Chapter One

Notes- the inspiration for this story came from the fact that several of my friends have been turning twenty one this year so with that and graduation there have been a lot of parties in my life in the last few months. The conversation that Hermione and Ginny have in this chapter is loosely based on one I had with my flatmate after a friend's twenty first and is the inspiration for the rest of the story. Just to make it clear 1. I have asked her permission for the use of the conversation 2. Our lives did not unfold like the rest of the story. But if young people get drunk in the real world why not in the magical world too?

The morning after the night before

Hermione sat at the large kitchen table that dominated the house she shared with her flatmate. The table was far too big for the room, but the pair have been given it by Hermione's parents and she felt as though giving it away would be like rejecting a gift. This particular morning found Hermione sat with a large coffee cup in her hand and the wizarding wireless chatting to itself.

The night before had been the biggest party she had probably attended in her life. It was her boyfriend Draco Malfoy's birthday. As the only heir to a sizeable fortune he had insisted on throwing a wildly expensive masked party at his large Bristol home. Hermione had rolled her eyes when he had first mentioned it thinking he would never pull it off. But she had acknowledged to herself last night had been amazing. The flat had been decorated as a mid-summer's party with full glades of trees, twinkling stars and the odd fairy. If Hermione didn't know better she would have thought he had been reading Shakespeare. However the morning after she was feeling the after-effects. She had found her best dress ripped when she woke up this morning. Her head was nursing a sizeable headache and she was missing a flatmate.

She had spent the last twenty minutes or so trying to work out when she had lost her. She knew they had arrived together. Hermione dressed in her favourite sky blue cocktail dress, the same one that lay ripped in her wardrobe: unlike some guests she had not bothered to change her appearance letting her soft brown curls down. She loved seeing the looks on the faces of certain girls when she revealed that she was dating Draco. Draco for his part did not change his body language but Hermione doubted he did not know the eyes that were following him. Ginny, Hermione's flatmate, had changed her appearance changing her normally red hair to nut brown and her blue eyes the same deep brown. Hermione had remembered seeing her dance with some boy around midnight but she had lost her after that.

The door of the flat opened and Hermione looked up as she poured her cold coffee down the kitchen sink. Ginny stood on the other side of the door. Her brown hair had patched of red coming through and her eyes had returned to their original colour.

"Where have you been?" Hermione asked Ginny her voice sounding a lot like Ginny's mother.

"Let me get in the door," she mumbled "then I will tell you." The door slammed rather ominously and Hermione realised Ginny looked like she had a headache that was at least as bad as Hermione's own.

"I lost you around midnight you were with some guy," Hermione scolded.

"Yeah well that's when things got interesting," she smiled despite her headache her voice that of someone who had either a bad cold or a bad hangover. "We errr what's the phrase?" She left a pregnant pause where Hermione despite not normally being a gossip had to bite her lip not to shout out.

"Hooked up," finished Ginny and in spite of herself Hermione felt her left eyebrow raise an inch or so. "Don't look at me like that," Ginny laughed.

"Who I am to judge?" Hermione smiled. It was true Hermione and Draco had hid their relationship for around six months hoping his parents wouldn't find had only been discovered when they had been found in a compromising position in a cupboard by Ron and Harry who had been worried after she hadn't returned from a late night revision session. "So?" Hermione asked Ginny smiling curiously at her "how was it?"

"It was," Ginny paused "good."

"Good?" Hermione asked statically her eyebrow raising again.

"Well amazing, fantastic and..." her voice trailed off and despite her headache she drifted back to last night.

"Ginny, Gin, hello," Hermione snapped her fingers in front of Ginny's face and the spell was broken.

"Sorry," she said "I'm in work today," she remembered.

Ginny worked for the Daily Prophet newspaper in London. She had only been working there eighteen months and so far the most exciting thing she had done was read an owl from one of the members of the Weird Sisters. Most of the work involved making drinks and reading correspondence. Nevertheless she normally enjoyed her work and hoped at some point she would have her chance to be a writer.

By contrast Hermione was a trainee healer, her days were long and arduous. She had been looking forward to Draco's party for months, she knew her job today would be particularly hard: a healer with a hangover was not a good combination. Twenty minutes later both girls were a work. Six hours later they both thought they had easily had the worst day at work in a long time. Ginny spent most of the day daydreaming and amongst other things managed to cut her hand with a letter opener. Vowing she would learn the spell to open letters she headed home in a fowl mood. Hermione however had instead of curing a young wizard who had transfigured his arms into wings had changed the man into a bird then spent forty minutes chasing an emu around the halls of St. Mungos. Needless to say both girls fell into their beds that evening.