Quidditch League Season 5, Round 9: Bats, Chaser 1

Prompt: Broom: Write about a witch or wizard gaining freedom.

Additional prompts: 2. (word) defeated; 13. (dialogue) "Should we tell him that it's fake?"; 15. (word) slate

Words: 1061

Disclaimer: The characters you recognize belong to JKR, those you don't are mine.

Listen Here

Theo Nott had the misfortune of being born a pureblood. He had the misfortune of having a father who was an avid supporter of Lord Voldemort. He had the misfortune of being present at Hogwarts when the Death Eaters invaded the school for the final battle. He had followed the direction of the Deputy Headmistress and gone to the dungeons with most of the Slytherin students. There most of them stayed and became sitting ducks. When the battle was over and Voldemort had been defeated the Aurors merely went into the dungeons and arrested them all. The first years were arrested and the seventh years were arrested. Every student in between was arrested. Now all were in a large holding cell in the Ministry of Magic. Benches had magically been conjured for the students once someone noticed sitting on the floor after hours of standing. The little ones were being held and cuddled by the older students. All the preconceived notions of what a Slytherin was were thrown out the window when the reality of the situation struck home. The older boys still tried to maintain the façade of stoicism, but no one quite succeeded.

It had grown dark when there was a commotion in the hallway. Voices were loud enough for everyone to hear, however they all stopped talking and whispering to better hear what was going on.

"What do you fools mean that you locked them all up? They aren't criminals! They are children!" The voice was familiar, but the yelling tone was not.

"You had them locked in the dungeons." A deeper voice responded. "We assumed they had been committing a crime."

The first voice exclaimed, "No, you idiots! Don't you know what they say about assuming? They were locked up there for their protection."

Someone asked, "What about assuming?"

The fourth voice replied, "Assuming merely makes an ass of you and me."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh," the first voice sarcastically replied. Then in a classroom voice that could only belong to Professor McGonagall, she asked, "Who told you where to go and arrest them?"

"Dawlish told us to round up any uninjured students and Filch said he'd locked the delinquents in the dungeon," the second voice said. "We thought he wanted these arrested."

"Merlin help me, but Snape was right! You are all a bunch of dunderheads." McGonagall went on, "They were to be taken to the Great Hall to be fed."

"Why were they locked up when the other students weren't?" voice four asked.

"The other students were sent out to safety through a tunnel to Hogsmeade. Granted some came back, but many met their parents and were taken home. These students' parents were, for the most part, fighting and they had no one to protect them." Professor McGonagall's voice was beginning to give the same tone she used when she was getting ready to subtract copious numbers of house points.

"But we weren't told," voice two answered.

"You didn't ask, did you?" The sharpness of the tone was increasing and someone was a going to be hexed if they didn't stop whining. All the students knew this, but the Aurors had obviously forgotten it. "Now release them to me and escort us to the floo so we may go back to Hogwarts."

"But Professor, we don't have authorization to do that," the whiny voice three started.

The students snickered because they all thought they knew what was going to happen next. Instead they heard the Professor cast her patronus and send a message to Dawlish to get his "skinny arse" here now. One by one the students started chuckling and soon all were laughing.

"Damn, I didn't know McGonagall had it in her," laughed Pansy Parkinson.

"Wouldn't want to be in Dawlish's shoes when he gets here," chortled Alan Davis.

They heard no more talking in the hall. There was pacing back and forth. There was murmuring, but no one was talking out loud.

"Professor McGonagall," Auror Dawlish greeted as if he was merely taking a walk in the park and meeting an old friend. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing incarcerating my students?" the indignant lady commanded.

"We found these on in the pockets of the students," Auror Dawlish replied, covering for his men and holding out a handful of ears.

Professor McGonagall knew immediately what they were. "Where, pray tell, do you think the students got them?"

"We assumed that they were taken off victims," was the quick answer.

"What's going on Minerva?" the bass voice of another man was added to the mix.

"I'm trying to get my students back so I can feed them and let them get some sleep." She answered sharply. "Kingsley, they seem to think the students have been taking ears for trophies."

"Why would school children do that?" the man asked.

Dawlish answered, "Because somebody did that to George Weasley. I think it's a new Death Eater fetish."

"Excuse me?" the teacher chuckled. "You think that school children are going around cutting off ears of their opponents?" He held one out to Shacklebolt.

Kingsley Shacklebolt could barely keep a straight face and had an almost Dumbledore-like twinkle in his eye. "Should we tell him that it's fake?"

"Fake, how can these be fake? Just look at them!" shouted Dawlish.

"Fred and George Weasley sell them at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. They are called extendable ears. If you will notice there is a button on one end of the flesh coloured cord that is attached to the ear on the other end. You put the button in your ear and you put the ear where you want to eaves drop on conversations," Minerva explained. "Now release my children and let us floo back to Hogwarts. That floor you have them sitting on isn't getting any softer and unless you've fed them, it's been more than twenty-four hours since they've had food."

There was a short pause and more murmuring and then McGonagall said, "Kingsley, please make certain that all of these students have a clean slate. I should get out of here before I catch a load of the stupidity that is going around."

Theo couldn't believe his eyes when the door opened. All the students shuffled and rose to their feet, picking up their cloaks that they had been sitting on. "May we have our wands, please?" he asked. "And I need my ears back."