Disclaimer: I think you know it.

And yes, I'm serious. If no one R/Rs within the next week or so, I will stop the fic. No joke. :Sigh:

Chapter Five

Detention with Sai

Evening had swept over the grounds and soon Harry, Ron, and Hermione headed out of the Great Hall after a long, satisfying dinner to serve their ever awaiting detention. Snape had told them to meet in his office at eight o'clock sharp.

"I still can't believe Sai stood up for herself against Snape like that!" Ron was still going at it.

"Oh, Ron, all she does is end up getting herself in trouble, don't you see? What she did was incredibly rash!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do, Hermione? Let all the professors and bullies walk all over us?"

"Well, no…it's good to fight for yourself, I suppose…but when it comes to Professor Snape—that's a different story—"

"Hold on," Harry cut in.

They had almost reached Snape's office but stopped a couple yards from the open door. Snape's voice was heard shouting at someone.

"YOU WILL DO IT! THAT IS AN ORDER! I AM YOUR TEACHER, YOU ARE MY PUPIL, AND THIS IS YOUR PUNISHMENT! I DON'T CARE WHO YOUR FATHER IS; YOU—WILL—NOT—DISRESPECT—OR—HUMILIATE—ME—AGAIN! NOW DO IT!"

Sai's composed voice answered.

"But if I did then that would mean I was disrespecting you, but I wasn't. I was only being reasonable. So in other words, if I did it then that would be ly—"

"SILENCE! DO IT, NOW!"

"I won't lie."

Snape was so frustrated, he stormed out of the room just to get away from the girl for at least one full second, only to find Harry, Ron, and Hermione standing in the corridor a few feet away.

"Potter!" he snapped. "Granger! Weasley! How much did you hear? I want the truth!" he boomed angrily.

"N-nothing, sir," Harry fibbed.

Ron nodded vigorously, adding, "We only just got here, Professor."

He eyed them suspiciously before stepping aside to make room for them to walk through the doorway.

"Get inside!" he ordered.

As they walked in, Hermione shot Harry an I-told-you-so look, which he ignored. Inside Snape's office was a five by five-foot chalkboard standing by his desk. Sai was sitting solemnly next to it.

"Sit down!"

Harry and the others took their seats in three empty chairs in front of Snape's desk. Snape stood before them with livid, glittering eyes.

"Miss Ildred here—" he said her name with a tone of utter disgust "—refuses to serve her detention the proper way. Perhaps if you three showed her how it is done…" He waved his wand and three more chalkboards appeared out of thin air beside the first one. "You will scribe 'I will not be late to class' exactly two hundred and fifty times in your neatest script possible. After that, I will have Mr. Filch, the caretaker, arrive to escort you to the first floor corridor to clean up a mess that a few 'humorous' third years thought would be amusing to provide for us. Do I make myself clear?"

Ron looked horrified.

"But that'll take hours! It'll be at least three in the morning before we're thr—!"

"I said," Snape cut him off, "do I make myself clear?"

Ron closed his gaping mouth and they nodded. Though he looked calm on the outside, Harry was fuming on the inside.

"Get to work."

The three rose from their chairs and each grabbed their piece of chalk, scrawling on the chalkboards straight away.

Snape leaned in toward Sai, sneering as he said, "You see? It's not that hard. Take it from Potter; he is somewhat of an expert when it comes to detention."

Harry felt his anger rising. He wished he could hex Snape.

"Yes, except," Sai began, looking straight into Snape's cold, tunnel-like eyes, "you expect me to lie."

Snape suddenly brought his face dangerously close to Sai's—their noses almost touched. Harry strained his ears over the sound of chalk hitting the boards so as to hear every whispered word.

"I swear, Miss Ildred—" he spat her name "—if you put one toe out of line again, I will have you thrown out of here, whether your father likes it or not. No matter what Dumbledore says, I refuse to accept you."

"You can't do that…." Sai spoke angrily, but with a bit of shock—or was that fear?—in her voice.

"Oh, I will, believe me…."

"M-my father…if he found out…he'd kill me…."

"Well then, Miss Ildred…then you better get to your detention."

Snape gave one last horrible sneer before leaving the classroom, saying, "If all of your detentions aren't fulfilled when I return, I will see to it that you be severely punished!" And he slammed the door behind him.

"Bloody git," Ron muttered bitterly at the door through which Snape had exited. Harry only hoped Snape wasn't standing right outside it listening to see if they were following his orders.

He was scratching words on his chalkboard, all the while noticing that Sai hadn't touched her piece of chalk. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her sit silently in her chair, staring into space. She appeared slightly frightened, and suddenly Harry felt guilt sweep over him and he wished he had never decided to eavesdrop on Sai's personal affairs. There was just something about her, though, that made him want to find out more about her; she was so mysterious. Something about her seemed so strange, and dark; she held secrets….

Harry couldn't help but feel there was much more to Sai than she let show.

"Hey," he said, bringing Sai back out of her thoughts, startling her. "You okay?"

"Oh. Yeah. I'm fine," she said bluntly, grabbing her chalk and immediately writing away in a hasty manner.

"Are you sure?"

"I said I'm fine, Potter."

He was about to ask her again if she was all right when Hermione shot him a look and mouthed, Don't, Harry.

They continued serving their detention without another word.

Three hours and twenty minutes later, the four of them were greeted by a very pleased-looking Mr. Filch, who led them traipsing upstairs from the dungeons to the first floor, their hands cramped and arms tired from the nonstop writing on the chalkboards. Filch brought them to the landing, where they met the awful sight of that night's pudding smeared all along the corridor all over the floor (some splattered on the walls) with streaks running through it as if people had been sliding along it on their stomachs. The pudding was crusty in many areas from it being there for so many hours. This would make it harder to get off the stone and marble.

