Déjà Vu

Chapter 2

Padma shrugs. "Technically no, but no one really checks. I'm sure you can get away with it if you don't bring him with you to meals, especially since you don't have a roommate."

Evelyn nods. "Do you have a girlfriend, Padma?"

She shakes her head. "No, had a little thing with someone over the summer, but it didn't last."

Evelyn nods, relating more than the other girl could know. "So, Luna," she says, turning to the other girl. "Tell me about Ginny." She already knows plenty about the Weasley girl, but she doesn't really mind hearing more.

After leaving Luna and Padma's room a little while before curfew, wanting to get a good night's sleep before her first day of school, Evelyn heads back to her own room. She's still not over the fact that she has her own room, able to start stripping off her itchy robes the second she walks in the door instead of gathering her things and changing in the bathroom.

She changes into her pajamas and quickly gets through her nightly routine, ready to climb into her warm bed and read for a while before she goes to bed, ready to enjoy the silence after a loud few hours.

When she walks out of the bathroom and back into her bedroom, she's greeted with an owl waiting for her at her windowsill. She frowns and walks over to the brown-feathered bird, wondering who could possibly be writing to her at this time of the night.

She takes the scroll from the bird's beak and opens it, frown disappearing from her face and morphing into a confusing mix of emotions.

Meet me in the third-floor hallway

It's not signed, but she knows who it's from.

She contemplates just throwing the letter out, but the thought of Fred waiting up for her only for her to never show up makes something twist unpleasantly in her gut. She still cares for the boy, she's not going to just leave him waiting for her because she doesn't love the idea or working things out with him tonight.

They are already going to begin the year with a rocky start to their relationship, that much is unavoidable, but she knows that she shouldn't do any more to make it worse. She knows that things are bound to be awkward, because how could they not be? But she knows Fred and knows that there has to be a way to make things a bit easier, make it so that it's not just radio silence and awkwardness with each other for the rest of the year.

She groans and throws the letter down, moving back to the bathroom to at least put her hair up. She runs through the things that she should say to him while she does it, wanting to get their little conversation over with quickly. They need to talk about Nick, they need to talk about where they will go from here, and most importantly, they need to talk about how the hell neither of them ever figured out that the other is a wizard. She couldn't quite get that one out of her head -- there had been far too many signs that she'd missed.

She takes a deep breath and walks out of her quiet, warm, comfortable room into the big, cold hallway, not even knowing where exactly she was going. Isn't there more than one hallway on the third floor? Which one is he talking about?

She creeps out of Ravenclaw and down the staircases quietly, praying to Merlin that they won't move on her. She's a bit weirded out by the emptiness of the school, but she just blames it on the fact that curfew is only a few minutes away. She crosses her fingers and hopes that the school isn't too strict with that, it would absolutely suck to get in trouble before she even starts school there.

"Fred?" she whispers when she enters what she believes is the main hallway on the third floor, stomach twisting with the quietness of the unknown hallway. She wants to turn around and go back to her room. Do people even leave their rooms in their pajamas? Could she get in trouble for that too?