A/N: None of the recognizable plot, people, etc, belongs to me, non-profit etc.
A/N2: The consensus online is that a roll of parchment is about 15 inches, and that's usually what people sell them in increments of now a days as well, so that's the assumption I'm using for this fic.
A/N3: Thank you thank you to: DwellingOnDreams7 and TamariChan for your reviews on chapter nine. I love reviews so much! I thought when I first published it that I wouldn't care what people wrote about my story—but I do ^^, it's somehow more exciting to write and publish when I know someone is reading, so thank you from the murky blue places in my soul. That said, would it be annoying if I responded personally to each review at the beginning of every chapter like some writers do? Should I respond in a private message? Anyway, thank for everything.
The Pureblood Pretense:
Chapter 10:
Sunday began less optimistically than Saturday, but much more creatively. Rigel was up before even the sun, quietly gathering her school bag and leaving her two roommates dozing quietly behind their velvet hangings. She had a tentative plan in mind that had the benefit of appeasing her curiosity while also helping her finish Flint's essays. Map in hand, Rigel made her way carefully through the basement corridors, which were above the dungeons, but below the ground floor. She had already explored some of the basement with Pansy on their first walk, but they'd only gotten as far as the Hufflepuff common room before heading up to breakfast. A part of her, the part that liked to glory over secret Potions knowledge in the dark of the night and the part that would rather do important things alone, in case they went badly, than accept the help of a friend, was glad she would be exploring this next corridor of the basement alone.
The still-life portrait was hard to miss, being several times larger than she was, but even though the Map was clear about what to do next, Rigel felt extremely foolish as she stretched out her right hand toward the bowl of fruit. She copied the tiny figure on the Map and tentatively tickled the giant green pear. It giggled, which was perhaps more starling than it should have been, and Rigel thought she saw it grow an eye and wink at her before the portrait swung inwards. Rigel grinned in undisguised triumph—there was no one around, after all, and besides—she'd just found the kitchens.
Unexpectedly, and in flagrant disregard to the probabilities of architecture, the kitchens were at least as big as the Great Hall. Taking in the five long tables, situated in exactly the same manner as the House and Staff tables, Rigel realized the kitchens must be exactly beneath the Great Hall, and that food was somehow transferred vertically up through the ceiling once it was placed on the tables in the kitchen. Also unexpectedly, the kitchens were a great deal noisier than the Great Hall during meal times, which Rigel hadn't thought even magically possible. Pots and pans were being whisked from surface to surface by house-elves, clanging and occasionally crashing into one another. There was a huge fireplace that roared impressively every time the grate was opened to add something to the pots of stew levitating over the flames. Rhythmic chopping and slicing noises came from elves cutting vegetables and timers seemed to go off every few seconds, blending together in a way that Rigel would have found impossible to keep straight. Yet, woven through the chaos, there was order, or at least there seemed to be some kind of plan. The elves danced around one another, apparently thinking nothing of bare-misses with sharp knives and boiling hot sauces, in a kind of beautiful pageantry that it would have taken humans years to even choreograph, much less attempt to execute.
Rigel stood uncomfortably to the side, intimidated by the sense of purpose all the house-elves were displaying, and definitely not wanting to cause a snag in the whole process by interrupting one of them. Within a couple minutes, however, and with no cue that Rigel could pick up, a house elf with a pink tea cozy around her waist and a necklace of champagne corks broke from the ranks and cheerfully approached her.
"Hello," the house-elf squeaked, curtsying gracefully, "We is very sorry for the wait. What can Binny do for you?"
"Hi, Binny," Rigel crouched down so she was on Binny's level, "I don't want to bother you if you're busy making breakfast, but I was hoping someone here could help me with something."
"Binny is not busy, Binny is on her…" the house-elf moved her face closer, whispering, "break," like it was a filthy word.
"Oh, well, I wouldn't want to take up your break, either," Rigel said uncertainly, unable to tear her eyes from Binny's luminous gaze.
"Oh, please, Young Sir," Binny glanced around nervously, "Dumblydoor is making us take breaks from cooking every hour, but you is not needing help cooking, is you?"
"Well, no-"
"Then Binny is helping you!" the elf squealed happily.
Rigel smiled ruefully at the happy little creature, "Alright, I won't tell Dumbledore if you won't."
