Scarlet Scarves
Chapter 4—Viktor and I
The time to the first task wore on and things began to lighten up for me. This crushing dread of evenings, a weight I hadn't even know I was carrying, had been lifted. I could almost swear I was breathing deeper and tasting food as I hadn't been before. I still had a painful twinge whenever I saw Lana but Fred, George and Lee proved themselves to be outstanding friends. I was busy too, which helped. When I wasn't cooking for 'Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' (what Fred and George had told me their company was clandestinely called) I was doing homework in the library or watching them fly on the Quidditch Pitch.
Nights were hard because I had to return to my old dormitory but Fred, George and Lee usually stayed out later than my dormitory stayed up and everybody but Amanda had decided to just ignore me in the mornings. It was unhelpful when I wanted to borrow nail clippers or toothpaste and got the day off to a bad start without fail but it was a truce at least and Fred and George were always there at breakfast to cheer me up.
I couldn't see how they managed to pull of the schoolwork with all the work they did for Wheezes. I stipulated early on that they could do no 'product testing' on me but in doing so I forfeited all clearance to the other parts of the business. ("You have to be useful to be let in on these secrets mate!" Fred said, throwing an arm around my shoulders). I was curious at first but in the end I was too grateful to be hanging out with them (and too busy too) to press the matter very far. I remember those days fondly—the smells in the fifth floor room, George making faces at Lana when she wasn't looking in Transfiguration until I was laughing so hard Professor McGonagall made me step out into the hall and evenings on the pitch.
The Gryffindor team had no official practice of course but the whole team (except Harry who everyone assumed was too busy with Triwizard business) met two to three times a week anyway to keep their skills sharp. I was the referee (a very lax one as I knew about 40 of the fouls) and the stand in Seeker (so unconfident on my broom they never bothered releasing the Snitch). I was so bad at both of my jobs I spent most of my time in the stands, reviewing my homework or ideas for new 'Wheezes.' On the rare occasion a possible foul was committed I could usually tell what the punishment should be based on who the accused was (Fred or George were worth a penalty shot and a ten minute grounding for example, while Angelina only merited a verbal warning).
But then one morning my job was usurped.
It was a Saturday so windy that I hadn't even bothered to bring my broom and I was huddled in the lee of the stands when I saw a figure approaching the pitch, a broomstick slung across his shoulders. I knew, from the gait, who it was even before he was close enough for me to make out his features.
Viktor Krum arrived on the Hogwart's Quidditch pitch.
I checked and was relieved to find he had somehow shaken off his fan club. I quickly pretended I hadn't seen him coming until he was about ten meters off. "Hello." I said, looking up from my papers, and keeping my voice friendly but casual when he was close enough to hear me in the wind.
I'd be lying if I said that my stomach wasn't spinning in my stomach but, at least mentally, I was determined to be as cool as calm as I could. I had no thoughts of what he might think of me, it never occurred to me that I could impress him in any way, I mostly didn't want to embarrass myself.
"Hello." It occurred to me then that I had never heard Viktor Krum speak. His voice was a beautiful bass but his English was so heavily accented I had to pay attention to make it out.
I smiled up at him as brightly as you can into such a surly expression. "The Pitch probably won't be free until this afternoon." I said in as friendly a voice as I could. "But you could come back then."
"Oh, I noticed that your team has no Seeker. I vas wondering if I might fill in?" He sounded almost shy, as if he honestly expected this amateur team to tell him he couldn't play with them.
"Oh." I was stunned. "Well…I mean of course! I mean we'll have to go back to the game closet to get the Snitch but that shouldn't be a problem." We'd taken the referee whistle for me out with the other equipment but I hadn't touched it till now. It made a weirdly shrill noise but one that carried even in the wind.
"What the hell?" Fred said as he landed. "You missed me cracking George with my bat but you pick up on Froddering? Are you high or just crue…" but he saw Krum just then, "Blimey!"
Blimey! seemed to be the general sentiment of the rest of the team too. None of the girls on the team were as silly as my friends had been but Alicia Spinnet was trying to tame her wind-wild hair surreptitiously and Katie Bell was giggling something into her ear. The boys too were slightly starstruck. They were all punching each other's shoulders and staring at Krum in a queer, awed way. "Well we've got to have a proper game now!" Lee, who was playing Keeper, said when Krum had explained he wanted to fill in for Seeker. "Let's go get the reserve team!"
Everyone seemed to be for this idea so they ran off toward the school. "Wait! Fred! Give me the key to the shed! I've got to get the Snitch out!" I called after them.
