Massive thanks go out to my buddy Bari (Born To Be Wild) who has just become my Beta-Reader -Thanks m'dear: You're an utter star!
Chapter Twenty:
Eleanora's first week progressed smoothly, if you don't count performing frankly idiotically dangerous leaps over hastily moving staircases having been dared to do so by Lee Jordan, and subsequently being treated to a lecture on student safety by McGonagall. The straight laced witch had ushered into her office and stared at her searchingly with her intelligent grey eyes.
"What possessed you, you silly girl?" she asked imploringly, taking off her glasses and polishing them meticulously.
Eleanora shrugged, the familiar blush creeping over her cheeks once again. She would have almost rather that her head of house has shouted angrily at her, so awkward she felt sitting alone in her office attempting to explain why once again she had defied her godfather's wishes and placed herself unnecessarily in danger.
"I guess I was just wasn't thinking," she replied lamely, not daring to meet McGonagall eye.
The elderly witch had sighed, pushing her glasses up her pointed nose.
"I don't see any real purpose in giving you a detention as I unfortunately know that it would almost certainly not deter you from performing any more idiotic tricks," she said in a calculated tone.
Eleanora's heart leapt and she lifted her head up from its humiliated droop.
"However," McGonagall continued, "one more asinine incident and your godfather and I have agreed that we will face no viable option but to place you under a mischief deterrence charm: A temporary one of course, just until you've learnt your lesson."
The girl's face was frozen in an expression of utter despair. Many times her father had threatened to cast the deterrence charm on her, usually after those unfortunate end of term reports, but he had always finally acquiesced, the eminent auror surprisingly susceptible to his daughters wheedling ways.
She opened her mouth to protest, but McGonagall's lips were mulishly pursed together, telling her that it would be beyond futile to argue. Instead she merely nodded submissively, though privately the cogs of her mind were already whirring, wondering if Hermione knew a good way to remove a deterrence charm without trace.
That night at the dinner table, she told her friends what McGonagall has said.
"…So if I put so much as one measly toe out of line, they're going to put a deterrence charm on me," she explained between mouthfuls of casserole.
"Really?" exclaimed Hermione a little too brightly.
Eleanora stared at her.
"I mean that's really awful," she added quickly with sympathetic smile. "But the charm itself is truly fascinating!"
"Then you know a way to remove it?" Eleanora asked slyly, a grin curling over her lips as she shot a glance at Harry and Ron.
Ron swallowed his mouthful of bread, and gestured to Fred and George who were absorbed in an arm-wrestling match with Seamus and Dean.
"Those two have had more deterrence charms placed on them than the whole school put together," he said, his face glowing with admiration for his brother's impudence.
"Then those are the guys to ask!" she grinned and bounded up from her seat, leaving her plate half empty.
"Alright, you two," she greeted jovially, just as Fred, or was it George, succeeded in slamming Dean's hand down onto the table, nearly upsetting a jug of pumpkin juice. Eleanor steadied it with her hand and pulled up a spare chair next to one of the red headed twins.
"How may we be of assistance, my good lady?" asked George in a mock courtly tone.
"Bloody well done for the stair-jumping by the way," said Fred, slapping her hard on the back in congratulations. "Lee told us he never actually expected you to do it."
"I can never turn down a dare," Eleanora replied with a helpless grin.
"Useful thing to know," joked George.
"Not if McGonagall gets her way," explained the girl, glancing around to make sure she wasn't listening.
"How so?" asked Fred.
"She wants to put me under a deterrence charm," she said with a frown.
"Oh, that's nothing!" George exclaimed, his face lighting with a crafty grin.
"That's just what I wanted to hear," Eleanora smiled, her eyes glinting impishly.
"Just go and souse yourself with some water from Moaning Myrtle's toilet and it gets it right off," George said in a confidential tone.
Eleanora recoiled in horror.
"You're kidding, right?" she asked, one eyebrow hitched up in horror.
The twins exchanged devious glances.
"Yeah," admitted Fred, looking somewhat disappointed at having to relinquish the joke.
"All you have to do is take a couple of doses of evasion potion before they cast the damn thing, and it keeps it from lasting more than an day or two."
George let out a fake gasp of horror and pretended to be choking. "A whole day…" he wheezed clutching at his throat, drawing concerned glances from his neighbours, "without mischief…Can't survive!"
Eleanora burst into giggles and slapped him hard on the back, as Sally-Anne sitting opposite them proffered a glass of water, missing the joke entirely.