Binny made an exaggerated zipping motion across her lips, bouncing on her toes excitedly. She reminded Rigel of a cute little five-year-old girl, and Rigel had to sternly remind herself not to talk down to the elf, who was probably much older than she was, anyway.
"I need to disguise myself," Rigel explained, "Not for anything bad!" she added, seeing Binny's look of dismay, "I'm not going to use it to break any school rules, I promise, but I need a uniform that doesn't have a Slytherin crest on it."
Binny frowned dejectedly into Rigel's face, "We is not supposed to be helping students with mischief."
"It's not even for mischief," Rigel said, "I'm going to use it to study, actually."
Binny blinked slowly, "You is telling the truth. Binny can tell."
"Then can you help me?" Rigel smiled imploringly at the house elf, "You guys do the laundry, right? Surely you could let me borrow another student's dirty robe, if I bring it back tonight so it can be returned?"
Binny shook her head fiercely, her ears swinging wildly, "No, no, no. We can't be giving you other students' dirty clothes."
"Oh," Rigel sighed, "I understand. I wouldn't want to get you into trouble."
Binny bounced nervously on her feet again, then froze, a look of fearful enlightenment dawning on her expressive face. She darted suspicious glances at all the other house-elves, none of whom were so much as glancing their way, then leaned even closer and said, "Is you losing one of your robes?"
"What?" Rigel whispered back, frowning in bemusement.
"You is!" Binny squealed loudly, and Rigel jumped with surprise, "If you is losing a robe, you is coming with me! The lost and found pile is right through here!" Binny pitched her voice above the clanking of dishes and winked broadly at Rigel before taking off through the melee. Rigel scrambled to keep up, ducking and even jumping various bowls of food as she followed Binny over to a door on the other side of the kitchens.
She emerged in a much quieter, but not much smaller room, which was filled with huge vats of water and lined on every side by labeled laundry bins. There had to be at least one for each dormitory in the whole school, judging by sheer numbers. Binny was waving her impatiently toward the right side of the room, where there was a large bin nearly overflowing with clothes that was labeled "Lost and Found."
"Here you is," Binny grinned triumphantly up at her, "Since you is wanting to find some robes, you must be losing them first. There is all kinds of lost things in here, and maybe you be finding something you is losing in here, yes, Young Sir?"
"Ooh," Rigel smiled back at Binny, "Yes, how silly of me, I'm sure I lost something I need to find in here. Thank you, Binny." She surveyed the bin critically. It looked like there was everything from Quidditch uniforms to high-heeled shoes inside. It was perfect.
"You better be taking anything you is finding," Binny said seriously, "If you is coming back for it later, it is maybe not being here."
"Do people usually come back for their things, then?" Rigel pursed her lips, she didn't like the idea of stealing anything someone actually wanted.
"Oh, no, Young Sir," Binny shook her head for emphasis, "No one is ever coming for these things, but they is going sometimes."
"Going where?" Rigel asked curiously.
"To the Room of Lost Things," Binny said matter-of-factly, "If it is being lost for long enough, or if it is being lost on purpose, it sometimes is going to the Room."
"How can you lose something on purpose?" Rigel wondered aloud.
"Maybe you is not wanting to be finding it again," Binny shrugged her bony little shoulders.
"Or just not wanting anyone else to find it," Rigel said thoughtfully, "It sounds like a room for hiding things. Interesting."
"Hiding or losing, if you is wanting to find something from the bin, you is not wanting it to go there, is you?" Binny said logically.
"I suppose not," Rigel smiled, "Thank you, Binny, you've been really helpful."
"You is welcome," Binny cocked her head at a sound Rigel didn't catch, "Binny is going back to work now. Good luck with your finding, Young Sir."
Binny left toward the kitchen at a happy run, and Rigel turned toward the Lost and Found bin and eyed it determinately. Time to find a disguise that would fool the Library troll. She began the painstaking (because she only had one good hand) process of taking things out and sorting them into two piles; one pile for things that looked like they might fit her (and weren't totally out of place, like the hoop skirt or the coattails), and one pile for the things that clearly wouldn't work. By the time she had gotten to the bottom of the bin, she had enough for several different disguises, which would be good in case Madam Pince unmasked one of her disguises unexpectedly.
