Hope enters the Slytherin common room after dinner, looking for her friends. Her Friday night detention got cancelled-Snape had pulled her aside in the hallway and had said something about a weekly staff meeting that they could not cancel for two "unpleasantly insolent" students. He had also said that she needed to find Josette and tell her, but Hope had never gotten around to it.
It's not that she hadn't told the other girl their detention was cancelled on purpose, it's just she'd been busy. That's all.
She jerks herself out of her guilty thoughts, finding Maya and Ethan playing chess by the stone fireplace. Rose sits on the arm of Ethan's chair, whispering advice into his ear; while Penelope is taking up the entire couch, laying down on it and waving her wand around randomly like she's inebriated.
"Hey, Machado, I need you to be my plus one to Slughorn's dumb dinner party next Saturday."
Both Machado siblings perk up. She swallows thickly.
"Sorry, I meant Maya," she clarifies, and Ethan pouts.
"Aww, Mikaelson, are you asking me out?" Maya drawls, a hand over her heart like she's sincerely touched.
"No, don't be silly," Hope says, her eyebrows furrowed. "Also, Rose, Slughorn invited you as well. I think you can bring your own date."
"So it is a date!" Maya yells, triumphant. Hope rolls her eyes.
"When did he say that?" Rose asks, playing with one of the chess pieces absentmindedly. Hope thinks it's a pawn.
"During first period," Hope answers, throwing herself directly opposite the couch Penelope's laying on.
"It's almost nine o'clock, H." Rose rolls her eyes, setting the chess piece down. Hope can see clearly now that it's a rook. "Why are you just telling me now?"
"Maybe because you screwed all of us over and left us to get detention," Penelope interjects, referring to the fact that the girl had worn muggle clothes the entire day, while the rest of them had each received two days of detention with Slughorn.
"I already told you earlier, Nicots don't get detention. My mother would have killed me," Rose says, not meeting anyone's eyes. Ethan watches her carefully, raising his eyebrows at her, and Hope observes the entire exchange quietly. "And we all heard Dumbledore during dinner, next week you'll have to serve a month of detention if you don't wear muggle clothes."
"Let's not change the subject," Maya interrupts before Penelope can say something else. "Mikaelson was in the middle of asking me out."
"For the last time, that was not what I was doing," Hope reiterates, but Maya waves her off, laughing.
"Why are you suddenly so interested in Slughorn's parties anyway?" she asks, a malicious glint in her eye. "You never were before."
Yes. Why are you so interested?
Hope swallows, her skin flushed where blood pools underneath.
"It's my sixth year," she states simply. "I need to start making connections."
"That's bull," Maya mutters, "but whatever. As long as I get to be your date."
She winks, getting up and leaving to her dorm room, complaining about not getting enough sleep the night before.
Hope smirks, and she's about to make a comment about Maya's snoring when she sees Josette Saltzman stomping over to her. Her smile slips off her face.
"Mikaelson!" the muggleborn calls, and Hope stands up. The Dreamless Sleep potion feels heavy in her pocket, and she smooths down her wrinkled uniform, looking up and directly into furious eyes. She feels her other friends stand up with her. "What is wrong with you?"
She pushes against Hope's shoulders, but the pureblood doesn't budge. Hope only arches her eyebrow in confusion and smirks. Inside, she's screaming.
"Don't play dumb with me," the muggleborn pushes her again. Hope glances around to her friends, who are waiting for a signal to intervene. She waves them off, but they don't move away. "I waited outside Slughorn's classroom for nearly thirty minutes. Imagine my surprise, when he informed me that detention had been cancelled hours ago, and you were supposed to tell me."
"Oh, right..." Hope trails off, as if she's just remembered what she was supposed to do. In fact, she had never forgotten, and it had plagued her mind for much of the night. She swallows a rock lodged deeply within in her throat; her friends' eyes weigh terribly on her. "I must have forgotten."
"My bad." She shrugs, turning away. Had her heart always sounded this loud in her ears? Merlin, she thinks everyone in the room can hear it.
"I can't believe you," Josette whispers, just between the both of them, something akin to incredulity in her voice. She looks at Hope for a short moment before leaving the common room altogether. Hope's heart continues to pound long after the door shuts behind her.
