Dislaimer: If i had written Harry Potter, the Slytherins would have gotten a much fairer view. In other words, i don't own it.
Geth342: This is early, i know, but i might not be able to update tomorrow. Anyway, i might be able to update in less than 10 days, depending on how quickly i can do homework. So, any time between 30th- 2nd November is when i will update. Anyway, cheers to all my reviewers and readers. I apologise for the rubbishness of this chapter, but it is necessary. Hope you all enjoy regardless!
Chapter 9: The Trouble with News.
Everyone kept talking about the headline, making it clear that this was the news Langtree had told me about. After the fifth time of them asking why anyone would do it, I felt I had to intervene if only for my own sanity.
"Who is this guy anyway?"
They stared at each other incredulously. "You've never heard of Adam Etasyl?" Sandy asked. I shook my head. "He's the guy who owns the Iceblood broom company. You know that really new broom. He's also a high up member of some pure-blood society. It's impressive for someone so young. He's what, thirty?"
"Thirty-one." Devyn said. Another person from Zac's time. How weird.
"I heard his dad bought him half the company and research though." Max interjected.
"I don't get it though. What exactly is so special?" I asked, still confused. Okay, so he had been murdered, and that was presumably bad, but people get murdered a lot. Sad but true.
"He's rumoured to be untouchable." Sandy explained. "Like, there've been a few murder attempts but they've always been caught by him. And, recently, there's been some nasty warnings going around about anyone who tries to touch him. He had some pretty good protection."
"That's why this is so weird." Olivia added.
"Okay." I said, and thought no more about it for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, Professor Langtree thought it might be a good idea to bring it up the next day. We had just sat down for the beginning of double Charms when he grinned.
"Hello. Did you see the paper today?" He asked it generally but I knew he was directing it at me.
Everyone else seemed to have noticed it too. "Yes sir. We all saw it." I replied, desperately trying to get everyone else involved.
"So, class, any thoughts?"
"Where's the motive?" Clifford Andover asked. "How did the murderer do it?"
"I imagine he used the Killing Curse." Langtree replied. "As for the motive…I think that will be revealed tomorrow, in a way." He glanced towards me again.
"How d'you know what the motive is sir?" Devyn asked curiously. That was a really good point. In fact, I wondered, how had he known that it would appear in the paper at all?
"I have a friend on the investigation team," He replied smoothly. "I think it'll be in the paper."
"Can we have a hint?" Danny wanted to know.
Langtree smirked. "Do you know anything about Hogwarts in 2033?" A few people looked thoughtful but I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. This sounded like it was being directed at me.
"Hey sir, shouldn't we be doing Charms?" I asked before anyone could answer his question. Max nudged me in the side. Everyone else glared at me.
Langtree looked at me properly then, his eyes laughing. "Why yes, Miss Carew. We're just waiting for Professor Rowland who will be sitting in this lesson. So, until then..."
"I'm here." Someone said, walking down the room. I turned to look as Professor Rowland limped towards Langtree. "So now you have to start teaching."
He grinned, looking remarkably like a child who had been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. "That is correct Professor. So, class, we shall postpone this talk for now." Everyone groaned. "We'll do Charms instead."
He began to talk about the origins of the Charm we had learnt yesterday, where the words came from and the movement. He was very big on magical history and it reminded me of History of Magic- it wasn't very exciting.
Just when most of the Gryffindors (and a few of the Ravenclaws) had begun to doodle on spare parchment (Clifford Andover had a particularly good sketch of a comet), Professor Langtree drew his speech to a close by shooting off a loud bang with his wand, making us all jump. Once we were all paying attention, he began to explain the next Charm. This would make someone do a strange pirouette. Exactly why we would want to do this was unknown but he still decided to teach it to us.
To begin with, we went through the theory and wand movements. That took us up to the end of the first hour, and I had quite a few pages of notes by the end of it. Then, he decided that we should practice the spell.
