Chapter 7 – The Third Task

Fortunately, it seemed as though we were the only ones who had been caught. Fawkes was restored to his ashes and chirped happily as we were seated in front of Dumbledore's large desk. He smiled at us, asking Filch to leave, his eyes twinkling.

"So I suppose there's a good story behind all this," Dumbledore said kindly, leaning back in his chair and waiting for one of us to speak. It took a while to get the whole story out… well perhaps I had left out some details, yet he had looked at me knowingly as I skirted around revealing the what the first task had been.

"Yes, there has been great tell of Merlin's magic teapot," Dumbledore said finally, and I let out a breath; glad that he had believed me. "Lost for a decade, I believe this is one of the first objects to be enchanted by Merlin. Indeed, he would have found the concept funny especially seeing as he must have been about your age at the time." Wow. Well that would explain a lot. Namely, the first task.

"I can see this will not stop you from breaking more school rules to satisfy the teapot, nevertheless, you will both be receiving detentions for the duration of the week," Dumbledore said, to be met by a groan from Sirius and a sigh of relief from myself.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"That will be all," Dumbledore replied, popping a lemon drop into his mouth. We left the headmaster's office hurriedly, careful to avoid eye contact with Filch who had been waiting outside.

The next day, we were informed in transfiguration on the time and whereabouts of our first detention by Professor McGonagall. This sent Milana into a pissy state which Sirius seemed oblivious to. As we went to collect the feathers we were supposed to be turning into jellybeans, Milana shoved me forward when she walked by. In turn, I stepped on the heels of her shoes, causing them to slip off. Returning to our desks angrier than when we had left them, we began trying to turn our handful of feathers into jellybeans which proved to be more difficult than we thought. Not only were we supposed to make it look right, but the taste was suppose to an elementary jellybean taste like strawberry or raspberry. I was partnered with James and Lily with Remus, I felt bad for Peter, who had ended up being the odd one out.

"Verto esca!" I humored myself, waving my wand half-heartedly. James on the other hand was doing magnificently, or so I had thought until I tasted one of his beans. After chewing for a second or two, my taste buds rejected it and in an effort to get the taste away, I swallowed it and gagged, choking. "Water!" I choked out to James before coughing several more times, my face turning red. "I am so going to kill you," I said when he returned, and downed the glass of water within a matter of moments. I sputtered, then my throat seemed to relax.

"What is going on over here?" McGonagall said tersely.

"I ate one of James's beans."

"Well maybe if you had been more focused on performing the spell and less on consuming its effects, then your feathers would not be feathers any longer." She walked away, and I narrowed my eyes at her, mumbling. It is not as if I could help it! It was pointless trying anymore. I'm in her house, why does she have to be so hard on me? I spent the rest of the class lost in thought; repeating the words verto esca forcefully and tapping my feather impatiently. So when the bell rang, I had got up, not paying attention to anything, not noticing the newly transfigured bean sitting on my desk.

Seven o'clock was ticking closer and closer yet Sirius still hadn't arrived. I was beginning to wonder if he'd come at all. We supposed to be in the care of magical creatures classroom, feeding amiruns and cleaning porlock cages.

"Here!" Sirius announced, giving Professor Kettleburn a smile. The rolling of my eyes was stopped as I noticed Milana had come in after him. She smiled at my, eyes glistening darkly.

"Why is she here?" I asked.

"Got a detention in Divination. I fell asleep," Milana said, grinning. I doubted that. Very. Much.

"Why don't you three start over there," Professor Kettleburn said kindly, indicating the amiruns. It sounds easy yes? Wrong. Amiruns are highly useful creatures. Their sap is used to bind the magical properties of substances such as acronite fluid and neem oil as a separate entity in a potion. This is all good and swell, however, Amiruns are an anorexiant breed. They don't eat enough food to sustain themselves, so they reproduce and die at a young age, rendering their sap production an insufficient supply. To keep them alive long enough for them to mature for ample sap, they must be force fed their diet of bugs and worms.

I put on my gloves, then grabbed a handful of writhing insects and starting on the first amirun of the group. It clenched its jaw tightly as I tried to pry it open with bar I had found on one of the shelves. In the end, I managed to force it to open its mouth by blocking its seven air holes. Satisfied, I looked over to where Milana and Sirius were standing. She hadn't touched a single bug or made any effort towards an amirun. Instead, she stood there by Sirius squealing excitedly as he finally stuffed several handfuls of grub into its mouth. Just wait for it, I thought, you two really have no idea how to deal with amiruns, do you? Unlike myself, they hadn't forced the amirun to chew and swallow, so their victory was cut short by their amirun spitting the bugs back out. Most of it landed on Milana, for she had flung herself around Sirius when celebrating their victory, therefore shielding him.

She let out a deafening shriek, letting go of Sirius quickly, her eyes widening. She was frozen in fear, and she would have been laughable but I could tell she was terrified. Sirius just stood there in shock, a white maggot squirming on top of one of his curly dark brown locks. I walked over quickly to Milana who looked close to tears, and mercifully, I brushed the ones on her hair off and took off her black wizarding robes and let them fall into a heap on the floor. When they were all off of her she squatted outside shakily, puke on the ground next to her.

When I returned from taking Milana back up to her room to grab a change of clothes and maybe a shower as well, Sirius had already siphoned off any bugs left on him with his wand.

"How is she?" he asked, awkwardly.

I rolled my eyes. "Not good. At least she probably won't ever fall asleep in class again. Lesson learned, right?"

He remained silent and we started to clean up the mess on the floor. Professor Kettleburn had told us we were to continue tomorrow but that we had done enough today, so we put everything back to where we found it and left quickly.

"Ambrosia?" he called from behind me and I turned. "Er, thanks. I hesitated back there and I guess I just didn't know what to do right then." I nodded, walking shoulder to shoulder with him in silence.

"Hey, did you get your next task yet?" he asked. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper, handing it to him.

Task Three: Camp out in the forbidden forest for a night.

"That's not so bad," he laughed.

"Easy for you to say, you don't actually have to do it." Sirius was suspiciously silent, so I looked over to see a mischievous grin on his face.

"No, no, no, no," I moaned at the determined gleam in his eye.

A/N: So I've become more organized, hence individual chapter posts. I have a general idea of what will happen next so I don't necessarily need to post chapters in clumps? I also have little parts of it already written. Oh hey also, I found this really cool chrome extension that does this search and replace thing on pages so if you don't like the name Ambrosia you can replace every 'Ambrosia' with a name of your choice. I've been doing that with some fanfictions because there are some over-used names on here…

Oh, I almost forgot, there isn't a bit of Sirius/Ambrosia progress in this chapter, however, I promise the next one will. :}