We're finally hitting the double digits!
Can't believe it's already chapter 10. It's all going by so fast.
I know, it's kind of shorter than usual, but I actually had a really hard time writing this one. Anyways, Review, review, review, review!
I don't know why.
It would make me so incredibly happy!
Read and enjoy!
The last week of the term had been magical, if anything could be magical under the circumstances. Hagrid had dragged in the usual gigantic Christmas trees. Flitwick had decorated them with gold and silver baubles, faeries, and snow. Garland had been wrapped around the banisters, mistletoe planted on the inside of doorframes, and large icicles hung off of the ceiling and alcoves.
Of course, Amycus and Alecto had gone through and ripped down every last decoration. In retaliation, Peeves and a few members of the DA had taught the knights how to sing carols in obscene and rather inappropriate ways.
Give us a break. We had to do something.
The Carrow siblings weren't the only ones that were lost to the holiday spirit. Draco Malfoy strutted around the castle docking house points for laughing too loudly, gave detentions for girls loitering under the mistletoe for too long, and even went as far as to threaten a pair of first years with expulsion for hugging outside the Charms classroom.
I kept myself busy the rest of the week by avoiding Draco like the plague. If he had given a second year girl detention because she sneezed without covering her mouth, could you imagine what he would do to me if we happened across each other in an empty hallway? Yeah, I can't either.
I stayed up extremely late walking the corridors with Seamus and Padma and woke up extremely early to get to breakfast before anyone else was awake. Because it wasn't just Draco Malfoy I had to worry about anymore.
Once Pansy Parkinson and her cronies had caught wind that Draco and I had ended our relations, not only had she began following Draco around like a lost puppy, but she also upped the ante on the number of times she could make my life miserable in a day.
Needless to say, I stayed out of everyone's way for the most part. Except…remember that night a week earlier when I had accidently dropped a bucket of paint out of a window and onto Malfoy? Well, it was an accident that it landed on him, not that I had tossed it out the window.
Anyways, evidently being covered in blue paint was NOT something that Professor McGonagall approved of, even during the last week of school. Neither was being out after curfew. Which was something she caught Seamus and myself doing…along with Draco Malfoy.
So, that's how I ended up sitting in detention (with McGonagall, who didn't bother reporting it to Amycus or Alecto) with four hours to go before the train left the platform. I was only seven minutes into it and I was dying. My feet and the legs of my chair had to be on the floor at all times. No turning around, no talking, whispering, making noises, distracting hand gestures or body language, no gum, no loud tapping, no food, no nothing. I'd probably get written up for breathing too loudly.
To hell with a holly, jolly Christmas. Let's just stick 'em in detention!
Draco was glaring at me from across the room, making sure to stare at me until I felt his vision. I turned my head to look at him, cocking my head to the side as if to challenge him. He shook his head softly and rolled his eyes, which wasn't the reply I was expecting to get.
"What?" I said out loud, forgetting where I was and that I wasn't allowed to be talking aloud.
Professor McGonagall's head snapped to attention, glaring at me from the front of the classroom. "Was there something you wanted to say, Miss Garcia?" I was fairly convinced that she had hated me ever since I wanted to see what would happen if I scared the raven we were working with in the fifth year. It took her half an hour to get it settled back down.
"No ma'am," I replied quickly, praying internally that she would just leave me alone.
She didn't. "You realize there is no talking in detention, correct?" she asked, placing her hands on the desk and pushing herself out of the chair she had been seated in.
"Yes ma'am," I answered as she walked up beside my desk, leering down at me.
"So you knew, but you still opened your mouth and spoke?"
Seamus and Draco were watching the exchange intently at this point. Seamus had a rather blank look on his face. Draco looked like Christmas had come a few days early.
"I'm sorry ma'am but I-" she threw up her hand to stop me from talking, which was fine and dandy, because what would I have said? She magically produced a piece of chalk and, with it, pointed at the chalk board at the front of the classroom.
"You will write 'I will not speak during detention' two hundred times on the board."
"Professor McGonagall? Don't you think that's a little cliché?" It was only an observation, but she had to go all postal on me.
Her nostrils flared and she narrowed her eyes at me. "Are you contradicting me, Miss Garcia? Because if you are then you can write it three hundred times. Or I could give you another detention."
