Just finished reading OotP, and...wow. If you have not read it yet, I hereby declare you to be a fool. Go read it, right now!! For those who have read it, back to the story....

Chapter Sixteen: The Right Thing To Do

Draco and I kept January interesting for all of the Slytherins by mocking everyone we saw. Not that they knew it, of course! It was a practiced art. Take, for example, Chloe Simmons...it seemed she was only dimly aware of the fact that we made fun of her at all.

Whenever her back was turned, I would charm a lock of my hair to be bright green, poking fun at the black streak in her hair that was caused by the cauldron explosion. It wasn't an easy spell, and I wasn't very good at Charms, anyway, but my inability suited my purposed just fine. Instead of being permanent, the color lasted only a few seconds, meaning she would never notice. Carol thought this was possibly the funniest thing in the world, and Inge managed a few little giggles. Even Joel Shema thought my joke was brilliant, which amazed me, as he was so...well, "intellectual" comes to mind.

Early in February, I found that Father had, indeed, tried to make Dumbledore move me out of Slytherin and into a different House. Professor Snape had witnessed the incident in Dumbledore's office, and took me aside after class to inform me of it...

"No, Miss Zænidh," he said carefully, in response to my immediate barrage of questions. "No one was hurt. Your father tried to Imperio the Sorting Hat--"

"He tried to WHAT?!"

"But only succeeded in turning it slightly mossy," he finished sardonically, rolling his eyes. "It's nothing to worry about."

I was far from convinced. "But that's an Unforgivable! He can't do that, it's illegal!"

Professor Snape looked down at me with only a trace of exasperation on his pallid face. "Fortunately for him, one is not sent to Azkaban for attempting a curse on a hat. And"--his eyes flickered with something like admiration--"Dumbledore is a very forgiving man."

I nodded stiffly and hurried out of the room; everyone else had already left. "Forgiving man, my foot! You'd have to be mad to--"

My thoughts were interrupted when I turned a corner and ran straight into Pansy Parkinson.

"I am so-o-o sorry!" she said. "Are you alright?" Surprised, I realized that she wasn't sugarcoating her voice; she was being totally sincere.

"Yes, I'm fine," I replied. "But where are you going? I thought everyone would be in the common room by now...?"

She understood exactly what I meant by that. It was Friday, which could only mean one thing for a Slytherin: party time!

"Well," she said with an inward sneer, "I got detention with McGonagall. Remember that essay about small object transformations? I thought she said it was supposed to be half a foot long, but it was really supposed to be a foot and a half...at least it was detention and not House points."

"Too bad for you, though," I said apologetically. "I'll save you some pie for when you get back. See you later!" As we each continued on our ways, I realized I had actually been nice to Pansy! Perhaps she wasn't so annoying, once you got used to her.

I ducked behind a tapestry of Magda the Mad, which Trikkit had told me was a shortcut that led to the House. "Lumos," I muttered to the darkness, lighting up my wand. After about fifteen paces, I came to a fork in the small corridor. Left or right? The prefect hadn't mentioned a fork...

I thought for a moment, then took the passage on the right. A bat fluttered by; I tried to ignore it, and kept walking. Ahead, the corridor ended, but not with a plain wall. A stone grotesque bared a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth at me, and, not surprisingly, spoke.

"Who're you, ge'l? And wot's th' password?" he asked in a rude, grating voice. I came to the conclusion that Trikkit's shortcut must lead directly into the House.

"Emerald City," I replied haughtily. I had never cared much for grotesques. Even gargoyles were more polite.

The grotesque chortled loudly. "Tha's not th' password."

I racked my brain...most Slytherins used the other door, so maybe this one worked on an old password. "Polished sterling!"

"Heh heh! Nope!"

"Green machine!"

"Tha's not it, neither! G'bye!"

"What do mean, it's not the password? It has to be! I know my own password, thank you very much!" I whipped out my wand and glared at the grotesque, hoping it would feel intimidated. No such luck.

"Yer own password, ha! Know I've never seen a li'l ge'l down 'ere, so's how d'yeh s'ppose it's the--"

"PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!" a voice behind me bellowed. Suddenly, I couldn't move. My wand clattered to the floor, and I fell over backwards...

There was a sound of hurried footsteps across the stone floor, and I found myself looking up at a tall, long-faced woman wearing Hogwarts robes. A professor! O, great, what had I done? This was probably some forbidden hallway that Dumbledore had forgotten to mention. If only I had turned left!

