it's perfect to sit on. I love going there and reading, or just plain thinking.

I practically bolted out of the Great Hall, Monica calling me to wait up. I think she'll get a bit ticked, since she does that sometimes, but she'll get over it. When I finally arrived at the hallway, I crept up to the window as quietly as I could. I did this because it seemed as if there were a lot of noise, the peaceful air about it would shatter.

I settled down, leaning on the side of the ledge. You know, Charlie isn't so bad anymore. I know it's sort of random to be thinking about all this stuff, but he really isn't. I don't really recall what had made me so pissed at him in the first place.

Oh wait, yes I do. That bastard stole my first kiss.

Okay, so he wouldn't do anything like that now, but he was downright awful back in third year.

Apparently he and some friends were playing truth or dare and someone dared him to kiss me. Well guess what the slime ball did! He marched up to me in the common room and gave a huge kiss on the lips. It wasn't so bad, but what he said afterwards was.

He yelled back to his friends to see if that was good enough. I yelled and called him a bastard.

That was the last time I ever cried over a guy.

Yes, back in third year I had a monstrous crush on Charlie. I never told anyone, not even my friends, who I tell everything. I came to the conclusion that Eric had somehow found out and dared Charlie to kiss me, which caused me to not speak to him for two months after that. But of course I eventually forgave him and began a long dating streak to forget Charlie.

It took me a while but at the end of last year, I realized that liking Charlie was part of the distant past and I promptly dumped my boyfriend of the moment. I think Eric was a little relieved that I stopped seeing people, because he never approved of what I was doing. I never told him directly, but I knew he could tell. Its one of those things we have. It's just like how I can tell he likes Hannah. He's never actually told me, but I can sense it.

Well actually, anyone with a pair of eyes would be able to see it. It's that obvious.

Leaning back on the wall thinking about Eric and Hannah, I slowly fell into a deep sleep.

12:02 PM

I was awoken by a soft buzzing on my stomach. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was the compact mirrors that Chaki, Hannah, Monica, and I had charmed so we could communicate back in fourth year.

They were quite useful, especially since the teachers didn't suspect us because it's perfectly normal for girls our age to carry around compact mirrors. Anyway, my mirror was softly buzzing, telling me that someone had an extremely important message to give me.

I flipped open the compact and saw only Chaki's very annoyed face.

"Where are you! You're 2 minutes and 43 seconds late!" she snapped at me. I rubbed my eyes and glanced at my watch, which read about noon.

"Whatta mean?" I grumbled, annoyed that I was awoken from a nice sleep.

"You were supposed to meet us in our dorm at noon and you're late! Hannah and Monica are out looking for you!" she said, growing more annoyed by the minute.

"Okay, okay! I'll be there in a few minutes, no need to have a cow." She scowled and closed her compact. I shut mine quickly and leaped up.

The journey to Ravenclaw was long, because I went the back way, so no one could interrupt me. If I stopped to talk to someone, it would take even more time, which would seriously piss Chaki off. Of all my years as being her friend, I've learned that it is very bad to cross her.

When I finally reached our room, Chaki was fuming. Probably because I took so long, though I think I couldn't have done anything to get there sooner.

"Finally!" Hannah said, sounding exasperate.

"Okay, so why is important that I be here exactly at noon, instead of five after?" I asked, looking at them. They sat there for a couple of seconds until Monica burst out.

"Because we have so much to do! First we have to decide what exactly we're going as, and then we need to pick out hairstyles and makeup! Then we actually have to put on the make up, and do our hair! Plus it would be nice to have painted nails. It's going to take a while!" she ranted, practically in tears by the end.

"Okay?" I questioned, "But will it really take seven hours?"

"YES!" came the loud response from the three of them.

I sat back, prepared to try to enjoy the process as much as possible.

2:36

The past two and a half hours have been pure torture. Well, actually I was asleep for the first hour, but their yelling woke me up. When I was finally fully awake, I saw Hannah and Monica in the middle of a screaming match on whether or not to go as a group or go separately.

Finally Chaki stepped in and said it would be better to go as a group, because then it would be easier to recognize each other.

So they've spent the past hour and a half arguing about which group. Monica was convinced that there was no possible way to go in a group that worked, Hannah was upset because Monica was upset and those two have this thing where when one of them gets upset, they end up pissing the other one off, Chaki was sitting there yelling at Monica, and I was making shadow puppets with light from the end of my wand.

I made a bunny shape and started humming Little Bunny Foo Foo, you know, that nursery rhyme where the rabbit hops through the forest and decapitates all the field mice.

Suddenly an ides hit me faster than Hannah can do twenty jumping jacks. Okay so that's really slow, but you get the point.