Filch stopped them, happy to see their looks of disbelief and horror.

"You'll be cleaning all of this up tonight—oh! Excuse me, I mean this morning," he sneered. "No wands!" And he handed the group four buckets filled with soapy water and four large cloths that looked as if they hadn't been washed for weeks.

Grimacing, they reluctantly took them.

"If I hear so much as a wand swish, I'll have you four cleaning in the trophy room for a month!" he shouted. And he stormed off down the hallway.

Ron whimpered. Harry distinctly remembered Ron having a very bad experience with the trophy room, as he was forced to clean every trophy—some being cleaned at least five times before Filch was satisfied—in detention during their second year.

Hermione rolled up her sleeves.

"Well," she said, "let's get to it." She kneeled down and began scrubbing away.

"Always right to it, eh, Hermione?" said Ron. Harry laughed.

"Don't you want to get this done as soon as possible?" said Hermione pointedly.

"Er, yeah," said Ron, and he immediately followed Hermione's lead, beginning to clean the pudding off one of the stone walls. "You two joining us?" he asked, pointing a sudsy cloth at Harry and Sai.

Harry nodded and went to join the others. He began to work on the opposite wall. Sai hesitated, eyeing the pudding mess with loathing.

"It's not fair," she murmured softly before tying her hair up into a ponytail and bending on her knees to work on the floor.

Harry heard her mutter "It's never fair" under her breath as he attempted to scrub at a particularly stubborn glob of dried pudding.

Just then a loud cackling resounded through the corridor, startling them. Hermione jumped.

"What's this, what's this? Ickle Potty wee Potter and his wittle fwends have detention, I see," said an obnoxious voice from above them. They all looked up to see Peeves the Poltergeist hovering over their heads, grinning deviously.

"Peeves," said Harry infuriatingly, "go away." He was not in the mood for the troublemaker's antics.

"Yeah, we've got enough to deal with as it is," said Ron in the same tone.

"Ooo, temper, temper. Feisty wittle kiddies aren't we? I wonder what would happen if I added some toppings?"

"No, Peeves!" Hermione shrieked. "Filch will enforce our punishment! Please don't!"

"Don't do it, Peeves!" yelled Harry. Peeves burst into laughter. This made Harry furious.

"Indeed, indeed I shall!"

"Peeves! Don't!"

But Peeves didn't listen; he began blowing up like a balloon. The group was terrified of what would happen when he burst. When he looked like he couldn't inflate any more than he had, they were expecting to hear a horrible bang and have all sorts of ghastly things to come bursting out of him, but instead he exploded with a very loud noise—one that was quite rude indeed, shaking the walls of the corridor.

"PEEVES!" yelled an enraged Filch at the end of the hallway. "I'LL HAVE YOU!"

Peeves was cackling maniacally, bouncing off the walls. He charged at Harry, pulled out his wand from his back pocket, and cleared all the pudding away with a flick of it.

"PEEVES, YOU FOOL!" thundered Filch.

"Gahahahahaha!" guffawed Peeves, who threw Harry's wand back into his face before zooming down the hall, knocking over suits of armor with loud clangs.

"PEEEEEVES!" Filch ran after Peeves in a fury. "THE BLOODY BARON WILL HEAR ABOUT THIS!"

Once they were out of sight, and the ruckus had faded, Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at each other, shocked. Sai stared down the hallway.

"Did…did Peeves just save us?" asked Ron, eyes wide. "No way…."

"I…I don't think he meant to," said Harry. "He just wants to tick Filch off." Though he was still unsure whether or not to believe what had happened.

Hermione nodded.

"So what…what do we do now?" Ron said, observing the now sparkling clean hallway, cleared of all traces of pudding. "I mean, there's nothing to do now. Can we just go?"

"No, I don't—" Hermione started, but Harry cut her off.

"Yes, we can. We didn't do anything wrong, it was all Peeves's doing. And I'm sure Filch is angrier with him than with us."

Ron seemed to agree.

"All right then. Let's go, I'm exhausted," he said, looking at his watch. "It's one in the morning."

Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but it seemed she had a last minute change of mind as she gave a large yawn instead.

"Well, I guess we could go then," she said while trying to suppress another yawn.

They left the buckets and cloths sitting side-by-side against a wall and began walking off toward Gryffindor Tower. At the end of the hall, Harry realized Sai wasn't walking with them. He stopped and turned around to see her still standing beside the buckets, staring off into space.

"You coming?" he shouted back at her, since the hallway was quite long.

She snapped out of her trance and looked at him angrily.

"Yeah, I'm coming," she said in an exasperated voice, shuffling after them. They all walked to the tower sleepily, Sai leaving a large gap between her and them the entire way, before they all plopped gratefully on their own beds, falling into a very looked-forward-to sleep.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore was bidding good night to a silvery ghost in his office.

"Thank you, Bloody Baron."

"You're welcome, Headmaster, sir."

Dumbledore smiled, a twinkle in his eye.

Yeah, I think this chapter sucks. It's mostly the first half that's important, the whole Peeves thing was just to fill it up and end the chapter. Plus, I was in a hurry to get it done because I had serious writer's block at the second half and just wanted to get it over with. Wow, I'm just a bad author. Oh well. But I promise you, everything you've read so far is important and leads to more exciting, more important things. You'll see…. And yes, Dumbledore was behind the whole Peeves thing. He had the Bloody Baron tell Peeves to wreck havoc for Filch so that the group would get off the hook. Yeup.

Sora