Fred turned and chucked the keys at me. "I have no idea where it is!" He called to me.
The game shed was a little shack about fifty meters outside of the Pitch. Isn't it funny how things never work out the way they should, I thought as we walked in silence to it. Lana had spent the last two months trying to get this man to notice her and I was the one walking with him, even though I hadn't done more than come to practice this morning. " I am Viktor Krum." He said as we reached the shack, as if I didn't know. His English I realized, was actually very good. His grammar and syntax were almost impeccable but hard to distinguish through the thick accent laid on top of them.
"Tennessee Scarlet." I said, offering him a hand to shake. "You might want to stay here. This is going to be a mission."
The Snitch hadn't been used in so long it's box was all the way in the back and I had to climb over a lawnmower, knock down several cans of paint and petroleum and move another box off the top of it before I could get at it. "Here! Catch this!" I said tossing him the box. He caught easily and opened it. The Snitch flitted out but he snatched it easily from the air and put it back in.
"I saw you at the World Cup." I told him on the way back. "That Ponski Feint thing was incredible."
"Vhat feint?" He asked.
"You know the…" I played out Lynch chasing him and then crashing into the ground in the air with my hands. "The Ponski feint."
He smiled (the first, I realized, I'd ever seen on his face). "Oh the Vronski feint."
Well I'd only been a letter or two off. "Yeah that one."
"Thank you." He looked genuinely pleased.
When we got back to the Pitch the rest of the team hadn't returned from the castle. "You want to warm up?" I asked. I had run out of material to talk to him about with the Wronski Feint and now it was downright awkward to sit next to him.
"Just a fun game?" He asked.
For you maybe, I thought. "Yep."
He shook his head.
I went back to looking for a good recipe for what Fred, George and Lee wanted to call Backstab Brownies (they made the eater unable to stop complimenting everyone they saw). In my opinion Best Friend Brownies seemed more appropriate.
"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.
"Could you say that word again please?" He asked.
"Brownies." I said.
"Frownies." He said.
"No." I said. "Bee Bee Brownies."
"Brownies."
"Yeah that's it."
"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."
For some reason, he found that very funny. He had a very nice laugh, I decided. It seemed to come right from the hip (both literally and figuratively) and like his voice, seemed to rattle around in your chest like bass based music from really good speakers. When he laughed I couldn't imagine why I'd thought he looked surly when I'd first saw him. I wanted to make him do it again.
"You'd better get going." I said. "The reserve team is here."
"Vhat?" He asked.
I pointed with the butt of my pencil. "Quidditch remember?"
"Oh." He stood. "Thank you." The T sounded like a S or a D, I couldn't decide which. He turned to walk toward the other players (who were running full stop for the Pitch) but stopped about two meters off. "I am certain you are a very good cook." He said and it was my turn to laugh.
To keep things fair they put him on the reserve team. It was about evenly matched too, or at least evenly matched enough to be a good time. It was incredible to watch Krum fly though. In context, at the World Cup he'd been amazing, put next to my house team he was awesome. None of the other players were in the same number system of good. He was, "unreal," as Fred said when the game had ended (180 to 190 to the reserve team). "Absa-fucking-lutely unreal."
I giggled. "Well he is a pro. Literally."
"Oh the reserve team is never going to shut up about this." George said, glancing over to where they were doing a celebratory dance. "Never mind if they had Viktor bloody Krum on their team. All we're going to hear about is how we lost to the second string."
"Well you did." I pointed out. The three of them were sweating pretty hard for such a cold morning but looking exhilarated nonetheless. Lee had a bleeding lip and Fred had a bruised arm but they looked happy.
"What have you got on brownies?"
"Not much." I said, handing over the book "I was watching the game."
I'd scribbled a half-finished recipe in the margin but that was little more than an ingredients list as of yet. I'd taken to making up my own recipes for new Wheezes. Magical properties are just another ingredient you could add to food but to work they need to be folded into the dough just like anything else. You can't simply spell something after it was created. And it worked best when the food had some sort of magical anchor in it. For the Canary Creams the eggs had been enough but for Backstab Brownies I wanted to add some sort of inhibition remover. I'd decided on rum. Of course there were no recipes I liked for rum brownies so I'd decided to make my own.
"Is the rum going to make it alcoholic?" Lee asked. Krum approached the four of us just then but Lee couldn't stop mid sentence so he just plowed on. "I mean are we going to have to put some sort of age limit?"
