Roses and Riots | f. weasley

Chapter 26: Someone Else

A/N: This hurt my heart to write.

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There were multiple year groups in the Great Hall for a study period later that week, and Emilia leaned in to talk to Harry who was sitting next to her, across the table from Ron and Hermione.

"How's your search for a date going?" she whispered to him.

Harry groaned, "horrible."

Ron sighed loudly, "this is mad. At this rate, we'll be the only ones in our year without dates."

Snape appeared behind them and shoved Ron's head back in the direction of his homework.

"Well, us and Neville," he continued in a whisper, grimacing at Snape who'd continued walking down the hall.

"Yeah, but then again, he can take himself," Harry snickered.

Emilia looked at him, "Neville's got a date, actually."

Ron groaned, "now I'm really depressed."

Emilia leaned forward, "you'll find someone, don't worry."

Fred nudged her slightly from where he was sitting on her other side, "Emilia, I wanted to-"

Snape cleared his throat loudly, "Mr Weasley, stop talking. Miss Potter, stop being so disruptive."

Emilia opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it as Snape moved down the table to berate George and Lee, and when she turned back to see what Fred had been trying to say to her, she saw he was preoccupied by whatever George and Lee had gotten in trouble for.

"I heard someone asked you," Ron whispered rather loudly, drawing her attention back to the conversation. "Nikolai from Durmstrang?"

Emilia winced, "well, yes, he did but-"

"Miss Potter, please refrain from gossiping about your social life during the study period or I'll give you detention for the rest of the month so that you won't have a social life," Snape said icily, appearing behind her once again, making her bow her head and pick up her quill again.

She waited until Snape was gone before opening her mouth to explain to Ron that while Nikolai had asked her, she had turned him down, but Ron was already distracted by reading a piece of parchment, his brow furrowed.

He slid the parchment back across the table, and Emilia saw Fred's messy scrawl, "get a move on or all the good ones will have gone."

"Who you going with, then?" Ron asked Fred, sliding the parchment back over, and Emilia felt her pulse quicken.

Fred scrunched the parchment into a ball and tossed it across the table, hitting Angelina with it, and Emilia felt as though she was unable to do anything but watch what happened.

"Oi, Angelina!" Fred whispered, leaning across the table.

Angelina looked up from her homework to look at him, "what?"

He pointed to her, and then mimicked a dance, "do you wanna go to the ball with me?" He pointed to himself with a grin.

Emilia briefly met George's eye on Fred's other side, and he glanced from her to Fred, looking completely baffled. Emilia looked back down to her parchment, not seeing Angelina's wide eyes as her friend processed Fred's question.

Her expression was that of pure surprise, "to the ball? Oh, I thought..." She cleared her throat awkwardly and smiled at him through her cloud of confusion, "um, yeah, alright."

Emilia continued to stare down at her parchment, blinking quickly to prevent the tears that insisted on welling up in her eyes. She picked up her quill with a shaky hand and tried to continue her work, swallowing the painful lump in her throat as she did so.