Chapter 5 – One More Sleep

Now, I don't think I can remember
A cold and lonelier December
And I find myself staring out the window
Wondering when you're gonna get back home

Ebony Bobbin was startled to see that a blanket of snow now covered the grounds of Hogwarts when she peered out the window that morning. Being in Slytherin, both her dorm and her common room were located in the dungeons, beneath the surface of the lake, and, as such, she'd had no indication that the first fall of snow had been flurrying all throughout the night. Not until she saw the pearlescent sheen out the window as she made her way to the Great Hall for breakfast.

She was quite alone, and, actually, was rather craving some solitude. She often did those days.

Ebony felt little joy at being back at the school for her final year. Even though she was Head Girl. Even though she was surrounded by her friends, her new family, and even though she felt more calm and content with regards to her emotional wellbeing than she had since she was eight years old, she simply felt… hollow. It was as though, no matter how happy she should have been with her situation, half of her was missing. Like her very heart had been ripped from her chest, and all she could feel was empty numbness.

One thought and one thought only kept her going—and that was knowing that she would be reunited with James in just three weeks time. The wait to Christmas would be agonising, but Ebony knew she could fight through it. She rarely enjoyed Christmas at Hogwarts because it had always been a foreboding time for her. An unsettling countdown to having to return to a loveless home. This was the first time in her life that she would actually get to spend the day itself with someone she felt all the love and safety she should have always felt at that time of year. It was just cruel that she couldn't spend the whole season with him.

Ebony knew she shouldn't wish her final year at Hogwarts away, nor her youth in general, but she craved the stability of life with James away from the castle. She wanted to be an adult, to be a proper married woman—with a house, and and a job, and paying bills, and cooking dinner together. Maybe they could get a cat or something—she'd never been allowed a pet before.

But it was all a distant dream. She would have to endure another agonising seven months before she was blessed with the future she was craving. And anyway, first, all she had to do was get through the next three weeks.

Ebony slid into the seat next to Scorpius Malfoy, as she always did. She could feel the Headmistress' eyes flicker towards her from the high table, as they always did, but Ebony didn't so much as glance in her direction. She was not speaking to her mother. Not after the humiliating display she'd kicked up after Ebony had refused to remain in the castle over Christmas—like she would even entertain such a ridiculous idea.

"Still ignoring Bobbin?" Scorpius asked, reaching for his pumpkin juice.

Ebony held out an empty goblet to him, and he obligingly filled it.

"I have nothing to say to her," she said coldly.

"You know," Scorpius said with a playful smile, "some people cherish having the opportunity to spend the festive season with their mothers."

Ebony shot him a condescending look. Scorpius had lost his mother over the summer in a tragic and complicated way. She, herself, had been a very complicated woman. But Scorpius was grinning at Ebony as he pushed her now full goblet towards her.

"You can only play the dead mother card every so often, Scorpius, and now is not one of those times."

"Touché."

Ebony absentmindedly reached for a slice of toast, even though she wasn't particularly hungry. "It snowed," she said with little emotion.

"Wow," the girl opposite her said with heavy sarcasm. "Real astute of you, Eb."

Ebony let her eyes roll over to Jinx Capella, who, she realised, she hadn't even greeted. Nor the boy to her side—Jinx's boyfriend, Albireo. Nor, really, Scorpius either.

"Hi," Ebony offered as a delayed response, not really responding to Jinx's comment at all.

Jinx was clearly feeling festive that morning, as the Metamorphmagus' hair was a shimmering gold colour, almost like tinsel. It was a lot to take in so early in the day.

"Hi," Jinx replied, thoroughly amused.

"Are we still doing this dumb Quidditch friendly then?" Ebony asked. "Even if there's a blizzard and we freeze to death?"

"You really shouldn't let your captain hear you calling any match 'dumb'—it all counts. It's all good practice."

Ebony resisted rolling her eyes. She had only joined the team, in part, because it had been a big passion of James', and even though they'd played on opposing teams, it had been nice to have something in common. It just wasn't the same without him though.

"We're top of the Hogwarts leaderboard at the moment," Albireo pointed out, eager to engage in Quidditch talk.

Ebony almost wished she hadn't brought it up.

