10. Spitting Plants
Despite the setbacks with Halloween, Avery was quickly shoved back into her schoolwork and didn't have time to worry about them. It seemed that the bushy-haired girl, who's name was Hermione, was getting along much better with Harry and Ron, and was a great help to all of them when it came to doing assignments. Avery liked Hermione, who like her, thought she would have been in Ravenclaw instead. Most Gryffindors distrusted Slytherins, but Avery found it easy to earn the trust of her new friends. It was helped incredibly by the fact that Avery and Dev had attacked Malfoy on Halloween night, which Ron thought was hilarious.
November was getting colder, so Avery was more mindful to wear a scarf this morning before going down to the Herbology greenhouses. It was muddy this morning, and Avery feared she might slip on her way down the hills of the grounds. Dev seemed to have an easier time maneuvering herself, and was waiting for Avery to keep up with her slow pace.
"We're going to be late." Dev said with a teasing smile. Normally, it was Avery who had to wait for her to keep up.
"I'm really afraid of falling." Avery said stiffly. They finally reached greenhouse 1, where Carly was already standing around, waiting for them.
"Hey." She said with a small smile. Sometimes, Carly could be in a good mood, and it was these times that Avery felt incredibly lucky. She looked like she was in a good mood.
"Hey Carl." Avery said cheerfully. "How have you been?"
Carly shrugged. "Eh, alright." She grinned. "I've just been having a wonderful day."
Dev opened her mouth, as if to make a snide remark, but Prof. Sprout was asking for their attention.
Today they would be looking after a plant that were not only sensitive to being talked to, but they would spit in your face if they thought you were getting a little boring. It reminded Avery of when her grandmother would make her tend her garden back at home, and how she had said that plants grew better with nice conversation. These plants, however, were simply more picky about what a nice conversation was.
"So, how wonderful has your day been?" Avery asked, curiously.
"Well..." Carly was tending to her own plant very carefully. "I just feel like I've learned so much, today." She continued to look joyful.
"That's nice." Avery remarked, wincing when her plant spit on her. "Was it anything interesting?"
"Oh, it was very interesting. Yes, you could say that."
"Well?" Dev asked, whose plant had already spit on her quite enough.
"I just think it's useful." Carly said mysteriously. She gave Dev a sideways glare before ignoring her.
"I don't think she wants to talk to you." Avery told Dev.
"Of course she doesn't." Dev sighed. "I wonder what she's so happy about... Avery, this isn't normal. Something is wrong here."
"C'mon, everyone is happy sometime."
"But not her! She's never pleased about anything!"
"It's none of our business anyway." Avery reminded her.
"It's my business, Avery. I don't trust her when she's happy."
"Suit yourself."
Apparently, small arguments seemed to satisfy the plants, and they were given good marks for the day. As soon as they left, Avery headed to the Owlery to send off another letter to her mother, which had carefully avoided mentioning any of the unfavorable bits of her recent activities. By the time she managed to get back to the common room, she was incredibly tired.
"Oy." She said in greeting to Dev. "How's your Charms homework?"
"Don't think you're copying." Dev said. "I had no idea what I was doing."
Avery sat down next to her friend. "Maybe I can do it." She suggested. "And you can copy off of me instead."
"Have at it." Dev pushed her parchment over to Avery, who read it over carefully.
Avery was bent over the parchment and so absorbed in her essay, that it wasn't until someone screamed that she was able to look up.
"What are you doing in here?" A sixth-year cried indignantly. "You're that girl who invades our table!"
Avery and Dev quickly found Carly, dressed in another set of Slytherin robes, trying to sneak into the girl's dormitories.
"I got my house switched." Carly replied cooly, meeting eyes with her.
"You're a liar!" Dev shouted hotly. "There's no way you'd be able to switch houses! Besides, even if you did, the whole school would have to know!"
Other Slytherins quickly sprung to agreement. Carly looked flustered.