"So, how do I get this evasion potion," she asked, when their laughter had died down. She had a faint recollection of seeing it detailed in a book somewhere, but couldn't recall any of the ingredients. She was sure that was where Hermione would come in.
George smirked roguishly at her. "Well, I'm sure if you go and ask ol' Severely Snappy very, very nicely," he leered, "he might give slip you a vial. Or something else."
Both boys dissolved into bawdy sniggers, and Eleanora felt her cheeks heat.
If only they knew, she thought, unconsciously shooting a glance up to the staff table, where he sat, quietly abstaining from the small talk of the other staff.
"Yeah, real mature, boys," she grinned good-naturedly, though a faint shiver of excitement ran through her veins at the implication of their words.
"But seriously, jokes aside, where do I get it from?"
Swallowing his lewd amusement, Fred replied, "Most of the stuff you can get from the apothecary in Hogsmeade, though keep a low profile in there because the Old Bat gets the owner to report back to him what any of us pupils have bought, just in case we're plotting anything naughty."
George smiled cherubically. "As if we would do a thing like that," he said innocently.
"The recipe is in one of the seventh year textbooks, but we just happened to stumble across a convenient copy," Fred continued winking.
"In Snape's desk?" Eleanora anticipated.
Both boys looked shocked.
"Of course not, young lady," George said in mock reproach. "In his store cupboard of course."
"Well lend it to you if you need it," he said.
"Thanks!" Eleanora smiled widely at them.
"No worries," Fred replied. "We wouldn't really want you to have to get round Snape," he grinned. "No one deserves that."
I wonder what I would have to do to deserve that, she wondered, a faint smirk curling her top lip, then pushed the thought firmly of her head.
Returning to her seat Eleanora shot a triumphant glance at the others.
"What did they say?" asked Ron.
"A dose of evasion potion should do it," she replied pushing her plate away in favour of the treacle tart that had just appeared.
"Crikey," Ron exclaimed. "Fred and George were actually useful; it's a wonder they didn't tell you to go and drench yourself in Moaning Myrtle's toilet water. That's their answer to everything these days."
"Oh, they did," replied Eleanora with a grin.
Ron shuddered. "I think I'd rather get locked in the cubicle with Snape than do that," he said, his face bearing an expression of horror.
Harry nearly choked on his pudding at this and Eleanora found her self suddenly utterly engrossed in her glass of pumpkin juice, privately thinking that there would be much worse things than to get locked anywhere with Snape.
* * * * * * * * * *
Saturday dawned bright and hot, and the sun streamed thought the Gryffindor common room windows alighting on every surface, giving the cosy room an almost incandescent aura. However, by mid morning after a leisurely breakfast, Harry and Ron were restless and flopped listlessly about on the overstuffed sofa, their divination books laying discarded on the floor under an excess of empty Chocolate Frog wrappers and screwed-up parchments.
"Oh, sod it!" Ron exclaimed, kicking the book under the sofa. "I'm not staying holed up in here all day trying to work out what the bloody stars have in store for me!"
"Probably a detention with Trelawney if you don't finish that homework," warned Hermione haughtily, her own Arithmancy homework complete and piled neatly on the table.
Ron stuck out his tongue behind her back.
"Don't think I didn't see that!" she shot back.
Eleanora grinned and slammed her own book shut.
"How about we go outside and take a break?" she suggested.
"I was under the impression that you had to do some work before taking a break," Hermione said, frowning at Ron.
"Oh, lighten up, 'Mione!" he replied, ripping open another chocolate frog, grasping it roughly as it tried to hop out of the packet. "Damn, Circe again," he said disappointedly. "You want?" he asked holding it out to Eleanora.
She squinted at it, shielding her eyes from the rays of the sun that poured through the diamond paned window.
"Circe? No thanks – I've already got three of her," she replied. "Though I've got a spare Queen Maeve if you want her?"
Ron flicked through the thick pack of cards. "Nope, haven't got her: I'll take her off your hands!" he grinned, reaching out for the card.
"Anyway," Eleanora repeated, "you up for a break?"
Harry stood up and stretched out his slight frame. "Suits me," he replied. "We could go down onto the Quidditch pitches. The maze is gone now, thank god."
"Maze?" questioned Eleanora, puzzled.
"They grew a bloody great maze on the Quidditch pitches last term" Ron explained as if this was the greatest crime of the century.
"I'll go and get my broom," Harry called over his shoulder, heading towards his dormitory.
Hermione shook her head in amazement. "Honestly; what on earth can be so engrossing about Quidditch that they feel the need to play it every minute of every day?"
