1: Trouble - Fred Weasley

11. venus

her weapons were her crystal eyes, making every man mad

black as the dark night she was, got what no one else had

-

When Imogen told Mo she'd finally sent off her application, Mo's excitement was palpable.

"So you're definitely coming to the lakeside party tonight then?" she asked, her eyes lighting up.

"Why is there a lake party? It's december-"

"Oh, who cares, Imogen? It's going to be the best party of the year, sixth and seventh years only, and the durmstrang and beauxbatons students, and I'm forcing you to come."

Once she'd thought about it, Imogen supposed a party was probably exactly what she needed - a chance to let her hair down after the load of stress she'd had hanging over her for months. And besides, she had a bottle firewhiskey in her dorm just dying to be drank.

As it turned out, when Mo invited her to this party, it was not just Mo who she'd be going with. Having been instructed to come to the common room for pre-drinks, she came down the stairs to find it cleared out for a big group of sixth and seventh year students, who currently were slamming shots in some kind of drinking game as music blared out of the record player. Amongst these students were Victor and all of his friends, and Adrian, who Imogen had sort of been avoiding. The second she arrived downstairs, he arrived at her side with shots. Mo winked at her over Victor's shoulder, and Imogen got the feeling this had all been part of her plan. Still, she accepted the alcohol.

All the shots made for a very tipsy Imogen, as she discovered when the group emerged outside and the cold air hit her face. They descended on the party as a group, fashionably late and with plenty of booze. It was something that made Imogen love being in Slytherin, arriving in the group like that. They were greeted by some with smiles and hugs, and others with intimidated glances and murmurs. But who cared, when you were surrounded by your well dressed, effortlessly cool fellows?

Absorbing a few Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws into the group, they engaged in some drunken chatter, and unfortunately Imogen ended up locked in conversation with Adrian. Imogen had found that the only thing worse than listening to a boy drone on about himself was listening to him drone on about himself drunk.

"So you know a snitch is small, and a quaffle is big, and a bludger is pointless really, because remember I said if you didn't let the bludgers out of the case you could still have a game? Imogen?"

Imogen hadn't realised she was expected to participate in this conversation, which had consisted of Adrian explaining quidditch to her for ten minutes. "Oh, yeah, yeah I remember."

"Right! So the bludgers basically don't even matter. So you could say that the snitch is the most important ball which, in theory makes the seeker the most important player. Which I just so happen to be, but that's not why I say it's the most important position..."

Merlin, Imogen needed to get out of this. She tried to make eye contact with Mo but she was twirling her hair at Victor already and was completely unreachable through the language of help-me-eyes. Imogen was drunk, and wanted to be having fun, not nodding and smiling.

At Adrian's next pause, she cut in. "Hey, I said I'd meet my friend Hetty actually. I'll just go find her and I'll come back, okay?"