T/N: Hey people, this one may be quicker than the last one, but the NEXT one might be farther away, as Nat still has it. I'll try to get it from her ASAP, 'kay? Anyway, here it goes!
Disclaimer: All right, I admit it! I am the great J.K. Rowling! Bow down to me you worthless mortals! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NOT! I do not know her; do not assume I am her. Do not sue Nat & me over this, as together we own 2 younger siblings, a teddy bear, a cat and 7 cents.
Chapter 7
Can It Get Any Worse? Do you really want to ask that?
Anj'la did not sleep well that night. She tossed and turned, dreaming a dream she could no longer remember. When she awoke, she was the only one in the dorm.
She walked down to the common room, dark circles under her eyes. The boys were in a very sorry shape. Blaise's arm was defiantly crooked. Matt had a black eye, and Quinn was trying to stifle the blood gushing from his nose.
"Nice sunrise, Matt. What happened to you three?" Anj'la asked, throwing herself onto an armchair. "Were you fighting?"
"Kinda," responded Matt. "I fell out of bed."
"I ran into a wall," Blaise said, trying to grin.
"And I bell dowd de stairs," Quinn said. A thought occurred to Anj'la.
"Just curiously, Quinn, but were those stairs the ones down to your dorm?" Quinn nodded miserably. Anj'la burst out laughing.
"Quinn, that's what, three steps down?"
"Doe?" He asked. Blaise stretched and yawned.
"Thesel's detention was horrible. He had me translate a whole chapter of an Ancient Runes text. After four HOURS of trying to decipher it, he told me, even the scientists who work with the stuff have never translated it. I could have killed him."
"That would do it," Anj'la agreed. She hadn't taken Ancient Runes because it was so hard.
It was now seven o'clock and the four agreed to head down to breakfast. They entered the Great Hall, only to find the Slytherin table deserted except for four plates of toast. They sat down. While Anj'la nibbled on a piece of toast, Matt took what was left on her plate. Anj'la shook her head and left to go down to the dungeons.
"Where you going?" Blaise asked around a bite of toast.
"I'm going to wander aimlessly through the dungeons. I need to sort myself out." Quinn, who had began to stand up, quickly sat down. If Anj'la needed to be alone, Quinn didn't want to bother her. If she didn't want to be followed, he wouldn't be able to follow her. Only Mariana could do that. But what if she did want to be followed, just to have someone to talk to? No, that wasn't really Anj'la's style. Quinn decided not to push it. If Anj'la didn't want him following her… Quinn didn't want to think about that- sometimes Anj'la could be scary.
Meanwhile, down in the dungeons, Anj'la paused and listened for any following footsteps. : Hmm… Where's Quinn?: She thought. : He was supposed to follow me.: Anj'la shrugged and kept walking. She walked to an unused part of the ground floor, and went straight to a portrait of Salazar Slytherin. It was the only one in the school, yet another reminder of how much the rest of the school hated Slytherin. His only portrait was in an unused area.
"Salazar Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four, help your daughter," she told him. (T/N: hee, hee) The portrait swung open. Inside was a spacious secret passageway. Anj'la stepped inside, muttering Lumos. Anj'la really liked the passageway, which led almost anywhere in the castle. That might be why it was in a deserted area of Hogwarts. It only opened for Slytherins, best of all. That meant that Snape and Vector were the only teachers able to get into it, and the Weasley twins and their map had no clue about it. Anj'la thought about the map. Fred and George could be so gullible sometimes. They told Mariana and Matt all about it, and even let them see it once. But this passageway- it led to the Great Hall. It had a peephole looking into the Headmaster's office. (They were pretty sure professor Dumbledore knew about the peephole, as he kept winking at them, but he didn't know about the rest of the passageway)
But the best part of the tunnel was the part that led to Snape's private storeroom. That was the best because over 3/4 of the ingredients for the Animagi potion were not available to students. That's right. Anj'la and her friends were trying to become illegal Animagi. Anj'la often wondered what her Animagus form would be.
Finally, Anj'la entered a room. It was a large, circular room with a high ceiling. There were already four others in the room. They were standing around a cauldron, which was now emitting orange smoke.
"Hey," Anj'la said. The other girls nodded to her. Mariana waved.
"Hi. Weren't the boys supposed to come too?" she asked.
