Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize (althogh I really wish I did). I all belongs to the glorious JRK, as we all know. And I don't own Gushers either.
Chapter Ten: It's Not Easy, Turning People Green
The horseless coaches would pull up to the front gates any minute, and Sianna stood by a side door to the Great Hall awaiting their arrival. She looked no less serene than usual, but it was a struggle to remain that way. Not that there was anything to fear from hundreds of foreign strangers who new more spells than she could possibly dream of and had probably been learning magic since they could talk.
Right. Nothing to be afraid of.
She jumped out of her thoughts when the giant front doors ground open to reveal the excited voices of students fresh out of summer vacation and newly reunited with friends. She raised her head and pulled her shoulders back, standing tall in her undistinguished little corner, and sent a glance to Professor Dumbledore, who returned the look and nodded reassuringly. All the teachers were seated at the High Table except McGonagall, who, as was tradition, was supervising the Entrance Hall and would soon go to the docks to instruct the first years.
The students entered the hall in a burst of identical black robes and a flurry of chatter. It was easy for Sianna to spot groups of friends sitting together, especially at the Gryffindor table. She sighed enviously and wished that she had a group to sit with...
Fred and George caught her looking and sent mischievous winks her way. She smiled and winked in return, which could have been a mistake, as it seemed to cause a bit of confusion at the Gryffindor table. A red headed boy that looked oddly like the twins was arguing with a black-haired boy who wore glasses...
"Honestly, would you two stop it?" Hermione nagged at Harry and Ron. "She wasn't winking at either of you—"
"Yes she was, wasn't she, Fred?" Ron asserted, looking at his brother across the table for support.
"Sure, mate. Course she was," George answered flippantly, looking oddly innocent.
"Who is that?" asked Seamus Finnigan, who had just noticed the topic of conversation.
"Dunno," Harry said.
"Well she's a pretty one," he replied. This received nods and murmurs of agreement from the male occupants of the table. Harry craned his neck to look over at the girl again, but she wasn't watching, he saw with disappointment.
"Oh come on, she's not that gorgeous," Hermione tried to reason (which, she ought to know, should never be attempted when dealing with excessive amounts of testosterone, as it is a catastrophic waste of energy and breath).
"You're just saying that because you're jealous," Ron accused tactlessly.
"I am not!" Hermione defended childishly, but at that moment, the double doors opened and a single, orderly line of strangely short eleven-year-olds moved through the Great Hall, most of the eyes cast upward in awe and amazement. Somehow, the first-years seemed to get smaller every year, and this year was the littlest yet. Hermione abandoned the argument as her attention turned to the front of the room.
Sianna watched the line move closer with a fluttering stomach, knowing that she would be the first Sorted. But before the ceremony, there were two introductions to perform. Dumbledore stood and the hall quieted.
"For those of you who were here two years ago, you will recognize our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin," he announced. Lupin stood in his place at the High table and received the torrential applause with a humble nod. Sianna smiled to see his popularity, and she joined the crowd in welcoming him as well.
When the noise died back down, Dumbledore beckoned to Sianna, who approached with long, smooth strides and a forced calm about her.
"And as you can see, we have a new student in our midst, as well as a new professor," he began obviously. "She has come here from her home in America and will be joining the fifth year class. So without further ado, I present to you...Sianna Castell," he said with a good bit more flare than was strictly necessary. His announcement was met with light applause, and Sianna had to exercise as surprising amount of restraint to keep from looking at Draco to see if he was clapping. She smiled shyly at the crowd, focusing on no one in particular, and ignored the obnoxious faces that the Weasley twins were pulling at her. She failed to notice the particularly loud applause that seemed to come from that section of the Gryffindor table.
"And now...the Sorting Ceremony may begin," Dumbledore announced with a sweep of his hand.
McGonagall gave the Sorting Hat a nod, and a long tear by the brim opened wide like a mouth and stretched a bit. The Hat inhaled hugely and began its long-practiced song describing the Hogwarts founders and their legacies. Amid all the explanations and planning, the professors had somehow neglected to mention that fact that the Hat could sing, but Sianna managed keep a straight face as she waited for the not-too-fine-voiced garment to finish its solo. When the applause quieted, the room became far too silent for Sianna's liking, and her shoes clicked sharply as she approached the three-legged stool nervously. McGonagall placed the hat gently on her head, and the professor's inscrutable visage was the last thing Sianna saw before the enormously wide brim blocked all view of the Hall (excepting the floor, of course).
