[OPEN / MASS THREAD] Bonfire Night

Being back at Hogwarts had been - ugh - so boring.  And for once, Clair was cool with boring.  Sunk deep in his own dark pit of apathy, boring was right up his alley.  Until it wasn't anymore.

That was why he was outside voluntarily, for the first time in weeks, levitating brush from the edge of the forest to a pile he'd assembled nearby.  Nearby the forest, but not so nearby that the forest would catch fire when it was lit.  Because as soon as the sun went down properly, it was totally going to get lit.

He turned to his partner in crime.  That little firstie - well, she was a second year now - who'd been so sneaky last year.  

"Kay, you know where all the common room entrances are?"

"In the basements, in the dungeons and up on the seventh floor," Darcy repeated back in her best "you're boring me" monotone.

"So you just have to tell everyone in Ravenclaw and then get someone in each of the other houses to tell their common rooms," Clair explained.

"Oh wow, thanks for telling me, I couldn't have figured that out for myself," Darcy replied.

Clair rolled his eyes.  

"Get going then."

As Darcy ran off in the direction of the castle, he cast a glance towards the Care of Magical Creatures Paddock.  It would be just like Thorfinn to suddenly appear and demand to know what he was doing.  But it  didn't look like the Deputy Head was anywhere nearby, so Clair stole into the forest in search of some larger branches.

Bethany hadn't been to the infamous Valentine's Day Party last year partly because she'd only been a fourth year, but mostly because she knew she really wasn't cool enough for something like that.  It had been organised by Margo Richards, who was not only cool but also so pretty most of the boys in the school drooled whenever she walked past.  Nobody drooled about Bethany. 

But when the precocious second year ran up and yelled that Clair Sauvage was having a bonfire down on the lawns, Bethany had no qualms about marching right down there.  You didn't need to be cool to hang around a fire and get smoke in your eyes.  Besides, if she knew anything about Sauvage (and she did, he wasn't the sort of person it was hard to know things about), he wouldn't have had the forethought to provide delicious snacks.

So she didn't march straight down there.  First she hung a right down to the kitchens to ask the house elves for marshmallows.  And a couple of bottles of butterbeer, because let's face it, Sauvage probably only had alcohol down there too.

It was almost 7 pm when Charlotte heard about something that would happen near the forest. The girl who was in her house, Darcy or something like that just couldn't stop talking about that so Charlotte decided to see that by herself. She wrote to Darian who will probably tell that to Mia and then Lottie would be able to see them there.

She came to the place near the forest and saw big bonfire. Clair was there and if she heard correctly, he was the one who started this.
She came closer to him with a small smile on her face.
After she broke with Christian, she didn't smile a lot.
"Hi" she said that simple word because anything more was too more.

He had just finished levitating the last branch into position. They weren't huge branches, but they were better than nothing for the prissy types like Charlotte who wouldn't want to sit on the ground.

Speaking of whom.

"Hey," he said, straightening up and glancing past her shoulder. Christian was nowhere to be seen. Nor was anyone else.

"Where's the boyfriend?"

Why he had to ask that? Can't they just have normal night, fun night with a lot of alcohol and laughing. But no one was there yet so there was no way to escape from this conversation. After all, Clair was her friend. He was one of the rare people who dared to say exactly what he thinks about her. And he was there before Christian.

"I... I broke up with him" she looked at the ground because it was easier that way. This was the first time she said that out loud. Even Mia and Darian don't know.
"Yeah, we broke up" she shrugged and looked at him again.

"Do you need any help? Now I realize I probably came earlier than I should. Maybe we can start drinking until I forget about that destroyer of lives?" She took a bottle of vodka which was in her bag.

Destroyer of lives? Here we go, it was time for Charlotte to get melodramatic again. Clair thought he was maybe getting the hang of this friendship. Or maybe, it was what some people (loser people) called being frienemies. Anyway, he knew a cue when he saw one.

"Why?" he asked bluntly. "Christian's a good guy, isn't he?"

Christian was a good guy. From what Clair had gleaned from talking to Charlotte and Margo and that weird conversation with Molly, being good was half his problem. Maybe he needed someone to explain the facts of life to him.

"Actually, you can help," he said, snatching the bottle from her hand.

He was doing her a favour, he thought, as he poured the vodka onto the unlit bonfire. Drunk Lottie was less fun than sober Lottie. He didn't want her getting drunk before the party got properly started.

Being melodramatic was part of Charlotte's personality. It's not like she knew she was melodramatic, but that was just who she was. That was her only way to deal with problems.
Was Christian a good boy? He probably was. That was probably the reason why he didn't want to break up with Charlotte first, but he did the even worse thing. He did whatever he could to make her break up with him.

"He just... He doesn't care about me" Charlotte paused and shook her head. From what she was able to realize, Christian cared only about Ace. She couldn't tell for sure, but she was almost 100% sure he was in love with her.

"Sometimes I think he did everything he could to make me break up with him. He wasn't there for me, even when I broke my hand during the holidays. And I was working with him in that shop only to be close to him, but he didn't even pay attention to me. It was like I wasn't there." She shrugged pretending that this didn't bother her. But it did. Probably more than she was willing to admit.

Charlotte smiled when he took the bottle from her hand thinking he wanted to take a sip but smile immediately left her face when she saw what he did.
"What the hell are you doing Clair? I wanted to drink that!" She said completely shocked. But it was too late to argue about that since she didn't have a drink anymore so she just looked at him.

"Okay then, how I can help?"

Clair stepped back and used his wand to set the vodka, along with the rest of the bonfire, alight.

"You just did help," he smiled at her.

"Look, you should forget about Christian. He's a loser with a misplaced sense of propriety. Not to be mean, but I'm pretty sure he only went out with you because he thought it was the right thing to do after we shut you both in that cupboard."

"That doesn't mean you should be trying for someone like Darian Levski, though," he added darkly.

She looked at Clair and in the end, she smiled and shook her head. "Well, I'm glad I helped." She looked around herself. Everything looked great.

"When will the other people come?" She asked curiously.

Charlotte frowned and looked at Clair angrily.
"Why you keep telling that story about Darian? I told you There is nothing going on between me and Darian. We are just friends."

"And while we are speaking about that, what's about you? Any girl you like?" She asked curiously. To be honest, Charlotte wasn't sure if Clair would answer to that but she decided to try anyway.

Clair shrugged.

"They might not be coming," he admitted. "It might just be us four."

He ignored her thing about Darian. Charlotte's bizarre attachment to Levski had momentarily slipped Clair's mind, but now as she defended him (yet again) he remembered that she refused to see what was right in front of her face. Ordinarily, Clair would consider that Charlotte's love life was none of his business or his problem, but taking care of it at least distracted him from his own, so having a chat to the source of the problem could do no harm.

He barked a disbelieving laugh at her question.

He could have told her about Julian, of course, but no matter how quickly Charlotte wanted to change, or how worldly she wanted to become, Clair had a feeling she wouldn't quite understand about that the same way someone like Margo - or even Julian himself - had.

"Ah Lottie, ever the romantic," he replied. "I don't like girls, I just have... um, entanglements with girls."

And then, because he couldn't help himself:

"Or boys, even. Why did you think I was at Satans?"