"They didn't get the hint. They're only boys, after all." (T/N: just for you, MKN!)
"Do you want me to call Matt?" Mariana asked. Anj'la nodded.
Mariana concentrated. She reached inside of her for that magical rope that led to Matt, and sent a thought along it. Matt- you there? Bring Blaise and Quinn to us. We're at The potion, 'kay? Soon she felt Matt's response. We're on our way. A few minutes later, the three boys came into the room.
Rose stretched as the boys dropped their stuff in a corner.
"We'd better get a move on," she said. "Assuming everyone helps, the potion should be done in 2 ½ months. I think." She consulted the book that had been 'borrowed' from the extensive Starbanks Library. "Yeah, 2 ½ months."
"2 ½ months?" groaned Quinn. "There can't be THAT many more steps can there? We've already been working on this for 3 months last year, and Jov worked on it over the summer."
"Sad, isn't it?" Lauren agreed. "To think, if we started it at the beginning of last year, it'd be done."
"But I didn't find the book 'til just after Christmas, and we needed to order the Codswallop toenails," Matt interjected.
"This is a pointless argument," Anj'la decided. "But these last 2 ½ months are key." She grabbed the book from Rose and consulted it. "We have to add 7 lacewings every half hour between 8:37 A.M. and 3:37 P.M. then stir the potion 7.3 times counterclockwise." Quinn whistled softly.
"How are we going to manage that one?" he wondered. "It's only the second day of school, and there's no way any of us can be gone that long from class."
"Why don't we each miss our best class?" Blaise suggested.
"Your voice sounds really low, bouncing off the dungeon walls like that," Jovanna said absentmindedly.
"I know," Blaise said in a high falsetto. Everyone giggled.
"Don't you think the teachers might get suspicious?" asked Rose, who was feeling unusually logical. "If we only miss one class, but not the others? If the teachers confer, they'll know something's up.
"Rose is right," Lauren said into the empty silence that followed it. "If we each miss a few days of school, it won't look bad, just like we're sick or something."
"But unless there was a cold going around, teachers might notice that it was just us getting sick," Jovanna said.
"That might arouse doubts of the certainty of our illnesses," Quinn said. The others stared at him.
"In English, Professor Know-it-all," Matt suggested, glancing at Mariana. She shrugged, to indicate that she, too, had no clue what he just said.
"I did say it in English," Quinn said, pouting.
"Words we can understand, please?" Rose asked. Quinn sighed.
"I said, they're less likely to believe our illness if just we were sick."
Oh. I Knew that. Mariana mind-told Matt, who chuckled.
"You know, I sincerely doubt you failed preschool for any good reason," Anj'la told Quinn.
"Thanks. But I can't miss school. I always get behind."
"We'll help. Me for DADA, Rose for Care of Magical Creatures, err… Me for Potions, Jovanna or Lauren for Charms and Matt for Herbology." Lauren was now standing on her head, obviously deep in thought.
"I've got it!" she claimed, righting herself. "If we each miss one week of school, that's two months. But maybe we should do it in pairs… Anj and Star, Matt and Jov, Quinn and Blaise, Rose and Me. So we each miss two weeks, one at a time, and two lucky pairs miss 3 weeks!" This plan was discarded almost instantly.
"Naw, no cold could go on that long. How 'bout we each miss one week with the pairs you suggested, and plan from there. But we still need an excuse."
Everyone looked at everyone else, and finally, the Knut dropped.
"That's it!" screamed Anj'la.
The group gathered outside the potion, their plan laid.
"So, who's going to miss the first week?" Rose asked.
"I will!" Mariana and Matt sang out in unison, as usual.
"Ink-a-bink
A bottle of ink
The Cork fell out
And you stink!" Blaise said, pointing between Matt and Mariana. His finger landed on Mariana, and he shrugged. "Sorry Matt, Mariana wins."
"I thought the finger landing on you means you lost!" Matt protested.
"Maybe, but she's my girlfriend, and you obviously are not, so she wins," Blaise told him.
"Fine. Ink hates me, anyway."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
By the time they got to the Great Hall, breakfast for everyone else had started. The seven of them managed to get seats together. Somehow, whenever Matt, Mariana or Anj'la wanted seats, there were some conveniently located.
"Where did Mariana go?" Lauren asked, glancing over the other six heads bent over their meals.
