"Dungbombs? She sent you dungbombs on Christmas?"
It was the first dinner at Hogwarts since the return of the students who had gone home for the holidays. Daphne still couldn't seem to wrap her head around Pansy's actions, and Avalon confirmed for the third time that, yes, Pansy had sent her a package containing dungbombs, and, yes, she was sure.
"It took me nearly three hours of cleaning before the dorm stopped smelling like them," Avalon complained. She stabbed her roast chicken with a fork angrily.
Further down the table, Pansy was talking to Adrian Pucey, an older Slytherin boy. She turned towards Avalon and noticed the other girl's eyes on her. Smiling innocently, she wiggled her fingers and then turned back to her conversation with Adrian.
"Should I hex her?" Blaise asked, twirling his wand nonchalantly.
Daphne laughed. "If she wanted anyone hexed correctly, I doubt you'd be the first person who'd come to mind to get the job done. Or the fortieth person."
Blaise pouted while his friends laughed. He was talented at many things, but Charms wasn't one of those things. If anyone had a question about the position of the stars or one of the Goblin Rebellions, Blaise was their guy as History of Magic and Astronomy were his two best subjects. Surprisingly, he was fairly good in Transfiguration as well. No one could figure out the logic behind that.
Avalon got up after a few moments and walked over to the Gryffindor table, where her sister was beckoning her. She walked with outstretched arms towards Lucy, but at the last moments she turned and hugged Neville instead.
"Hey Neville," she greeted. "How was Christmas with your family?"
"It was fun. And thanks for the new cloak you got me. My gran would have flipped if she found out I lost mine," Neville said.
Lucy's brow furrowed.
"What about your parents?" Avalon asked.
Neville opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut. He laughed. "They wouldn't have said anything about it, probably."
"Avalon, you're ignoring me."
The younger girl and Neville continued to chat, drowning out Lucy. After a few moments, Avalon turned to her sister and smiled. "You know, I never got a chance to thank you for the boots you sent. The thing is, I knew someone who wanted them more than I did. The rubbish bin."
Lucy's face fell visibly. Avalon told Neville she'd see him later and went back to her table to join her friends. Their eyes were wide. While they hadn't been able to hear the conversation, they had been following along the best that they could by reading lips and expressions, and they knew at the very least it had been brutal.
"Ruthless, this one is," Draco said with a laugh. He poured ketchup on his potatoes.
But not everyone was as impressed by Avalon's actions.
Halfway through the next Potions class while they worked on Forgetfulness Potions, Seamus Finnigan poked her in the arm with his wand—hard—from his spot at the workspace next to her with Daphne.
"That was horrible, what you did to your sister. She was blubbering about it in the Common Room for half the night," he hissed at her.
Daphne rolled her eyes at him as she added Valerian sprigs to her cauldron. "Butt out, Finnigan. It's really not any of your business what happens between Lucy and Avalon. You're not friends with either of them, if I recall."
Finnigan huffed. "If my sister treated me the way you're treating Lucy, I would—"
"But see, it doesn't matter what you would do."
"Do me a favor, Finnigan. Put half as much energy into crushing these mistletoe berries as you put into sticking your nose in everyone's business," snapped Daphne. She thrust the mortar full of berries at him and shoved the pestle into his hand. Silently, but with a reluctant expression, Finnigan began to do as he was told. He turned away from Avalon and read pages from his Potions textbook as he mashed the ingredient.
Avalon smiled in her best friend's direction. It was times like these she wondered how much more difficult her life would be without Daphne in it. Thank you, she mouthed.
Finnigan wouldn't let it go however, and resumed the argument towards the end of class.
"She's your sister! Don't you love her?"
"Argh!" cried Avalon. She raised her wand as they finished the potion. The remaining step was to wave it over the cauldron, a simple task that she took on because Neville was still working on his potions skills.
However, Finnigan running off on one side of her led to distraction, and the next thing everyone in the dungeon knew, there was a humongous cloud of smoke and soot in the air and covering every available surface. It was a déjà vu moment as potion had splashed out of the cauldron spilled onto the floor. Once again, poor Neville found himself caught in the crossfire of a potions mishap.
"Gran? What's happening? Where am I?"
Well, at least our Forgetfulness Potion works.
In an instant, Professor Snape was upon them, black beetle eyes glinting. "Are you really that incompetent, Miss Steele, that a simple Forgetfulness Potion is beyond your level of ability? Your weekend will be spent in detention with me, I'm afraid."
