Cherry Lips // s. black

-NOVEMBER. 3.-

It seemed the whole castle had the same idea as Ace.

Not to use Carmilla to put the tinsel and baubles up, but to deck the school with Christmas themed... everything.

Multiple students had a dare going around to see who could successfully put the most baubles on the whomping willow. There were also multiple people in the hospital wing. It was probably unrelated.

June bought a new gingerbread perfume in their last Hogsmeade visit, in which Carmilla slipped into that old record shop next to the florist and listened to music on the couch until she was dragged back out. The perfume stuck in Carmilla's nose from the first spray, though it could have been every other girl in the school was wearing it.

Hagrid began growing Christmas trees in his patch, which Charlie said would go in the great hall for the Christmas feast. Like every other meal wasn't a feast to start with.

Slughorn had also given out the invites for the Christmas ball, slips of paper with gold lining and long words June had to read aloud for her. Carmilla would have to find yet another dress to wear and a date to the dam thing.

Snow covered the grounds, making the treks to the finally repaired greenhouse even more difficult and squelching, but apparently the lake would freeze up and they would get to skate in the middle of winter as well. Maybe it would be worth the soggy socks and pink noses. Not that Carmilla's nose had anything to make it pink. 

The Ravenclaw quidditch team had also played against Slytherin. They lost by twenty points.

Carmilla was ashamed that she hadn't seen the snitch in time to secure their team the win in the end, but Ace had reassured her multiple times that it was early in the Quidditch season. The scores didn't matter that much, yet. She was scared for when they would. 

It had taken multiple hot chocolate runs from June to cheer the sulking girls up. 

Her grades had drastically improved. Surprise. She couldn't write much just yet, but she could read most of her textbooks now. And understand what she was reading. The teachers put her only just above passing marks, probably out of sympathy, unless the assignment was a diagram. Now that Carmilla actually thought about it, her drawings were probably the only thing keeping her in school.                                                                                                                                                                                   June had got into the habit of reading whichever book she was currently onto out loud, no matter what it was. Carmilla had quite enjoyed 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret,' but couldn't say the same for 'Jaws'. 

Ace sent a letter to her parents. She got one back. She was staying for Christmas.

Carmilla suspected it might be about those bedtime stories. 

"Are you going home for the holidays?" Charlie asked her quietly, looking up from his textbook. He grabbed a chocolate frog from the pile the two of them had put there for motivation.

Carmilla had decided she wasn't going to go back. Ace would be alone, and she wanted to explore the castle and visit the record store in Hogsmeade every day and have funny messing with her white shirts she was desperate to alter.

She still felt a bit of guilt for leaving her sisters, but she knew they'd want her to bring back cherry shampoo and chocolate frogs and more tales of magic the next time holidays came around. Most of the girls weren't related in anyway, but the nuns called themselves sisters as well, so it became a habit for the young girls too. They were her sisters. She'd grown up pulling their hair and splitting bread rolls.