I stood up and snatched the stupid chalk from her hand, grumbling angrily as I stalked past her. She looked slightly disappointed as I started writing my sentences.
I waited until Professor McGonagall was completely focused on Draco and Seamus to stop and shake out my hand. As I was taking a quick break, I noticed that I spelled my last 'detention' wrong. I went back to erase the extra 't', when I had an idea. Professor McGonagall couldn't see me and I had about one hundred eighty three "I will not speak during detention's" to go. Hey, why not.
My next sentence read: "I will not spoke during detention."
Then: "I will not speak during distraction."
Professor McGonagall was examining some papers on her desk, but after my fifth silly sentence, which read "I will not choke during flotation," Seamus's head tilted to the side. He squinted at the board for a moment before his face cleared and his mouth twitched at the corners.
Meanwhile, I was having a good old time writing stupid things, until I was halfway through and had a bunch of sentences that looked like this:
"I will not fork during inflammation."
"I will not croak during agitation."
"I will not blink during irritation."
Seamus was having a silent fit at his desk, biting his bottom lip and going from pink, to red, to blue, to purple, and back again. Even Draco was having a hard time keeping a straight face at this point. Luckily Professor McGonagall remained blissfully unaware of what I was doing until I was entirely finished with all two hundred sentences, each stating something different and equally ridiculous.
Finally looking up from her desk and noticing her color-changing pupil, who was now a funny orange color, Professor McGonagall spun around. She squinted at the board just like Seamus had, but trust me, she wasn't laughing.
"What", she said, slowly rising from her chair and strutting over to jab a finger at a sentence in the middle of the board, "is this?"
It was my turn to squint. "I believe that says 'I will not fart during constipation'.
A burst of laughter had Professor McGonagall turning to see Seamus rolling around on the floor gasping for breath. When she turned back to me her features were set in stone. "Explain—now."
I shrugged, "Grammatical error?"
"Can't say you didn't deserve it."
The train was trundling through open fields filled with snow. We passed quickly through as if the train were on a thin sheet of ice. I was so glad to be on my way home. It was the first time in seven years that Padma and I had, very literally, sprinted from the platform and onto the train.
I glanced out the window. We had entered a dense forest, where the snow barely graced the ground despite there being at least six inches just on the opposite side of the trees. "Thank you, Padma. Remind me to add that to the list of reasons I should smother you in your sleep."
I turned back to the parchment in front of me, filled with two hundred sentences for Professor McGonagall. Padma was on her stomach on the floor working on her Ancient Runes homework while I sat on the bench working on my five thousand lines of "I will not mock my teachers and will show respect to my peers at all times." No grammatical errors, due the first day of term. I was beginning to wonder how I got myself into situations like this.
"Don't blame me for your stupidity," Padma said quite unkindly, pushing one of Seamus's runaway chocolate frogs off her Ancient Runes book. "You always do things without thinking them through, and I always tell you to think before you act, but do you-"
"Yeah, I don't need the lecture. I get it already," I cut her off, trying to soothe the painful cramp in my fingers.
Padma snorted. "I don't think you do. I don't understand you. Why do you go looking for trouble? It's not like any good would come out of it."
I sighed, wanting to change the subject. Seamus's second chocolate frog hopped out of the package and onto Padma's homework once again. She brushed it off, smearing the chocolate across the parchment.
"Damn," she muttered as she licked her finger and tried to un-smudge the stain. Seamus, who had a guilt-ridden expression plastered on his face, took out his wand and pointed at Padma's homework.
"I can get that chocolate out for you if you want!" He moved forward off the bench, but Padma scooted the parchment away from him. As if on cue, bright golden sparks flew from the end of his wand.
"You will not touch this," she said fiercely, glaring at him from under the blanket of black hair that was spread over her Ancient Runes book.
"Where did Neville, Ginny, and Luna go?" I asked suddenly, my brow crunching in the middle. I had just realized that they had been missing for a long time now. The train left the dense forest and was rolling through a small village filled with large empty gardens and fields full of animals.
Padma and Seamus shrugged their shoulders, turning back to their previous activities. Seamus started to peel open another chocolate frog package, while Padma started to decode another Ancient Runes assignment.
