As February continued, so did the chattering of Rose's yearmates, all of whom seemed to be bursting with excitement for Valentine's Day. Rose didn't care much for the apparently massive, all-important holiday, but she was excited for the Hogsmeade trip that would accompany it. She wasn't anticipating having to bribe her friends into going along with her.
"What do you mean, you can't go?" she cried over breakfast a few days before the trip.
James and Albus wore matching gloomy expressions and piled food onto their plates lethargically.
"We have practice," grunted James. "Mandatory."
"There's only a week after that 'til the match," sighed Albus, "and apparently taking the day to go to the village would be... how did he put it?"
"A massive waste of time."
"An accident waiting to happen."
"We could get hexed at any minute," added James unenthusiastically, "and they would be harder to catch since we're off grounds."
Rose set her goblet down and leveled an incredulous stare at her cousins.
"You're telling me that you're afraid of the Hufflepuffs hexing you?" she said slowly, making sure she had heard them correctly.
James only offered a weak shrug, and Albus's eyes dropped to his plate.
"What you two need is rest, not more practice," said Rose. "You can't be expected to perform this way."
"I wanted to go," said Albus with a hint of a whine, "I really did Rosie."
"It's fine," she said, knowing that it was useless to go up against the boy's dedication to their damned sport. "I'm sure Scorpius and the twins are still going."
The trip was actually a few days after Valentine's Day, since the holiday fell during the week, but most students seemed to be of the mind that this was cause to celebrate it twice. When Rose returned to her room later that day, she found it decked out in pink and red streamers. Puffs of confetti hovered in clumps throughout the room. Rose had to push one aside to get to her bed, which was thankfully free of love-themed debris.
"Do you like the decorations?" asked Mary Deverill eagerly. She was perched on the end of her bed, working on untangling a trio of glittering streamers. "Kara helped with some of them."
"I did the hover charm!" cried Loren Nicosa proudly. Rose hadn't even seen her standing on a stool in the corner, stretching her tiny arms over her head to try and reach a clump of glitter that had become attached to the ceiling. She muttered something under her breath and a series of silver sparks shot out of her wand, coating the glitter and the surrounding area of the ceiling.
"I'm sure it's fine," said Rose, seeing Loren's face contort with frustration. "We can fix it tomorrow. It's very... lively."
Tia Marsh came in and tossed her bag on her bed without seeming to notice the decorations. Mary giggled as one of the glitter clouds got caught in Tia's hair.
"What?" asked Tia, looking around. "Oh, yeah, very festive. 'Tis the season and all that."
It took Rose three tries to successfully Vanish the glitter from Tia's hair, which only increased her suspicion about what kind of charm Loren had used to make them cling together.
Kara Welsh arrived with a fresh batch of decorations, and the conversation continued to circle around Valentine's Day. Rose managed to deflect most of the attention away from herself by cracking open one of her books, but she let her eyes drift over the pages as she listened to the others discuss which boys they were thinking about asking to Hogsmeade for the weekend.
"It's just getting so late!" cried Kara, flopping backwards onto her bed. "I thought he would have asked me already!"
"Maybe he just assumes you're going together, since you went with him last time," said Mary.
"But what if I made plans with someone else?" asked Kara. "Oh, he'd be frightfully jealous."
"Go with both of them," offered Tia, who was removing the color-changing nail polish Kara had convinced her to borrow. "You can always get lunch with Brady and then meet up with Albus or something."
Rose looked up sharply from her book, breaking the pretense of not listening to their conversation.
"Albus isn't going," she said without thinking.
Four sets of eyes turned to her.
"Overprotective cousin," sighed Kara after a long moment, "definitely a deterrent. I think I'll stick with Brady."
Rose meant to get up early the next morning to go down to breakfast, but she woke not to the charmed alarm box given to her by her parents but to the excited cries of her roommates.
"We all got Valentines!" cried Kara, clutching a red velvet bag like it was a life raft. "Look at yours! Quick!"
Rose saw that there was a bag fastened to the end of her bed with curled pink ribbons, which matched the one still affixed to Tia's. The other three had already removed theirs and were leafing through the contents.
