Chapter 40: The Dramatics of a Gryffindor Party

Cressida stands at the edge of the pitch, sweat glistening her forehead. The snitch is still between her fingers, the wings softly fluttering. Her eyes nonchalantly watch as a blonde-haired boy in a Keeper's uniform is hauled off the pitch on a floating gurney with Madam Pomfrey walking alongside it. Cressida can't say she isn't too displeased with the penalty earned from it.

The rest of the team is somewhere behind her, celebrating their strong undefeated victories this year. Another player strides up next to her, a similar smirk donning his lips. "How many ribs do you think he broke?"

"How many you broke," she corrects, smiling up at her dark-haired anchor.

Sirius holds up his hands which still have his braces on. "I just hit the bludger. He's the one that didn't move."

"Hooch would argue against that. In fact, she did."

"Eh, McGonagall doesn't seem to care. She just likes it when we win." Cressida glances up into the stands where the staff sit. McGonagall is indeed still cheering, and what looks to be almost like taunting Professor Flitwick.

There's a loud whooping sound behind them from Heffler who is cupping his mouth. "Party time!"

Cressida sighs with a smile. She hadn't really thought about their victory party until then. Her eyes are drooping and her arms ache.

"We don't have to go." She glances back up to Sirius, wondering if her face was really that easy to read. "I want to rest too. We've got our apparation test tomorrow morning."

"Let's stay for half-hour. Then we can sneak out."

And that's exactly what the pair intend to do. They head up to the Tower with the rest of Gryffindor, the cheering deafening but also a warming payoff for their efforts. Unlike Sirius and Cressida, James revels in this victory. Cressida watches him fondly, shaking her head as he leads a chant as they flood the Common Room.

Marlene finds Cressida, pulling her away from Sirius. "I feel like we haven't talked all year."

"We talk every night before bed."

Marlene rolls her eyes. "Yes. Gossiping about others." Her elegant finger pushes into Cressida's shoulder. "We haven't talked about us." And with that, Cressida is pulled into a loud, but personal conversation with Marlene that somehow survives over the sound of the party happening around them. They talk about everything that comes to mind, and Cressida finds herself forgetting about hightailing out of the party for the time that she sits with Marlene on the couch.

"How's James going?" Marlene inquires with a sly lick of her lips. Cressida stammers, eyes flickering about for the boy in the crowd but she can't see them.

"I don't know," she answers with a small laugh. "Good I think, actually. I think I'm going to talk to him and… see if he feels the same."

Anxiety grows through her stomach as she confesses her thoughts, realising that Marlene is closer to Lily than she is to her. But Marlene only grins at her, pushing her drink out in cheers. "Good for you."

Her shoulders straighten in surprise. "Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Marlene giggles. She leans forward with a sly glint in her eyes. "You should go talk to him now." Cressida quickly shakes her head. "I just saw him head up to his dorm. You'd be alone. In a great mood. What a way to end the day."

Cressida turns her eyes towards the stairs. Could she? Could she actually go do it? "Should I?" Her head continuously flicks between the stairs and Marlene. "What if…?"

"What if what? He doesn't feel the same way? Then you get to move on with your life. If he does, then you get to look at something entirely new."

She doesn't breathe in her final moments of decision making. "Alright." Letting out a shaky breath of insanity, Cressida pushes herself off the couch and forces her feet towards the dorm. The rowdiness of the party becomes deaf on her ears, turning into a background humming as soon as she places a foot on the stone stairs.

One at a time.

What is she going to say?

'Hey James, I'm absolutely in love with you, and I want to know how you feel.'

She doubts even if she did plan anything, it would be the thing that she ends up spewing out. There's a weakness in her legs that hasn't come from sitting on a broom for two hours on end. And there's goosebumps on her arm that aren't from the cold chill of a British night.

Her fist raises to tap at his door, but stops before her knuckles touch the wood.

"I just don't know what to do Padfoot." Cressida pinches her brows. He sounds stressed. Though she isn't someone to snoop on her own friends – especially when it's clear they don't want to be heard – there's something that just stops her from doing anything. She can't leave, but she also can't move forward. "I really want to go out with her again. It was amazing. I can't get her out of my head."