"I won't be gone long, back by 8:15," Anj'la told her. "And we don't add anything until 8:37, so we're fine. Right?"
"Yeah," Rose agreed. "You should get back in time." Just then, there were loud screeches from over head as the morning mail came in. Rose paid for her copy of the Daily Prophet and Anj'la gave a cracker to Nubay as he dropped the letter he had been carrying into her pumpkin juice.
"Thanks," she told him, casting a quick drying spell on her letter. Her mother's neat print registered in her brain briefly. It was probably a letter telling her what she had forgotten.
Anj'la scanned the letter. First she looked shocked, then she was very stunned, and then horrified. She looked around for a corner to die in, and, finding none, decided to confront the subjects of the letter. As her mother wasn't there, she went for the next subject.
She shoved the letter into her bag and stalked over to the Gryffindor table and tapped one of the boys facing away from her on the shoulder. He turned around. He had black hair, emerald green eyes and glasses. It was Harry Potter. She grabbed his arm and attempted to drag him away.
Instantly, the two kids on either side of him turned around. One, a red headed boy Anj'la recognized as Ron Weasley already had his hand on his wand. Anj'la did not loosen her grip.
"What the hell?" said Ron.
"Let him go," said the girl, whose name was… oh, what was it… Hermy? Mary? Hermione that was it. Hermione Granger.
"I only want to talk to him," Anj'la hissed.
"Why should we trust you? You're a Slytherin. You're probably all working for You-Know-Who. You're going to haul him off and turn him over to Him." Ron accused. Anj'la sighed. When she first came to Hogwarts, all this bothered her. Now, however, she was 5 years old and wiser. She knew when to pick her fights and when not to. This was not a time to.
"If I agree with you, can he come with me?" Not waiting for an answer, she continued. "Besides, your family is pretty close with some Slytherins, aren't they?" Seeing Ron's confused look, she sighed. "The Starbanks Twins? And that's my guarantee I won't hurt him. I hang out with them, who hang out with your infamous older twin brothers, Gred and Forge."
"You mean Fred and George," said Hermione, thoroughly confused.
"No, I mean Gred and Forge. Trust me." Ron suddenly remembered the brief Christmas time conversation he and Harry had had with the twins in their first year.
"Bloody hell," he said. "Do you have Muggle microphones wired in our common room or something?" Hermione sighed impatiently.
"Ron, you know Muggle electronics don't work at Hogwarts."
"Umm… Excuse me?" Harry asked as Ron and Hermione started bickering. "You're cutting off circulation to my hand," he told Anj'la, fruitlessly trying to loosen her death grip.
"Sorry," said Anj'la, plainly not sorry at all. "Now come with me, Potter."
Anj'la started walking and Harry, much to his surprise, followed. She led him down a set of stairs, made two right turns, a left, went through a door, and down another set of stairs. She glanced around and led Harry into a room. Harry recognized this room. It was the room off the Great Hall the Champions had met in, during his fourth year. Anj'la released his hand, and Harry felt the blood flow back into his fingers.
Harry cautiously sat down into one of the fireside chairs, keeping a wary eye on Anj'la.
"What's this about," he asked quite lightly.
"THIS," he was told. Anj'la shoved a letter at him.
"Read this." He did. First, he was confused. Why was Anj'la letting him read this letter from her mom? But as he finished the letter, the meaning became all too clear. Harry numbly stared into the fire.
"Of all the possible people, you're my cousin."
T/N: OOOH, cliffie! I was just looking back, and the only real cliffie wasn't very big and was way back in chapter one. Six chapters without a real cliffhanger? Consider yourselves lucky! BWHAHAHA!
Sorry… Interesting stuff in this chapter, no? Animagi, lost-and-found cousins, all that good stuff. Nat still has chapter 8, so might be a while. I'll get it ASAP, promise.
Enchanted Spirit- it's fine, glad to have you back! About the Zambini/Zambini thing…. Err…. (Thinks up answer) Zambinis related to Zabinis, it's a shortened version of another name, but they immigrated at different times and to different places. Old family tradition to name children after names like fire, so the family has lots of Blaises, Fionas, Tybalts, Blairs, Blaines, Blazes, etc. Blaise Zambini's little sister is Infernal, which is odd, but oh well.
MKN- yes, I am a wretched child. (See ch. 3, when Lucius calls me/Mariana the devil child)