Chapter 20: Face of Lies
"You must have the tolerance and patience of a mother."
Cressida sits politely on a stool by the kitchen island bench. Euphemia is baking the 'muggle way' as she puts it, testing her skills at gingerbread men. The scent fills the entire lower floor, and she's surprised the boys haven't wandered down from James' room yet, following their noses.
Cressida smiles as innocently as she can. "Maybe I'm just as bad as them," she counters.
"Please," Euphemia huffs in the most lady-like manner. "No one is as bad as my son. Although Sirius is probably close." She smiles kindly at Cressida, taking the Christmas treats out of the oven and placing them one by one onto a spaced metal tray to cool. "You remind me of myself when I was your age."
"Really?"
Euphemia nods with a hum. "I was a rugged young lass." Her youthful smile glows in reminiscence. "James' father was a friend of mine long before we got together. We always got into trouble doing stupid things during the Summer."
Cressida grins, resting her chin on a poised fist. "I can imagine that," she muses. And she can. Though Euphemia's age is physically visible, so is the external youth that some people just glow with. In the eyes and the smile.
"Which is why we're lenient with James. He'll grow up someday. He's more like his father than he'll let us say." Euphemia leans her weight into her hands along the bench's edge, smiling up to the roof where the bedrooms lay. "They're children. You all are. I teach what I can as a mother, but it's up to the world to teach them what I cannot. And from what I know of your little group, is that you're all good learners." Cressida's smile stays; a sudden urge to re-join them despite her need for a break not less than an hour ago. Whether James' mother can see the expression on her face, or just through instincts, she pats Cressida on the arm. "Let's get these guys decorated then you can take some up."
Sliding from the stool, Cressida takes over the icing and dots each gingerbread man with three small dollops of the white coloured sugar as Euphemia trails behind her with a bowl of small lollies.
Within half an hour, Cressida is wandering back up the stairs with a large oval plate in hand, stacked neatly with the still-warm gingerbread. Impulsively her socked feet guide her towards James' room at the very end of the hall down the left. She can hear a scuffle as the smell finally wafts down the far end of the manor. The door swings open, a head poking out right next to the frame. Cressida giggles quietly, holding up the plate in display. James' open mouth forms into a delighted beam at the same time that Sirius appears from further back in the room on a wheeled chair.
"So that's what you've been doing for the past two hours," Sirius calls down. "Can't say I'm too displeased by your disappearance if this is what you bring back."
"You can thank James' mother," she hints, sparing a smile at James as he picks one off the plate as she passes through. Sirius pushes off with his feet, the wheels rolling across the wooden floor. Without once leaving his seat, his arm stretches up blindly to take a gingerbread, before rolling back towards the desk where he rests his feet.
James room is basically a projection of his small dorm area. A large king-sized bed with a dark oak frame. A window that takes up half the outer wall, overlooking the acreage. It's dark in colour but flooded with light and rather homely.
In the far corner is a large cupboard, magically extended of course. And inside it, between clothes and shoes and other stray belongings, are the ingredients they need for that night's full moon.
"When's Peter arriving?" she questions, sitting down on the large bed. James goes back to lounging around as well on the bed between her and Sirius on the opposite side of the frame, splaying out with his eyes pointed at the ceiling.
"Sometime in the next couple of hours," Sirius answers. "Said he'd be here before dark." With no clock in the room, Cressida peers out the large window. Snow covers everything now. A wonderland of white. Yet despite the chilling sight of the outdoors, they all are happy wearing simple long sleeve shirts, no jackets needed. "I can't wait until we kick Slytherin's arse after the break."
"Finally get your revenge with Rosier?" James presumes, stretching his arms to interlock his fingers behind his head. Cressida eyes the lift in his black cotton shirt. His wand pokes out from its usual spot, in his front pocket.
Sirius contemplates the idea. "How pissed will you be if they get a few penalty shots?" he inquires.
"As long as we win in the end, and you don't get banned from playing, I don't give a rat's arse about penalties. Merlin knows we'll get some as well from their dirty tricks."
In an attempt to distract him as he debates Quidditch with Sirius, Cressida hands him another gingerbread, which he eagerly takes, propping his head slightly to bite it. He nods avidly at something Sirius says. "…I know," he huffs through a full mouth. "It's like he thinks recruiters are in the stands through training."
Cressida's fingers lightly wrap around the wand's hilt that's near her knee. "He's not as bad as Fredricks at least. Bloke thinks he's a Hollyhead Harpies protegee," Sirius barks. "He can't even catch a Quaffle without using both hands."
Cressida snorts in agreement, carefully pulling the wand upwards.
"She thinks I don't know what she's doing."
Cressida's eyes dart towards James who is continuing to look at Sirius. At first she prays that she's just missed part of the conversation but Sirius is watching her with mirthful questioning. Well, watching her hand specifically. "I did say the other night that she is a bit slow," Sirius comments.
Smiling coyly, Cressida pulls the wand out the rest of the way, not facing any physical protest beside a half-hearted glare from James. "I hate to be the one to tell you, Cress," James sighs, rolling his head with a regretful smile, "but you're not as sneaky as you like to believe. Your face always says exactly what you're thinking."
Her face hardens in reflex. "Does not," she objects clearly.
"Does," Sirius quickly deflects, spinning around on the chair with his head lopped over the backrest. "Do you really think we believed you when you lied about why Flitwick kept you back?"