I sighed again. It was an incredibly long train ride. The seats weren't that comfortable. There was only candy on the trolley the plump witch brought around. My butt was starting to hurt. Seeing all the cows outside wasn't bringing me much joy. Neither were the sentences McGonagall assigned to me
I stood up, stretching my back and spreading my arms into the air. "I'm going to stretch my legs. Use the bathroom. Whatever."
I slid open the compartment door and pressed my back up against the train wall to avoid running straight into a group of second year boys staring into a compartment filled with sixth year girls. I rolled my eyes as I passed them, shaking my head lightly.
I headed toward the bathroom, not really sure where to go at this point. I wasn't too keen on running into Draco at this point…especially after the detention earlier today. He wasn't too fond of me either.
I stood in line for the bathroom, directly behind a third year boy who evidently had waited way to long before leaving his compartment. He bounced up and down in front of me, his hands clasped awkwardly in front of his bladder. He rushed into the next available stall, pushing past a small first year girl who had been waiting ahead of him.
"Hey!" she yelped as she caught her balance against the wall next to the stall. "I was here first!"
He didn't say anything to her as the lock clicked into place behind him.
"That was rather immature of you this morning," a voice behind me muttered into my ear. I jumped in place, spinning around to glare at the person behind me.
"Oh…I thought we weren't on speaking terms anymore," I said to Draco. His face changed from a smirk to a sneer in an impressively small amount of time. I turned back around to wait for the first open bathroom.
"We aren't, Garcia." He snapped at me. It was my turn to smirk. I really loved to wind him up. "Especially after McGonagall sent us on Christmas break with five thousand lines thanks to you."
A bathroom opened up and, without another word to Malfoy, I headed in that direction. Unfortunately for me, he followed. I upped my walk to a brisk jog in order to beat him to the empty stall. Just as we both reached the door, the train came to an abrupt stop, sending us both crashing into it. The door banged shut behind us.
"For all that is good and holy in this world…" I muttered to myself as I shook the bathroom door. It was locked tight. I jangled with the lock for a moment before giving up. "I would be stuck with YOU in a bathroom stall."
Draco righted himself, standing quickly from the toilet seat. We were crunched in, my face barely a few inches from his chest. I held my breath, not wanting to smell his sharp cologne.
"If you weren't being such a bitch, Garcia, then we could have made this time worth our while."
I rolled my eyes at his comment, backing up against the stall wall until the toilet paper dispenser was digging uncomfortably into my lower back. Even then, that barely gave me an inch more room to work with. A crack accompanied with heavy footsteps just outside the stall door resonated through the corridor.
"What the hell is going on out there?" I asked mostly to myself as I tried to maneuver my body closer to the door. I stopped quickly when I realized I would have to get closer to Draco in order to press my ear against the door.
"Death eaters," Draco said shortly. Anger flashed across his face as he turned his head away from mine. If I wasn't mistaken, I thought I caught a glimpse of fear in his eyes.
"Check everything!" a muffled voice said from the other side of the door. A few more footsteps stomped away from the bathrooms. Gasps of surprise and horror echoed from the closest compartments before they were blocked out once again by the shutting of the compartment door.
"Alohomora!"
The bathroom door swung open, revealing a large, masked death eater blocking the only way out of the stall. He stared down at us for a moment before shaking his head.
"Can you let us out of here?" I asked quite snottily. "I'm stuck in a bathroom stall with the Blonde Boy Wonder with no thanks to-"
Draco placed a hand over my mouth for the hundredth time it felt like. The death eater let out a low growl before shutting the bathroom door and locking it once again.
"You and that mouth, Garcia," he sighed as he leaned against the bathroom wall. "You really need to control that-"
"I FOUND HER!" a low shout reverberated throughout the corridor, effectively cutting off Draco's lecture. A high pitched scream sent a shiver through my spine. Draco and I looked at each other in surprise.
"Not Luna!" I heard Neville shout. There was a scuffle before another loud bang, followed by the sound of the compartment door slamming. "LUNA!" Neville continued to yell as he banged on the glass. The locks clicked open and, without another look toward Draco, I rushed out of the stall and into the corridor.
Just in time to see a terrified Luna in the grasp of a large, bald death eater. The last thing I saw was a quick spin, followed by the whipping motion of her long, blonde hair and his black robes.
Then, she was gone.