-
Saturday morning holds the Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw game. Hope wakes up extra early-with much thanks to the Dreamless Sleep potion-and only attends for the sake of Pedro, who will be getting his revenge on Alyssa Chang during the match.
She had spent much of her time after classes teaching him a stinging hex, one that would create boils along a person's skin and gives the pigment a weird complexion. It was perfect for Pedro, as it was a simple, temporary spell and the Chang girl would know exactly where it came from.
He follows her through the stands, and they settle in the back as the game begins. He pulls out a red and gold-Gryffindor-flag from his pocket, and almost starts to wave it around before Hope hurriedly plucks it out of his hand and throws it off the bleachers.
It falls five hundred feet to the ground, and Pedro watches it go down the entire time.
"Why did you do that?" he asks, the corners his lips turning down. Hope sighs.
"Where'd you get that flag?" she asks, instead of answering.
"Jo gave it to me," he says. Hope waits until Pedro looks away to roll her eyes. Merlin, that girl was everywhere.
"Don't ever talk to her again, do you hear me?" Hope watches as his eyebrows knit together. She can't allow this to happen to him. If he becomes a blood traitor, his family would burn him off the tree, no matter his age. "She's a mug-"
"She's a bad influence," she says, because saying that she's a muggleborn doesn't sound completely right. It didn't sound like something Pedro would understand.
"But she helped heal me after what Ravenclaw did," he tells her. Hope frowns.
"I thought Ethan took you to the hospital wing?" she asks. Pedro shakes his head vehemently.
"No, he got distracted flirting with Rose."
"Oh," Hope breathes. "Well, I'm sure he didn't mean to forget about you. Rose and him...it's complicated."
"And what about you and Jo?" Hope almost snaps at him, almost tells him that he doesn't know what he's talking about, almost tells him that he can't keep calling her Jo if he doesn't want to get bullied, or worse, disowned.
She opens her mouth, and none of that comes out.
"It's complicated."
About twenty minutes later, Hope finds an opening in the game and signals for Pedro to try the spell. Alyssa Chang has been commentating the entire time-something Hope realized she was only doing for extra credit-and the actual game is quite intense.
It's 120-130, in Ravenclaw's favor. A bludger had just hit Ravenclaw Chaser McDonald Gangley in the head, sending him out of the field and briefly pausing the match. Hope knows that Gryffindor is going to win for sure now that Ravenclaw's star chaser is out of the match.
Pedro lifts his wand, pointing directly at Alyssa and whispers the incantation for the hex. It finds her perfectly, hitting her directly in the forehead. The microphone screeches as she drops it screaming, ugly warts and blisters stretching across her face. Her skin turns orange, and Hope laughing cues the Slytherins around her to snicker as well.
"What the hell?" Hope can just barely hear what's left of Alyssa's voice in the microphone. She can still definitely hear the screaming. "I look like a flipping carrot!"
Pedro and Hope share a secretive look, and she urges him to put his wand away. The boy still had it out for whatever reason-almost like he wanted to get caught.
She looks up as he tucks it within his sleeve, trying to appear casual, and her eyes meet Josette, who is moving quickly throughout the crowd, trying to find a place to stand with her friends. She notices Jade trailing the muggleborn.
Josette hasn't yet seen her, and Hope briefly stares before looking away completely. Her breath feels suffocating in her throat-perhaps it was because they were so high up, and the air was lacking much oxygen at this attitude, yes, that must be it!
She turns back to the game, which has just resumed. As she had thought, without Gangley, Ravenclaw performs poorly and can't score as much. Gryffindor catches the snitch thirty minutes later and Hope groans.
It's not like she was rooting for Ravenclaw, but the Slytherin motto was to cheer for everyone but Gryffindor.
She glances over to where she last remembers seeing Josette-and when she thinks back to this moment, she'll call it an accident-and doesn't immediately find the other girl. She soon realizes it's because she's not facing this way, now turned to the side to hug Jade as they cheer for Gryffindor in true house spirit. Hope thinks they're hugging each other a lot more tightly than necessary.
"Come on." She grabs Pedro's collar. He whines, and swats at her hand. "We're leaving."