"Ah, It's seems we have a dash of everything in here, do we now?" said a tiny voice in her ear. "More brains than anyone could possibly need...and a good bit of ambition to go along with that. Want to be the best, do you? You'd do well in Slytherin...but Ravenclaw might be better, considering the circumstances," the Hat argued with itself.
Just put me where I'm supposed to go, Sianna thought at it, hoping it would hear. It did.
"Not everyone fits perfectly in one house, you know. You're a good challenge, haven't had one like you in years...nearly as bad as Harry Potter, you are. Now just quit fidgeting and sit still for a moment, I'm thinking," it commanded sternly.
The blood rushed to Sianna's face, and her impatience flared violently.
Listen, Hat, Sianna addressed the garment atop her head. If you don't hurry up and just pick a goddam House, you're going to have a lot more to complain about than my fidgeting! she warned.
"Fine, then. I'll just put you in SLYTHERIN!" Sianna could her the last word shouted to the rest of the hall, and she sighed with relief as McGonagall reclaimed the Hat. Cheers and a raunchy wolf-whistle came from the table on her far right, with only very sparing applause from the rest of the room. Professor Snape pretended not to notice the goofy grin that she threw him on her way down to the table, one that innocently promised trouble on the horizon.
Sianna sat by the side door of the hall and glanced down the length of the table, inadvertently catching Draco's eye. His look remained steely, and he did not break the stare until someone next to him tapped his shoulder. Sianna shook her head, half sad and half scornful, and turned to watch the rest of the Sorting.
There were seven new additions to Slytherin (not including Sianna), the smallest number of any House, and the five new boys and two girls filled in at the end of the table, right beside Sianna. She groaned inwardly as she realized that she would be sharing the first meal of term with the rather frightening bloke on her right and the gaggle of eleven-year-olds that occupied all other sides. Sadly, it didn't leave much room for conversation, and it was a relief to get down to the dormitories after the meal. She already missed the engaging discussions of the professors seated at the High Table.
She entered her new, rectangular dungeon room tiredly, only to see that the five others she would share it with were already there, unpacking their trunks and gossiping like the teenage girls they were. When they noticed the new occupant, though, they all turned towards the door and fell silent, one of them glaring hatefully at the intruder and the rest either curious or indifferent.
Sianna, taken aback by the sudden hostility, held the staring contest for one confused moment before she remembered to relax. Be cool, be calm, she told herself.
"Hello," she said nervously.
For one tense moment, no one replied. Then one girl, looking to her companions in slight amazement at their lack of manners, rolled her eyes and approached Sianna, hand held out in greeting.
"I'm Katherine Pritchard," the girl introduced graciously. She had the odd sort of hazel eyes that seemed to change colors even as you looked at them, and her obviously well cared-for chestnut curls framed her oval face well. Just by looking, Sianna could tell that Katherine was the type of girl that placed a good bit of importance on decorum and appearance.
"Nice to meet you, Katherine. I'm Sianna," she replied, "but you already knew that."
Katherine smiled and turned to introduce her housemates. The glaring girl was Pansy Parkinson, a blonde with a pug-nosed face and squinty, jealous eyes. Sianna tried to smile nicely at her, but she received only a reluctant nod in return. Abigail Monroe, an extremely short, fierce-looking brunette, stood next to Sally-Anne Perks, a girl with very closely cropped, dirty blonde hair, a plain face, and an entirely bored expression. The last girl, Millicent Bulstrode, had muscles about as big as the ones on that huge boy that had sat beside Sianna at dinner, although she didn't she appear quite as threatening. None of them were exactly friendly in their greetings, but they were nevertheless more welcoming than Pansy.
The girls all went back to unloading their bags, this time noticeably quieter. Quite silent, in fact.
Sianna tried to ignore the animosity in the air as she unlatched her trunk and pulled out the same clothes she had folded up so carefully the night before. Moving really sucked. She began to transfer her now-wrinkled clothes from the trunk to her bed, which was right in the middle of all the other beds. It was situated against the end wall, with two others on the left wall and three on the right. She could tell it had been added in the only available space, as the girls' dressers and the two doors occupied the rest of the wall. The position only reaffirmed the feeling that she was an outsider barging into the middle of a close-knit group of friends. They had, after all, spent five years living together. She couldn't possibly expect to just fit right in immediately.
"So, Sianna..." Katherine began awkwardly, clearly trying to be polite, "what brings you here from America?"
"It's a long story..." Sianna said evasively, not really wanting to go into it but knowing that there was no other option.
"We're here all night," the Pansy said with more than a touch of annoyance.