"Too early," groaned Tia from behind her drawn curtain. "E'rryone shush."
But there was no putting a stopper in the excitement coming from the inhabitants of the third floor girls room. With an internal shrug, Rose untied her bag and pulled it into bed with her.
She didn't know how many letters she should be expecting, so when three slid out of the bag and her stomach dropped, she didn't know what to call the feeling. Was she excited? Nervous? Disappointed that there were not more? That was a silly thought, since she didn't even know what was standard for this sort of thing. And come to think of it, she hadn't sent Valentines cards to anyone, so why would someone send one to her?
The first was a simple card from her parents. Her father included a reminder to write more often, and her mother's note explained that the school was now sending reminders for holiday cards and wasn't that lovely? Turning the card over, Rose saw the Hogwarts' crest stamped on the back and realized that everyone's parents must have been urged to send their child a similar note.
The second was a simple folded piece of parchment that seemed to have been hastily torn from a larger sheet.
This is an IOU good for one trip to Diagon Alley this summer at a time of your choosing, provided you don't tell Mum that we went to Quidditch practice instead of Hogsmeade because we're not supposed to choose Quidditch over our friends and she's scary when she's mad.
James and Al
PS: Happy Valentine's Day
Rose laughed aloud. In all of the madness that seemed to consume her friends around Valentine's Day, this was the kind of present she was looking for. (Though she was slightly tempted to tell Aunt Ginny about her cousins' Quidditch training schedule, but she knew that they could just as easily blackmail her, so she would take their peace offer instead.)
The third card was crisp beige cardstock with a cartoon lion sketched on the front. The message inside was written in ink that shifted between black, red, and deep blue:
Happy Valentine's Day
Your favorite twins
Rose put the three cards back in the bag, which she locked in her trunk for safekeeping. Two of them she wanted because they made her happy; one she needed to keep safe because she had a feeling that James would try to weasel his way out of his IOU if Rose didn't keep physical proof it existed.
Kara and Mary dressed quickly and scampered out of the dormitory, talking to each other in low tones. Tia groaned and threw open her curtains, apparently resigning herself to the start of the day. Loren was taking her time with her hair, humming one of the songs that Rose recognized from being played on repeat during Loren's boyband phase.
"Food?" asked Tia, using her wand to poke her hair into submission. "I'm starving."
"I'll be down in two minutes," said Rose, who had managed to break another one of the laces on her boots and was working on relacing it with her spares.
As soon as Tia had gone, Loren spun around and sat on the edge of her bed, facing Rose with wide eyes.
"I have a secret admirer," exploded Loren, the words running together so that Rose had to replay them in her head before they made any sense.
"Oh?" said Rose lamely, unsure of what her reaction was supposed to be.
"He sent me a card!" said Loren, petting the velvet bag that she had rehung from the end of her bed. "It says that he's been wanting to tell me for months, but he thought that waiting until today would make it more romantic. Isn't that wonderful?"
"That's... really great, yeah," said Rose, tying her boot and grabbing her robe. "But you said you don't know who it is, right?"
"We're meeting on Saturday in the village," said Loren, eyes glazed over. "He wants to take me to Madame Puddifoots, can you imagine! Oh, I just know he's the one."
"That sounds wonderful," said Rose, nodding, then realizing she had been nodding for a while and abruptly stopping. "I'm going to meet Tia for breakfast."
"I'll be down soon," sighed Loren, eyes still locked on something far away.
Rose had had some bizarre days at Hogwarts, but Valentine's Day of her third year quickly made it into the top ten oddest to date. Breakfast wasn't too bad, though there were a few themed foods that had the girls cooing and the boys wincing. She decided to wait on the chocolate until at least lunch, though the smell was driving her mad.
"Al," she said when her cousin sat across from her, "did you know that Kara Welsh was thinking about asking you to Hogsmeade for Valentine's Day weekend?"
Albus's face screwed up in confusion as James burst out laughing.
"I- that's odd," said Albus, grabbing a pitcher of orange juice with more force than necessary. "Well I'm not going, so... So."
