A Mind Wide Open; chapter 1
By Ginny Ha-ha
Today is the first day of the rest
of our lives!
Tomorrow is too late to pretend
Everything's all right;
I'm not getting any younger as long
As you don't get any older
I'm not going to state that yesterday never was.
-- Green Day --
~*~
I'm sorry; I've been terrible at writing (well… posting) lately, I know! This is the main thing I've been working on, and I'm fairly pleased with it.
J. K. Rowling owns Harry and his school mates. I own, well, whoever someone else doesn't. Please read and review!
Incidentally, this chapter is for Will, for his help, ideas, and putting up with me moaning about writer's block!!
~ Gin ~
~*~
The wind howled. Rain poured down from the sky, which was steel grey with clouds. They hung heavy over the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, threatening, pouring fourth water so that it was less of a shower, and more an ocean being tipped from above.
The forest stood silhouetted, black against the sky. The only light came from the moon and the windows of the great castle, and even they were almost obscured by the solid curtain of water that covered the landscape.
Rain slapped against the skin of the girl who toiled across the uneven ground, wrapped in her black school cloak, pointed hat rammed so far onto her head, and collar turned so far up, that her face was almost completely hidden. Fierce dark brown eyes glared out over the turned-up collar of her cloak. Every so often, she stumbled, tripping over a sodden lump of mud, or a stone, her trailing shoelaces lashing against her tights, leaving brown lines of watery mud impressioned where they had slapped.
The girl muttered to herself and felt in her pocket for her wand, in the hope that a good Impervious spell might act as some protection from the British weather. She pointed it towards herself, muttering; "Impervious!" Nothing happened. "Come on... you bloody thing..." her words were all but swept away by the screaming wind. "Impervious…Oh for crap's sake!" She gave the wand a vicious shake. "'could have sworn that was the right spell... Stupid, stupid, stupid …Urgh..." She continued her soggy way across the grounds, still muttering angrily to herself.
She reached the castle door some minutes later, passed through it, and squelched her way up to the Ravenclaw common room, entering via the rotating bookcase.
A wave of warmth swept over her as she entered, only serving to make the girl more aware of the way her wet clothes clung to her. The fire was ablaze, students sitting round it in comfy chairs, chatting, laughing and playing various board games. She ignored them as they stared at her soaking figure, and stalked through the room, head held high in defiance of anyone who might mistake her for someone who was remotely interested in anything they had to say.
She entered her dormitory shivering with wet and cold. Thank God! Finally, she could get a change of clothes and a chance to relax!
A gawky and adenoidal girl with thick red hair and a northern accent, by the name of Lisa Turpin, glanced up from the novel she was reading stretched out on her bed. "Oh… Hiya Mandy, I didn't see you come in." She paused, and skimmed a few paragraphs of novel before continuing. "Raining out, is it?"
Mandy Brocklehurst stood in the doorway, dripping wet, her uniform clinging to her shivering form. Water was running off her hair down her nose. "Not much. Not so as anyone'd notice." She pushed her lank fringe out of her eyes, which was dripping water down her face in little rivers.
"Oh, good." Lisa returned to her book, presumably oblivious to the sarcasm. Mandy sighed, irritated, and began the process of getting changed out of her wet clothes into an unflattering pair of pyjamas decorated with dancing hedgehogs.
Close to, she was an ungracious, flat-chested, rather plain girl of sixteen, with fair hair cropped short like a boys', currently flattened to her skull with wetness. Her oval face bore clever features, and her dark eyes denoted a certain hint of sharpness, which suggested that she knew that she was a deal more intelligent then most people, but had only recently realised that it was a good idea not to let other people discover this. She began viciously towelling her hair dry, booting her hat into a distant corner of the room.
"Have fun in detention?" Lisa said.
"Oh yes," Mandy put on a heavily sarcastic tone, dumping the towel on the floor to join her extensive collection of odd socks, "Abso-bloody-lutely spiffing."
"Why didn't you put an Impervious spell on yourself, eh, you daft prat?" Lisa gave her sideways smile, as if pleased at having realised that Mandy hadn't.
