true loves poison • james potter

12

Flashback - Fifth Year

"A sweater? To a party?"

"The invitation said casual."

"Which means dress cute."

Lorelei gave a playful glare, "I am dressed cute."

"Stop hounding her Liz." Melissa said from the bathroom, "Clearly she's doing something right. Future Mrs. Linwood."

Fighting a smile, Lorelei retorted, "Marriage feels a bit extreme, Melissa."

Liz grabbed the vase of flowers off Lorelei's nightstand, "If he keeps delivering flowers, I'll propose for you."

Chuckling Lorelei picked at her nails, "I don't know, we haven't even been dating that long."

"You're only a few months shy of a year, and with this war going on it might be a good idea not to wait too long." Liz wiggled her brows dramatically.

"Godric Liz! I'm only fifteen, that's way too early to be talking about marriage."

"Only three years!" Melissa said as she walked out of the bathroom, "Okay, how do I look?"

Both Liz and Lorelei spoke at once, "Hot."

Melissa blushed and quietly told them both to shut up.

Together they walked to the party, it was a chilly May evening and the air was nippy as they walked to the designated common room - Gryffendor.

As soon as the portrait swung open, Lorelei searched for her boyfriend, Johnny. He told her the day earlier he planned on arriving at the party early to pregame with some of his Gryffindor friends.

"Looking for loverboy, Lorelei?"

Blushing she met Melissa's eyes, "He said he'd be here before me."

"He's around here somewhere, I'm sure." Liz said offhandedly. "In the meantime-" Liz's eye caught on a table in the corner where students were throwing tiny white balls into cups arranged in triangles, "If you need me I'll be finding out what that is." Wandering away, Liz approached the table.

Melissa and Lorelei shared a look, making them both laugh. "I'm going to stop by and see what snacks they have, do you want to join me?"

Lorelei shook her head, "No, thank you. I think I'll go find Johnny."

And then she was alone, surrounded by music and bodies and alcohol. The room felt stuffy now with her sweater on as she navigated the room, avoiding couples snogging and boys rough housing.

Eventually she found Todd, Johnny's closest friend, throwing a ball across the room at another quidditch player. "Todd."

Looking over at her, Todd laughed nervously, and he cleared his throat, "Oh hey Lorelei, when did you get here?"

"A few minutes ago. Do you know where Johnny is?"

Another nervous laugh, Todd avoided eye contact looking back at the boy he threw the ball too, "Uh, no, I don't. Listen, I've gotta go, Ben's calling me over."

Watching him walk away, Lorelei tried to smooth her confused expression. Todd was acting oddly, but don't all boys act oddly?

Ignoring her uneasy feeling she kept moving through the crowd, searching every head of brown hair to find the one that matched her boyfriend's face.

The music was entirely too loud for her brain to function properly, her sole mission to push through people without getting firewhisky spilt on her.

She had finally pushed into a clearing of some sort. Standing up straight she looked around to find mostly couples, all close to shagging each other on the floor. It was just about the last place she expected to find her boyfriend of eight months, but something compelled her to search each pairing for him.

Unfortunately her gut feeling sank into a stone of certainty in her stomach as she zeroed in on Johnny snogging some blonde girl.

The blood flowing through her body froze as time warped as she watched her boyfriend comb his fingers through the unidentified girl's hair.

Her emotions seemed to be confused with what she should be feeling. Anger, sadness, regret, shame all filed through her body at lightning quick speeds.

He hadn't even noticed that she caught him as his attention was solely on syncing his mouth with the blonde in front of him.

She didn't even know what to do as she stood there. A braver version of herself would be pulling them apart and screaming at him, yelling every curse word her older sister had taught her at the boy.

In four seconds her whole love life had come crashing down.

Eventually the blonde pulled away, whispering something to Johnny. It had to be something like, "Wanna find a room?" Because he nodded and they stood up from their spot on the floor.

Johnny nearly rushed past her with as eager as he was to leave with this blonde. But right as he was about to pass her, he saw her standing there and he realized everything Lorelei just had.

She addressed the blonde first, "If you give me a minute with him, he'll be single when you shag him." Her voice shook as tears filled her eyes, but she tried to keep all resentment away from the blonde and all on Johnny.

The blonde looked at Johnny in disgust, "You have a girlfriend?" She pulled her hand away and stormed off, leaving Lorelei and Johnny in the privacy of the crowd.

After a few seconds where Johnny wouldn't meet her eyes, and where Lorelei tried to organize her thoughts, the only thing she could think to ask was, "Was it so hard to just break up with me first?" A tear streaked down her face, "We're done."

Honestly she didn't have anything further to say to him. A month ago he'd expressed his opinion to her on shagging someone before marriage. Specifically his distaste in doing so.

Disgust. That was the emotion that won as she stared into his brown eyes. Turning her back to him, she walked away into the crowd of bodies all having a much better time than she was.

"Lorelei, wait!"

She wrapped her arms around herself as Johnny kept trying to catch up to her and failing due to the size of the crowd.

Bumping into someone she mumbled apologies, seeing it was Potter she gave him a quick nod and another sorry. He tried to say something after her before seemingly remembering he couldn't.

She eased out of his space, pushing to the doorway.

The next morning, someone had spread the rumor that she had left the party crying and that Johnny had cheated with Daisy Allen.