Lily. He's talking about Lily.

"So you're going to ask her out on a proper date this time?" Sirius questions in a slowed and proper tone. "One that doesn't involve another girl?"

James scoffs, humoured. "That would be ideal." They both laugh, but Cressida's hand and smile have dropped like a rock in the water. "I swear I close to kissing her, then, she – it didn't end well. I mean it wasn't bad, but I don't think we were on the same train of thought. Then there was all that shit afterwards."

Shit? Her problems are shit to him?

"Probably because she was confused. I would have been too, especially after everything that happened," Sirius adds as the reasoner. The guilt that Cressida had somehow suppressed in ruining Lily's date with James bubbles back up all too violently. How could she be standing here right now, prepared to throw her feelings onto a man that is in love with another woman? "Look, mate, all I can tell you to do is talk to her. But what are you going to do about…?" He trails off, either leaving her name unsaid completely – like a forbidden topic – or mouthing it like they suspect she could hear them.

"I…" James trails off in the same fashion. Cressida can hear his heavy sigh event through the wooden door. "I have to tell her it was a mistake. A complete misunderstanding. That the date was a misunderstanding. I mean, I tried to make it as casual as possible so she'd take the hint but I don't know what she's thinking."

"Does anybody?"

James huffs mirthfully again. "How do I tell her that? I've led her on to thinking I have these feelings that I just don't. Maybe I had them – I thought I did."

Cressida steps away from the door at that moment, no longer interested in letting her heart be torn into not only two pieces, but many. Her hand snaps back down to her thigh. She's right back where she started – only now it hurts worse. Because she let herself have hope.

She takes long steps backwards until her heel no longer reaches the floor where it morphs into the staircase. Part of her imagines just letting herself fall backwards. Would she pass out before she hits the bottom, or would she feel each thud against the stone all the way until the end and more?

Merlin, how has she read everything so wrong.

Instead of letting herself fall, Cressida turns around and slowly walks back down the stairs. What was before a soft humming to her ears has returned to ear-quaking loudness.

She could salvage this. She hasn't told him anything. She even told him she'd speak to Lily for him. And maybe Cressida overstepped her boundary with James, and she has to apologise for that. Say that she was upset about Arthur still and Sirius wasn't there.

She wants Sirius. But Sirius is with James.

Remus.

The boy eventually ends up finding her, his relaxed and unfussed appearance straightening as he takes in her frazzled self. "I have firewhiskey hidden if you want some," is the first thing he says to her, thumb pointing over his shoulder.

Cressida shakes her head, forcing a laugh and a smile. "No. I'm fine." She has to be. "Just tired. Really tired." Almost with the most imperfect timing, James and Sirius come sauntering down the stairwell. They've stripped off all the extra quidditch gear, leaving them in their numbered undershirts and black pants. Sirius has this unbothered smirk that falls so naturally on his face. James has put his glasses back on that he removes for training and matches, his hair as dishevelled as though he's just flown through a storm.

Cressida looks away from them, but James finds his way back into her line of sight against her will. "There's my champion!"

"Finally sharing the victory with someone other than yourself," she drawls, her own smirked focused on Remus.

The gentle boy pouts, pointing his finger at her chest. "That's my line. You stole my line."

"At least we can skip the bartering this time," James laughs, standing next to them with his arms crossed over his chest. "Forty-forty for Cress and I. Ten for Sirius and the rest of the team get two per cent each."

Not in the mood for banter so light-hearted, Cressida only hums in agreement. What is she supposed to do? He's her friend; still is and always have been. A gentle hand rests on the back of her shoulder. "Can we talk?"

Cressida glances around. "Here? Now?"

"Ah, yeah, I mean, we can step outside if you want. But I want to talk about this now."

Cressida wanted time to think. Time to recover and put herself back together before she even considered talking to James directly. Praying that it is something about their game – or their apparation test tomorrow, she nods. "Okay."

