Scarlet Scarves
Chapter 3—Friends and Fanclubs
I stopped going with my friends when they went to see Krum after that first time. Amanda invited me the first couple of times but I made excuses. Lana hadn't brought up what had happened at the Goblet but I knew it was better if I just stayed away from Krum.
The Champions were chosen and, of course, Krum was one of them. Harry Potter did something spectacular for the fourth year running and got chosen too. Roger said he thought this wasn't fair—that Potter was a little cheat out for fame and fortune. I thought it wasn't fair to Harry. A fourth year to compete against seventh years? It seemed negligent of the staff to allow it. Still if spending my nights stupidly—worrying about things I couldn't solve or work out—I spent my evenings only slightly better.
With little else to do when all my friends were out stalking Krum I began spending the time in library by myself. It wasn't my first choice of preoccupations but neither was it insufferable. I love to read and my already good grades hardly suffered from the extra time.
For the most part it was a solitary time. Krum came in quite a bit but Lana and the other seemed more interested in peeking around the shelves at him and giggling than sitting with me. In fact I usually moved if he sat near me because I couldn't study with the noise they were making. It was a mean thing to think, especially concerning my friends, but I couldn't see how he didn't blow up at them and tell them to leave him the hell alone. At first I'd thought it was because he liked the attention but I dismissed that when I realized he never flirted back. Maybe, I reasoned, his English isn't good enough to tell them to leave because no one could possibly be enough of a stoic to endure it otherwise. Amanda sat with me sometimes when she had a lot of homework and Jack came in from time to time too. "What the hell are you doing here?" I asked when I saw him.
"Oh me? Trying to find a book about the Goblin Rebellion of 1258." He said.
"No you goof." I said. "What are you doing at Hogwarts!"
But he didn't seem ready to tell me yet. "I came for this thing called the Triwizard Tournament. You might have heard it mentioned a couple times? Big to-do about better relations between magical students."
"Oh yeah?" I played along. "How is it going for you?"
He spread his arms. "Not so well, not so well. I didn't get picked as champion."
"Oh? That's a downright shame." I said. "But seriously how the hell did you end up a Beaxubatons in the first place?"
"My mum's a console in France." He explained. "I took my first two years at Hogwarts but then we moved to France."
That explained why his English was so impeccable. "Oh yeah? I don't remember you."
He shrugged. "I remember you actually." He said. "I had a thing for you friend. I'm just surprised I recognized you but did you know that your voice hasn't changed at all since first year?"
He tried to bury the admission about his crush but it didn't work. "Lana?" I was shocked.
"No." He said. "The other one. Amanda."
"Really?" I tried to remember if he'd been successful. Amanda had had so many boyfriends even back then it was hard to be sure. "And how did that go?" I finally asked.
He laughed. "About as well as the Tournament did. I wasn't even a contender."
"She's still here if you want to meet her." I offered. "Cute as ever too."
He waved it off. "No it's fine. I moved to France and forgot all about that amongst the wine, women and absolutely revolting food."
"Ugh! I accidentally got some sort of raw fish puree last night. I thought it was potato salad." I admitted.
He laughed. "You've got to be careful."
The nights Jake came were always the best—he was so funny and sweet—but he had other friends and places to be and mostly I was alone. But then one night a much less expected visitor came: Roger. "So Lana is in love with Viktor Krum." He said, sitting down in the chair opposite me and putting his feet up on the table.
"Guess so." I said, trying not to squirm under his cool blue eyes.
"She's going about it all wrong." He said. "If I were Krum I'd run for the fucking hills if I saw her coming."
Was he being a good brother? I wondered. Or was there something else he was driving at. "Yeah," I said, "I know."
"Why don't you tell her so?" He asked.
I shrugged. "She wouldn't listen to me."
"You mean you don't want to risk pissing her off. Even for her own good." He accused. That took me by surprise. Roger didn't seem like an insightful person but that was probably truer than I cared to admit. As he spoke he leaned casually across the table and pinned a Support Cedric Diggory badge onto my cloak. It was so hard to think with his large, warm hands so close to my neck I could feel the heat.
"Maybe." I sighed, trying not to stare longingly up at him. "But the whole school has gone nutters about this guy. I'm supposed to turn the tide all by myself?"
Roger shrugged. "Or you could just let your friend make an ass of herself. Your choice." He said and then, as casually as anything took out his homework.
I tried to return to mine but what he'd said wouldn't leave my mind. He was probably right, I thought. To not tell her would be tantamount to not telling her if she had something in her teeth after dinner. "You really think she'd want to be told?" I asked Roger.
