Chapter Three
Hogwarts
September 8, 2017
The first Friday of the term was welcomed with open arms by all who had survived it, namely every student save for one first-year Hufflepuff who had had the great luck of falling completely through the trick stair on the stairwell that formed a shortcut from the fourth floor to the second. Finding his inability to rid the school entirely of the step quite infuriating, Professor Longbottom visited the young Hufflepuff in the Hospital Wing. Neville had fallen prey to the step on several different occasions during his time as a student at Hogwarts, and so he knew the pain quite personally.
On his way from the Hospital Wing to the Great Hall, Neville stopped in the Entrance Hall to check on the house point totals. Nearing the end of the first week, the totals were dismal, but that was to be expected. Most house points interactions that happened during the first week were usually either scolding the older students for breaking rules they knew better than to break, like magic in the corridors, or rewarding first-years to give them a quick confidence boost to send them off into the rest of their first term. The houses were sitting nearly even, all around thirty points, with Hufflepuff in the lead by two. It was far too early to even venture a guess, though since Slytherin hadn't won the cup in nearly thirty years, the options were considerably narrowed.
Neville turned to make his entrance into the Great Hall, but stopped quickly as he heard some distant shouting. He walked over and glanced down the History of Magic corridor before sighing and continuing down it.
Victoire parted ways with her Head of House as they entered the Great Hall. She quickly scanned the nearly-empty Gryffindor table for a friendly or familial face before sitting down alone near the middle. She didn't mind being alone in most situations, but the Great Hall was a breeding ground for gossip and mild-mannered pranks on those sitting alone, and despite her status as a seventh year, she just didn't feel up to taking it all on. The doors to the Great Hall opened again and she looked up, hoping to see someone coming her way but instead locked eyes with Sawley, who returned her stare with eyebrows raised in defiance before turning his back and sitting at the Hufflepuff table. Victoire pulled a book out of her bag and gave it her full attention while waiting for everyone to arrive and dinner to be served. Fortunately, Victoire was pulled out of her reading a few minutes later by a loud HUMPH as someone sat down heavily across the table.
Eleanor Bones was a seventh-year Gryffindor, Keeper on the Quidditch team, Head Girl, and the only relatively good friend Victoire had ever made from her year. She sported the familial angular face and sand-colored hair, and had the largest eyes with the longest lashes Victoire had ever seen on a human. Eleanor was, in fact, quite beautiful.
"Bones, I'll thank you to practice a bit more charm and grace in my presence." Victoire said, hiding a grin behind the pages of her book.
Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Not today, my friend. Not today. Here it is, the first week of classes, and I've already been purposely tripped by a first-year Slytherin, had two prefects completely disregard my position, and then today of all days McGonagall stops me in the hallway to let me know that if I disappoint her with my authority, she'll reconsider the position for next term?"
"No!"
"Unprovoked!" Eleanor sighed, slumping against the table and resting her head on her hand. "I don't know about this seventh-year business, V. I don't know about it at all."
Victoire frowned as she put her book back in her bag and scooted it underneath the bench she was sitting on. "That sounds like a rotten week and I hate it for you."
The rest of the school was slowly streaming in, as it was well nearing time for the dishes to appear. Lucy, Anne, Molly, Louis, and James all entered the Great Hall together, but the latter two joined another group of Gryffindors further along the table. Louis gifted Victoire a jolting peck on the back of her head in passing. She casually waved along after him, but secretly appreciated the gesture of affection from her youngest sibling. He must be in an extraordinary mood today, Victoire thought, glancing down the table.
Frank Longbottom came in soon after and joined the four Weasley girls and Eleanor, kissing Eleanor on the lips as he sat down. "Hello Ellie, I haven't seen you since breakfast."
"Why Frank, I do believe you're forgetting that break before Charms when we went looking for my earring in the broom closet."
Frank laughed, his face flushing. "Right."
"And then, you know, Charms itself."
Frank rolled his eyes. "Riiiiight."
Victoire smiled. "Frank, you know I do believe it's time for you to defend Eleanor's honor."
Fred Weasley joined them at the table. "Who's run off with Ellie's honor this time? Ouch!" Fred frowned and rubbed the arm that Eleanor had punched for such a comment.
"Apparently, some first-year purposely tripped her earlier this week."
Fred's eyes widened. "A firstie with cobblers that large? Improbable. We'll have to nip that one in the bud quick-like."