Rigel now had one school robe for each of the other three Houses, complete with House crest on the chest pocket and colored ties to match. The sleeves on all three robes were long enough to cover her bandage, but not so long it was obvious they weren't hers. She found a pair of glasses that were just a little crooked, which she kept, and a fake handlebar mustache, which she immediately discarded at ridiculous. She also had picked out three wigs from a collection of eight she'd found in the bin. She wondered at how many people must simply forget about their Halloween costumes once the opportunity to wear them had passed. The wigs were an unexpected boon. Rigel had been planning on using one of the abandoned Potions workrooms in the dungeons to mix up some basic hair dyes, but had been worried that the dye wouldn't take very well to her black hair. It would also be hard to explain if she forgot to wash it out. She had one redheaded wig that was shaggy and sort of curly around the ends, as well as a mousy-brown colored wig that featured pin-straight, ear-length hair. Her third wig was to be a last resort, she decided. It was a girl's wig, with long, blonde hair that was neatly braided, and had straight-cut bangs. It was to be a very last resort.
She gathered her spoils together under one arm and tried to figure out a way to get them back into the dorms without anyone noticing. By the time she'd put everything back in the bins, there were bound to be other Slytherins awake in the common room, not to mention her roommates. Rigel struck upon inspiration when she glanced over the laundry bins lining the room. There was really no reason it wouldn't work…
Rigel moved to the nearest bin. It was labeled: Ravenclaw 4-G-1. She peered inside, feeing oddly uncomfortable, and saw that unlike the Lost and Found bin, this one was separated into parts. There were five segments in the bin, and on cursory inspection all of them seemed to have female accoutrements mixed in with the generic school robes. Working from the guess that that one was the first bin for the fourth-year Ravenclaw girls, Rigel made her way around the room until she came to the bin that read: Slytherin 1-B-2. Sure enough, inside there were three segments, and in one of them she recognized Archie's bright gold boxer shorts (Why, Archie, why?). She chose one set of robes for use right then and stuffed the rest down into her section of the laundry bin, along with the two extra wigs. The redheaded wig she kept, and stored carefully with the glasses and the red and gold tie in her book bag.
She left the laundry room carrying the Gryffindor robes (with the crest hidden) and politely thanked Binny for helping her "find" her lost robes on her way through the kitchens, which were noticeably less busy than before. Binny winked cheerfully at her from behind a huge bowl of strawberries and told her to come back and visit soon.
Rigel rolled the extra robes up using her knee as an awkward sort of table and pushed them into her book bag too, grateful for the undetectable expansion charm Sirius had added, in case his son needed to carry suspiciously-shaped objects casually. She headed for the Great Hall, assuming that if the kitchens were slowing, breakfast must be starting.
She didn't get any questions over breakfast about where she had been all morning, and no one seemed to think it odd that her left hand was kept in her lap at all times. Rigel used the opportunity to scarf down her porridge as fast as she could manage while staying within the bounds of proper Slytherin decorum. She smiled gratefully at her friends, trying to tell them without words that she appreciated them leaving her alone about her strange schedule, and as soon as she'd downed her glass of pumpkin juice, she took off again, determined to finish those essays before lunch.
Rigel chose the bathroom closest to the Library to change in, since that way less people would see her wandering around the school disguised as a student who didn't exist. She swapped robes, placing her Slytherin robes in her book bag, and listened carefully to make sure she was alone. She emerged from the stall and made her way to one of the sinks, wetting her hair with water until she could slick it back enough for the wig to hide it. The wig was almost impossible to force on one-handed, but Rigel eventually managed it, heart beating fast as the thought that someone could walk in any second. She made a face at the feel of the scratchy underside of the wig sliding against wet hair as she adjusted it, and decided she'd have to come up with a better way for keeping her hair back eventually. When it was settled, she turned to the mirror. A boy with flat, grey eyes and messy, red hair looked back at her. She thought she looked a bit like a Weasley, which was why she chose the Gryffindor robes for this wig. Hopefully, Madam Pince cared too much about her books to keep all the students straight, and a red-headed Gryffindor was a common enough sight not to cause the old woman to be suspicious.
