Chapter 8.7) Stalemate Part II
Selected Listening: The Chamber of Secrets- John Williams
Over the next few days, quidditch practice grew more intense under Oliver's authoritarian gaze. Not only did they practice five days a week in all sorts of weather, but Anastasia, Fred, and George also had duties spying on Slytherin practice. Anastasia, who had her cloak, would sneak out of the locker room and stand on the outskirts to take notes on a clipboard about the Slytherins' practice maneuvers. At the end of the session, they reported back to Oliver on what they had found. Usually, the sessions were made up of the Slytherins showing off stupid stunts and attempting to race their fashionable brooms even though they all went the same bloody speed.
Later that week, Harry informed the group that Nearly Headless Nick had invited them all to his deathday party on Halloween. None of them had been to a deathday party before, and they thought it might be interesting, so they tentatively agreed to go.
On Halloween night, the troop shuffled down to the dungeons where the party was being held, and as they approached the room, they felt their temperatures drop lower and lower. Their teeth began to chatter.
"This better be worth it, Harry," Ron threatened. They had passed the Great Hall on the way and had to strain themselves to keep from ogling the mounds of sweets other students were enjoying at the Halloween feast.
Upon entering the chamber, they saw probably thirty silvery ghosts, levitating above the floor, munching on ghostly dishes. Somber music echoed from a record player in the corner. They approached the tables to find the food rotted out, flies hovering.
While Harry and Ron went to tell Nicholas hello, Anastasia and Hermione stuck by the food table where a small group of ghosts, including the Fat Friar, the Gray Lady, and the Bloody Baron, chatted.
"I still hope the little girl shows up one day. I would very much like to meet her," the Friar said thoughtfully. "Maybe if we work together, we convince her on to the afterlife. It's such a difficult fate for a child."
"What little girl?" Anastasia asked. She would have noticed if a little girl ghost had been wandering the corridors. The other two ghosts turned and glared at her and Hermione for the intrusion. Hermione grabbed onto Anastasia's robe sleeve.
The Fat Friar turned to Anastasia and said kindly, "Ah, you see there's the ghost of a child who makes mischief around the castle. Not Peeves-type mischief. Things like moving teacher's supplies or taking sweets. Things like that," the Friar explained without a hint of hesitation talking to two live people.
"You're still going on about that?" The Gray Lady asked. "No one's seen the little girl since the headmaster took care of the obscurus problem. That's what she was, Friar, an obscurus, not a ghost, nor poltergeist."
"An obscurus?" Hermione asked. "I don't think I've heard of that before."
Anastasia thought she had heard Newt Scamander mention obscurus once or twice on their journey together, but she couldn't remember what he had said about them. It was a topic the magizoologist chose not to linger on. For some reason.
"How would an obscurus be at Hogwarts?" the Friar demanded. "An obscurus is a child whose powers are suppressed. This is a magic school. Besides, no student here is young enough to be an obscurus. No, the little girl's spirit is still here somewhere. Remember when that ruckus happened in the transfiguration classroom a couple years ago? Something large falling from the rafters. There's rumors that it was her."
Anastasia looked to Hermione, wide-eyed, she was the ghost the Friar remembered.
"Problem is, Friar, we ghosts don't fall. We float." The Baron said and drifted away to be somewhere else.
"That's not the only thing," the Friar said determinedly at Anastasia and Hermione, waving his finger excitedly. "Madam Pomfrey's had medications go missing left and right. That's exactly the kind of thing the little ghost would do."
"Um…" Anastasia became nervous and started fiddling with her pendant. Hermione gave her a nervous sideways glance and searched for an excuse to walk away.
"I think Harry and Ron found Nick—" Hermione said and pulled on Anastasia's arm.
"Oh, that's a nice necklace you have," the Friar commented before the girls could flee. Anastasia decided to wear it on Halloween night. One special occasion, where no other students will be, shouldn't cause any trouble, she thought to herself.
"Thank you." Anastasia said. "It was my mother's…"
"Who's your mum? Was it one of my students perhaps?" he twittered with a smile. Although Anastasia knew she needed to evade the Friar's small talk, she realized that he might be the only person who knew anything about her mother at all, but she couldn't be obvious about it.
"Um…no…no not at all. My mother was-is-a muggle," she stuttered out, "both my parents actually."
"We really, really should be going," Hermione urged.
"Huh, well it reminds me of one of my students. She had a necklace just like that. Holly. Yes, Holly was a sweet one. Kept to herself a lot. Had a tendency of comforting the most uncomfortable."
Anastasia's ears perked up. She had a feeling the Friar was a ghost who liked to talk as long as someone was listening, no matter who or why.