"A Slytherin first-year, no less." Victoire supplied.
Frank leaned back in his seat, guffawing. "Oh ho ho, we'll take care of it. You just point out this little git to us, love."
Eleanor sighed. "As Head Girl I cannot condone … whatever it is you've got planned."
"We're just offering him a little guidance, Elephant." Fred said as the food appeared and everyone began filling their plates.
Eleanor sighed at both the nickname and the excuse, but her reluctance to participate seemed to disappear as she turned to look across the room at the Slytherin table. After a few seconds of scanning, she turned back to her friends. "Easy. Fourth from the door on the far side of the table. Frizzy red hair."
Everyone looked up at once, even Anne, Lucy, and Molly who had been engrossed in their own conversation with a fourth-year boy named Leigh. As seven pairs of eyes locked in on the perpetrator and six mouths gasped "what?", Rose Weasley looked up from her Shepard's pie to see half of her family members staring at her in disbelief from across the Great Hall.
"SLYTHERIN!"
Rose's heart lurched, seemingly looking for the nearest exit. Face flushing, Rose stood up and made her way to the Slytherin table. Despite the sudden clamor coming from the rest of the students about a Weasley in Slytherin, Rose only heard her father's voice in her head. Any house but Slytherin, Rosie. We'll disown you if you're in Slytherin. She was going to have to have a word with Uncle Harry. She had practically begged the sorting hat to place her anywhere but Slytherin, but it didn't seem to appreciate the severity of her wish.
Rose sat down, feeling the rest of the Slytherin house watching her carefully. Rose looked down at the empty table space in front of her, not daring to look over at the Gryffindor table.
"It's alright," a voice whispered from across the table as the sorting ended. "I was supposed to be in Ravenclaw." The girl was small and bony with a pale face, straight black hair and almond shaped eyes.
Rose looked up from behind the long red hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. "What d'you mean?"
"All my family's in Ravenclaw. Not a single witch or wizard's been placed elsewhere in over two hundred years." The girl grinned. "My mum always said I was a trendsetter."
This made Rose feel a little better, but by a small margin.
"I was supposed to be in Gryffindor." Rose whispered, not wanting any other housemates to hear her. Her new friend nodded.
"I know. You're a Weasley. You're all in Gryffindor."
"Not all of us," Rose sat up straight, suddenly feeling defensive. "My cousin Dominique is in Ravenclaw. She's a fifth-year. And my cousin Albus just got sorted in today."
Rose was shushed by a nearby prefect. Headmistress McGonagall was finally at the podium.
"My sincere apologies for the delay. Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts!" The student body cheered. "I imagine you're all quite famished, so I'll leave you to it shortly. But first, a reminder: no one's to leave the hall before the end of the feast, as the house-elves are still graciously taking care of everyone's belongings, and there's a few announcements to be made. Cheers!" McGonagall stepped away from the podium and sat back down at the professors' table.
As the din slowly rose to a normal volume, Rose looked back at her new friend, clearly to resume their earlier conversation, but the girl spoke first.
"Eliza Krane," she said, offering her hand across the table. Rose took it and shook it firmly. "Rose Weasley."
The two girls smiled.
After the feast and McGonagall's yearly announcements, the Slytherin prefect who had shushed Rose and Eliza stood and motioned for the first-years to do the same. "First-years, this way. I'll show you to the dungeons."
Rose gulped. She had heard legends upon legends about the Gryffindor tower, the Ravenclaw tower, and the Hufflepuff basement next to the kitchen, but never had she thought to ask about the Slytherin dungeons. A group of eight first-years followed the Slytherin prefect across the Entrance Hall and down a small flight of spiral stairs until they reached a solid stone wall.
"Black Bat." The wall gave way, stone by stone, to a short corridor, which lead out into the Slytherin common room.
The Slytherin common room was a miniature version of the Great Hall – long and narrow, with high ceilings reaching two or three stories above – except there were no tables, and everything was dark sculpted stone and beautiful, ancient wallpapers. The main seating area was a group of low-backed black leather couches centered around a towering fireplace, but there were smaller sitting circles and reading areas with plush black fur carpets and solid floating bubbles that gave off a soft yellow light. The rest of the light, however, gave a green tinge to the room as it came from the demanding windows on the far side of the room, which Rose slowly realized gave a relaxing view of the lake, but from underneath its surface. The glass wasn't clear – Rose ventured that it might have been made out of sea-glass – so it looked thick and threw the light around the room in soft flashes with the lake's waves.
