Last part of the triple-update. At the end of this chapter I've included some things about name inspirations :)
Disclaimer: I do not own nor am I making any profit out of Harry Potter and its associated trademarks.
Chapter Ten: The Draught of Peace
Conny had been chasing her cat, Bach, when she realized that she was stuck somewhere on the third floor at three o'clock in the morning. A staircase had vanished after she'd used it, and she couldn't find an alternative way back. Filch or any of the teachers or prefects could be anywhere. If she'd been one for swearing, she'd be cussing like a sailor.
The one good thing she had on her side were Grandma's boots. They allowed her to jump impossible distances and get to places that no other student would manage, but they couldn't handle the forty-five foot jump up to where the staircase had been. She found that she could use them to shoot forwards as well as upwards, which made running down corridors amazing and ridiculously dangerous. Haunting the castle at night wasn't something she'd taken up intentionally, but she wasn't fond of sleeping at the moment. She kept getting nightmares of drowning.
Bach's constant escapes were a good excuse as any for her wanderings. He was hard to follow, but easy to catch once he got sleepy and sat down to snooze, usually after a couple of hours spent running around or trying to catch mice. So far, she'd narrowly missed a run-in with a seventh-year Hufflepuff prefect, who'd been whistling loudly and reading a romantic novel by wand-light while patrolling. She'd tried to hide once from Filch in a disused classroom on the sixth floor, only to find Luke and Ally romantically entangled behind the teacher's desk. She'd run back out before they recognized her. She had, however, had time to admire Luke's musculature before taking her chances with Filch. Luckily, he'd rounded the corner by the time she'd hastily slipped out.
During these strolls, she heard things. Some were ordinary gossip between prefects patrolling in pairs ("Did you see Patricia and Kyle today? They looked like they'd had one hell of a fight!" or, occasionally, juicier gossip: "Steph reckons that Professor Vector is pregnant," and some pretty ludicrous rumours, too: "Professor Sinistra and Douglas Jenkins from Ravenclaw are having an affair!"). The best stuff was when teachers, who also patrolled around and about on rotation during the week, got together to talk, or, more rarely, shag. She'd seen Professor Sinistra (who wasn't having an affair with Douglas Jenkins, in fact) straightening her robes and patting her hair into place as she guiltily left the Muggle Studies teacher, Professor Quirrell's, office. Of course, she only told her select group of friends these tidbits, and never revealed how she came across it.
One thing that Conyeri dreaded was weekly Quidditch sessions with the hawk-eyed Madam Hooch. Conny wasn't that good at flying, having lived in London and not had many opportunities to get on a broomstick, but, to her surprise, Lucy was excellent. She darted between everyone else when they practiced laps, winning every race, though the bulky Hufflepuff boys they had lessons with often handled her roughly, one (a particularly neckless fellow named Curtis King, who possessed the brainpower of a troll) even going so far as to knocking her off her broom. A broken ankle later, he was barred from Quidditch for life and was given three months of detention. (Lines! He would hate that. Conny didn't think he could write.)
"You're such a bore!" Lucy appeared above her, handing upside-down on her broom, speeding around as though she hardly concentrated on it. Corfax's broom was struggling with his weight and refusing to go higher than about a metre off the ground. "Hey, betcha a galleon I can get Oscar and Wilkins to knock each other off their brooms."
"What? Don't you dare, Hooch will have your head."
"Nah." Lucy grinned. "She wouldn't. She used to be in Ravenclaw, too. She says I'm prime chaser material."
"You'll make a better chaser if you don't get yourself killed by all the Hufflepuff first-years first." Conny eyed the two boys up. They were classic beater material: thick, in every sense of the word. She compared them to Lucy, who was barely five foot and stick-thin (she had to battle against the wind when she walked outside, for god's sake!), and reckoned quite sensibly that she stood no chance. Then, she realized how boring she was. "I tell you what, I think I'll join you while Hooch is trying to get Corfax's broom to work."
"Yes!" Lucy fist-pumped triumphantly. "We'll lap them, then approach either side. You know how to hook a broom?"
"Hook?"
"Yeh, it's one of the best-known methods of cheating in Quidditch. You come up behind someone and, when they're turning, you hook your closest leg around the back of their broom. It totally floors them." Lucy grinned and returned to normal flying position. "Ready?"
"Which am I taking?"
"You're bigger than me, so you can have Wilkins." Lucy said.
