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#7 – superstar

Fateful Rendez-vous

- in which we learn that taking romantic advice from Millicent Bullstrode is not always a good idea -

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Our story takes place on an ordinary night, a perfectly ordinary Thursday night at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Had you been walking around the castle just before midnight on this particular night, you might have noticed two figures sneaking around as quietly as possible, stopping now and then to check they weren't being followed or that there was no one around before finally entering a dark Astronomy Tower.

Hogwarts Castle was a place where it was practically impossible to get any time to yourself, especially if what you wanted to do with this time was meet your boy- or girlfriend for some undisturbed snogging. The rest of the students, the teachers, the ghosts and the portraits, a multitude of house-elfs and of course the student-hating caretaker and the inimitable Peeves saw to this. Any meeting with your object of affection would have to be carefully planned to avoid these obstacles.

The two figures mentioned earlier, Ron Weasley and Pansy Parkinson, had decided on attempting such a meeting tonight. Millicent Bullstrode had informed Pansy that the Astronomy Tower was the perfect place for a secret rendez-vous of this kind, and despite being rather disturbed by the thought of how Millicent Bullstrode would know anything about that, Ron had agreed.

After the initial whispers of "Ron?", "Pansy?", "is that you?", "who else would it be, you idiot?", which got the greetings out of the way, our heroes got around to the important part of the meeting – snogging. A task they undertook with much enthusiasm.

So much enthusiasm, in fact, that they rather forgot to pay attention to anything else and were rather surprised on one of the occasions when they pulled apart for some air to find that the light was now on in the corridor they were standing in. Even more surprising were the applause that broke out.

A group of third-year Hufflepuffs had just walked out of the Astronomy classroom, and had all stopped in the hallway to look at the two of them. Some of them were sporting worryingly manic grins that said as plain as anything, "just wait until we tell the rest of the school about this". Other, more shy ones, were blushing rather profusely.

Ron and Pansy would probably have blushed just as profusely had they not felt all their blood drain away from their faces by the terrifying sight next to the students. The look on professor Sinistra's face was enough to make the bravest Gryffindor quiver.

"Children. Get back to your dormitories right now," she hissed, her eyes never leaving Ron and Pansy.

The young witches and wizards filed away, some of them still blushing, others giggling silently and one of the boys giving a thumbs up and actually winking at Ron as he left.

Once the students had all left, professor Sinistra slowly approached Ron and Pansy, her eyes looking like they could freeze blood. Ron and Pansy both gulped. Pansy frantically tried to straighten out her uniform. Ron shuffled his feet and nervously ran his fingers through his hair.

In the end, they got away with a very long lecture and two weeks of detention.

"And there's probably no way they'd let us serve those together, either," Ron commented glumly as they left in different directions.