It seemed the whole castle had the same idea as Ace.
Not to use Carmilla to put the tinsel and baubles up, but to deck the school with Christmas themed... everything.
Multiple students had a dare going around to see who could successfully put the most baubles on the whomping willow. There were also multiple people in the hospital wing. It was probably unrelated.
June bought a new gingerbread perfume in their last Hogsmeade visit, in which Carmilla slipped into that old record shop next to the florist and listened to music on the couch until she was dragged back out. The perfume stuck in Carmilla's nose from the first spray, though it could have been every other girl in the school was wearing it.
Hagrid began growing Christmas trees in his patch, which Charlie said would go in the great hall for the Christmas feast. Like every other meal wasn't a feast to start with.
Slughorn had also given out the invites for the Christmas ball, slips of paper with gold lining and long words June had to read aloud for her. Carmilla would have to find yet another dress to wear and a date to the dam thing.
Snow covered the grounds, making the treks to the finally repaired greenhouse even more difficult and squelching, but apparently the lake would freeze up and they would get to skate in the middle of winter as well. Maybe it would be worth the soggy socks and pink noses. Not that Carmilla's nose had anything to make it pink.
The Ravenclaw quidditch team had also played against Slytherin. They lost by twenty points.
Carmilla was ashamed that she hadn't seen the snitch in time to secure their team the win in the end, but Ace had reassured her multiple times that it was early in the Quidditch season. The scores didn't matter that much, yet. She was scared for when they would.
It had taken multiple hot chocolate runs from June to cheer the sulking girls up.
Her grades had drastically improved. Surprise. She couldn't write much just yet, but she could read most of her textbooks now. And understand what she was reading. The teachers put her only just above passing marks, probably out of sympathy, unless the assignment was a diagram. Now that Carmilla actually thought about it, her drawings were probably the only thing keeping her in school. June had got into the habit of reading whichever book she was currently onto out loud, no matter what it was. Carmilla had quite enjoyed 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret,' but couldn't say the same for 'Jaws'.
Ace sent a letter to her parents. She got one back. She was staying for Christmas.
Carmilla suspected it might be about those bedtime stories.
"Are you going home for the holidays?" Charlie asked her quietly, looking up from his textbook. He grabbed a chocolate frog from the pile the two of them had put there for motivation.
Carmilla had decided she wasn't going to go back. Ace would be alone, and she wanted to explore the castle and visit the record store in Hogsmeade every day and have funny messing with her white shirts she was desperate to alter.
She still felt a bit of guilt for leaving her sisters, but she knew they'd want her to bring back cherry shampoo and chocolate frogs and more tales of magic the next time holidays came around. Most of the girls weren't related in anyway, but the nuns called themselves sisters as well, so it became a habit for the young girls too. They were her sisters. She'd grown up pulling their hair and splitting bread rolls.
She'd go back for easter anyway.
"No, I'm staying here. What about you?"
"I'm definitely staying, holidays at my house are hell," Charlie groaned, stretching his arms above his head. "I mean, my parents are bloody awful anyway, but they need to get a divorce soon before I go deaf with all the shouting... I swear my hearings getting worse."
Carmilla chuckled, and folded over the corner of her textbook on herbology once she found the page she needed for her next report.
Charlie was in the same position as Ace, if that meant anything.
A loud shush came from the old librarian's station as the quiet lull over the desks and aisles in the library were interrupted by a few loud Gryffindor's.
It didn't take long to figure out who they were. Carmilla's ears heard the footsteps run up behind her before they stopped. She quickly gave up all hope of starting her report. She could do it at breakfast before the lesson she had to hand it in. Everyone knew that's when students did the best work.
"Cami!"
"Hi."
"Can you please stop calling me prongs? It's actually catching on!"
"Is that chocolate?"
"It's a great nickname," Carmilla said, and slid over a wrapped chocolate frog to Remus, who took it gratefully and sat down with them, pulling a wobbly drawing of a horse thing with wings and a beak. Peter took a frog as well. He had another giant plant pot in his arms. It was wiggling around. The plant. Not the pot.
"What's he doing here?" Sirius wrinkled his nose at Charlie, who had also given up on homework and was helping himself to the slowly disappearing chocolate pile.
Carmilla stared at Sirius. "We're studying... Sort of."
James glanced down at Charlies tie as well, and the Slytherin boy just shifted under all of their stares. She watched his hands literally shake as he signed off his essay on a laughing potion.
"Is he making you do his homework? Prick." James muttered in Charlie's direction.
"I think you should leave now." Carmilla said through gritted teeth, her eyes not wavering from the desk in front of her. She figured she shouldn't make a scene out of her friends sudden turn of heart. There were two chocolate frogs left. Her book was open on a page about spiked roses. Her eye twitched.
Remus looked between her and James, but he didn't defend Charlie from the accusations either.
"Ha! Now piss off, snake boy." James said, leaning on the table casually. As if he wasn't literally a bully. "Take you're scaley ass somewhere else and stop using our friend."
Carmilla stood up. She turned around. She punched him in the jaw.
Before she could even bring her fist back to punch him again someone was pulling her back forcefully, arms around her waist.