"Professor Rowland," he called. "If you would join me down here?" Rowland left the student she was helping and limped down, smiling. "Okay class, now watch carefully." He drew his wand and uttered the spell. Rowland did a graceful twirl, red hair flowing, and nearly stumbled on her bad leg. Langtree struck an arm out to catch her.
There is a strange sensation when, for no apparent reason, a completely random memory or even a faked memory comes to you. Maybe you're sitting somewhere, reading and you suddenly remember your old teacher shouting at you or something like that. Anyway, that's what happened to me at that point.
One moment, I was studying the technique and watching Rowland laughing as Langtree caught her. And then, suddenly, I was eight years old again. The exact context was blurry but in my head, I was looking at two blurry people in black and white- a boy and a girl- sitting by a tree. The boy had his arm around the girl. The girl was laughing. And the pair were moving but they couldn't see me. The girl flicked her hair back, the boy yawned… they looked right through me. As though I wasn't there. As though I was invisible. But that was silly because, even then, I knew that I couldn't make myself invisible. I walked forward to see if I could attract their attention but…
"Holly!" Max hissed. "Wake up."
I jerked upright. "Was I asleep?" I asked in surprise.
He sighed, grabbed my arm and pulled me up. It was then that I realised everyone else was standing. "No. But you were staring into space. What were you thinking of?"
"Nothing." I muttered, dazed. "Just remembering something. So, we practicing the charm?"
"Yes."
I paused for a moment. "Um…Max…how do we do it again?" Having been focusing on my strange memory, I found that I couldn't remember what Langtree had been saying. Max groaned but dutifully told me how to do the spell. We spent the rest of the lesson taking it in turns to perform it on each other but, by the end of the hour, the best that we could do was make each other do a strange hop. Unsurprisingly, our homework was to practice the Charm.
As soon as we left the classroom to go to break, everyone began discussing the murder again. A few people looked hopefully towards our teacher but I pushed Devyn and the others out of the room before they had the chance, proclaiming a sudden desire to go to the courtyard. My friends were confused but followed me.
By the end of the day, I had a deep desire to wear ear muffs- I was absolutely sick of hearing about Adam Etasyl's murder. Yes, he was dead and yes, that was bad. But why did they have to go on and on about it? When they looked set to keep talking through the evening, I decided to write a letter to my parents. Even then, I ended up adding something about Adam Etasyl- after all, he had been in Zac's year.
I hoped that the talk would die down by the next day but, true to Professor Langtree's prophecy, there was even more information. This time, I read the article properly, noting that he had a younger brother who was distraught and that there was very little evidence near his body. Except for a note. And I have to admit, even I thought the note was strange.
Consider this payback for fifteen years ago.
You took their lives. You took mine.
Now I've taken yours.
This, of course, lead to even more speculation about the murder. Everyone had their own private theories. One of the stranger ones was that the murderer was a ghost who had been killed fifteen years before by Etasyl because he looked the wrong way at him. I couldn't quite see how this worked- how did the ghost pick up the pen?- but it didn't stop a few people discussing the possibilities.
To me, the link seemed a bit different. If Adam Etasyl was thirty-one, that meant he had been born in 2017, just like Zac. Unlike Zac, he had been in the Battle of the Snakes as he would have been in either his fourth or fifth year then. And, if you looked at the memorial, there were two names- so lives and not life. The murderer could easily have been making a reference to that. I mentioned this theory to my fellow Ravenclaws who all shot it down, apart from Sandy who admitted that there may have been an Adam Etasyl in the battle (but she couldn't remember).
I mentioned my theory to Lysana and Rune the next day. Rune looked blank. Lysana looked thoughtful. She said, slowly, that my theory was the most plausible one she had heard but she still didn't know who the murderer could be. When the mood became very sombre, Rune suggested we form a trio of detectives and investigate it ourselves, as well as asking Harry Potter to aid us. This led to us discussing the impracticalities of this and soon we were laughing.
After a few more days, it became clear that the newspaper was not going to give us any more information. Professor Langtree did not seem very inclined to do it either although his continual staring was making me paranoid. It had gotten to the point that even Danny- who would rather dance naked than be nice to me- asked him why he felt the need to always stare at me and could he stop because it was freaking him out (It was freaking him out, I thought. How did he think it felt to be me?). This resulted in Langtree looking two metres to my left for a few days.
