Thecolouryes @ TDA
Starring:
Troian Bellisario as Bollie, the wretchedly misunderstood heroine.
Gaspard Ulliel as James, the bi-polar baby daddy.
Taylor Swift as Scarlett, the good-girl-gone-insane ex.
Rosie Tupper as Cherry, the girl who is everybody’s scapegoat.
Confession four - I would genuinely love to shoot her out of a cannon.
I had just made the decision to spend the rest of my life in bed when Scarlett MacMillan came racing into my dorm, looking like she was out for blood. I’m serious. Her nostrils were flared, her face was contorted, her hair was whipping about in a spontaneous fury-induced wind (okay, I joke. But she did look, like, REALLY angry).
Now here, I’ll admit - I panicked. I’ve never been much of a fighter, and as unwanted as it was, I really didn’t want to hurt the child I was at this stage sort of maybe probably quite sure I was growing in my lady parts. And I had all the facts - I had slept with James Potter, his girlfriend knew he had slept with someone, and now she came storming in to my room ready to kill - I assumed this was the end for me, so before she could spot me I ever so casually rolled off the edge of my bed, hoping I would land on the soft pile of clothes littering the floor.
I didn’t.
Instead I landed with a loud thud on the hard wooden floorboards, and couldn’t stop myself from swearing loudly as I gingerly tested my elbows to see if they were broken. They weren’t, in case you were wondering. But I’m pretty sure all my bones were purple for weeks afterwards.
Weirdly, though, Scarlett didn’t seem to notice this. Thanking my guardian angel, who seemed to be back from her extremely long holiday, I crawled under my bed and watched the scene quietly from there.
Because it appeared I had jumped to conclusions. Scarlett didn’t appear to be looking for me at all. Instead she stormed over to Cherry Hastings’ bed and ripped the curtains open viciously. Cherry was still asleep, but Scarlett literally grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her awake.
It was terrifying. And a little bit awesome. Mostly just because nothing very exciting ever happens to Ravenclaws.
Anyway, Cherry woke up groggily, groaning and clutching her head. She looked pretty green, and she’d been at the party the night before so I assumed she felt like a hippogriff had crapped in her skull as a result of the rather dubious alcoholic mixtures generally served at Hogwarts parties. But Scarlett didn’t give her much time to be hungover. As soon as Cherry was sitting up unsupported, Scarlett slapped her in the face. Cherry’s head snapped to the side and that totally fake sounding crack noise echoed around the small room. We all gaped. Cherry’s mouth dropped open, and she was frozen for a few seconds before she put a hand to her cheek and turned back to face the seething Scarlett.
Who proceeded to then slap the other side of her face.
Dah.
“You skank!” Scarlett screamed, as Cherry clutched her face and all the other girls in the room gaped though the gaps in their curtains.
“What?!” Cherry finally managed to exclaim. I praised her for voicing exactly what I was thinking. Cherry was no angel, but she wasn’t mean, and as far as I knew she’d never done anything to Scarlett - and thanks to Ruth I was generally quite up to date on the latest gossip.
“James told me what you did, so don’t try and play dumb!” Scarlett thundered. “Seducing my boyfriend, when you knew we were still together - getting him drunk! It’s despicable. I hope you rot in hell, you slutty skanky monster!”
And then Scarlett turned on her (£1000, high) heel and stormed out of the room just as angrily as she’d entered.
I wanted to cry.
But Cherry was already taking care of that, so I conjured up an ice pack and carried it over to her. We weren’t exactly best friends, but she’d just taken two slaps for me, even if she didn’t know it, so I figured now might be a good time to buddy up to her. I felt rotten.
And also nauseous. But that kind of went without saying those days.
“T-t-thanks,” Cherry managed to force out between sobs. Cherry was one of those people who really need to be liked. I could imagine how upsetting it must have been to have someone that angry at her. Plus Scarlett slaps pretty hard.
“She’s such a bitch,” I blurted out. It probably wasn’t much consolation, but it was the first thing I thought of and it just sort of fell out. Cherry made an agreeing sort of noise, though, so I assumed it was okay.
“I d-didn’t even do it,” Cherry exclaimed miserably to me and the few other girls who were mostly groaning and going back to bed.
“I know,” I said, rubbing her shoulder miserably. She continued to cry for a bit longer, which soon got quite awkward, but I didn’t really feel like I could abandon her.
After a while, everyone else was asleep again, and Cherry was wiping her eyes with one of the many tissues I had offered her. She sighed deeply, and then looked at me kind of sheepishly.
“Thanks,” she said feebly. She didn’t elaborate so I just shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her why I’d done it, so I figured I’d just let her believe I was a nice person for a while.
