THIRTYEIGHT
Eve knew this feeling well. It had become prominent in her life for the last year, edging its way into her emotions and plaguing her moods for days on end. It was a feeling she found worse than pre-match jitters, or heartbroken rejection, or even a session in Umbridge's detention.
It was the feeling, of course, that something bad was going to happen.
But the real pain came not from the premonition itself but from the specificity of the something itself. And if Eve soaked in the feeling enough to consider the disastrous possibilities of this something, a paralyzing fear took over until all she could muster was hide under her covers and pray for sleep.
However, this simple act is harder said than done when one has classes, growing plants, and a gang of social cues to attend to. Anxiety has no match for teenage responsibility. Eve was well aware of this much. But even this distraction wasn't enough to help the dread that filled the expanse of her stomach, weighing her down and causing the edges of her eyes to water when she wondered too profoundly.
What was there for her to do but simply wait?
But was there even something to wait for?
Eve was sure there was something wrong with her.
"What's wrong with you?"
Eve's eyes crossed the rain-stained windowpane to meet Neville's curious regard, although she only replied to his question with a raised brow.
"Your face…. It went all funny."
Neville finished his words with a dramatized blank stare; one Eve assumed mimicked her expression only moments ago. She, again, only kept her brow raised.
"What? Boy trouble or something?" Neville asked, his question followed by a playful grin growing on his face, an expression Eve found new and slightly alarming for the boy.
Had everyone undergone personality lobotomies in the last year?
Neville had gotten cheeky while Eve had gotten Professor Trelawney styled mad. Eve really needed this school year to be over.
"It's quite unfortunate for me to say, but I think my troubles far surpassed the boy kind," Eve finally replied, taking a glance down at the unfinished Herbology reports in front of her.
She picked up her red quill and hesitated for a moment before dropping it again beside the parchment.
Somehow, the greenhouse seemed to be the last place she wanted to be in right now, surrounded by incoherent student work and her own lost ambition. For a second, she thought of her body pressed against the wood paneling of the table and George between her legs. Even those daydreams couldn't help her at this very moment.
She looked back up to see Neville still staring at her.
"Surely you're going to tell me what's the matter, Eve."
Eve thought over this notion in her head for a second or two longer. Was there even a point in trying to make sense of what was destroying her mind?
"Do you ever get this feeling… that something bad is going to happen? Only, you don't know what that something is."
Neville's expression raised to show slight surprise over Eve's words, but after a moment, his eyes softened again, and a slight grin grew on his face.
"I would say that's always been a strong trait in my disposition," Neville replied.
"Yeah, well, I'm still getting used to it," Eve sighed.
A shared silence fell between the two as Eve disembarked back into her thoughts while Neville watched from across the table in careful wonder. He hesitated for a moment, opening his mouth to consider his words before shutting his lips. Then, after another steady second, his face raised again, and he spoke.
"You changed last year. I mean, after last year, I guess I should say."
Eve's eyes trailed to meet Neville's delicate stare, but she didn't immediately respond to his statement. She only gazed for a moment, her expression mild and indistinct, as if she had expected the words from the boy. As if it was no surprise at all to her, maybe she knew preciously what he had meant to say, but neither attempted to admit it.
"Everyone did, Neville."
"Yes, but some more than others, don't you think?"
Again, Eve paused, her expression still unwavering, but she did feel a steady rise in her heartbeat.
"Well, he was my friend," she finally said.
This time, it was Neville who stared for a moment, his eyes still kind but Eve finding them heavy while on her now. She glanced at a pot of aconite just behind the view of his shoulder.
"At the start of this school year, I noticed you. I used to never see you without your friends, but this year, I always caught you alone. You were quieter too, not really in a sad way, but like you always have something on your mind."
"Well, sometimes it was in a sad way," Eve corrected, and with her words, she sent Neville a weak smile.
The smile he sent back was equally as feeble.
"But I suppose some things have changed since the beginning of the school year."