"We won our first match against Hufflepuff," Albireo boasted, as though he couldn't quite believe it.

"Mhmm," Scorpius agreed, "but Ravenclaw also won their first match—so, technically, we're tied."

"Not," Albireo pointed out proudly, "if you break it down to the actual points. We came out higher. We're technically top."

Scorpius looked thoughtful, and Ebony did the calculations in her mind. The Slytherin team would need to beat both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor in the rest of the season if they were to win overall. But, despite their shaky start, she had no doubt the Gryffindor team would pick up and beat Hufflepuff too. If Ravenclaw also beat them, and providing Gryffindor also beat Slytherin, then all three teams, excluding poor Hufflepuff, would each have won two matches. And if that were the case, it would, quite rightly, come down to who had scored the most overall points. Ebony liked to believe they had it in them to beat the Gryffindors, but they were like a well-oiled machine ever since her fifth year. In all the time she'd played for the team, Slytherin had never beaten them.

Ebony could not help but think of James once more. Little she did could distract her from thoughts of him, but talk of Quidditch might as well have just been a big neon sign which flashed his name. She knew he would be gutted to know his former team had lost their first match without him.

"We need to beat Gryffindor," Scorpius declared. "There's no way they're going to lose to Hufflepuff, so our best chance is to win all three games if it's going to come down to a three-way deadlock."

"We've never beaten Gryffindor since they reformed," Jinx pointed out with an edge of bitterness. She liked to win.

"Well, we haven't played them since they've reformed for this season," Scorpius pointed out. "And"—there was an undeniable glimmer of smugness in his expression—"they've already lost their first match."

Ebony was highly bored of the conversation but resisted rolling her eyes. To distract herself, she stared at the swirling grey sky out of the massive windows which lined the hall. She needn't have, though, as flakes of snow were also gently falling from the ceiling above them in a perfect reflection of the weather outside. Ebony used to think snow was beautiful, but now it just seemed cold and foreboding.

It had once been her name, she mused sadly. Ebony Snow. Before she had been Ebony Darkbrow. And now, even though she had married James, she had opted to share her mother's maiden name—Ebony Bobbin.

Ebony had certainly had a lot of names, and, indeed, a lot of identities. And now, she wasn't really sure who she was anymore. Ebony the Head Girl. Ebony the Slytherin Chaser. Ebony the Headmistress' daughter.

She just wanted to be Ebony. The Ebony she was with James.

"Earth to Ebony," Jinx snapped, bringing the girl sharply back to reality.

"What?" Ebony asked. The piece of toast she'd attempted to eat had now gone hard and cold on her plate, one meagre bite taken out of it.

"We're postponing practice because of the snow."

"Oh."

All three of her friends looked at her with sad looks. Ebony knew she wasn't much fun to be around those days, but she didn't really know how to invest herself in life at Hogwarts anymore. "What should we do instead?" she asked, attempting, at least, to be a bit more engaged.

In truth, Ebony just wanted to be alone, but she didn't want to seem rude.

Quidditch and lessons, she supposed, were the two things which gave her life any kind of structure—along with prefect meetings. It wasn't like she felt particularly invested in any of them, but at least it provided a distraction. It was when she had free time when she felt most lost. She always would have spent those moments with James, or with all of their friends as a group—but his absence was always highly noticeable. So instead she opted to just sit by herself in her room. She would write to him. She would think about him. She would do little else.

"We're going to go to the Gryffindor Common Room," Scorpius said.

Ebony had to resist from groaning.

Even Jinx looked annoyed. "I don't understand why we always have to go there—why can't they come to our common room for a change?"

Ebony was inclined to agree. If there was anywhere in the school she wanted to avoid for familiarity with James Potter then it was the Gryffindor Common Room. She never should have spent as much time as she should have in there, given that she was a Slytherin, but James had always abused his privilege as Head Boy to let her and her friends in, and Bobbin had always been extremely lenient. Those abuses of power seemed to have extended into the new school year now that Ebony was Head Girl and James' younger brother Albus was Head Boy—and because Bobbin was still desperately trying all she could to appease her. Although their Gryffindor friends were incredibly grateful for this, Ebony wasn't sure the rest of the house was.