"I could ask you the same question about schoolwork, but I already know what the answer will be!" retorted Ron, his voice muffled as he clambered under the sofa trying to retrieve his Divination book.
Eleanora, determined not to get involved in their dispute, headed off to her own dormitory to get her light robes and her own broom. She scowled as she removed it from its case: Her father had confiscated her racing broom following rather unfortunate incident the previous term and she was now left with her out-dated Firebolt. Still, she grinned to herself, nothing a few charms hadn't been able to fix to some degree.
Jumping the last few steps back down into the common room she saw Harry and Ron ogling Harry's new broom: A Nimbus Elite. Chucking her own broom carelessly on the sofa she joined them.
"That's a beauty alright," Ron whistled, lovingly running his hands over its smooth handle.
"When did you get that?" Eleanora asked in reverence, minutely straightening out the brush.
"I got it out of the money left from what I gave Fred and George," Harry said, blushing a little, as much to Ron as to Eleanora.
Seeing that it was a delicate subject, Eleanora quickly strode towards the portrait hole, beckoning the others.
"Come on – the more time we spend nattering in here, the less time spent on the pitches!"
Harry and Ron both dashed for the portrait hold with such enthusiasm that both the girls couldn't help but laugh, even Hermione who, mortified at the thought of abandoning her studies, had shrunk her Ancient Runes textbook and put it carefully in her pocket, much to Eleanora's mirth.
* * * * * * * * * *
"Oi, Harry!" Ron shouted loudly. "Catch!"
He served up a quaffle at an impressive speed, and Harry swerved sharply on his broom to seize it, immediately chucking it in Eleanora's direction. She dived on the charmed broom, her fingers almost grasping the large ball, but she missed it and it bounced to the ground.
"Darn," she expostulated, bucking on her broom. "This thing is bloody useless!"
Swooping back down to the ground, she picked up the quaffle, tucking it under her arm.
"What model is it?" Harry asked, still lazily hovering in the air.
Eleanora scowled. "Firebolt Series 3.6," she called back, eyeing it critically.
"It's still better than mine," Ron grumbled, apparently having some trouble keeping his broom in the air.
"I thought you said you were reserve chaser for the house Quidditch team in Beauxbatons?" Hermione asked from the ground, looking up from her Ancient Runes textbook, now back to normal size.
"I was," Eleanora replied, flinging the quaffle back to Harry.
"They let you play on that thing?" Ron asked dubiously.
"Nope," she replied a little evasively. "My father confiscated my best broom. This is the old one. "
"Why?" Harry asked, his face contorted in shock as if that was a crime punishable by an particularly lengthy Azkaban sentence.
"I got thrown off the team," she answered awkwardly, kicking off hard from the sun-baked pitch.
Ron and Harry exchanged glances.
"Why?" asked Harry again, his tone cautious having seen the black look on his friends face.
"Oh, nothing terrible," she reassured him lightly, executing some sharp turns in mid air. "Just for casting a couple of itty-bitty hexes during a match."
Ron's mouth gaped.
"Oh come on," she cried defensively. "The other team were playing dirty; they'd already felled one of our chasers, so I decided they deserved a taste of their own medicine." She wrinkled her nose. "Though the school didn't see it quite that way."
"I wonder why," Hermione intoned disapprovingly.
Harry asked tentatively, "what kind of curses are we talking here?"
"Just a couple of jelly-legs," she called back airily.
"On a broom?" Hermione gasped, her eyes filled with condemnation. "Eleanora! That could have been really dangerous! They could have fallen."
"What do you mean 'could have?" she grinned back, going back into a steep dive to catch the ball that Ron has just thrown.
"Oh relax 'Mione," she said, pulling her broom back up "I didn't let them hit the ground…Well, not too hard anyway." She smiled shrewdly.
"Are you sure you weren't meant to have been in Slytherin instead?" Ron shouted a puckish grin on his freckled face.
Eleanora gasped in mock horror and threw the quaffle dangerously close to his head in playful retribution.
He ducked and called out, "lousy throw, Slytherin!"
"Well," she called back, laughing, affecting a pose. "I always thought emerald green was more my colour."
Harry pulled a face. "Yeah, but would you really want to share a house with Ferret Features and his cronies?"
"Ferret Features?" she asked bemusedly.
"Malfoy," Ron called back. "Blond, slimy little git: Hangs around with two gorillas."
Harry laughed loudly, soaring high on his Nimbus.
"You better watch your filthy mouth, Weasley," a smooth voice shot venomously from below.
Ron nearly fell off his broom.
