The Founding of Pigwarts III – Chaos Is Served
Chapter 26: I Spy A Spy
Ron was feeling bored and frustrated. He was bored of being frustrated, and he was frustrated of being still unable to flap his ears. He was also a bit sore from getting hit by a Bludger in their little Quidditch game of the previous night, and still a little deaf from getting yelled at by Hermione in their little Quidditch game, and by Ginny right after it. All things considered, though, it had still been a nice game, not just because they had won it, but that helped, too. And Hermione had played quite well when she wasn't yelling at Harry for trying to kill her; in fact, she played marvellously for her first time, even catching the Snitch and everything. Ginny hadn't liked it much, despite their victory, and kept glaring suspiciously at everyone and muttering something under her breath.
He thought he knew why Ginny was this upset, though, and it wasn't just for not catching the Snitch. It was because when proposing her little bet to Hermione, she hadn't expected her to excel at it, and learn to do it this quickly; she hadn't been prepared for it and that's why she got so moody. Ron, however, had long ago concluded that Hermione was good at everything, even things she wasn't good at, and was now happy for and with his friend.
He only wished things were as easy for him to learn, then he wouldn't be frustrated with his failed tries of ear-flapping, and bored of his frustration. He sighed, loud and over-dramatically, because of his frustration, boredom, and the fact that no one was near to hear it. His usual amusers were all in class, or had told him they had to go to class, but instead went to do something better than keeping him company, bringing him pancakes, and listening to his complaining. He did have the class schedule somewhere, but didn't feel like looking at it, since it might have well turned out that everyone did indeed have a lesson to teach.
Getting tired of being bored, Ron left his office in favour of wandering the empty corridors. He had just remembered another part of Headmaster-y behaviour – chatting with portraits. And perhaps he could catch some student up to no good, and help them with it. He wasn't the kind of person to reproof anyone for doing a little mischief, and they had known it when making him the Headmaster, so they just had to accept it. And find him first.
Unfortunately for him, the portraits didn't seem to be in a chatting mood. He had to repeat his question of 'Hey, what's up?' several times before he got their attention, and then it wasn't the kind of attention he cherished.
"Who let this beast in?" an ugly old woman spat to another ugly old woman, when he had turned towards her portrait, a smile on his face, hoping to start a friendly conversation.
"Look into a mirror, crone," Ron replied, not too amiably, and decided to leave the portraits alone. They were having a bad day, obviously. And so would he, if he had to bear their snotty looks and sharp comments for much longer.
No rampant students seemed to be on the loose either. He passed a few people on the way, but they looked as if they had every right to be where they were, and even said hello to him. Ron wished he could flap his ears in greeting, but since he couldn't, he just grinned at them.
Third time unlucky, Ron had already reached the doors of the Library when he remembered that Dean had been replaced with a quirky pink-feather-wearing-napping-in-the-bookshelves ghost, who was also damn annoying with his incessant questioning for his glasses – or at least that was what he'd heard, not having visited the Library since that time he and Blaise had met with Dean and Draco, and had a little drink and chat in the Restricted Section.
The Arse itself, as Blaise so loved to call it, held little appeal to Ron, because to him books were still books, and books unrelated to Quidditch didn't catch his fancy, even if they were interesting and different. The most amusing part of their get-together had been watching Dean's expressions of horror, panic, and embarrassment.
But perhaps Blaise had found another person to horrify and embarrass, and was doing it just now, without inviting him. Of course, the only yet uncorrupted male professor Ron could think of was Neville, or perhaps Boot, although he seemed too indifferent to be an amusing corruptee. Still, it probably wouldn't be too bothersome to check, and if he did it quietly, he might not wake up the dead librarian asleep in books.
Ron pondered the thought, slouching past the enormous shelves, realizing that dead people did belong in the books. But they shouldn't jump out of them at their leisure, at least not without giving a proper warning. A written one, perhaps, and a few days in advance.