"I recall," said Rose, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, thanks for the note."
"My pleasure," said James with a grin. "Like I said, just don't tell Mum."
"What are we not telling Aunt Ginny?" asked Lysander as he sat.. "Morning, all."
"That they're ditching their friends for Quidditch," said Rose. "Thanks for the card, I loved Lorcan's drawing. Are you two coming Saturday?"
Lysander opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He tried again, but only managed a wordless grunt. Confusion clear on his face, he got up abruptly and walked over to where Lorcan sat at the Ravenclaw table.
"What did I say?" asked Rose.
But the odd behavior kept up as the day went on. Professor Halberton decided that the holiday was cause for celebration and deviated from her normal lesson plan to teach them a simple color-changing charm.
"This isn't meant to be a long-term change," explained Professor Halberton, "and please bear in mind it should not be used on living things. I don't want to see pink owls flying around tomorrow morning at breakfast or you'll all have detention for a month, understood?"
The class nodded silently.
"The charm will only last for about ten minutes," continued Professor Halberton. "Again, this is not to be used as a substitution for proper Transfiguration- Professor Randor would have my head if he thought I was trying to supersede his lessons on color changing- but it's fun on holidays and other special occasions."
A few minutes later, the classroom was full of students crying "Parvus Verto" and turning their personal belongings (and anything else in the immediate vicinity) various shades of pink. Before long, the room had taken on the distinct look of being coated in chewing gum.
As Professor Halberton had promised, the charm began to wear off before their class ended. They watched, many in disappointment, as the classroom faded back to its normal shades of mahogany and maroon as they filed out.
"Rose!" said a small voice. Rose turned and saw Mary Deverill still standing by one of the tables, slowly packing her bag. Albus lingered by the door, but Rose offered him a confused shrug and he left.
"Need help?" asked Rose awkwardly, watching Mary fill her bag at a snail's pace.
The girl's eyes flickered around the room, and she didn't speak again until it was empty.
"I got a card this morning from a secret admirer," she hissed, her eyes as wide as saucers. "What do I do?"
Rose was taken aback by this sudden statement, and she couldn't help but think of Kara's card from that morning. What was it with these boys and their dramatic declarations? And they said girls were the dramatic ones when it comes to Valentine's Day.
"Do you like him?" asked Rose lamely.
"I don't know who it is!" said Mary, clearly panicked. "He wants me to meet him in Hogsmeade during the trip this weekend, but what if he's, I don't know- what if he's someone awful? Like Callum Leach?"
Rose couldn't help but grin at the thought of Callum Leach penning a romantic letter to sweet little Mary.
"It's definitely not Callum," said Rose. "And you'll never know if you don't go, right?"
Mary nodded, her mouth set in a hard line.
"So... go get him," finished Rose lamely. "On Saturday, I mean."
She was in a glum mood for the rest of the afternoon, and she hated to acknowledge that she was feeling a bit left out. Even though she wasn't particularly close to the girls she was living with, besides Tia, she found herself jealous at the attention they were receiving. By the time Kara approached her on her way to dinner, she had had enough.
"Let me guess," snapped Rose, "you have a secret admirer too, don't you?"
Kara's mouth popped open, and she nodded slowly.
"Rose, you have a secret admirer?" she squealed, grabbing Rose's hands. "That's wonderful! Who is he?"
Rose wondered how this question kept intersecting with the concept of a secret admirer and decided to ponder it later, when her head wasn't aching.
"I- I don't, no," stammered Rose, feeling her cheeks heat up. "I just meant... never mind."
"But that was a brilliant guess!" cried Kara. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about! Someone sent me a card and I don't know who it's from."
"Are you worried you won't like him?" intoned Rose dully.
"No," shrugged Kara, "if he's weird I can just leave, right?"
"Leave?"
"I'm meeting him for tea on Saturday," said Kara with a grin. "But if it's someone like— I don't know-"
"Callum Leach?" supplied Rose.
"Yes, ugh, like him! Then I can always walk away, no harm done."
Rose wasn't entirely sure that Kara knew the definition of the phrase "no harm done," but now didn't seem the time to correct her.
