on the surface, the two couldn't have been more different.
he was cruel, arrogant, and cold; she was quiet, mellow, and kind.
however, the two students would soon be made aware of how they wore matching scars on their skin and in their souls.
//
"...
It was the day of the Yule Ball, and Lorelei and Luna were both sitting on the floor of Lorelei's dorm and eating sweets. They had a couple of games on the floor beside them, discarded after playing through each a couple times.
Luna was just as calm and chipper as always, but Lorelei reminded Luna of a sunken ship: mysterious, quiet, and with a sort of disconnected sadness that onlookers couldn't quite understand. Luna thought she understood though. Sometimes it was hard to understand what made Lorelei get so quiet, but the flaxen-haired friend had gotten good at reading expressions and body language to learn what was wrong.
"You're sad," Luna bluntly murmured while directing a pawn forward in their game of wizard's chest. She briefly met Lorelei's face after this move.
Lorelei wouldn't look at her.
"No, no, of course not! I'm smiling! I'm having fun!" Lorelei tried to convince her, but Luna wondered why Lorelei felt the need. Being sad didn't make her a bad friend. Luna knew how much Lorelei had wanted to be asked to the ball by that boy from Beauxbatons.
"I know how much you hoped he would ask you. It's okay to be sad, Lorelei," Luna said as she countered one of Lorelei's moves in the game.
"He said he was going to ask me, and he lied," she answered, finally starting to be honest with herself. She blinked back a couple unwelcome tears that had clouded up her vision. She moved her rook forward and turned her face away from Luna. She stared at the gown bags that were strewn out on the unoccupied beds of her three roommates. They had all been asked to the Yule Ball in the end, but Heather's hurt the worst by far.
Lorelei brought her knees closer to her chest and forced a smile onto her face when she looked back at Luna, who was staring at her with knowing eyes and a gentle smile.
"Enz-" Lorelei began but Luna uncharacteristically cut her off.
"No. Boys like that don't deserve to have us remember their names," she said with an anger in her eyes that Lorelei wasn't used to. "Why don't we make our own ball here?"
"I don't have a fancy dress for you, only the one Gran sent for me," Lorelei pointed out with another set of tears in her eyes. Her Gran had gone out of her way to get Lorelei a dress, and it was all for nothing. Enzo betrayed her, and Gran didn't get the letter in time.
"Who said I need a fancy dress to have fun? I can wear anything," Luna mused.
After that, the two girls giggled as they got dressed. Lorelei wore the gown she planned to wear to the ball, and Luna wore the most colorful dress she could find amongst Lorelei's things. It was a dress that Gran had gotten for her, but Lorelei thought it didn't suit her. Luna pulled it off though; Luna could pull off anything, Lorelei believed.
Lorelei got music playing on the record player Gran had purchased off an old friend who wanted to upgrade their model. The player didn't always work well, but Lorelei figured out where to hit it to make it work again. She put on an upbeat album by The Beatles that Lorelei found hidden amongst her father's things in the attic back home. She loved to put it on when no one else was around, but she didn't mind showing it to Luna.
The two girls sloppily did their hair and put on brightly colored lipstick before they danced around the room, each teaching the other their favorite dance moves. Luna taught Lorelei a move where they spun and twirled their hands. Lorelei, on the other hand, just flailed her body around wildly for a bit until she and Luna both tried to do some moves that Lorelei had seen on the MTV channel back home. Lorelei explained the channel to Luna as "a Muggle television show where you can listen to lots of fun songs and watch people dance to them". She tried to shove away her feelings of homesickness as she thought about this.
When Hey Jude came on, Lorelei became even more excited and told Luna how this was her favorite song. Lorelei took a break from dancing to belt out the lyrics to this song. This made Luna chuckle, but she started to hum along to the music too.
The two of them giggled more than either of them had done so at Hogwarts so far, and it became easily one of the best days they had had at the school yet.
They took off the dresses, took down their wild hairdos, and wiped off their lipstick all before Lorelei's roommates returned. When the three girls came back to the room, they found Lorelei sitting with her back against her bed with a wizard's chess board between her and Luna. The three of them giggled to themselves at the sight, and Lorelei tried to pretend she hadn't heard.
Luna did though, and she knew Lorelei had heard as well. Despite generally being a pacifist, she hated seeing how those girls excluded her friend. So, she turned back to look at them with a dazed smile.
"Oh, hi, Jude," she murmured to no one in particular before twisting herself back around and smiling at Lorelei mischievously.
Lorelei bit back an amused smile, which was already crinkling her eyes. She slowly convinced herself there was no way the Yule Ball could have even compared to her night in her dorm with Luna anyway.
//
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