Rigel put the large, round glasses on her nose, and stepped back to take in the effect. With the glasses on, her grey contacts, which looked strange with red hair, were fairly obscured, and thankfully the glasses were reading glasses, not prescription, so they didn't mess with her already corrected vision much. In a flash of inspiration, Rigel rooted in her bag for her pot of ink. She carefully watered down a small amount until it was a murky grey and them dabbed the ink across her nose and cheeks with the point of her quill. She couldn't help but chuckle a bit at her reflection, which looked quite silly up close, but when she moved further away the ink blurred into freckles and she thought she looked like a passably different person.
Satisfied, she stored the ink and straightened her robes, trying to look Gryffindor. After a few minutes of staring blankly at her reflection, she realized she had no idea how to look Gryffindor, or even what that would entail, so she mentally shrugged and hoped she could count on people seeing what they expected to.
The Library was quiet so early on a Sunday, though she didn't doubt it would be bustling that evening, when students tried the finish their homework all at once. Rigel casually looked away from the checkout desk as she entered, walking in a bee-line toward the History section. She found the books she needed for the goblin rebellion essay easily, but decided to take them out one at a time, in case Madam Pince remembered recommending them to her, and she didn't think she could carry all three with one hand, anyway. So, with the book on the economy of the sixteenth century in hand, she grabbed a table and got to work.
The glasses were annoying, but she learned quickly to slip them low on her face and read over the top of the lenses if she didn't want to go cross-eyed. The wig was itchy, but she dared not scratch at it, and strands of red hair kept falling into her line of sight and making her twitch with surprise. She finished the History essay an hour later, however, and the books on Venimus Tentacula were thankfully easy to find in the Herbology section.
She found one with colored illustrations and set to trying her hand at labeled diagrams. She sketched (not easy with a quill) and labeled and tried artfully varying her line thickness like the book did, and when she leaned back to appraise the end result, she nearly cried. It was awful. It looked like a five-year-old had scribbled on the page and then someone else had gone back and written a bunch of meaningless words around the edges. Her rendition really looked more like the giant squid than the plant she was trying to draw, which, she defended herself, might have something to do with all the tentacles. Rigel crumpled her pitiful attempt into a ball and tapped her fingers against the table agitatedly. She couldn't mail the essay back without the diagram, but she couldn't ask anyone for help with drawing it, because it would be completely obvious that she was doing an older student's assignment.
She supposed she could… she glanced at Madam Pince surreptitiously and cringed when she saw that the old woman was screeching quietly at a cowering Ravenclaw, who appeared to have dog eared a couple pages in a book he checked out. No, she definitely didn't want to risk being caught actually defacing a book. Still, she couldn't think of any other way to get a decent diagram short of art lessons, and besides, Rigel argued to herself, it's not like she was going to make the book unreadable. No one would even be able to tell when she was done. She moved her book bag carefully over in front of her on the table so that it blocked the view of her immediate workspace from Madam Pince. With her left elbow bracing the book open, she began slowly and carefully tracing the lines of the book's illustration in ink. The ink pooled and sat wetly on the top of the page, not soaking in a bit as she'd expected, and Rigel breathed a sigh of relief; the book had been magically waterproofed, so it wouldn't actually take any damage from this. Still, she mentally vowed, when she got her allowance she would buy another copy of this book and donate it anonymously to the Library in penance for being willing to damage it.
Once she had traced all the major lines over in ink, she used her teeth to hold one edge and her right hand to hold the other, and slowly lowered her parchment down onto the wet page. The ink soaked up into the parchment perfectly, and when she pulled the parchment away, not thinking about how stupid she must look with parchment held delicately between her front teeth, she had a rough tracing of the plant diagram that was in the book. She set her stolen illustration aside and blotted the Library book carefully, leaving it to dry completely before she shut it again. Rigel sighed with relief that Pince hadn't noticed, and filled in her tracing with details and labels until it was finished.
The rest of Flint's homework was much easier to complete. Though the Herbology and Potions essays were the longest, she knew far more about the topics, so it was a work of an hour and a half to finish both of them. She returned the books while the sand was drying and, after painstakingly packing up her things one-handed, she averted her face once more on the way out the door. Rigel was more than happy to be able to take off the wig and glasses and wipe the "freckles" off her face in the nearest bathroom. That particular disguise would take some getting used to.
Once more herself, she decided it would be best to get the trip to the Owlrey out of the way first, and then spend the rest of the day with Draco and Pansy, if they weren't busy.