"What do you mean?" she asked, ripping her arm away from Hermione's grasp. Hermione mumbled something about 'hopeless' and stalked off to find the boys.
"Holly didn't care much for making friends with Hufflepuffs. Too chipper for her liking, I suppose. No, she made friends everyone else outside of her own house. Not even really friends, more like acquaintances…she had one good friend, Holly did.
"Who?" Anastasia asked.
"Oh….what was her name? It was an old name—Lyra? No, Natalia…no that's not it either…Cassiopeia?"
"Narcissa?" Anastasia asked, saying the first name that leapt to mind.
The Friar snapped in recognition.
"Yes! Those two were like peas in a pod, Holly was the only girl Narcissa got along with outside of her sisters. Yes, yes. So unfortunate what happened though. Holly died by the hand of he-who-shall-not-be-named! I can't imagine what it would be like to lose such a close friend by such a violent nature. Not fair at all it is. Like losing a piece of one's soul. In those dark days, we lost so many."
Anastasia faltered. She had met Narcissa Malfoy in the bookshop that day, and she had been wearing her necklace.
"Yes, I suppose you're right," she said, and wandered off to find the rest.
Anastasia gazed around and found her friends had gone. She skipped quickly out of the hall to see if she could find them around the corridor, but no luck. She sighed and headed towards the back staircase. It was a faster way back to the common room anyway. She walked up to the first floor and started down the hall when she heard a noise.
The soft sound of crying.
Anastasia followed the noise into the restroom, until she reached the stall where the noise echoed from, feeling flashbacks from the Halloween before coming her way, from when Hermione was the girl she found in the bathroom after Ron's heartless comments
"Hello?" she asked, "Can I come in?" Anastasia pushed open the door to find Ginny Weasley hugging herself and rocking back and forth on the toilet.
"Ginny what's wrong?" Anastasia asked and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I don't know…I was at the feast and then—"
"And then what?" Anastasia asked. "Are the other first-years being mean to you?"
Anastasia didn't understand how other students, even Gryffindors, could be so cruel sometimes. To ostracize a girl who may have been a little shy but was otherwise perfectly nice.
Ginny shook her head but wouldn't say more.
"Are you lonely?" Anastasia asked, "You know you may be able to make friends faster if you stopped writing in that journal so much."
From the way Ron spoke the year before, Ginny had been jumping at the bit to go to school, but now Anastasia wondered if after 11 years at home, being the baby with mum, Ginny was suffering some homesickness.
Of course, Anastasia, couldn't relate. She was always at home, and she didn't have a mum's presence to miss, only her spirit.
Ginny shook her head.
"No, I have a friend," she said weakly. "I think I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping well."
Anastasia rubbed her back understandingly.
"It takes some time to get used to the castle," she said, "but it's great that you have a friend," Anastasia said in an upbeat tone. "We were starting to worry about you, Fred and George and me. They'll be so glad to hear that."
Ginny dried the last of her tears.
"Thanks," she said. "I think I want to go back to the common room now."
The two gingers headed down the hall, side by side. If someone didn't know them personally, they might have been sisters, but there were subtle differences. Anastasia's hair shone ruby, and Ginny's favored orange. Freckles scattered along Anastasia's pale cheeks and arms, while Ginny's olive skin was clear, a trait that Anastasia was only slightly self-conscious about. The final difference, their eyes, Anastasia had inherited her mother's hazel gaze instead of her father's blue twinkle. Ginny, the more traditional ginger, had blue eyes.
They climbed the main staircase to the second floor. Anastasia gave Ginny a few more minutes to calm down on their walk before asking the question on her mind.
"So, who's your new friend?" she asked, "What house is she in?"
But Ginny couldn't have answered. They had run into the back of a large crowd of students all stopped, staring at something on the wall. Anastasia and Ginny pushed to the front, and found Harry, Hermione, and Ron staring at a message written in blood.
"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware."
To the right of the message, Mrs. Norris had been frozen, running up the wall.
Anastasia looked to Ginny. The Weasley girl stared at the graffiti, catatonic.
"Are you okay?" Anastasia asked in a whisper.
"Enemies of the heir, beware? You'll be next mudbloods," a familiar voice piped out of the blonde boy in front of them. Anastasia realized they had walked into the throng of Slytherins.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed Ginny's wrist, and pulled her away to the Gryffindor group, led by Percy, who had walked from the other direction. On the way, Anastasia shot a nasty glare back to Draco Malfoy. Percy gave the girls a judgmental eyebrow as they joined their house.
"Why weren't you with the group?" the prefect spat at a whisper.
"I'll explain later," Anastasia told him.
