Carmilla was on the quidditch team.
Honestly, she kind of just sat there in shock for a while once Ace had come running into the great hall with a wide smile on her face, and then the pink haired girl had skipped around for the rest of the day. Carmilla however, was in a sort of trance through her classes and meals, not really believing it.
Sure, Benny was never going to get on the team, but apparently girls weren't known to play quidditch much, so there was less of a chance of Aster letting her on, even if she was better than Canopus at the game.
Ace was one of the three chasers, the other two being fourth years named Chris and David. They were fast, but Ace was small.
And just better, really.
The pair had run into one problem though. Well, Carmilla had a problem, and apparently through some friend code that she would have to add to her list, it meant Ace had a problem too.
Carmilla didn't have a broom.
Of course, she had her and Sirius's lucky broom she could borrow from the school, but against actual quidditch players and rich kids with daddy's money to spend on equipment, she was fucked.
June had said they could put their lolly smuggling business to good use, but the first game was in two weeks, and they would have to sell a shit load of Honeydukes to afford a broom, and then they would have to actually order a broom.
There was also the idea that she could make her own, but Carmilla knew that her spells weren't that reliable, even if June and Ace's lessons were paying off. Which they were. She wrote an entire essay a few days ago, which Ace obviously checked over and fixed up afterwards.
These events led up to where Carmilla now found herself, standing in front of the first- and second-year girl's dorms with a bag full of Honeydukes sweets, and Ace.
They glanced at each other before Carmilla opened the door cautiously.
"Greetings children!"
Five eleven-year-old girls looked up from the assortment of things they were doing, visible confusion on their zitty faces. Carmilla was glad she skipped the pimple stage at Hogwarts. She had actually skipped it all together. Her body just didn't do things like that.
One of the girls, Carmilla named her 'blonde', which she felt was a very accurate description, walked up to them bravely.
"Can we help you?" She asked with one eyebrow raised. Ace turned to Carmilla with a smile, hand balling the actual conversation part of the conversation over. This was not in the friend code.
"...We want your money."
Blonde squinted her eyes at them thoughtfully, her lips pinching together as she assessed the teenage girls demanding her money.
She turned to her group of friends and did the thing that all girls seem to be born with, a communication skill through eyes and head shakes and then a lot of eye rolls that they all inherited at birth.
"Is this a robbery, or are you selling us something?" a short girl asked them curiously, getting up from where she was reading a magazine advertising butterbeer flavoured ChapSticks.
"Oh yeah... We're selling lollies. Because you little twerps can't get to Hogsmeade. We have a bag full of them!" Ace pointed at the bulging bag on Carmilla's shoulder happily.
"Do you want our money, or are you going to keep insulting us?" Blonde asked sassily, crossing her arms. Short girl came up next to her and reached her hand out to see the lollies they were offering.
Ace scoffed in indignation, crossing her arms as well and jutting her hip out. "Both."
Short girl showed Blonde the assortment of chocolates, blood lollipops, liquorice wands, pumpkin pasties, pepper imps, fizzing whizzbees, and more. The other three girls came over and they did a whispered huddle, as if a quidditch game was going to start. Was the Ravenclaw team going to do a whisper huddle? What was she supposed to say?
"What's your prices?" Blonde asked with another eyebrow raise.
Carmilla stuck her hands into her robe pockets, rifling around for the list of prices June had helped them write out the day before. Short girl took it from her suspiciously and looked over it in a second. Another silent conversation between the girls happened, and then Blonde nodded.
"We'll take a box of pumpkin pasties, three butter beer lollipops, ten pepper imps, and a limited-edition chocolate frog. We want the Fleamont hair care card. You get ten percent off products if you use it."
"Deal."
The rest of their visits went along those lines, although one dorm was especially violent, causing a scorch mark in Ace's robe and multiple broken liquorice wands [that they didn't even end up buying].
Another dorm roped the two girls into an hour-long tea party, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Carmilla got her hair done. Now it sat in a thick braid down her back.
They considered going up to the boy's dorms for approximately one second, before heading to their corner of the common room. It was actually more of an octagonal room, since it was in a tower, so every gang of friends got a nook or cranny by a fire or between bookshelves.
"So how is this going to get me a broom?" Carmilla questioned, looking up from the drawing off a snitch she was doing while pretending to start writing her essay for Astronomy. She had given up on learning Saturn's moons.
