The Slytherin common room is absolutely packed tonight, the dungeon air thick with firewhiskey fumes, sweat, and the kind of chaos that only happens when someone decides to host a party before the holidays actually start. Music blasts from somewhere near the far wall, the bassline rattling through the stone floor and up through your shoes. Green and silver lanterns pulse in rhythm with the beat, casting everything in that familiar underwater glow.

People are packed in everywhere—sprawled across the velvet sofas, perched on armrests, leaning against bookshelves that definitely shouldn't be used as seating. A group of third years have somehow commandeered the corner near the fire and are attempting to stack empty butterbeer bottles into a tower that's already wobbling dangerously.

Someone yells something unintelligible from across the room. Another person yells back. Neither of them seems to understand the other, but they both laugh anyway, and someone else spills their drink celebrating an argument nobody won.

Kai Crouch is standing near the window with Mattheo Riddle, both of them in the middle of what looks like an extremely animated conversation about something Kai keeps gesturing wildly at. Mattheo's got that look on his face like he's either about to laugh or throw something, hard to tell which.

You're wedged between a group of fifth years arguing about Quidditch rankings and the armchair where Lorenzo Berkshire is currently trying to explain something to Theo Nott—Theo looking moderately entertained, Lorenzo looking like he's running out of ways to make his point.

And then Pansy Parkinson comes barreling through the crowd like she's on a mission. She's fighting past shoulders and elbows, skirt swishing, one hand holding a blindfold made of what looks like deep green silk. She spots you from across the room and her face lights up with that specific look—the one that says she's about to drag you into something and doesn't care if you're ready for it.