The next time she meets up with her friends, she's grinning maniacally. "Sooo? We're going, right? Oh man, I need to find a date, don't I? And an outfit! Merlin's apples this is going to be great."
"I'm thinking about wearing this one," Emma says, tapping the pale green robe closest to her, "but I can wear any of them." She eyes the one that's a shade somewhere between pink and orange. "Most of them."
"Anyway, I found my spare," Karen says, producing a royal blue dress robe. "There's a splodge on it that will not come out, but I know what made it so if you wanted to mix up more of the same potion and turn it into a pattern you could. Or just hack it off and wear it daringly short, I don't care what happens to this robe." The splodge is a sort of periwinkle near the hem.
Vivian quietly gets permission from Emma to collect the simpler of the two extra robes. It's a pale purple she's not convinced will look good on her but it's at least edged in a darker purple she likes better, and the other one she's pretty sure will make her skin look green. Purple it is!
The next afternoon, she goes down to the Quidditch pitch while the Slytherins are practicing. And if she happens to stay put until they leave and the Gryffindors show up, well, shame on her for losing track of time.
"Hey there."
"That's okay," Alli says unconcernedly, turning backwards in her seat so she can't see the pitch. "I just knew you'd be here." She smiles, to try and cover the fact that it's suddenly hard to swallow. Her brain is going cute boy! cute boy! and it makes it difficult to concentrate. Stupid brain. "It's Matthew, right?"
Alli bounces straight back to Slytherin in search of Vivian. Sure enough, Vivian's on her bed reading a book Alli doesn't recognize but suspects is for Magical Runes. "Viv, Viv, Viv! Stop doing homework, this is better. I have a date!" she announces, bouncing on the end of Vivian's bed.
"She-" Vivian almost says "is kind of going with you, isn't she, just as friends?" but that seems way too much like salt in the wound and she stops herself. "-wouldn't do that to you," she settles on instead. "She's not that mean. She's not like Alli with her weird need for a cute date."
She tries to make it sound like a gentle joke. But she's a tiny bit (a lot) invested in the answer, so she hopes she actually managed.
"I-" her brain attempts to panic, but she buries it under Karen's quote again. "I know we were all going to go as a group, but. Would you maybe... want to gowithme?"
The last part is a bit of a rush but look at her. Not just staring.
(Why is her brain still panicking? Oh no, this was a terrible idea, aaaah-)
"It's okay! Really! It's my fault!"
She considers repeating Karen's quote, to try and explain, but that reveals a bit more than she wants to admit in the face of that face Karen's making.
"Sorry to surprise you. I didn't mean- I just-"
She's so bad at this, she screwed it up so much, how did Alli do it?
Her brain latches onto I kind of want to. Maybe, maybe maybe maybe? At any rate, it gives her enough hope to offer "Maybe think about it?"
"I-" She stops. Colors are supposed to match, right? Or go together at least a little? "I don't remember what color your dress robes are? Sorry."
She eyes Jenny's slightly manic eye gleam and pities the remaining dateless male students. "...Miranda, we may be the ones without dates." Unspoken is please don't make me be the only one, but Miranda's already been pretty firm about her disinterest in dates, so Emma doesn't feel compelled to say it aloud.
She knows Miranda's joking but she gets a little defensive anyway. "Well, there wasn't anywhere for queer wizards to go! And it's important they have a place for themselves, and know there's someone to talk to, and there's reasons." She manages to cut off before she gets too far down her usual soapbox road, and glances apologetically at Miranda. "Besides, obviously, girls being cute too."
"You, an actual celebrity, came to the first meeting," Vivian reminds her. "Maybe you don't realize how much easier that made everything for me? But. It did. You can do nothing, ever again, and still have done more than most people." She tries to smile. "So I get to praise you. Least I can do."
(The answer will be yes; Alli has less than no objection to hanging out with cute Gryffindor Quidditch players. But she also likes hanging out with her friends, so she's going for both.)
And then Emma's makeup. And then her jewelry. And then fusses over her hair, arguing that it's going to fall out if Emma doesn't pin it down with something, no, why would it have to be a pin, of course magic is fine, but it's going to fall down.
By the time they get to the ball room, it's become a running joke. Emma's been dubbed 'Wispyhead' and Jenny has been jokingly banned from touching Emma's head again for at least the next six months.
Vivian appears to pick up Karen all dressed up. She's not wearing makeup, because she tried to put on eyeliner three different times and finally gave up, but she has her hair streaks and her nice dress and, most importantly, she got an older student to magic her up a small bouquet of flowers. As soon as she spots Karen, she offers the flowers.
Meanwhile, Vivian is enjoying dancing quite a lot, even if she still has no idea what she's doing. She can't stop smiling; she suspects that' more her partner than the dancing, but it's probably a little of both. "This is fun! Even if I've never danced before and have no idea what I'm doing."