when summer goes; two paper boats { nola }

DECEMBER

“Well I’ve only been a prefect for a few months,” Billie started, finishing Nola’s second dutch braid. “Do you have the – oh, thank you,” she added, taking the hair tie from her friend so she could tie it off. Nola had loose curls, like her, and had asked for Billie to replicate her braided hairstyle for the Gryffindor. She finished doing so as she spoke, tugging at parts with gentle fingers to make sure it was all even. Smoothing the ends with her fingertips, Billie gave a satisfied nod.

“All finished,” she said, shifting back a little in the bed so her friend could turn back around. Bille placed one of the magazines on top of another absentmindedly, making a small pile of them on one side of the bed. She smoothed her pyjama top, then folded her hands demurely in her lap.

“And I mostly just use the Ravenclaw one; bathing anywhere else just feels a little too… Unnecessarily extravagant to me.” Even though Nola had asked about it, Billie felt herself stalling a little; she didn’t like bragging, and this felt a little too much like that. Nola was looking at her now, impatience (real or imagined) in her expression. “But yes,” she said, conceding finally. “It is just like you said, with the endless taps and so on.” She gave a small smile.

There was no way in hell Magnolia would have landed the position of prefect for Gryffindor House, which was totally find considering that it felt like a lot of responsibility that she couldn’t have bothered to take on. If being prefect was a whole game of cops and robbers, she would choose the role of a thief any day. But there were some perks to the job, at least from what she could tell, she’d be allowed to roam the halls at all times of night and harass the younger students into giving her information under the guise of writing them up otherwise. Not that she’d have the heart to coerce students into anything, well maybe a few Slytherins could use the punishment (Merlin knew none of them ever got punished enough for the deeds they would surely commit). And then there was the whole thing around the prefect’s bath being the best thing ever. Magnolia had plenty of questions about that, too.

She handed the rubber band to Billie as soon as she asked for it, reaching up to pat the braid as she felt for its form, it was always easier when someone else did them, they came out much more even that way. Otherwise, Magnolia couldn’t be bothered, with a thousand accessories to her name, it was easier to just leave her hair down and stick something shiny in it. “Thanks,” she turned towards her friend with a smile on her face, “Ah, I see, I see,” she said, though she had a hard time wiping the smirk off of her face. If there was a private bath and two prefects, one former one, had the password (did it change every year?) then that only meant…

Magnolia was in no way cheering for Phillip and Billie to continue dating, not when there was someone way better suited for the little blond angel sitting in her room, but it was almost Christmas and it made no sense to spend it starting a new relationship. There was a time for everything, and this wasn’t the time to change boyfriends, come January however, would give the perfect one month and a half before Valentine’s Day. “So…” she smirked again, “the prefect’s bathroom must be pretty private, huh? Does the password change every year or do all the former prefect’s congregate and like…talk?”

“You’re welcome,” She answered simply, with a small smile. She shifted back in the bed so she could lean against the wall, reaching for one of Nola’s fluffy, pale pink pillows to hug against her chest. Nola’s room was really beautiful, and she’d made sure to tell her friend when she’d come in for the first time. Her own room was a lot less decorative than this one, though she was well aware that Kendrick had chosen the curtains and the sheets with her in mind. While she was always grateful for small gestures like that, the blonde never put up her own posters or decorations; she didn’t want to impose on the space any more than she already had.

“Talk? In the bathroom?” Billie asked with a slight frown, clearly not understanding. "No, it changes all the time, like your common room passwords.” The password system was a lot more straightforward that theirs, she thought. Personally, Billie had only had problems with the Ravenclaw riddles at the start of her time at Hogwarts, but she knew a lot of Hufflepuff students had had trouble with it when they’d been in the tower after their common room had been destroyed. Judging from Nola’s expression, there was something she was clearly missing. Billie covered a yawn with her hand.

“Well talk and you know,” Magnolia shrugged it off as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The Gryffindor girl had read in an article that getting steamy in the bathtub was the sort of thing guys were into these days. And though she didn’t think Billie was the sort of girl to encourage that sort of behavior to begin with, she was so sweet and so polite, someone evil like her ogre of her boyfriend would totally be into that. He was in seventh year, after all, everyone knew that seventh-year boys were only after one thing. She wasn’t even sure if that was legal. But she didn’t want to put the entire thing off, Magnolia would give anything to have an older boyfriend too, as long as it wasn’t Phillip. Yuck.

“Oh,” she said, the truth of the matter not nearly as interesting as the thought she had concocted in her mind. “Well, I guess that makes sense but still,” she insisted, trying to find a reason for the whole romance tale she had made from Billie and Phillip’s life as a couple after hours. “Like, we girls always have a chat in the bathrooms with our friends but like…,” she tried to explain, her eyes wandering over to the shelves for a moment to see if she could figure out what issue that was exactly, it had done such a fantastic job of selling the idea to the girl’s brain. “The prefect’s bathrooms are co-ed, right?” she tried. “Like any Ravenclaw boy could get in there as well, theoretically.”

