Serenity | 1

TWENTY THREE

"You're Welcome"

Hallowe'en 1968

The Hallowe'en feast had the members of The Slug Club bubbling with anticipation. Serenity was listening in on the conversation between Lakita, Erin and Dexter as she twisted the golden treasure chest pendant between her fingers and she pushed a pumpkin-flavoured lollipop around her mouth. Laughing at one of her sister's jokes, she looks across at the Ravenclaw table to find Merritt already watching them.

She was smirking from where she could see through to Serenity, her bushy eyebrows wiggling suggestively from across the hall as The Grey Lady passed between them. Narrowing her eyes, Serenity removes the lollipop and moves her mouth to imitate 'what?'

Within seconds of asking, her vision turns black and the conversation between her sister and cousins dulled. Through the conversations that continued in the excitement, she could hear the distinguishable cackle of her younger sister and a familiar warmth pressing on the back of her neck. Her hand closed around the pendant and raised her other to hold the hand covering her eyes.

"Guess who?" Pulling the hand away with a giddy smile, Serenity spins on the bench to find Lucius bending over her.

"Lucy!" Despite his constant disapproval of the nickname, he couldn't help but smile as she wrapped her arms around his neck and grinned up at him. "What do I owe the pleasure?" He hums and lowers his mouth to her ears.

"Rumour says Slughorn hired The Hobgoblins for tonight."

"Does 'rumour' have a name?"

"Nothing gets past you." Lucius' arms tighten around her waist as a wolf whistle drags their attention back to the people around them.

Vaughn had stolen Serenity's seat on the Hufflepuff bench- Juliet sat on his knee, her arm wrapped around his neck with a smirk on her face as she watched the two of them. Lakita was frowning at the back of Juliet's head as she removed a hard boiled sweet from her mouth and pressed it onto her hair.

Serenity raised her eyebrow disapprovingly as Juliet screeched and attempted to pull it out. She whined when she only managed to get her hair tangled even more. Erin shook her head with a sigh as Juliet began demanding that Vaughn 'get it out!' Rolling her eyes at Lucius, who was watching the scene with a bemused smirk, Serenity kicked Lakita's leg. Her sister whined which was punishment enough for her.

"Here, why don't we just cut it-" Juliet screamed and launched herself from Vaughn's knee as if it had scolded her backside. Cradling her hair, she shook her head at the boy dropping the butter knife and holding his hands out to her with a chuckle. "I'm joking, babe!" After a hesitant moment, Juliet also laughed and allowed him to wrap his arms around her waist.

Erin reached across the table and pinched the sweet. Without time to protest, Juliet's head was yanked backwards as Erin tugged on the sweet as her magic unravelled the hair from it.

With a pristinely clean sweet in her hand, Erin offered it to Juliet. The Slytherin shook her head with a scowl and cuddled into Vaughn. Briefly offering it to Dexter, Erin shrugged and passed it back over to Lakita who proceeded to suck on it once again.

Lucius finally stopped laughing enough to reply to Serenity.

"Vaughn saw Stubby Boardman in Slughorn's office earlier."

"Are you sure?" Serenity, now in disbelief, looked between the two boys for any sign of a joke. Vaughn simply shook his head.

"I'm sworn to secrecy." The group was as silent as possible in the noisy hall. "I realise now how contradictory that is."