"Party in the Gryffindor common room tonight," Kevin shouts through the halls after dinner is over. "Fifth years and up. Bring something to smoke or to drink or you're not allowed in!"
I follow the other Gryffindors towards the staircase but I stop when I see Cass sitting on a bench by herself. "I'll see you up there. Don't start without me." I say to Louis before pushing through the crowd of students and over to my sister.
"It feels weird not having her around the castle anymore." She says when I sit down beside her.
I rest my elbows on my knees, letting my hands dangle between my legs and I look up at my sister. She sighs and continues, "Like... I dunno, she's not in any of my classes anymore, she's not on the quidditch team, she's not in the common room or the dorm. I don't like not having her around."
I let her talk, listening carefully to everything she says. Once she's done she looks at me, "Don't you have a party to go to?"
"We have a party to go to," I say.
Cass rolls her eyes, "Right because you want to be the loser that brings his sad excuse of a little sister to a party with all your friends."
I look at her, "Do me a favour Cass?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't talk like that about yourself. It's bullshit." I get up and turn to face her, sticking my hand out towards her, "Off your ass, let's go."
Cassie swats my hand away and stands up herself. Albus and Scorpius dash past us and start to run up the stairs. "The hell are you two running from?" I call out.
"Rose said we can come to the party and there's not much you can do to stop us," Al calls, looking down at Cass and me from the stairs.
Cassie and I start up the stairs slowly, "I don't have to drink do I?" She asks me.
I smile to myself, "Bold of you to assume I'd let you."
When we get to the common room entrance Kevin is standing there with his arms crossed, "I said no one below fifth year." He says looking at Cass.
She shrinks under his gaze and I roll my eyes, "Who died and made you the fat lady?" I say shoving past him and saying the password. Cassie follows me into the common room. Loud music is already blaring through eight different speakers set up in the round room, and it smells of weed.
"I'm gonna go bum around with Al and Scorpius," Cass says before going over to our cousins who are laughing loudly in the corner. I make sure she's alright and laughing along with them before I go over to the makeshift bar and pour myself a butterbeer.
"Long time no see Weasley."
I turn around and Hannah is standing behind me. I'm not going to lie. She looks fucking amazing, her hair is pulled up in a big ponytail and she's wearing a black tank top with blue jeans. "What'd you want Torres," I say taking a drink out of my cup. I have a strong feeling that I'm going to have to be buzzed for this conversation.
She smiles up at me, "Just missed you is all. It feels like you've been ignoring me."
I finish off the rest of my drink and fill my cup as I answer, "Cause I have." I turn back around to her, her smile has faltered a bit. "Have you broke it off with James yet?"
She rolls her eyes, "You don't even like James."
I take a drink of my butterbeer and suck my teeth, "I don't like slags either. Excuse me." I push past her and go over to where Louis and Amar are standing with a few other people in our year.
Lou looks past me and I look over at my shoulder where Hannah is standing, she's shooting daggers at me with her eyes. "Fuck is that about?" He asks.
I look back at him and shrug, "Nothing, I'm done with that."
A few girls giggle beside me and only then do I realize that Evie is in our little group with her friends. And fuck she looks good. Her black curly hair is all pulled up in a big bun on the top of her head, her dark brown skin is perfectly smooth even though I can tell that she's not got a bit of makeup on.
"Hiya Freddie." She says, holding her red cup up by her lips like she's trying to hide from me.
I take a drink from my cup and wink at her, "What's up darling?" Her friends all look at her with big eyes and they start giggling again. I leave them to it and turn my back a little so I can talk to Louis and Amar.
"Dom says she's on her way up. She's got some weed she wants to sell to a couple of drunken idiots." Louis says looking at his phone and shoving it in his back pocket.
"So when your sister leaves are you going to become the school's new dealer?" Amar asks Louis, "Cause that'll be dope as hell. I wouldn't have to pay for anything."
Louis rolls his eyes, "Nah man I don't want to fuck with that shit. Besides, she's already got her eye on some Hufflepuff girl a year above us to take over for her once she's up and out of this place."
"How did Dom even manage to become the school's dealer?" I ask.
Louis shrugs, his head bopping to the beat of a song that I'm too lazy to figure out what it is, "Not a fucking clue. I dunno how she's even getting enough to sell I mean the girls rubbish at herbology."
There's a shriek from the other side of the room and we all look over to see what happened. James is standing in front of Hannah, who has got her arms around some random guy's neck. And I swear on my life James looks like he's genuinely hurt by the sight.
"Jay! No, it's not what it looks like!" Hannah shrieks letting go of the Ravenclaw boy and going over to James. She tries to put her hand on his arm but he pulls away from her.
