Girl's Night! [Nina and Lyra]

Ariel swung her wand around, muttering a few spells she had learned for decoration. It wasn't much, she didn't want to overdo it. But she did hang up a nice, small-ish banner that said 'girl's night' in big, red letters, and underneath - in a smaller writing - it said 'and about bloody time'. She had barely had the chance to speak to either Nina or Lyra after the year started, and she missed them. They were her crowd. And even though Ariel maybe knew Nina better than Lyra, it didn't mean that Lyra was any less her crowd. They lived together here. Secrets were futile.

So Ariel had taken it upon herself to arrange this. They didn't know, and she liked it the idea of surprising them. She had gone down to the kitchens and gotten some candy and chips, muggle and wizard alike, and then she'd bought some butterbeer in Hogsmeade, and some candy (again) from Honeydukes. She loved being allowed to go to Hogsmeade!

She wandered around the dormitory as she looked at what she had put up. The snacks all stood on a table by the beds, which she had moved together, so they'd have loads of space. She had also transfigured a few stones into big fluffy pillows in red and gold, because Gryffindor pride. She finally sat down in one of the beds, the middle one, waiting for the two others to show up. She was pleased with her work, might be they would be too!

Lyra had been stuck behind a counter all afternoon so when she got back to the castle, she was ready to do something actually fun. That whole shift where she had hardly moved other than to eat free samples of the sweets that were out and sweets she had bought at a wonderful discounted rate meant she just wanted to run around or actually interact with other human beings. Or eat more sweets. After dinner, she was straight up the tower to the common room in the hope she could spend some time with her brother or roommates.

There was nobody she wanted to talk to in the common room so she went up to the dorm she shared with Nina and Ariel. At first, she didn’t notice Ariel because she was too captivated by what had happened to her previously boring dormitory. There was a really cool banner and comfy pillows she didn’t think had been there before and a table with FOOD! She grinned. “Ariel, this is amazing!” It truly was. It was so nice of her friend to do all this! But she was right with the banner. They had hardly spent any time with each other all year - she barely knew Nina at all, despite sharing a room with her.

She remembered the bag she had in her hand. “I have some sweets to add to the table!” she grinned. “They aren’t much, though, compared to all this!” Lyra walked over to the snack table and put down her Honeydukes stuff, just some fizzing whizbees, acid pops and jelly slugs, the stuff that had been on sale at work. It was a small contribution in comparison to all the effort and money Ariel must have put into this little party. She felt a bit stupid that she hadn’t had this idea herself now.

Now that Nina had found the library in her first year, she actually found that it was a magical place. Despite what Ariel had said about them being able to use it for pranking, she had spent countless hours in there just reading! She loved it! Sarah had found her in there and was shocked that she had been reading in her free time!

She had read through dinner on accident and now was STARVING. The kitchens where too far away from her dorm, and she was lazy and tired to walk in there. So she decided that she could starve until breakfast the next morning.

After classes had been over, she had changed into her pajamas to feel more comfortable when she was reading in the library. Sure she had gotten some weird stares, but she didn't really care. She was comfortable in her zebra print feetie pajamas!

She had gotten to the fat lady portrait and had gotten a weird comment from her about the pajamas but didn't really care. She walked in and skipped right to the room she shared with Lyra and Ariel. Maybe one of them had some food that they could share? She was so HUNGRY.

She walked in and was shocked to see pillows, banners and what was that? A TABLE OF FOOD! She was literally jumping up and down at the sight of the beautiful table filled with sweets. She heard Lyra say that she bought some honeydukes stuff! Awesome! Maybe this wasn't going to be a bad night after all!

She said, "Whoa! This is brilliant! Oo! Food! I'm starved!!!"

At that she went straight to the table and grabbed a handful of the first thing she saw and stuffed her face with it.

Ariel beamed at Lyra's reaction as she walked into the dormitory. Just what she had hoped for. Just by that reaction, she knew this thing was gonna be totally awesome! "I figured it was a nice thing to do for my awesome roomies," she said happily. She had also done this to get her mind off her pranks for a moment. Her mother was right; they were getting a bit out of hand in an offensive and non-fun way. So this was the perfect excuse to think about someone else!

"It's brilliant!" was all she got to say before Nina walked into the room, exclaiming she was starved and was basically jumping up and down in joy. Ariel had to laugh about the way she started munching. Which was awesome. "Thanks!" she said, her smile widening even more, if possible. "Now, let's eat ourselves gooey in those beds, yeah?" she suggested gleefully and patted the places beside her.

The expenses on this night was nothing to talk about, really. The butterbeer had cost a couple of galleons, but it was nothing since they had gotten so much free food from the kitchens. God, she loved House-Elves, she thought as she claimed a couple of chocolate frogs and licorice wands. She also put three mugs of butterbeer down in front of them. "What have you guys been up to the last couple of weeks?" she asked, referring to their schoolyear, as she was quite not-caught-up on that.

"AWESOME thing to do for your awesome roommates!" The three of them were all really awesome. So they probably deserved Ariel's awesome party thing. It would also be nice to talk to Nina a bit. That girl was almost a total mystery to her, even though they had shared a room for years now.

Nina's entrance was entertaining. Her excitement seemed to mainly be because of the food. That was fair enough, there was some great food there. "I like your pajamas!" she beamed. Now she felt as though she should change too. She had a cute pink onesie to wear but it was nowhere near as cool as Nina's zebra thing. "Wait... did you wear that around the castle?" she giggled. Since her friend had turned up wearing it, she must have been wearing it earlier.

Lyra grabbed herself a cauldron cake and flopped down next to Ariel. She took a sip of her butterbeer, smiling widely as she swallowed it. Butterbeer was the best. "Nothing much," she shrugged. "I've been boring... talking to Lyn, eating, that sort of stuff." Something exciting needed to happen, like the twin switching plan which they had talked about a lot but never put into action.

Lyra noticed her feetie pajamas and she said, "Yes! I wasn't going to sit in the library in my school clothes. That's highly uncomfortable. So, I went and changed into my favorite pajamas and re-read my favorite book thus far! Ariel, this is awesome really! You have no idea!"

She was grinning ear to ear at her friend. Probably her best friend besides Sarah, well, she had no choice but to like her. She had wanted to write a letter to Aisha about how her year was going so far and how her classes have been. Just the daughterly thing to do. Weird.. Since Aisha had adopted them, this was the first time she had referred herself as Aisha's daughter. It was slowly starting to sink in that she really was.

She didn't want to talk about all the depressing deaths and dramatic things that had happened, so she decided to flop down on the pillows. She asked Lyra, "Lyn is your twin right? In Hufflepuff, like my twin Sarah?" It was weird how much in common she and Lyra really had yet they never talked, or had a genuine conversation.