Chapter 4
Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 1990.
Soon as breakfast began, Jovvian started narrating the crazy dream he had just had, completely engaging Riley, who was laughing at the boy's really messed up imagination. But Lumini couldn't afford to do the same.
Being only the first week back to school, she was unproud to say she was already behind on a report for her next class. She couldn't decide whether to believe that her assignments would become more difficult as the years went by, or just to think that herbology classes would become her living hell during her second year.
And everything was even worse because she knew all of her classmates were so fascinated with the exciting new teacher, who allowed you to speak as loudly as you wanted to with your pot partner while teaching all sorts of wacky magic plants. Lumini thought that was rubbish.
It almost made her miss being at home.
…
Even though she was in a rush to finish her work, Lumini had to stop herself and curse her own thoughts. She did not miss her home, not even the holidays. As relaxed as she could have been, the boredom and loneliness she had felt were certainly not the best thing she had ever experience.
Her parents hadn't been happy at all with her newly formed friendships. And it was clear to her that Riley and Jovvian weren't exactly to blame for that, her mother made it clear with the look on her face when she denied having made girl friends. Because of course that her parents thought a little girl of her age needed to be with other little girls of her age. Lumini thought that was rubbish, too.
It wasn't as if the fact that they were boys was a problem in the way they interacted with each other. It wasn't as if the small group acted in some way that others of their age wouldn't. They even had founded complete liberty on talking about the people they fancied.
They all knew about Riley's fascination with that sixth-year brunette, about that interesting boy from a higher grade than theirs that Lumini liked, and all of them had made jokes about the glances Jovvian was giving that Hufflepuff girl. Lumini was sure she didn't need any girl friends, and as a matter of fact, her roommates weren't very friendly neither.
However, she had Riley to tell her if her uniform looked good, if she had something between her teeth, or if her clothes matched. She also had Jovvian, who had the most magical hands in all of Hogwarts when it came to styling and fixing hair, and she knew that for a fact because, at the end of the day, it had been Jovvian who helped her remove the gum that those twins had thrown into her hair as part of their prank. Not her roommates, not any girl she knew, just Riley and Jovvian.
But it simply seemed that nothing was enough to her parents, and that was the reason for the group not being able to meet during the vacations. Lumini couldn't recall ever having been more surprised of her own mind than during the holidays, when she founded herself missing the classes, the assignments, teachers, and even the annoying Weasleys.
Those damn twins.
In just their first year, the Weasleys had made her look like a fool with their storytelling, fall out of the boats, thrown gum at her hair, traded her wand for a wood-stick-like insect, bewitched her ties for them to be any color except her house's, and put fireworks in her room, and that was just among the highlights of all the things they had done. The only thing that comforted Lumini was knowing that she had returned each of those jokes.
Despite Jovvian's reproaches, she had cast spells on their brooms in flight lessons, made disasters in several of their potions, bewitched their shampoo bottles to change the color of their hair, cast tongue-twisting spells on the days of oral tests, bewitched their books so they wouldn't open, and accused them of pranks they hadn't even done so the teachers would take points from their house.
But Lumini had decided on the train there that this year would be it, that most probably the three of them had matured enough and that their second year at school would be calm and peaceful on both sides.
That's what she thought as she finally got ready to take a bite out of her food, giving up on the incomplete homework. But Merlin knows she regretted doing it, for as soon as her fork stabbed the egg on her plate, a disgusting smell began to take over the entire Slytherin table. Rotten egg smell.
The entire table began to cough and fan their faces, trying to remove the irritation from their eyes. Thanks to Jovvian's hand grabbing her arm and pulling her, Lumini was able to get away from close to the stinky food and, while she was trying to look for fresh air elsewhere, she caught the looks from another table. She knew that the Weasleys were staring directly at her, and she knew them very well.
It took her little to no time to connect the dots and find out who had caused all that. On the other hand, as hard as it was for her not to curse their names and make the entire Great Hall find out the guilters, she didn't need the teachers to find out. Because knowing how angry their little prank had made her and their backstory from last year, her owb guilt would be too obvious when she returned the joke. Lumini knew that all she had to do was wait for the perfect opportunity.