"So it's true? You really did snog my cousin?" He shouts. The entire room goes quiet, it feels like even the music got quieter.
I can't help but smile a little. I know it's wrong but god does it feel good to have Hannah face up to the consequences of her actions.
James doesn't even give Hannah the time to respond or try to defend himself. He takes hold of the closest girls waist and pulls her close, "You single?" He asks. The girl nods about a hundred times over, "Great. I'm gonna snog you till you can't remember your name yeah?"
The girl doesn't say anything, she just nods again and James takes her arm and drags her up to the boy's dorm. No one moves for a second, but then the music gets loud again and people go back to their conversations.
"Fucking hell. Imagine being that good looking that you can grab a random girl and say that to them." Amar says shaking his head in disbelief.
Louis and I laugh, "Bet you a galleon it's because his parents are famous." I say.
It's about three hours till the older students from the other houses show up. That's when it really turns into a party. People moved all the couches and stacked them up in a corner so there is room to dance. Dom is selling weed like her life depends on it, nearly everyone has one of her pre-rolls in between their lips. I even see Cass take a few drags from the one Rose has got.
Amar is in the middle of the dance floor, two girls dancing on him in beat with the song. Louis is dancing with Killian from Ravenclaw, both of them nearly touching but not quite. Cass is dancing with Rose, Albus, and Scorpius, each of them making a complete fool out of themselves. I haven't seen James or that girl he took with him.
I squeeze past a few dancing people, and go over to the table with all the booze on it and pour myself another drink. I look up and I see Molly sitting on the lap of a seventh year Hufflepuff girl that I don't know the name of. They are kissing quite heavily, hidden away in a corner, nearly completely covered by a curtain. Christ is everyone but me getting it on tonight?
"Not dancing?" Evie's voice says from behind me.
I turn around and smirk at her. She has one of Dom's joints in between her fingers casually.
I shake my head, "I can't dance for shit." I say to her. I find myself looking at her from head to toe. Her jeans tight on her legs, her massively oversized flannel has fallen off one of her shoulders exposing her tank top strap.
She takes a drag of her joint, "Yeah me neither." She says as she blows smoke up into the ceiling.
I decide to be bold. Maybe it's the fact that James is so much bolder and out there than I am and I'm a little jealous of his confidence, or maybe it's because I'm on my way to being absolutely plastered. Whatever it is, I take the joint out of Evie's hand and take a long drag, maintaining eye contact with her the entire time. Her cheeks go a dark shade of red but she doesn't break the eye contact.
I hold the smoke in my lungs for as long as I can and then I blow it up towards the ceiling. "Want to go totally make fucking fools of ourselves in front of nearly everyone we go to school with?" I say to her, handing the joint back to her.
She takes it from my hand, her fingers brush against mine, and whether or not it was an accident it sends chills down my spine. "Well, how could I resist an offer like that?"
She takes my hand in hers and gently pulls on my arm, bringing me to the dance floor. Over here, the music is louder than it is anywhere else in the room. People are sweating, pressed close not only to the people they're dancing with but also with everyone else around them. Dom and her boyfriend are making out heavily in the middle of the dance floor, still swaying to the music.
I focus on Evie, her hips pressed closely against mine as we start to move to the beat of the song together. It takes me by surprise, how not awkward this all is. Till I start to overthink what I should be doing with my hands that is. I chug the rest of my drink and toss my cup on the floor so I can put both my hands on her hips. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me closer to her. Her chest pressed up against mine.
And I don't want to sound like a fucking simp or anything. But fuck me does this feel great. She turns around slowly and presses her bum against my hips and starts to dance that way, her back pressed into my chest, my hands still on her hips.
Her hair smells like strawberries, so strong I can smell it over the alcohol and weed. It's intoxicating.
I look around the room once. Amar is gone and so are the two girls he was dancing with. Louis and Killian are dancing very close together now. I double-check to make sure that Cass hasn't disappeared but she is still hopping around and dancing with Rose and the rest of them. I still haven't seen James so I take a wild guess and figure it's going to be best if I pass out in the common room tonight.
"You want to get out of here?" Evie says turning back around so we are face to face again. Apparently, I make a face because her eyes go wide and she loses nearly all her confidence. "Not – not like that. It's just the music is giving me a headache... Uhm, never mind. I think I'm going to call it a night. It's past curfew and everything." She steps away from me, her face red with blush and embarrassment.
"No I didn't think that you were – wait here. I'm gonna go grab something and then we can roam the halls and find you a Tylenol or something." I say, but as soon as the words leave my mouth and Evie's eyes go big I realize that it totally just sounded like I was off to get a condom or something. "God that's not what I meant, like at all. I have something that can make sure we don't get caught by any teachers."