He leveled his electric blue gaze at me. "Wouldn't you?"
I bit my lip. "I've got to go." I said, stuffing my books back into my bag. A quick glance at my watch told me that Lana and the others would be in the dormitory, getting ready to go downstairs to dinner.
I can never be sure if I did the right thing that night for Lana or for Roger. Everybody knows that people do bad things for the right reasons but can we also do right things for bad reasons? I didn't know as I mounted the steps to our dormitory and I still don't know today.
She was almost ready when I arrived. She was just adjusting the Bulgarian scarf, a constant fixture of her dress now, low across her hips. "Can we talk?" I asked quietly.
She fluffed her bangs for a second, leaning close to the mirror to make sure they were just the way she wanted them. "Yeah all right." She said.
Girl powwows, the private ones, take place in the bathroom as a matter of tradition so we went there. I sat up on the sink and put my feet against the door to make sure no one came in. Lana sat in the first cubicle on the toilet seat. "What's up?" She asked. She could see herself in the mirror and ironically, she began to fuss with her hair again. That's what's up! I wanted to scream.
I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. It isn't easy to criticize your friends. Faced against parents, teachers, the cruel stratified society your crueler peers impose, and the stress of school there is a somewhat tacit promise between friends not to heap more abuse on each other. Breaking it isn't impossible but it is hard.
"It's…well…" I began awkwardly. "It's about Krum."
She perked up. "He didn't say anything to you about me did he?" She asked.
"No," I said, "it's just…well do you think…I mean are you sure that Krum really wants the kind of…attention you're giving him?"
Lana stopped primping. "What are you saying?" She asked.
I almost aborted right then. I could have said something nice about her hair, told her I'd seen Krum looking at her that morning at breakfast, and she would have been happy to drop the subject but I didn't. "Well it's just that I don't know that many blokes that would take to a girl who was following them about." I said as politely as I could.
Lana brushed that off. "You just don't know Viktor. Yesterday Emily told me she heard that Jake told Timothy that Jane heard from Susan that Mary overhead Viktor telling one of his Durmstrang friends he thought that 'the girl with the scarf' was cute."
"They were speaking in English?" I said.
It was a big mistake. Lana had been willing to dismiss what I was saying as wrong but harmless before then but now she was getting angry. She turned and gave me a very long stare. "Yes." She said forcefully.
"Listen why don't you just try something a little less…" I couldn't say psycho and I couldn't think of another word. "Why don't we just invite him to sit with us at lunch sometime? He wasn't sorted into Slytherin so he doesn't have to sit at their table."
"Oh yeah why don't we do that?" She said sarcastically. "You don't understand anything about boys do you Tennessee!"
Being so confused about Roger that was a jab a little too close to the heart. "I do to." I said hotly.
She laughed meanly, standing to go scrutinize herself in the mirror. "Well if I'm going to fully prescribe to Tennessee Scarlet's School on How To Get A Man don't I have to stare at his arms over breakfast and then try to stifle every other sign that I like him?" She asked.
I closed my eyes. I'd always wondered if she knew I fancied her brother and now I knew. "This isn't about me." I tried to say calmly.
"Are you sure? I think it is. Get a clue Tennessee! No one is ever going to like you if that's all you do!" Her voice was a little bit louder than it needed to be—loud enough to be heard through the bathroom door. "You're just jealous that I actually have a chance with Viktor!"
"Lana I'm trying to help you." I said very quietly.
I was trying to diffuse the situation but it was already too little too late. She was so angry she didn't look like my best friend anymore. She didn't even look friendly. "Look if you want Viktor too you can't just say so!" Her tone had that strained rationality of the truly angry but she was still talking at an unreasonable level.
"I don't want Viktor!" I said, beginning to get angry myself.
"Yeah whatever." She said in a disbelieving tone.
I took my foot off the door and stood to face her. We were making so much noise that no one would try to come in even if their bladder was about to explode. "You're really stupid about this!" I said.
"Well you aren't being a very good friend!" She countered.
I bit my lip, trying not to cry I was so mad. "Oh yeah? Well I guess if just leaving your friend to study in the library every night counts as good friendship then no, I'm not a good friend!" I shouted.
Lana and I had had fights similar to this before but this was always the climax. When I started to tear up it was usually when the fight started to deescalate into reconciliation.
But not tonight.
"Oh don't you even give me that!" She shrieked. "You chose to be a weird little mole person this month! And probably just to have the rest of us run to your side you attention greedy little twit! You probably wanted to get the rest of us into the library so you could go out and get Viktor yourself."