There, standing a few feet behind Hermione was Malfoy and his "gorillas," their arms crossed across their burly chests menacingly, looking as if they could snape their broom sticks with one finger.
Accurate description, Eleanora thought, stifling a giggle.
"Get lost, Malfoy!" Ron called out to them, his bravado now recovered.
"Make me," came the supercilious reply.
Crabbe and Goyle stepped forward threateningly, their muscles flexing underneath their emerald green Quidditch robes.
Ron paled and soared higher into the air, well out of the reach of their ham-like fists.
Malfoy tore his gaze from Ron and settled it firmly on Harry who hovered in the air, noxious dislike etched on his face.
"Well, well," Draco drawled lazily. "If it isn't Potty and his amazing flying scar."
Crabbe and Goyle laughed hoarsely at this, jostling each other roughly, earning themselves a sharp glare from their diminutive leader.
Harry glared at Malfoy, his fists clenched angrily around his broom.
"I'd watch out if I were you, Potter," Draco continued, his eyes flashing poison. "Wouldn't want to have any little accidents now would we? Then again," he smirked nastily, "if I were you I would have drowned myself in the lake long ago."
The sharp featured blonde glanced over at his bullish henchmen. "Now you can laugh," he hissed commandingly, sneering at Harry as they chortled stupidly.
"Just do us a favour, Ferret-Face and sod off back to the dungeons!" Harry called loudly, accompanied by a very rude hand gesture made by Ron.
Malfoy sniggered. "Pathetic," he drawled. Suddenly he noticed Eleanora silently hovering almost directly above where he stood. He took a step back and turned his pale face upwards.
"Miss D'Souza," he said, his tone becoming unctuous and sycophantic, a snide smile curving over his thin lips. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
Eleanora practically retched at the oily manner of the loathsome blonde. Instead she let a tight smile curve her lips though her eyes remained dark, flashing with repugnance.
Her father had told her much about the 'esteemed' Malfoy family, and she definitely did not like what she heard or what she now saw. As far as she understood, Lucius Malfoy had been and very likely still was, a key figure in Voldemort's inner circle, and then swiftly and unconvincingly repented of all his crimes as soon as the Dark Lord fell, claiming to have been placed under the Imperious curse. Though she had never met the man, she had often listened to her father ranting about the "slippery bastard," after a hard day at work, no doubt having conducted yet another fruitless search of the imposing Malfoy mansion.
"No," she replied coldly, dropping altitude a little. "I don't believe you have."
Draco smoothly extended a pale hand upwards. Eleanora looked at it pointedly, then back into the pale, expressionless eyes of the boy.
"I wouldn't hold your breath either," she continued, ignoring the proffered hand.
Harry took a sharp intake of breath and a triumphant grin creased Ron's face as Malfoy's oily smile quickly turned into a sour frown.
"Come on you three," Eleanora called out to her friends, shooting Draco a glacial stare. "It suddenly just got really cold out here.
* * * * * * * * * *
"That was bleedin' fantastic!" exclaimed Ron happily as they trudged back up the stairs to the common room. "Did you see the look on his smarmy little face?"
"Classic," Harry agreed, pulling off his Quidditch robes and throwing them over a chair as they entered into the comfortable room.
Only Hermione looked troubled. "It was funny alright, but was it really a good idea to antagonise him like that?" she asked, looking concernedly at Eleanora.
"Oh come on," she replied, rolling her eyes at the maternal girl. "What's he going to do to me?
"Set Crabbe and Goyle on you for starters?" Hermione replied with a worried look.
"Nah," Eleanora began then stopped herself short.
It probably wouldn't be a particularly good idea to explain that if the little weasel or his muscle-men tried anything she would just retaliate with a couple of well-chosen wandless jinxes. Leg-Lock maybe, she mused, or a touch of Rictusempra, the tickling charm.
"I mean," she backtracked quickly, "Crabbe and Goyle are hardly the brightest crayons in the box now are they? If they try anything, I could probably confuse them with a cupcake or something."
Harry and Ron suddenly erupted into hysterical laughter.
Eleanora furrowed her brow in confusion. "What's so funny?" she asked, as Ron rolled around on the floor, clutching his sides
"That's what we did," sputtered Harry helplessly, "in our second year……..We left a cupcake dosed with Dreamless Sleep in the corridor and they ate it……And then we……"
He dissolved in laughter again and Ron composed himself sufficiently to finish, "locked them in the broom cupboard."
Eleanora grinned delightedly. "And you say I'm the one with Slytherin tendencies!"