Violet’s jaw hurt. She had been sitting upright on her bed for the past half an hour trying to work out what she would do about Scorpius not realising that the string from her hoodie that she had been chewing on was slowly disintegrating in her mouth. She spat out a mouthful of the grey green gunk and quickly charmed it away.
Suddenly, light poured in through the curtains of her bed, revealing the last person she wanted to see.
“Hi, Vi,” said Rose carefully.
“Morning,” replied Violet, trying to conceal her annoyance.
“Can I come in, we need to talk,” said Rose ignoring the fact that it was half past four in the afternoon and not, in fact, the ‘morning’.
“Ok,” she replied grudgingly and Rose pulled the curtains open completely, took a place at Violet’s feet and closed the curtains behind her.
“Muffliato,” said Rose quietly, they had used this charm before to stop the nosiest twins that had ever existed from gossip-mongering.
“I…” started Violet, but Rose interrupted.
“I just want to tell you that I don’t plan on going out with Scorpius. I just wanted him to like me and give me an ego boost, but he made it very, very clear that he liked someone else instead. I was so blind; I never noticed how you guys felt until it was called to my attention. I feel like such an idiot. An insensitive, self-absorbed, slutty idiot. I messed up something that could have been great- that will be great. I will get you together,”
“Okay…” Violet trailed off. Why was everyone so convinced he liked her; he hadn’t told anyone that he did? But he did say he didn’t like Rose. Damn. He didn’t like Rose. She had left him for no reason. No reason at all.
“We just tell him that you’re related to James and that the photo album was from years ago. He never liked me, he was just jealous of James,”
But Violet had stopped listening. She could have kept kissing him. She didn’t have to run away, right into the arms of James, she just that second realised. She was such an idiot. They could have gone to the ball together. She could have told him how she felt. But she hadn’t. She had been convinced he liked someone else. Modesty isn’t a good thing- no matter what people might say. She could be kissing him at that moment. She could be looking into his gorgeous silver eyes. She made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a sigh.
Oops. She was meant to be listening to Rose. “Sorry, what was that?” she asked guiltily.
“We show Scorpius how much you like him,” she said slowly, as if talking to an idiot, “Very subtly of course,” she joked.
“Because of course subtlety is your middle name. You should have seen yourself the day we got told about the ball. Poor Scorpius, he looked like he would have an aneurism,” she said this light-heartedly but there was an underlying hurt to it.
For once, Rose seemed to pick up on this, she leaned over and hugged Violet tight, “I’m sorry for everything I did to you. I really do want to make up,”
“Ok,” Rose squeezed her harder, “I put my relationship future in your hands. Merlin knows how much I will regret that, but there you go,”
“I promise that I’ll make it work. You will be all made up by Scorpius’ birthday,”
“You better hope so,” she pushed Rose off and got out of bed, squinting into the sunlight. “What time is it, Rose?”
“’Bout half four,”
“Ah,” said Violet shortly. She shoved on an old and worn denim skirt and a pair of red woollen slippers, not bothering to remove her pyjama top or hoodie. She pulled the hood up, it would be too much fuss to brush her hair.
Rose simply looked at her disparagingly and rolled her eyes. Violet rolled her eyes back and they both started giggling, seeing who could cross their eyes further.
“D’you think I can still get some breakfast?” Violet asked, actually sounding worried.
“D’you realise that in an hour and a half it is dinner time,”
“Yeah, so?”
“Breakfast it is then,” said Rose, taking her arm and leading her of the dorm.
*
Ten minutes later they were both sitting a small wooden table in the kitchens, having random assortments of food offered to them from all directions.
“No, thanks,” said Rose, for about the fiftieth time that minute.
“Yes, please,” said Violet, taking her third cup of tea and sixth slice of toast.
“I would be sorely tempted to say that you’ll get fat but that would be pointless seeing as you have about as much flab as a foetus,”
“I must have good genes,” joked Violet privately, remembering photos of her father when he was her age. “Are you sure you don’t want some toast? This honey is divine,”
“No, thank you. I’m watching my weight,”
“Eugh,” said Violet disapprovingly, “Dieting people are so boring,” she didn’t endorse the whole ‘I’m so fat’, ‘No, you’re so skinny’ thing that seemed to go on with most teenage girls. Rose wasn’t fat, and she knew it. Rose seemed to think that if she ate a little less for a few days then she would become a better person. Rose’s problem wasn’t an eating disorder- the diet would be over with in a few days, just like all her other fads- it was that she needed to concentrate and focus solely herself in one thing. There had been the quidditch faze, the pet cat faze, the ‘being a perfect big sister faze’, and, of course, the never ending boy faze.