Sianna barely kept herself from glaring at the back of the girl's stringy blonde head, which was buried halfway in her trunk. Play nice, at least for now, she reminded herself. She sighed and leaned against the bedpost, deciding to start the story from the beginning. There would be no glossing over details this time—that had caused enough trouble already.
"Well, both my parents are Muggles—"
"What?" Pansy exclaimed in blatant disbelief, standing upright and eyeing Sianna condescendingly. Sianna looked back with a deliberately blank face.
All the girls had looked up in unwelcoming surprise at that statement. An impossibly tense moment passed before Katherine blurted, "You heard the girl." Sianna could tell that she was acting as the required mediator only for the sake of keeping the peace. "Go on, Sianna," she prompted, but this time she had to force her smile. The other girls were still staring, probably wondering how she'd even gotten into Slytherin in the first place. Sianna frowned slightly to see how deeply ingrained the bias was, even in semi-nice people. She continued the story as if nothing at all had happened.
"So anyway, my parents are Muggles, and..." she paused, trying to figure out which part to explain next. In an attempt to make it relatively simple, she summarized, "Well basically, I didn't know I was a witch until about two months ago. A long time ago, someone put a spell on my magic so that no one would know about it, not even me...so I never even did any accidental magic or anything until Professor Snape found out and took the spell off."
Sianna stopped there, knowing that there were gaping holes in the explanation but having trouble filling them in without confusing her audience. Fortunately, neither Katherine's curiosity nor her polite propriety was dampened by her knowledge Sianna's parentage.
"What's Snape got to do with it?" she wondered.
"Well, I think somebody in America detected the spell because it was unauthorized, but they couldn't figure out where it was coming from because they didn't know the counter-spell or something like that," Sianna explained, not quite sure herself. "So they got Snape to do it because apparently he's really good at dealing with that type of magic. Then when he'd figured the whole crazy thing out, he persuaded my parents to send me to Hogwarts instead of an American school...so here I am," she finished.
The room got quiet again for a minute, and Sianna went back to her almost empty trunk. Only her books and some toiletries were left. She was on her way to the bathroom to put her things away when Katherine asked another question. She was obviously struggling to get the entire story straight, no gaps.
"Wait...so why did you have a spell on you in the first place if your parents are Muggles and you'd never heard of wizards or anything?"
Sianna wavered for a moment, but decided to answer the question truthfully. Everyone would find out eventually anyway, right?
"Well, the thing is...my real parents—my biological parents—might actually be wizards. Nobody knows, really. See, the parents I told you about, the Muggles, they're actually my adoptive parents," she simplified. She really didn't want to tell them about the whole complicated shenanigan at the hospital.
"Oh," Katherine replied lamely, looking a little shameful of her jumping to conclusions.
"Yeah...so for all I know, I could be pureblood just as easily as Muggle- born," Sianna added, hoping to put a stop to the Greater-Than-Thou looks that Pansy kept sending her way. When no one said anything, she ducked into the bathroom and tried to find a place for her things.
There were two tiny shower cubicles accompanied by three toilets and an entire wall of mirror, stretching from the countertop to the ceiling. Unfortunately, there were only three sinks, but the ample counter space made up for it. Sianna hung her towel and make-up bag on one of the many hooks and went back to her trunk.
She hauled out a stack of books with a grunt off effort and let them fall on her bed before bending back down to grab the rest. She had far more schoolbooks than most, as she was expected to progress through more than one level of magic in a year. As she shuffled through the volumes, though, she came across something that was neither a textbook nor one of the Muggle novels she'd brought from home.
Sianna had entirely forgotten about the bumpy little paper-wrapped package that the Weasley twins had given her that day in Diagon Alley. They'd probably spent half the summer wondering whether she'd tested it or not...
The knot in the string refused to loosen, and Sianna spent quite a few minutes working at it before Abigail noticed her struggling.
"Need help?" she offered bluntly, turning from her bed to face Sianna's.
Sianna looked up with surprise and laughed, then offered the stubborn package to her housemate. "I can't get the damn string undone," she explained.
Abigail laughed shortly and pulled a proportionately short and stubby wand from her pocket. She performed a quick severing charm and handed the wrapped object back to Sianna.
"What is that thing?" Katherine asked as Sianna began tearing at the many layers of paper.
"No clue," she replied honestly. "I met the Weasley twins in a joke shop at the beginning of the summer and they gave it to me, wouldn't say what it was."