"Oh, it won't, that was just to convince you." Ace said breezily, counting out the coins they had collected from on the floor of the common room.
The three girls were gathered in their spot, between two tall bookshelves towards the back of the common room. Their own things sat on the shelves around them, between the books that had been there before Ace and June claimed the entire aisle in their first year.
Carmilla huffed, scribbling out the drawing when her quill blotched. She reached into her robes [the deep pockets on the outside and the inside really were good for storing things] for the alphabet sheet that she was copying down on a daily basis.
Between June reading out loud while she followed along with her own book, and Ace teaching her how to write, Carmilla was learning quickly. Her eyesight did cause a slight problem, so her O's and D's got mixed up a lot. And the W's and M's. And the U's and O's. And the S's and Z's.
"Figures." She muttered.
Carmilla put her sheet of paper down. "Wait... we're versing Hufflepuff, right?"
Ace looked up sadly, her eyebrows drawn together. One of them was a bit patchy. She'd tried dying it pink last night. "Yes. Easiest way to lose. Hufflepuff have won, like, three years in a row."
She went back to counting out the bronze knutz in her palm, writing down the money they collected from one trip through the dirt tunnel to Honeydukes.
Carmilla thought for a moment, before getting to her feet, leaving her things on the dark wooden floorboards. It was their spot in the common room, no one would take her things. Her back cracked as she straightened it. "When does Gryffindor play?"
"Like, a week before Christmas, ages away, don't worry about them... Why?"
Carmilla ignored the fact Ace had memorised the entire schedule after only having it for three days and strode down the small aisle towards the large double doors. June looked between the two with confusion. "...Where are you going?"
"Prongs owes me a favour!"
June turned to Ace this time, "who the hell is Prongs?"
If Carmilla thought about it logically, she could probably work out where James would be, but instead she was just walking around in a huff. It was times like this when she wished the map that she made had people on it as well, though that would be a bit stalkerish.
Helpful, though.
"If I was a loud Quidditch obsessed person, where would I be?" She asked herself, walking past the Charms classroom. She sighed. "Tricking me into selling sweets for a broom. Duh."
Carmilla hid behind a tapestry for a moment. Dust wafted up and she rubbed her nose. Sass's fur already abused it enough. She turned into a bat and flew clumsily down the corridor. She had to avoid a lot more obstacles, and she flew into multiple doorframes like a bug on a windshield, but it was faster than walking around.
This was the one week she could fly around without suspicion, as people would just think Hagrid forgot to get rid of all the bats in the great hall.
She flapped past the doors to the library, knowing Remus would probably be there as it was a sunny afternoon, and hopefully he was being annoyed by his friends. They tended to do that. She looped around a large statue with 'Grindleward' carved into the stone and turned back before she opened the door.
Just as she had expected, Remus was sitting on the ground with a pile of books by his side.
James was playing wizard chess with Peter, both of them in a staring match as they tried to assess the board at the same time. It wasn't working. Peter was going cross eyed, and James's glasses were hanging off one ear.
"James," Carmilla said. The boy didn't even realise he was being spoken to as he ordered the stone horse around on the checked board. She frowned. "Prongs!"
"Gah! Merlins balls-" James yelped, knocking over the board and falling backwards. Peter groaned and started collecting the fallen pieces from underneath the bookshelves, muttering annoyed things.
Remus steadily ignored the loud group, choosing to continue writing whatever report he was working on this time.
"Prongs? That works?" Peter questioned.
Carmilla sat on a stack of books about something called the devils snare, turning to face James, who looked like a deer caught in headlights once again. He glared. "Yes?"
"...I need your broom." Carmilla stated, slightly nervous about the chaos that would ensure from those four words.
James only shrugged and started helping Peter collect the pawns. One had rolled underneath her shoe, and she figured by leaving it there, they couldn't start the next game until she was satisfied.
"You can have my firstborn instead. You aren't taking Harry."
Carmilla stared at him. "Pardon me?"
Peter lifted her foot up and took the pawn. He shrugged and started aligning the little white figures on the checked board. "His brooms named Harry."
"You owe me a favour, remember?" Carmilla guided him back to the conversation she had started, and not one about naming inanimate objects, which she'd already had this morning. June had titles for every one of her paintbrushes.
James groaned, slumping back onto the bookshelf in dismay as he realised that he did in fact owe Carmilla a favour. He looked up at her with puppy eyes, "don't hurt my baby, please!"