Ch11: School Incidents
News of Professor Black's secret wedding was slow to leak into Hogwarts, as most of those who knew were not eager to tell it to the press, yet it could not be kept a secret for long.
While most students considered it just a saucy piece of gossip, the Slytherins seemed to get infuriated. Dianna was starting to get warnings and threats while passing through the corridors. She continued her normal activities and didn't pay them any attention, yet they started bothering her. She was glad of the new skills she had learned during the Christmas break and especially of the shielding she had managed to learn just before returning to school. She was also much better at exercising her wandless magic now and was quite confident on her ability to withstand any attack by malevolent students, something she was already expecting.
Brenda Weasley came running into the dormitory room. "Lilly! Some Slytherins seem to trouble Dianna. It looks like they are taking her somewhere!"
"Thank you for telling me. I'll try to help her."
"Do you need us to help as well?"
"Not now. If I don't come back in twenty minutes, then you should tell the headmistress."
Lilly made sure she had both her wands with her and then rushed out. She stopped in a hidden corridor and concentrated, trying to find Dianna. 'Where are you?' she thought, trying to cast the thought towards Dianna.
'They're taking me to the Slytherin common room. I play along for the time being. I believe I can handle them on my own, but you may join, if you like,' she sensed.
Lilly turned herself invisible and apparated to the corridor leading to the Slytherin dormitories. She didn't have to wait long. A moment later she saw Dianna, surrounded by ten Slytherins, most of them fifth and sixth year, all holding their wands at Dianna. They held the wands somewhat hidden, but not well enough. As one of them opened the door and held it open for the others, Lilly slipped in unnoticed.
They shoved Dianna into a chair. One of them searched her robes for a wand, finding nothing.
"My wand is in my bag," Dianna said.
"Shut up, blood traitor!" one of the older boys said.
"I'm no traitor and you have no right to treat me like one," Dianna insisted.
"Shut up or..."
"Or what? Does the noble house of Slytherin consider frightening a first-year girl with ten bullies as an appropriate act of bravery?"
Their leader raised his wand. He didn't even start pronouncing a spell when his wand crumbled in his hand, turning to ashes.
"Next time I'll turn your other wand into ashes," Dianna smirked, seeing the puzzled and frightened look on the boys.
"Don't listen to her! She's just bluffing!" one of the other boys said. "She thinks that now she has the Potter protection. It would not help her once we are finished with her."
Several of the boys raised their wands. A fraction of a second later, all wands were plucked from their hands and were hanging near the ceiling, rotating like a merry-go-round.
"Now we are a bit more even: I have no wand and you have no wands," Dianna commented.
"We don't need wands to beat you up." They still didn't understand what they were facing.
"Indeed you don't," Dianna agreed.
One of the largest boys tried to beat her, only to find his hand striking an invisible barrier. Another tried to do the same from a different direction, getting similar results.
Lillian chose this moment to reveal herself. She was standing across the hall from them with her wand pointed at the group.
"What are you playing at?" one of the boys growled.
"Just fair play. Ten big boys against one small girl didn't seem right, so I came along, to make it somewhat fairer. Don't you think so?"
A boy tried to run to her, only to be thrown back like a rag doll.
"Now, do you want the whole school to hear about how powerful you've been compared to mere two first-year girls?" Lilly asked innocently.
The boys looked terrified.
Dianna walked to Lilly and they both approached the door.
"Your wands will stay up there for another day before they fall down. As for this one..." Dianna took Lillian's wand. "Reparo!" she said, waving the wand towards the ashes. They turned into a wand again. The boys tried to grab it, but it flew up, joining the other wands.
"Now remember – do not mess with a Potter! You may then wish it was only your wooden wands that turned to ashes," Lillian added warningly.
"Shall we go?" she asked Dianna. They held hands, touched the door and disappeared.
They reappeared in the hidden corridor, the one from which Lilly apparated.
"I didn't know we could communicate just by thinking to each other," commented Dianna.
"I wasn't sure either, but it was worth a try. I know I can feel the thoughts of my parents, my siblings and my grandparents. I've never really tried to communicate like this, but it is fun."
"It is. Why did you come there, really? I could handle them by myself, you know."
"You had no wand and you don't need them to know you can do wandless magic. I also touched the door before apparating to just confuse them. The less they know about our abilities – the better."
