Snakes and Sanguine

Year 3: The Uncle and the Man From New Zealand

The first snow fell on the eighteenth of December, the day students began to leave for the holiday season. Though, the snow was not much. Just a mere thin layer sticking itself on whatever it could latch onto before ultimately melting only a few seconds later.

Lucien, Venus, Scorpius, and Silas were among the students who had boarded the express at Hogsmeade station that day.

Annabeth would be staying at Hogwarts for the holidays since her parents would be in Greece. She and I had spoken about how it would be our dream to visit one of the many islands.

As for Al, James, Lily, and I, we stayed back a few days so we could attend Slughorn's Christmas party on the twentieth. James had invited Lils as his plus one after she had begged him for hours in the Gryffindor common room. Though, the two of us had agreed to go together as it was now part of my obligation as his girlfriend. I had convinced Al to invite Annabeth as his plus since otherwise, she would be alone that evening and Annabeth being the extrovert she is, would not have been able to handle that.

Lils, Annabeth, and I had all dressed up together in Lils' dormitory. I, of course, had to borrow another one of Lils' outfits. It was lucky for me that she had so many. Unlucky for me, I was still probably seven centimeters taller than her.

"We really need to buy you more clothes." she giggled as she gathered her red curls to place in a bun, holding a hair tie in her mouth. "Maybe you can ask your uncle to buy you some."

"I haven't even met him yet," I replied, slipping my arms through the sleeves of the black dress. "It would be rude to ask him such a thing the first time I do meet him." I looked down at the dress, looking at the distance between the end of the dress and my knees. "Lily, this is so short."

"It's sexy." Annabeth smiled. "James will not know what to do with himself."

"Oi! That's my brother we're talking about." Lily exclaimed, turning her head from the mirror of the bathroom to face us through the open door. "And you're lucky I'm still lending you my clothes so you better not complain."

"I haven't even had a shave! This is not sexy Annabeth." I replied.

"Ooh I bet there's a spell to fix that." she grinned brightly.

"Oh! Annabeth, on the windowsill to your left, there's a pile of magazines. Some of them are my friend's beauty ones. I bet there's a spell in there. The rest are my quidditch one, but don't bother asking about the ones that are neither beautiful nor quidditch." Lils explained, taking two pieces of hair out the front of her bun to shape her face.

I let out a sigh since there was no way that I was going to get away with not wearing this dress.

Annabeth walked over to the windowsill and flipped through the pile of magazines. "The finest men in the Wizarding World?" she asked through giggles, holding up a magazine titled just that.

"I told you not to question the other ones," Lily replied, walking over to Annabeth and snatching the magazine out of her hands.

As Annabeth continued to look through the pile, Lils flipped through the pages of the magazine. When she turned to one page, her eyes grew wide and she let out a laugh of disbelief. "Look at this!" she exclaimed, holding up the magazine in front of Annabeth, showing her an image that seemed to take up two pages by the way she was holding it.

"Oi! My eyes!" Annabeth exclaimed, slapping her hands over her eyes. Lily let out a mischievous laugh then turned to me and held the photo up.

My mouth fell open, then I quickly squeezed my eyes shut to erase the photo of a nude man who wore nothing except a wizard's hat and looked to be in his twenties from my mind.