I shifted back and forth from shoe to shoe but finally shook my head, wondering how this conversation must sound from Krum's point of view. "No. The rum itself will burn up in the oven but it'll leave the taste behind."
We turned to Krum quickly.
"You all played very vell." Viktor told the three of them. He was sweating too a little bit but not as seriously as the three of them. It was the physically difference between playing your hardest and just having a good time.
"You were amazing man." Fred said. "Absolutely amazing!"
"Brilliant." George agreed.
Viktor waved them off. "If you ever vant to play again please tell me at breakfast." He said slowly.
"Er…yeah…of course." Fred said dumbly. "Brilliant."
"Good luck vith your brownies." He said to me. He made a short nod that could have been the beginning of a bow and then started off for his ship.
"I can't bloody believe that Viktor Krum wants to play Seeker with us again." Lee said after an honorary moment of stunned silence had passed. "Let me stop lying. I can't believe Viktor Krum wanted to play Seeker with us at all."
"Well it better not be for another couple of weeks." George groaned. "I feel like I'm about to fall over."
Krum nodded to us whenever he saw us in the library after that evening and he played with the Gryffindor team occasionally. "That's so weird." George whispered to me.
"What's so weird?" I asked, thinking he meant something on our potions homework and pulling his paper over to see.
"Krum." George said. "I've just realized that you've got what Lana wants and you've got it because she drove you to it."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"I mean it would be good revenge if Krum waved to you and not Lana in the library but it just occurred to me that it's actually Lana's fault. If she hadn't kicked you out of your seat at the table you wouldn't have started hanging out with us and you wouldn't have been there on the Pitch that day. Isn't that ironic?" He said.
I shrugged. "If you say so." Sometimes the twins seemed to be angrier with Lana than I was about the shitty thing she'd done to me. I was, honestly, almost done with being angry with her. Almost all I felt these days when I saw her was a poignant nostalgia for the fun things we used to do. "Now can we talk about Canary Creams again?"
8888
The day of the first task dawned cloudy but warm. Breakfast was a silent affair. It seemed, finally, to have dawned on the Gryffindor table that Harry might be in mortal danger. We'd planned for weeks to release Canary Creams on the general populace at the celebratory party but that morning there was a question in our heads that hadn't been there the night before: what if our champion died? And no one wanted to ask it. Fred, George and Lee were all trying not to look at each other or me the whole meal.
The mood as we filed into the stands was like the World Cup on steroids. There were no enforced sections for schools but the stands had four distinct blocks of color. Scarlet for Durmstrang, red and gold for Gryffindor, yellow for the rest of Hogwarts and a light blue for Beauxbatons. Fights broke out once or twice where the edges of color pushed together and had to be broken up by teachers. I saw Jack as we were filing into stands but he didn't wave to me as he usually did. I winked as I walked by him and he winked back and smiled but I think we were both extremely conscious that our schools were competing.
"This is weird." I said commented once to George but I was wearing red and gold from head to toe so it packed a light punch.
"Tell me about it." He said, hoisting the banner he'd made in support of Harry up higher.
Still, I couldn't help but feel that once we found out that the challenge was dragons, real live, fire-breathing dragons, was some of that tension seemed to melt away. And by the time Cedric Diggory appeared on the field to face his dragon there were exactly two teams in my mind: the Dragons and the Humans and all I really wanted was a shut out. If Harry came out on top that was great but it didn't mean that much compared to the more looming threat of Harry not coming out at all.
Watching it I felt like I was going to have a heart attack at any second. I had my hand on poor Lee Jordan's forearm and I kept unconsciously gripping it really hard whenever something exciting happened. Lee didn't notice at the time, probably because every time I clamped down something much more interesting was happening, but he found later he had a little braceleted bruise shape where my hand had been. "Fuck but you've got a grip!" He moaned later. His arm was swollen a little bit and he could barely move it. I apologized profusely of course but it was far too late to live it down. They'd never open another jar of cooking supplies for me ever again without some crack about it.
Maybe it was my Gryffindor sensibilities but I couldn't help thinking that Harry's way was the cleverest—a very simple spell but with good results. "Oh I do hope he can think of something as good for the next task!" I said as the four of us ran up to the fifth floor directly after the task had ended.
"Oh give it a rest and just be glad he did so well on this one!" Fred said.
We stopped by the kitchen too, to pick up some normal food to mingle our own with. Before this year, before I'd started hanging about with Lee and the twins, I'd never broken any school rules so I'd never been to the kitchens. The house elves were strange to me, being muggle born. Hermione Granger, a fourth year in Gryffindoor, had been trying to tell me for months now that they were a suffering slave class but they seemed downright chipper to me.