Pansy, overhearing the conversation, sneered and said pompously, "The Weasleys can't afford to be giving anything away."
"Oh please, Pansy," Katherine scolded. "They can hardly help that they're poor."
"They could have helped it if they'd ever figured out how to brew a simple contraceptive."
Katherine cocked her head to the side and agreed, "Well yes, that's true." They both cracked into a fit of giggles at the thought.
Then, with a final rip, what seemed like yards of paper came unwrapped, and out fell several colorful glass bottles, one for each color of the rainbow. They were completely plain and unlabeled.
"What are they?" Sianna asked Katherine, who was standing by the bed and watching curiously.
"I've no idea," she said, picking up the red bottle and opening it with a twist and a snap. She sniffed and exclaimed, "It smells like cherry!"
"It's probably just some kind of drink," Sally-Anne said dully.
"No way," Katherine argued. "You know the Weasleys...they would never give anyone something they hadn't messed with. They must have done something to it."
Katherine screwed the cap back on and handed the bottle back to Sianna.
"What, you're not gonna try it?" Sianna asked disappointedly.
"Are you mad? It'll probably turn my head into a cherry or something!" Sianna chuckled a little at the thought of Katherine starring in a "Gushers" commercial...
"Well, if you won't do it, I will."
The four other girls looked curious, but no one else went over to watch.
Sianna shrugged at Katherine and uncapped the bottle ceremoniously, taking a deep breath. "Well, bottoms up!" she said and took a huge gulp of the overly sweet liquid. The taste was strangely reminiscent of homemade Gatorade with too much powder and not enough water.
All six girls (even Pansy) waited with baited breath for something to happen.
Nothing did.
"Well that was anti-climactic," Sianna sighed, twisting the cap tight and letting the bottle plunk back down onto the bed.
"Yeah, all it did was turn your finger red," Katherine pouted. Sianna looked at her hands. Sure enough, the index finger of her right hand was red from base to nail.
"Huh. I didn't even notice that. Odd," she mused, wiping her finger on her pants to see if the color would come off. It did, but with an interesting side effect.
"My pants! Ah fuck, these are my favorites!" Sianna whined. Every last bit of her jeans, from the zipper to the inside of the pockets, was the exact shade of red as the formerly innocent cherry liquid. Damn Weasleys.
"That's fantastic! Can I try?" Katherine asked excitedly. She was holding a sweater of the most disgusting shade of green imaginable.
"Please, do," Sianna said, staring at the sweater in horror and offering the array of bottles. Both girls laughed as the sweater turned popsicle- blue, and Sianna was suddenly very glad that at least one person in Slytherin was willing to befriend a Muggle-raised, possibly Muggle-born witch.
Sianna was the last to wake the next morning, a Tuesday morning, which meant...classes.
She, of course, would not have any actual classes until five o'clock that evening, but that did not mean that her professors hadn't found ample amounts of work to fill the time until then. Professor Snape in particular liked to emphasize the importance of out-of-classroom research, and had left her a lengthy list of ingredients with whose properties she was to be familiar before her next session with him.
She stumbled into the shower with her eyes still closed as the others were organizing their things and heading upstairs. Well, she'd never been one to eat much breakfast anyway.
When Sianna finally made it to the Great Hall (still in time for food, she noticed with satisfaction), it was entirely full. Before she sat down, though, there was someone she wanted to talk to.
She walked straight past the Slytherins, two aisles over and up to find Fred and George Weasley joking with their Gryffindor friends. She tapped them both on the shoulder, and they turned around simultaneously.
"Hey," Sianna said cheerily. "Long time no see. Sorry I never wrote during vacation, I was just so busy I forgot."
The twins looked at each other oddly and remained silent. Only then did Sianna realize that the people around them had gone quiet as well, and that the Gryffindors were staring at her like she'd sprouted a second head. The twins turned back to the table.
She crouched down to their level and whispered, "What's with you guys?"
One of them—she couldn't tell which—turned halfway and answered without looking in her eyes, "Listen, you probably shouldn't be talking to us."
"And why's that?"
A boy across the table who had been listening interrupted, "Just go back to your own table, Slytherin."
If looks could kill, that boy would have been six feet under in before his heart could beat one last time. Sianna turned her gaze questioningly to the twins, but they couldn't bring themselves to raise their eyes from the table.
Sianna stood in scornful surprise and said out loud, "Are you serious? I suppose I was mistaken to think that you two might be above all that." She bent to pick up her bag, mumbling, "First they hate me 'cause I'm Muggle- born, now they hate me 'cause I'm a Slytherin. This place is just full of people who love to jump to conclusions..." She kept muttering as she stalked off angrily. If they didn't have a decent reason not to speak to her, she would give them one.
