Chapter 17:
Filch's smile reflected the trouble that Leah and Malfoy had gotten themselves into. His smile was of one of evil and pleasure – one that made you cringe when you saw it.
Both Leah and Malfoy stood rooted to where they stood in the dungeon as Mrs. Norris, his lamp-eyed cat slinked around their ankles.
"Dear, dear. What do we have here?" Filch asked, savouring the tense atmosphere.
Leah looked down at her feet and she could feel Malfoy also do so. Filch gave a short laugh of triumph. "Wandering in the night… mmm, very foolish. Thought a little night time stroll with your girlfriend would be good, hm? Well, your luck ran out didn't it?" he said thoroughly enjoying the sight.
Malfoy called out, "we weren't wandering. It… it was Peeves," he quickly said. He went on, "We were just coming back from Transfiguration, the last period and Peeves pushed us in here and closed the door. The door was already self-locked."
Filch's eyes bulged even more, not believing his ears, "now, now. It's too late to make up such excuses like that…"
"No! It's true," Leah called out, after Malfoy gave her a little more than a soft nudge in the ribs.
Filch glared at her and she gulped as she looked straight into his eyes. Don't blink, she thought, don't you dare. "Don't you start lying too…" Filch started to say.
"I'm not," she interrupted, trying to make her voice firm.
"I don't care; I found you were you weren't meant to be and that's that. Come with me," he said grumpily and walked away. Both followed him, looking down but thinking of excuses to get them out of he trouble they had landed into. They were finally taking into Filch's office – a dark room with walls decorated with polished chains and thumbscrews. On one side of the wall were cabinet after cabinet of reports on every offender in the school while he had been there. She noticed one cabinet was dedicated to only two students. On it was written "George and Fred Weasley" and written also was the dates of their arrival and the departure of the school – only last year. Weasley… Weasley, where have I heard that name before, thought Leah. A vivid image of walking down Diagon Alley and finding a new shop containing jokes, gags and other humorous and what could be useful things, sprang in her mind. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was where she had seen it – she could remember Ron talking about them too. But now wasn't the time to think about these things.
Meanwhile Filch was going through his draws until he found two slips of paper. On it were spaces in which he filled out their personal information; name, year, crime etc. Crime? Thought Leah. What crime?
"Look, we're telling you the truth," Malfoy said angrily.
"Argh, shut up," he Filch grunted, not even looking up from his little pieces of paper.
Leah looked at him with disbelief; wasn't there any justice in his guy?
But apparently not.
"It was Peeves, the poltergeist. We didn't do anything wrong, and think, with our help you could capture him and get him out of here once and for all…" Malfoy tempted. The squeaking from Filch's quill stopped after listening to Malfoy's suggestion.
He looked up, with a dangerous twinkle in his eyes, "Hmm, not a bad idea…" he muttered and stroked his chin.
Leah instantaneously nodded, hoping it was her ticket to freedom. But at that moment there was a boom of something being pushed over and clangs and clatters filled the empty corridors. Filch picked up his things, shoved it into his draw and hurried off to where the commotion was. "Peeves!" he bellowed as he stormed off down the corridor.
"Come on, let's go!" Malfoy said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the door.
However, she resisted. "No!" she urged, "It'd be better if we wait here, otherwise out cover will be blown."
He gave a sigh and came back. "Fine, but as soon as we're off the hook, I'm out of here," he said and lent on the desk, his arms crossed. Leah sat down in one of the mouldy chairs sitting in front if his equally mouldy desk. The room was less than inviting; it's torturous metal instruments on show on the walls, glimmering threateningly. She gulped as she sat her self further into the moth-eaten chair. Malfoy also looked none too pleased to be in this room. He looked about unhappily, inspecting the instruments hung around the walls.
Filch was taking longer than they expected and both got a bit bored. Leah jumped up from where she sat and went over to the filling cabinets. She went up and down, looking at each and every name on the faces of the cabinets. Halifax, Hammond… Harrison. Leah stoped herself and looked down at the name – her name, Leah Rhiannon Harrison. She quickly opened her file to find a small piece of paper with Durmstrang's coat of arms on it. She picked out the parchment read through the neatly written handwriting. It was a report from Durmstrang about her. In it was written all the offences that she had committed while she was there. She was thankful that the list was only short and the offences only minor. Being late to class, lighting a fire without permission, disrupting the potions class ("who wouldn't when a bat of a woman taught you out of old musty books?")… Wow, thought Leah, they were pretty strict over there compared to Hogwarts. She carefully put back her files and went on looking at the names.
Netherlands, Ningly, Nott… as she went through the names, she suddenly came to a name which she knew well – Parkinson. Curiosity took her once more and she opened it to look at the file named "Pansy Mosag Parkinson". To Leah's disappointment her lists of offences were small and minor, except for one incident. She picked out the piece of parchment, where written was "crime; possession and use of love potions". With it was a small bottle, containing liquid tinged pink. It smelt sickly of roses and sugar and labelled on the bottle was "P.P. for D.M.". Leah's eyebrow rose with glee as she looked down at the little glass bottle.
Malfoy noticed that Leah was unusually preoccupied with something and came over to inspect. He didn't have such a good feeling about the situation they were in and the risk they were taking to mooch about Filch's office. Once seeing that Leah had gotten herself into someone else's files, he came over and slammed the door shut, narrowly missing Leah's fingers. She yelped as she pulled her fingers out quickly and looked at Malfoy as if he were a maniac. "What do you think you're doing? You could have slammed my fingers in the damn files!" she yelled.
"Shh! be quiet!" he said quickly. "Hey, that's my line," he added after realising that she was getting the better of him.