"Do you think I didn't try?"
"Oh, is your wand still playing up, then?"
"Take a wild guess, Lis'."
"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't have asked you, would I? There's no need to be so snappish--"
"Lisa?"
"What?"
"Shaddup." Mandy sat down heavily on her bed, and picked at a loose thread on her blue and bronze duvet. "What time is it?"
"Getting on for nine thirty PM, I'd say."
"I suspected as much." She yawned, and flopped backwards onto her bed. "That's that, then; I'm going to sleep. You can read using just the one lamp, can't you?"
"Well, all right, I'll give it a go, since I'm in a generous mood. It's bad for my eyes, though."
"Good good."
Mandy extinguished a number of the candles that lit the dorm with her finger and thumb, leaving Lisa to read using one sole candle next to her bed. Mandy flopped onto her own four poster, and allowed herself to doze...
~*~
Life had been getting on top of Mandy recently-- almost literally. Her mind felt as though it was being squashed. She had no real idea why. Probably just, well, life... Or one of those displacement activities that one of her other dorm mates, Padma Patil, was so keen on… Or something.
Just lately, though, it seemed that Mandy always felt odd.
Sort of… compressed, yet elongated, like she was constantly wearing braces, only not on her teeth. This stupid Herbology detention for 'forgetting' her homework hadn't helped.
Tonight, it felt as if someone was trying to push her entire body right through the mattress. Mandy's head ached dully, and she watched vivid green and blood red spots flashing and dancing behind her eyelids.
She was almost getting used to it. The stress had been present for several days now, and was showing no signs of abating. She'd been briefly to Madam Pomfrey, who had forced some sort of vile-tasting pink stuff down her throat, which had completely failed to do anything to help, and had given her a tendency to dream about prawns.
Mandy had never liked hospitals, and, with a knowledge born of experience, distrusted many of their treatments. Besides, they were full of sick people, and the smell alone was always ghastly, even at Hogwarts; a kind of mix of cabbage, sour cheese, and disinfectant.
She sighed, and turned over in bed. It was all right for her dorm mates!
Lisa Turpin was as blunt in her manners as a brick wall; she was not a naturally pretty child. Tall, pale and angular, she constantly looked as though she was trying to swallow her front teeth. She was one of those people who seemed to move as though they were being dragged along by a string, and, Mandy suspected, couldn't find organise a piss-up in a brewery, so to speak. But still-- somehow—she managed to get through life with fantastic marks in everything, and she only ever worried about things like who was dating who, and whose sister had snogged which boy behind someone else's back, and what they were going to do about it. She was popular, in a strange kind of way; everyone knew who she was, or at least had heard the name. Whether they liked her or not was another matter entirely. Mandy found her bearable, and could talk to her happily enough when she felt like a gossip.
And then there was Sue Li. Sue was… well, Sue; delicate, philosophical, and absolutely infuriatingly quiet. It made Mandy want to hit her. She rarely volunteered any information on herself, and could sit, apparently in thought, for hours at a time. How could someone just be like that? It was, quite frankly, completely and utterly weird. She was one of those people who worried a lot about the purpose of life, and weather stepping on an insect could change the world—it had never occurred to Mandy to let that bother her. Insects were made to be stepped on or ignored, depending on how painful it was when they bit you. But Sue was odd, and cared about things like that, for some reason Mandy had never been able to fathom.
Padma Patil, on the other hand, could talk at length about almost any subject you could care to mention, and could quite happily have ruled the world in her spare time-- probably even whilst doing her homework and juggling at the same time. But ask her who was dating Terry Boot, or whether Justin Finch-Fletchley had suddenly showed an unerring desire to dress up in ladies lingerie (which he hadn't yet— or at least, Mandy hoped not, even if he was as camp as a row of tents), and she'd have no idea. She seemed to be under the vague impression that Harry Potter was dating Rita Skeeter. And she collected Muggle stamps.
Mandy, though… she was permanently confused.