Evie laughs, "Don't worry. I trust you. I'll be here."
I smile big and nod a few times before excusing myself and heading up the stairs. I totally forget that James is in our dorm with some girl till I get to the door and hear them inside. And let me tell you, hearing your cousin's sex noises is something that no one should have to listen to... ever.
I pull my wand out of my back pocket, "Accio Marauders Map." I half-whisper as I wave my wand in the air. I hear the girl inside scream and James shout something like 'what the FUCK Weasley?' It's only a matter of seconds before the map flies out from the crack at the bottom of the door and lands at my feet.
I pick it up and head back down the stairs before I hear more of James and his new girl of the day are doing in the dorm. As long as they aren't on my bed I couldn't care less. Evie is standing with a few of her friends off to the side of the room, but when she sees me she excuses herself and moves over to the entrance of the common room.
I smile to myself and walk over to her, we leave the common room together. I don't pull out the map till we are alone on the other side of the sleeping fat lady portrait. I tap my wand on it and mutter 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good' and honestly, I sort of mean it. I don't tend to use the map for any of my pranks cause if you can't do it without the map then you shouldn't be using it at all in my opinion, so I use it to keep an eye on my family and things mostly. This is the first real time I'm using it for mischief.
"Where'd you want to go, darling. The castle is our playground." I say to Evie, holding the map out in front of me, "Except for the fourth floor because it looks like Long-ass is patrolling that floor."
Evie laughs, "Long-ass? Really?"
"With a name like Longbottom? What was I gonna do, not make jokes about it all the time?"
Evie peers over my arm and at the map, "Astronomy tower?"
I trace a path to the tower with the tip of my wand, "Sounds like a splendid plan." I fold up the map and stuff it into my back pocket along with my wand. I take Evie's hand in my own and interlock our fingers, the alcohol coursing through my body making it a lot easier to talk to girls.
Not going to lie to you, the astronomy tower is my favourite part of Hogwarts. The entire ceiling is made up of bits of glass that magnify the stars in the sky. The floors are covered in different rugs and the solar system is carved into the floorboards.
Evie goes right over to the balcony and throws open the glass doors, letting the cold January air in. It feels great on my hot skin. "I know I've been here for years. But this view takes my breath away every time I come up here." Evie says, her arms outstretched like she's trying to hug the sky.
I smile like an idiot and go over to the balcony, standing beside her. "I dunno just looks like a field and a forest to me," I say, half-joking.
Evie puts her hands on either side of my face. Her hands are hot, her skin soft like silk. "Use that big imagination I know you've got tucked away in there Weasley." She pulls my head to the left and tilts my chin upwards a little, "See? You've just got to get a different angle." She takes her hands off of my face and I kind of feel empty without her touch.
"Just looks like a bunch of trees only a little crooked now," I say poking fun at her.
I turn to look at Evie and she's smiling and shaking her head at me, "Fucking hell Weasley. Are you always this much of an ass?"
I laugh, "I've been known to be assey." We both howl with laughter, completely forgetting that we really shouldn't be up here. We laugh for quite some time, then it slows down, then we are looking at each other in silence.
Evie steps towards me slowly. Her eyes flick from mine down to my lips. The last time I kissed someone it ended up getting me beat up in front of my family, but I push all those feelings down and cup her face in my hands. I never realized how big my hands were till they were on either side of her face.
She smiles at me a little and wraps her arms around my waist. Together we lean closer to each other till our lips meet. I only intended to kiss her very softly, but my brain is fizzy from the booze and weed and it doesn't take long to turn a relatively innocent kiss into a full-on snog session.
Kissing Evie feels like how I think a kiss should feel like. I never really enjoyed kissing Poppy, it felt more like a chore than anything else. And kissing Hannah felt forced, like something that I didn't really want to happen.
But this.
This is fantastic.
We pull away from each other, out of breath, both of us smiling like idiots, "I don't normally kiss people I've had all of two conversations with." Evie says, breathing heavy, "But I think that was worth it."
I laugh and brush my thumb against her cheek, "Definitely worth it."
We kiss again, she leans her whole body weight into me which catches me off guard in a good way. Her lips taste like strawberries, her clothes smell like weed and laundry detergent.
Evie moves her arms so they are wrapped around my neck pulling me closer to her if that was even possible.
"Seems like you two are having a good night."
We pull away from each other instantly and look into the round room that the balcony is attached to. Professor Sinistra is standing there with her arms crossed, the tip of her wand lit up which casts an orange glow across the room.
"Evening Professor, can we help you with something?" I say as casually as I can which makes Evie snort. God that was cute.
"Both of you. My office. Now, please."