The fight is actually something of a reality thing. Me and me bro fight like that all the time. (Matthew, not David).
Quote: "Stop, stop, stop. You're going to put someone's eye out." –Hermione
Jaded Angels and Silken BlossomsChapter 10: Fight
***
Three days a week now we had Quidditch practice, something that I looked forward to. As it originally had been our homework time together (4 o'clock), Hermione and I decided to meet each afternoon at five in the library to do our homework together.
As our time at Hogwarts drew on, so did my dread at having to choose people from Ravenclaw and Slytherin to go on the Japan trip. Actually, I was having trouble choosing people from Griffindor, too. Hermione was about the only one I was sure was going with Eriol and I.
When I voiced my concerns to Eriol Halloween morning before class (about five minutes), he smiled and patted me on the head like a cat. I felt like a little girl when he did that.
"Don't worry your beautiful little head about it," he said. "You'll find them. I know you will." His pretty blue eyes gave a twinkle as he turned away.
That was all he said to me.
In all of the business of schoolwork and homework and Quidditch practice, Hermione and I barely got to see each other during the day. And with Syaoran's lessons in Eastern Magic growing even more complex as we grew stronger, we hardly had time to talk at night, either. We were both a bit testy that day from a long night's dueling with water and fire and wind and wood. I had just had a Quidditch practice night combined with a day with Snape and Draco and our astronomy class. I still hadn't finished one of the essays that were due right after lunch.
In Professor Flitwick's class, we were finally learning how to make objects levitate, or fly. We'd been practicing different wrist movements all week, and had been told to practice them at night as well. I had done so dutifully, even though I'd memorized them all in Molly's care, until midnight the night before. I was tired, and Syaoran had kept us later because of my tardiness, so I was hungry, too.
"Now, I will pair you up," said Flitwick, coming down the aisles. "Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley…Ms. Indigo and Mr. Potter…Mr. Finnigan and Mr. Longbottom…"
Great. Just peachy. Now I had to put up with Harry. Why me? I took some satisfaction in seeing that he wasn't too pleased, either. Actually, Hermione didn't seem too pleased with it, and neither did Ron. Although I really cared for Hermione, I felt a tiny little scrap of satisfaction in knowing she was just as miserable as I was.
When we were given our feathers to levitate, I gestured politely to let Harry give a try first. Hermione also let Ron do the same.
"Wingardium Leviosa," said Harry, swinging his wand much too slow and much too wide. The feather turned over on the table. "Come on, you stupid feather, fly! Wingardium Leviosa!" Again, the feather flopped. He raised his wand higher, above his head, and looked like he was going to strike the feather with it.
"Stop!" I said, grabbing his hand. "You're on a warpath over nothing, just stop. Now, watch. Wingardium Leviosa." The feather floated up high in the air.
"Oh, look, everyone, Miss Indigo and Miss Granger have done it!" In my attempt at showing Harry how to use the spell, Hermione had also been yelling at Ron about his show of wind milling his arms while holding a wand. They exchanged a disgusted look. Ron just lay his head down on the table, but Harry reached up and grabbed the feather I was levitating, bringing it back down by force. I broke my spell and stared at him.
"You do know that you could have gotten severely hurt, don't you?" I said. "If you just grab a levitating object, it may react to the magical barriers that I filled inside it. You could be killed if you grab the wrong magician's object!"
"Really? Where'd you read that one, Magic for Dummies?" Harry snarled, sitting back in his seat.
"For your information, it was in Simple Wand Safety, thank you very much," Hermione said from the other side of Ron. "No one bothers with it anymore because they actually expect you to be smart enough to figure it out!"
"Are you calling us stupid?" Ron growled.
"If the shoe fits!" Hermione snapped.
"Then you just called her an idiot, too, since she had to read it to 'figure it out'," Harry jerked his thumb in my face.
"Yeah!" Ron said.
The bell rang.
"Can you believe those two?!" I said when Hermione and I were out of earshot. "We try to help them, and this is the thanks we get."
"You're one to talk," Hermione said, her face straight forward. "I helped you with your homework last night, but when I asked for your help on the History of Magic homework, you said you had Quidditch practice. You didn't even offer to let me use your notes!"
"Hey!" I protested. "That's not fair, Hermione, I've helped you out a lot."
