FORTY
"Fancy running into you here."
Eve's eyes had been locked on a floral pattern covering the tapestry that hung across the room. She didn't know how long she had been staring at the red and gold spirals, but when she felt the couch sink in beside her, she finally turned to look at Fernando's grinning expression.
"What are you doing here?"
"You know, the Gryffindor common room really has security issues," Fernando said, ignoring Eve's question but continuing to make himself comfortable by kicking his feet up on the table in front of their legs.
Eve raised an eyebrow and turned back to the tapestry, all at once realizing she didn't actually care for an answer but finding the new company comforting in a sudden strange way.
"You're feeling it, aren't you?"
"I don't think I can tell just yet," Eve replied, carefully giving the tapestry one last hard stare, so sure she saw a vine move at the corner of her eye, but when she blinked, nothing.
A laugh erupted from across the room, loud and slightly hysterical, and Eve turned her eyes from the tapestry to the spot Angelina Johnson sat in a plush sofa chair, a hand covering her mouth. Alicia Spinnet lay in front of her on a rug, her reply to Angelina coming out in another explosion of cackling.
"Seems to be working for some."
"You know," Fernando started, "I've never noticed how pretty Angelina is until right now."
"Yeah, she's well fit. Not really your type, though, is she?"
Eve grinned as she turned to meet an eye roll from Fernando.
"Imagine toad truffles made me straight. Oh, how easy my life would become."
"If you honestly think that you seriously don't know the first thing about girls."
"Well, if you've any indicator for your species, you're probably right."
"Hilarious."
A flash of orange passed the corner of Eve's vision, causing an immediate turn of her head. She lifted herself on one arm to peer over the couch, but her expression dropped when her eyes met Ron's face.
Ron raised a suspicious brow at her, his eyes darting for a moment at the sound of another laugh from Angelina, but when he turned back to Eve, she only shrugged and turned away.
"What was that about?"
"George's little brother. I thought it was him for a second."
Fernando let out a laugh.
"If you're getting the Weasleys mixed up, you're definitely feeling something."
"It was just the hair."
"Where is George anyways? Aren't you two supposed to be spending quality holiday break time together?"
"And where exactly does one spend time with their boyfriend in a castle full of his siblings and enemies?"
"You said boyfriend."
"Yes, it's a recent thing."
Eve couldn't help but grin with her reply, causing Fernando to let out a loud whistle.
"Atta girl," he said, accompanying his cheer with a soft shoulder shove.
"To answer your question, though, I do not know where he went. He and his twin ran off on an errand."
"Is there ever a time when he isn't running off with his twin?"
"I would assume they don't go to the loo together."
"How sure are you of that?"
Eve paused for a moment, cautiously considering Fernando's question.
"…. I'm actually not sure at all."
The pair turned towards one another, Eve catching the same glimmer of glee in Fernando's eyes that she certain was in hers as well. They suddenly erupted in laughter, loud and with the same hysterical tone as the Gryffindor girls across the room. Eve raised a hand to her mouth in an attempt to cover the noise, but the feeling only came stronger, wrapping her in a warm, tingling embrace. She brushed a tear off her cheek, and another giggle surged from realizing it.
"Oh, I'm feeling something now, alright," Fernando said finally, sucking in a sharp breath, his attempt to gain air back into his lungs.
Eve nodded, throwing her head back and taking in her own intake of air. She stretched her body back into the couch, her weight sinking, feeling at once impossibly soft and overwhelmingly heavy. For a moment, she was sure the cushion would swallow her whole.
Eve didn't know how long she sat like that, sucked into the tender mush of fabric and cotton, her thoughts loud but entirely incoherent. Both somewhere else but entirely present. All she could hear was the loud exhale of her breaths.
A loud static sound pulled Eve back into the common room, her head turning and her eyes adjusting to the fuzzy figure across the room.
Lee Jordan was twisting the nob of a small radio. After a moment of curses and small taps at the speaker, a melody emitted from the device. Alicia raised her arms and let out a loud quidditch win cheer. Since Eve had last noted the girls, Angelina had moved onto the rug with Alicia.
"How is it that a radio has a signal in the middle of the Scottish Highlands?"
Eve had almost forgotten Fernando's presence next to her, the music seemingly causing the boy to awaken from his trance as well.
"I don't know. Magic, I suppose."
"Oh, yes. I forgot about that."
The music brought a strange clarity back into the room.
There were few Gryffindors in the common room, mostly older years who stayed to study over the holiday or the quidditch team who stayed for practice.
Familiar faces said their hellos to Eve and Fernando, some staying to chat or sit beside them in comfortable silence. Angelina and Alicia began to sway to the music, holding onto each other like Yule Ball dates, but with no practiced coordination. For a moment, Eve tried to decipher who had taken toad truffles and who was just coexisting in the strange ambiance, but she couldn't find the slightest amount of concentration to study the faces in the room now.
