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Amelia stood in front of the painting, taking advantage of this soon to be rare moment of quiet. In less than half an hour the gallery would be full of posh socialites all vying for the chance to purchase one of the many fine works on display tonight. Amelia frowned as she looked at the painting in font of her. It evoked such loneliness; she didn’t like the feeling but the work itself was magnificent. Taking a deep breath, Amy turned and gave the gallery a scan. Each of the 32 post-impressionism works on display tonight were vastly different in subject matter and emotion, yet cohesive as a whole. It displayed a phenomenal range and skill. She quite liked it all and had she not been trying to sell the pieces, not to mention she'd lose her job over it, she might have tried taking home a few for herself. She would have to be satisfied in having seen it first-hand, as she was with every show she'd worked thus far.

The caterers were setting up in one of the larger offices in the back with waitstaff planned to circle the crowd offering champagne and delicately decorated cakes to the patrons. “Ring me if you need.” Amelia turned again, this time toward her boss, the gallery curator, as he stepped out of his office and locked the door. Amy smiled. This was to be her first real show. She had taken the lead on all of the planning, though she hadn’t been left completely unchecked and thank Merlin for that or else there would have been advertising and signage all around the room and in the front window without the artist’s name, and Amelia was even being trusted to host and close up on her own. It was a big opportunity and she was excited and anxious for it. “If I need, I will. Goodnight.”

Soon enough the doors were open and the room full of guests. Amelia had invited a few of her friends who she thought might appreciate the evening and who she wanted to ensure knew that her big evening had gone off a success. Of course it was only her evening in the sense that it was her first mostly solo showing at the gallery, when really the evening belonged to – and was properly billed to – the artist, Quinn Blackwood.

Triss had been home from Hogwarts since Friday evening, but the gallery was having a big show this weekend and this was the first time Amy had been able to get away. She enjoyed her job. It made her feel smart, sophisticated, and basically better than everyone else who came passing through the gallery doors making comments on the pieces that were so off base they might have been talking about a piece of cheese for all the sense it made. Amelia’s ego needed no additional stroking for her to feel superior, but it was nice all the same. That sense of superiority would be carried on during lunch with her family, though she didn’t feel the need to rub it in their faces at all. Especially not Beatrice’s. She’d been having some sort of trouble with a boy again – Amy didn’t know all the details but she’d be sure to get a fair few at today’s lunch.

Pushing the door open without bothering to knock, Amy announced herself to the family at large. “Your favorite daughter has arrived,” she called tauntingly, a good-natured tone to her voice. The Greengrass girls were loved equally, but Amy knew she was the prized daughter if one were forced to elect one. Making her way through the home, she heard voices in the nearby lounge and headed in that direction.

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Jovian refused to ever be found wrong, and Amelia was much the same. The girls had had a few rows in their time when opinions differed but for the most part they got on smashingly and aside from a few little tiffs every now and again, there wasn’t much that the girls really bickered over. If Amelia truly cared about whether or not it took a high level of intelligence to keep a business afloat, then she would have quirked her own eyebrows in return and stared the other redhead down. As it were, the argument was not worth enough in Amelia’s eyes to go into a diatribe about the vast array of hats one must wear in order to keep a successful business afloat, particularly one as Fin’s which was so rife with the possibility of pub brawls and shadier illegal deeds. Let the Head Girl be cynical. It only left a wider pool of men for Amelia when the time came.

Another name was thrown into the conversation and visions of Fin Avery’s wet summer body glistening in the Scottish sun were replaced by a blond wizard. This wasn’t such a bad image either, and Amy had much more experience chatting with Lysander than she did Finley. “Burke is quite attractive, although I’m not sure about marrying into such a large family. I already have one of those, you know. And all those sisters would probably want to have a say in every bit of his life, seeing as he’s the baby of the family, and I suspect that would include his girlfriends – to a degree.” It was difficult to tell, from the outside, whether or not a bloke was man enough to stand up for himself to his family. It certainly couldn’t be judged by how he acted with his schoolmates. Some of the bolder wizards in her class were complete and utter mummy’s boys when they went back home, while others bossed their parents around like spoilt little prats and acted the innocent intellectual at school. You really had to get to know someone and if they turned out to be a wanker then you were piss out of luck for all the time you spent on them.

Chewing silently as Jovi spoke, Amy gave a breathy sort of giggle and smiled, keeping her lips pressed together until her mouth was free of food. She could just picture Jovi standing outside the Ravenclaw common room, arms crossed and foot tapping, waiting for Miss Fashion Disaster to climb out of the tower so she could write her up for a detention for magic in the corridors or some other such nonsense. Of course, Amelia could do that as well, and she wouldn’t have to wait about for that nasty orange skirt to reappear, being in the same house as the girl and being a prefect. Sure, she hadn’t made Head Girl as Jovi did, a sour spot in their relationship to be sure, but as a prefect she too held a higher position over the other students, just like Jovi did. Amelia kept her thoughts on the matter to herself, suffering silently in her ongoing jealousy that really should have dissipated after this many months. They were nearing the end of the school year and here she was, still mildly jealous of her best friend.

“In my experience if they’ve got any brains at all they’re either dull as a bloody doorknob, ugly as sin, or older. Honestly, I cannot wait until we’ve graduated and have more opportunities to interact with intelligent people.” Amy gave a minor sneer as her eyes gave a subtle scan around the room filled with their peers. “It’s slim pickings for a brain at all around here, isn’t it?” By the end of her seventh year it was hard for Amelia to not feel as though she had outgrown the learning opportunities of Hogwarts. The vast majority of people she met in the halls, library, or courtyards were younger than her, with less life experiences to draw on (not that she had many herself, being stuck at the same boarding school as everyone else), and fewer years of magical education.

“By the gods, that is a hideous skirt.” Amelia sneered at the third year who walked past their table with her friends donning an orange and green checked skirt. “She looks like she shat out a pumpkin.” Amelia and Jovi were having a girls day, having ditched their respective significant others for a day of frivolous shopping and gossip. It had been a relatively relaxing day thus far, especially owing to the fact that that prat Dwayne Davidson was spending his Hogsmeade day in detention instead of pestering her in the hopes that she would accept his invitation to a date. Amy watched the orange disaster, unable to look away much like witnessing the wreckage of a train, it was alluring in its monstrosity. Mercifully, the offending skirt and its counterpart disappeared behind the wall of a booth on the far side of the Three Broomsticks and Amelia’s eyes were saved the pain of having to watch it much longer. “She’s not going to get a Valentine’s date dressing like that. I don’t care who her parents are.” Amelia shook her head, having recognized the girl as a fellow Ravenclaw whose mother was a quidditch player for one of the minor professional teams in Britain.

“What have you got planned for Valentine’s day? Rory wants to take me out to dinner on the next Hogsmeade weekend, but he’s said sod all about the fourteenth. He’s not going to last much longer.” Amelia rolled her eyes at her own mention of her boyfriend and his stupid plans to woo her three days too late. They would probably end up at the tea shop or somewhere else that had been decorated like a bloody cliché. Merlin help him if he tried bringing her here for a romantic evening. She would dump him for Dwayne Davidson in a heartbeat, not because she had any interest in him at all, but because it would make Rory insane with jealousy. Amelia took a bite of her chocolate biscuit and wiped a few crumbs from the corner of her mouth after setting the rest of the biscuit back on her plate.