"Of course they're happy!" George laughed when I mentioned how surprised I was. "This is what they live for." In the corner of my eye I saw Fred filch three bottles of rum off the shelf. I'd been wondering where they'd been getting all my cooking supplies. Of course I realized that everything I was cooking the house elves could do and just as well if not better, but they'd hardly let the twins stand over them and hex the food.
The party itself was fabulous. I spent most of it on the couch with Amanda, who was mooning (in a very, very, very hushed voice) about how cute Diggory had looked today. It seemed like a little bit of disloyalty until I looked around and realized that Lana and the others hadn't even showed up for Harry's party. I wondered, vaguely if they'd been invited onto the Durmstrang ship, but when Amanda and I finally tromped upstairs well past midnight they were all up in our dormitory.
It was Amanda who pushed open the door but I could feel, even from behind her, the sort of word-vacuum we were stepping into, the kind that can only be created by a room full of teenage girls who have just recently stopped talking about you. There was a pro-Krum banner hung draped over the window and they were all sitting around a cluster of butterbeers, staring wordless at the two of us framed in the door.
I froze but Amanda grabbed my hand and pulled me through, yawning theatrically. "Jesus I'm tired." Her words seemed to echo against the empty walls.
We pushed through them to our beds and slid under our covers. "Oh my god, she's such a freak." I heard one girl near my bed hiss as the buzz of the gossip bees grew again. I turned on my side away from the chatter, feeling as if I might finally see the humor in girls like these.
8888
The Canary Creams were a hit.
I spent the whole weekend cooking and we'd still sold out by Tuesday morning. I spent every waking moment I wasn't either in class or doing my class work making more Creams. Not that I was doing all the work. Overnight Fred, George and even Lee had been replaced by very professional businessmen. They wouldn't let anyone help me cook (because the recipe and hex were now highly classified) but they hired a couple of first years to package the creams into boxes and bags for the holidays and they brought me my meals right from the kitchen to the fifth floor room.
I was so busy I even had to work during lunches to meet the demand, which is the reason I was late to Transfiguration on Thursday. "Now that the four of you have been good enough to join us I'd like to continue what I was saying." Professor McGonagall said, scowling at us as we hurried to take our seats. "If that's all right with you."
"Sure thing Professor." Fred said, which is really the only thing you can say to something like that if you're Fred Weasley I suppose.
Professor McGonagall, probably because she knew what she said was tantamount to entrapment, continued without more than a withering glare to Fred. "As part of the Triwizard Tournament Hogwarts will be hosting a Christmas ball this year. The Yule ball will take place in the Great Hall, starting at eight o'clock on Christmas Day and ending at midnight. Only fourth year students and above will be allowed though you may invite a younger student if you wish."
I didn't even need to turn my head to know who had exploded into giggling chatter in the left corner of the room. Out of habit, I blushed. They aren't your friends anymore, they aren't your responsibility anymore, I had to remind myself. "Dress robes are to be worn," Professor McGonagall continued when she'd stared them all into silence. "But before we go any further than that let me make it perfectly clear that, although I expect you all to have a good time, I also expect the highest level of behavior from all of you! Severe punishment will be awarded to any student who embarrasses the school in any manner!" She glanced around the room with a very stern expression but I couldn't help but feel that her eyes lingered in my corner of the room for extra time. "Now," she continued, "with that out of the way, on to Transfiguration."
Of course no one felt much like concentrating after that. We were torn, the lot of us, between a little hidden fantasy about going with someone in particular, and the mortifying prospect of going alone. I envied the boys that week; at least they had some control over their own destiny. Fred, George and Lee insisted that at least I didn't have the fear of rejection to consider but, still, it seemed like a more than fair tradeoff to me.
I knew, of course, who I wanted to go with, but I knew too that Roger would never ask me. He was a year older than me, very handsome, a Quidditch captain and very popular. Still I couldn't help looking at him hopefully mornings in the Great Hall. I was so obvious in fact that Fred finally turned over his shoulder one morning and said, in a voice that seemed to carry over the whole hall, "who the hell do you keep looking at anyway Tennessee?"
I kept my eyes on my food from then on.
The Wednesday that was the last day before our break dawned and still no one had asked me. Fred, George and Lee all had dates so there was no chance one of them might get desperate and as me as a friend (a slim hope to begin with as they were all so popular). In fact everybody seemed to have ended up with their dream date and I was starting to panic a little bit. (It is an interesting thing to be panicked right around Christmas; The school decorations had been stepped up this year to impress our guests and even I could see how funny it was to walk through all the holy, mistletoe and carols feeling like my stomach was full of lead.)