This sounded as a good idea, and he felt marginally better for coming up with it, at least until a soft but still frighteningly loud shout of "Ronnie!" made him jump. Of course, when he wheeled round to glare and quickly changed his mind, his sour mood was quite as dead as the new librarian, and perhaps dosing in some book as well.
"Hey, Millie," he grinned, walking to the woman. "I thought you had a class."
"I did," she replied, frowning.
"So, what's up?" Ron continued good-naturedly, sitting down next to her and giving the heap of books on the table a pointedly disinterested look.
"Research," she said curtly, and even a bit sharply.
"Potions?" Ron guessed, shooting the books now a hostile stare, angry for them for coming between him and Milla, even thought they were technically in front of them, not between.
She finally looked up from the tome she was currently browsing, and glanced around, suspiciously. Once she deemed the coast clear, and the ghost nowhere near, she turned to him and shook her head, whispering,
"Vampires."
"Oh?" Ron asked, brightening up a bit. Vampires were clearly more interesting than Potions, and everyone knew about her personal experience with them, or at least what she claimed was personal experience, and he was not going to argue. Of course, everyone knew about her personal experience with Potions as well, and were actually more inclined to believe it.
"What have you found out?" Ron inquired, having to fake only half the interest in his tone.
"Nothing," Millicent huffed, pushing the book away and glaring at it.
"Oh," he said, wondering whether he dared to say what he wanted to say, and then said it without further thinking because thinking was bothersome. "Want to do something else?"
She gave him a funny look, as if she was surprised with his proposition, but then shrugged in agreement,
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to flap my ears," Ron answered honestly, still not thinking. "But we can do what you want to."
"How kind of you," Millicent said with a smirk, and had already come up with a few possibilities, such as interrupting a lesson and finding an innocent student to blame it on, or snogging in some half-hidden alcove, when the first half of his sentence made her pause.
"Why do you want to flap your ears?"
"I thought it'd be cool," Ron explained, blushing slightly. "I need a special Headmaster-y thing to do that I would be remembered by, like Dumbledore and his twinkling, and I thought flapping ears would be a cool thing to do."
Millicent stared at him for a while, and then at his ears which started to grow quite red under her intent gaze.
"That would be really cool," she admitted at least, and Ron couldn't help but grin at hearing that.
"But I haven't figured out how to do it yet," he said, giving her a helplessly hopeful look.
"Hmm," she said, turning back to his hears and even reaching out to pinch them in a way that Ron considered flirtatious. He frowned at her in mock-annoyance, rubbing his ears, when in reality he was almost bursting with happiness at how well she was responding to his advances.
"I guess you can attach an invisible thread to the tops and then pull the other ends in your pocket to move them," she suggested, poking his ears again to his great pleasure.
"It's a bit clumsy though," she went on, but Ron was barely listening to her since his ears and attention were now otherwise occupied. "I know there is an ear-twitch jinx, but that would make them twitch uncontrollably, not at your will."
"Mmm," Ron said.
"You could of course jinx yourself, and perhaps there's a variant to the spell that makes your ears twitch only for a moment, but that would be clumsy, too, because you'd have to conceal your wand but point it towards your ears... or I could make you grow elephant ears, and then you'd be able to move them, but that's not what you want, is it?"
"Mmm."
"Mmm?" Millicent repeated, raising a brow, and only now noticing on the obviously unfocused look on his face.
"Ronnie, you aren't listening to me!"
"Mmm."
"Are you dreaming about pancakes again?"
"Mmm."
"Figures. Is pancakes all you ever dream about?" she asked, slightly exasperated, and now would have been a perfect opportunity for him to say something flattering and romantic; a perfect opportunity that Ron missed because he wasn't still listening to her.
"Mmm," was his only reply.
Millicent stared at him, uncertain of what to do with him. She could have slapped him, and he deserved it. She could have kissed him, and proven that she was much more dream-worthy than any amount of pancakes. But she just gave a sharp and forceful twist with her fingers, which were conveniently holding on to his ears, making him yelp and finally wake from his sweet daydreams that for once had nothing to do with pancakes.