"They didn't want word getting out." Carly continued. "Thought it would... cause a commotion. Which it clearly is. They wanted my transfer to be quiet."
"Quit making stuff up, we know you are!" Dev's temper flared. She didn't want Carly to share a dorm with them, Avery thought.
"What's going on, what's going on?"
A prefect, Gemma Farley, stepped through the angry crowd. She spotted Carly and frowned. "What are you doing in here? You're a Ravenclaw, aren't you?"
Carly's face turned red, and her eyes locked to the floor in shame. "Yes."
"I knew it!" A boy from the back cried.
"How did you get in here?" Gemma asked, with surprising calm. It must have been a talent of prefects to be able to handle any situation.
"I... I nicked my robes. I know how to get them." Carly admitted slowly.
"Who told you the password?"
"No one. I... I found out where the common room was, and I just waited until I heard someone use it." Ah, Avery thought. The cleverness of a Ravenclaw after all.
Gemma was looking Carly over, but seemed to believe that she was telling the truth.
"Well, you certainly have the ambition enough to make it this far." She remarked. Carly perked up.
"Have I proven I'm Slytherin enough?" She asked hopefully.
"It doesn't work that way." Gemma reminded her. Carly scowled. "You'll have to leave."
"I just wanted to look around!" Carly protested. "It's so much nicer in here! Please let me look!"
"You've seen enough!" Dev said coldy. Carly gave her a distasteful look.
"Shut up!"
"Quiet, both of you!" Gemma shouted "I'll be fetching Prof. Snape shortly. Come with me." She gestured for Carly to follow.
"I'm not going." Carly said stiffly.
"Then 20 points from Ravenclaw." Gemma said, sounding tired.
"I don't care about points." Carly said smugly. "Or detention."
"Then it won't bother you when Snape gives you plenty." Gemma replied smoothly. "C'mon, I haven't got all day you know."
"Fine." Carly said, following Gemma. It confused Avery, but she thought she saw a small smile on Carly's face. When they left, the common room began to buzz with chatter.
"I can't believe she actually got in!" Dev said in shock. "No one's dared to come in!"
"She seemed happy about getting detention." Avery said thoughtfully. "Any ideas why?"
"No. She's just crazy." Dev sighed. "We still have this essay, Avery!"
Avery suddenly remembered, and she busied herself with work again.
The next few days, there was talk of the intruder in Slytherin's common room. During these days, Carly didn't come anywhere near the table, and Avery suddenly felt that she missed the Ravenclaw's presence. Dev called her mad, but Avery considered Carly to be a friend now. She heard that Carly had been given mounds of detention, but instead of looking glum and complaining, Carly often looked pretty cheerful about her arrangements. Avery couldn't imagine why.
One day, as they were sitting in Charms together, Avery decided to ask.
"So, Carly." Avery began, wondering how to ask her question. "So... what do you do in detention?"
"I help Prof. Snape clean his caldrons." Carly said happily, while making an apple tango. "I really like it."
"You... you like detention?" Avery looked like she was seeing an alien.
"Well... I like detention with Prof. Snape." Carly explained. "I just like the company of old people."
"You do realize he's like, 30?" Dev asked.
"Well... yeah... I was kidding!" Carly looked slightly agitated. "I mean, I just like him is all!"
"Heh... teacher crush." Dev smirked. Carly looked embarrassed.
"I didn't say that!" She said quickly.
"Sure."
"Ew! Who would like a teacher? They're... they're... grown up!" Avery seemed utterly bewildered. Carly looked pink.
"That's not a problem to me." She said.
"But that's so old!"
"Shut up Avery." This time, it was Dev. "We get it, you don't like boys, yadda yadda."
Avery stopped talking, taken by surprise. She never noticed it before, but she did seem to proclaim her dislike of boys fairly often.
"Do I say it that much?" She asked hesitantly.
"Yes." Carly said, without missing a beat, she added, "It's really annoying. Like you think you're better than us or something."
