Midnight Rain - L.B.

F I F T E E N

We share the last line
Then we drink the wall
'Til we wanna talk

Hogwarts Quidditch Field
September 26th, 1997
5:22 pm | Tatum Vaughneton

"We didn't do anything."

"M'kay." Pansy shrugged, a small smirk forming on her face, the barely noticeable dimples showing in her cheeks. "Never said you did."

I brought the cigarette from between my fingers to my lips, taking a deep inhale of the smoke.

I watched the grey clouds float around me as I exhaled, looking over at Pansy as we sat just the two of us in the stands of the Quidditch field. "You implied it, though."

"Sure did." She smiled to herself, taking a swig of the fire whiskey bottle in her hand. "What did happen?"

"Literally nothing. We just talked." I shook my head, picking at a tear in the fabric of the stands, my fingers smoothing over the scattered string as if I could fix it back easily. "Lots of talking."

"That's weird." She mumbled, tucking a stray strand of her hair- that she'd taken the time to style to perfection and pull back into a braid earlier in the morning- behind her ear. "And highly suspicious. Daphne is still being a stupid fuck about it. If I didn't know she was so caught up with Ana, I'd think she was more in it with him."

"As if." I leaned my chin on my palm, slouching forward so my elbow was on my knee, wincing in slight discomfort as I discovered a random bruise on my lower thigh. "But why? What'd she say now?"

"Just a bunch of bullshit about how you guys shouldn't be together and he's a shitface. But you know what, fuck everyone else's opinions. If he is what you want, go for it." She raised the bottle for emphasis, making a small mess with the still nearly full alcohol. "And he's changed since he was a dickhead in fourth year! Fourteen is hardly a year to judge someone entirely off of."

"Yeah!" I egged her on, laughing at her aggressive encouragement and taking in a bit more of the smoke.

"So go forth and prosper! Date him! Fuck him! Marry him! Have his babies! Not in that order, but you get the idea." She scrunched her nose with a smile, patting my back enthusiastically.

She kept going, adding more and more to the list of increasingly odd things for me to do until I was practically choking on air.

My fingers dug into my thighs, my stomach hurting from the laughter over the topic that wasn't even that funny, rasping in breaths only making the two of us laugh harder until we were wheezing and gasping for oxygen.

Pansy made it too easy to laugh like that. It was always a clutch your stomach while your eyes bead with tears of laughter when she was around, even if nothing was ever that funny.

She grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to her as we tried to regain our composure, my hand holding out the cigarette far from us so we didn't accidentally burn ourselves.

The fire whiskey sloshed around in the bottle she was previously downing, her fingers clutching tighter to not drop it, her body hunched over mine.

"Are you shit-heads high?"

"Aww, Theo!" Pansy extended an arm for him to sit beside her, her other arm still resting on my back before I finally regained myself, wiped under my eyes, and sat back up. "Not this time, but we're always down to be."

"I bloody know you are, Pans." Theodore plopped into the seat beside her, resting his legs out over the edge in front of him.

I set the cigarette out beside me and passed him my lighter as he took a pack from his pocket. "What are you doing out here? I thought the Astronomy Tower was you boys's place."