"Are we under the lake?" a boy asked as they all stood in a group near the middle of the common room.
"Yes," the prefect replied, "the Slytherin common room and dormitories all stretch out underneath the lake. You'll find that the seventh-year dormitories are the furthest out there, providing the older students with a panoramic view of the bottom of the lake."
Rose and Eliza looked at each other with widened eyes, but the prefect continued. "The password changes each fortnight, and will be posted on the bulletin over there. I suggest you not forget it, as you will learn that not every older Slytherin takes kindly to first and second years, especially when they've forgotten the password. The girls' dormitory is on the left and the boys' on the right." She pointed to two small staircases on either side of the hall. "Your dormitories will be found inside of the first doors on both hallways. Curfew is at nine o'clock sharp for your first term, but changes to ten in your second. If you've got any further questions, don't be afraid to find me." And with that, the nameless prefect made her way up the stairs to the girls' dormitory.
The group stayed congealed for a few moments until each student decided to do some further exploration. Eliza and Rose followed two other first-year girls up the short staircase to a long hallway, entering the first door on the right that sported the number one hanging on a nail. Rose, forgetting her earlier anxieties about being in Slytherin, gasped as she entered the dorm room. She thought the common room (and even the hallway – with the stone walls and wooden doors on one side and an entirely sea-glass wall on the other, another window to the lake stretching the entire length of the hall) was beautiful, but it paled in comparison to her new sleeping quarters. It was a large, square room, with the same tall sea-glass windows and sculpted stonework on the walls and columns (mainly depictions of snakes.) There was a large window seat in the middle of the far wall, piled with pillows and blankets to cushion the cold stone it was carved from. The beds were sturdy four-posters, but the mattresses sat only an inch off of the ground and the curtains were make of silk the same shade of green that emanated from the windows, bordered with the darker Slytherin green and silver. While the four beds in the room were generously spaced for privacy, and the ceilings seemed to reach into the heavens (quite literally – the ceilings here sported the same enchantment as on the ceiling of the Great Hall), the room didn't feel cold or unwelcoming. There were thick satin rugs laid sporadically around the room and beside the beds, and Rose suspected a warming charm at work. After what seemed like hours of gazing at the calming beauty of it, Rose turned to Eliza and their two other roommates.
"This is bloody amazing." She said bluntly, and the three other girls agreed.
Eliza introduced herself first. "I'm Eliza Krane. What are your names?" She asked, locating her trunk and opening it.
The blonde girl spoke first. "I'm Persephone Greengrass, but Persephone is cumbersome. Everyone but my gran calls me Percie."
Rose kicked off her shoes and climbed onto her bed across from Eliza's. "I've got an Uncle Percy."
Percie giggled and curtsied. "Uncle Percie, at your service." Everyone laughed.
"I'm Pippa Zabini." The last girl said in a small voice. She had coarse black hair and a small button nose. She was unpacking her trunk as well, setting her nightstand up and stocking her drawers with clothes and unmentionables.
"Zabini?" Eliza asked, pausing and turning to the girl. "Is your father's name Blaise?"
Pippa nodded. "Yeah, why?"
Eliza smiled. "I've heard my mum talk about your dad, I think. He asked her to the Yule Ball their fourth year."
"Sounds like dad."
"Did everyone's parents come to Hogwarts?" Percie asked.
Rose nodded, but stayed silent. She wondered if the rest of the first years were discussing familial lineage as they unpacked their trunks, or if this was a particularly Slytherin practice. It felt formal and potentially calulative, so Rose was leaning towards the latter.
Percie closed her trunk, seemingly done with unpacking for now, and sat on top of it. "My mum was a Slytherin too."
"What about your Dad?" Rose asked.
"He didn't go to Hogwarts."
"Oh wow. Of course I'm glad to have come to Hogwarts, but after hearing all of the stories I feel like I've already experienced it. It would have been amazing to go to somewhere like Beauxbatons."
Percie stayed silent, but Pippa spoke up again.
"My mum was a Slytherin too. Tracey Davis was her name, then. What about you, Eliza?"