Her marks had started to deteriorate since they had returned from the last summer holidays, and her mind, if not feeling squashed, was always buzzing. It felt as though a colony of bees had established itself inside her head, which, quite apart from anything else, was incredibly irritating. Bees were all right, she reasoned, but her head was not the place for them. You couldn't step on them there, for one thing. At least, not without a deal of pain.
Imaginary bees were worse, if only because she had a very vivid imagination. She considered this to be one large bane of her life—it came just after being short, flat-chested and having a mouth full of metalwork. Oh, and the inability to get a boyfriend. Not forgetting the fact that she was as stubborn as the day was long; nor did Mandy hold herself above using popular clichés.
If it was a perfect world, she would eventually had fallen into a dreamless sleep whilst mulling over these thoughts, and woken up bright and early the next morning, ready to face the day ahead and have an, if not brilliant, at least fairly decent day.
If only.
~*~
The room pulsed. She could feel it. The room was pulsing, deep and heavy, like the heartbeat of a mountain. The air felt to her as if it had been stretched thin, and then twanged. It hurt to breathe, like the air was caught in her throat. Elastic… the whole atmosphere must be made of elastic! Dizziness overtook the girl's mind. She tried to move, but found that she could not; her limbs seemed locked into place.
Colours swirled in front of the terrified child; a deep whirlpool of brightness, trying to suck her in with almost irresistible power. Light shouldn't pull like that! It felt like she was balancing on the edge of an enormous whirlpool, made of a million shades of every colour.
The girl felt her mind falling. Thick, bright, colours rose in a smoky wall before her eyes, almost like the colours of the rainbow. Only they were too vivid for that. They had more presence; more power. They were more like the…the…the colours of magic...
Her body seemed to be channelling an irresistible force of electricity. It ran through her, making her eyes sting and her hair stand on end. Her teeth felt on edge.
Sweat pored into the girl's eyes, making the shapes and crazy colouration become yet more mingled in her already spinning mind. The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
"Stop it!" she found herself ordering the advancing sweep of colour, "Keep back!"
The whirlpool lights wavered, but only for a second. They flowed forwards, pulling her towards them, sucking her in. Deeper… deeper…
A shrill scream rose in her throat, splitting through the heave and pull of the light and air like a carving knife through water; ineffectual. She screamed again…
And the world exploded.
"Mandy! Mandy!"
"My God, Mandy, are you all right?!"
"W… wha'?" Mandy pulled herself off of her pillow, trembling. It was damp with sweat. Every muscle in her body ached, as if she'd been lifting dumbbells all night, and she was still breathing hard.
She felt for the glass of water on her bedside cabinet. She downed it in one, although her shaking hands caused her to spill a fair deal down the front of her night-dress.
"Bad dream?" Padma Patil gave her friend a concerned look. Mandy nodded mutely, yet to find her voice.
Lisa looked impressed.
"good grief, Mand', that must have been some fat nightmare for you to scream like that!"
"I never knew you had it in you." Padma agreed, nodding. This made Mandy feel ever so slightly more seasick.
"Yes, well..." she paused to collect her spinning thoughts, "I'm fine." She leaned back against the wall behind her. "It was just a dream. You know how stressed out I've been feeling lately. It was probably something to do with that."
"It could be a displacement activity. Too much worrying about everything else." Padma suggested, watching Mandy closely.
She shrugged. It might be.
What was a displacement activity anyway?
Lisa stared at Padma for a long moment before dismissively continuing.
"It was flippin' scary, you know? We were telling ghost stories, and Sue was telling us 'bout this doll that come alive and killed this girl, with blood all over the place. We were all getting really jumpy, you know, and then you go and give that blood curdling scream. Wicked!"
"Oh. Really." It was too late at night for this. Lisa sometimes made Mandy feel like banging her own head against a wall.
Lisa tended to be abrupt and, as a rule, it didn't occur to her to be sympathetic to people; even those who had just woken in the middle of the night screaming their heads off.
The final Ravenclaw girl, Sue Li, had not moved from her bed on the other side of the room. She grinned slightly. Mandy gave her a wan smile back.
Sue was a quiet, round-shouldered girl, easily embarrassed, who got on with life by doing her best not to get in people's way. Mandy never interfered with her, and Sue never interfered with Mandy. That suited everyone just fine.