Sianna checked her watch again, for the fifth time in as many minutes. She had been right to guess that Snape would keep his class in session until the very last moment. She fingered the glass bottle in her bag excitedly, eager to exact her revenge on those infuriating Gryffindors...
Finally, the double doors of the Potions classroom banged open and students began filing out hurriedly. Sianna, hidden around the corner, took a quick swig out of the green watermelon bottle before stashing it back in her bag, always careful to keep her index finger away from everything else.
The exceedingly rude seventh year from that morning sauntered out of the class in the middle of the crowd, flanked by several giggling classmates. Sianna chuckled. Pretty soon they would have something real to laugh at.
No one saw her slip into the group, just as no one noticed her slide right back out into the shadows. They were all too busy watching lollipop-green pigment bleed all the way from their classmate's hand to his toes, even into the inside of his ears. Every bit of skin was coated in unwashable color. Sianna couldn't restrain an amused smirk at her victim's confused screeches. She'd never heard a boy's voice crack in quite that manner...
She had to take an alternate route to the Transfiguration classroom because the stupid boy and his dimwitted friends wouldn't get out of the middle of the hallway. Besides, no decent perpetrator was ever caught near the scene of the crime.
After that first seventh year, the Quidditch team members were the first to go green. Sianna thought that was appropriate...you know, for the sake of team spirit and all. They weren't the only ones, though. Slowly, the whole of Gryffindor House was turning candy green, and no one seemed to know why or how. Not one of the lot was safe, except the first years (they'd never done anything wrong) and the Weasley twins (who else would she blame it on if someone tried to get her in trouble?). Sianna thought Harry Potter looked particularly appetizing in that shade, as it was a very close match to his eyes. Ron Weasley's hair, on the other hand, rather ruined the effect for him.
The sudden burst of chaos was the talk of the school, but the only people that had any inkling as to what the hell was going on were the six fifth- year Slytherin girls. They kept quiet, though, at Sianna's absolute insistence. Nobody was getting caught, if she had anything to say on the matter.
Determination to exact large-scale revenge unscathed would not keep her safe though. Someone—one single, dangerous mind—managed to connect the dots. The argument at breakfast, the green Gryffindors popping up all over the library and the dungeons, the annoyingly haughty look on Sianna Castell's face...oh yes, Hermione had it all figured out. All she needed was a shred of concrete evidence, which really wasn't all that hard to find. It just took a little patience and a set of sharp eyes.
Sianna didn't know any of that, though, when she received an ominous owl one breakfast time nearly a week into term.
"Oy, Sianna," Abigail said from across the table. "Heads up!"
Sianna looked up and was promptly hit between the eyes by a rolled up bit of parchment tied with a string.
"But I never get mail," she said with surprise.
"Go on, open it," Katherine prompted. Sianna did so, with no small amount of curiosity.
To Miss Sianna Castell,
Your presence is required in my office at precisely nine o'clock this
morning. I have received word of several school code violations that I
wish to discuss with you. Both your accusers and their Head of House
wish to be present. DO NOT BE LATE.
Professor Severus Snape
"Damn," Katherine whispered as she read over Sianna's shoulder.
"Too right," Sianna agreed. Well, this was it...the end of her little scam. But she would not go down without a fight.
"In his office? Nothing good ever happens in there. You'd better have one hell of an excuse," she warned.
"Oh I will," Sianna reassured them. "You think I didn't consider that? My excuse was built in from the beginning, hon." Her voice conveyed far more confidence than she felt. "I'm not a Slytherin for nothing, you know," she added as she rose from the table. She had twenty minutes before her meeting, and she was going to spend that precious time hiding all traces of the Rainbow Surprise, as they'd thoughtfully dubbed the drink. It was cheesy, she knew, but it had been the best they could think of at the time.
Fifteen minutes later, with the candy liquid securely stashed and her defending case mentally reviewed and prepared, Sianna left the dormitories for Snape's office. She preferred to arrive early and have to wait than late and be in even deeper water.
She knocked twice and backed up a step, taking a calming breath and straightening her shoulders. When the door opened, she wasn't too surprised to see that Professor Snape was already inside, along with Professor McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. The "Golden Trio," as she'd heard several people call them. The "Dream Team." Sianna wasn't really too familiar with the three students, but she'd certainly heard enough about them, especially Potter. All four Gryffindors looked disgruntled and angry (particularly Potter and Weasley, as they were still green and would remain that way for at least another twelve hours), but Professor Snape's expression was perfectly blank. If any emotion was apparent, it was slight amusement. Sianna found that immeasurably encouraging.
