Shiver With a Friend
“Hey, Green,” Bellatrix said suddenly, as if it was more of an abrupt afterthought than something she’d been planning since they’d gotten back from break.
“Hm?” Green hummed, mostly focused on their Potion (Bellatrix had lost patience about ten minutes ago- it was mostly just sitting there and watching it simmer, and she hated that part).
“Are you doing anything tonight?” she asked, far less confidently than she actually felt.
Thankfully, this actually tore Green’s attention away from her work. “Oh. I don’t think so, no. Except for homework, of course.”
“Bloody hell, you and your homework,” she huffed. At Green’s vaguely furious look, she amended, “I’m joking. Mostly.” She was not- she’d struggled to come up with any hobbies that Green might have besides ‘doing homework’, which was frustrating primarily because she’d actually attempted to get her something for Christmas and had come up empty.
Just- she couldn’t get her, like, parchment, or something. That wasn’t exactly romantic. And she didn’t want to get her another book, because then she would actually read it, and then she would be even busier than she was already.
“Anyway, we should hang out. It’s a full moon, there’ll be moon flowers blooming in the Forbidden Forest tonight,” she coaxed. Green couldn’t say no to this, because moon flowers were a Potion ingredient, which meant they were sort of academic, right?
“Oh! I’m not sure we should be breaking curfew….”
“Pft, we’ll be fine. I sneak out all the time, and I’ve never been caught,” she bragged. She’d had lots of experience sneaking around the family manor as a child, and compared to that, Hogwarts was nothing. The teachers didn’t even care that much about tracking down the students- they were just waiting for their shifts to be over.
“Can’t we just meet in the library?”
No, they could not just-
She took a deep breath, and compromised. “How about we meet there first, and then we can go out to the forest? C’mon, it’ll be fun, maybe we’ll get to fight a werewolf.”
Or an Acromantula- she’d stumbled across a colony of them rather unprepared the last time she’d been in the forest, and while she hadn’t decided to engage them then, she’d been thinking about it since.
“I’ll think about it,” Green said dubiously, which meant she probably wouldn’t be down to fight any Acromantula. “But I will meet you in the library. After dinner?”
“Sounds-”
She was cut off by an aggressive sizzling sound, and Green exclaiming, “Ohh, no-” right before their Potion exploded.
Green looked incredibly distressed as Slughorn gave them a lecture on lab safety, but Bellatrix saw this as a positive. Exploding were much more interesting than non-exploding ones, and besides, she had distracted Green enough to make her forget about her classwork.
That definitely boded well.
—--------------------------------
As per usual for her meetings with Green, she left the Great Hall a little earlier than she normally might so she could get to the library while the other girl was still distracted by her friends. She supposed she had an advantage there- she didn’t have any friends except for possibly Rodolphus, her much younger sister, and hopefully Emma Green. The former two could live without her for twenty minutes; the latter, she was a little more concerned with keeping up appearances with.
After all, she didn’t care if Rodolphus decided he hated her, and Cissy was her sister (well- Andy was her sister too, but Cissy was extremely unlikely to decide she was in love with some mudblood and run off on them), but Emma Green was a more precarious situation. She couldn’t forget that the other girl had hated her at the beginning of the year; she needed to keep up her nice facade to keep her hooked, and that meant leaving unreasonably early for a rendezvous with her, as embarrassing as that was.
(For the last few years, Bella had always made a point of showing up to ‘dates’- i.e., whenever she happened to like a girl enough to schedule a hookup in advance instead of just grabbing her up at a party- at least ten minutes late, just to make the girl wait. She found it helped improve the whole evening).
Emma Green joined her in their usual spot in the library at exactly 7 o’clock, right when she’d expected her to. Apparently, showing up early or late to make whatever type of impression one wanted to make did not occur to Green, or at least didn’t matter to her as much as punctuality did.
“Hey. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” she worried, hanging her bag off the side of the chair next to her, causing it to tip a little. Bloody hell, what was in that thing?
“Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” she assured her. “How was your dinner?”
“Fine,” she shrugged. “I mean- same as usual.”
“Cool,” she nodded, not sure what else to say. Honestly, it was her fault for picking to talk about this- seriously? How was dinner? What was wrong with her?
The conversation carried on in much the same way for another hour- vague, shallow things, switching rapidly from topic to topic once each one died out after the first few sentences. Normally, Bellatrix would be just fine with this- why would she care about the deep stuff when she was just looking for a fuck buddy? But Green clearly cared about forging connections, and the ‘deep stuff’, so she’d figured she would carry that part of the conversation. She almost seemed reluctant, however, and Bellatrix found out why when she asked:
“So I think I heard you were homeschooled? What was that like? I can’t imagine having to be cooped up at home and having to, like, pay attention to classes and stuff.”
She couldn’t even picture who would’ve taught her- her parents wouldn’t have entrusted her education to the house elves (child rearing had been an acceptable job, of course, but there was only so far house elves could take you), but they also certainly wouldn’t have taken it on themselves. Her mother couldn’t stand to be in a room with her for more than about ten minutes, nevermind while she was trying to teach her something (her etiquette lessons as a child came to mind- mother had left most of them near tears with frustration), and her father could only stand to see her when she was in trouble.