Rigel made her way carefully up the steep steps leading the Owlrey. The late morning wind was bracing, and she kept her chin tucked into her collar to keep her nose warm. Unfortunately, she sacrificed much of her line of sight in order to shelter her face from the elements, and the strength of the wind so high up dried out her contacts and forced her to blink rapidly and squint. It was because of all this, she thought, that she didn't see the small girl in blonde pigtails coming down the stairs until she had run smack into her. Later, as her left wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, she would wonder rather uncharitably just what the blonde girl's excuse was, but the pain of collision as it happened transcended even bitter thoughts.
Both girls gasped as they fell sideways into the railing, Rigel with muted agony and the other girl with surprise and fear. The railings were quite strong, not even shaking as they took the full brunt of the girls' (admittedly meager) weight, but the little blonde cried out with terror and clutched desperately to Rigel's right arm (her left arm having been unceremoniously yanked out of the other girl's reach).
Three calming breathes later, Rigel felt safe in unclenching her teeth.
"Are you alright?" Rigel asked automatically, though she knew it was her who was the most adversely affected by the fall.
"I think so," the girl, clearly a first-year Hufflepuff from her yellow and black tie and submissive expression, sniffed woefully up at Rigel. She had sunk to the hard steps immediately upon realizing they were both still alive and, still holding onto Rigel's arm, had dragged her down into a sort of pseudo-crouch. Rigel smiled as politely as she could and stood, firmly pulling her arm up, intending to make the girl relinquish it. Instead, she clung tighter to Rigel's arm and used it to lever herself back into a standing position as well. "I'm so sorry," she moaned, patting her hair back into place nervously, "I wasn't looking where I was going, but I didn't mean to run into anyone, I swear."
She seemed genuinely flustered, so Rigel gamely ignored the shooting pain in her wrist and offered her good hand as a gesture of forgiveness, "No problem. I'm Rigel Black."
The girl's smile froze on her face as her eyes darted to Rigel's green and silver tie, then to the crest on her robes, as if there was some mistake, then back to Rigel's face. Her cheeks turned a miserable shade of pink and she took Rigel's hand in her pale, shaking one, "H-Hannah Abbott. Sorry, so sorry, Black, I didn't mean… I mean, you're not… angry, are you?"
Rigel purposely softened her gaze, shaking the girl's hand as gently and kindly as she could, "Of course not, it was just an accident," she smiled with equanimity she didn't feel, "Pleased to meet you, Miss Abbott. I recognize you now, from the sorting."
"Oh," Abbott looked confused, as if she'd expected Rigel to curse her after helping her up off the cold steps and introducing herself, "Yes." She stared dazedly at Rigel for long enough that Rigel's fake smile began to feel even more stiff, and then she blinked, turned yet a different shade of pink, and hurried off down the stairs, pigtails flying behind her in the wind.
"Right," Rigel muttered, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and thinking it would be a miracle if she got these essays to Flint in one piece.
She chose a nondescript school owl to carry her essays, which she had stacked and rolled together as if they were one thick letter. She thought it would be less suspicious that way. With a feeling of relief, Rigel took the stairs back down to the seventh floor, this time with her eyes wide open despite the wind. She was in a good mood, ignoring the extra ache in her wrist. She felt free for the first time in days. It was the first time she'd really taken a moment to appreciate the novelty of her current circumstances. Here she was—a halfblood—at Hogwarts, the school of dreams (if you listened to her father talk about it), and she was studying under the brightest mind in her prospective field. Who cared about an injured wrist or a little blackmail between causal acquaintances in light of all that had gone gloriously right in the past week?
Rigel by-passed the secret passage to the third floor in favor of taking a new route down to the dungeons. One should never pass up an opportunity to explore. She perused the Map and eventually decided to take the Northwest stairs down to the fifth floor, then cut across that to the Main Stairs. She stowed the Map in her bag and headed North (having just come out of the West tower), stopping whenever something looked interesting to investigate.