If Quidditch wasn't hard enough, everything about the Gryffindor Common Room screamed James Potter, and his absence was painfully noticeable. It also didn't help—being surrounded by so many idiotically loved-up couples. It hadn't mattered before, because Ebony and James had been the power couple at the heart of their friendship group, but now she was bitterly alone.

Ever since Rose and Scorpius had officially reunited, they were all over each other. It had been sweet at first, because Ebony had wanted it to happen for so long. She had felt immensely guilty for being the one to have ended their relationship in the first place, and it relieved a massive weight off of her shoulders to see them finally reconnect. But they were three months into their new shot at love, still in the disgustingly soppy throes of fresh, new romance, and all it did was make Ebony long for James.

Jinx and Albireo, who had been in a tumultuous on-again-off-again relationship since Second Year were currently very much on. And, to make matters worse, Sam and Janey, who had once argued as near-constantly as Jinx and Albireo, were now dating. And they were a lot less shameless and reserved with their public displays of affection than Rose and Scorpius were trying to be.

So there were three impossibly loved-up couples surrounding her at all times.

Even Albus, whom Ebony had grown a lot closer to over the summer, was seeing a Hufflepuff girl. Ebony had never craved a sibling, but she had enjoyed spending a lot of the summer in the Potter house, and truly felt like both Albus and Lily Potter had embraced her as a sister. Well, she was technically their sister-in-law, she realised. With Albus being appointed Head Boy alongside her, Ebony enjoyed the time they got to spend together. She had overlapped with him a lot, naturally, given that he and Scorpius had been best friends since about their first day at the school, but she had never had much of her own relationship with him until that summer. He reminded her of James, of home, but in a comforting way rather than a way that made her feel that sense of sad longing she so often did.

But, as he, too, was involved in his own relationship, they spent little free time together.

"They don't like the dungeons," Scorpius said dismissively.

"And why do we have to cater to their comfort levels?" Jinx asked, sulky as ever.

Scorpius opened his mouth to argue, and Ebony felt the need to intervene. She really, really did not need to deal with Scoprius and Jinx sparring that early in the morning. Both of them were too stubborn to relent.

"There's got to be a better place we can hang out," Ebony interrupted thoughtfully. "It's really not setting a good example to the younger students if the Head Boy and Girl, and so many prefects, keep abusing their power to bend the school rules." She and Scorpius, and Sam and Janey, were also all prefects after all.

Scorpius shot her a confused, questioning look, not buying it at all. He knew Ebony didn't care for obeying the rules, but he sensed there was a deeper importance as to why she had spoken on it.

She tried to stare back at him meaningfully. "I also don't like being so in debt to Bobbin."

That wasn't the reason at all, but Ebony knew Scorpius would soften more at talk of her relationship with her mother. Ebony could not bring herself to call her 'Mum', but it also felt weird to keep referring to her as 'Bobbin', like all she was to her was just her headmistress, sharing the same relationship every single one of the thousand students had with her.

"Alright," Scorpius relented. "But where, exactly?"

Ebony considered it. There weren't really any communal areas for the students to mingle. The Great Hall was only available for meals, and wasn't particularly inviting when they were just a small group anyway, and the library had strict rules about noise levels, obviously. And with the snow picking up pace outside as it thundered to the ground, anywhere outside was off-limits.

But Ebony suddenly had a thought—a place they hadn't made use of since they'd returned to the school for the new term, but one which they had spent countless evenings in with students from all four houses before the summer.

"The Room of Requirement!" she exclaimed, everything clicking into place.

Scorpius looked thoughtful. "That could work."

The Room of Requirement was an incredible part of the castle—a room which could cater to the user's needs, no matter how creatively specific. She and James had gotten great use out of it over the years…

They could easily create their own cosy room with sofas and fireplaces, without either house's decor taking priority. And it would be perfectly in keeping with the school's rules.

Well, Ebony wasn't exactly sure how many of the Hogwarts faculty were aware of it. She knew it was a well-known secret with the students, but she suddenly didn't even know if Bobbin was aware of its existence. She must do, surely—she knew everything about the castle. It's how she had busted Ebony for trying to sneak James into the castle after their first Hogsmeade trip of the year, invisibility cloak or not.

