𝒂𝒅𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖, 𝒋𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒑𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓

022. Christmas party

"The will be a lot of eligible bachelors here tonight, I want you to look your absolute best,"

"Bachelors?" her eyes raised, her confidence slowly regaining.

"You heard me."

"You want me to find someone at your party?"

"For Merlin's sake Evelyn you're not that daft,"

She rolled her eyes at her father's words, Not having anything to say she got up and left the dining table, returning to her room. Eva walked into her room noticing how clean it was, except for the pile of gifts at the edge of her bed that had been accumulating since yesterday. She decided that she would open all the gifts later tonight, in order to have something to look forward to, after all, Eva wasn't really in the Christmas spirit mood.

She spent the remainder of the day up in her room, either reading one of the books from the family library or writing in her journal. She had picked up on the writing habit when she was really little and it kind of stuck. Eva always thought her emotions were either extremely high or extremely low. She never really had anybody to express her feelings to so whenever she could, she wrote in her journal so she wouldn't actually explode or go crazy with her emotions. Lately, her emotions had been all over the place, so the pages were filling up pretty quickly, She had a lot to say but she couldn't.

Bunny had delivered Eva a bunch of dress options for her to pick which one she was going to wear to the party. The first was a big, puffy, white dress that honestly looked like a cupcake. She dismissed that one automatically, she wasn't trying to have to wear a wedding dress just yet. The second was a gorgeous blue dress, it was short but absolutely decked out in shimmering gems. The last dress was a stunning red piece. It had a long, triangle neckline that cut down to her boobs. The bottom was very loose so that when she walked her legs showed. She decided that she would wear the red one despite her absolute loving the shimmering blue one, she knew she would have to keep that for a different occasion.

She loved red. It reminded her of James. To be honest that's probably why she picked it. She knew she had to go out there and uphold her family's honor but even having the slightest bit of James on her would make the occasion seem almost ironic.

♡♡♡

The Christmas ball was always the same. It was decorated so glamorous that it made some people like the family more and while others grew jealous. Eva always stayed up in her room for the beginning portion of the event, then she would gradually make her way downstairs to the ballroom. She wouldn't have a grand entrance or anything like that because she hated the attention and all the eyes on her.

She walked through the side door hoping that no one would catch her walking in late but to her dismay, her mom did. Lenora's eyes spotted hers from across the room beckoning her to come join them. Eva sighed to herself as she realized how drunk she was gonna have to get to survive this night.

An hour into the party it had gone exactly like how Eva had imagined it would. Every once in a while her parents would bring someone over for her to meet and they would engage in mind-numbing small talk for a couple of minutes before she would make some excuse to leave. She would sneak a few drinks when nobody was looking, it's not like it was hard, her parents didn't care and everyone else was either too drunk or too into themselves to notice.

She was probably on her fifth glass when she bumped into someone. She knew who he was, of course, she knew who he was. He had the same black hair and blueish-gray eyes that she had become so familiar with in the past year. He was shorter than his brother but still taller than Eva. Eva had seen him around Hogwarts, after all, he was in the same house as Eva. They had talked every now and then when Lucius was still her boyfriend or when they got put together in class projects or even when their family invited them and they were forced to speak to each other. Eva had no problem with Regulus, he was actually one of the very few Slytherins that actually liked her, which she was very grateful for.