She turned to Lee, who sat on an armchair beside Fernando.
"Where's Harry?"
Lee turned to her, his eyes widening slightly as he mulled over her question as if it had just occurred to him of Harry's existence, or perhaps Eve's across from him. His eyes scanned the room around them for a moment before his expression fell into a comfortable grin.
"Your guess is as good as mine… He's always around here somewhere, distressed about something."
"If I were Harry Potter, I'd surely find it distressing," Fernando added, "Can anyone else not feel their fingers?"
"Eve!"
Eve's name was called in a unified chime. She turned and found Angelina and Alicia still on the rug, the girls now looking at her, their hands waving in frantic gestures for her company.
"The girls are asking for you," Lee noted, almost ominously.
"I don't think I can move," Eve said honestly.
Eve felt a sharp pinch on her arm, causing her to jump out of her spot on the couch in pain. She wobbled for a moment on her feet, rubbing her arm and giving Fernando a hard kick on his shin. The boy hardly winced, only meeting Eve's eyes with a grin and a slight shrug.
"Did I or didn't I help your predicament?"
Eve turned away from the boys and shuffled across the room, Angelina and Alicia rolling to their sides to make room for her. Eve sat cross-legged beside them, giving them each an expected stare, and the Gryffindor girls returned her look with mirrored grins.
"I see I've been called for."
"You have been formally invited to the girls' circle," Angelina grinned, her voice drawn low and strangely suspicious.
"Girls' circle? Please tell me this involves human sacrifice."
Angelina and Alicia stared at Eve, vacant, unblinking, and entirely too long for Eve's comfort.
"What?"
The girls moved their eyes from Eve and to each other, their expressions at once breaking and falling into the same shrill giggles Eve had been hearing all evening.
"I forget you're funny," Alicia said with a genuine nature as if it really was the toad truffles that had caused her to come back into such a startling revelation.
Perhaps it was. Eve realized very quickly that she had less protection on her thoughts. And everyone else's words were coming out in natural outbursts of honesty. It was making her feel strangely comforted and equally deranged.
"We wanted to ask about you-know-who…." Angelina started, her voice taking her earlier tone of secrecy.
Eve raised a brow.
"Why on earth would we talk about Volde-"
"We're asking about George, you nobhead," Alicia interrupted, her tone taking an instant turn from utter disbelief into loud delight, causing another belly laugh to echo throughout the common room.
"What's going on with you two?" Angelina asked, clearly altering her high into pure diplomacy. It made Eve want to laugh.
"What do you think?"
"I think," Angelina started, pausing for what seemed to be actual intellectual thought processing, "I think you two are secretly fornicating… in the Room of Requirement, in the common rooms, in the kitchens-"
"The kitchens?" Eve asked.
"Yes, the kitchens," Alicia answered.
"Surely you can use another word than fornicating," Eve continued.
"Fooling around, cohabiting, going to bed with-" Angelina started.
"Shagging," Alicia added.
Eve paused a moment to reflect on the use of synonyms.
"Or you're tutoring him in Potions; he surely needs it," Angelina concluded. Alicia confirmed her friend's notion with a nod.
"And I suspect there is no middle ground between these two possibilities?" Eve asked, careful not to give too much to her expression in fear of revealing the scandal of the truth too early.
Angelina shrugged.
"We've considered other possibilities, but they don't seem probable after careful observation."
"And how careful have these observations been?"
"They haven't had to be too careful, you two are all over each other like second years," Alicia grinned.
"That's not true," Eve defended, letting out a loud scoff to convey the audacity of the accusation.
If only they knew how much I ignored that boy all year, Eve thought.
"Then what is the truth, de Santos?"
Angelina paired her question with a challenging glare reminiscent of an expression found on the quidditch field. Eve wanted to laugh again.
"We're…. collaborating."
The answer caused the Gryffindor girls to pause in their questioning, mulling over Eve's words with thorough deliberation.
"Collaborating," Angelina repeated, enunciating the word carefully with her lips, her brows connecting as she studied Eve's blank stare.
"Collaborating… what does that even mean?" Alicia asked.
"You said fornicating."
"Angelina said fornicating. I said shagging," Alicia corrected.
"Right. I'm glad everything has been cleared up then," Eve nodded.
A commotion broke the girls' interrogation. Across the room, where the tunnel to the portrait entrance ended, and the common room began, loud footsteps and laughter echoed into the room. Even in her hazy state, she immediately recognized the laughter's melody.