Daphne raised her hand politely. "But Professor, Finnigan started it! It wasn't Avalon's fault."
"Ah, don't worry, I've got plenty of work for the both of them in the dungeons. Mr. Finnigan can find his way to the dungeons this weekend as well. And I'll be deducting five points from Gryffindor," Snape added.
Potter and Weasley were prepared to fight this verdict. It probably didn't seem fair to them that the Gryffindor would be losing house points while the Slytherin would not be. However, their protests died in their throats as Neville started up again, concerned that he was in a strange place with no recollection of how he came to be there.
"Where are you, Gran? Who are all of you people?"
"You two get full marks on your Forgetfulness Potion," Snape looked around at the students until his eyes settled onto Neville who was walking up to various students and studying their faces, trying to get a feel for their identities. "Will someone please take Longbottom to the Hospital Wing? Again?"
Avalon stood up and took him by the arm. "Who are you? Why are you touching me?"
"Come on, mate, careful. Watch your step now."
They hobbled off in the direction of the Hospital Wing. Avalon laughed to herself as she imagined what Madam Pomfrey would say when she saw her most frequent patron. The last time he had been there (some of the Slytherins had cast a terrible Jelly-Legs Jinx on him in the corridor and he had fallen down two different moving staircases) the matron had joked about creating his own quarters in the Hospital Wing since he was in so often.
"This is your fault."
Finnigan rolled his eyes as he scrubbed the cauldrons in the Potions dungeons without magic. Avalon was in the storeroom, her voice muffled from inside as she organized the ingredients since the Weasley twins had made a bit of a mess looking for mashed Flobberworms the day before.
He sighed. "You were the one who messed up the potion. You made the explosion."
"And tell me, Finnigan, how many things have you blown up this week alone?" Avalon responded. "Besides, if you hadn't been nagging me like my mother while I was trying to cast the spell, none of this would have happened."
"Excuse me if one of us cared about your sister's feelings."
Avalon scoffed. "You didn't actually care. You just didn't want to hear her crying all night long in the Gryffindor common room."
Finnigan was silent. He tried to carefully hide the fact that he was pouting, putting in extra force in scrubbing the cauldrons. No one spoke for about ten minutes, until there was a crash and loud, blood curdling scream from the storeroom. A cloud of thick, dark gray smoke began to billow out from the doorway, and Avalon came out coughing.
"We seem… to have a… problem."
"No kidding," Finnigan responded with a whistle. He flapped his hands in the direction of the door to clear out the smoke. He hesitated to hide the edge of concern in his voice, and paused before asking, "Are you all right? What happened in there?"
"I was trying to stack some of the ingredient jars and I dropped a couple. Did you know certain magical components cause explosions when they mix?"
Finnigan nodded. "Like Chemistry."
"What's Chemistry?" Avalon asked. She furrowed her brow at the boy and his odd terminology.
"It's muggle science. You can mix a bunch of different liquids and materials together— they're called elements—and they have chemical reactions. It's pretty cool. If I wasn't a wizard I would have wanted to learn more about it," Finnigan nodded.
Avalon's sneer deepened. "You're a muggleborn?"
"Half and half, actually. My dad's a muggle. He had a bit of a nasty shock when he found out my mum's a witch."
The smoke had finally vaporized. She grabbed a broom from another cupboard since they weren't allowed to use magic and disappeared into the storeroom again. "You know, I just asked if you were muggleborn. I didn't need your entire life story," she said.
"Blood status isn't everything, you know. Having muggle blood isn't as bad as you think," Finnigan responded.
"Having dirty blood, you mean? Yeah, I'll take your word for it."
"Look, let's just get this done, your majesty. You can go back to your life and I can go back to mine. We don't have to interact while we're cleaning," Finnigan said. "I'd rather not spend more time than necessary talking to arrogant pricks like you."
Avalon laughed haughtily. "Done and done."
They went back to silence, both eleven-year-olds fuming, unable to believe the other one.
A/N: Hey guys, Cristy here. Sorry, finals week just finished so I wasn't able to update as frequently. BUT it's officially summer vacation, so I will definitely be more consistent with the chapters now. First year is almost coming to a close, and with second year, more changes will come. I can't wait to progress this story further. Please leave a review if you're enjoying the story! You readers are what make writing worthwhile. See you later. Also, I don't own Harry Potter (obviously).