The tears spilled over but I wiped them away quickly. All the fight seemed to go out of me with those first two drops. "Lana you know that isn't true." I said sadly but firmly. "I would never do that."
"Whatever." She huffed and then, flicking her bangs back into place, she marched right out of the bathroom.
I stayed there for a few seconds, took a few deep, shuddering breaths to calm myself and then followed her. I wanted to see if I could set things right before the fight scabbed over and scared. But the thirty seconds I'd spent was too long.
When I stepped out the whole dormitory was staring at me with accusing eyes. Right or wrong I had basically said in the bathroom that they were all boy-crazy stalkers who were hated by their idol and pitied by everyone else. My eyes swelled again and I fled down the stairs.
I knocked into Amanda coming up on the way. "Hey Tennessee I looked for you in the lib…" She trailed off as she saw the tears in my eyes. "What's wrong?" She asked.
I was still so upset I didn't really realize that Amanda didn't have any clue what had just happened. "And you too!" I almost shouted. "What the hell kind of friend are you to pick Lana and her stupid crush over me?"
Amanda stepped back. "Oh God I missed something big didn't I?" She said.
With the shouting out of my system all that was left was pessimistic self-pity. "I'll let Lana tell you." I said. "I'm sure you wouldn't believe my side of the story anyway." And then I ran down the stairs and out of the common room.
I knew I wasn't going to dinner or even back to the dormitory until I was sure all the other girls would be asleep. I went to the Owlry. It smelled bad and the floor was covered with droppings and the skeletons of little animals but I sat on of my bag and enjoyed the soothing noises of sleeping owls.
There was no one around to put a show on for (either by prolonging the tears or stifling them) so I cried hard for about two minutes and then stopped. I felt like I was stuck in an emotional eddy. On one hand I wanted very badly to be friends with Lana but on the other I wanted her to apologize for what she'd said. I moved between those—around and around—for about an hour without making any attempt to break the cycle. The second I got too close to either hating Lana or running down to the Great Hall and begging forgiveness, I'd start to move toward the other end.
After a while I took out a sheet of paper to write a letter but I couldn't think of anyone to write too. The people I most wanted to say something to were Lana, Amanda and Krum and I mostly wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves. I went to the window and stuck my torso out as far as it would go into the cold, rushing wind. The tears on my face dried and my head began to clear slowly. I tore off Roger's Support Cedric Diggory badge off my cloak and flung it as far as I could over the lake water. That felt productive.
The sun went down after a while and the owls began to leave. I couldn't see them after a while but I could hear the whoosh of their wings as they flew out the window over my head. By eleven o'clock I judged that most people would be asleep and was just about to leave when I heard feet on the steps.
There was of course nowhere to hide but I noxed my wand and hoped it wasn't Filch and for the first time that day, things went my way. Up the stairs came Fred and George Weasley. "Don't be so nice about it this time George" Fred was saying. "He needs to know we mean business."
I knew Fred and George of course, they were vaguely my friends too, but mostly in the sense that we were all Gryffindor sixth years. We'd hung out in a few classes last year but we weren't the kind of friends who sent each other owls over the break. For a laugh I waited until they were almost into the Owlry and then said, very loudly, "What are you to up to?"
The effect was everything I could have hoped for. The two of them nearly jumped out of their skins. "Tennessee Scarlet I am ashamed of you!" Fred scolded me when I'd stopped laughing. (It took a while as I was still in the hyper-emotional place where everything is hysterically something).
"What the hell are you doing here past curfew?" As he spoke he raised his wand so the light from it fell on my face and my face must have still been red and puffy from the crying because his voice trailed off at the end.
"Bloody hell." I heard George hiss.
I sighed and ran a hand through my rumpled hair. "How about you don't ask me that and I won't ask you the same?" I proposed. I was so far past modesty or pride the state I knew I must be in was close to laughable.
"Fair enough." Fred agreed.
There was an awkward pause of silence. "Well," I said finally, "I was just off. See you guys later."
"If you want to wait we can walk with you back to the common room." Fred offered.
"Oh…Okay." I agreed.
With Fred and George with me making it back to the Fat Lady felt easy but as I slipped by her bed, Amanda sat up. "Tennessee? Is that you?" She asked the darkness.
I didn't answer.
"I know you're there Tennessee and I'm not mad at you. I don't think either you or Lana are right but I'm not taking sides."
Afraid my voice would betray that I'd started crying again I didn't answer.
