Chapter Two: What Is This Feeling?
GLINDA:
(spoken) Dearest darlingest Momsie and Popsicle:
ELPHABA:
(spoken) My dear Father:
BOTH:
There's been some confusion
Over rooming here at Shiz:
ELPHABA:
But of course, I'll care for Nessa:
GLINDA:
But of course, I'll rise above it:
BOTH:
For I know that's how you'd want me to respond
(Spoken:) Yes
There's been some confusion
For you see, my roommate is:
GLINDA:
Unusually and exceedingly peculiar
And altogether quite impossible to describe:
ELPHABA:
Blonde.
Five years later and Lavender Brown still had a hard time pretending that she lived in the girls' dormitory every time she visited Audrey, Elizabeth, and her BFF forever, Parvati. The girls lounged comfortably on their four-posters beds, but Lavender still always felt out of place. Not that that room that she shared with it was exactly comfortable either though.
Which was why she relished these once a month slumber parties with the girls. Lavender was the queen of the school, but living in a separate room than the girls could sometimes severely stunt her social status, especially when something funny happened and the other three had an inside joke, while she was on the outside. That's why, once a month, Lavender was on top of her game. She had to remind the girls who ruled the school so she saved her best gossip, compliments, and insults for this night. Everything had to be perfect or everything could fall apart.
Of course, she could technically invite the girls over to her room for a sleepover, but with it there, she didn't want to risk it. It was foul, nasty, rude, and just something to be generally ignored. Except on two occasions: when they were torturing her, or pranking her. And on the extremely rare occasion something interesting or embarrassing happened to her, gossiping about her.
And the sleepover just happened to coincide with the hottest piece of high society news that happened to pertain to her: Hermione Granger.
"So, have you heard the news yet?" Lavender raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows inquisitively.
"You know that we never hear anything, Lavender!" Parvati moaned. "We are gossip clueless when it comes to high society."
"Then you'd better study up because we are the next generation of society girls," Lavender laughed. "This, surprisingly enough, has to do with the family of the only non-society girl here,"
"The ugly duckling?" Audrey snorted. "Barely anything happens to her. It's always her mother."
"You're only partially right in this case. But listen up, anyways. So… have you ever wondered why little miss half blood is still here?" Lavender asked.
"Yeah, actually," Elizabeth said, her eyebrows furrowed. "Why is she still here? Wasn't there like a law last summer saying that HBs were banned from school or something like that?"
Lavender had started a new fad recently in the school. She had heard her father refer to half bloods as HBs and Muggle borns as MBs and the abbreviation had just caught on. It was so tiring and stupid to say something as long as "half blood" or "Muggle born" anyways when they were so insignificant, that she really shouldn't be wasting her breath on their proper titles.
"Not that there were tons of HBs to start with; only little Ms. Granger in our year, I believe." She lifted a chocolate covered strawberry and took a bite. "Well, you'll never guess what happened—Elaine Granger divorced her Muggle husband and went back to the Malfoy family!"
Everyone's jaw dropped. "No way…" Parvati said, awestruck.
"I know! Insane, isn't it? That's how the shrew got to stay in Hogwarts, granddaddy Malfoy must have pulled some strings to get her to stay."
"But why would he do that for her? She's just a dirty blood," Audrey asked.
"Well, as soon as the divorce papers came through, it was revealed that Elaine was having an affair with some foreign pure blood. Here is the crazy part—they had a son!"
"No! Wouldn't her husband find out? As dull as Muggles are, they do notice those sort of things," Elizabeth noted.
"I heard all the gory details from my mother who got it from Elaine herself. So, apparently when Elaine, her husband and that werewolf they live with went on vacation to France, Elaine met and slept with a pureblood wizard there. She got pregnant, so she and the werewolf got the husband ridiculously drunk and passed him off to a prostitute and picked him up in the morning. The fool obviously remembered that he'd dipped his wick in something that night, so it was no surprise when five weeks later Elaine announces that she's pregnant!"
"This is better than reading Witch Weekly!" Parvati squealed.
"She convinces her husband to let them stay in France for the remainder of the pregnancy, and the night she goes into labor the werewolf takes her husband to a bar and gives him fire whiskey! A Muggle! Drinking fire whiskey!" She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. "The pig got drunk off his ass while his wife gave birth to her lover's child and passed the child off to the lover for safe-keeping! She then told her husband that the child died during childbirth and used that excuse to divorce him, citing that 'the death of our newborn has left a gap in our marriage so large that nothing can be done to repair it.' It was done with much drama. The three months later, she's married to the pureblood wizard and back in the good graces of the Malfoys!"
"That's absolutely insane!" Parvati screamed. "NO WAY!"
"I haven't even told you the best part yet!" Lavender said excitedly. "You know the werewolf? His name is Remus Lupin and he's rather famous—he went to school with Harry's dad James and his godfather, Sirius Black and he's so rebel! Not to mention extremely dreamy, so I really can't blame her for having an affair with him…"
"She's sleeping with a WEREWOLF?" Parvati, Audrey, and Elizabeth yelled simultaneously.
