Chapter Text
Tuesday, May 15, 1951
Minerva stared up at the vaulted ceilings of the greenhouse, watching the palm fronds sway above her. Or maybe it was just her head that was swaying, she couldn’t tell (perhaps she was a tad more worse for wear from the punch than she’d anticipated).
“Ahh,” a very tipsy Ro sighed from next to Vera. “Good idea, Pompom, the greenhouses are fun.”
“Now you like them,” Pomona giggled. “Before, you looked so- so gloomy, I thought you were having the worst time.”
“I didn’ look gloomy!” Ro slurred. There was a scuffle and an oomph, which Vera assumed meant that Pomona had been whacked with a pillow.
The four were arranged in a circle, heads in the middle and feet sticking out like spokes in a wheel, on the floor in the middle of the greenhouse. Above them, the night sky was sharp and clear behind the green-tinted glass, the thick sprinkling of stars another indication of a fast-dawning spring.
“Wait wait wait, guys,” Poppy said. “Do you think- do you think any of the plants can hear us?”
“Whoa,” Ro whispered. “I dunno. Plants? Can you hear us?”
“Plants don’ talk,” Pomona put in. “‘Cept some rare ones in East Asia, but we don’ have any of those here. I wish…”
“I don’t wish.” Vera shivered. “That sounds terrible.”
She suddenly remembered the fancy wallpaper her mother had refused to strip from the walls of their inherited house, the kind that always seemed to be looming over you and listening hard. Once, she’d caught her mother leaning against the pattern of leaves, a dizzying mix of roses and leaves that twisted into vaguely human faces if you squinted, her eyes closed and ear pressed to the wall as if it were reporting everything that it had seen. Vera wasn’t sure, but she’d avoided the west parlor anyway ever since.
The image sent a shiver rolling down her spine like a drop of water on a window pane.
“Poppy?” Vera said, rolling over on her side to stare at Poppy’s side profile. “Poppy?”
“Yeah?” Poppy mumbled.
“Can you-” Vera wasn’t sure exactly what she’d meant to say. “Can you tell us a story?”
“A story?” Poppy repeated, scrunching her nose.
“Ooo, yeah, a story!” Ro cried. “Tell us about- about something funny, Pops. You’re always so funny.”
“I don’t know any stories,” Poppy said. “Maybe- I suppose, did I ever tell you about the boy that Rose dumped cake batter on?” At their interested dissent, Poppy continued, gaining the swing of her story. “Well, I was maybe nine or ten, and Rose was seeing this bloke from the city. One day, I think he was late or something, or- no, no, he’d gone with another girl! Behind her back!”
Ro scoffed in disgust. “I hate him!”
“I know,” Poppy agreed fervently. “But Rose was so cool, when he showed up at our house a day later she told him, ‘wait here’ and then walked inside and picked up the bowl of cake mix our mum was making and dumped it right over his head!”
“Rose is so brilliant,” Pomona sighed, while Vera and Ro giggled.
“Mum was mad for a bit,” Poppy laughed, “but she thought it was so funny she didn’t even care much about the wasted cake mix.”
“I want to do that someday,” Ro said. “Dump cake mix on some idiot's head.”
“Do it to Theo,” Vera suggested, grinning at the thought. “He deserves it, the bastard.”
“Nah, Theo’s old news,” Ro insisted. “I- I’m so over him! I don’t even remember his last name anymore!”
“Brown,” Pomona filled in, rather unnecessarily.
“Alright, I do remember his last name, but whatever. The point is, he’s dust! Absolute pond scum! You and me, M,” Ro added, reaching out to grab Vera’s hand but missing and seizing her nightgown instead. “We’re well shot of the boys, aren’t we?”
“I don’t hate Elph,” Vera said, turning to look at Ro and setting the ceiling spinning again. She blinked quickly, trying to set her mind back to rights. “He’s not bad, like Theo.”
“But you broke up!” Ro insisted. “So we don’t like him!”
“It was my fault,” Vera said, dimly aware that this was an off-limits subject but plowing forward in an effort to clear Elph’s name. “It was my fault, y’know, I was the problem.”
“You’re not a problem!” Poppy burst out angrily. “Elph is a problem!”
“Yeah!” Ro echoed.
“No, wait,” Vera said. She couldn’t get the words to line up right on her tongue. “We just weren’t right, y’know? It wasn’t right.”
“Then what’s right?” Pomona asked, her voice seeped in sleepiness.
“I dunno know,” Vera admitted.
“Maybe you’ll know when it happens,” Poppy suggested. “That’s what my mum says - if it’s right, you’ll just be able to tell.”