She was just starting down the relatively secluded Northwest stairs when they disappeared out from under her. She dropped straight down, breath caught on a yell, foot unable to find purchase, hand missing the railing by scant inches, and in the same, disorienting instant a jet of hot air whistled over her head in a confusion of red light. In the next moments, she became aware of several things: she hadn't fallen through a trap door, but had rather fallen prey to the stone-like jaws of a particularly nasty trick stair, which had swallowed her right leg in a clamp up to mid-thigh. Her one good hand had found purchase on the stair above her and was currently assisting her left leg in keeping her from falling into the staircase up to her crotch, which was bound to be painful even if she wasn't a real boy, and her left arm was curled tightly against her chest. Her book bag had landed a few steps down the stairs and was out of reach, along with her wand (much good though it would have undoubtedly done her). Also, someone had sent a curse at her, and missed when their target had unexpectedly moved two feet downwards.
Rigel tried to twist her body around but cursed when her grip on the smooth stone step failed her and she sank another few inches into the trap. She gritted her teeth and braced the elbow of her uninjured arm against the step above her, craning her neck over her shoulder to try and catch a second attack. None came. Instead, she heard footsteps approaching the landing. If only she could see—
The footsteps came closer. They paused at what Rigel estimated was about the top of the stairs, just a few meters behind her, but she couldn't get her torso to move that way with two limbs braced and the other two useless. There was a window on the left side of the landing, and whoever it was must have passed in front of it, because suddenly there was a silhouette drawn in shadow below her on the right side of the stairwell. Rigel thought she could make out long hair and medium height and then the shadow's arm rose in an arch and she heard something clunk onto the stair behind her. Whatever it was exploded before she could curl her head away and a stench she was disgustingly familiar with assaulted her nose and mouth. Her eyes watered and she sneezed violently several times. She blearily watched the shadow retreat and heard the footsteps running fast away from the scene, and then she was coughing, unable to move away from the source of the horrid smell or even cover her airways properly while holding herself half-out of the trick stair.
The dung bomb rolled into view, taunting her from its position just far enough from her left ear so as to be impossible to nudge down the stairs. She wriggled again, now struggling out of pure stubbornness, but gave up again after several minutes and mentally bemoaned her current predicament. Curse my awful luck with stairs! This stupid trick step wasn't even on the Map, she huffed sulkily before realizing she should probably be grateful she got stuck in a stair instead of struck by an unfamiliar spell. For all she knew, the trick step had saved her from a terrible fate. Still, it was hard to be appreciative while lying in stone quicksand.
Just when she thought the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, she heard the sound of harsh, growling laughter coming from the upper landing. She'd been so busy glaring at the dung bomb and fuming over yet another stair-related catastrophe that she failed to notice the new silhouette adorning the stairwell wall. This one was taller, broader, and before she could be thankful that at least it wasn't her attacker, she recognized the laughter and realized who it was.
"Well, here's something you don't see every day," heavy footsteps marked the newcomer's progress toward her entanglement, "And to think I had begun feeling guilty for taking up your free time, when it appears that even with the extra work you still have the leisure to sprawl carelessly about the castle—and in the Gryffin's territory, no less."
Ugh. Flint. Rigel fought a grimace as the older Slytherin appeared in her peripheral vision. He had his hand to his chin in exaggerated contemplation and made a great show of examining her position from all angles before stopping on the steps just below the one she was trapped in. Even though he was standing on a lower step, she had to stretch her neck to meet his eyes, and he made no move to bend over or crouch down for her sake.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I don't think you're supposed to do it like that."
Rigel sighed, the sound less exasperated and more desperate than she'd intended, "Will you please help me out of here, Flint?"
"Why can't you get yourself out?" he asked, putting his hands in his pockets to demonstrate his unwillingness to assist her.
"I'm not strong enough to pry the trap apart," with one hand, "my wand is out of reach, and I can't pull my leg straight out without skinning it until the trap is disabled," she said, trying without much success to keep her voice even. She was nearly panting with the effort of holding herself out of the step for so long; even with her other leg for leverage, she was slowly sinking, centimeter by centimeter.
Flint seemed to consider this very carefully. He hemmed and hawed and shifted ingenuously from foot to foot, all the while watching Rigel wait and sweat, like a dark-winged god of judgment meting out punishment and reward from his gilded throne. Eventually he snapped his fingers as if happening on a brilliant idea and smiled down at her, "Maybe you should try using both hands."
Rigel nearly growled, "I can't."
"Hmm…" Flint tapped his foot slowly, "Well if you can't, you can't. I guess I can help you out. Here, take my hand."