Eve watched Neville's smile grow ever so slightly; as his eyes lit with a gleam of playfulness she knew precisely where it led. She smiled again, this time with a tad more gleam, and glanced at the aconite again.
"Yes, well. It's been one strange year, indeed," Eve replied.
"But maybe, things will begin to get better soon."
"You don't seriously believe that do you?"
Eve's question drew a hardened look from the boy, but only for a moment. The truth was, Eve wasn't the only one who had changed since last year. She wasn't the only one who could feel the new rampant anxiety that fell on the student body of Hogwarts. Or heard the whispers and scowls from the students who thought she was different. Or listened to the forewarned pleas that came from the boy that lived. Neville had believed Harry this whole time, hadn't he?
The boy nodded after a moment as if caught in a frail attempted lie. To Eve's surprise, he followed this response with a short laugh, as if finding the pensive pessimism all at once ridiculous and amusing. He really had changed, Eve thought.
"I'm done with this if you are."
Eve furrowed her brows at Neville's words before watching his glance fall to the abandoned parchments in front of her. Eve nodded and pushed them aside.
"Look at us, abandoning school duties," she grinned, slipping off her wooden stool and reaching for her bookbag.
"Well, if there's anything I've learned in the past year, it's that there are more important matters than school."
"And right now, it's the inside of my bedcovers," Eve replied, turning in her step and reaching for the greenhouse door. She twisted the knob and pushed, meeting at once the cool setting gloom of the evening.
"DA meeting at 9, remember?"
Eve turned in her heels to meet Neville's awaiting gaze, the boy already knowing plain and well what awaited in the girl's reaction.
"How do I somehow forget every single week?"
"You seem to be too busy worrying about things that haven't happened yet."
Eve sighed in response and turned back towards the corridor ahead.
"Will you walk with me?"
When the time finally came, and it became certain that Eve wasn't under the comfort of her bedsheets, the pair made their usual weekly creep up to the seventh floor of the castle.
"You know, my Reducto spell is getting better and better each week," Neville whispered as they made their way through the dark unfold of the Room of Requirement corridor.
"It's always just fun to blow something up, isn't it?" Eve grinned, watching as the wooden frame of the enchanted room grew in front of their eyes.
Just as the door's wood molded in size and texture, there was a soft echo of voice from somewhere in the distance of the corridor. Eve's head whipped in either direction, her eyes meeting no source of the noise, though.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Neville replied, his eyes following Eve's lead to take a glance at either side of the dark corridor. But again, there was nothing to unfold before them.
"It sounded like a cough or something," Eve insisted, and again she turned to peer in either direction.
For a moment, Neville's expression seemed to show concern for the girl's words, but then the door in front of them materialized into full form.
"I didn't hear anything, Eve. Come on."
Neville reached for the knob of the door and, with his hand on her arm, pulled Eve alongside him and into the Room of Requirement.
All at once, Eve's vision changed from the dim haze of the castle corridors to the blue glimmer of the mirrored walled room. A group was already formed in its middle, Eve noting the familiar faces that huddled together, their expressions directed in the same field of view.
Harry's face appeared from the middle of the huddle; his eyes cast down in what looked like a study of his hands. As Eve approached the group, her eyes followed with the others, glancing over shoulders to have a look at the creased papers and black-inked text of a Daily Prophet.
"You remember what I said earlier about things getting better?"
Neville's voice was still beside her, but when she glanced at him, his eyes were steady on the news headline. Eve followed his eyes and read the words before her:
'MASS BREAKOUT IN AZKABAN'
The headline followed with an eerie aerial shot of the stormy cliffs of the maximum-security prison. And framed with the printed story held mugshots of the escapees, the wild hair and rotten teeth of one woman catching Eve's eye in particular. She wanted to ask who Bellatrix Lestrange was but decided to hold her tongue for the group.
"Right, everyone's been filled in then?"
Harry's words were sharp and short, and all at once, he folded over the newspaper and tucked it under his arm like he had just shown the weekly weather report. Eve could see a tense grip in his jaw as he turned to the front of the room.