"All right." She said. "We can talk about it in the morning."
I pulled the covers over my head and huddled down under them, feeling as though my heart must being squeezed in my chest. My last waking thought was, so this is what Roger wanted. But why?
8888
The next morning I pretended to sleep through when the rest of the dormitory left. I was nervous that Amanda might try to wake me up but she didn't. After the last girl had trickled out I got up and dressed hurriedly. I was genuinely hungry after missing dinner the night before so I hurried downstairs. But when I came through the doors into the Great Hall I realized that I had a big problem. I always sat with my dormitory but I knew I couldn't sit with them now. I knew that even before Lana said loudly, "well look what the cat dragged in."
I blushed scarlet. I must have looked like something the cat dragged in too. I hadn't bothered to shower the night before or brush my hair this morning. "Shut up Lana." I head Amanda say. "Tennessee!" She called to me. "Over here Tennessee!"
But I pretended not to hear her. I stood in the door, temporizing for what felt like ages and ages. It felt too like everybody in the Great Hall was staring at me and thinking what a freak I was. I could see the back of Jack's head from the door but he was at the Ravenclaw table with his Beauxbatons friends. I couldn't sit there. I could see Roger, and really this whole mess was his fault, but he was at the Ravenclaw table too (and would never let me tag along with him anyway). For the first time since I'd arrived at Hogwarts I felt unwelcome. "Oi! Scarlet!" It was Fred Weasley and I'd never been gladder to hear his voice. "There's a free seat here!"
When I woke up that morning my stomach had felt almost empty. When I'd come in it had felt tied up in tight little knots but now I was sure I couldn't feel it at all I was so relieved. "Thanks Fred." I said as I plopped down in my chair. "Thanks a bunch."
"Yeah no problem." He waved it off.
"You want to talk about it?" George offered.
I stared into my plate, trying not to cry because they were being so nice. "Of course she doesn't." Angelina Johnson cut in. "Now someone help me with this Charms homework."
But you can't want to cry around Fred and George for too long. They had me laughing by the end of breakfast and so comfortable by lunch I was willing to talk about it. "Lana and I just got into a fight about Krum." I said without warning, midway through my sandwich.
"Over what a psycho she is about him?" George asked.
I giggled nervously. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Well I can't say that Fred and I don't moon over Viktor…" George started.
"Viky as we like to call him." Fred cut in.
"Yes, thank you Fred. We do tend to moon over Viky but I can almost guarantee you're welcome to hang out with us while we do." George said.
I giggled. "Well I'll probably take you up on that more than you're bargaining for." I warned them.
It was an odd thing but that day, which had started so abysmally, was the best I'd had since Krum had arrived. Angelina let me partner with her in charms, George passed me a funny note in Transfiguration (a picture of Krum with exaggerated good looks and hearts all around him) and Lee Jordan said I was the best help he'd ever had in potions when I helped him with his homework.
To my surprise, however, we didn't go to the library that evening ("oh Madame Pince would never let us do this anywhere near her precious books"). The three of them took me instead to a tiny little room off the fifth floor corridor. "All right Tennesse we're going to show you our headquarters but first you have to swear a pledge." George said when we'd arrived at the mirror that covered the door.
I thought he was joking. "Okay." I agreed with a giggle.
"I swear to abandon any quaint attachment to the Hogwarts Student Code of Conduct I might have at the door." He said.
I raised my hand and repeated him. "I swear to abandon any quaint attachment to the Hogwarts Student Code of Conduct I might have at the door."
"I promise never to reveal the location of this room to any teacher or authority figure."
I giggled. "Come on you guys I'm not going to rat you out."
"You've got to swear!" Fred pushed.
"Okay I promise never to reveal the location of this room to any teacher or authority figure."
"I pledge my talents in mischief and mayhem to the cause of good and good times." I wondered if I had any talents in mischief and mayhem but I repeated it anyway.
For the big deal they'd made of it the room was somewhat of an anticlimax. It was about three meters in length and breadth and most of the space was taken up by the oddest collection of furniture. There was a couch and two chairs but there was also an oven, an empty cauldron (tipped on it's side), three sets of kitchen knives and a muggle toaster. Most of the surfaces in the room were covered with books taken from the library and papers. It looked more like a bookworms hideaway than Fred and Georges. On top of that I was surprised to see that most of the books had titles like The Joy of Cooking (magical edition), Magical Sweets and Tastes Like Magic!.
