She Said What?

Chapter 12: I Attend a Slug Club Party

A/N: This chapter is fun. And these acquaintances are most likely going to show up again, so you might want to keep track of them. I think you'll enjoy this.

And review. I'm kind of an unashamed review-whore who likes to know what people are thinking.

October 15

10:00 PM
Status: Relieved

Well, I've managed to sneak away from Slughorn's office now. Finally. You can't imagine how awful it was in there – his parties can be extreme buggers sometimes.

See, today was the day of the previous, aforementioned party Professor Slughorn invited me to. October fifteenth. I've been so deep underground in the library that I actually forgot about it – until I went to Potions and Slughorn gave me a little wink, saying he would see me tonight.

I was really confused...until Alice told me she wanted a sandwich and I remembered I had the damn party tonight.

Eurgh. Fuck.

There was plenty to do to get myself ready for the miserable ordeal. I mean, I had patrol tonight, so after class, I caught James in the corridor and took five minutes to guilt-trip him into taking over for me, since I cut him so much slack with the whole Quidditch thing.

I then convinced myself that making Slughorn's day was worth not doing McGonagall's complicated Animagi essay until tomorrow during breakfast, which took a while.

I also begged Livvy and Alice to accompany me to the party, because I couldn't possibly go alone and come on, what are best friends for? That took another ten to fifteen minutes and only worked because Livvy conned me out of another butterbeer and Alice made me swear to essay-reading for the rest of the year, no excuses.

Once that was done, I had to get upstairs and find something to wear – something that looked like I didn't care, but did make sort of an effort. It took longer than I would've liked (my clothes are either way too casual or way too fancy) but I eventually borrowed Alice's green shirt and wore my most flattering jeans with it. I put my hair up in a messy bun at first since it looked like a disaster, but Livvy said it looked better down, so I stuck in a green butterfly clip and called it quits.

Livvy wore a semi-casual true-blue dress with her hair down and Alice was in a rebellious mood, so she wore her jeans and her obnoxious light green sweater that everyone hates. Me and Livvy begged her to please wear something else so that walking with her wasn't such an embarrassment, but Alice only grinned and dragged us along. We would have to deal with her dress choices.

Professor Slughorn is a good sort of man, very earnest and all that, and the food at his parties is always admittedly excellent, but he can be extremely tiresome when it comes to how he runs the parties. He has all these charming or well-connected people in his office and he decides he wants to fix them up, get them introduced, or else the world will explode or something. He's like this really fat, old uncle who really wants his nieces and nephews to get along, only most of them don't get along for their lives.

Today, he was at his usual tricks, and I was his first lucky victim of the evening.

"Lily, m'girl, nice to see you, nice to see you!" he chirped upon my entrance through his door. He bounded forward to give my hand a wring, his smile broad and unmistakable.

"Hello, Professor," I said politely, giving him my sweetest smile.

He gave my shoulder a very uncle-like pat that nearly snapped my collarbone and then said hello to "Miss Harris" and "Miss Prewitt, fabulous to see you both." He offered us refreshments and we moved forward – I found some friends over by the punch bowl. They looked pleased to see me.