"Well, I don't know about you," Padma broke the silence, "But I am going to bed. I have a splitting headache, and on top of that, we've got to get to Transfiguration early tomorrow, remember? We have a test, and I, for one, want to have time to prepare."
"Oh, bollocks, I forgot! Crap, man." Lisa moaned, shuffling over to her own bed, and falling into it with a sigh.
"It'll be fine," Sue prophesised, "It always is."
"You've never exactly done badly, after all, have you?" added Lisa.
"No," Padma frowned, "But that's not really the point. The point is I don't ever want to. Well, good night."
"Night-night."
"Sleep tight."
"Yeah."
All was silent for a long moment.
Lisa sat up again. "Has anyone seen Boris?"
"Your stupid teddy?"
"He's not stupid. He brings me luck. I'll need him in the test tomorrow."
"I hope you drop him in a cauldron."
"Oh, shut up, Diamanda-Marie Brocklehurst."
"Same to you, Liesel Aria Turpin."
"Huh! It's not my fault I have a stupid name!"
"No more is it mine." Mandy paused. "Either way, they chose this stupid assignment at exactly the wrong time. Just when my stupid wand keeps playing up."
"Hannah Abbot's has been going funny, too." Sue said.
"Has it?"
"Yes. I feel for her. She's not exactly gifted at wand-work as it is. Much better at Potions, although Snape never admits it." Padma pointed out.
"Stephen Cornfut's has been as well."
"His would." Pointed out Mandy. Stephen Cornfut was the House moron; the kind of person who made Mandy wonder if a village somewhere was missing its idiot.
"Maybe there's a bout of wand rot going round?" Sue suggested vaguely.
"Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that my wand was working last lesson, so it should do now, and will do tomorrow." Lisa paused. "I wonder where Boris is."
"You can find him in the morning, Lis'. Seriously."
"Okay, okay. G'night, then."
"Good night everyone."
And that was that; more or less.
~*~
Please take a few seconds to let me know what you think!
By Ginny Ha-ha
Today is the first day of the rest
of our lives!
Tomorrow is too late to pretend
Everything's all right;
I'm not getting any younger as long
As you don't get any older
I'm not going to state that yesterday never was.
-- Green Day --
~*~
I'm sorry; I've been terrible at writing (well… posting) lately, I know! This is the main thing I've been working on, and I'm fairly pleased with it.
J. K. Rowling owns Harry and his school mates. I own, well, whoever someone else doesn't. Please read and review!
Incidentally, this chapter is for Will, for his help, ideas, and putting up with me moaning about writer's block!!
~ Gin ~
~*~
The wind howled. Rain poured down from the sky, which was steel grey with clouds. They hung heavy over the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, threatening, pouring fourth water so that it was less of a shower, and more an ocean being tipped from above.
The forest stood silhouetted, black against the sky. The only light came from the moon and the windows of the great castle, and even they were almost obscured by the solid curtain of water that covered the landscape.
Rain slapped against the skin of the girl who toiled across the uneven ground, wrapped in her black school cloak, pointed hat rammed so far onto her head, and collar turned so far up, that her face was almost completely hidden. Fierce dark brown eyes glared out over the turned-up collar of her cloak. Every so often, she stumbled, tripping over a sodden lump of mud, or a stone, her trailing shoelaces lashing against her tights, leaving brown lines of watery mud impressioned where they had slapped.
The girl muttered to herself and felt in her pocket for her wand, in the hope that a good Impervious spell might act as some protection from the British weather. She pointed it towards herself, muttering; "Impervious!" Nothing happened. "Come on... you bloody thing..." her words were all but swept away by the screaming wind. "Impervious…Oh for crap's sake!" She gave the wand a vicious shake. "'could have sworn that was the right spell... Stupid, stupid, stupid …Urgh..." She continued her soggy way across the grounds, still muttering angrily to herself.
She reached the castle door some minutes later, passed through it, and squelched her way up to the Ravenclaw common room, entering via the rotating bookcase.
