Trophy Room
Disclaimer: Own nothing.
A/N: I know Michael Corner may seem like a little bitch to you, but why else do you think Ginny dumped him? Besides, who drinks alone? That's pathetic.
Michael Corner turned the corner ungracefully, splashing a bit of Ogden's down his front. Malfoy had been in the stands with him—for some reason, while Michael Corner had taken up with the Gryffs, his best friend Anthony Goldstein, along with his on-and-off snogging partner Padma Patil (prefects' duties, my arse), had taken up with the Slytherins part time. Padma did it mostly for the free booze, a move that Michael Corner now knew as advantageous, if only merely to soothe the wounds of yet another Gryffindor win.
The bloody fucking shithole that was the trophy room—if only to exist for the sake of pompous bastards like Eddie Carmichael and flying jocks with more meat in their heads than sense—Michael noticed Potter's father among them—how had he ended up here? He hated the trophy room.
The only good thing he had ever remembered about it made it onto his snogging spots with Ginny—the antechamber adjoining the Great Hall, and the broom closet in the Entrance Hall, the antechamber next to classroom seven—he'd never known what class was next door—and somehow, the third floor was where they'd skip to next. The first floor was always overcrowded and McGonagall and Dumbledore haunted the second floor. On the fourth floor, they'd get into an alcove hidden by a mirror. They were cramped but happy, and close enough to the library to pretend that they'd been headed there all along. Once, earlier in the year, with Goldstein's password, they'd had a nice swimming party on the sixth floor in the prefects' bathroom. The seventh floor held infinite numbers of possibilities for them—the entrance to her tower, his head of house's office and classroom, and the Room of Requirement.
Michael staggered over to the crystal trophy case but his focus ended up on the large tome resting underneath a spotlight. "How bloody dramatic." He muttered, flipping through carelessly. There'd been a lot of Potters and Weasleys—the banes of his existence now—through the years. James Potter practically owned the trophy room—there were more for him than anybody else he could count. Not that he was doing so well with the counting about now. And somehow perfect Harry Potter would end up as Head Boy and win a Quidditch medal too. Michael turned the last page of the volume in disgust—Percy Weasley was near the bottom of it.
He took a nice long sip before returning to the trophy case. Ginny had been frightened senseless one night that they had come in here. She'd laid eyes upon a small plaque placed, "Ironically" near Harry and Ron's, for some tabloid-worthy heroics second year that Michael didn't remember. There'd been another one for the same name, but it had been the one near Harry and Ron's that had set her off. Tom Riddle. Merlin, Ginny had never wanted to come to the trophy room again, which was fine by him. What wasn't so fine was that Ginny hadn't been in the mood for anymore that evening.
Potter and Weasley had to have been, separately, the two most peevish and indirect annoyances in Michael's love life. What lot of girls didn't want to be on Potter's arm for Yule Ball the previous year? To make it worse, when Michael had scooped up the littlest Weasley, she had been reeling from the latest but probably most insignificant blow Potter's ignorance had dealt her. And Michael, at least in his own opinion, did not like picking up after anybody's scraps.
Weasley, on the other hand, was another entire inconvenience. Keeping Ginny's secret safe from the eyes of her watchful brothers was hard enough before the distribution of prefect's badges, which granted Weasley a pass virtually anywhere. Ginny had to come up with a visiting schedule—and they had, upon Weasley's appointment, stopped visiting the convenient seventh floor.
He hated this room and he most particularly hated those two awards. Special Services to the School? What the hell did it all mean? Why wouldn't those two Quidditch-loving blind Gryffindor bastards just keel over and die and let him have his peace?
Michael turned when the sniffling that he thought had only been ringing in his ears grew louder and when he turned, he found a rapidly undressing and thoroughly depressed Ravenclaw Seeker in his arms. The match couldn't have upset her that much, could it have? Then again, Chang was probably another victim of the Gryff-hearted lothario Potter.
He'd picked up scraps before…
Chang sank, her little toes barely able to take the stretch anymore and she grabbed for his Ogden's. "Greedy, greedy." Michael scolded, and Chang's eyes poured over the case Michael had been staring at, and to see her own mother's name on the Ravenclaw Quidditch medals plate made her burst into tears even more. Granted, the fact that her mother was the only Ravenclaw to receive a Quidditch medal might also have sent her crying—they weren't known for being particularly agile, the Ravenclaws.
Michael supposed that everybody had something in the trophy room to fear and resent, even if their families had nothing to do with it, like his.
What a night for Ogden's.
fin