Vera was too plastered to fully contemplate that, or maybe not plastered enough, but if it had been said by Dahlia Pomfrey it must have been the truth. Vera was pretty sure that Dahlia was the source of everything good in the world, ever.
“I wonder if it’ll be right with Doris,” Pomona mused, reaching her hands toward the ceiling and wiggling her fingers lazily.
“Who?” Ro said quickly.
“Oh, no,” Pomona said, her hands falling out of the air with a thunk. “Oh, fuck, that was a secret.”
“But I already know,” Vera said, abruptly remembering the flash of Pomona she’d seen through a throng of partygoers- her arms wound around a tall Hufflepuff with curly hair. “I saw you snogging.”
“Vera!” Pomona moaned. “No, it’s a secret, Ro’s not supposed to know-”
“What d’you mean, I’m not supposed to know?” Re demanded, already sounding offended.
“Oh no…” Pomona said to no one in particular. “Oh, fuck, oh no-”
“But it already happened,” Vera explained, unsure why Pomona was failing to grasp this. “So it’s not a secret.”
“You snogged someone?” Ro said, far too loudly. “That slag Doris?”
“She’s not a slag,” Pomona said. “And so what if I did? You’ve snogged half of London, I’m allowed one or two!”
“But I thought- I was thinking-” Ro tripped over her words.
“Well, you thought wrong,” Pomona said icily. “I knew you’d react like this, no wonder I didn’t want to tell you.”
“React like what?” Ro cried.
“Shut it,” Poppy snapped. “Just stop- no more, guys, Pom doesn’t want to talk about it! We can’t talk about it.”
“But why?” Vera bit her lip. Was Poppy mad at her? She didn’t want Poppy to be mad at her, she hated that. On an impulse, she reached out and fumbled for Poppy’s hand, squeezing it in the dark. “Don’t yell at me, Poppy. I’m sorry.”
“That’s’okay,” Poppy said, so quickly her words slumped into each other like leaning trees. “I’m not, Minerva, I swear…”
“Good.” That really was good, now Vera’s chest didn’t feel like it wasn’t working anymore.
Ro and Pom blazed right over their whispers.
“React like what?” Ro repeated hotly. “Like what, Pomona??”
“Like- like-” Pomona sat up abruptly, and Vera saw her point wildly toward Ro out of the corner of her eye. “Like this! Like you’ve got some sort of claim on me, just because- just because-”
“Just because what?” Ro demanded, and Vera was overcome with the impending doom feeling of being moments from vomit. Something was going wrong, really wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
“I don’t know-”
“No, you were clearly going to say something, what was it?”
“Nothing-”
“No, because what?”
“Because you’ve dated more people than I have,” Pomona finished. Vera blew out a breath, somehow aware the crisis was averted. The plants around them rustled, almost sighing in relief along with the girls on the floor. “You’re not the expert on everything, Rolanda.”
“No one said that!” Ro answered, a bit quieter. “Godric, Pom, I just don’t understand why you were keeping it a secret!”
“I said I don’t know,” Pomona repeated tiredly. “I just didn’t feel like telling you, alright?”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m telling you now anyway,” Pomona sighed.
“Yeah, but still,” Ro said.
Pomona groaned loudly, tilting her head back toward the ceiling. “For the love of Circe, I’m too plastered for this conversation.”
“Me too,” Ro agreed. “Can’t we just make up now and talk about this tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah, alright,” Pomona mumbled. She leaned over and slumped down on top of Ro in a mess of elbows and knees. Ro wiggled into her with a peaceful hum.
Vera stared up at the ceiling, utterly confused. For a moment there, it was like they were all standing on a cliff, waiting for Ro and Pom to jump off, and then they’d all just turned around and went back down the rocks to the bottom. Probably for the better, but Vera wished she knew what had been waiting in the freefall.
Perhaps she’d just ask Poppy later, Poppy always knew what was really happening. That was the best part about Poppy, it was like she had a special set of glasses that no one else had, that could always just… see right through things? Vera wasn’t quite sure where she was going with that metaphor, but she was too tired to think of a better one.
“Was Doris a good snogger, then?” Ro said into the side of her pillow.
Pomona giggled. “Please, ask me that when I’m not three sheets to the wind.”
“Alright,” Ro said. “But later I want to hear all the details.”
“Whatever you want, Rolanda.”
“Happy Birthday, Pomona.”
Vera had absolutely no idea what was going on, but she was pretty certain that Pomona’s second day of being sixteen would start with an atrocious headache. That was a problem for tomorrow, though. For now-
Vera rolled over, straining her eyes to find Poppy’s in the dark. “Pomfrey, tell us another story?”