A wave of warmth swept over her as she entered, only serving to make the girl more aware of the way her wet clothes clung to her. The fire was ablaze, students sitting round it in comfy chairs, chatting, laughing and playing various board games. She ignored them as they stared at her soaking figure, and stalked through the room, head held high in defiance of anyone who might mistake her for someone who was remotely interested in anything they had to say.
She entered her dormitory shivering with wet and cold. Thank God! Finally, she could get a change of clothes and a chance to relax!
A gawky and adenoidal girl with thick red hair and a northern accent, by the name of Lisa Turpin, glanced up from the novel she was reading stretched out on her bed. "Oh… Hiya Mandy, I didn't see you come in." She paused, and skimmed a few paragraphs of novel before continuing. "Raining out, is it?"
Mandy Brocklehurst stood in the doorway, dripping wet, her uniform clinging to her shivering form. Water was running off her hair down her nose. "Not much. Not so as anyone'd notice." She pushed her lank fringe out of her eyes, which was dripping water down her face in little rivers.
"Oh, good." Lisa returned to her book, presumably oblivious to the sarcasm. Mandy sighed, irritated, and began the process of getting changed out of her wet clothes into an unflattering pair of pyjamas decorated with dancing hedgehogs.
Close to, she was an ungracious, flat-chested, rather plain girl of sixteen, with fair hair cropped short like a boys', currently flattened to her skull with wetness. Her oval face bore clever features, and her dark eyes denoted a certain hint of sharpness, which suggested that she knew that she was a deal more intelligent then most people, but had only recently realised that it was a good idea not to let other people discover this. She began viciously towelling her hair dry, booting her hat into a distant corner of the room.
"Have fun in detention?" Lisa said.
"Oh yes," Mandy put on a heavily sarcastic tone, dumping the towel on the floor to join her extensive collection of odd socks, "Abso-bloody-lutely spiffing."
"Why didn't you put an Impervious spell on yourself, eh, you daft prat?" Lisa gave her sideways smile, as if pleased at having realised that Mandy hadn't.
"Do you think I didn't try?"
"Oh, is your wand still playing up, then?"
"Take a wild guess, Lis'."
"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't have asked you, would I? There's no need to be so snappish--"
"Lisa?"
"What?"
"Shaddup." Mandy sat down heavily on her bed, and picked at a loose thread on her blue and bronze duvet. "What time is it?"
"Getting on for nine thirty PM, I'd say."
"I suspected as much." She yawned, and flopped backwards onto her bed. "That's that, then; I'm going to sleep. You can read using just the one lamp, can't you?"
"Well, all right, I'll give it a go, since I'm in a generous mood. It's bad for my eyes, though."
"Good good."
Mandy extinguished a number of the candles that lit the dorm with her finger and thumb, leaving Lisa to read using one sole candle next to her bed. Mandy flopped onto her own four poster, and allowed herself to doze...
~*~
Life had been getting on top of Mandy recently-- almost literally. Her mind felt as though it was being squashed. She had no real idea why. Probably just, well, life... Or one of those displacement activities that one of her other dorm mates, Padma Patil, was so keen on… Or something.
Just lately, though, it seemed that Mandy always felt odd.
Sort of… compressed, yet elongated, like she was constantly wearing braces, only not on her teeth. This stupid Herbology detention for 'forgetting' her homework hadn't helped.
Tonight, it felt as if someone was trying to push her entire body right through the mattress. Mandy's head ached dully, and she watched vivid green and blood red spots flashing and dancing behind her eyelids.
She was almost getting used to it. The stress had been present for several days now, and was showing no signs of abating. She'd been briefly to Madam Pomfrey, who had forced some sort of vile-tasting pink stuff down her throat, which had completely failed to do anything to help, and had given her a tendency to dream about prawns.
Mandy had never liked hospitals, and, with a knowledge born of experience, distrusted many of their treatments. Besides, they were full of sick people, and the smell alone was always ghastly, even at Hogwarts; a kind of mix of cabbage, sour cheese, and disinfectant.
She sighed, and turned over in bed. It was all right for her dorm mates!