“Ok, it’s Scorpius’ birthday in a few days, isn’t it?”
“Fourteenth of November,” Violet specified.
“So, what if between now and then we convince him that you like him and then you make your move at his birthday party?”
“Birthday party?”
“Yes, the birthday party we are throwing for him in The Room of Requirement,”
“Does he know about this yet?”
“No, we’ll tell him at dinner, he will not refuse”
“You should become a lawyer, Rose, like your mum. You’re an unstoppable force of nature,”
“Oh, actually, on the topic of my mum. They all say that you are welcome to stay for Christmas, we are all going to my grandparents’ house. Though how we are going to fit 27 people into a five bedroomed house I am not sure. Even if one of them is only two feet long,”
“How is your sister?” Violet asked curiously, she loved kids herself and she knew how much Rose enjoyed talking about Faith.
“She’s great. Mum says that she is just teething now and she can’t stop blowing people kisses,” Rose pulled the letter out of her pocket, tracing the words with her fingers until she found the part she wanted: She is starting to recognise everyone in depth now and she is constantly blowing kisses at me and her dad. She looks so cute, smacking her lips with her tiny starfish hands.
Violet read the rest of the letter as well. She was mentioned there at the end. Rose’s mum seemed really nice, although Violet was still a bit worried about meeting all these new people.
She looked again at the bit that Rose was showing her- something caught her attention. She is constantly blowing kisses at me and her dad. In the rest of the letter she had just called Rose’s father ‘Dad’. Was Faith’s dad not Rose’s dad?
“Rose,” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her, “Is Hope your half sister?”
“No, why would you ask that?” she looked confused.
“No reason, I must have had you confused with somebody else,”
“Oh, ok then. Are you finished your feast yet?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Don’t want to fill up before dinner,” Violet looked longingly at an eighth piece of toast that was offered to her by an incredibly buoyant elf, jumping up and down with a plate of toast and honey balanced precariously on its tiny hand.
*
They were both sitting in the library after dinner, writing their essay’s on summoning charms. They had to write about what it was, how it was done, famous uses of it and the pros and cons of using it against not being lazy and going to get the thing yourself. Rose had already written two feet, and that was simply on the first three criteria. Violet was good at charms too, but she spent so much time researching and less time actually writing. It was different for her, being a muggleborn. There were still so many things to find out, and so many surprises. It still amazed her even that you could make something fly over to you from the other side of the room, whereas most of the class just accepted it as part of everyday life. Charms and potions were her best subjects, although she did very well in most things.
She remembered in second year, when Rose had decided that they had to make some potion that her mum had made in her second year. Violet had thought that she meant something from one of their textbooks. Oh no. It was from a textbook- a sixth year textbook that she had found in the Room of Requirement. A rather skanky looking book filled with cramped, scrawling handwriting and barely a clean page. It had taken Violet, Rose and Scorpius three months and in the end all they ended up with was a lumpy, mud-like liquid. That was until they tried it. Violet spent the next month and half never quiet sure whether she was talking to Rose or to Scorpius, or whether any other person she talked to actually was Rose or Scorpius. They hadn’t had so much fun as that since the first time they used ‘The Family’s Cloak’ as it was called. Violet had been jumped out at so many times by a hysterically laughing Scorpius that she had developed immunity to it. She could face his loud ‘Boo!’ with a completely straight face.
They had been the best friends. The second Golden Trio. What had happened?
Violet had been so caught up in worrying about Scorpius as the boy she was in love with that she had forgotten about Scorpius as her best friend. Scorpius as the boy she shared everything with and who was always there to look after her. She was in love with him, but he meant more to her than just that.
She stood up to search through the shelves one more time, checking to see if there was anything that she had missed. All of a sudden, as she parted Charms, Charms and More Charms and Charm Yourself to a Better Life, a pair of very familiar silver eyes appeared, accompanied by a very familiar ‘Boo’. He had surprised her, for the first time in several years and seemed very pleased with himself for doing so. She recalled her most recent thoughts and felt her face getting hot.
