Chapter 43: Dancing Grandpa
Just as it seems Remus' birthday happens, James' is already appearing. Though he loves a little bit more of a celebration, so the Gryffindor Tower has become host to a relatively small party. Lily Evans has ensured that no alcohol has been snuck in through the guests, but she hardly has the cunningness to prevent it from being snuck in by her friends prior to the beginning of the celebrations.
Which she is late for.
But that's currently at the back of her mind.
Cressida grins madly, skipping in front of Elias with a parchment in her hands. She waves it in his face, counting on other students to move out of the way behind her. Elias grins knowingly. "I told you," he sings.
Cressida twirls, holding the parchment to her chest. The delight bubbles out of her. "You're amazing," she declares. A near-perfect score in Transfiguration. Something she hasn't been able to achieve all year. James' help should have gotten her to this position – she'd been a great student in the class up until this year and James' top marks and her abilities were not being reflected. But she isn't staring and daydreaming when Elias is tutoring her. "I owe you big time."
"You owe me a butterbeer," he bargains.
Cressida holds her hands in surrender, stuffing the paper into her bag. "That sounds like a good deal. I can't do this weekend since the last Quidditch match is on Sunday and James has us training all Saturday but next weekend for sure."
"Oh, well of course," Elias splutters with a grin, feeding off her hyper activeness. "Even if you weren't on the team, I'd be there because I'm the head cheerleader."
They lapse into a fit of laughter. Cressida swings back around to walk straight as they reach the stairs, only three flights below the seventh floor. Classes had finished for most students about an hour ago but as soon as she could, she went to find Elias while the others headed to the tower so she could share her achievement with the one she knew would celebrate the most with her.
"Hippogriff," she says to the Fat Lady who swings open the door with an eye roll. Cressida almost berates her for the attitude but realises why as soon as the door opens. What was meant to be a small gathering of mainly Gryffindors has turned into the party of the century. "Fuck me."
Music from an unknown source blares some unidentifiable tune yet people manage to dance to it.
"At least James won't realise I'm late," she sighs through an airy chuckle as Elias eyes off the scene as she does. "Hell, I probably won't even see him all evening at this rate."
"Capaldi is probably throwing a fit," Elias muses, hardly bothered by the party himself. Out of the crowd, a swaggering Sirius emerges with a drink in hand which looks somewhat like pumpkin juice at least.
"Capaldi is currently on a date with Goldie Burnes," he divulges with a wink in Elias' direction. He momentarily purses his lips in a frown before taking a quick sip of his drink. "Only cost a few galleons to get her to agree."
Cressida snatches the drink out of his hand, bringing it to her nose and takes a long sniff. There's the unmistakable whiff of firewhiskey that tingles the back of her throat. "Don't let Lily near this. In fact none of the drinks should be spiked."
Sirius snatches it back. "And they aren't," he assures her. "The only firewhiskey here is hidden up in our room and you have to know where it is to find it." His eyes harden, turning back to Elias. "You didn't hear anything."
Elias holds his hands in surrender with a nonchalant smile. "Firewhiskey isn't my thing, and I don't care to have this party ruined." Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he leans forward on the balls of his feet. "Might be my last if we don't win the Quidditch Cup."
"We will," Sirius smiles tightly. Cressida narrows her eyes in warning at him. Just as Cressida is about to announce her intentions to go drop off her things and change before she joins the party, James emerges from the crowd with his arms in the air.
Cressida releases the tenseness under her eyes, her own arms opening. She lets out a sharp breath of air as the back of her feet are pulled off the ground. "Happy birthday," she laughs over his shoulder. She's already wished it to him that morning properly, but this one feels more like an 'enjoy your day'. Or night.
As soon as he pulls back, his brows are raised, hazel eyes running up and down her figure. "You're late," he accuses.
Cressida scrunches her nose. "Sorry." Her hand rests naturally on the back of his arm so she doesn't bother to correct its path. "I just had to tell Elias something."
"Don't be modest," Elias drawls to her before looking at James. "She scored a near-perfect on her Transfiguration test that we've been studying for."
Cressida smiles bashfully, bowing her head. "Nice," James compliments, a gentle hand resting on the dip of her back.
Elias nods proudly, swaying back and forth on his feet. "A leap from the last one. A forty-eight, wasn't it? Now you've got a ninety-eight."
A pit grows in her stomach. She can only hope James has had enough to drink that he won't put two and two together. "Yes," she agrees quickly. "I messed that one up." She knows that he's just showing off both their work in her steed, but she wishes he'd just shut up.
"The last one?" James mutters. "That was on switching spells. We studied together for that. How could you have failed?" The hand on her back disappears and Cressida retreats her own.
Elias realises his mistake. "I'm going to say hey to Fabian." With a final apologetic glance at Cressida, he scurries away. She watches him, longing to trail behind.
"Cress?" With no other choice, Cressida turns her eyes up to James. "I don't understand how you could have done so badly. We worked on that together for hours." Her mouth moves around as the words try to form but her mind doesn't work fast enough to come up with a reasonable excuse. What could she say? Sorry, you're a good teacher but I was too busy being distracted by you? "Is that why you asked Griffiths to help you instead?"
"What? No," she splutters. She'd have put up with the terrible grades for the time she got to spend with him in exchange. It is only one class. "I just felt sick through the test and I flunked it."
"What about the other assignments? You never even showed me what you got on those." Cressida glances over her shoulder but Sirius disappeared some time ago. "Cress, if I'm such a bad teacher then you should have just told me. I'd rather you hadn't wasted your time."
