Snapshot 3: The Prick's Ho

The Camera left the Potter table after a few more happy snaps of The Boy Wonder. It mingled, dodged various feet and had a sip of some butterbeer. It truly couldn't understand how the assembled teens could drink the stuff—it gave the Camera hiccups. Eventually it stumbled across Draco, who was in the process of getting dead drunk.

'You're downing that stuff almost as fast as the Potter boy,' the Camera sniggered to Draco, who glanced down at it and sniffed.

'I'm not. I know how to pace myself.'

'Right. You just have a very fast pace.'

'Yes. Very fast, that's me.' Draco said muzzily, and glanced down at it again. 'What are you?'

The Camera looked about for a second, and stabbed one finger in the direction of Colin, who had just tripped over Lavender Brown's lengthy skirt. 'His constant companion.'

Draco frowned, obviously trying to work this out. He glanced again at the Camera, then peered more closely, then sniffed again. 'Oh. The camera.' He emptied another glass of Butterbeer. 'Well, go away. I don't want to be seen near a contraption that's had the hands of Potter's fan all over it, endless pictures of Potter wrung out of it, and obvioushly has Potter's clothes in tashte. Verry bad...thingo...'

'You're beginning to slur. Did you know that? I thought you should know that. And I hate Potter. That's why I left Creevey.'

Draco tried to glare at the Camera, but gave up when his eyes refused to focus properly. 'Shod off, Snappy, or I'll crack your lens and glue you to...wossname...Potter-fan's arm.' Another sniff. 'Probably just an 'maginashon of my figment anyway.'

The Camera watched him upend another glass. 'How many of those have you had?'

Draco's lips moved in painstaking calculation. '`Bout...twenny?'

'And you can still coherently insult and threaten? With no hiccups?' The shutter widened in joy. 'We must be kindred spirits or something!'

'Bye, 'maginashony-figment.'

The Camera heard Draco swear as his foot connected with its edge, and it was booted several metres across the floor. It got up, brushed itself off and glared back at Draco, who was nursing his sore foot. 'Yeah. Right. Just what I would've done. Kindred spirits.'

The camera wandered around, and eventually gravitated towards the raised platform the band was on. It performed the camera equivalent of a wince—and nearly broke it's shutter in doing so—at the sound, before deciding to do something about it.

'Why don't you stop your caterwauling and join the rest of us? Maybe you'll sing better when you're drunk!' It bellowed, glaring up at the lead singer.

The singer glanced down and rolled his eyes.

'I'm being paid for this job and I will sing, now go away you annoying camera thing!' He trilled, leaning down and jabbing a hand at the object of his attention. Behind the camera a pair of young witches squealed and fainted.

'Look at those two poor things! They fainted in horror!' The camera yelled back.

'Indeed, in horror of your awful countenance! This is your penance and comeuppance!'

At this point Dean wandered over, and began to click his fingers as the insults continued to fly.

'You know,' He observed thoughtfully to Seamus as the Irish boy joined him, 'I really like this song.'

'Look, are you going to keep that racket up all night or what?'

'Dead right, all night, uh-uh, whoa...yeah!'

'Madness,' the Camera muttered. Right on cue, Pansy Parkinson elbowed her way between Seamus and Dean, quill and album cover in hand.

'Get lost! I want an autograph!'

Seamus and Dean glowered at Pansy, then glanced at each other, quickly reaching the same decision. They advanced on her—

The entire room fell silent at the solemn bellow that rose from the other end of the room: 'Zeh ha peena sheli, zona!'

Everyone looked about to find the source of the shout. Draco raised his glass to the crowd and threw it back. In the sudden quiet, a bewildered Hagrid wandered over to the couch and sat down. No one heard Flitwick's muffled squeak as the Weasley twins, shaking with drunken laughter in the opposite corner, yelled back: 'Zeh ha peena sheli, zona!'

'Wow,' Pansy whispered as Draco answered back. 'I never knew Draco spoke Hebrew...'

The Camera squinted up at her. 'You know what he's saying?'

She sniffed. 'I'm the daughter of the Magical Foreign Relations Minister. Of course I do!'

'Yeah, right...look, is there a cold going around in the dungeons or something?' The Camera edged away nervously.

Pansy glared down at it. 'What are you talking about?'

'Nothing, nothing. So what are they saying?'

By now something of a verbal tennis match had commenced, which most of the room had chosen to ignore—particularly Hagrid, who was apologising profusely to Professor Flitwick for sitting on him. Pansy's brow creased before she began to translate: 'This is my corner, ho! This is my corner, ho! My corner, ho! Corner, ho! Ho! Ho! Ho—what is so amusing?'

The Camera picked itself up off the floor, still snorting sporadically. It took a deep breath and shrieked, 'Who's the hoe?!'

Hagrid sat back down as silence engulfed the room again. Even Draco and the twins looked slightly startled out of their stupor. The Bloody Baron flew up a few feet to search for the offender, knocking Nearly-Headless Nick into the punch as he did so. Above the doors, the clock struck nine. By the second chime, the Camera had disappeared into the crowd to get the perfect vantage point for portraits of the twins (still aghast); Draco (shrugging it all off with another drink); and Hagrid, on his knees before a huffy Flitwick, promising to make up for it all with the next dance.

—CLICK!—