"I'm very happy for you," said Rose, her throat suddenly tight. "I- I forgot something up in the common room. I'll see you at dinner."
For the second time that week Rose found herself fighting back tears as she hurried to her room. What was wrong with her? She usually laughed at how Valentine's Day turned girls into simpering idiots, but this year it felt like something in her heart was growing tighter and tighter as she saw everyone else's happiness. She realized with a pang of embarrassment that she wanted that.
Tia was still in the dormitory when Rose flew into the room. She didn't say anything when Rose flopped onto her bed, slamming a fist into her pillow. It didn't do much to alleviate her feelings.
"Rough day?" asked Tia at last.
"It's ridiculous," said Rose, not looking up. "This whole Valentine's Day thing is ludicrous, don't you think? We interrupted our classes to learn that ridiculous charm that won't even last twenty minutes- I mean, what good is that going to do us in the real world?"
"You're not angry about the charm," said Tia gently.
"And everyone else has these secret admirers," added Rose softly, finally letting the tears come to the surface. "Everyone else is so excited to be getting these blasted cards from boys who like them, and I hate that."
To Rose's surprise, Tia burst out laughing, and not just a little chuckle. This was full, howling laughter that took a full minute to die down. During that minute, Rose wondered if her friend should be sent to the Hospital Wing for evaluation. When her roars had died down into smaller peals of laughter, Tia came and joined Rose on her bed, nudging the other girl over to make room.
"Rose," Tia finally managed to choke out, "I am so, so sorry. I'm their secret admirer."
It took Rose a minute to try and figure out what Tia had just said. She sat up, blotting at her eyes, to stare at her roommate.
"You- you sent the love notes to the other girls!" Rose cried. "Why?"
"Aren't you sick of hearing them prattle on and on about this stuff?" asked Tia with a devious grin. "I thought it would be fun! We're all meeting up for tea at Madame Puttifoot's on Saturday if you want to join me for the grand reveal."
Rose began to chuckle, which quickly devolved into full-on belly laughter as she flopped back onto her bed. She felt a tinge of embarrassment that she had let something so silly nearly ruin her day, but quickly dismissed the feeling. None of it mattered now. And it wasn't a bad idea, getting the girls together for an afternoon focused on their friendship instead of their possible male flirtations.
Rose was one of the last students to return to the Gryffindor Common Room after dinner, where she found a Valentine's Day celebration in full swing. One of the older students had decorated with a bit more skill than Kara and Mary, and while the color scheme was still a bit heavy on the eyes, Rose admitted that they had done a good job. She wasn't ready to eat more directly after dinner (though she wasn't surprised to see James woofing down some chocolates) so she grabbed a mug of warm cider and found an empty chair.
"Looks like they got the night off from Quidditch practice," said Lysander, taking the seat beside her and looking out at the other students. "At least they get to have some fun, since they won't be in town on Saturday."
For once, Cameron Thornton seemed to have put his duties as Quidditch captain to the side and was sitting with Dominique, absorbed in whatever she was saying. Rose had to admit they looked good together when they weren't engaged in one of their heated arguments.
"Louis even remembered to get Ariana something," continued Lysander, "and it's not three days late. Lorcan said she's very impressed."
"I'm impressed too!" said Rose. "Look at him, growing up. And here I thought he'd always be a bit of a prat."
"Speaking of which- here."
Lysander handed her the book he had been holding, which she hadn't noticed before. It was the next in the series she had been borrowing from the library, clearly fresh from a bookstore, with a small red bow stuck to the corner of the front cover.
"Sorry for badgering you about your homework," said Lysander, his cheeks pink. "Happy Valentine's Day."
"I- thank you," stammered Rose, looking from the book to Lysander, then back to the book. "I can't wait to start it! The last one ended at such an awful point, I've just been dying to know what happens, and the library doesn't have the rest of them, and- thanks."
Lysander grinned, and nodded, then stood. He nodded again, gave a sort of half-shrug, then disappeared into the crowd. Rose's fingers toyed with the ribbon on the book's cover as her stomach clenched and her mind whirled.