“Oh,” Billie said, getting it this time. She wrinkled her nose above a small smile, shaking her head. “Merlin, I don’t want to think about how many people have made out in there. Gross.” She laughed lightly, hugging her pillow a little closer for comfort. She liked to think that the other prefects over the years had respected school rules as much as she did – surely being caught using the prefects’ bathroom for such things would result in one losing one’s status as prefect entirely. Another time she might blush at the idea, but she felt comfortable here with just Nola.

This was what happened at sleepovers, she supposed. It was inevitable; the lateness and cover of dark always made it easier to talk. She hadn’t really had many sleepovers, though. No one on one sleepovers at all, actually. “Theoretically it could happen,” she said. “There aren’t ever many prefects, though,” she added as an afterthought. Not many people had access to the room, and not everyone had someone they wanted to do… private things with.

Magnolia laughed, suddenly very invested in who exactly had made out in the prefect’s bathroom and if it was common knowledge. “But where else does one have a good snog at Hogwarts?” she asked. It was more of a rhetorical question, but she figured Phillip and Billie would have gotten that far in their relationship. Not like other schoolmates who were practically going to suck each other’s faces off if they kept kissing like that in public. At least Billie seemed very private about that sort of thing which only made her more curious. “Bathtubs are supposed to be sexy anyway, so I can totally see it being like the ideal place,” she concluded, playing with the end of her braid, twirling the unbraided hair towards the bottom with her index finger as she made herself more comfortable by moving to sit at the edge of the bed.

“But you’d sneak someone into the prefect’s bathroom, right?” well, that didn’t seem like a very Billie thing to do, so she quickly rephrased, “I mean like you could be convinced to do that, for some alone time with the right person, right?” she added, “Prefect or not,” she nudged on, not wanting to outright ask if she and Phillip got onto those sorts of things but also very curious to know. If not for his stellar personality, there had to be something much more appealing about her boyfriend that made an appearance behind closed doors. And no matter what Billie said, there was no way she’d believe he was nicer or sweeter, those just didn’t seem like the sort of things Donnelly was capable of. At least not without ulterior motives, of course. 

Billie laughed at Nola’s question, but she could tell it wasn’t entirely rhetorical. What should she say? That she’d spent a little more time in empty classrooms and secluded corridors this year than any previous year? Her cheeks started heating up a little as the conversation shifted closer towards the place Nola was nudging it. “Are they?” Billie asked, feeling amused and self-aware, but her question was entirely rhetorical. She wondered what Phillip thought about bathtubs, and immediately felt embarrassed knowing that her blush would be unmistakable at this point.

It wasn’t not-fun to talk like this (quite the opposite, in fact), it just wasn’t something she ever spent much time doing. Barbie was her best friend, but even though she and Owain had dated for a long time – over a year – Billie had never asked about any of that. Billie was a private person, and her housemate was pretty much as conservative as she was. The blonde brought her knees up so she could rest her chin on Nola’s fluffy pillow. It tickled her neck as she shook her head. "Phillip wouldn’t ask me to do that," she protested, but she was still smiling. Nola was smiling, too – though she looked less embarrassed than Billie felt. "It's nice in there but it's still a bathroom," she added, "ew."

Magnolia was not really sure what Billie was thinking about but if the redness of her cheeks were any indication, maybe it meant that Billie thought bathtubs were sexy, too, and perfectly good places to do sexy things in. Now she really wondered what the couple was like when they were alone, but she did not want to give it enough thought for an image to implant itself in her head. That would be totally weird.

The Gryffindor had been so caught up in her own thoughts that Billie’s comment to her question transformed itself into a reaffirmation of her thoughts rather than the comment she had made earlier. It took her a moment to realize her mistake, “Even if he did, no means no, Josie’ll see to it that he understands if he ever crosses the line,” she said, feeling suddenly angered by the thought that Phillip would ask innocent Billie to do anything she didn’t want to do. But her curiosity (read: nosiness) was still relatively unsatisfied. “Okay well not in the bathroom what about like…the Astronomy Tower?” she offered, it seemed like a very Ravenclaw thing to do.

“You two have been dating forever, right?” Magnolia was not sure about the logistics; the point was that it had certainly been more serious than most relationships around them. “Tell me details” she whined a little, getting way too ahead of herself, the excitement obvious in her voice. “Wait, no, let me guess, first base? Perhaps first and a half?”