Lisa Turpin was as blunt in her manners as a brick wall; she was not a naturally pretty child. Tall, pale and angular, she constantly looked as though she was trying to swallow her front teeth. She was one of those people who seemed to move as though they were being dragged along by a string, and, Mandy suspected, couldn't find organise a piss-up in a brewery, so to speak. But still-- somehow—she managed to get through life with fantastic marks in everything, and she only ever worried about things like who was dating who, and whose sister had snogged which boy behind someone else's back, and what they were going to do about it. She was popular, in a strange kind of way; everyone knew who she was, or at least had heard the name. Whether they liked her or not was another matter entirely. Mandy found her bearable, and could talk to her happily enough when she felt like a gossip.
And then there was Sue Li. Sue was… well, Sue; delicate, philosophical, and absolutely infuriatingly quiet. It made Mandy want to hit her. She rarely volunteered any information on herself, and could sit, apparently in thought, for hours at a time. How could someone just be like that? It was, quite frankly, completely and utterly weird. She was one of those people who worried a lot about the purpose of life, and weather stepping on an insect could change the world—it had never occurred to Mandy to let that bother her. Insects were made to be stepped on or ignored, depending on how painful it was when they bit you. But Sue was odd, and cared about things like that, for some reason Mandy had never been able to fathom.
Padma Patil, on the other hand, could talk at length about almost any subject you could care to mention, and could quite happily have ruled the world in her spare time-- probably even whilst doing her homework and juggling at the same time. But ask her who was dating Terry Boot, or whether Justin Finch-Fletchley had suddenly showed an unerring desire to dress up in ladies lingerie (which he hadn't yet— or at least, Mandy hoped not, even if he was as camp as a row of tents), and she'd have no idea. She seemed to be under the vague impression that Harry Potter was dating Rita Skeeter. And she collected Muggle stamps.
Mandy, though… she was permanently confused.
Her marks had started to deteriorate since they had returned from the last summer holidays, and her mind, if not feeling squashed, was always buzzing. It felt as though a colony of bees had established itself inside her head, which, quite apart from anything else, was incredibly irritating. Bees were all right, she reasoned, but her head was not the place for them. You couldn't step on them there, for one thing. At least, not without a deal of pain.
Imaginary bees were worse, if only because she had a very vivid imagination. She considered this to be one large bane of her life—it came just after being short, flat-chested and having a mouth full of metalwork. Oh, and the inability to get a boyfriend. Not forgetting the fact that she was as stubborn as the day was long; nor did Mandy hold herself above using popular clichés.
If it was a perfect world, she would eventually had fallen into a dreamless sleep whilst mulling over these thoughts, and woken up bright and early the next morning, ready to face the day ahead and have an, if not brilliant, at least fairly decent day.
If only.
~*~
The room pulsed. She could feel it. The room was pulsing, deep and heavy, like the heartbeat of a mountain. The air felt to her as if it had been stretched thin, and then twanged. It hurt to breathe, like the air was caught in her throat. Elastic… the whole atmosphere must be made of elastic! Dizziness overtook the girl's mind. She tried to move, but found that she could not; her limbs seemed locked into place.
Colours swirled in front of the terrified child; a deep whirlpool of brightness, trying to suck her in with almost irresistible power. Light shouldn't pull like that! It felt like she was balancing on the edge of an enormous whirlpool, made of a million shades of every colour.
The girl felt her mind falling. Thick, bright, colours rose in a smoky wall before her eyes, almost like the colours of the rainbow. Only they were too vivid for that. They had more presence; more power. They were more like the…the…the colours of magic...
Her body seemed to be channelling an irresistible force of electricity. It ran through her, making her eyes sting and her hair stand on end. Her teeth felt on edge.
Sweat pored into the girl's eyes, making the shapes and crazy colouration become yet more mingled in her already spinning mind. The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
"Stop it!" she found herself ordering the advancing sweep of colour, "Keep back!"
The whirlpool lights wavered, but only for a second. They flowed forwards, pulling her towards them, sucking her in. Deeper… deeper…
A shrill scream rose in her throat, splitting through the heave and pull of the light and air like a carving knife through water; ineffectual. She screamed again…
And the world exploded.