He reached out, sticking said appendage lazily in her direction. He didn't bend down nearly enough for her to grasp his hand with her right one without falling the rest of the way into the trap, and from the sharp grin on his face he knew that. He also probably realized that even if she did give him her hand, he'd just be scraping her leg raw if he tried to directly pull her out. She glared up at him mutinously.
"Perhaps you could just pry open the stair? Or better yet, disable the trap," she said.
"What, don't you trust me?" he stretched his hand a little further, teasingly brushing his fingertips across her head. Rigel jerked her head away pointedly, "Well, alright, no need to be rude about it," he laughed again, "And just how do you propose I disable this little mechanism?"
"Usually there's a switch on the underside of the railings near the trick step," Rigel said.
Flint sighed, but dutifully checked the railings on either side of the stairwell, "Yeah, I'm not seeing anything. You sure there isn't a password or something?"
That's actually not a bad guess, Rigel thought, annoyed that she hadn't thought of it. But it's too late for that now. The Map's out of reach, and anyway, I'm not about to use it with Flint here, "No idea. Can't you just pry the things open? Please, Flint." She didn't look him in the eye when she said it, but he grunted in surprise all the same.
"Hn," Flint bent down at last and rolled up his sleeves, "Phew, the stench is even worse down here. You owe me an extra credit assignment for this."
"Deal," she sighed.
Flint firmly gripped both sides of the trick stair and pulled. The pseudo-stone shuddered in protest, but the two sides of the vise-like trap slowly began to move sideways toward the edges of the staircase. When she had enough room to pull her leg free, Rigel summoned her energy and twisted her body upwards with a great heft until she could collapse sideways on the stair below, her injured wrist still held protectively to her front and none the worse for wear. As soon as she was clear of the edges, Flint allowed the trap to snap back into place with a sickening thud.
"Thanks," Rigel said tiredly. She stretched the aching muscles in her limbs as best she could and retrieved her bag from the steps below.
"I'd say 'anytime' but… I probably won't ever do anything like this again," Flint said, his graceless smile back in place, "So, you wanna tell me what the dung bomb was about?"
"Not particularly," Rigel avoided the upperclassman's eyes.
"And you aren't going to explain what's wrong with your left arm, either?" Flint guessed.
"Wasn't planning on it," she hoisted her bag over her right shoulder and gave her savior / blackmailer an especially sarcastic salute as she started down the stairs once more, "Thanks again, Flint. Oh, and that thing I owe you is in the mail."
She thought wryly as his laughter followed her out of sight once more that she might actually get used to the harsh, grating sound at this rate.
Returning to the common room at last felt like what Rigel imagined soldiers experienced coming home after a particularly drawn-out war. She was mentally and physically drained, for what felt like the umpteenth day in a row, and she couldn't really remember what it was like to have ordinary days since coming to Hogwarts. Pansy greeted her before she'd made it across the threshold, but Rigel found she couldn't bring herself to mind. There was really nothing like the comfort of friendship after a long, hard day of—
"Eugh, Rigel, you smell like dragon dung," Pansy exclaimed upon approaching her. The blonde girl waved her hands frantically at the air around Rigel's head, "I was going to introduce you to some people I met today, but that's definitely going to have to wait for another time. I really wouldn't be caught dead with you in this state."
There was really nothing like the brunt of a true friend's opinion to slap you out of melancholic contemplation, Rigel thought.
"Sorry, Pansy," she smiled ruefully, "I got caught with a dung bomb by Peeves just now."
"Oh," Pansy clicked her tongue disapprovingly. Rigel decided not to tell her how much the action made her sound like Rigel's mother, "Well, you'll never get rid of the stench on your own. Come on, I'll help you wash it out."
So saying, Pansy marched her across the common room and down the first-year hall. Rigel was about to tell her she wasn't allowed in Pansy's room when she realized they were walking straight past it and headed for Rigel's dorm. Pansy knocked twice for propriety's sake, then threw open the door and walked right in.
"Pansy? What in Salazar's name are you—Rigel!" Draco appeared to be at a loss. He was sitting on his bed in his casual weekend clothes, and there was a book in his lap he'd obviously been reading before Pansy had burst in on him, "Is something wro—oh, Merlin, what is that smell?"
He clapped a hand over his nose and mouth and glared in horrified affront at them.