"Great. Um, cool. Let's step away, if you don't mind Moony."

Remus raises his hand, stepping away and back into the crowd. Cressida lets him lead her away. They don't leave the party completely but move to the small alcove that is on the far end of the room, shadowed by large bookcases and furniture that's been pushed aside. Maybe she should have taken Remus' offer of firewhiskey.

James licks his lips, letting his body tip to the side until his weight rests against the stone wall on his shoulder. "I want to talk to you about us. I think you know that we've been changing and-"

"Actually I wanted to talk to you about this as well," she cuts him off. She just needs to save her dignity. To pretend to have been on the same page as him all along. Save herself the embarrassment of a misunderstanding.

"You have?"

"Yeah. Really I just wanted to say that I'm sorry." All the pretend and the lying was just practice for this moment. She can say it so naturally that she might even believe herself for a moment. "I think I've come across in a way that I don't intend to – that I have feelings for you." She lets out a shaky laugh that sounds a bit too nervous so she cuts it early. "I want you to know, that I know it wasn't a real date. I don't think you have feelings for me or anything like that. And I don't want anything between us to change. I'm sorry if I made you think I wanted otherwise and made things strange. I don't." This way, it's her that places herself on the sidelines. Not him, not anybody else.

James doesn't speak for a while after she finishes, a hand raising to his mouth where two fingers pinch and twist his bottom lip around. "Glad we talked then," he murmurs with a soft smile that tips both ends of his lips up equally. It looks wrong on him. Cressida exhales silently, feeling successful in not ruining their entire friendship. "I'm sorry if I ever came across the same way."

"Hadn't thought much of it."

Biggest lie of them all.

Cressida smiles at him at wide as she can, saying something about finding Remus once more but it is Sirius who pulls her arm. "I thought you said you wanted to rest."

"I do," she laughs meekly, rubbing the back of her neck. "I just wanted to talk with James first."

Sirius brows raise high. "Oh, he was looking for you actually as well. He was-" Sirius turns around to search for his best mate in the crowd.

"It's fine," she interjects. "I found him and we talked." She knows Sirius tries to remain as impartial as he can between her and James, acting not as a middleman but a friend to both, but he could at least show her a little sympathy? He knows how she feels.

His raised brows drop back down into a deep furrow. "Already? So are you two…?"

Cressida shrugs. "We're fine."

He looks at her like she's grown three heads. "Alright, where is James?"

Cressida sighs, pushing her tongue against her teeth. She looks around for him with lazy eyes that scan the crowd around them. It isn't a particular sight that draws her attention, but the sound of cheering. There, just over Sirius' shoulder. "He's over there," she states. Her voice is flat and void. Sirius spins on his heels. She can't read his face, but she can read the shock on his body as he watches James and Lily kissing in the midst of the party. Passionate and hasty. She can't tell who started it.

Everything comes crashing back down onto her. Every night that James spent pinning over her. The plans, fake scenarios, the showing-off, his confession of love to her, the letter.

How had Cressida ever believed James might actually feel something towards her? He wasn't secret with his feelings, he loved to show the world exactly what he felt for Lily Evans. You don't just fall out of love in a few days.

"Excuse me."

Her hands raise near to her chest, pushing past anybody that's in her way. Their faces flash by her with no recognition of who they are. They all look like strangers. She can't breathe, not even in the open air of the seventh floor past the Fat Lady. Not even in the empty third floor corridor. Tickling the pear on the painting feels like the most ridiculous thing but she does it, turning the knob and stumbling into the kitchen.

For the first time, Cressida actually looks at something properly. Or the someone.

Regulus sits on the bench, apple at his mouth and a book on his lap. They just stare at each other. Cressida's bottom lip quivers more and more, not wanting to show anything in front of the snarky Slytherin boy. The one who left her a note saying he would be here tonight. But she crumbles right to the floor.

Wails fill the steamy air; panicked and airless.

It's stupid – the back of her head tells her. To be crying over a boy.

Let her cry. Let her have this night.