"Why?" he asks, ever curious. She eyes Jade and Josette once again, for a moment too long, and the boy turns around to look as well. He doesn't see anything and huffs.
"The game's done," she tells him. "And you already got your revenge. Do you feel better?"
"No," he says. Hope scowls, thinking that her prank against Gryffindor had also not been as satisfying as she thought it would be.
The pair end up getting milkshakes at Hogsmeade-chocolate for her and strawberry for him. Hope only allows it because she wants to cheer him up, at least that's what she tells herself after she orders two more chocolate milkshakes.
"Where are your friends?" Pedro asks, around a mustache of whipped-cream.
"They came here earlier," she says, a similar mustache on her face. He giggles and she wipes it clean with the back of her hand. "They wanted to beat the crowd before the game finished. They're probably back at Hogwarts already."
"I'm sorry that I made you miss them," he says, looking down, like he truly feels badly about it.
"Don't be," she whispers. She grabs his hand when he doesn't look up. "Never apologize for something as insignificant as that."
"Then when do I apologize?" he asks.
Hope has the same question, and it seemed that she needed to learn it as well. In fact, she had been itching to apologize to Josette for the entirely of last night and the whole morning. She did not know exactly why, but it seemed like a good plan to make herself better. She wanted to apologize to only make herself feel better, once again, not for Josette, and definitely not because she felt bad.
"I don't know."
They move onto Gladrags Witch and Wizardwear for muggle clothing after they finish their milkshakes. Hope does not think that she could survive another month of detention added to her two weeks, and forces herself to swallow her pride as she leads them both into the store. Losing all her nights just like that was not worth it.
She tells Pedro to look around, promising to buy him all his clothes if he can do it in the next five minutes-she really doesn't want to stay in the store for longer than that. As he runs away, she approaches the familiar shopkeep almost nervously.
"Excuse me," she implores, and he gives her his full attention almost immediately. "I was here last weekend, and there was a...jacket, a hoodie I think it was called? Well, I..."
She cuts herself off anxiously, not wanting to get embarrassed any further.
"Ah! Yes! I remember!" the man says, and then takes off without another word. As she waits for him to come back, she examines a Slytherin scarf in front of her. It was softer than any one she had ever bought before, and it had a cool emblem that appeared to be hand-stitched. Of course, she herself did not need another scarf, but...
"You know, I begged the Sorting hat not to put me in Slytherin. And my parents-they wouldn't even buy me a spare robe, nevermind a scarf or tie..."
Hope stands stricken there, remembering but wishing she could not, unable to hear anything in the store passed Josette's sobs in the Astronomy tower. She shakes herself out of it, and the shopkeep comes back a minute later with the hoodie and jeans she had tried on.
She gives him a weird look but chooses not to voice her opinion on how creepy it is that he remembered that.
"Anything else, Miss?" he asks while ringing her up. She looks around for Pedro, and snaps her fingers at him. He comes nearly jogging, carrying a bunch of items. Hope regrets telling him she'd pay for all of them.
After Pedro loads everything into a bag, the shopkeep turns to her once again, as if he knew something she could not accept.
"Anything else, Miss?" he repeats.
Hope hesitates, her fingers twitching wantonly at her sides, before reaching for the scarf. She touches it softly, her eyes falling shut with short memories. Maybe her apology could start here.
"This, too, please," she says, and when he tells her the total, she tips him extraordinarily well.
She makes Pedro carry all the bags except for the one holding the scarf, and they trudge back up to Hogwarts together. He thanks her for a good day and they separate at the common room stairs. While he goes to his dorm, she goes to the Owlery, a room at the top of the West tower that held all of Hogwarts' owls.
Once there, she pats the head of her own owl, Marbles. She had not seen him for a while-as Hope Mikaelson never received much mail from home-or even visited him, as she could not face the truth of what that meant.
"Long time no see," she tells him, and pretends that he can understand her. She looks around the empty Owlery, her hands almost shaking, before taking the scarf out of her bag. She then neatly folds it into wrapping paper, and scribbles a note at the top after much deliberation.
Sorry.
-HM
When she tells Marbles to deliver it to Josette Saltzman, she pretends she doesn't stutter over the name, she pretends that the syllables don't get stuck in her throat, pretends that it doesn't choke her on the way up.