"You deserved it," she stated, looking away.
"Uhh, erm... hey, do you want to have dinner with me, or something? Uhh," Ron said, grabbing the not so perfect opportunity and blushing with more than just his ears this time.
"No, thanks," she spoke coldly. "I've had enough of pancakes."
"Umm... we can have something else," he offered, a bit taken back by her icy reply, and starting to doubt the good-ideaness of asking her out like this.
"Whatever," Millicent declared, pulling the book she had discarded back towards her.
"Umm... we could go to that restaurant in Diagon Alley that you said you liked," Ron muttered, wondering why he hadn't given up yet and crawled back to his office, defeated.
The book slid over the table once again, as she turned to look at him, now both brows raised in surprise,
"Are you asking me on a date, Ronnie?"
"Erm... no? Yes? Maybe? Should I?"
"I'm not going to tell you that," she huffed, shooting him a short glare and then pointedly snapping her head away from him. "You'll be lucky if I answer to your question at all, in case you decide to ask it."
Instinctively encouraged by such behaviour which would have just confused him further if he had tried to analyse it, Ron took a deep breath and forced his voice as calm as possible,
"Millicent, would you like to go out on a date with me?"
She humphed at first, letting him suffer the silence for a while longer, before turning back to him, a teasing smirk on her lips.
"Well, I don't know," she said sweetly. "It's a nice offer, of course, but I'm not sure if it's for me. Hmm, it's a difficult question. What do you think I should say?"
"Hell, yes!" Ron exclaimed. "At least you'll get a free meal."
"It's sometimes better to stay hungry than eat in certain company," Milla announced wisely.
"Are you crazy?" he cried out in disbelief that someone would give up a free meal, the insult in her words slipping completely past his ears.
"Wouldn't you rather starve than eat with... let's see... Snape? Umbridge? Dark Lord?" she asked.
Ron frowned, thinking about it. Having dinner with either Snape or Umbridge didn't feel too appealing, and he also had a hunch that the food there might not be quite safe... and when it came to Voldemort...
"We-e-ell," Ron drawled, reaching a decision. "As long as I don't have to climb into his grave, I suppose."
"You're incorrigible," Milla said, smirking and shaking her head.
"Am I really that bad company?" he wondered wistfully, coming back to the insult he had ignored before.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking which answer she should give. It had been a stupid question, so she didn't feel too bad when stating a resolute, "Yes."
"Hmm," Ron said, turning contemplative. "Would it help if we sat at separate tables? Perhaps at the opposite ends of the restaurant?"
"Blaise has taught you well," she remarked, eyeing once again the book she had pushed away.
"If you don't want to come, say it. I can handle it, you know. I might not understand, but I won't like you any less for it," he promised.
"That's good to know," she said a bit absently, stroking the open page of the book.
"Okay," Ron said, disappointed and dejected, but far from giving up for good. Stubbornness was a virtue, after all. "See you later then, Milla."
"Ronnie," she stopped him. She had started to call him that to annoy him, but after being annoyed for a while, he had actually started to like it. No one but her called him that. It made him feel special. She made him feel special.
He looked down at her from his standing position by her desk, waiting for her to continue. He hadn't given up his hopes, but he didn't expect the words she spoke then either.
"I'll go out with you if you give me a good idea how to catch those Vampire kids," she stated her conditions.
He sat back down immediately.
"Let me get this right," Ron said, getting ready for the big thinking. "You want to expose those students as Vampires, but you have no proof of that."
"Of course I have proof!"
"No solid proof then."
"Solid, liquid, what does it matter?" Millicent declared. "I know they are Vampires, what more proof do I need?"
"But there's nothing to convince... erm..." he paused, searching for the least likely person to believe her theory. Usually it would have been Hermione, but with her recent odd behaviour, he wasn't so sure of it any more. "Harry, for example, that they are Vampires?"