Leah tried to protest, but stopped herself and quickly sat down back in the chair. She could hear Filch's shuffling footsteps nearing and Malfoy also, who go away from the filing cabinets to stand next to Leah.
He muttered as he came in with Mrs. Norris, "Never mind, sweet. We'll get him next time. That ruddy ghost… pushing over all those armours…" he came to his desk and opened the draw in which he had hastily put away the notes. He brought them out and said, "Now, where were we up to…"
But Malfoy interrupted him, "we were up to saying that Peeves locked us in that dungeon and that we're innocent."
"Oh, right. Well, you're going to have to make an official statement to Dumbledore if you want to get the all-clear," he said his eyes bulging involuntarily.
"We'll do anything; it's the truth," Leah said quickly.
"Fine, now get out of here," Filch said and shooed them out of his office.
Once out of the room, both of them gave the shut door a gingerly look and walked quickly in the opposite direction from it. Once they had gotten around the corner, Ron jumped out, along with Harry and Hermione. They all looked very pleased, but their expressions were quickly wiped off when they saw Malfoy. "Oh, don't tell me that you were in trouble with her!" Ron said, exasperated.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow and looked at Ron, "What do you mean by that?"
"Gees, if I knew that you were in trouble with Leah, then I wouldn't have bothered getting up early so to come and save your behind…" Ron said, throwing his arms into the air.
"No-one saved my behind, apart from myself!" he said glaring at Ron.
"No, I save you. Well, Harry and Hermione also. You know – Peeves, armour, distraction… it was all us," Ron explained rather shortly.
Malfoy looked at him unhappily, not wanting to accept that he had just been saved from being in trouble by a Gryffindor.
"So, what made you get in trouble by Filch? Did you get caught last night?" Harry asked, looking a little worried.
"Um, not last night – just this morning. After running away from that room, we got locked in a dungeon and Filch caught us in there," Leah explained.
"Us? We? What do you mean 'we'?" Hermione asked, her eyes narrowing as she thought. Suddenly she clicked, "Hang on, does this mean that you were stuck for the whole night with HIM?" she said, horrified at the thought.
Leah nodded. The three Gryffindors gaped. Malfoy glared. "You know, I do have a name."
"Yeah and it's Slimy gi… ouch!" Ron started to say but Hermione trod on his toe. "Not now!" Hermione hissed while he hopped about on one foot and cradled the other.
Malfoy snickered as he looked Ron up and down, "well, I'll be going now"
"Yeah, you do that, or I'll make you!" Ron shouted after him, still jumping about on one foot.
Once Malfoy had gone, the three stood about, talking for a little while. Leah asked Harry if she could have the time and realised that she should be heading off as breakfast would end soon. A change of robes would be good too, she thought. "Well, thanks for helping out," Leah said to the three.
"That's alright," Harry said and he looked down as his face started to tinge. Leah smiled, she guessed that he still had a crush on her. Hermione also noticed when she looked sideways at him. She gave her a knowing smile and suppressed her giggles. Leah turned and left the scene.
She went downwards into the castle and came to the door of the Slytherin common room where she found Malfoy leaning against it, waiting for her. She crossed her arms as he said, "What were you doing? Buffing up every window you passed?"
Leah chose to ignore his comment and arched an eyebrow and asked, "Why were you waiting for me?"
"I just wanted to make sure that you didn't tell anybody that we'd gone to a duel last night," he said, his glare penetrating through her. He had a threatening way that she had grown to like, it was just so… him. In character, she thought quickly, god I sound like I like him. "Fine," she said and scooted around him to give the password.
His hand reached out to her. "Wait. You haven't answered my question yet." That death stare again, Leah thought.
"Of course not. I don't want anybody to even think that I could stand the sight of a prick like you. Now, are you going to let me go in, or not?" She said it so sweetly that Malfoy clenched his fists, so not to raise his temper. Instead, he moved aside and let Leah say the password.
She kept a hand out to keep the door open and he stepped into the room. The common room was deserted, exactly as it had been last night. She guessed that people had gotten up lazily and then had gone straight to breakfast. She hurried to her dormitory, changed into clean robes and headed back down again. Malfoy was still there.
"So, are you coming to breakfast?"
"Yeah, I'm starving. How about you go first and I'll follow you in a few minutes."
"Ok," she turned and went out of the room to the Great Hall.
Once she was in there, she easily found Elise who was sitting on her own, but facing the door instead of her usual burying her nose in the Daily Prophet. Elise pulled her close to her when she sat down, "Where were you?" she hissed.
"Ok, Ok, easy on the pulling. I over heard M… maybe now's not the right time to tell you about it," she said. Malfoy had walked in and was eyeing her very closely as he walked down the isle between the two tables. Leah tried to look as natural as possible and was convincing enough that he didn't come over. Instead he sat down with Crabbe and Goyle who looked relieved when they saw him. Elise noticed that Leah was looking in the direction of Malfoy and pondered on the thought.
Throughout breakfast, Malfoy kept a close eye on Leah; when she was reaching out to get the toast, when she was buttering her toast, when she was taking the toast up to her mouth. He supposed that he didn't mind keeping such a close eye on her; she was a pleasant sight. No, don't think that Draco, he quickly corrected his thought to himself. But looking over to where Leah was seated again, he noticed something shining on her hand, or her finger to be exact. Just a ring, thought Malfoy, any girl wears a ring. Except this one has a ruby in the middle. Hang on, haven't I seen that ring before? He shrugged. It must be something in a shop in Diagon Alley or something…
A/N: R&R! Hehe, so what do you think, hmm? Sorry it took so long to post – been sick and a bit busy lately… those teachers are never on my side. Anyway, R&R please!!! Mia xx