She went back to her seat and leant down over her essay, trying in vain to conceal her pink cheeks. Scorpius seemed to realise himself and he began to blush too.
“Hey, Rose,” he said awkwardly, “Hey, Vi,” even more awkwardly.
“Hi, Scorpius,” replied Rose, and she smiled at him kindly to show that there were no hard feelings. He looked tangibly relieved. “You know that you said we could plan and arrange your birthday party,”
“I did?”
“Yes,”
“Okay, then,” he didn’t put up much resistance; he knew there was no point. This was Rose.
“I was thinking that instead of having it in the Common Room or in The Room of Requirement we could have it somewhere else,”
“Where were you thinking?”
“Well, it might sound not all that great, but it is pretty huge and there is no way that the teachers will find us. It took them a thousand years to find it the first time,”
“Oh, Rose, not there,” chastised Violet, catching on quicker than Scorpius.
“Where?” asked Scorpius, “Where?”
“The Chamber of Secrets,” the girls answered simultaneously, although Rose sounded a lot perkier.
“What the hell?” he sounded astounded, although not entirely disapproving.
“Oh, come on, it’ll be great,” demanded Rose. She stood up, and made all her quills and parchment fly into her bag, as well as Violet’s into her bag.
“Where are you going?” asked Scorpius.
“We are going to The Chamber of Secrets,” she stated.
Ignoring their unwillingness to leave, she dragged them out of the library, grabbed them each a broom from her cousins’ trunks and lead them towards Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.
*
“Why exactly did we listen to you?” enquired Violet.
“Because we are stupid,” answered Scorpius.
They were in an enormous, dark cavern. There was slime dripping from the walls and every step they took made crunching noises as centuries’ worth of rodent bones broke under their feet. Violet was very conscious of the fact she was still wearing slippers.
“Just needs a touch of TLC,” said Rose, refusing to be put down. “We need to work together on this, okay? Every one picture this room being squeaky clean then, on three, we say Scourgify,”
They followed her instructions and suddenly the room was spotless. The slime, the bones and the hideous rotting smell had disappeared. The floor was a light grey marble, with diagonal rows of tiles decorated with snake heads. The walls and pillars were made from the same grey marble, which was highly polished and smooth under its previous layer of gunk. At the far end of the room the enormous statue of Salazar Slytherin looked rather less terrifying, no more scary than an ordinary statue of a long dead wizard.
“I think a change in décor is needed,” said Rose, grinning. She waved her wand and each of the carved snakes turned into the Hogwarts crest. She took on a look of deep concentration and pointed her wand at the statue. “Assomigliare Alternanto,” she called out. The huge marble figure went through a transformation, it seemed to split into three sections, then each of those sections lengthened and slimmed. Within thirty seconds the statue had transformed from an old, angry looking man with a long beard into three very familiar teenagers, smiling broadly and with their arms around each other.
“I’d say that is a definite improvement,” said Violet, a grin spreading across her face to match Rose’s.
“I’m not so sure, I mean that boy is devastatingly good looking but those two other beasts are hideous,” commented Scorpius, a false sneer on his face. He yelped quietly as he was beaten half to death by two laughing read-heads.
“Oh my god, Scorpius,” said Rose, a look of shock on her face, “I can’t believe we forgot to tell you. You’ll never guess what we found out that day in Hogsmead,”
“That Violet really can eat 10 kg of chocolate at once and not feel sick?”
“No, so much better. We bumped into mine and James’ dads,” she made a face, “And it turns out that Violet’s great aunt is James’ grandmother and that her dad is his dad’s cousin. So we are all related how great is that? James even brought in a photo-album full of pictures of his granddad and grandma, who look remarkably like James and Violet. Isn’t that a coincidence? It’s quite sweet though, seeing as James always loved her like a cousin, you know, like a family member,”
As previously stated, subtlety wasn’t exactly Rose’s forte, but it had the desired effect; Scorpius look star-struck.
(A/N- You have no idea how long it took me to write this chapter, writers’ block is an evil thing. It’s just that I have so much planned for the future chapters it is hard not to go straight in. I want to write Christmas and the next summer right now,)
Write a Review A Violet in the Sunshine: Chapter 11: Plans
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