She was picked up, somehow, and through the white noise in Carmilla's ears she heard Peter shrieking behind her. Something shattered. Remus dumped her to the side, and she shoved him out of the way, still clawing at the shocked Gryffindor, but she couldn't reach him anymore.
James was holding his face. The chocolates were on the floor next to her overturned chair.
The old librarian appeared behind them quickly, grabbing Carmilla and James by the scruff of their necks and dragging them to the door like naughty pets or little girls. Carmilla couldn't see much until the teacher let go of them, slamming the double doors behind her with a glare.
The Gryffindor boys crept out behind the pair and chased after James down the corridor.
Carmilla was left fuming by herself.
"You didn't have to do that."
She turned to Charlie, and he handed her the books and chocolate she'd left on the table in the library. She put them in the pockets of her robe. "But I wanted to."
He smiled a little bit, like he didn't want to, but he couldn't help it. "Thanks. But maybe don't... fight your friends anymore."
"They aren't my friends if they're going to pick on you," Carmilla said. She meant it.
Anger was pooling in her stomach at James's taunts and the fact Charlie was so used to them. Distain was creeping through her head at everyone else's ignorance because they weren't guilty if they stood by and watched and the fact that that was okay.
His eyes were brown. He grinned up at her, "...Okay."
"You did what?"
Carmilla looked at her shoes, not wanting to meet June's fiercely dark eyes.
June towered over her [she had hopped on a pile of books, Carmilla was actually the tallest of the trio] with her arms on her hips.
"Mama bears mad," Ace sung. She didn't look up from the bauble's she was painting with June's watercolour set on the other side of the room. They were going to be Christmas presents for people. No one yet understood why, because when people received them, they would have to wait another year to put the decoration up. They left her too it.
"I punched James in the face because he called Charlie a scaley ass." Carmilla whispered, scrunching her nose up. She didn't regret what she did, not one bit. That didn't mean she wanted to parade the fact around.
Sure, it wasn't good that she had punched James in the face, but if she knew it was going to shut him up then she would have done it sooner.
If James was going to insult Charlie, he should have had a proper reason, like his terrible taste in hot cross buns with the sultanas, or the way he tied his shoelaces [it was the weirdest knot ever] not just the colour of his tie. Because even Carmilla, who'd been at Hogwarts for nearly three months, knew there was a difference between a rivalry and an old tradition of nasty boys. There was a difference between being a death eater and a dickhead.
"...Is Charlie okay?" Ace asked, looking up with a frown.
Maybe the girls had figured that Carmilla was actually very emotionally attached to this small brown-haired boy who really needed someone to teach him how to tie his laces and decided to stop glaring at his house colours.
Carmilla sighed and bellyflopped onto her bed. "Yeah. He showed me where the kitchens are. We ate an entire chocolate pie."
June came over to her and sat down on the end of the bed. Sass jumped up onto her lap and started chewing the tassels on one of the cushions. "You can see him after you apologise to James for nearly breaking his cheek bone."
"Firstly, I didn't 'nearly break' anything. And I'm not apologising. James was a right git and deserves it if he insults my friends." Carmilla huffed.
"I meant after he apologised first. The bitch still started it."
"Apologise first!"
"No! Who's the one with the bruise on their face? ...Evans is going to think I'm ugly..."
"That isn't the point, Prongs. Just say sorry to both of them and we can go to class," Remus groaned. They had been standing there for ten minutes while James tried to get out of apologising for being an asshole.
Peter had brought his plate of toast over and he and June had begun discussing their Care of Magical Creatures' assignment. Carmilla was behind on hers. She took a slice of toast. It had butter on it.
Ace started flapping her hands around. She elbowed both of the girls.
"Milly, we've got Care of Magical Creatures in about...oh... hi...." Charlie faltered. He looked around at the group blocking the doors of the great hall. He tugged on his green and silver scarf, shuffling the books that their teacher had told them to bring along between his hands.
"James was just about to apologise for being an absolute bag of limp dicks to you last night, wasn't he?" Carmilla said coldly. She turned to said Gryffindor and stared at him.
"Yes I was because I am a terrible person and I owe you my life please don't kill me bye bye!" James yelped, dragging away Peter and Remus. He tripped over his feet. Sirius saluted Carmilla before James started wailing about betrayal.
"You didn't have to say that. It's fine. I get it a lot." Charlie shrugged.
Ace frowned. She was probably remembering the multiple times she had bagged him out because of his house colours while also bugging Carmilla to ask him out. She was a very confusing girl. Carmilla still didn't understand the inner workings of her glittery brain.
Carmilla took the half-eaten piece of butter on toast from June's hand and finished that too. "That doesn't make it okay. And of course I was going to make him apologise. He's a twat with an ego bigger larger than his obsession for Lily Evans."
"Damn straight." Lily muttered, walking past the group with Marlene, the dark haired girl.
"We better go to; Professor Magister already hates you." Charlie muttered, nudging her. They walked out of the large doors into the dreary weather.
Carmilla knew it wasn't okay just because it happened a lot.
If anything, it was worse.
now before y'all come at me for Marlenes hair, lemme just remind you that characters don't reach the peak of their design and aesthetic at fourteen years old. let em brew. let em marinate.
<3