"My mum was a Ravenclaw, Cho Chang. She married a muggle, though, and my grandparents weren't too happy about it. They were happy when I got my letter. They were afraid I'd be a squib."
Percie grinned and looked over at Rose. "Well, Weasley?"
Rose groaned and flopped over onto her back. "I'm a Weasley, isn't that information enough?"
"There are a lot of Weasleys." Pippa quipped.
Rose sighed. "My mum's Hermione Granger and my dad's Ron Weasley."
Percie gasped. "We didn't realize you were that kind of Weasley!"
"And what does that mean?" Rose rolled off her bed frowning.
"It means Hermione Granger was your mum. And Ron Weasley was your dad." Eliza explained, "Harry Potter, the Golden Trio? Do you not know how many history books they've been written into?"
Rose relaxed a bit and shrugged. "It's just mum and dad and Uncle Harry to me."
Eliza laughed, collapsing onto her bed. "Oh Rose, so modest."
"The entirety of our mum and dad's generation fought in that war, Eliza. It's hard to find someone whose parents weren't a war hero."
Pippa and Percie stiffened, glancing at each other quickly and then looking down at their feet.
"You forget the company you're in, Rose."
Rose flushed. "Right. Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."
Percie shrugged one shoulder and shook out her ponytail. "S'alright. Things are different, now. None of us are our parents."
Eliza grinned. "Definitely not." And Rose agreed.
Rose awoke to find her roommates already up, quietly moving around to get dressed. She smiled as she heard the same wooshing noise coming from the lake against the window that had lulled her to sleep. Even if the big picture of being in Slytherin was still causing her to worry, at least she felt calm and happy in her dorm room with her new friends. Rose sat up in bed and yawned.
"Good morning, sleepyhead. We were about to wake you, it's almost time for breakfast."
Rose fell back onto her pillow and rubbed her eyes, momentarily thrown off by the politeness everyone in the room was showing her. While Hugo was a milder demon to deal with, she often spent nights with her cousins who showed very little respect for the sleeping after they woke up.
When she realized the other girls were nearly ready to leave, she shot out of bed, grabbed a towel from her trunk and screamed "Ten minutes! Just wait ten minutes!" before running into the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later found the foursome entering the Slytherin common room, only to merge with the first-year delegation from the boy's dorms.
"Morning, Zabini." said a white-haired boy that Rose knew to be Scorpius Malfoy. He had stark white hair like his father, a pinched nose and something Rose could only refer to as a "butt chin."
"Hullo, Malfoy." Pippa replied.
Rose and Eliza followed behind as the others continued towards the rock wall that held the exit from the common room.
"Malfoy is possibly the ugliest creature I've ever seen." Eliza whispered.
Rose giggled.
The eight new Slytherins chatted their way through breakfast as if they had known each other for centuries. Near the end, Professor Bullstrode, the Slytherin Head of House, came walking down the table, handing out the term's timetables.
"What've we got, Rose?" Percie asked as Rose was the first out of the bunch to receive hers.
"Potions first with Gryffindor, and then Defense Against the Dark Arts with Ravenclaw after lunch."
"Just two today, then?" asked a boy named Peter Flint.
"Right," Percie answered, now looking at her own. "Then tomorrow we'll have Charms and History of Magic. Wednesday's a load of bullocks, we've got Potions, Herbology, Flying, and Astronomy!"
Scorpius smirked. "I've got no need for that flying class."
"Don't be an arse, Malfoy." Pippa replied quickly, not looking up from her breakfast. "Nearly everyone's been on a broom before."
Peter and the boy sitting beside him, Argo Bletchley, glanced at each other and grinned.
Scorpius frowned at Pippa. "And what's up your arse today, Madam Zabini? Mad your house elf's not here to feed you breakfast with a silver spoon?"
Pippa raised her head and glared at Scorpius for a long while before returning to her breakfast. Everyone remained silent, and Rose made a mental note to never put herself on the receiving end of Pippa Zabini's glare.
Three hours later, Rose found herself huddled over a steaming cauldron of purple goop with Eliza, hair frizzing visibly by the second, faces staring concernedly into the pot. They jumped with a start as their professor spoke for the first time in the class.
"You'll find that if you followed the directions written precisely on the board, your potion should be a clear yellow broth at this stage." Professor Bullstrode walked up and down the isle tsking as she looked into each pot. When she got to a pair of Gryffindors consisting of Tabitha Brown and Sarah Lane, she stopped.