Professor Rowland took over instead, although she, at least, was far more subtle, apart from her random conversations with me in the corridor. Sometimes, it would be no longer than 'Hi Holly.', 'Hi Professor'. Sometimes, she would ask me how school was and how my family or friends were. She was especially interested to hear about Lysana and Rune, obviously having worked out that this was the pair I had talked about all those years ago.
My parents did not reply to my letter for two weeks, which was a bit odd for them. When they did reply, they did not mention anything about Adam Etasyl for which I was thankful. Then I realised that Zac had sent me a short letter, saying that he had actually been friends with Adam and he was devastated to hear about the murder and if I heard any news, could I tell him? I replied back saying that Professor Langtree had taken to staring at me and there had been a note about the murder.
Thankfully, towards the end of September, the article was less discussed as very little new evidence had been found. It gave my ears a break.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
By the end of September, I shared Sandy's pain with the younger kids. There were a lot of them and they always seemed to feel the need to shout and scream. Apart from Sephy (who waved to me whenever she saw me), I tended to ignore them.
According to Sandy, the worst one of the lot was Darius Potter. He got in trouble a lot but punishment had no effect on him- he saw it as a badge of honour. Any admiration she had held for him had already disappeared. Faith Weasley had it even worse- she had grown up with Darius and found it hard to punish him. As a result, he thought it was funny to cause trouble near her.
However, in general, I didn't have much to do with them.
I finally got to help Sephy out on one Friday evening. I was leaving the library and walking back when I heard some voices.
"You're so dumb Green."
"Ooh, Zettel, I can't do this."
"Who can't read by the age of eleven?" The voices started sniggering.
"Shut up." A girl's voice sniffled. I walked onto the scene to see three Slytherin first-year boys surrounding Sephy, who looked like she was close to tears. "My brother will get you."
"Who, the mudblood lover?" One boy asked. "I'd like to see that." I bristled at the term. That was the point I decided to walk in.
"Hello, Sephy. We were wondering where you got to." I remarked, ignoring the boys who immediately started sniggering again.
She looked up at me, her eyes shining hopefully. "Hello Holly."
"Disgraceful." The tallest boy remarked. "She needs the Mudblood's help."
We both glared at him. "Watch your mouth." Sephy shouted, surprisingly loud for someone so shy.
"It's not a good idea to threaten someone older than you." I remarked softly. "Especially when they can curse you easily." I held my wand out, just to prove my point whilst wondering where my sanity had gone.
Unfortunately, my words didn't appear to be very threatening. One of the shorter boys peered at me and then asked curiously, "Aren't you Everett's girl?"
I stared at him, caught off guard. "Am I what?"
"Everett's girl."
It took me a few seconds to realise what he was asking. "No. I'm not." I stated flatly. "Get out of the way."
"That's not very friendly." The third boy- a very pale individual- remarked. "But then, Mudbloods have no manners."
"That's it!" Sephy shouted. Apparently, she was as temperamental as her brother.
"Watch out." The tall boy laughed. "She's gonna curse us."
"Bet she's too dumb to work out which end of the wand to use."
"Yeah, we could stand here for ag- oof." The boy who was speaking was suddenly cut off by Sephy head-butting him. She hadn't been able to get her spell to work and had resorted to physical violence instead. I'll give her this- she had more guts than I did.
The boys looked furious and drew out their wands. What they could do- having had very little tuition- was a mystery but I didn't really want to find out, so I used the leg-locker curse on the tall one and threatened the others with the same treatment. They didn't look quite so cocky anymore.
"Right," I muttered, trying to sound threatening and not quite managing it. "Apologise to Sephy."
"No thanks."
"Not a chance."
"Sorry." The taller boys turned to look at the short one who shrugged. "I'll apologise to her. Not apologising to the Mudblood though."
I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. You can leave if you want." I had no intention of making anyone apologise for that insult because, frankly, I didn't have the time to sit there and make them.
