AMOR FATI . . . fred weasley

IX. LAST CHRISTMAS, I GAVE YOU MY HEART...

19th december

.·。.·゜✭·.·✫·゜·。..·。.·゜✭·.·✫·゜·。.

LOLA LEMONT IS FUCKING FED UP.

    Normally she does not swear in English, preferring to maintain the illusion that she is dignified and classy (obviously, only her friends know otherwise), but these are desperate times. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times... Yeah, blah blah blah.

    Christmas gives Lola a headache - or rather, it used to. Christmas at the Lemont mansion in crappy Caernarfon, with the dead linden groves encircling the house, trapping it like prey in a spiderweb, was closer to death than life. Christmas at the Lemont mansion was all, Yes ma'am, no ma'am, three bags full ma'am, to Aunt Bellatrix. Christmas at the Lemont mansion was, in short, a rather sorry affair.

    Christmas at Hogwarts is anything but. And it is all because of the friends that she never expected to make; friends who Lola expected to be terrified away by her lack of a Boggart, or her fighting fists and her terror tongue. Friends who, against all the odds, stayed.

    Friends who are all the Christmas presents Lola Linden Lemont could ever ask for, forever and infinity.

    One of these friends is currently lounging amongst the patchwork quilts and cuddly toys of her bed, auburn hair fanned ornamentally across the pillows, as Lola raids her wardrobe and critiques every item of clothing.

    'These dungarees need sewing, Attlee, they have far too many holes.' Lola takes Johannah's trademark pair of corduroy dungarees and surveys them, frowning.

    'OK!' Johannah says cheerily, barely glancing upwards from her copy of her festive potions recipebook, Have yourself a fiesta in a bottle! Of course she would be a festive fiend. Lola highly doubts that is a surprise to anybody in the universe.

    'Actually, holes in clothing are fucking trendy now,' Zalewski pipes up from Thomas' bed. They are both sprawled out underneath her sheets, him reading the Daily Prophet but casting envious glances at her copy of Witch Weekly.

    'Ach-y-fi, Zalewski, holes in clothes being trendy? That will never catch on!'

    (Ach-y-fi meaning, in Lolaland, That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen/heard/smelt! It is usually directed at Fred Weasley, surprise surprise.)

    Johannah smiles reassuringly over at Zalewski, and it is like the stars coming out after a long day away. 'Pyotr, my love, you would look lovely in anything, even a... um, a binbag! Don't listen to her.'

    Lola scoffs contempt and returns to the wardrobe to hide the smile fighting her face.

    She carries on amending Johannah's clothes, fixing holes and adding embellishments and changing their colours with swift swishes of her wand. Quite honestly, Lola is in her element with this - who would not want their clothes redesigned by her, the girl who has only worn black practically since she came from the womb, kicking and screaming with her hair mutating?

    There is only one item of clothing that she does not dare touch, and that is Johannah's dress from the Yule Ball.

    Lola remembers that night all too well. She had danced with Lee all night, in paradise, in every heaven, ignoring the daybreak that would eventually come and tear her from him, her eternal carousel of forevers and promises and hopes and dreams.