Marooned - Fred Weasley

Chapter 28: The Yule Ball

The Yule Ball was right around the corner, which meant so was Sarah's birthday. She had gotten different kinds of sweets from everyone else, which they all shared as they talked and laughed. She spent the last week in the Restricted Section, reading and listening to music, because that was the most secluded place and the less likely for anyone, no one in particular, to enter.

She felt a bit mad, maybe hurt, she didn't know exactly, but she knew that she wanted to stay away for a while. Tonight was the first time she found herself in the same room for longer than five minutes with Fred.

He missed her, found himself quite downcast when she wasn't around, although George would describe him as a 'painfully annoying git' and he wouldn't be wrong. And their evening ended too quickly, he wanted to stay with her, he wanted to talk to her, say...something. But the girls quickly got up, waved at them and giggled all the way up.

The girls went to bed not long after going up, because they knew they would need to run around the dorms all day tomorrow and still look fresh in the evening.

As soon as they got up, they started buzzing around. Curlers in her hair, Sarah helped her friends and the girls a few years younger, put off crisis after crisis. Sarah helped Harry iron his robes, and set his tie, taught him how to do it himself, too, and he quickly ran back up to his dorm.

When it finally settled down, she started doing Selena's make-up.

"Has anyone seen the golden highlighter?" asked Angelina.

"Here, Angie," Sarah threw the recipient at her and she caught it.

"Great catch! You could be on the Quidditch team," she exclaimed, and Angelina flexed and Sarah returned to the eye-shadow palette she was holding and putting it on Selena's eyes-lids.

"All done," she said, looking at her masterpiece. Selena looked into the mirror and gasped at her perfect smokey eye "I love it! Thank you!"

Sarah bowed and sat down to let Selena do hers. She asked Selena to draw a cat-eye and set a glitter eye-shadow.

Afterwards, she undoes her hair from the curlers. The brown ample waves fall down her back and she admires them a bit before getting out her dress. It was simply splendid. It was a dark shade of purple, and made of satin, hugging her waist and then falling down, slightly wider than her hips, until it reached the ground when she was barefoot, but her heels were visible when she wore them. It also has puffy long sleeves, hiding both her scars, emerging from the sides of the sweetheart neckline.

She put it on, twirled around while the girls cheered and showed them its greatest asset, "It has pockets!" she gushed.

"It's always the best when they do," commented Alicia and they all nodded.

"I absolutely love your dresses," she added, gesturing to the girls and they all twirled around too, then bowed.

Selena's was knee-length and cerulean blue. It matched her eyes. Angelina's dress was black, made of velvet. It was beautiful and sophisticated.

"My mum picked it out," said Angelina, Sarah glanced at herself in the mirror, thinking of her mum, her hand going over her arm. She put on her medallion and the ring, brushing over the red stones. They were lovely, she always loved them, they were always a way for her to self-soothe in situations, like her Mum was right there. When she looked up in the mirror again, she saw her eyes and pictured her father smiling.

She thought how she could have talked to her mum about what she was feeling, about this ball, about Fred, about Harry and the tournament, how she would have helped her decide on the pair of shoes. Remus was surprisingly insightful on that, though she still wondered. Would she have had to tell her father, "He's just a friend" when she told him about Alexander being her date for the ball. They would have demanded photographs, and she thought of Remus doing so, grateful he took on this double role as her parent all these years.