Tides of Fate | ᴍᴀʀᴀᴜᴅᴇʀs ᴇʀᴀ

22 | Inconvenient Truths

Lily winced at the color. Alice couldn't stop laughing. Even James choked back a laugh behind his pint of beer.

And so on and on they went. Alice was dared to do a cockney accent for the rest of the game, which left everyone at the table wheezing in laughter. Fabian revealed he once dropped his baby nephew on his head and told no one. Gideon blurted out that he'd once been a mega-fan of the Weird Sisters.

When it was James's turn, he surprisingly chose truth.

"What's a secret you've never told anyone?" Lily asked playfully.

He seemed to think about it for a second. The veritaserum urged his mouth open, and there was a brief flash of panic in his eyes. He covered it quickly with a laugh, stalling his own speech.

"I kept sneaking in to sleep in my parents' bed until I was 5," he said eventually.

"Awww, how cute," Lily laughed.

Everyone else laughed in good nature. "No reason to be embarrassed," Gideon said. "Fabian wet the bed up until 6 years old!"

"Hey, you're the one who breastfed until he was 3!" He fired back.

The entire table roared with laughter as they spilled memories left and right, making fools of themselves with the occasional dare. After the first hour, most of them were rather tipsy. Carina had chosen truths and dares for her previous few turns and eventually settled on truth this time.

"Have you ever loved anyone, and if so, who?" Gideon asked her.

"Yeah," Carina revealed softly.

Her girlfriends' heads snapped towards her in surprise. They hadn't known she'd even dated anyone seriously. She was asked to Hogsmeade all the time, and Carina had a generous policy of giving most people at least one chance. So they knew she'd had no shortage of admirers over the years. But they'd never seen Carina interested enough to pursue anything past a third or fourth date. In fact, the longest they'd seen Carina with anyone was James Potter, a reminder which brought both witches anxiety.

"Oh god," Carina shook her head bashfully, feeling the influence of the veritaserum urge her response forward. "This wasn't how I wanted to tell you all, but really I should've told you a while ago."

"You're killing me," Alice exclaimed. She almost hoped it wasn't James- it would be too sad if it was. "Who is it?"

"Lucius Malfoy."

"WHAT?" Alice shrieked. That was definitely not what she'd expected. That wasn't even on her radar.

Carina winced, as did Sirius and James. Though, to be fair, she didn't know if their wince was from disgust or as a response to Alice's shriek. Fabian and Gideon remained quiet but assessed her with surprise. She didn't even want to meet their eyes. It was well known that Malfoy was now a Death Eater, and she couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed.

"It was a long time ago," she hastened to fill in. "We dated most of our fifth year, and we'd ended things by the end of the term."

"W-what? How? What'd you see in him?" Lily asked curiously.

"He wasn't bigoted back then," Carina told them earnestly. "I ended it as soon as his father started really drilling that shite into him. But when I knew him, he was... confident, smart. He challenged me. We had a fun dynamic."

"And you loved him?" Fabian asked curiously with no judgment in his gaze.

"We were kids," Carina shrugged. "Yes, I did love him. But our love was also very innocent and puppy-like. It obviously didn't last the problems of life and this war."