"This is truly remarkable." Professor Bullstrode commented as Rose groaned. The purple puss in the cauldron in front of her was starting to undulate. "I've never seen such a simple set of directions so carelessly disregarded. Tell me, Ms. Brown, what brought you to the conclusion that batfly wings would be a nice addition to the potion primer that I asked for?"
Everyone's heads quickly snapped to look in the direction of the Gryffindor, whose face was flushed as red as the Gryffindor banner.
"I wasn't a-aware, P-Professor. I thought I added in lacewig."
"Lacewig is a plant. Batfly wings are part of the anatomy of a batfly."
"Professor, the vials in the storage cabinet weren't labeled, we just assumed-
"Ms. Lane, this was a test, and you have failed. Two points from Gryffindor." Half the students groaned.
Eliza stirred the cauldron once more, looking over at Rose worriedly. Professor Bullstrode slowly made her way over to their table. Rose hoped that Professor Bullstrode was of the old Slytherin variety, just this one time, and only took out her aggressions on the Gryffindors. Hopefully her father wasn't lying about that Slytherin trait.
"Ms. Weasley, Ms. Krane. Which one of you sneezed earlier?"
Eliza slowly raised her hand.
"Let this be a lesson in the exactitude of potions making. Undoubtedly part of your sneeze was directed into the potion, rendering it unusable. You might want to clear it away before it advances any further. I wouldn't want to clean up what's coming next if I were you."
Eliza and Rose looked wide-eyed into their cauldron, whose contents were now changing colors rapidly and bubbling wildly.
"Bugger." Eliza whispered, sitting back on the bench. "I think we're about to be covered in purple snot." She quickly turned off the flame underneath the cauldron.
And within seconds, they were.
Pippa Zabini had been raised classically, or so her Grandmother called it. At age four she began piano and lessons in ballet, and by age ten she was fluent in French and Arabic. Strict control over Pippa's early education had been an unspoken gift to her paternal grandmother from her parents after her father married a white witch from Liverpool. Pippa sometimes pulled out the family photo album to look at the first extended family photo with her mother in it – a small white speck in a sea of dark black skin. She inevitably looked out of place. But skin color was not what her grandmother had been objecting to. The Zabinis came from a long line of dark skinned Mediterranean witches and wizards, mainly located in Italy but a few (like Pippa's grandmother) hailed from the northern coast of Morocco. The Zabini clan held claim to one of the oldest and purest bloodlines in the wizarding world, reaching as far back as the Egyptians and the cradle of civilization. Pippa's mother, Tracey Davis, was surely pure-blooded, but her branch of the tree was snubbed as "new magic." Somewhere along the tree, they had split off from the imitable House of Bones.
So while Pippa was raised in high Wizarding society on the coattails of her grandparents and sent home at night to a warm home and coddling parents, she slowly rubbed away at the façade that the pureblooded families had thrown up at the end of the Second Wizarding War with Voldemort. Underneath their new inclusive platform lay years of rot and Pippa had spent enough time around it for that rot to become a part of her. She knew that blood status didn't a good wizard make, but she also knew that family history was still relevant, and class was still important. So when Pippa made friends with Percie at the age of eight, and her grandmother disapproved, Pippa was confused. Percie had private tutors, came from an older wizarding family (her cousin was Scorpius Malfoy for Merlin's sake), and never embarrassed her parents in public. In private, Percie and Pippa got along famously, and so she thought surely she had made a great match. She never really understood her grandmother's disapproval of Percie, but she reasoned it had something to do with her father's absence. As long as Ms. Greengrass said he'd been a pureblooded wizard from northern Africa, it didn't matter who it was, right? Having a child out of marriage with the right person mattered less than having a child with the wrong sort. Pippa was sure of it, and so the friendship continued.
At lunch that day Pippa and Percie sat in confidence with Eliza Krane and Rose Weasley, their roommates. They were company her grandmother would have approved even less of (blood traitors and half bloods) but Pippa didn't mind. She felt much freer under the roof of Hogwarts.
Pippa had barely sat down when Eliza clapped her hands and emitted a short squeal. "I'm SO glad you're all here. I must tell you – I'm in love."
Pippa stared at the young girl across the table with a blank face. "In love."
"Yes, in love. Hopelessly. I tried for a horribly long time to not be, but it's unavoidable."