"Hey guys," I said, but they obviously didn't hear me because they were all still yelling. "SHUT UP!" I screamed, and they actually listened to me because they were now staring at me like I was an unfamiliar UFO.

I wasn't unidentified, and I sure wasn't flying, so they obviously had something wrong with them.

"Okay, I was thinking," Hannah snorted at that one, so I glared at her, "and maybe we could go as characters from that book, The Travels of a Circle. We could all dress up like the people in the ball scene."

They stared at me again. It was starting to get creepy, them staring at me.

"Hannah can go as the mermaid princess, Monica can go as the human queen, Chaki can go as the fairy princess, and I can go as the elf maiden. See, it all works out."

"But it's a kid's book," Monica snapped.

"Do you have anything better?" I snapped back. She just glared at me. "Okay so we need modifications on out dresses, that shouldn't take too long. Hey we might even have time to do our nails!"

5:45

Please…someone…save me…

The past three hours have been total hell.

Okay maybe that's a slight exaggeration. Sitting in a large cavern with nothing to eat but broccoli would be hell. But this whole thing seemed pretty close.

We spent a good portion of the time altering out dresses. Since we hadn't read the book in a while, we had only a vague memory of what the dressed actually looked like, so the altering was a painfully long process. Okay so they looked awesome in the end, but that's beside the point.

As of now, we're looking at hairstyles. Chaki's all done, she'd lucky because all she's doing is a side part and straitened hair. She of course will have a tiara, probably a silver one since she's a fairy.

"Oh! What about this one for Monica?" announced Hannah as she pointed to a hairstyle. I leaned over her shoulder to take a look and I have to say, if we could pull that off, it would look amazing.

The model had shorter hair in the front that was hanging loose and then the rest was French braided until the hair was pulled into a messy bun at the bottom. I grinned and looked at Monnie.

"Yes, I do believe we could pull this off," I said eyeballing her hair hungrily. I'm sure she was pretty freaked out as we all probably looked like vultures eyeing a dead cow. I look at her thoughtfully and say, "You know, you'd be an amusing dead cow."

"What?" came three disbelieving voices. I tried to explain my train of thought, but they all juts stared at me.

"Ashley, you're babbling again," Hannah said, after I had gotten into a full swing explanation.

"I do not babble!" I said, and she just gave me an amused look. I really don't babble! I looked up the definition once and it means to talk enthusiastically or excessively and I don't do that! Okay so maybe I do talk a little too much sometimes, but still! I'm insulted that she would even bring up the topic. It's only her opinion anyway. I'm sure Eric and Charlie think I'm and absolutely wonderful person who does not babble one little bi-

"Stop pouting Ashley, you look like you're constipated or something," Monica remarked, so I sunk into even deeper pouting.

6:12

Okay they were getting quite frantic. Okay and I was getting a bit frantic as well. We had only forty five minutes and we hadn't even started getting ready. Okay, so we had planned everything out, but we were still in our regular clothes. Well at least I was. I drew last as to who got the bathroom to shower and change.

Monica was already done and was in her dress, which was a silky dark purple, with a crimson red over coat, much like medieval princesses. She was now waiting with Chaki for Hannah to finish with the bathroom.

Chaki looked awesome too. She had on a silvery blue dress that slowed down to her feet. She had to wear two inch heels to make sure the dress didn't get caught on anything. The dress was clingy, but not overly much. She also was waiting for Hannah to get done.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, though it was only ten minutes, Hannah bounded out in a flurry of silver. Her dress was a strapless one that sparkled at her every movement. It was also tight at the top and loosened up as you traveled south, which is something I'm sure all the boys will really appreciate.

I smiled and told her my brother would drown in his own drool and dodged her smack and proceeded into the bathroom. I was a bit annoyed that I was last and I knew they would start the makeup and stuff without me.

Okay so it didn't really bother me because I knew they needed me for accessories. You see, my mother had this thing with giving me jewelry every time she went shopping. What had resulted was a pile of jewelry that was useless to me. I never liked jewelry in the first place, but I dutifully wore it whenever I saw her.

With all this jewelry that had accumulated over the years, my friends had a wide selection of things to wear, seeing as I granted them access to my jewelry trunk. And yes it was a trunk. Of course I had everything all laid out in color order and type. My mother also had gotten me a few weird pieces of jewelry that I kept in a separate box, including five or six tiaras. Well the tiaras were from my grandmother when I went through a princess obsession when I was six.

Let me tell you a few things about my grandmother. She was really nice, made the best strawberry shortcake, and was exceedingly rich. The funny thing was that our family was one of the few rich wizarding families that weren't purebloods. My mother is muggle born and my dad is half and half. My grandmother also passed away a few years ago, so we had relocated to her house on the mouth of a river. It was a beautiful house, richly adorned in anything you could ever imagine. It was styled after American houses; I believe the style is colonial.