"Mandy! Mandy!"
"My God, Mandy, are you all right?!"
"W… wha'?" Mandy pulled herself off of her pillow, trembling. It was damp with sweat. Every muscle in her body ached, as if she'd been lifting dumbbells all night, and she was still breathing hard.
She felt for the glass of water on her bedside cabinet. She downed it in one, although her shaking hands caused her to spill a fair deal down the front of her night-dress.
"Bad dream?" Padma Patil gave her friend a concerned look. Mandy nodded mutely, yet to find her voice.
Lisa looked impressed.
"good grief, Mand', that must have been some fat nightmare for you to scream like that!"
"I never knew you had it in you." Padma agreed, nodding. This made Mandy feel ever so slightly more seasick.
"Yes, well..." she paused to collect her spinning thoughts, "I'm fine." She leaned back against the wall behind her. "It was just a dream. You know how stressed out I've been feeling lately. It was probably something to do with that."
"It could be a displacement activity. Too much worrying about everything else." Padma suggested, watching Mandy closely.
She shrugged. It might be.
What was a displacement activity anyway?
Lisa stared at Padma for a long moment before dismissively continuing.
"It was flippin' scary, you know? We were telling ghost stories, and Sue was telling us 'bout this doll that come alive and killed this girl, with blood all over the place. We were all getting really jumpy, you know, and then you go and give that blood curdling scream. Wicked!"
"Oh. Really." It was too late at night for this. Lisa sometimes made Mandy feel like banging her own head against a wall.
Lisa tended to be abrupt and, as a rule, it didn't occur to her to be sympathetic to people; even those who had just woken in the middle of the night screaming their heads off.
The final Ravenclaw girl, Sue Li, had not moved from her bed on the other side of the room. She grinned slightly. Mandy gave her a wan smile back.
Sue was a quiet, round-shouldered girl, easily embarrassed, who got on with life by doing her best not to get in people's way. Mandy never interfered with her, and Sue never interfered with Mandy. That suited everyone just fine.
"Well, I don't know about you," Padma broke the silence, "But I am going to bed. I have a splitting headache, and on top of that, we've got to get to Transfiguration early tomorrow, remember? We have a test, and I, for one, want to have time to prepare."
"Oh, bollocks, I forgot! Crap, man." Lisa moaned, shuffling over to her own bed, and falling into it with a sigh.
"It'll be fine," Sue prophesised, "It always is."
"You've never exactly done badly, after all, have you?" added Lisa.
"No," Padma frowned, "But that's not really the point. The point is I don't ever want to. Well, good night."
"Night-night."
"Sleep tight."
"Yeah."
All was silent for a long moment.
Lisa sat up again. "Has anyone seen Boris?"
"Your stupid teddy?"
"He's not stupid. He brings me luck. I'll need him in the test tomorrow."
"I hope you drop him in a cauldron."
"Oh, shut up, Diamanda-Marie Brocklehurst."
"Same to you, Liesel Aria Turpin."
"Huh! It's not my fault I have a stupid name!"
"No more is it mine." Mandy paused. "Either way, they chose this stupid assignment at exactly the wrong time. Just when my stupid wand keeps playing up."
"Hannah Abbot's has been going funny, too." Sue said.
"Has it?"
"Yes. I feel for her. She's not exactly gifted at wand-work as it is. Much better at Potions, although Snape never admits it." Padma pointed out.
"Stephen Cornfut's has been as well."
"His would." Pointed out Mandy. Stephen Cornfut was the House moron; the kind of person who made Mandy wonder if a village somewhere was missing its idiot.
"Maybe there's a bout of wand rot going round?" Sue suggested vaguely.
"Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that my wand was working last lesson, so it should do now, and will do tomorrow." Lisa paused. "I wonder where Boris is."
"You can find him in the morning, Lis'. Seriously."
"Okay, okay. G'night, then."
"Good night everyone."
And that was that; more or less.
~*~
Please take a few seconds to let me know what you think!