"What? Like trying to beat me in the number of Griffindor points we get? Like trying to beat me in how many books we read? Like trying to take my claim to the best Griffindor in Potions?" Hermione shouted. "I'm sick of it! You try to force everything so that you're number one."
"What?!" I shouted. She knew perfectly well I had to try my best! "You're the one who's trying to beat me out. Everything I do isn't good enough for you, is it? I'm better on a broomstick, so you're mad at me. That's it, isn't it?!"
"No! I'd rather not ride a broomstick around, trying to take some silly little ball just so everyone can gape at my wondrous abilities. I'm sick of it!"
"I'm sick of you!" I shouted.
"There's something we can agree on," Hermione snapped and took an about-face. She stalked off, her bag making a huge racket as she did so.
Then it hit me. I had just fought with my best friend, the closest friend I'd ever made. She was mad at me for trying to beat her out. She was mad because I was on the Quidditch team. She was sick of me. Sick of my face, my voice, everything.
I didn't know what to do. The halls cleared out as the bell rang for class. I couldn't go to class and face her. I couldn't. I just couldn't face her. Footsteps rang out in the hallway. There was only one person who roamed the halls after class had started. Filch!
I ran. I ran and ran and ran and ran some more. Finally, I found the girl's restroom and slowed to a jog. I opened the door, jogged to the end stall, sat on the toilet seat, and cried. I cried and cried, and I didn't realize the time of day. I didn't care. I didn't care what was going to happen if anyone found me.
I didn't care. The tears kept coming. I became dehydrated and the world around me became a blur. Seated on the toilet seat on the first floor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on a Halloween afternoon, my bad beside me, I fell asleep.
The blank white void appeared. I conjured up my bedroom, my bedroom at home. I held my wolf pillow, my pillow, and cried silent tears again. My stomach growled again, and I conjured up my favorite spaghetti dinner, something that I loved so much.
Then I threw it across the room. The plate shattered into a million pieces against the sea foam green wall. How could I think of eating when my best friend was no longer my best friend? I hiccupped and conjured up some spring water. The tears, fresh and new, returned in full force. I sobbed and they raked my body like wet leaves on a December morning.
"I take it something bad happened," said Syaoran. "I fell asleep in class again."
"Go back to class," I muttered, hiccupping again. "Or I'll throw one at you 'stead o' the wall."
"What's wrong, Angel?" he asked, sitting down on my bed. "You miss your family?"
"Tha' ain't it," I shook my head wildly. I conjured away my robes and replaced them with blue jeans and a T-shirt.
"Then what is?"
"Ain't none o' your business, jus' git back ta class," I said, staring at the pictures of my wolves and tigers.
"This is a nice room," Syaoran said, looking around. "Yours?"
"Back home," I said, hiccupping again. "Go on, then. You're class more important than anything o' mine."
"Not when you cry so hard you fell asleep," Syaoran said. "Come on, Angel. I'm right here." A sudden loud crashing interrupted my answer.
"I dunno what's going on," I said. "But I git the feelin' I betta wake up. See ya!"
My vision swam for an instant, but I saw what had woken me up almost immediately. It was a mountain troll. What the hell was a mountain troll doing in the girl's bathroom?
"Angel, thank goodness, I thought you were dead!" I heard Hermione's voice on the other side of the bathroom. There were two rows of stalls, you see. And unless you shouted really, really loud, no one can hear you in the place.
"Hermione! Angel! Are you girls in here?" I heard Ron and Harry shout into the room. The troll took another swipe at the stalls in which I was seated, and I dove out of the way as the toilet I was seated on burst into a thousand porcelain pieces.
"We're in here!" I yelled. "Whoa!" The troll had taken a swipe at me again, leaving the sink I had stood in front of moments ago in pieces, just like the toilet.
"Hey!" Hermione shouted. "Hey, ugly! Over here, you dumb, overgrown git!" She banged her hand against the stalls and drew the troll away from me.
"Hermione, run!" I shouted. She ran, all right, right into a corner. The troll was just about to strike again when Harry started yelling at it, too. Stupid as most trolls are, it went after Harry. Harry did not escape as Hermione and I had. Harry was dangling upside down in a very precarious situation. The troll tried to strike him with the club it carried, but Harry ducked out of the way.
"Do something!" Harry yelled.
"What should we do?!" Ron asked.
"Anything!" Harry panicked. The troll took another strike at him and he ducked. Think! What can I do to help Harry?