Amanda accosted me after my last period class in the hall that day. "Guess what!" She said, her voice ringing with the stress of holding back her secret.
"What?" I asked tiredly.
"Guess who asked me to that ball?" She said, apparently feeling that just the one guessing question wasn't a sufficient build up.
"The Minister of Magic." I said sarcastically. I didn't mean to be so mean to Amanda but I was irritated and bitter that I hadn't been invited yet. I needn't have worried though: she was so happy she barely seemed to notice my sarcasm. "Better!" She squealed.
"Oh God it isn't Viktor Krum is it?" Lana or one of the other girls will kill her in her sleep, I thought.
"Better!" She was dancing in the toes of her shoes by this time. "Jack Smythe!"
I should have seen it coming. Jack had said he liked her (he'd denied that it was a current thing but I'd never really believed him) and he wasn't the type to be too shy to do anything about it. I smiled and tried to match her excitement. "That's great!" I squealed. "He's great!"
"I know!" She said. "His French is divine!"
"What are you wearing?" I asked.
"Oh I can't decide yet!" She sighed. "But I'm going to Hogsmead tomorrow to look. Want to come?"
I didn't want to admit to Amanda, who had always been so beautiful and never had any problem getting boys to like her, that I hadn't been asked. "Don't you want to go with Lana?" I asked.
She didn't go for it. "No." She said. "She's going with all the other girls anyway."
I was backed into a corner. "I…I mean to say…it's just that…well I…No one asked me to the ball." I finally managed.
Amanda's face fell for a second. It was really sweet actually: she looked almost confused, as if she couldn't believe no one had snapped me up yet, but she bounced back quickly. "Well there are still three days!" She said in a very cheering voice. "Someone'll ask you soon and then you'll be glad you've already got the dress!"
"No, I mean I really don't want to Amanda." I protested. "I mean…" This was also hard to admit. "What if I don't get to use it? It'll look so silly hanging by my bed."
She bit her lip. Even she couldn't ignore the fact that Lana and the others would mock me mercilessly if I bought a dress and had no date. "You can go with Jack and I." She said determinedly. "As a group."
That sounded worse to me. I didn't want to tag along with Jack and Amanda and ruin their date. I didn't want to be a third wheel, being passed from date to date so everybody else could have a little romantic alone time. Still Amanda was nothing if not persistent and it would be almost as hard not to go at all. "Okay." I sighed. "Okay." I could always just leave if it got too bad.
"See you tomorrow!" Amanda said, giving me a little hug. "Gotta split!"
Fred, George and Lee had detention that night (some end of term spirits had possessed them to let off a bag of dungbombs in Snape's dungeon) and the demand for Creams had slacked off recently as everyone had learned not to accept food from other people so I had nothing to do that night. It was almost my first solitary night since my fight with Lana.
The library was almost deserted. Very few people hang out in the library at the start of a break but I almost preferred it that way as I set myself up in my favorite little window nook with a sappy romance and a bag of creams (not hexed). The library was warm and the pane of glass was cool. My book was interesting and the creams were delicious. And best of all there were no giggling ex-best friends behind the bookshelves tonight to disturb my concentration.
I was just at the point in my book where it is revealed that the mysterious Count Drago was the same person as the roguish but sexy King of Thieves that had kidnapped Esmerelda and stolen her heart in the first part of the book all along (except without the mask) and she has fallen in love with him twice, when I suddenly became aware that someone was walking toward me.
I looked up and was surprised to find I was staring right into Viktor Krum's eyes. "Good Evening." He spoke more carefully than he had on the Pitch.
"Hello." I said as pleasantly as I could. I really wanted to find out what happened to Esmerelda and Drago.
"I vas just vondering if you vould consider going to the Ball with me." He didn't say it like an English boy would have. He didn't speak the language well enough to make himself seem casual, as most boys do when they asked girls out. He didn't even hesitate or qualify it with something like 'if you don't have someone else to go with' or 'if you aren't busy.' It wasn't even as if he knew what I was going to say (I hadn't, after all, been following him about for a month). It was a very bold thing to do, I realized later, (asking a girl out when you literally didn't speak the same language I mean).