"Right." Conny smiled and she and Lucy caught up to the two boys, who were pushing Jonmarc out of the way as they sped forward. Wilkins saw her out of the corner of his eye and veered away- straight into Oscar. They hit and just managed to hold onto their brooms. Lucy signaled now! And Conny hooked her foot under Wilkins' broom and sent him flying downwards- fortunately, they were flying low anyway, but it was still a good fifteen feet, even if the grass was squishy.
She gave Lucy a high-five and they zoomed on. "You're not a bad flier, you know. A bit of practice, and you'd make a good keeper."
"Keeper? That's like, a goalie in football, right?"
"Uh… sure." Lucy said. "Next year, you'll try out with me, yeh?"
"If you want." Conny shrugged. "I think my Dad's still got his old brooms somewhere."
They touched down twenty minutes later, out of breath and frozen to their bones. Hooch told them to warm up before dinner and began lecturing Oscar and Wilkins on their behavior. Corfax stumbled off, humiliated, and wasn't in the Great Hall.
"Maybe this'll get him on a diet." Lucy said through an ironic mouthful of pizza. They laughed at the joke, but Conny still felt bad at how people treated him. She herself wasn't skinny like Lucy or Polly, but not as bad as Corfax. She spent the evening avoiding food and trying to not feel too guilty.
Rosie McAvery came over and plonked herself down at the Ravenclaw table. Students sitting at other Houses' tables were not uncommon, so they budged up to make room for her. She was from Edinburgh, and spoke with a strong Scottish accent, but everyone liked her because she was funny and smart. Ravenclaw had a thing for brains; usually, Gryffindors tended to be more brawny, but there were exceptions, and these exceptions were welcomed to the Blue and Bronze house any time. Conny did sometimes get jealous of Rosie, though; she often stole Lucy's attention away, and though Conny had come to accept that Lucy's allegiances and favour constantly shifted, she'd thought herself nearer the top of the list. She knew about Lucy's brothers, for a start- that should make her important, right?
'…But Conny's really good at it too- even better, I'd say. Right, Con?"
She snapped out of her thoughts and grumbled a response.
"Is anyone going to the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match on Thursday?" Rebecca Dannat asked, setting her cutlery down. "I think we should. We haven't been great at supporting Quidditch this year."
"That's because we've been busy dueling." Polly replied logically. "But we probably ought to anyway. Only Conny and Lucy went through to the next round."
"It was more luck for me than skill." Conny mumbled, her hands clenching as the memory of water filling her lungs erupted in her mind again. "I won't be able to win again."
"Nah! Yeh're frikking amazing at Diligence!" Rosie said in her thick brogue. "Saw ye in Defence class- yeh'll easily beat the wee folk from Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Oh, aye, ye may have some trouble with our Bill- but he's just an all-around genius."
"I hope I don't go up against Rissa." Conny said. "She's bloody lethal."
"Damn right." Lucy shared a look with her. "That's the thing- when is the next round?"
"Two weeks next Friday." Jonmarc piped up, despite being quiet and moody as usual. He'd been a right misery since losing to Bill; the girls though it was him being sensitive, so they invited him along to all their various activities now. He'd been made an honourary girl, which probably made him angrier and surlier than losing in the first place, but he put up with it.
"Ugh, I am so behind on jinxes. My shield charm makes me grow a beard instead, I have no idea what I'm doing wrong." Conny admitted. "We're just not wired to do such advanced magic."
"A shield charm is hardly advanced." She heard Ralphus drawl from further down the table. "I was doing them before I learned to walk."
"That's nice." Rosie said absently. Ralphus looked her up and down, noticing the Gryffindor badge.
"Want to go back and sit with the other idiots?" He said.
"Nay, not really."
He seemed taken back by her deliberately effusive answers. "Can anybody else understand what she's saying?"
They saw it for the pathetic quip it was and ignored him. He'd been a right bastard after being beaten in the Dueling Competition, and to make things worse, people kept walking past him and squirting him with little jets of water, just to remind him what a horrible person he was.
Conny was reminded of all this as she slunk past a damp tapestry, where Polly had taken the liberty of dampening him earlier that day. It was dark, and late, and she was tired, but she really hated sleeping. She sighed and saw Bach curled up on an armchair in the Hufflepuff Commons. She was all the way on the ground floor; it would take ages to get upstairs now. She'd hardly get any sleep, since she'd be up as soon as the drowning came again. It was starting to affect her studies.