Ginny said nothing and stared down at her feet.
Albus found his way to the crowd and pushed his way forward. He gazed at the evidence on the wall and then back down to the three Gryffindors staring at him with innocent, begging eyes.
"It wasn't them," Anastasia said, stepping out from her place. "They were with me only a moment ago. We were at Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday party, you can ask him."
"Really Professor, it wasn't us!" Harry piped up.
The next few moments passed in a slow-motion blur. Out of all the adults witnessing the evening's terrible events, they never suspected Snape to help, but he was the one who stepped forward and announced that they may not have been involved at all. The other students were dismissed, and Albus examined the scene.
Petrification. The headmaster determined. Method, unknown.
The next day, as they solemnly readied themselves for class, Hermione chastised Anastasia for being so careless at the deathday party.
"You should have left your necklace in your trunk!" she scolded. "The Friar recognized it for Merlin's sake! And, AND, the ghost he was talking about was obviously you. You're lucky he didn't piece things together right then!"
The other girls had already gone down for breakfast, and they were alone in the dorm.
"Hermione, drop it, please," Anastasia said, straightening her tie in the mirror. "The Friar doesn't know. I lied, remember? He can't connect the dots. And yes, I'm putting the necklace away right now."
She stowed it in a sock in the corner of her trunk.
"Aren't you frightened?" Hermione said, rubbing her arms as if she were still cold from the night before. She had been twitchy since the message appeared on the wall. "I didn't like the way Malfoy said that. It was like he knew something we didn't."
"It's a stupid prank," Anastasia said, doing her best to brush off the ominous feeling hanging over the castle. "Malfoy's always a jerk, and it was Halloween after all."
"Maybe so," Hermione said, "but I've never seen Professor Dumbledore so cross." Then she grabbed her bag and stalked out.
After quidditch practice that evening, Anastasia stayed late to do some free flying. The Gryffindor team had only somewhat nailed the 'Anastasia knocks Harry off the pitch' play. The most difficult part was turning at the last second to hit Harry with her shoulder and not the end of her broom. Of course, it was only for an emergency. She probably wouldn't be playing in the Gryffindor-Slytherin game at all. Harry would be able to defeat Malfoy on his own.
As if he had been called, Anastasia looked down at the field to find a small figure with bright blonde hair staring up at her from below.
"Oi!" Draco shouted. "Come down here!"
"What do you want, Malfoy?" she called.
"What's the matter? Don't you want your necklace back?" he asked.
Anastasia stopped and circled around to land.
"What of it?" she asked, once firmly on the ground, one hand on her broom, the other on her hip.
"You promised me meds. Where are they?" Draco asked.
"I didn't promise you anything. You demanded them and threatened me by stealing my pendant. I never told you I would get them," she snapped.
Draco's lip twitched.
"Well then you'll never see your stupid bauble again," he shot back. Anastasia frowned at him. He really didn't know.
"Professor McGonagall gave me my necklace back. It fell out of a Slytherin prefect's pocket during class," she smiled proudly.
Draco growled and stomped at the ground in a horrendous tantrum, cursing Crowley.
"Besides, I won't be getting anything for you after that comment you made the other night. That was cruel, and you know it!" she told him.
Draco composed himself quickly and he turned to her with a devilish grin.
"And which comment would that be? You'll have to specify," he taunted.
"You know which one I mean, you blood-purist-spoiled-prat!" she yelled. Draco leaned back only a decimeter, scowling.
"What you think of me doesn't matter," he said gruffly.
"It doesn't?" she asked, unphased.
"No!" he shouted, getting back in her face, "you'll get that inhaler, and you won't tell a soul. Because you know that if I am physically unable to play quidditch, you won't be able to play either."
Anastasia froze, keeping her gaze nonplussed.
"I don't know what you mean," she said sternly.
Draco drew back, squinting.
"Don't know what I mean? Ever since we met, we have been incapacitated by each other. Every time you run, I have an asthma attack. Every time I am out of breath, you faint. Weasley punched me in the eye, and you couldn't open yours. You fell on your ankle when you went after Quirrell, and I limped for a week. That's why you wouldn't punch me the other day when I insulted Granger! Admit it. There's something weird between us."
Anastasia fell quiet. While she had known this was the truth for some time, she could never quite accept it. Now he was bothering to say it out loud, and it felt like her worst fears confirmed.
"So, you'll get the inhaler then?" Draco asked expectantly as he backed away. Anastasia glared away at the bleachers, but that didn't deter him. "Next week. Same time, same place. I'm counting on you, Green. You are too."
And he walked away, leaving Anastasia with her reeling thoughts.