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The common room is swarming with people when I step out of the boys' hall and into it.
It's all Pansy's work—she goes all out when it comes to birthdays, even the birthdays that aren't hers. There's a net of lights above the ceiling hanging from the green lanterns. There's balloons drifting around as well, the kind that one by one randomly combust into an explosion of sparkles and glitter any time someone in the room says "happy birthday!" There's a whole table specifically for food and another entire table specifically for drinks—firewhiskey, beer, the works. The theme, naturally, is green, so as green as the common room already typically is, its thats much more.
"Where's Daphne?" I shout over the music when I see Blaise leaning against a wall with a joint in his head, deep in conversation with Tracey.
He looks over at me almost in slow-motion, the rims of his eyes a little red from the Alihosty. He then shakes his head and shrugs before offering the joint to me.
"Thanks," I say, taking a spot against the wall with him while I bring the joint up to my lips.
"Pansy really has no chill," he chuckles, snatching the joint back from me before I even have a chance to exhale. "She tried to make me put on a party hat."
"If she even comes near me with a party hat, I'll hex her."
He chuckles, and we stand there in comfortable silence for a few moments. Pansy and Blaise have been my best friends since before we even began at Hogwarts—Blaise's mother was always out finding husbands (who'd mysteriously die months after marriage, leaving her with a fortune). Pansy's parents weren't around much either—they were constantly honeymooning, even years after their marriage, so they spent all their time in Bali and Fiji and Thailand. She has a sister, though Poppy Parkinson was in Hogwarts while Pansy was younger, and therefore never around. She and Blaise spent most of their childhood at the Malfoy Manor.
So silence is nothing new between us—sometimes, it's comforting.
"I see Daphne," Blaise says suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I glance at him and follow his gaze, seeing Daphne, dressed better than anyone else in the room in a silky black dress. She's swarmed by people dancing to the loud music, a bright grin on her face while Pansy stands nearby to make sure not a second passes where Daphne isn't grinning.
"I'm gonna go wish her," I say, absentmindedly patting Blaise's shoulder while he turns and continues talking with Tracey.
As soon as I step away from the wall, I'm consumed by a mass of dancing, sweating, jumping bodies that scream the lyrics to a Hobgoblins song that must be new since I don't know all the words. Someone at some point presses a drink into my hand, so I shrug and hold onto it while I twist and turn to make myself through the crowd, recognizing some students as young as third years.