"Well," she said, "I suppose I could say they are in league with Draco. He might start to believe it then."
"I still think you should gather some more intelligence first," Ron stated.
"I could get you Harry's invisibility cloak. Or better yet," he continued with growing enthusiasm, sudden realizing that he had passed most of his Hogwarts days spying on people, "you can ask a house elf do it for you. They are really good at it."
For a moment Millicent's face was completely blank, as if she was shocked about the good advice he was giving her, or at least that's what Ron hoped, before a smirk raised the corners of her mouth and her eyes sparkled with the birth of a devious plan.
"No, not an elf," she spoke after a while. "I need someone closer, someone who can watch and listen, and ask clever questions at opportune moments. I need someone they could trust. Someone they would talk to. Someone to witness a slip of tongue and report it back to me. Someone to search through their personal things when they are not there.
"And I know just the right person."
"Who?" Ron asked in curiosity.
--
"One moment, please," Millicent spoke to the fourth year Weasleys and Grangers rushing out of her classroom as if their lives depended on it. True, she had once threatened to trap the last one to leave into the painting with a Nundu on the wall, but she hadn't meant it seriously. She liked the painting, she was not going to ruin it with the addition of some hysterical student.
The students halted mid-escape and looked at her, fear in their eyes. She paid them little attention, the whole force of her glare concentrated on the one student that answered to her look with cold indifference.
You won't be looking like that once I blow your carefully constructed cover and announce your true identity to everyone, Millicent thought, turning her gaze to another student.
"Miss Catherina Svendsen, I'd like to have a word with you. Everyone else, leave."
Most of the students complied, doubling their effort to get away, but there was of course the one that never missed a chance to defy her. Well, she would have her revenge for that.
"Don't worry," Victoria said, not bothering to lower her voice. "She can't do anything to you."
Want to bet on it? Millicent watched her leave with malicious satisfaction, then assumed her most poisonous glare and levelled it on Catherina. She could see that the girl was trying to be strong, even cool and collected as her friend, but failing quite obviously.
"Miss Svendsen, I couldn't help but notice the trouble you were having with your Potion today."
"I..." the girl said, turning her face towards her Professor only to get the full dose of that horrible glare, and quickly dropped her gaze. "Yes, Professor."
"I also couldn't help but notice that the final result of it was a little less disgusting than usually," Millicent continued.
"Yes, Professor."
"Yes. And since there was no way you could have fixed up the initial mess yourself, it must be that someone helped you with it."
Catherina remained silent.
"I said, Miss Svendsen," Millicent repeated, her tone sharper than before, "that someone must have helped you with your potion."
"Professor," the girl muttered, keeping her eyes on the floor.
"Tell me who it was, and I'll give you an easier punishment. I'm sure you have better things to do with your nights than scrubbing the cauldrons until they sparkle. You could certainly use them for studying, if you progress in other lessons as well as you do here."
"No one helped me, Professor," the girl finally stated.
"Very well, have it your way. That would be fifty points from Weasley and four weeks of detention."
"F-four weeks?" Catherina exclaimed, forgetting herself in the face of such a surprisingly unjust punishment.
"What you did is called cheating, and here, in Pigwarts, we don't look lightly at cheating," Millicent stated.
"Yes, Professor," the girl said, her voice shaking from a mixture of fear, shock, and anger.
Millicent let the oppressive silence ring for a moment longer.
"Of course," she finally continued. "Perhaps I am being too harsh on you. After all, you're just a silly little child and have no idea what your friend really is."
"Professor?" the girl looked up in surprise.
Internally cackling with evil laughter, she turned her expression into something less angry and more pitiful.
--
"What did she want?" Victoria asked, waiting in the hallway a few steps away from the classroom door.
"She figured out I was helped with the potion today," Catherina said, carefully avoiding the other girl's gaze.
"Why is that a problem? This was not an exam. We are here to learn. She should be the one helping us all," Victoria said with contempt. "She didn't deduct any points for it, did she?"