"Let's pick up from where we left off, shall we?"
In a steady queue, the group dispersed and assembled themselves in their usual spots, their wands appearing at their sides and their faces lifting considerably from the somber news shared only moments ago. Eve nodded as Fernando came to her side.
"Who's Bellatrix Lestrange?" Eve asked, her voice hushed as to not sound her question to the rest of the group.
Fernando grimaced and gave a weak shake of his head.
"I'd savor that ignorance for as long as you can, Eve," Fernando replied with a sigh, his expression turning back to the group surrounding them, "I think your boyfriend is trying to get your attention."
Eve drew her gaze to her peers around her, quickly scanning faces until she found the one she was looking for. George's eyes were already fixed on her as she met them, his expression breaking to a smile when he realized he had finally caught hers.
Eve grinned, raising the hand that held her wand and sending a slight wave. George opened his mouth, wide and overly expressive, and Eve could see he was trying to mouth something to her amongst the clamor of the group.
"WHAT?" Eve mouthed back, watching the blue glimmer of a Patronus block their eye-line of one another.
The haze broke and George's face appeared again, and Eve could see what made out to be the resemblance of a "DO."
The word followed with George pointing his wand at Eve, and she nodded slightly in recognition.
"DO I WHAT?" She mouthed, and again George's face was lost in the fog of magic and strange fanatic expression.
Eve laughed and shook her head. She hadn't the slightest clue what the boy was getting at in his weird miming exercise. She watched as George's shoulders lifted as he let out what seemed to be a deep sigh of exasperation.
He opened his mouth again, but this time, words trailed across the room.
"DO YOU WANT-" George's voice boomed over the clamor of the group, but it was cut short by an even louder rumble.
The room shook as an immediate second boom rang overhead, causing the students to cut short their spells and attention.
"Bloody hell, what was that?" Fernando's voice came from beside her.
There was another boom, and then another, accompanied by shards of ceiling collapsing on the stone floor. A clamor erupted from the wooden door in front of them, the wood shaking violently as another boom came from overhead. Harry rushed to the door, his wand drawn as the group awaited the source of the disaster from behind.
The final boom came a moment later, loud and explosive, and the front door flew off, leaving a massive hole in the wall and shards of glass flying past.
Eve felt a sudden grip on her arm, but whether it was from Fernando or George, or perhaps another terrified friend, she didn't turn to look. Her eyes remained glued on the setting smoke ahead while her heart continued to feel the aftershock of the eruption.
Pink was the first thing that appeared in Eve's vision as the hole in the wall cleared into view. And that was all that needed to be noted for the group to know what was ahead for them.
Professor Umbridge, along with Filch and a gang of badged Slytherins behind, stood before them, wands raised and expressions of delight marked on each one of their ghastly faces.
"Get them."
Umbridge's command erupted in another kind of commotion as the Slytherins disembarked on the DA with fevered mayhem. Immediately, pushing and shoving dissembled among the students as insults and commands were exchanged between the raging peers. Eve felt the grasp on her arm pull her out of the horrified daze. She turned to meet George's face.
"Quick, Eve. Do you want to go on a date with me?"
"You're seriously asking me that right now?"
George's face upturned slightly at Eve's question, as his eyes danced around the room for a second as if not entirely convinced in the severe drama unfolding in front of them. As if to say, Surely, you're not going to let this minor issue get in the way, are you?
And Eve wasn't going to.
"Yes, obviously, George."
The conversation between them was then cut by the appearance of green robes by their sides. Arms pulled them apart, and Eve met the eyes of a familiar Slytherin girl, her wand raised at Eve's chest.
It was a catastrophe. Of monumental proportions. The worst that had come to play out in Eve's disastrous teenage life.
But at least she was going on a date.
Author's Note: I apologize for the late update! Seems to be the standard for me now, unfortunately. I also apologize for the mistakes you may find. It seems the only way I can finish editing is with multiple glasses of wine in my system. Anyways, how is April over already?