"I know. It's awful, right?" Pansy breezed by the choking boy and towed Rigel toward the bathroom, "Rigel got hit with a dung bomb by Peeves, and he needs help washing it out. Come on, Draco," she added when Draco appeared to want no part in it, "Surely a Malfoy doesn't cringe from something like an unpleasant odor."
Draco leveled a look at Rigel that clearly said he was debating whether she was really worth coming any closer to, but in the end he rolled his eyes and moved past them to turn on the water in the sink. Rigel thought about protesting, saying she was perfectly capable of washing her own hair, but her two friends looked so adorably determined to brave to unbearable stink of the dung bomb in order to help her out that she simply grabbed a spare towel to put around her neck and knelt in front of the sink sedately.
When Draco okayed the water temperature, Pansy gently pushed her head forward until she was leaning over the basin, her hair directly under the faucet. Rigel screwed up her eyes so her contacts didn't get rinsed out and went patiently still while Draco and Pansy bickered good-naturedly about what shampoo would be most effective. Pansy wanted to use the one with the strongest scent, to counteract the smell of dung, while Draco wanted to use the one with the strongest scouring agent. In the end, they used both. It was a strange feeling, having two sets of hands alternately pulling and scrubbing at her head, but twenty minutes later she was declared "fit for human company" and set free.
Her scalp felt very tingly and pink, but she couldn't smell dung every time she inhaled anymore, so she thanked the blonde duo graciously.
"Don't thank us," Draco waved a hand dismissively.
"Yeah," Pansy inhaled dramatically, "It's our noses we saved, since you didn't seem to be at all bothered by it."
"If you'd grown up at my house, you'd have learned to tolerate it as well," Rigel said while towel-drying her hair and cleaning her ears of water.
"Well, anyway, you guys stay here a minute while I go and grab something. Your roommate won't mind if I hang out in here, will he?" Pansy very clearly directed her question to Draco.
"Nott won't care," Draco shrugged, "He invites Zabini in all the time."
Rigel hadn't known it had already become such a frequent occurrence, which she guessed was why Pansy had asked Draco, not her. She really was missing things, wrapped up in her own world. Usually that didn't bother her, but somehow… ah, well. Rigel mentally shrugged. Someday she would sit down and think about all the things that needed thinking about, like mysterious and cowardly assailants who shot spells at her from behind, but that day was not yet come.
Pansy was back shortly with a deck of wizarding playing cards and a large pink tin that turned out to be full of cookies. She set both on the middle of Draco's bedspread and plopped down at the foot of his mattress, gesturing impatiently for them to join her. Rigel sat awkwardly at first, perched on one side of the bed while Draco sat gingerly on the other. Pansy laughed at them and offered them each a cookie.
"My grandmother sent them to me this morning," she explained, "She's amazing with food, and since Rigel missed lunch today I thought he ought to have something to eat, even if it's rather unhealthy."
Rigel smiled her thanks and nearly swallowed her cookie whole, she was so hungry. Draco squawked indignantly that she was getting crumbs on his bed, eating like a barbarian, and Rigel in turn made a show of picking invisible (read: nonexistent) crumbs off the green and silver bedspread and eating them, making sure to lick her fingers for added effect. All three of them laughed lightly at that, and Draco and Rigel relaxed enough to sit properly on the large mattress. The three of them ate cookies and played cards all afternoon, talking about classes, people they knew, and sometimes just nothing in particular until it was time to go to dinner. None of them ate much, being full from the cookies, but they chatted comfortably across the table and all the way back to the dorms as well.
As she climbed onto her bed that night, Rigel gave thanks to the friendship gods. Sunday would have been a lot worse without them. She also thanked them for shooting Flint with the friendship dart, even if the effects turned out to be a temporary amusement to him, as she suspected they would. All and all, she thought, her first week at Hogwarts could have been a lot worse. She'd made it through, and that was all that mattered.
[end of chapter ten].
A/N: Perhaps it seems unlikely that Rigel has such trouble with staircases to certain readers, but with 142 staircases in the castle, it seems to me that some major events must, for probability's sake, take place there ^^. Also, it occurs to me that Rigel sighs a lot. If this was the scarlet letter, that would be a motif lol, but since it's not, let me know if it gets annoying. As always, thanks for reading (to anyone who actually is reading) it means a lot to me.