"Or when you said you didn't want to play Quidditch?" James adds.
"When you sneak into our dorm to take the cloak." Sirius stops his spinning, using the tips of his toes to drag the chair over, leaning forward and resting his arms along the bedframe. "And you think we can't tell you're lying when you say someone calling you a mud-blood doesn't bother you."
She isn't sure what to feel at that very moment. It's…conflicting. Part of her – the private part of her – feels put off by the sudden call out, like she suddenly needs to build a brick wall. Cressida never realised how pathetic her lying skills are. Violated – how dare they know her so well? But the other half is oddly comforted by the knowledge that their attention has picked that up.
In the silence, they easily hear the sound of a 'swish' from the downstairs fireplace. Peter's arrived. James nods to Sirius. "Go get him, will you?"
Sirius looks utterly revolted by the idea of removing himself from his comfortable spot, but James doesn't give in his pressing expression. The longer-haired boy yields, muttering, "Fine," before slowly departing from the room.
After he leaves, Cressida pins her eyes on nothing in particular, twirling the wand around like a drumstick. She finds comfort in the action. Well, not so much the action, but holding the particular item. Being allowed to hold another's wand is a sign of trust and she doesn't take it for granted.
James leans his head on his raised palm quietly, listening to the muffled sound of his mother greeting Peter. They have a few minutes before he would be out of her hands. "That wasn't meant to make you upset."
The twirling slows as Cressida gives James a small smile. "I'm not," she assures him. "I'm just figuring out how I'm going to lie from now on."
"Why would you lie to us?"
Cressida leans down with a small smirk. "I have my secrets," she whispers, winking. "Like what I'm getting you for Christmas. At this point, I'm terrified you'll guess and be able to tell I'm lying if I say no."
His brows perk in the realisation of the sudden advantage. "I like surprises so I'm not going to ruin it," he decides. "But can you tell me what you got Sirius?"
Cressida can't do anything to stop the wide, and mildly bashful grin creep up. "I, um, got him, ice skates." James' eyes close over as he spews into laughter that surely travels through the entire manor. Cressida shakes her head, hiding her mouth behind the back of her hand. "I want him to learn!" she defends. "I'm so sick of him pouting while we're all out there."
"Merlin this is perfect," James breathes. He holds up a finger, signalling for her to wait. He leaps from the bed, heading towards the wardrobe and begins rifling through it. He glances at the door, but still, his mother's voice rings out. He holds a package close to his chest, scampering back to the bed. He kneels by its side, unwrapping the brown paper. "This is what I got him."
Cressida crawls towards him, scanning over the present. At the realisation, her hand covers her mouth. James has gotten him protection gear. Muggle protection gear, including knee pads and elbow pads. "He's going to hate us," she declares, hardly bothered by the fact. "It makes me bloody concerned about my present. Any hints?"
James pretends to consider it for a moment but shakes his head. "But on the topic of it-" his arms stretch over the bed he still kneels in front of, laying a hand on each of her knees, "-if you don't like it, we can change it. I can figure out something else-"
"You're beginning to sound like me," she cuts him off, noting his defensiveness about gifts. "You know I always love your gifts. And Remus'. But Sirius' are questionable, though I think it's because we give him things like this that he feels the need to retaliate."
James purses his lips, nodding thoughtfully. "Perhaps," he agrees.
Xx
Cressida glares at her phial with disgust. But a heavy relief overcomes her as the mandrake leaf has finally been evicted from her mouth. Her tongue constantly rubs over the roof of her mouth where it had unintentionally stuck for the last week or so and the ghost of the feeling remains.
Everybody's eyes are dreary, and their hands freezing over as they stand in the middle of a small field that's filled with shrubbery and trees. The spot they stand in has nothing hiding the moon's rays from glistening on the glass phials. The clock had said well past midnight when they first snuck out, and then they had to wait another hour or so before the clouds uncovered the moon.
They had added the dew and the Death's-head Hawk Moth, and now they just need to add a single strand of their own hair.
"What happens if we mix these up when we have to drink them?" Peter enquires.
James presses his lips outwards, staring at his own phial. "No idea. Maybe something like a Polyjuice potion gone wrong."
Cressida makes an effort to ignore their concerns – that they had made the choice to ignore when she first brought them up – and adds her hair to the mixture. It turns a silvery metallic, sizzling as the hair dissolves. After a few moments, it returns back to a clear liquid. Looks like water.
The other three follow suit, and fortunately, they all do the same thing. Sirius holds his up closer to his face. "Great," he sings, "so they're either all perfect, or all doomed. One for all and all for one, am I right?"
"Luckily we only have to wait to a thunderstorm to figure it out," Cressida remarks in the most sarcastic voice she can conjure. "I dibs going last, just in advanced."
James looks her over as he leads the way back to the main property. "You sure you're Gryffindor?"
Cressida shrugs. "The sorting hat almost put me in Hufflepuff," she admits.
"Why didn't it?"
She'd never admit the true reason. Possibly the only reason she's in Gryffindor. Cressida had pled with the hat to put her in there. James and Sirius had already accepted her into their ranks by the time she sat on the stool and already they sat at the Gryffindor table. Her knowledge of the other houses was limited, and only having what James said on the train ride over, anything but the house of red and gold seemed daunting. "I'm going to go with my impulsiveness," she smiles, nothing of her true thoughts coming to her words. "I've noticed that's quite a Gryffindor trait."