George and Fred strolled into the golden maroon room, not looking the least bit concerned by their lateness nor of the frenzy of the activity they had just walked into. They eyed the strange state of their Gryffindor peers with pleasant delight.
Eve watched George's eyes scan the room, knowing exactly who they were searching for but making no attempt to make herself known. Once all the couches in the room had been looked over, his glance finally landed on the carpet where Eve sat with the two Gryffindor girls.
George's eyes met Eve's, and he gave an amused tilt of his head, a seemingly silent questioning of her current state of affairs. Eve only showed a slight shrug.
"See... Fornicating."
Angelina's words caught Eve's ear, and she turned to meet the girl's stare, finding Angelina's devious grin awaiting her. Eve raised a hand, giving Angelina's shoulder a hard shove and sending the girl down onto the carpet and into a fit of laughter.
"Surely you two can find something else to focus on, considering your quidditch team has-"
"Shhhh. He's coming," Alicia interjected, alerting the girls with a wave of her hand and sending a glance across the room.
Sure enough, George was making his way over to them. He stopped when he got to their spot on the carpet, peering down with a curious stare. When he was met with silence from the girls, he let out a short laugh.
"What? Have I interrupted something important?"
Eve sent a glance to Angelina, who in turn glanced at Alicia. The latter girl attempted to clear her throat, but the sound sounded more like a choke, causing Eve and Angelina to burst into a clamor of giggles.
George raised a brow.
"I see Lee's already shared his Easter sweets."
"You would already be participating yourself if you and your brother hadn't run off to who-knows-where," Angelina piped out, her giggles subsiding as she resumed her serious tone. Her suspicion was now finding a new victim.
"You do like to know where my brother is, don't you?"
Eve turned to Angelina, who answered George's question with a scoff and an attempt at an eye roll. Eve could see a glow rise in her cheeks, matching the crimson tapestry behind them. Alicia let out a laugh and reached out an arm, attempting to pinch her friend's cheek, but Angelina swiped Alicia's hand away.
When Eve turned her attention back to George, he already had a hand outstretched for her to take.
"Come on, before the entire common room goes completely mental."
"It might be a bit too late," Eve replied, taking his hand and letting him raise her to her feet.
Eve wobbled for a moment, air rushing to her head as she adjusted to the altitude. George gave a gentle squeeze to her forearm.
"Do you wanna go upstairs?"
Eve nodded, and the two moved through the common room, making their way to the stone staircase that led to the boys' tower. Of course, before they could begin the ascend, a shout of "Fornicating!" reached them from across the room.
"Do I even want to know?"
Eve grinned, saying nothing and turning back to the stairs. She climbed the path up the stone steps, which she knew by now, having traveled up to George's room several times before. But still, like always before, she felt the familiar rise of butterflies in her stomach. Even with the ease of the toad truffles guiding her limbs, the thought of being alone with George caused every muscle to tighten with anticipation.
She felt George's hand graze her back, more firm than affectionate like he was supporting her weight from behind. Had he seen her sway or stumble? She didn't know if it was the effects of the high or him, but it felt like the same strange thing in a way.
Eve pushed his dormitory door open and made her way inside, kicking her shoes off as she went and laying on George's bed with a loud thud.
"Make yourself at home, why don't ya," George said with a light laugh, walking past his bed and towards one of the windows that framed the walls of the room. He pushed it lightly, the window opening with a slight creak.
"I think you might need the air," George said, moving back towards his bed and following suit in kicking off his shoes. He sat down at the end of his bed, his back resting behind one of his bedposts, so he faced directly opposite Eve. Their legs met in the middle, Eve bumping his knee with her foot. George grinned and responded to the gesture with a brush of her shin.
"How do you feel?"
Eve took a moment to think over George's question.
"Okay. A bit strange, I guess."
"Like you're on a cloud or something, huh?"
"More like the cloud is on me, I think."
George grinned at this, his eyes not leaving Eve's face although he remained silent.
"What?" Eve asked, a grin spreading on her face to match his, although she knew there was more to his smile than hers.
"What? Am I not allowed to look at you?"
"Not like that."
"And why is that?"
"Because I know you're up to something, George Weasley."
"I had no idea toad truffles turned every girl into a criminal investigator."
Eve remained silent, her brow raising slightly in challenge as she studied the amusement rise on his face. After another moment, George ended the stare-down with a soft laugh.
"You're tough to beat," George sighed, lifting himself off the bedpost and dragging his legs forward, shuffling his way towards Eve's side of the bed. He stopped at Eve's thighs, crossing his legs so he still faced opposite Eve, their thighs close but still not touching. Eve found the lack of contact slightly annoying but not as annoying as George's silence.
"What were you and your brother doing this afternoon?"
"Oh, you know. Snooping around the castle, per usual."