"Oh..." Avery felt cold. "I'm sorry..."
"Just shut up about it." Carly sighed.
Avery hadn't realized that she had been doing wrong. She stopped, and thought. Did she like anyone, really? Well, she liked Harry and Ron, but as friends. She hadn't liked a boy since she left Muggle school, actually. Now she had been so wrapped up in magic, she didn't notice...
"Sometimes..." Dev said playfully, "I thinks the lady doth protest too much..."
"Huh?" Avery blushed. But why? She didn't like anyone, that was foolish. It made her blush even more. How annoying! "Uh... anyway." She wanted to change the subject again, "Does Snape make you clean those by hand?"
"Yes." Said Carly.
"Oh geez, that must suck!" Dev commented.
"Nah." Carly brushed it off. "It's not that bad. I kinda prefer it, y'know? I mean..." She added hastily, seeing Avery and Dev's looks of bewilderment, "I don't like using magic... well, actually, I guess I do, but not for everything, you know? Just for things I need it for. If I just use magic for everything I do, then I feel like I'm lazy."
"Oh!" Avery nodded. "Yeah, I get it." Dev nodded as well.
It was still hard to imagine not preferring magic, though, Avery thought. Magic was fun, and special, and she had more faith in magic simply because of what it was. She didn't know what it was, actually, but to her magic made everything better.
After thinking about it, she wondered if that was how Purebloods thought about themselves, and she shivered. Just because something was magic, Avery rationalized quickly, did not make it better, just more interesting. She urgently banished any thoughts of superiority from her mind, worried it would make her as conceited as the Purebloods in her house, especially Malfoy. Of course, not all Purebloods were bad either, she told herself desperately. Ron was a Pureblood, and he was nice...
Avery often did this to herself, and she would become very worried about how she formed her thoughts and became incredibly self-conscious, as though anyone looking at her could hear her thinking to herself and judge her for what they heard. The back-tracking and re-wording that followed these outbursts tended to eventually make her feel very lost, and she decided to think about something else.
Her new thoughts wandered to Harry Potter. Not because he was a boy, mind you, or because he was a celebrity (though that was very interesting indeed), but because he was her friend, but she still didn't know much about him. Avery had thought meeting a celebrity would be different, but Harry wasn't much different from anyone else. He was actually a lot like herself- he didn't seem familiar with the wizarding world yet, but he was enjoying it just as much as she was. Sometimes she wondered if they had more in common to discover, but was paranoid about being teased so much that she didn't talk to him as much as she'd like to. Maybe she should just get over it... after all, according to Carly, her point had been made, so there was nothing to worry about. But what would she talk about?
It was all very confusing and Avery didn't much like thinking about this either.
So she thought of the next best thing- December was on its way, and soon it would be Christmas.
Author's Notice: Wow, it's been a long time since I updated. It's been- 3 months, maybe? I apologize to the people who were enjoying my story! If you're interested in knowing what took so long, feel free to read while I try to explain myself...
When I got back to school, I had English 12 scheduled for the first semester. That meant I needed to complete a senior project by the end of this semester, which I didn't get started on until late because I was a new student. A senior project is a required-by-law assignment that must be completed in some states of the U.S. in order to graduate high-school. Each school has a different requirement for senior projects, and mine was a tall order. I needed to complete 100 hours of volunteer work, write two essays, and put together a presentation of all my achievements. My project involved me at the local public library, where I recorded obituaries off of a microfilm machine and helped researchers find their ancestors. I got to type index cards on a typewriter, and it was a great experience, but my hands were sore every night and my brain was usually very tired (6 hours of school followed by 3-6 hours of working at the library). I took a break from writing all leisure projects until my 100 hours was up.
I'm pleased to say I got everything finished and my presentation is tomorrow. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and I hope that I can get back on the ball with my new schedule and continue writing these chapters. I hope each of your holiday's were longer than mine, and just as enjoyable.