"I know!" Lavender said. "I admire her all the more for it though, you know. That courage and cunning! She's the epitome of who I want to be when I grow up."
"Me too!" Parvati gushed. "I think that we should keep this piece of gossip our little secret. We don't want Elaine's good name to be further besmirched by this interesting little piece of news. She is, after our idol."
The other girls nodded vigorously. "Let's keep this under wraps. Besides, we don't want anyone knowing that Hermione actually has an interesting family. People might actually think that she's acceptable." Lavender shuddered.
"Her sister, Rose, isn't too bad," Audrey said thoughtfully. "She's in that awful wheelchair of course, but she's normal-ish. Or she would be if she didn't hang out with her sister all the time."
"She's a good little Ravenclaw. A bit OCD about some things but bookish to the end. Nothing that abnormal." Lavender waved it off. "And her other pureblood brother, Killian, is only like two years old right? What I just told you is old news finally brought up for some air," Lavender informed them.
"What a weird family," Parvati reflected. "It would be so surreal for me if I was Elaine. Imagine having a Muggle ex-husband, a werewolf lover, and a pureblood husband. And from that you get a half blood daughter, a who-knows what daughter and a pureblood son."
"What if Rose was Remus' daughter?" Elizabeth asked. "It's certainly possible."
"How could they carry on an affair when they're all living under one roof in a three-bedroom house in the werewolf slums? With two children," Audrey said.
"I won't even go into the kinky details of how they could do it!" Parvati said wickedly and grinned.
"Eww! Parvati!" Lavender tossed a pillow at her playfully. "Well they can't do anything about Rose. She's like Harry, they don't know whether she's a half blood, pureblood, Muggle born."
"I thought Harry was a half blood though," Audrey frowned. "Wasn't his mother a Muggle born?"
"They aren't sure anymore," Elizabeth answered. "They've been interrogating the sister and they think that they've found new evidence that suggests Lily might have been a pureblood. Turns out that the Evans family has a history of sketchiness when it comes to turning out witches and wizards. There are Squibs here and there. Lucky for Harry, they don't know yet," she said this in a low voice, her face serious.
"There's been talk of Death Eaters trying to resurrect You-Know-Who, which means…"
"Harry's dead if they ever do… Oh! Poor Harry!" Lavender moaned. "He's so sweet too!"
"I know! Isn't that such a tragedy? Thankfully they haven't figured out how to do it," Elizabeth said, obviously relieved.
"Yeah, thank God, huh? Because if they murdered him then you wouldn't have anyone to go with to the ball, huh?" Lavender teased her.
"Oh! Stop it!" Elizabeth said sadly. "He's only going with me because Ginny is too young."
"You never know, he might fall hopelessly in love with you!" Parvati said in a singsong voice.
"Oh! You guys!" Elizabeth said exasperatingly.
Lavender smiled slyly. She was back on top.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
They were jumping on the beds again but Hermione didn't even look up from her book. Lavender was gone for the night so she had decided to tackle Practical Defense Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts that night and maybe even A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions if she had the time. It was nearly impossible to get any reading done while Lavender was in here, usually squealing, whining or complaining about something. And on the rare occasions Lavender was not in the room, she was usually banging on the portrait, demanding that Hermione let her in. The little blonde bubblehead was hopeless at answering the riddles the portrait posed and for the past five years. Hermione thought that it was rather pathetic really—a Sixth year who couldn't answer a simple riddle.
The worst was when Lavender would drag her latest conquest into the room for a bout of snogging. When that happened, Hermione was forced out into the common room where she got to fully appreciate her ostracism from the rest of Gryffindor. Thankfully that had only happened twice before Hermione had hexed them both from the room.
But really, compared to the rest of her life, her social life was just a small blip on the radar. She was expecting to get expelled from Hogwarts any day soon, she was practically waiting for Rose to commit suicide, her mother was practically asking to be murdered with carrying on an affair with Remus behind what's-his-name's back and Mark was fooling around with the Resistance and the Death Eaters, when he really should be in hiding, because technically, he didn't exist!
It was really no surprise that her grandfather's owl chose to arrive at that particular moment when Hermione was really starting to freak out. She jumped up to snatch the letter away before the wretched bird tried to pull out her hair again.
She was glad that she had the approval of the old man. He was bright, intelligent, extremely cunning, yet he also had a soft side that he rarely let show. Hermione had met him for the first time after the divorce and rather than let herself be cowed by the fearsome patriarch, she had marched right up to him and introduced herself. He had taken a liking to her after that, sending her books and fund money for her experiments, something that infuriated Rose to no end.
But that was one area in which Hermione completely ignored her sister. She was going to become a Ministry official no matter what. She was going to show the Minister wrong. She was as good as any pureblood, maybe even better. And no matter how clichéd it sounded, it was time for them to let her people go.