And she had tried waiting... for an entire day, but Riley had also hated having to take three showers to remove the odor and having to throw away his robes.
Although Jovvian was the smart one of the group, Riley was a genius for many things, one of them being herbology. He always knew beforehand the plants that Professor Sprout taught them, and just like that, he managed to shape them the perfect opportunity.
*
Usually Lumini hated Tuesdays, precisely because of her herbology lesson, but that day she was beyond excited about it. It wasn't as she didn't like them because of the plants and all the bugs in the greenhouse - although she really hated the damn plants and bugs in the greenhouse -, but what bothered her the most was the teacher.
Pomona Sprout, head of the house of the hard workers, fair play, and flowers and colors, thought that all students should be friends and get along with each other. Lumini thought that was rubbish, too.
Even more because everyone knew of the little war that existed between her and the twins, which caused that, completely on purpose, the teacher assigned her to work with one of them in every class. And though she was not as bothered as usually, the twin's glances were getting on her nerves.
"What the hell do you want?" She asked with the least friendly tone she found within herself, but still with her eyes on the soil they were working.
"Your hair…" he commented, frowning. "It looks different."
The girl couldn't stop herself from making an exaggerated and sarcastic expression of surprise, as if she had not noticed that detail.
"Why did you decide to cut it?" The redhead seemed willing to continue that pseudo conversation.
"Fuck you," was the only thing she answered, making them both go back to work in silence.
"Oh...!" The boy exclaimed after some seconds, before laughing. "The chewing gum, of course."
Lumini pressed her lips thin as she remembered how she was forced to cut her hair to remove the sweet. Although she knew perfectly well that she could have asked Madame Pomfrey or even the head of her house to cast it away, she did not low herself to asking for help to fix what those two had done.
For a moment, how she cried as Jovvian closed the scissors over her hair crossed her mind.
"Fuck you," she repeated, still annoyed by that event.
"Anyway, it used to be longer, even after you cut it off that time." The girl could only shrug, not wanting to start a conversation with him enough to tell him how she had discovered that that style was more comfortable for her. "It's weird ... no, I mean, I'm not talking about you being weird. It's just that not many girls have hair like that, you are different from them, you are like a boy... not that you look like a boy, I mean, it is as if you were a... balloon! I mean if you saw a balloon among a crowd you would still see it because it is something that stands out from the rest and it is kinda odd to see a balloon in any place and... I'm not quite sure of what I am saying."
"If I'm a balloon, you with your stupid red hair are the circus clown," the girl complained, not understanding half the nonsense that had come out of his mouth.
"I mean, clowns and balloons, we are matching, right?" He muttered, regretting all the words he had been saying and, probably, all the words he would keep on saying.
The conversation seemed to have sunk there as the two continued to work, still thinking about the odd previous exchange of words.
"I don't know why I compared you to a balloon, either," the redhead admitted, after a minute of silence.
And Lumini couldn't help but to let out a little chuckle, stepping away from the pot and covering her smile with her hands, unable to grant the Weasley having made her sincerely laugh. But the boy did notice and laughed with her while watching her close.
However, when the girl turned to hide her face, she noticed the eyes of the redhead's friends, staring at them as they whispered and laughed. She did not like that at all.
"WHAT THE H...?" A voice echoed over the greenhouse with words that Lumini would have never dared to say - even with how trashy her mouth already was.
All of the students' eyes went to the owner of the shouting, quickly giving disgusted reactions to the twin covered in pus from the plant in front of him. Lumini smiled when she saw Riley smile at her too and was quick to follow the instructions he had given when her own plant was rightly placed in the pot. A few drops from the bottle Jovvian had stolen from potions lesson in the fresh soil, and she got five seconds to get out of the way before the other twin ended in the same conditions his brother's, even though everyone was still watching the previous scene.
Lumini was sure that the smell of the plant's pus could compete with rotten eggs, and the laughter of the other students only encouraged her victorious smile.
The teacher quickly gave the students the rest of the free time while looking for something to calm the plants. And with that, Lumini took the opportunity to walk across the room and jump into Riley's arms, wrapping him in a hug.
"We should be partners in crime more often," she said, ensuring that the twins would hear.
The redheads only exchanged looks, convinced that last years war was still on.