"No, no, no." Cressida shakes her head frantically. "It's not your fault at all. You're actually a better teacher than I give credit for." Unable to put what's inside her head into proper words, her hands clasp around the material of his grey school jacket in front of his shoulders. "You're amazing," she spits out.
His brow twitches, his palms cupping the points of her elbows.
"I loved studying with you, but we were always getting distracted. Or I was." Her chest racks in a nervous laugh. "I'm just struggling to stay on top of everything this year and this is just the class that's at the bottom of my pile. And to be completely honest, Elias is as boring as beetle dung when it comes to studying but quite clearly, it's working better for me. Trust me, I'd much rather spend it with you, but you have other things and with OWLs coming up…" Cressida takes a long breath but finds herself unable to finish her own trail of thought.
James' mouth is hanging open with something in his eyes that she hopes is good. "Breathe," he instructs softly. Cressida nods with a bitter laugh. His palms trail up her arms and around the back of her head and neck, pulling it close. Cressida clenches her eyes shut, feeling the softness of his jumper against her cheek. "Can I tell you something?" Cressida nods. "Studying with Lily is the most boring thing I've ever done." Immediately she burst into a choked laugh but forces it to stop since she doesn't know where the conversation is going. "But I aced our latest essay."
As his arms drop slightly, Cressida leans back. "I feel like I should be insulted now," she says. James laughs, shrugging his shoulders.
"You're distracting." The last bit of air in her lungs evaporates. Not in the same way, she repeats to herself. "I don't want either of us to be upset tonight. Or any night really."
"Me either." James smiles contently, watching her as if he is waiting for her to say something more. What else could she say unless she wants to mortally humiliate herself? "Enjoy your party," she eventually does manage. "I'll go babysit Sirius."
Peeling herself away, Cressida combs through the crowd, a keen eye searching for the long hair. Only once does she look back for James, but he's disappeared in the crowd as she has, no doubt bathing himself in the attention. When she does finally find Sirius, unlike her presumption of being in the middle of the gathering, he's leaning against a wall with his drink full once again.
Cressida leans against the wall next to him with a sigh, fondly watching her housemates live their lives around her. "Where's Remus and Peter?"
Sirius points towards the far end of the tower and Cressida wonders how she had missed it. Remus is standing on the table, dancing alone but he has a crowd cheering him on from the floor. "I'm not good at healing spells," she declares, already predicting him falling from it. Sirius chuckles to himself mostly. The left side of his mouth is drawn in a smirk; a playful and teasing side of him coming back out again. Cressida raises an easy-going brow. "Finally over your 'fuck the world' mood?"
He lets out a hiss of air between his teeth. "For the most part," he decides.
"Good," she swallows. Peeling her eyes away from the crowd, honest eyes bore into his own. "Cause I need you. And I can't talk to you properly when you're like that."
"For what it's worth, I am sorry," he says. His voice is almost flat but Cressida knows it's to keep himself behind a wall that he's so adamantly built. "I don't exactly always like myself either."
"Sirius-" she turns on her heel, the most of her weight set in her shoulder against the wall, "- you can be an absolute bag of dicks some days. But if I ever hear something so self-degrading like that come from your mouth again, I'll throw you to the Whomping Willow myself until that forsaken tree knocks some literal sense into you."
Sirius leans slightly away from her, unsure how to take her small burst. "I'm either not drunk enough or not sober enough for this talk."
Cressida sighs quietly, slouching her shoulders and offers him a warmer expression. Silently agreeing with his observation, she looks for something else to take hold of their conversation. She hasn't exactly been keeping with the atmosphere. "Those girls are ogling you," she smirks.
Sirius barely glances to the side. He's always been like that – little to no interest in them. He doesn't have time for girls he'd always say. When he first asked about Marlene at the beginning of the year, she half-expected them to actually have something since it was the first sign of any interest he's shown, but just like always…nothing. "Care to make them jealous with me? Might start a bit of drama and liven the party up even more."
"And have more girls turning their noses up at me?" she snorts. "May as well." She laughs loudly as his arm pulls her towards him, back pressing against his chest. Then he takes her hands in his, guiding them from behind like a puppet master and moves them in a very unrhythmic way to the music. "I feel like we're grandparents at a wedding," she laughs over the music. It's almost an awkward two-person conga line.
"I did tell you I'd be a cool grandpa," he sings back even louder as they move towards the crowd. Cressida eventually manages to weave herself around and face Sirius, the crowd entirely encircling them.
It's mindless fun. Fun that's sure to end in a few hours so she knows to take everything it has to offer while she can.
"And maybe not just those girls." Cressida doesn't pause her swaying but squints her eyes at her companion. What is he on about? As though just twirling her around again to the music, Sirius holds the back of her shoulders steady against his front. And she doesn't see it for a moment in the sea of faces. It's only the glasses that first catch her attention.
He glances over towards her in the slightest of moments before looking back at the blonde boy he's talking with. Cressida forces herself to turn back around with a tired glare that she doesn't bother aiming at anything in particular. "Not tonight," she declares firmly. Sirius watches over her shoulder for a few moments longer before meeting her sharp gaze. "I want to have fun."
Sirius purses his lips in consideration. "Let's have fun then, shall we?"
The song changes at the perfect moment and for the first time in a very long time, Cressida completely forgets everything but the music and her dancing partner.