“He would never,” Billie said, frowning in surprise. All Phillip had done the whole time they were together was make sure she was okay. Especially in the contexts that they were talking about. She shook her head, ignoring the question about the astronomy tower. “He really loves me, you know,” she said, aware of her friend’s dislike of her boyfriend. Her cheeks were pink as she said it, and her voice soft, but it was true. Whatever else Nola thought of Phillip, she hoped she could at least convince her friend that he cared about her and treated her well. “And he would never… He’s always checking I’m okay, and comfortable. Sometimes too much,” she added with the smallest of smiles, an uncharacteristic hint of teasing in her eyes.
 
“Six months,” she said, feeling a mix of proud and embarrassed. Well, not proud and embarrassed exactly; she was happy that it had been so long, and expressing that felt like bragging to her. She had the sense to feel uncomfortable boasting about her relationship to her friend, even if the Gryffindor girl had asked. She raised her eyebrows at the next question, though, shocked. “Oh, Nola!” she exclaimed, feeling very grateful suddenly for the pink pillow as she buried her face. She smiled into it but she was sure her face was the same shade as the pillow right now. “I don’t even know what that means,” she complained, her voice muffled. “American nonsense!”
 

Magnolia didn’t know enough about Phillip or their relationship to vouch for what her friend was telling her, sometimes girls fell for the wrong boys because they were deceptive, in rare cases, they were just completely different with different people. But, the Gryffindor wanted to believe that while Phillip was terrible at socializing with their friends and had made it pretty clear that he didn’t like much, if anyone, in their group of friends apart from Billie, that the Ravenclaw was smart enough to choose wisely. That didn’t take away from the fact that he acted like a prickly cactus every time they invited him to anything.

“I believe you,” she said finally, figuring that she ought to say something that didn’t feel like a complete insult to her friend’s tastes. “Still think you could do better but…” she mumbled, her eyes traveling over to her fluffy white cat that, captivated by all of the talking on the bed, had been intrigued enough to hop onto the bed and settle in Magnolia’s lap. “You don’t mind Queen Vicky, do you?” she asked, not sure how the girl felt about cats, the cat looked up at her and seemed to meow disapprovingly. Magnolia giggled and stroked her head, “Queen Victoria, I mean,” she corrected herself.

It was hard to focus on her cat when Billie was burying her face in the pillow in embarrassment, it was terribly cute. No wonder she was so popular with all the boys at Hogwarts. Under different circumstances, this would have been the ideal time to cue the sighs of wistfulness. Magnolia wished guys would find her cute, too, like cute enough to date. “It’s like,” she tried to remember what she had read, American nonsense maybe but much better than saying what it all was. “First base is snogging, second base is like stuff here,” she said vaguely, using her hands to gesture to the general area of her chest, “and you know the third base is like,” she gestured vaguely again, “and finally it’s like going all the way,” she explained. “You know,” she insisted. “Home run’s like you’ve done it.”

“Yes, I love cats,” Billie said through the material of the pillow. She loved all kinds of animals; becoming some kind of veterinarian was her second choice for a profession once she finished school. It was the reason she’d taken Care of Magical Creatures, after all.

It was difficult to maintain her composure, though, or to talk about animals at all when Nola was being so direct. She wasn’t used to it at all. Like stuff here. Billie peeked up over the top of the pillow, watching as Nola gave a short talk on the different “bases”. The blonde shook her head again at the ridiculousness of it. Why divide everything into arbitrary categories? Why the sports metaphor? American nonsense indeed!

You know. Billie did know. It wasn’t a lack of understanding that had her so flustered; it was one thing to talk about this sort of stuff with someone you were actually doing it with, and another thing entirely to talk about it with literally anyone else. “Nola,” she whined, popping her chin on the pillow so it dipped in the middle, either side of it pushing her cheeks up a little. “Why do you need to know?”

“You can pet her if you’d like!” she offered but didn’t dare move the temperamental cat knowing that she’d just get fussy and leave the room instead. That was the thing about the cute, furry creatures, they lived their life by their own rules.

But Queen Victoria wasn’t nearly as interesting as what Billie said next, which only made Magnolia wonder if they had done much more than she had originally assumed or if Billie was just a very private person and found the questions too embarrassing. The Gryffindor was incredibly nosy, though, and hearing about that sort of thing from a person she actually knew rather than from a character in an imagined fantasy was so much better. It wasn’t like Rheya was going to give her details on her steamy love life (and she honestly wasn’t sure she’d want to know everything her older sister got up to in her free time).

“It’s just girl talk,” she shrugged off, tickling her cat behind her ear, she was so cute when she purred. “You’re not like…offended, are you?” she wondered if she had crossed the line. The two were friends but had only gotten closer recently, this was the sort of thing her and Mavis always talked about. Then again, neither of them had boyfriends so it was all speculation. Magnolia wanted facts. “But if you’re all about kissing and not telling then that’s okay too,” she said with a bright smile. It wasn’t okay but Magnolia wasn’t going to force information out of her, “If you want to ask me stuff you can, too, you know, we’re friends, right?”