“Yeah,” was my awkward reply. There were a few moments of silence as Cherry blew her nose.
“I’m so hungry,” she admitted. “But there’s no way I can go to breakfast. What if she’s there?”
I hesitated for a moment, but decided I probably owed it to her to help with this one.
“Get dressed,” I ordered. “I’ll take you to the kitchens. The house elves’ll let us eat in there.”
She seemed happy when I said that, and babbled on for a bit about how she’d never been to the kitchens or seen a house elf, before switching to more depressing topics. She was quite a talker, which was probably a good thing, because it distracted me from everything in my head.
From what I could tell she was mostly recounting for me every moment she had ever spent in the company of Scarlett MacMillan. It was a longer list than I would have expected; they were old family friends, they’d ridden the train together in their first year, had lunch a few times, but then when Cherry went on a date with James early in fourth year, Scarlett went insane and ‘stole’ him. Of course, Cherry didn’t even like James, but Scarlett did, so they remained on friendly terms even after that… but Scarlett never trusted her around James. So that explained why she’d been so quick to believe Cherry had slept with him.
I nodded sympathetically through most of it. But as we neared the ground floor, I suddenly found it extremely difficult to concentrate on what she was saying as I had just spotted my current least-favourite person stood in the entrance hall with his friends. I don’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones, the lack of sleep, the fact that I’d spent most of my morning comforting a girl who’d been attacked for nothing because of him, or just my general seething rage at the world, but I felt anger bubbling up inside me and I knew if I was going to explode, I wanted it to be on him.
“Hang on a sec,” I said to Cherry. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t give her much time to protest, as I quickly stomped away, glaring at James as I made a beeline for him.
“We have to talk,” I announced, quickly grabbing him by the arm and dragging him away from his friends before he had a chance to argue.
“Jeez, Bollie, what the hell?” he exclaimed when we came to a stop a few meters away.
“Why the hell did you tell Scarlett you slept with Cherry?” I hissed. He looked shocked.
“I… well, she guessed!” he defended lamely. “She found out it was somebody from Ravenclaw, assumed it was Cherry, and when I didn’t deny it I guess she just… and how the hell do you know about that anyway?”
“Scarlett just came into our dorm and yelled at Cherry, then slapped her across the face and stormed out. Cherry‘s been crying ever since. She’s, like, majorly cut up about it.”
He looked torn for a second.
“Look, Merlin, I’m sorry. I’ll apologise to Cherry if that’s what you want, but to be honest I’m still a bit confused. I thought you’d be kind of glad someone else was taking the heat.”
My jaw dropped. A mixture of pregnancy hormones and indignation were making it extremely hard to resist punching him.
“What the hell do you take me for? Of course I don’t want Scarlett to find out it was me but I don’t want somebody else to suffer for my mistake!”
“What, so now it was a mistake?”
He inexplicable looked quite put out. I gaped at him for a second.
“Yes!” I hissed rather forcefully. “We were drunk, and we barely know each other, and don’t go acting all rejected because from what I hear you’ve been bitching about me like I was some sort of cheap slut you couldn’t wait to be done with.”
That shut him up.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to say, I’m sorry about all the things I said to Scarlett about you,” he muttered, averting his eyes. “I just panicked. I’ve been with her forever, I couldn’t believe I might lose her, so I said whatever I could to make her stay. I don’t believe any of it, of course I don’t. And I don’t regret it either, what happened I mean. I know I should, and I don’t know why I feel this way, and you’re right, we really don’t know each other that well, but I can’t help it. I feel like we have this weird connection, y'know - and I wouldn’t change what happened.”
He gave me the most adorable look, big brown eyes fixed straight on me and peeking through his ridiculously thick eyelashes, and I had this horrible urge to melt into a puddle on the floor. Except I was still pissed, and I didn’t want him to be saying all these adorable things, so I dregged up that list of everything he had done to me in my mind and focused all the negative energy on sounding as pissed as I possibly could.
“Well I do regret it,” I snapped, taking a step away from him. “It was nothing but a huge mistake that I made for all the wrong reasons, and it’s been absolutely more trouble than it was worth. Now you’ve got your little girlfriend, so I’m going to go and take care of the girl she just beat up, and I’d appreciate it if you’d never speak to me again.”
And with that I gave him a short dose of my extra-vicious glare, which I reserved only for very special occasions, before turning on my heel and stomping angrily back over to Cherry.
I then realised that the exchange might have been a little less dignified than I’d imagined, seeing as I was only wearing my old unicorn patterned pyjama bottoms and a baggy grey T-shirt with a hole in the front.
Seriously. This is my life.
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