"Come on Baz." The pale boy muttered. "Or she might get Everett on us."
"My brother can handle him."
"Baz, your brother is too thick to remember the password to the Common Room. Let's just go." He glared at me. "I'm sorry, alright?" I shrugged.
"I'm not." Baz said. "I have some pride, unlike you bums."
I shrugged and began to walk away. Sephy, after a moment's hesitation, followed me. As we walked, I heard Baz trying to move and did consider going back for him, but I couldn't be bothered. I really hoped that his brother wasn't big.
Sephy and I did not say a word until we were in the Common Room. My friends had clearly been wondering where I had got to and bombarded me with questions which I avoided. Instead, I sat down with Sephy in a corner.
"Who were those boys?" I asked softly.
She looked away. "Herbology class." She muttered.
"Are you struggling with the work?" I asked carefully, fully aware that she could be offended by it.
She was. "Are you calling me stupid?" She demanded, although her voice was low.
"No. Struggling doesn't mean you're stupid. It means you're struggling."
"I'm fine."
"Oh. Okay." I started to get up. She stopped me.
"It's…it's a bit hard." She muttered, her face turning red. "But Professor Motran says my reading's getting better." I looked at her, my face not changing expression. "I just can't get the homework right. I read it but… I'm not very good at Herbology." She looked down, embarrassed, as though this was a deadly sin.
I smiled at her. "Everyone's bad at something. You should see my Astronomy work. It's awful."
"But Astronomy's easy." She pointed out before realising what she had said.
"Thanks." I said ruefully. She apologised. "If you want, I can go through some stuff with you or help you spell-check your essays?"
She smiled shyly. "That'd be nice, thanks. Um…if it's not too much trouble…" She seemed to be reverting to her shy self before my eyes. I groaned inside. I had absolutely no idea how to deal with shy kids.
"Of course not. I told you I'd help. Oh, actually, I have an idea. Rune Everett- your brother's friend- he's good at Herbology. Maybe you could get your brother to ask him to help." The idea had only just occurred to me, although as I said it, I had a feeling that Rune would expect payment. Or just wouldn't do it. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how stupid it was. But, by that point, it was too late to take it back.
"Isn't he your boyfriend?" She asked curiously.
I ground my teeth together. What was it with people that day? Did they all know something I didn't or were they just trying to annoy me? "Did you get that from the Slytherins?" I demanded. She nodded, looking as though she would rather be somewhere else. "No, he's not."
"Sorry." She whispered.
I sighed. And now I had scared her. She was certainly a strange girl- one moment she was angry, the next she was completely terrified. I couldn't work her out. And, considering I could usually work people out, it was a strange experience for me. "Don't worry." I muttered. "Now, do you have anything for me to check?"
She thought for a moment and then shook her head. I told her to give me a shout when she had something and we parted ways. I went back to the others.
I sat in silence for a while as they discussed some new law the Ministry was bringing in. Usually, I would put some input into it but all my stamina for the day had gone so, instead, I looked into the fire and thought.
I don't remember falling asleep but I must have done because the next thing I knew, Sandy was gently waking me up. Blearily, I opened my eyes and looked around the deserted Common Room. Rhian and Sandy were looming over me.
"It's pretty late." Sandy said in response to my unasked question. "Everyone else has gone to bed. We thought we should wake you up."
"Thanks." I yawned. "I'll come up now." I got up, grabbed my books and started to walk out to the dorm with them.
"So…Everett isn't your boyfriend?" Rhian asked innocently.
"What?" I asked, caught off guard.
Rhian and Sandy exchanged amused looks. "Everett isn't your boyfriend then?" Rhian repeated.
"No…" I said uncertainly. "Why would you think he was?"
"Well…you were muttering 'not my boyfriend. Rune's not my boyfriend.' It's slightly suspicious." Rhian laughed. I blushed.
"You know you can tell us, right?" Sandy grinned.
I shook my head as we entered the dormitory. "I'd believe the sleep talk." I muttered.