She began trudging upstairs with Bach nestled in her arms, and, she supposed, her tiredness was why she was much less cautious than usual, and failed to notice the soft tap-tap of shoes behind her until it was too late.
"Miss DeHayersae." The cold, semi-amused voice of Professor Snape said slowly. Conny wheeled around, her heart hammering in her chest. She's been caught. Now she'd have to do a billion detentions or an essay or something.
"Professor Snape." She sighed, tired, not caring how cheeky she was being.
"That is my name." He raised a dark eyebrow. "Now, why would a first-year such as yourself be wandering around quite so late?"
"Couldn't sleep." She said. "Don't want to sleep."
"Why on earth would that be?" Snape asked, his lip curling. "You are a child, Miss DeHayersae, and children, by definition, are lazy, and enjoy sleeping."
Her face burned. She thought… it was better to be honest. Maybe he could do something about it. He was the Potions Master, after all. "I get… bad dreams, sir. Of drowning, like I did at Hallowe'en. Then I wake up, and I fear going back to sleep again."
She could have sworn his face softened slightly. "That is… I empathize, Miss DeHayersae. I am sure there is something I could offer you to remedy this affliction."
"Really?"
"Oh yes. I offer the Draught of Peace to students who are upset and anxious. If prepared in its concentrated form, it will send the imbiber into a deep, dreamless sleep."
Brilliant, Conny thought happily- a solution for all my problems! If I'm sleeping, I can perform better in class… get better at dueling… and have a better life.
"I shall send some by owl tomorrow at breakfast." Snape said. "And fifty points from Ravenclaw for being out of bed so very late."
Appalled, she was about to say something back when Bach launched out of her arms, straight at Snape's face.
It was like something out of the muggle movies that Conny's mum had taken her to see when she was little: almost in slow motion. Bach leapt, claws outstretched, and collided with Snape like a furry cannonball. He raked his rather sharp claws down the Potions Master's face, leaving deep gouges down his cheeks. Snape roared with indignation and grabbed Bach by the scruff of his neck, chucking him across the hall and into a suit of armour, which swore loudly at him. With a flourish and a swish of his cloak, Snape turned around as stormed off, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Conny stood, dumbfounded, as Bach extracted himself from the helmet of the suit of armour, yowling loud enough to wake the whole bloody castle.
"You little legend, you." Conny picked him up and cuddled him close. "I think you just got me in a hell of a lot of trouble, Bachy."
He just purred in a gloating fashion and started to lick to blood of his claws. Conny carried him upstairs, back to the Ravenclaw tower, and managed to clean herself up as sunrise approached. Her reflection was not a pretty sight; she had bags under the bags under her eyes. Her hair needed a wash, but she was afraid to get into the shower. It had all seemed okay, when she was home and her parents were there for her, but now she was back… it was all frightening again. She didn't like it. She felt weak and flawed next to the older, more popular students.
Some notes on namings and inspiration for names:
Conny DeHayersae:- I've actually lifted this name straight out of another fic I wrote. I'm so unoriginal like that… sorry. The name just seemed to fit the character. Conny's full name, Conyeri, I made up myself. It is a perversion of the name 'Constance', which I LOVE. DeHayersae, I kinda forget where it came from.
Lucy Ra:- Lucy's name is a bit more interesting. Her first name, Lucelia, is the long version of the name Lucy that a girl in my primary school used to have… I thought it was really pretty so I chose it. Now, Ra, sounding ostentatiously Egyptian, is actually… well, I read Dracula, and anyone who'd read it knows that there is a character called Lucy Westenra. So I just got rid of the 'Westen' and was left with the 'Ra'. The nationality and stuff came along after.
Jonmarc Lucwitt:- I made up Jonmarc because it sounded French. I did French GCSE (I actually, somehow, got a A*, which is funny if you know my accent) and I just liked the idea of different nationalities being represented. So 'Jonmarc' is just a contraction of one spelling of 'John' (Jon) and 'Mark', franglicized to Marc, to make Jonmarc. I wanted Jon's surname to be able to be said in a French accent (where it is pronounced 'Looc-weet'), an American accent (where it is 'Lah-quit') and an English accent (in which it is 'Le-quit).
So there you have it. I'll explain some other characters, items and locations later on :)
