"How could my love for her be wrong? Sure, it was odd to some people, but it was love just the same."
Since your first day at Hogwarts, there have been rumors about that strange Lovegood girl who wears mismatched clothes and talks about creatures th...
Rory and I never discussed the love potion again, or anything else that was said backstage for that matter. We forgot all about it as weeks passed, and on the first Friday of April there was to be a party in the Gryffindor common room for the twins' 17th birthday; right before Easter break began. I'd never been to a real party before, and neither had Luna, Ced, or Cora. Rory's gone to a few muggle "house parties" over the summer holiday, and he said there was loud music and bright lights and people dancing everywhere. So naturally I said yes when I was invited, and when the night finally came I dressed myself in the outfit that I'd picked out the day before; a lace-trimmed tank top, a pair of blue jeans and my white trainers.
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I was tying my hair back into a ponytail when I hear Luna let herself in my room. I looked out the bathroom door to see that she was wearing the strawberry-patterned dress from our day in Hogsmeade and her red Chuck Taylors, with her hair french-braided down the back.
"Where'd you get that dress?" I tease as I walk over to the doorway where she's standing, sticking my wand in my back pocket.
"Can't remember," she giggles. I smile back at her as we begin the long walk over to the Gryffindor common room, where we're met by the muffled sounds of music and people laughing and talking. The lady in the painting talks.
"Password?" she asked, and I looked to Luna.
"Agh, what did they say it was? Cheerful tangerine?" she says, looking up at the painting. The lady smiles and the painting swings off the wall, and suddenly Luna and I are swept into the crowd. For a few terrifying seconds I get separated from her, pinned between people's bodies and unsure of where I was. I feel someone grab my hand and pull me sideways, and when I stumbled out of the crowd I get a fresh grip on Luna's hand and smile. We pass a table full of food and drinks to find Rory and the twins standing by one of the windows. The moonlight lit them up from behind so that it looked as if they were glowing around the edges, and they smiled at Luna and I. George had gotten his stitches out and he no longer wore the bandages, but there was a long pink scar that stretched from the corner of his eye to his hairline. Most of the time it was hidden behind his floppy red hair, so we were all back to referring to them both as Fred-and-George.
"Happy birthday," I shouted over the blasting music, hugging them. Luna did the same, and then looked around the noisy room with a confused expression.
"Is Cora here? And where's Ced?" she asked.
"They're getting the cookies they made," Rory replied. As if on cue, Cora and Cedric came through the common room door, arms stacked with plastic tubs full of chocolate chip cookies. The faces of the people who were standing around the table lit up, and a throng of kids dove into the box before they were even set on the table. Ced held his own cookie in his teeth while he took another box out of Cora's arms and set it up on the table. Cora took a bunch of cookies in her hands and made her way over to us to hand us all our own cookies.
