Jade woke up happy again the next morning, but this was a different
brand of happy. She wasn't feeling brashly, victoriously happy. She
didn't feel like swaggering into the Great Hall or getting in Jack's
face. She felt a calm happiness that ebbed slowly over her. She felt
like twirling and singing and hugging Alana and hugging West. She felt
like wearing a dress and not hiding in her cloak. It felt like she had
just swallowed a hot drink, and now there was a warm, comfortable
feeling in her heart and flooding through her body.

She was
awake earlier than Alana, earlier than Mallory, even earlier than
Hannah, their morning person in residence. Jade leaped out of bed and
flung the yellow curtains to the side. Sunlight beamed in, and her three
roommates groaned as it washed over them. She laughed.

"Good morning, ladies!"

"It's bleh-o-clock in the morning! Let me sleep," moaned Alana, hiding under her pillow.

"Finally someone shares my enthusiasm," Hannah noted, reaching for her slippers and landing on the floor.

"Mmphmph..."
Mallory grunted, flopping onto the floor. She straightened up and
tossed her pillows at Jade and Hannah, respectively.

Jade
scoffed and started to get dressed in the dormitory's small bathroom.
She had chosen a pretty emerald-green sweater dress and leggings, and
she felt quite pretty and nice wearing it. She rarely wore dresses,
because they made her feel self-conscious, but today it was the perfect
outfit to make her feel cheery.

She came out lacing up her favorite sneakers. Alana wolf-whistled, and Jade playfully smacked her. "I don't look that good." She flipped her head upside down and began to brush her long, tangled curls.

"Well,
you're fourteen now, so I guess that explains your happiness." Alana
looked up from smashing her alarm clock into oblivion.

"What?" Jade dropped her hairbrush.

"Yeah,"
Alana said, oblivious to her best friend's confusion. "Today's your
birthday. Jade Elizabeth Pevensie, today you are fourteen years old.
Happy birthday, ya nutcase."

"I thought it was tomorrow!" Jade
beamed. Trust Alana to remember when her birthday was when she herself
had forgotten. "Well, happy birthday to me, I guess."

"You're three years older than me and West," Alana lamented, brushing her own hair.

"Not for long. Your birthday is in January, and West's is in April. You guys aren't so far away."

"It feels like an eternity."

Hannah giggled and tugged yet another Hufflepuff sweater over her head. "We're going into Hogsmeade today!"

Alana looked confused. "What's Hogsmeade?"

Mallory
laughed as the four girls headed downstairs to the Great Hall. "It's
the local wizarding village. We go there and shop, there's an amazing
candy store, and this one place sells this fizzy stuff called
Butterbeer...You have to go there to understand it, but I think it's the
perfect place to spend a birthday."

Jade laughed and snapped
shut the pretty closure on her cloak, which was lined with fleecy green.
"I agree, it sounds great! Let's have breakfast first, though."

Alana leaped to her feet. "I'm down for breakfast. BACON!!" She screeched and tore into the Great Hall.

The other three shared expressions of confusion, then followed, laughing.

Inside
the Hall, Jade and the others loaded their plates with food and sat
down, chatting casually. West came and perched on the edge of the table.


"Happy birthday, Jade! Are you going to Hogsmeade?" West was eating eggs and toast.

"Yeah. Come with us?" Jade had a huge smile on her face.

"Sure, of course! I heard they have this amazing greenhouse supply shop, and I need a little plant for my dorm room. It's so bare and weird in there! I forgot all of my little plants and photos back at Eaglesclaw." West stole one of Jade's strawberries and popped it into her mouth.

Alana looked up from her bacon. "They have a joke shop there that's phenomenal, I've heard. And this amazing candy shop full of free samples!"

Jade fluffed her best friend's hair. "Hurry up and eat so we can go and have fun!" Maybe she was fourteen, but she would always be immature.

*******************

In Hogsmeade, soft, powdery flakes of snow were sifting gently down from the sky. Jade tilted her head back and let them fall all over her face. Everything felt magical, softer and happier than she knew how to express. It was strange, the snow was piling up around them, but it wasn't cold. She twirled in a tiny circle.

"I love this so much," she yelled up to the sky, the thin air catching her words and blowing them away.

Alana and West were skipping near her. The snow was in their hair and powdering their robes, turning their hair to a faded orange. Hannah and Mallory had run off to the Shrieking Shack, and now the three of them were alone.

"The two of us have to buy some important stuff. Go have fun, and we'll meet you at the Three Broomsticks later," West promised.

"Can't I just come along?" Jade felt a little hurt. She understood that the two of them had some secret project, but abandoning her on her birthday? That itself was a low blow.

"It's really a private thing," Alana added, pulling on her hood. "We'll see you later."

Jade felt her cheeks heating up, but she sighed and trudged off to Potions and Pages, the apothecary/bookstore in Hogsmeade Village. She found a second-hand copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard, with water-stained pages and a cover on its last few months of life, then settled down in a corner and read. She lost track of time, her nose buried in the comforting pages.

It was growing dark outside when Jade finally looked up, and she scrambled to her feet. "I'll take this book," she said, slapping a Galleon on the counter and running out. She ran into Alana and West on the way out, bearing huge paper sacks. Alana dropped her bag on the ground and it split open, sending packets of candy and bags of chips and bottles of Butterbeer rolling across the ground.

"I'm so sorry," Jade gasped, dropping to her knees to pick up the spilled groceries. "What's all of this for, anyway?"

"None of your business," Alana humphed, grabbing the last package of confetti.

Jade shrugged her shoulders and pulled the hood of her cloak on, walking back to the castle.