"What can we do?" Ron asked me.
"I dunno!" I shouted. "My mind's blank! Hermione?"
"No clue!"
"Do something!" Harry repeated. "Anything!!!"
"Tripularo Cantisto!" I tried, pointing my wand at the troll's feet. He fell over backwards, but kept his grip on Harry. The troll's foot landed on my right leg, and I heard a sickening snapping noise as a thousand different needles shot into my leg at once.
"ARGH!!!" I screamed, and the tears returned. Not tears of sadness, but tears of absolute pain, a pain I had never known before. The troll stepped off, letting the blood rush back into my feet, making it feel, if at all possible, worse. I whimpered, gripping what was left of my right leg in my hands. I huddled over it, trying to catch enough breath to perhaps let up the pain, but to no avail.
"Swish and flick!" Hermione said to Ron. He nodded. It was then that I saw that Hermione did not have her wand. It had been cast aside against the wall on the other end of the bathroom, inside her bag.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Ron shouted, and the troll's club flew into the air and hovered inches above its head. Harry managed to free one of his feet. Ron let the club fall directly onto the troll's head and the walls came tumbling down. Well, the troll did, anyway. Harry managed to swing out of the troll's limper fingers and land unsteadily on his feet. So unsteadily, in fact, that he fell over on his butt.
The troll's sheer weight shook the walls for several seconds after the dust had settled, but anyone could see that the troll had been knocked out. Hermione ran to her bag and threw it over her shoulder, pulling out her wand and leveling it at the troll in case it woke up. She then ran back over to me.
"Angel, I am so sorry," she said. "I didn't mean a word of it, honestly."
Several pounding footsteps rushed into the bathroom and came upon four soaked eleven-year-olds and one KOed troll. However, the teachers weren't exactly pleased with us.
"E-Explain yourselves!" Professor McGonagall stuttered as she looked on the scene. "Why aren't you in the dormitories? Oh! Miss Indigo, are you all right?"
"Nah, jus' a coupla broken bones, nay, I'm jus' peachy," I grinned lopsidedly, but it turned into a wince. Snape looked like he had just gotten the rest of the year on holiday to Hawaii.
"We need to get you up to the hospital wing," she rushed over. "But don't think any of you are off the hook. We'll get this sorted out as soon as Madam Pomfrey has mended your bones. Ms. Granger, might I have your help?" Hermione came over and lifted me up by my right arm while Professor McGonagall took my left. The blood rushed to my leg and the pain became unbearable.
"Severus, Professor Quirrell, please handle the troll," said McGonagall. I didn't remember much more, because as soon as she had transfigured a splint from a shard of the toilet seat, I had blacked out.
I came to in the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey told me that the others were waiting. They had apparently been waiting for my arrival, because the second I did, Professor McGonagall wanted some answers.
"What were you four doing in there?" she asked sharply. "You could have been killed!"
"It was my fault, Professor," Hermione lied through her two front teeth. "I thought I could take on the troll, because I'd read about them, you see. Harry and Ron and Angel came to rescue me after it threw my bag against the wall. If they hadn't come, I'd probably be dead."
I may never forget this. Hermione almost never lies, and to a teacher, I think this was probably the first time. She was laying the entirety of the blame on herself, even though she knew it had really been none of our fault to begin with. How were we going to explain my absence from my classes, though?
"Well…in that case…" Professor McGonagall's mouth wasn't the only one that was hanging open. "Hermione, you were very foolish. How could you think you could take on a fully-grown mountain troll?" Hermione hung her head. "Five points will be taken from Griffindor for your serious lax in judgment."
Hermione nodded.
"Go on up to the Tower. The Houses are finishing up their feasts up there."
She left.
"You're all very lucky," said Professor McGonagall. "Not many first years could take on a mountain troll and live to tell the tale. Five points will be awarded for each of you. For sheer dumb luck. And consider yourself very lucky it was only a broken leg, Miss Indigo."
We all nodded.
Harry, Ron, and I made our way upstairs. We were silent in our trek. When we reached the Tower, everyone was there. Standing silently in the doorway was Hermione. She stepped out of the din of things and looked at us all.
"Thanks," we all said at once. And we were forever friends.
***
I couldn't think of a better way to get them all together. Sorry for my lack of creativeness. So, have you figured out who Eriol really is? Here's another clue: he's related to Sakura, Eriol, and Syaoran.