But since my grandmother died, my mother inherited a large amount of money, hence her buying me anything she can get her hands on. It's funny because every summer, I find my closet size doubled with all the clothes she buys. She doesn't actually send me the clothes to school like she does the jewelry, so I always act so happy. I think she buys me stuff to make up for all the time she doesn't spend with me.

I finished up in the shower, and dried off using a spell. I hear giggling from behind the door and I pull on my dress. I didn't alter my dress all that much, only to make it fit me. The elfin princess was only describes as looking particularly dark with the blondest hair ever seen. Of course she brightens up when her prince arrives. Apparently he has 'hair of the flaming torch and eyes so bold, wearing bright colors complementing the fair maiden.'

Sounds like someone we know, eh?

I unlocked the door and walked out only to see Monica's hair in a mass clump.

"Um is her hair supposed to look like a nest?" I asked Hannah.

"It looks like a nest? Oh my god Hannah I'm going to kill you! This is really important! Oh my god!" and Monica burst out in tears. Of course any sensible person would start crying as much as se if they saw what Hannah had done.

"Monica its okay, let me help you," I said frantically.

6:34

Okay so with a simple spell I fixed Monica's hair and set it to the way we had picked out. I gave Hannah two smacks, one for messing up Monica's hair and one for good measure. Of course Hannah was only joking; she does this when she's nervous.

Okay, so I'm slightly panicking as well, but not as much. I mean we have plenty of time. Forty five minutes in fact. It's always good to arrive fashionably late. I tell them this and I can see them visibly relax.

"Okay, if we're to get this done quickly, we need a system. Chaki, you'll get the hair, Hannah, you'll get the makeup, and I'll pick out jewelry. When it's my turn, Hannah will get the jewelry, when it's Hannah's turn, Monica will get the makeup, and when it's Chaki's turn, I'll do the hair. Okay? Okay," and with that said, we got off to work.

Within ten minutes we finished up Monica, which is totally awesome because we had very limited time. Thank God for magic, otherwise we would be in a total mess. Monica looked awesome, with her hair done perfectly and her makeup done perfectly. I quickly shot a spell at her nails and they became red to match her overcoat and swirled to the deep purple of her under dress. I had picked out darker jewelry and had set upon her head a gold tiara with red jewels. I wasn't sure if they were real, but they sure looked it.

We set to work on Chaki immediately, seeing as time was running short. Luckily she was easy to do. Her hair was perfect with the wave of a wand. I charmed her nails to a pale blue, to match her dress. Hannah also added a touch of red highlights in her hair. Not too much, but just enough to brighten it up a bit to add a greater contrast to the blue I gave her a diamond tiara that looked as if it were made up of entirely of pale blue diamonds. The jewelry was also light and made up of mostly silver.

Hannah was next. We left her hair down, and coaxed her wavy hair into soft rolling waves, much like the ocean. Her makeup was all dark, and her nails were blood red, which wasn't exactly in the description of the character but it was cool just to put it like that. Her tiara also consisted of one blood red jewel, which was in the book because it was supposed to be the jewel of the ocean and very important to controlling the ocean.

I was last. I have to admit, I looked pretty good. My tiara was perhaps the plainest, just a plain silver with a rose pattern. I did indeed look like the dark elf princess. Now wouldn't it be cool if there was someone dressed as my prince? Of course Hannah would need her secret lover who was a human. Hmmm, I wonder what Eric was going as? Chaki would need her happy prince, who was as full of laughter as she was. Or at least was supposed to be. She looked quite green as of the moment. And Monica would need the mysterious stranger who would sweep her off her feet and send her off to lala land.

I checked the clock and ushered them along when I remembered the most important part of this whole thing.

"Wait! We need our masks!" I cried. Monica ran up and got them and handed them out. My mask was pure white, Hannah's mask was blacker than black, Monica's was a deep red, and Chaki's mask was light blue, almost white.

We made our way down to the Great Hall, seeing no one on the way, which was a bit creepy because the halls are usually so busy with chatter. We finally arrived at the Great Hall and we entered. I heard a collective gasp from beside me.

All I know, is that I was defiantly swept off of my feet.

OMG! It's done! Okay, so it's not everything I wanted to happen in this chapter, but you all will get over it. I know exactly what I'm going to be doing next chapter, so there won't be a five month wait between chapters. I apologize immensely for the wait! Please don't be mad! ))Hands out Charlie plushies.(( There. All better!)) :)Okay, so look soon for the next chapter. It will be started tomorrow and hopefully up by New Years. That's exactly what I'm aiming for. Again I apologize for the wait!