The Rest of the Slytherins
'If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins."
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 32.
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The characters and basic plot belong to JK Rowling. Words spoken by some of the characters have been borrowed from 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'.
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I
Blaise
Human Transfiguration to and from
a) objects
b) plants
c) animals
I do wish Head Boy Draco My Father Malfoy would stop pacing . Round and round and round and... He'd make me giddy if I was watching him. But I'm not.
c) animals (like ferrets)
Something is going on and Head Boy Draco My Father Malfoy knows it because he has the Mark. And he wants us to ask, so he paces round and round and round with a worried look on his face. It works with Crabbe, Goyle and Parkinson. Not with me.
d) humans
a) Objercts : When a human gets Transfigured into an object, the result will be different, according to whether the human in question is a wizard or a Muggle
Besides, the Mark looks obscene on his delicate porcelaine arm. On my arm, it would look like engraving on a bronze plate. If that didn't make Mother respect me, I don't know what would.
When a Muggle gets transfigured into an object...
I know I could concentrate better if I went to the dorm to study with Nott, but I don't want Head Boy Malfoy to think he's disturbing me or something.
Besides, if something's going on and it involves the Dark Lord...
Bing, bang, oof, poof. Old Sluggy bursts in. In pyjamas. I knew something was wrong.
"Malfoy," he says.
Malfoy stands still. At last.
'He Who Must Not Be Named is on his way to Hogwarts. The students are to be gathered in the Great Hall to be evacuated."
"Why evacuated?" asks Pansy.
"Professor McGonagall's orders."
"She's not in charge," snaps Draco, in that tone of his. "What does Professor Snape say?"
Sluggy sighs.
"Just do as I say, for once."
Sluggy looks tired. It must be serious, for him to be wandering around the dungeons in pyjamas.
"Pansy, get the girls," says Malfoy.
She jumps up.
"Zabini, get the boys."
What am I, your house-elf?
I... mark... my... page... and... close... my... Trans... fi... gu... ra... tion... book.
He's glaring at me. I glare back.
I. Get. Up. And. Walk. To. The dormitories. After all, it might be an emergency.
It probably is.
I burst into the seventh year dorm.
"The Dark Lord's coming ! We're evacuating !"
Nott looks up from his book.
"Why?"
"Dunno. Sluggy said."
Quietly, he gets up and pulls on socks, shoes and travelling cloak. I bang on the other doors.
"Up, everybody ! The Dark Lord's coming ! We're evacuating !"
While they panic and scuffle, I pull on my own shoes and cloak.
"Death Eaters too?" asks Nott.
"Dunno."
His father is a Death Eater. Since he came back from Azkaban half dead, Nott has been quite jumpy.
Fathers are overrated. Especially when they're in the Death Eating business.
We reach the common room just before the great scramble. Malfoy is barking orders and everybody is running around madly. Then, slowly, student by student, Slytherin house trickles out into the dungeon corridor.
The seventh years leave last : Malfoy, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle and the girls, Pansy, Tracey, Daphne with her little sister and Milly with her cat. And yours truly.
Sluggy is waiting in the Entrance Hall.
"Everyone here? Did you make sure, prefects? Come on, then."
He's still in pyjamas.
Students from the other houses are filling the Great Hall. We close ranks around the Slytherin table, the Bloody Baron hovering protectively over our heads like one of the Muggles' patrol helicopters.
McGonagall is standing on the platform.
"What's she doing there?" asks Daphne. Daphne hates things and people not being in the right place.
"That's baaad," says Pansy, scratching the polish off her nails.
"Where's Snape when we need him?" grumbles Malfoy.
Professor Snape is nowhere to be seen. Nor are the Carrows. Pansy's right : that's baaad.
"You might want to hear what's going on," hisses Nott.
"Prefects, when I give you the word, you will organise your house and take your charges in an orderly fashion to the evacuation point."
"And what if we want to stay and fight !" yells Macmillan.
Please do, Macmillan. We could do with a laugh.
"They've killed Professor Snape !" whimpers a second year.
"And the Carrows?" says another.
'Where's Professor Snape?" shouts Tracey.
"He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk."
The common phrase? Done a what?
The idiots are all clapping. Now I know why we are evacuating.
"We're stuck with Sluggy," groans Malfoy.
"And the old hag," adds Pansy.
"I don't think we should call her that," says Tracey hesitantly.
"Why not? Old blood traitor, old-"
"Last time I called her an old hag, Professor Snape made me scrub cauldrons."
I am about to explain to her that her cauldron scrubbing probably had nothing to do with old McG when a high, cold voice speaks out of nowhere.
"The D-Dark Lord," whispers Nott.
Malfoy is as white as a ghost. Could this Junior Death Eater be afraid?
"Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched," says the voice. "Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."
Potter? Potter's here? Everybody is looking at the Gryffindor table and I can't believe it : bloody Potter is standing right there.
"Potter's here ! Someone grab him !" screams Pansy.
As if. What they all do is stand up and draw their wands in our direction. Milly's cat hisses and she holds onto it for dear life. If a single bloody Gryffindor sets a finger on Checkmate (that's what she calls it, though I have never seen her play chess), hell will break be fun, actually.
"Now you've done it", whispers Daphne.
"Thank you, Miss Parkinson," says McGonagall. "You will leave the hall first with Mr Filch. If the rest of your house will follow."
We certainly would, Madam Craneface.
To use the common phrase, we'll do a bunk.
No need to say, she gets called things worse than 'old hag' and Professor Snape doesn't make anyone scrub cauldrons.
Sluggy catches up with us in the Entrance Hall.
"Upstairs. Follow me."
"Upstairs?"
"Aren't we evacuating?"
"Miss Parkinson, you are a disgrace to the title of Head Girl," says Sluggy.
That really sets her off.
"They're putting everyone's life in danger just to protect Scarface's a-"
"Pansy, don't talk like a Muggle !" snaps Daphne.
"I don't care any more ! I"ll say whatever I want ! They're sacrificing the whole school for a little prig who came here knowing nothing and who think he's better than us for who knows what reason-"
"Calm down, Miss Parkinson," pants Sluggy. "He Who Must Not Be Named is on his way."
"He wants Potter, he can have him."
She's still ranting when we reach the seventh floor, long after old Sluggy has lost his breath. He stops abruptly and leans against the wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. I half expect him to collapse, but the wall collapses instead, revealing the entrance to a large room all decked up in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw colours.
"I'm not going in there," says Pansy.
"You are, if you don't want to get killed."
The Weasley girl is there, swinging on a hammock in front of a tapestry of the Gryffindor lion. She is pointing to a door on the side.
"You ! It's all because of your bloody boyfriend, you filthy little blood traitor !"
Pansy lunges at her, but Sluggy gets there first and puts a shield around the Weasley girl. He's quicker than I thought.
"In you go, in you go," he pants. "Prefects... Where's Draco Malfoy?"
Malfoy has disappeared. So have Crabbe and Goyle.
"I highly disapprove of Snape's choice of Head boy and girl," mutters Sluggy. "No time to look for them. Your safety comes first. Get the first years in."
There are a lot of first years : the Dark Lord decreed that the house system should disappear progressively, so there has been no Sorting this year. All the kids have been put in Slytherin.
Pansy doesn't want to go. She wants to look for Malfoy, but Slughorn won't hear of it. Three missing are quite enough, he says, and there's nothing she can do to hlep Malfoy. Then Milly drags her through the door into the tunnel. Milly doesn't need magic that much. She's as strong as Hagrid.
We light our wands and help the younger students down a steep slope.
'Where are we going?" asks Nott.
"To Hogwarts, then home" says Sluggy, sliding happily down in his pyjamas.
"I'm not going home," says Nott. "If there's going to be a fight, Father will be here."
"I'm not going home either," I tell them.
Mother doesn't want her honeymoon with What's His Face disturbed because her son got kicked out of school by a bunch of fanatics. Besides, What's His Face will end up like the others, so the least I see of him the better.
"The other seventh years are going to fight, McGonagall's letting them," says Pansy. "That idiot Macmillan..."
"If Macmillan and Longbottom are fighting..." says Daphne.
"And the Abbot girl," adds Milly.
"Then we should fight too," concludes Daphne.
"Fight?" repeats Daphne's little sister.
"Not you, you're too young."
"I'm only two years younger than you."
"You heard McGonagall : you can fight only if you are of age."
"Since when do you listen to her?"
"I am responsible for you. Mother and Father won't want you to fight. Tell them," she adds proudly, "that I stayed with the Dark Lord."
"Me too," says Pansy, just as proudly.
The tunnel ends in The Hog's Head. The barman who looks like Dumbledore gives us filty looks.
"Disgusting place," remarks Pansy, trying to turn up her nose like Madam Malfoy. It doesn't work because her nose is all fat and squashed.
"Now," says Sluggy, "The children must get home. I am sending word to people in various parts of the country. How many of you can Apparate?"
I find myself surrounded by a cluster of little clutching hands. I am to get them to London by side-Apparition, supposedly because the Floo is under Ministry surveillance. I don't see why the Ministry wouldn't let me repatriate these kids, but again Sluggy says, "Do as you're told," in that tired voice.
"I'm coming back," I tell him.
"We all are," says Daphne.
As I show the kids how to hold tight and turn with me, the Ravenclaws burst out of the tunnel.