But I didn't feel like I could ask too many questions so I settled myself on the couch and took out my charms homework, pretending that I was listening raptly to everything they were saying. They crowded around the cauldron and began muttering to themselves. Occasionally there was a loud bang and the smell of boiled eggs or burning cooking filled the room.
"What are you three trying to make anyway?" I finally asked on the second day of mysterious booms and smells.
They looked up and for a second if I'd made a mistake. Fred glanced at the other two and then said, "Creams." He said, passing me the book.
I checked over the recipe. It wasn't that hard at all. "I can make these." I offered, coming to peer into the cauldron. There was some black gloo congealed to the bottom.
"Can you really?" Lee looked downright impressed.
"Sure." I said, rolling up my sleeves. "I could make them without magic too. I'm actually not a bad cook."
I scoured the cauldron first and then checked the recipe. I'd said that I could cook them without magic but mostly just to impress them. Cooking with magic wasn't too different from muggle cooking. You still had to put it all together you could just use spells for kneading dough and breaking eggs and shaping the dough. "You three just sit down over there and I'll have these out in no time.
"I told you we should have gotten a girl!" George crowed triumphantly as the first batch began to harden in the oven and the smells began to reach the couch where they were all studying. I glowed with pride and pleasure.
"Actually as I recall you saying that, and I quote, 'cooking can't be that hard.'" Lee Jordan said lazily.
"Well the toffee wasn't!" George said defensively.
"We bought the toffee mate! We didn't make it remember!"
"What are these for anyway?" I asked when I brought the first pan out and cooled them magically.
"We've got to tell her." George said, his mouth full of creams. "We're never going to get ours to taste this good. Our only hope is to beg her to join us."
"Join what?" I asked.
"We're starting a company." Fred explained. "A provider of magical pranking material."
"Like Zonko's?" I asked.
"Better." Lee said. "Just think of it Tennessee! A whole shop full of things you have to test on your mates first because you aren't sure what they'll do to you! Row after row of succulent candies that'll make you break into boils or breath fire." It was a strange dream to be sure but to hear the three of them talk about it, it seemed almost romantic and appealing.
"We've got a bunch of ideas but so far none of the food has come along well, except the toffees which we bought." Fred continued.
"You could be head chef!" Lee offered.
"And we'd give you a cut of the profits of course!" George offered.
If they'd asked me that morning I would have said no. The whole venture was on very shaky ground with the school rules, the Ministry regulation and it was all potentially dangerous to boot. But that morning seemed like a lifetime ago. It might be nice to have some extra pocket money, the economist in me whispered. You owe them big for what they did for you, my conscience piped up. It would be fun, my heart screamed, to let your hair down a bit. "Okay." I agreed. "I want thirty-five percent."
"Twenty!"
"Twenty-five."
"Done."
Amanda was waiting for me again when I finally went upstairs. "You know you've got a lot of nerve being mad at me for what Lana said!" She said.
"Shhhh!" I hissed at her. "You're going to wake everybody else up! And I'm not mad at you!" I came to sit on her bed so we could whisper back and forth.
"You've got a funny way of showing it."
"Listen you know I can't sit at that table any more." I said. "I hope we can still be friends but I think Lana and I might be genuinely through. I'm sorry I ignored you this morning."
She nodded. "Okay." Nothing ever phased Amanda. She knew where she was going and how to get there. She had your number; she had her number; she had life's number.
And I couldn't help but being deadly envious as I crawled into bed.
FinAN: A big thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter! What do you think of her becoming friends with Fred and George? Too cliché? How about what Lana did to her? Too predictable? Too trite? And someone mentioned they noticed some incongruities between my American voice and the British backdrop. If anyone notices anything in particular drop me a line. I'd love to fix it. Here's a preview of the next chapter.
"Vhat are you doing?" Krum asked.
"Er…looking up brownie recipes." I said.
"Vhat are frownys?" He asked.
I giggled. Who could be frowny about brownies? I wondered but it was stupid, of course they wouldn't teach the word brownies in English Class. "They're like squares of chocolate…goodness." I began but gave up. I turned the book around so he could see the picture.
"Oh." He said something that must have been the Bulgarian word for brownies and handed the book back to me.
"Yeah exactly." I said.
"Are you a good cook?" He asked.
"Yeah." I said. "I'm okay." I circled something lightly with a pencil and gently folded down the edge of the page. "Are you?" I asked, just to make conversation.
He shook his head. "Just Quidditch for me."
I cocked my head to the left, unsure how to answer that. "Well," I said finally, "you're a much better Quidditch player than I am a cook."