"Oy! Harry! Toss me a pudding, will you?" Ronald Weasley roared across my dining room table, his mouth already full of bread. Harry Potter, resident celebrity and Gryffindor seeker four years running now, made it clear at that precise moment that he was much better at catching than throwing.
A Yorkshire pudding landed right in my goblet, splashing my face with bits of wine. Of course, at that time, I made no reaction. I merely wiped my face with my napkin, which I then set in my lap, and went about my business of eating in silence.
"Are you okay, Professor?" Hermione Granger asked timidly. "You look so…so…"
Blank? I wondered. How could I not be? I'd been living like this for weeks.
Draco Malfoy traipsed in at that moment, a smirk on his face. "Sorry I'm late, Severus. I had to go shopping. My robes were tapering off at the ends. I was going to leave it until tomorrow, but then I realized that I looked a bit too much like Weasley and-" he stopped abruptly, surveying the table. "Oh honestly, we're not having Shepherd's Pie again, are we? I thought we'd moved on from this atrocious slop and onto a more dignified spread."
"…onto a more dignified spread," Ronald mocked, his voice high pitched and taunting. "Bloody snoot."
"Highbrow," Draco corrected him. "Much better than being depraved and redheaded if you ask me. Although I must say, Weasley, those freckles go outstandingly well with your poverty."
"Shut it, Malfoy," Harry growled. Potter, I corrected myself. Not Harry. Not Ronald. Potter and Weasley. I repeated their last names over and over again in my head as the blasted nightly routine went on without a hitch: the food fight. I excused myself quietly and slithered off to my study, shutting and locking the door behind me. It had been a long month. I would have never thought at the end of term that I would be burdened with four dunderheads and forced to live my summer hearing their boisterous voices arguing, laughing, and scheming day in and day out, through the night till daybreak. It was like they never slept!
I pulled out my journal from my desk drawer and flipped to the first blank page. I began to scribble down the events of the day, thinking all the while of the other full pages preceding this one – the events that led up to this moment. The hindrance of my summer plans. The four misfortunes turning my kitchen into a ruin at that very moment. The cause of it all: Dumbledore.
Author's Confessions:
Yeah, I know. Horribly written.
And to be honest, I have no idea how it happened. We'll call this a WORK IN PROGRESS.
Thanks for readin'.