Starry Nights

Birthday Spirit

Cleo, Erin and Cathleen spend the entire evening making decorations. Cleo makes streamers and confetti with parchment and paint. Erin sketches drawings of a Chinese Fireball which Cathleen charms in between duplicating her fairy lights.

Rosie is the first one of the girls to go to sleep, as she does every Wednesday before astronomy in order to get the hours she would miss staying up for the class, she has a value for sleep that most of the other girls simply do not. Except Erin, who also passes out early, well, as soon as she’s done with her part of the decorations. Rebecca and Garnet do a little bit of revising with their astronomy notes from last week, before they both fall asleep on Rebecca’s bed. Aradine is quietly scribbling away at the desk, as usual, working on an essay perhaps, but no one ever really knows with her. Eleanor and Charlotte are sitting on the carpeted floor whispering to each other, discussing who knows what.

So far Cathleen knew little about her roommates, she knew that Aradine was friends with some of the Slytherins in their year, Morgana and Sebastain, but not Ivy and her crowd, and otherwise Aradine keeps to herself. Rebecca was a chameleon, coming and going, blending, her best friend was in Hufflepuff but she gets along with all the other girls and spends a lot of time hanging out with Garnet and Rosie. Rosie and Garnet, despite the fact that they only just met on the train, had hit it off, they were a duo you rarely saw one without the other. Eleanor and Charlotte were childhood friends, Cathleen had discovered and similarly, they were always together.

One by one the hours trickle by. The girls grow tired. Cathleen and Cleo sit across from each other on Cleo's bed carefully watching the other girls and waiting. Cathleen has a pocket-watch her dad had given her, passed down in the Lupin family for generations, even Charlotte and Eleanor notice her checking it, anxious for the time to pass.

“Somewhere to be Lupin?” Eleanor asks, raising her eyebrows.

She expects Cathleen to come up with a witty response, sarcastic banter was very common in their dorm. With one look at Cleo, who only smirks, Cathleen shrugs and says, “Probably better if you don’t know.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” Charlotte says leaning forwards, a determined curiosity evident on her face.

Eleanor also turns around and inclines her head motioning for them to elaborate.

“We’re sneaking out tonight, cover for us?” Cathleen suggests smirking.

“That’s smart, if you get caught out tonight you have the excuse of astronomy class, I hadn’t even thought of that,” Charlotte says nodding approvingly at their mischief.

“Yes it is, smart, we’ll cover for you with the other girls but if you get in trouble, we had no idea,” Eleanor says, before turning around and then adding, with her back turned, “and you owe us one.” Success.

So at 10:30 they wake Erin, gather their things and sneak down to the common room. This is the tricky part, because on any given night there are usually a handful of people in the common room, sometimes more, Ravenclaws aren’t particularly good at sleeping, always something keeping them awake. They’re also not particularly good at minding their own business.

But when they get down to the common room, it’s emptier than it ever is at that time of night. There’s a girl, probably a fourth year, laid on one of the couches reading. She eyes them as they walk down the steps then turns back to her book, not sparing them another look. In an armchair near the back of the room, there’s a couple, the girl is sitting in the guys lap and they are making out, heavily, unaware of the girls even coming down the steps. There’s a 5th year boy stargazing out one of the big windows in the common room with a telescope. Other than that, it’s empty.