Percie snorted, stirring her rice pudding. "It's Monday." Rose and Pippa laughed, but Eliza frowned.
"I swear, if this is how this friendship is going to work, I'm not for it! I'll leave right now and for the next seven years the dormitory will be an awkward and silent place to be!" Eliza pushed away from the table and made to stand up, but Rose clasped a hand over hers on the edge of the table.
"Eliza, please, we're sorry," Rose said, still grinning.
Eliza rolled her eyes. "You look it." She sat back down despite the absence of sincerity.
"Do tell us who it is," Percie took a bite of her pudding and looked up smugly. "so we can row this boat along."
Ignoring her friends' disbelief once gain, Eliza turned to look at the Gryffindor table. "He's sitting over there with the shaggy black hair."
Rose turned around as well. "At the Gryffindor table? Please don't tell me you're talking about James. He's my cousin! He's wretched."
"No no no no no," Eliza smiled dreamily, turning back to her friends. "his name is Frank. Frank Longbottom."
Rose sighed, dropping her head hard against the table as Pippa and Percie strained their necks to get a better view.
"The one sitting next to the blondes and red heads? Merlin, he's surrounded by women. He looks quite older, too. Bad luck that is, Eliza."
"He's dating that blonde. His father is also our Herbology teacher." Rose explained, sitting back up on the bench to eat the rest of her lunch.
"Professor Longbottom, really?" Percie tilted her head to one side, looking quite contemplative. "I guess it makes sense, same name and all."
Pippa looked sideways at her best friend in wonder. Finally, "I always knew you had some smarts in there, Perce."
"Sod off, Pipalina."
The two girls grinned, but Eliza was suddenly in a state of panic.
"He's seeing someone?"
Rose nodded. "Her name is Eleanor. She's Head Girl, I'm quite certain she's good friends with my cousin Victoire."
"We have to get rid of her."
"Eliz-"
"No! I have a plan." Percie leaned in, looking sinful. "I'm quite good with plans."
Rose and Pippa groaned, sliding out of their seats and making an early start to the first Defense Against the Dark Arts hour of the term.
The excitement of the DADA lesson far surpassed the level of their potions class earlier that day. They were beginning right off the bat with a workshop in beginner's dueling, which everyone found fascinating. Rose stunned a dummy target three times out of her four tries, which was two more than most of the rest of the class excluding Pippa.
On their way back to the dungeons before dinner, Eliza and Pippa popped into the toilet, leaving Percie and Rose lingering in the hallway outside.
"So, Rosie, how do you reckon our first day of schooling has gone? Let's rate it, one through ten. You go first."
Rose thought for a moment, leaning her side on the wall. "I suppose this morning, waking up, was about a two, but breakfast was stellar so I'll give it an eight. Potions was a firm four, lunch was about an eight as well, and Defense Against the Dark Arts was a definite nine. I'll round it off at a solid five or six, which is as good as any first-year could hope, really."
Percie laughed. "You gave both mealtimes the second highest scores."
Rose shrugged and laughed. "What can I say, I appreciate the culinary arts."
"Right. Okay then, I'm going to give it a seven, because nothing went horribly wrong besides getting splashed with a few of Eliza's manufactured bogies, and the shower in our room has excellent water pressure."
"It's like magic, right?" Rose smiled.
"Right. Like magic."
The two laughed for a moment until they heard students coming down the intersecting hallway. Hearing something that piqued her interest, Percie leaned around Rose and the corner to get a better look at who was coming. As her face re-entered Rose's line of vision it sported a highly suspicious grin.
"What?"
"Rose Weasley, are you ready to be the best friend ever?"
Rose looked skeptically back at Percie. "What are you-"
"There isn't much of a choice. Get ready to run!"
Rose sputtered and moved back against the wall as Percie lunged forward and slid her foot into the hallway as an unsuspecting someone came around it, tripping over Percie and landing with a hard thud. Before Rose knew what was going on or who was splayed around her feet, Percie silently disappeared into the loo behind them.
Rose looked down at the sandy-haired girl who was now looking back up at her with a very, very large frown on her face. "What in the bloody hell- hey! Where're you going off to! Come back! I'm Head Girl, you can't just-"
But Rose was gone, sprinting down the hall and into the dungeons.
"Fifteen points from Slytherin!" Eleanor screamed at the quickly vanishing first-year.