But surely it was not off-limits? Why would a room like that even exist if the students weren't allowed to use it?

"I'll suggest it to Rose, and we can meet there later today," Scorpius decided with finality.

Even Jinx looked appeased.

"You in, Eb?" Scorpius asked, offering the girl a genuinely warm smile.

Ebony felt guilty. She didn't want to join them, not really, but she also found it hard to say no to Scorpius. Not when he was looking at her with such eagerness. She had noticed how much of an effort he had been going to in order to make her feel included and supported since they'd returned to the school, and Ebony was grateful, but sometimes he was too kindhearted for his own good.

"Sure," she said with a weak smile of her own, already wondering how she might be able to get out of it.

Worried that Scorpius might somehow sense she was being deceptive, Ebony took a sip of pumpkin juice from her goblet and looked around the hall.

She unintentionally locked eyes with Bobbin, who, as she often was, was intently observing the girl with sad eyes.

Her mother offered her a small smile upon realising Ebony had actually looked in her direction. Ebony looked hurriedly away.

She really did not know how to feel about the woman, nor the situation as a whole. Something about Ebony felt so grateful, so relieved, to finally, finally know the truth about her origins. Despite their past, she could not deny how heartwarmingly wonderful it felt to have somebody treat her like a mother should always have treated her—kind, and supportive, and genuinely interested in her wellbeing. Ebony couldn't deny that Bobbin's heart was in the right place, and that she was desperately trying to pour all the love into her which she had been deprived of giving her for the first seventeen years of her life.

And now Ebony had a stepfather too. She had never fawned over Professor Roberts in the way that so many of the other students had, which was probably just as well. And even though he was only in his thirties, Ebony certainly felt a sense of fatherly love from him. It felt nice to feel like she truly belonged to a family.

But it was also hard to be around Bobbin and Roberts, kind as they were, given that they, too, were newlyweds. It simply wasn't fair. Ebony and James had been married for six months, and they had certainly not been allowed to enjoy their time as a young, married couple with the freedom which Bobbin and Roberts were. Ebony and James had not even been allowed to stay under the same roof together over the summer, as though they were children. As though they had not made a very serious, very adult commitment to each other.

Bobbin didn't get it. She had made that abundantly clear. As much as she was trying to be tolerant, and supportive, and please Ebony in any way possible—(Ebony was well aware that Bobbin had appointed her Head Girl for that very reason)—she was being incredibly stubborn and intolerant about the one thing which mattered most to Ebony. And that was her relationship with James.

Ebony supposed it was only natural for parents to get overprotective when their kids eloped at seventeen years old, but Harry and Ginny Potter had been way more accepting and welcoming once they had gotten to spend time with the newlyweds together over the summer. Ebony wasn't stupid, she knew they weren't exactly thrilled, but they no longer outwardly showed it. Not like Bobbin did.

And Ebony didn't get it—not really. Despite how much he pushed her buttons, Bobbin had a fondness for James that extended beyond that of teacher-student, like she had already always viewed him as a troublesome son. She had always let him get away with far more than any other student had, appointing him as both Quidditch Captain and then Head Boy, even though he really hadn't proven himself to be nearly responsible enough. He was the only one Ebony had ever seen Bobbin let speak to her in the very blasé, often inappropriate way that he did.

And yet, she had been incredibly unsupportive about James and Ebony's nuptials, in spite of the fact that James had time after time proven that he could be responsible, and that he did truly love and support Ebony with all that he had. Nothing was going to be good enough for Bobbin, Ebony had decided, and she was making her daughter's life hell as punishment. Ebony really did not see why James shouldn't be allowed to stay in the castle for her seventh year. It wouldn't be inappropriate—he was literally married to one of the students—and Bobbin had always granted him leniency with other rules, so why not this one? Especially knowing how immeasurably happy it would make her daughter?

It was selfish beyond belief, and Ebony couldn't understand why Bobbin refused to budge.

Feeling in low spirits once more, Ebony watched the swirling snow out of the window. She wondered what James was doing right then. Whether he, too, was having breakfast. Whether it had snowed where he was too.

Three more weeks, she thought resolutely. She could do it. Three more weeks.

Author's Note: Title and epigraph inspired by Leona Lewis' 'One More Sleep'