"If you say so..."
Dianna went back to the library, where her school bag was waiting for her. Lilly went back to her dormitory to tell Brenda everything was fine, before grabbing her own bag and joining Dianna at the library.
The Slytherins seemed extremely polite that evening, when Dianna and Lillian went to the Great Hall for dinner. They went out of their way to keep their distance from the two girls. Those who couldn't avoid getting closer were keeping their hands down, in front of their trousers. Nobody knew why and none of the girls volunteered an explanation.
Tuesday night, after spending the evening with Dianna and Narcissa, Lilly decided to fly a bit, as she liked to do every once in a while. She went to the owlery, but stopped as soon as she reached a deserted corridor and apparated to the farthest side of the lake. She then turned herself into an eagle and started flying, enjoying the freedom of soaring on her wings and scanning the grounds leisurely. She didn't expect to see anything in particular, yet she did find some items occasionally, things other students had lost or misplaced. She liked using her eagle-eye vision to find these items, eventually helping other students by collecting the items and placing them near the entrance doors.
She was already flying back, not having found any lost items – very few students wandered outdoors during the cold weather – when she noticed some activity on the astronomy tower. Flying lower, she spotted five boys who looked seventh year. Four of them were holding the arms and legs of a younger girl, restraining her, while the fifth was trying to remove her clothing. The girl was probably under some silencing spell. Lilly noticed that she looked like screaming, yet no sound was coming out of her mouth. Despite the other boys holding her, the girl also managed to kick the fifth boy, slowing him in removing her cloths.
Lilly didn't need to see much more. She changed her form in mid flight into a dark gray owl, so that she could come much closer without making any sound. She landed on the tower and none of the others noticed her. They wouldn't have been bothered by an owl anyway. She thought quickly how to act and decided that these boys needed to be publicly humiliated in order to make sure they would never try such actions again.
She turned herself invisible first and then returned to human form. Now, using her metamorphmagus talents, she changed herself into a tall blonde woman, wearing a shiny armor and wielding a spear. She approached the group. The girl was still fighting, yet the boys had already removed her pants and her sweater, leaving her in her knickers and her blouse only. One of them was already starting to lower his own trousers. Lilly decided to add another touch to her appearance, making herself glow before gradually turning visible.
The effect was stunning. It was as if a being of light was materializing in front of the boys' eyes. Lilly enhanced her voice to sound older and much more powerful. "Thou have committed a crime against my protected ones!" she said in a menacing tone. The boys seemed to freeze, letting the girl slip out of their hands. "Thou should be punished for your crimes!" Lilly continued, pointing the spear towards the boys. Five golden ropes erupted from the spear, tying the boys tightly. Lilly turned to the girl, who was still lying on the floor with her eyes wide open. She waved her spear once, and the girl's clothes returned to their proper location. Another waving, and the girl could be heard again.
"You are safe now, my child," Lilly said in a tone she had heard in some movies. "Now go to the hospital wing to have your bruises treated and then let the headmistress know of what these sub-humans tried to do to you."
"Yes, Ma'am," the girl replied and hurried down. Lilly looked at the five boys. She decided to let them hang with their genitals exposed for the whole school to see. She conjured some more ropes to connect to the ones tying them and then had them hang on the tower's railing. She made the ropes long enough so they would hang with their feet about waist-high. She then made their trousers and boxers vanish, exposing their sensitive areas to the cold weather.
She now summoned four pieces of parchment and a self-inking quill. She wrote four announcements, urging the students of the four houses to gather at the bottom of the astronomy tower. Changing back into an owl, she took the four parchments and flew into the four common rooms before landing near the Griffindor entrance, returning to her normal form and joining her friends in the common room.
"Andrew, take your camera before we go!" she reminded her friend, as the whole student population was starting to move towards the astronomy tower.
Andrew managed to take quite a few pictures of the five boys, each having created a small yellowish puddle below his feet, before the headmistress arrived. She released the boys from the ropes and marched them to the hospital wing, promising a severe punishment.
Andrew's work was decorating the main hall the next morning. The life-size photos were floating in mid-air near the walls and above the tables. Nobody knew how they were put there or how to remove them, although the headmistress had her suspicions about who did it. The boys, three Slytherins and two Ravenclaws, all from very snobbish pureblood families, were nowhere to be seen for more than a week.
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