“No, it’s not that,” Billie said quickly, the idea that Nola might have thought she’d done something wrong snapping her out of her embarrassed, flustered state – at least a little. Resisting the urge to apologise outright, she sat up a bit straighter, her cheeks still warm and undoubtedly quite pink. Just girl talk. “I’m not offended,” she clarified insistently, though it wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t personally offended, but some of her more conservative, prudish sensibilities certainly were. The topic of conversation was all a bit scandalous, really.

Nola was smiling brightly and Billie offered a tentative one back in response. She glanced down at her friend’s cat, a touch envious that it was sitting right there, in her lap. A part of her immediately felt a light, warm feeling in response to Nola’s we’re friends, right? though. They’d only been friends for a year, and hadn’t really spent much time together one on one until recently. Billie’s smile became more sincere as she smoothed the collar of her pyjama top. It was in her nature to take words like that to heart; she shone under such things as praise and validation.

“Of course," she said, nodding. She hesitated, glancing down again. "I suppose I just haven’t talked about this kind of thing with anyone,” she said quietly. Her hands moved to her cheeks, checking the temperature of her skin. Against her cold fingers, they felt especially warm. She glanced back at Nola, smiling before she had to glance away again, shaking her head at herself. "And..." she hesitated, "I didn't really think I'd do anything until – you know – marriage or something. I know, I know it's dreadfully old-fashioned..." She rushed the words out, too embarrassed by them to pause.

Magnolia was relieved that Billie hadn’t been offended; it wasn’t usual that the two girls spent much alone time together, the dynamics of their friendship simply meant that the Gryffindor often gravitated towards her two best mates and coincidentally, her two roommates. But Magnolia liked Billie, she had a soft sort of energy that made her easy to talk to, but more realistically, it was easier to be an ongoing chatterbox when the person you were talking to didn’t try to overpower you with their loudness. Sometimes she could not have a conversation with Mavis because the two of them would get too excited and try to talk over each other.

“Yeah, I get that,” she offered sympathetically, though Magnolia had always been surrounded by her little gang of best friends, she really wished they had all met Billie earlier and maybe she’d feel more comfortable discussing this sort of thing with them. “But we are friends,” she said this time with more confidence, “and I mean, I know I’m a little gossipy,” that was the understatement of the year but she was trying to make a point, “but I’m not digging for information, I’m just you know, curious, I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” she offered with a smile. “Like I don’t think a guy’s ever liked me either, probably will graduate Hogwarts a boring ol’ virgin,” she lamented a little, making a dramatic show of pressing the back of her hand against her forehead and making a sad face, Magnolia was good at pouting. “I’m sixteen already and I haven’t even had my first kiss, so I’m so intrigued by like couples, real ones,” she encouraged.

Magnolia considered what Billie was saying and wondered if it meant that she had done something. “Wait, does that mean you’ve like done something or you didn’t think you’d so much as a kiss before marriage? How does that even happen? I can’t imagine marrying someone without having kissed them at least once, are your parents super conservative or something?”

But we are friends. She couldn’t help but smile; it felt good to hear. The group of Gryffindors – excepting Killian, obviously – were all so loud, and often intimidating. On second thought, even Killian could be loud, she supposed. Just not in comparison to the rest of them. Phillip thought it was all a bit obnoxious, she knew, but Billie just wanted desperately for them all to like her. She shook her head once automatically, denying Nola’s claim of being “gossipy”, even if it was a teeny bit true. “I doubt no one’s liked you,” Billie said, managing to fit a couple of sentences in edgewise, smiling at Nola’s dramatics.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Nola was like a steamroller when she got going. She closed her mouth, the last question taking her off guard. An uncomfortable swooping sensation in her tummy made her hesitate. This was one of the problems of being so quiet, she thought. One of the problems of having been at school with the same people for five years but only getting to know them now; they didn’t know.

Not especially keen on talking about her parents, Billie just nodded. "Not more than kissing," she said. It sounded so silly and childish, even, talking to someone as confident and modern as Nola, but it was true. None of her guardians had ever had a direct conversation about sex with her, but there was a definite streak of conservatism she'd inherited through indirect comments, especially when she was younger. She glanced down at the pillow in front of her, and at her fingers tugging very lightly on the fluffy strands. “I was raised fairly sheltered, I suppose,” she said. What an understatement! She didn’t want to linger in a conversation about her parents, though – “But yeah, Phillip and I…” She had to glance away again, feeling her cheeks heating up. “We’ve done more than kiss.”