She supposed Emma Green may have had bearable parents, in addition to having not been a little hellion as a child, so homeschooling might not have been as bad as she was picturing.
But Green closed up the moment she asked, and Bellatrix understood immediately what the issue was. Bellatrix still didn’t know all of the details of Green’s past, even though she sorely wanted to. Even though she had asked. That was probably why the other girl was so reluctant to open up the conversation- that might make her let something slip, giving Bellatrix more information. Unfortunately for her, Bellatrix had a vested interest in ‘more information’, so Green was going to have to break eventually.
Part of the problem was that they were still sitting in this stuffy library, where they could only talk in very hushed voices. Personally, Bellatrix would have been fine with a slightly higher volume- that is, she thought it was ridiculous that they were near-whispering- but Green was a stickler for the rules, apparently, especially in the library.
Nerd.
“You wanna head outside? Library’s gonna close soon anyway, but I really do want to keep talking.” Because Green wanted her to be interested in her and her life, right? That meant talking.
For seemingly the first time that evening, something went her way. Even though the hesitation was written clearly on her face, Green said, “Alright. Just for a little bit, though, and- well, it is a full moon, the Forbidden Forest might be a little risky….”
Alright, she was willing to work with that. “How about we go to the Quidditch pitch instead? Trust me, no one’ll be down there.” She would know because she was the only person insane enough to practice Quidditch at ten or later, far after the sun had gone down. But it was her favorite place to go when she couldn’t sleep (which was often), though if asked of course she would say it was the forest.
“Yeah, we can do that,” Green nodded.
Yes.
As predicted, the pitch was abandoned by the time they got there (Green had insisted on them both dropping their things off and meeting back in the Entrance Hall), though the pitch was still illuminated by the light of the full moon.
“Ooh, I’ve never seen the Quidditch Pitch at night. It’s so pretty,” Green gushed, looking up at the stands. “It looks so different from down here.”
“Hey, you’ve been here at night before,” she said before she could really think about it. “I saw you here at, like, three in the morning once.”
Green turned to her in surprise. “Wait, what?”
Ah, crap. “You were kind of staring into space. It’s not like I followed you there, or anything, I was just down there to practice. Blow off some steam.”
“Right,” she said, furrowing her brows. “Didn’t- that was at the beginning of the year, right? Why didn’t you hex me?”
“I don’t know. You looked too miserable to hex,” she said, which was definitely going to endear her to Green. It wasn’t even that far from the truth- she hadn’t been able to put a finger on what had made her leave the other girl alone that night, but hey, that could’ve been one of the reasons. Theoretically.
“Wow, thanks,” she muttered.
“Not- oh, you know what I mean,” she huffed as Green started laughing at her. “You’re very funny, you know that?”
“Not something I’ve been called often, but sure,” she laughed. “Anyway, I wasn’t really paying attention to the view that night. And the moon wasn’t out. It’s very peaceful.” Then she frowned, pulling her robes tighter around her. “Bit cold, though. Wish I’d brought a jacket.”
She scoffed in disbelief. “Didn’t you go back to your dorm? Why didn’t you grab one?”
“I didn’t think I’d need it! It wasn’t too cold today.”
Well, Bellatrix wasn’t complaining- less layers was always a good thing. And it wasn’t like she was wearing a jacket, either, but in her defense, she didn’t tend to get cold.
Still, when a particularly cool wind ripped across both of them, they both shivered. “Had you ever seen a match before you came to Hogwarts?”
“No,” she said hesitantly. “But even then, I could tell you were good.”
“Well, I am the best Chaser in the school,” she bragged. It wasn’t even bragging, not really- she was the best Chaser in the school. Partly because she came out and practiced in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep, but partly because she was just good at Quidditch.
Green seemed to have something on the tip of her tongue- Bellatrix let her take her time until she finally said, “A few of my old friends- before I came here- played Quidditch. I thought coming down to the Pitch would- I don’t know, remind me of them? Might be a source of comfort? But I think it just made me sadder.”
She nodded, surprised at the sudden honesty. “Were they any good?”
“Oh, yes. Well- one of them was really good. The other two were- they were good, too. But he was a brilliant flier. Almost better than you.”
“Maybe I’ll be able to test that someday. You’re not going to tell me where I can track him down, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” she huffed, but it almost sounded like a laugh.
“I didn’t think so.” As it was, she had no idea what to do with that information- obviously, she’d assumed that Green had had some prior experience with magic before showing up for her seventh year at Hogwarts, because there was no way she hadn’t, but she was yet to find out where she’d gotten that experience.
She and Green shared a look, and a chill went down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. This was where she would normally kiss her. If she were any other girl, she would. If it were any other time.
But this didn’t feel quite right- she’d never been worried about that before. So she didn’t move. She didn’t do anything at all.
She went to bed that night feeling lighter than she had in- a while. It was a weird feeling; but she didn’t think she minded too much.
She hoped that, whatever Emma Green was feeling right now, she didn’t mind it either.