"You asked to see me, Professor?" she began innocently, feigning confusion at the room's occupants.
"Yes, Miss Castell. You see, Miss Granger here believes that you have been turning her classmates green," Snape informed her with a hint of mocking disbelief in his voice. "You are here, essentially, to hear the case she's made against you. Please sit."
The chairs were arranged in an arc facing Snape's desk. Sianna took the one on the end, the only one left, which just happened to face Granger's seat. Oh, goody. Sianna looked directly at her classmates with her face schooled into a skeptical smirk, as if she seriously doubted the validity of the charges.
"Okay," she began awkwardly when no one spoke. "What gives you that idea, Granger?"
"I saw you," Granger revealed smugly. "I've been watching you for days, ever since I started to suspect you. You're there every time a new person turns green—"
"How does that prove that it was me?" Sianna asked reasonably. "If you were there to see me every time someone turned green, then it could just as easily have been you doing it, right? You're the Transfiguration genius anyway, not me."
"What?" Granger asked, clearly a bit confused. "Who cares if I'm good at Transfiguration?"
"Well, it would take a fair bit of skill to change the color of an object without altering its form. You should know that," Sianna said, eliciting an offended glare from Granger. "And Professor McGonagall can personally attest to the fact that I have hardly come close to attaining that level of competency." She looked over at McGonagall expectantly and received a reluctant nod of agreement.
"It's true. She can hardly turn paper into cloth as it is," the she stated honestly.
"But I don't think she's doing it with her wand, professor," Granger said.
"Then I would really be fascinated to hear how, Miss Granger," Snape said silkily.
Granger looked down for a moment, inadvertently revealing her uncertainty. She really shouldn't have done that, Sianna observed, seeing that Snape had noticed the movement as well.
"I think she might be using a potion, sir," she said quietly, "but I don't know what."
"I know of no potion that could turn a person green without having them ingest it," Snape countered immediately. "And I am fairly certain that Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley, however inobservant, would have noticed someone forcing a potion down their throats," he added snidely. Sianna had to remind herself not to smile triumphantly.
"But still, everyone knows she's mad at Fred and George, so she does have a motive," Potter volunteered. Sianna smirked with raised eyebrows. Granger had probably told him to say that.
"Fred and George Weasley?" McGonagall interrupted out of curiosity. "What have they got to do with any of this?"
"We saw her arguing with them the first day of classes, sir," Granger explained.
"Honestly, they're more likely to be behind all this than I am," Sianna argued sarcastically. (Really, it was partly true. They'd given her the means, had they not?) "I mean, they're the ones always pulling jokes on their friends, from what I hear."
"Why would they turn their own housemates green?" Weasley asked skeptically.
"I dunno, you tell me. They're your brothers."
Snape sighed with impatience. "Unless you have more compelling evidence, Miss Granger, I am going to have to ask you to drop these absurd accusations," he said with obvious annoyance.
"But we saw her—"Weasley defended desperately.
"Enough, Mr. Weasley. You have already wasted a sufficient amount of my time. Now if I'm not mistaken, you three have a class beginning in..." he checked his watch, "ten minutes. If you are late, it will most certainly not be my responsibility."
Potter, Weasley, and Granger stood up slowly and left without a word, and none dared to look up except to glare evilly at Sianna, who could barely keep herself from blowing one fat, victorious raspberry at the lot of them.
Professor McGonagall rose to leave as well, but she paused to whisper something inaudible in Snape's ear before gazing strangely at Sianna and exiting the office.
So Sianna was left alone in her chair, with Professor Snape staring at her from behind his desk.
"I do believe you have some research to do, Miss Castell," he dismissed, with a shadow of a smile.
A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long...I was on vacation and my computer access limited, plus my own computer was being temperamental and wouldn't save anything to a disk. Still won't, as a matter of fact. Damn stupid machinery...
Lauren04- About the thing with the torches...remember, I'm American, so to me a torch is a big stick with fire on the end, not a flashlight. I just imagine these dark hallways lit with torches in brackets on the walls...ya know, the medieval dungeon sort of thing. Sorry for the confusion there.
And to the rest of you lovely people, who I know are there reading my story and not reviewing (which should be the eighth deadly sin)...some feedback would be really, really, really beyond great, especially if you have some constructive criticism for me!