Cherry Lips // s. black

-FEBUARY. 3.-

"How do you spell Meadows?"

"M-E-A-D-O-W-S," Remus said, from his bed on the other side of the dorm, where he was drowning in piles of knitted patchwork blankets of all different colours. He sipped his tea. It was a white tea, kind of minty, and Carmilla's mug of it was already finished.

Peter looked up from the giant square of old parchment. 

He was leaning it against a big old painting of some lady laying in a lake of flowers, wearing what was probably a wedding dress. "I know meadows, but is the last name Meadows spelt the same?"

The scissors in Carmilla's hands slid through the fabric quickly and cleanly, cutting straight down the middle of the front. The elastic at the very edges frayed, but that was something she was willing to live with. There was a big pot of cactus's on Peter's bedside table. James's glasses were hanging off one branch of the prickly plant.

She put the scissors back down onto Peter's pillow and shook the fabric clippings off her long sleeved white shirt. "I think they're the same. Who is it?"

"Dorcas," Peter said, his voice strained as he leant over the entire painting to reach his ink pot. She still didn't understand why people didn't just use pens or pencils for writing. "You should know her, she's a Ravenclaw too."

Carmilla looked to Remus. He was reading Dracula again, which meant either James had given up on trying to prove she was a vampire, or he'd just given up on reading itself. "Remy, do people think that we're all interchangeable?"

"Yes," he said immediately, and kept reading.

She huffed. Just because the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs weren't as loud and annoying as the Gryffindors who knocked into everyone in the hallways and threw things over students heads, or as villian-ified and prideful as the Slytherins who started debates in classes that didn't need debates and wore too much perfume, didn't mean they weren't there.

The next shirt was just as easy to cut up, since she needed something simpler, so she just snipped off the sleeves and tucked in the stringy edges.

Remus closed his book, the hardcover snapping shut being the loudest noise made in the messy dorm over the last few hours. Because James and Sirius were in a detention and physically could not be in the space, of course. "Peter?"

"Mmp?" Peter mumbled, through the quill he was holding in his mouth so he could stretch the paper out and let it dry. Carmilla frowned. She'd noticed that boys didn't have a very well functioning thought process. Maybe it was just part of their biology.

"Why are you writing the names of everyone in the school?" he asked, like it had just occurred to him that they were practicing to be serial killers.

Carmilla pulled her lipstick from the pocket of the brown suede jacket she'd borrowed from June, and put more onto her lips, spreading the last white shirt out over Peter's blankets. He had the squishiest mattress. She'd tested them all before settling down for the day to do anything but her homework.

"...So we can see where they all are?" Peter scoffed, flipping the coffee stained map over to add more names. She didn't bother to correct him, and Remus went back to his book after a strong side eye.

A bird flew past one of the many arched windows, squawking like a maniac. She picked up her mug from the wobbling tower of bits and bobs on the bedside table, before remembering it was empty. She picked up her shirt instead, realising she needed a hard surface, and slid a book underneath it. It was on some sort of spiny black horse with wings. Carmilla flattened out the fabric and pressed her lips to it.