"Only ten. I got lucky. She must have been having a good day."
"That's not luck, that's injustice," Victoria spoke, an unnaturally sharp edge to her tone which made Catherina finally glance at her. "But what more can you expect? It's the same everywhere."
"Victoria..."
"I'm going to the Library. See you later, Catherina."
Catherina watched her walk away, the words Professor Bulstrode had hissed to her echoing through her mind. She discovered she would have picked those four weeks of detention and fifty points deducted over this any moment.
"She pretends to be your friend, but surely even you have noticed her strange behaviour."
"Perhaps she is the only person willing to spend time with you, but does it really weigh up the risk of waking up one day in desperate need of blood? And you might just discover that none of your room mates are in any position to lend you some."
"I'm not asking much from you. I'm just asking you to do the duty of a Pigwartian, of a witch, of a human being, nothing more. Just rummage through her things when she's not in the room."
"Get her drunk and ask a few suggestive questions."
"Bring me a sample of her sunscreen! She has to wear something!"
"I got this hint from a very reliable source."
"I suppose she doesn't keep a list of people she has sucked dry already? Well, look for it, anyway."
"Remember, you will be serving the community, the whole Wizarding world. Do it for the greater good. I'll promise to mention you when they come to give me the award."
"Follow her to the bathroom if you have to! Just make sure she wouldn't suspect anything."
"A book of instructions of how to bite and suck, perhaps. No, she's probably mastered that already. A book of judging the taste of someone's blood by their appearance and personality then. She's got to have something incriminating!"
"Do it, or it's going to be a lot more than a measly fifty points and four weeks of detention."
"Never stay more than a few steps behind her. Become her eternal shadow. Make sure she doesn't notice anything, though."
"Breathe a word of it to anyone, and I'll make hell look like a walk round the lake compared to your life. Yes, that short! And yes, I can do that!"
"Act totally normal. Question her when she's not expecting it!"
"Just do it, okay, and report back to me."
"Keep your eye on her twenty-five eight. You sleep when you are sucked dry of blood. And keep a low profile, for your own sake!"
"Now get out, you're giving me a headache."
"Shoo! Shoo! Have you grown roots or something? I said out!"
Now that Catherina thought about it, she realized she hadn't got the chance to even begin to say 'Yes, Professor' during the whole talk, which was good, because she had been way too dazed by all that to utter anything. And way too terrified by the threats, orders, and yells.
In addition to that, she couldn't quite believe her Professor. Sure, Victoria was a bit of a loner, but she had come from different kind of society, and it was only the beginning of the year anyway. That didn't necessary mean she was after everyone's blood, literally. And she had been so very nice and friendly and helpful to her, while the Professor had yelled, threatened, and ordered her.
Besides, she was almost sure it was not the right thing to do for a Professor, to make one student spy on another.
On the other hand, Professor Bulstrode was still a Professor, and by definition wiser than her.
Cathy sighed, shaking her head and mentally cursing David again. If only he hadn't blown up her potion, then perhaps Victoria wouldn't have asked after her well-being, they hadn't become something like friends, and she wouldn't be in this mess with a kind and gentle room mate possibly after her blood, and a hellishly frightful Professor definitely after her.
End note: Milla, Milla, Milla, what are you doing? Being smart and wicked, yeah, I know. Anyway, she's also driving me nuts. I have no idea who I want her to end up with, because I like her equally with each of her three admirers. Oh dear. Perhaps I'll get mad at her and write her to end up with... erm... Luna instead. That would be extremely evil, and quite nasty of me. Let's hope I won't go there.. unless you'd like me to? :P
Anyway, so I'm planning to have a timeskip here. And if everything goes according to those plans, it's going to be Hallowe'en in the next chapter. That's quite a jump, more than six weeks, I know. But I read from the HP Lexicon that the first Quidditch match of the year took place in early November, and since I'll need sort of an explanatory chapter before the one with the match, Hallowe'en has given me a few ideas. So yeah, beware. Or something.