"And usually, your snooping has ulterior motives."
George paused for a moment, and Eve could read that he was carefully choosing his words. The anticipation was causing a nervous swell to rise in her stomach. She couldn't tell if it was the toad truffles or her intuition sensing something increasingly wrong in George's silence. She gave his knee a shove with her own. George let out a huff and raised an arm with a wave.
"Alright, alright. We may have stumbled into Umbridge's things."
Eve remained silent for a moment, taking her boyfriend's words in with growing trepidation. She watched George's expression desperately try to conceal a grin. It was as if, for the first time, it had finally occurred to her just how insane the boy in front of her was.
"I think the high is causing some sort of paralyzing shock. Quick, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Eve swatted George's hand away and shook her head again, her senses rising with her disbelief.
"George, you told me you and your brother were taking time off from the antics. I mean, you're about to graduate-"
"Close your eyes."
"I don't want to close my eyes, George."
"Oh, come on."
Eve sighed and did what was asked of her. She felt George shuffle on the bed for a second.
"Okay, open."
When Eve opened her eyes, George's palm was outstretched in front of her, and in it, a golden ring adorned with a familiar black stone. Her ring.
"You went inside her office…."
"Oh, nothing we haven't done before," George shrugged, giving his still outstretched hand a tiny shake of attention.
Eve sighed, taking the ring and slipping it back onto her finger. The darkness of the stone animated at the touch of her skin, and she watched as the color whirled into a misty grey.
"What's it saying?" George asked, his face hovering close to Eve's in an attempt to study the mystery object.
"It's saying you shouldn't have done that."
"If it makes you feel better, we were helping Harry with something, so getting back your ring was technically a second thought."
Eve took a moment to inspect George's face, his eyebrows lifting in a classic Weasley look of innocence.
"Actually, that does make me feel better."
George let out an incredulous laugh.
"You've got a strange version of romance, my dear."
Eve sighed and fell back into the pillows; she was feeling an increasing weight on her limbs now despite the lightness in her head.
"My version of romance doesn't involve you getting expelled a month before school ends."
Eve's eyes traveled around the golden tracings of the bedframe canopy over their heads, the rings blurring into one distorted backdrop of stars and galaxies. She heard George make a strange noise beside her, like his breath caught into a sharp cough.
She turned to him slowly, finding his gaze already on her with an unfamiliar intensity. She reached a hand and touched the side of his face, her thumb gracing the glitter of freckles over his cheek.
George's lips parted slightly, and for a moment, Eve thought he would begin to say something, but she only watched his breath escape in a slow rhythm, in and out.
"What is it?"
A moment of silence passed between them again, but this time Eve filled the time by tracing her fingers down from George's jaw and to the collar of his sweater, grabbing the fabric and giving it a slight tug towards her. Despite his muteness, George took the cue and lowered himself to the bed, leaving enough space between him and Eve for one last attempt at words.
Eve let her mouth part, but she couldn't tell now if she had more to say or if she was just finding it increasingly hard to breathe. But George interrupted before she could decide.
"I just," George began, but his words were already coming out tousled and slow, like he couldn't decide whether he was making a mistake or not, or perhaps more so, whether Eve would think he was not.
"I just want you to know… I love you."
George's words were accompanied by an expression of strange, strangled sincerity she had never read on his face before. A small, almost insignificant, grin grew on his lips, and Eve could see there was happiness paired with a sad hesitation in his eyes. It made her feel her own strange combination of joy and uncertainty and maybe a tiny hint of melancholy. But she didn't know how to say this, like George's silence had suddenly been given to her.
And so, with the only communication she knew at that moment to be delicate and sure, she kissed him.
And then he kissed her. Again and again, with so much blanketed benevolence Eve was sure her skin was covered in it, the tingling sensation of kisses on skin and legs tangled under sheets, the dazzling high of being chosen for this very moment, of being in love.
Eve was certain she could feel it, even when the kisses slowed and George's hands uncovered from under the sheets, and his breaths dwindled into a sound sleep. Beside him, Eve's breaths remained steady and awake as her immersion of fading highs, one from the afternoon and one from the boy laid now next to her, meshed into a peculiar restlessness.
There was warmth within her, a bodily joy she could still feel on her, tingling and overpowering, that burned when she thought of George's words from earlier. But there was also something else, something that ached when she thought of George's face while he said it. Something was missing within the joy, something resembling sorrow or guilt. Like a gnawing melancholy begging to be found and named.
Like there was something he wasn't telling her.
Author's Note: Happy December! Happy holidays! Happy end of semester (if you are in school like me)! I HOPE to end this story in the next few months... It's been a goal of mine to finish this as I've spent so much time with it and I love Eve dearly. Thank you if you are still reading and commenting! XX