I blinked. "What?" If had thought it through long enough I might have tried to sound less stunned but it just popped out. He seemed to think it was a problem with the way he'd said it because he merely repeated what he'd said before, enunciating more clearly. Still, this was helpful as it gave me time to think. "No I understood." I explained. "I just…I mean…that is…" There was, I realized, no tactful way to say it. "Don't you have someone better to go with?"
"No." He said, very firmly. "There is no one better." I was shocked (stunned really). After about four years of dancing around my crush on Roger I'd almost forgotten that the truth was still an option. And he said it so unapologetically it was impossible not to admire.
My first impulse was to say yes about a million times but just as I started to speak a vision of Lana and her Bulgarian scarf popped into my head. If I went with Viktor it would prove that I was right and she was wrong and that would certainly put our friendship past the pail of a patch up. It was just the sort of thing I'd always sworn never to do (loose a friend over a boy that is).
For someone I couldn't read at all Viktor could read me like a book. "You are voried about your friend?" He asked and he drew his fingers across his hips where Lana kept her scarf so I knew which friend he was talking about.
"No." I lied. "We aren't friends anymore."
"My fault?" He asked.
"No." I said. "Not really anyway." That was the truth too. If Lana and I fought it was our own damn fault and no one else's. Viktor hadn't asked the two of us to be so petty and immature. "I'd love go with you." I said firmly.
"Thank you Tenn-see." He said and, with a short bow, turned and left.
I sat there for almost a full minute while my body processed and processed what had just happened. I tried, in my head to separate the pros and cons of going with Viktor, but in the end all I felt was overwhelming happiness. Whatever I did I couldn't make myself care about how much this might hurt Lana or even if I might have given up Roger to go with Krum. He was so nice and so handsome and he made it so I couldn't feel my legs when he looked at me and that was all I cared about.
I jumped out of my seat and did a little dance and then, Esmerelda and Drago forgotten, I ran as fast as I could to the girl's dormitory to find Amanda. "What the hell are you on about?" She asked as I pulled her bodily by the arm into the bathroom and shut the door.
I turned on the sink for extra secrecy and put my foot against the door. "You have to promise not to tell anyone!" I said.
"Okay." She agreed.
"No really promise!" I insisted.
She sighed, annoyed. Amanda hated secrets, especially secrets she didn't know. She put her hand over her heart. "I swear not to tell anyone what you're going to tell me. Now go on and tell me already!"
I grabbed her arm and pulled her so I was whispering in her ear. "Viktor Krum just asked me to the Yule Ball." Unlike Amanda, who could savor these moments, I knew I had to get the truth out there quickly or it wouldn't have enough momentum to make it out at all.
Amanda almost imploded. "OH MY HOLY HELL!" She shouted. I gestured frantically for her to keep it down so she started whispering frantically. "Where? What? When? What did he say? Are you happy? Who was there?"
I related the whole story to her in whispers.
"Oh wow." She said when I was done. "I am going to find you the prettiest dress robes ever!"
I giggled. "You don't think I did a bad thing? To Lana I mean." I asked.
Amanda stared at me for a long, long time. "Tennessee." She said finally. "Sometimes you really are too much. Lana would be rubbing this in your face right now if she were in your place. Don't get me wrong, I love the girl to death, but fuck her. Girls make the mistake of letting their friends in on their love life all the time but don't be one of them! This ball— it's just between you and Viktor and no one else."
"Right." I repeated. "Me and Viktor and no one else."
FinAN: Okay so the response to the last chapter was a bit on the tepid side but no one seemed to have any negative feedback. What did you lot think of Viktor? I know he's a little bit far from what he was in the book and the movie but you really can't have a main character that's devoid of humor or can't say what he wants to (or at least I can't write that). The ball is in the next chapter so that's cool. Anyway please review! It would be so cool if I could get up to 40 by the next chapter. Speaking of the next chapter here's a sneak peak!
I found Fred and George's present in the little pile at the bottom of my bed easily. I'd expected cooking supplies but there was no such thing. It was, I could tell just from looking at it, a sack-o-dungbombs from Zonko's because instead of putting it a box or even just putting a bow on it, they'd tried to wrap it conventionally. There were little bits of the sack poking out at all ends and the paper was held together with spellotape. Boys, I thought, rolling my eyes. I didn't even bother trying to lug the bloody thing downstairs, I just shoved it under my bed before anyone else noticed it and decided to tell the faculty that I had about fifty pounds of dungbombs under my bed.
"Did you like our gift?" Fred asked when I came back down to the common room.
"Oh yeah." I laughed. "It's great. Very me."
"You'll need them someday." George assured me.