The woman looked shocked for a moment, then sighed, waved her wand, and mumbled, "Finite incantatem." I found, to my relief, that I could move again. I picked up my wand and stood nervously.

"Now," she said, peering at me through black-rimmed aviator glasses, "I want to know why a Slytherin girl is arguing with my bedroom door guardian."

"Your WHAT!?" I shrieked. "O my...! I didn't...! I thought...! A prefect told me...!"

She blinked a few times. "Told you what?"

"Told me this was a shortcut to Slytherin Dungeon," I said miserably. "I guess I was supposed to go left."

"Ah, that shortcut. Yes, that would have helped," she replied. "No harm done, though. A point to Slytherin for having the nerve to argue with a grotesque. By the way, what's your name?"

"Andromeda Zænidh, ma'am."

"Any relation to Andromeda Tonks?"

"Eh, never heard of her, ma'am."

"Hm. Righto, then. I'm Professor Vector, the Arithmancy Master. You might consider taking my class in your third year. Fascinating stuff, and much more precise than Divination." Immediately, I was sold on the idea.

"Okay, sounds good. I'll, uh, be going now. Bye!" Before I could embarrass myself any more, I turned and retreated down the corridor.

When I came to the fork, I had a sudden inspiration. "Nox," I muttered, and my wand extinguished its light. There, on the wall, in glowing green letters, I could see the words: "Slytherin Dungeon, that way." An arrow pointed left.

"Bloody lumos!" I thought. "If not for that, I would have seen the sign." At the end of this hallway, there was a plain stone wall. Fortunately, it responded to the password, and a door opened into the common room. Almost everyone was there, laughing, chatting, and eating. Only a few students were trying to study, and it was mostly spell work.

"Hey, Andromeda!" yelled Trikkit jovially from across the room. "You found the shortcut, what took you so long?"

I narrowed my eyes and crossed the room to where she was standing. "It would have been quicker, if you had told me to go LEFT!" I shouted. Then I explained the whole situation.

"Oh-h-h-h," she said slowly. "I never even thought to use Lumos." Then she shrugged and continued wolfing down a gigantic piece of brandied fruit cake. "Just a stupid first-year mistake," she added, shaking her head. A bit of cake landed on my robes. "Sorry 'bout that..."

Seeing that I wasn't getting any real sympathy, I brushed my robes clean and sought out the other first years to tell them what had happened, in case they ever wanted to use that shortcut. I found that Millicent had known about it the whole time, Troy didn't care, Crabbe and Goyle didn't understand, Inge was too scared of the dark to use it, and Draco, Carol, and Joel were pretty impressed.

"It did occur to me," said Joel, stirring his hot chocolate with a butterscotch candy cane, "that teachers probably have their own rooms, aside from classrooms. I never knew where they were, though." He stopped to take a drink, and frowned as the rising steam clouded his glasses.

"It's no wonder they don't tell us," laughed Draco. "Can you imagine what a bother it'd be, if the whole school was constantly trying to figure out your password, so they could play a prank on you?"

"Yeah," agreed Carol. "If you ask me, there're already enough practical jokes between students. Teachers don't need any more problems to deal with. Speaking of problems, did you all know that--"

"NEXT WEEKEND IS THE TRIP TO HOGSMEADE!" interrupted Trikkit, standing on a chair. This was her favorite way of announcing news; if it was posted on the message board, not everyone would stop to read it. The common room quieted down quickly so she could continue. "Please try to stay out of trouble. I want no repeats of that fight in the Three Broomsticks, alright? And remember, it's February, gentlemen, and if that doesn't mean anything to you..." she trailed off with a silly grin, stepping down from the chair.

Conversation resumed, and Carol grumbled, "Great, I forgot what I was going to say."

"Something about problems," I prompted.

"Problems...problems...nope, can't remember," she said with a sigh.

"O well," I answered distractedly. I was thinking about what Trikkit had said. Valentine's Day was soon. Maybe I would find out who had sent me that music box at Christmas...

To Be Continued...

Disclaimer: I own Andromeda, her father, Trikkit, Carol, Joel, Inge, Magda the Mad (I think), the shortcut to Slytherin Dungeon, Prof. Vector's room and appearance, the grotesque, and about anything else not in the HP books. To my extreme surprise, Rowling uses the name Andromeda in OotP, on the tapestry of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black; I DO NOT own Andromeda Tonks. Simmons belongs to Wildmage42, my partner in crime, go read her story, blah blah blah, I've said this often enough. Please review!!!