AN: Aah, summer is so wonderful. Unless you're Harry, then it rather sucks. But I am not, so there. And HERE is chapter number three in which Mister Malfoy butts heads with Seraphim. Enjoy.
Chapter 3: Insuffrabilities
Sometime in the late afternoon, after performing a simple warming charm, the sixth-year Care of Magical Creatures class made their way to the lake. Hagrid was going to teach them how to take care of the giant squid, something they'd been buzzing with excitement about for the past few weeks.
They would be massaging the tentacles and checking to make sure the squid was in good health. As the squid was slightly dangerous, Hagrid announced that they would be working in assigned pairs.
Harry and Ron were working on one tentacle while Seraphim and Hermione were checking the squid's beak with Hagrid's supervision. Poor Neville had been stuck with Malfoy.
"All righ' everyone?" Hagrid called, as they were about to begin.
A chorus of affirmatives rang in the chilly autumn air.
"Okay then. Firs' yeh've got to get a feel for 'im. Got ter make sure that he knows yer friendly." Hagrid rubbed just over the beak and the squid gave a rumble almost like a cat's purring. "Jus' like that."
The whole class tentatively reached out their hands to stroke the squid until they all felt as if they were in a muggle massage chair.
"Now, have yeh all got yer instructions?"
Another chorus of yeses.
"All righ', begin," Hagrid busied himself with teaching Seraphim and Hermione how to clean the beak while everyone else worked on various other parts of the squid.
Soon Hagrid had waded out to the shore and was overseeing the entire class' progress with a smile on his face. The squid was purring so loud he'd be afraid for the castle's foundations if they weren't protected by magic.
Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil were assigned to help Seraphim and Hermione feed the squid. The four of them had a hard time figuring out what the squid ate since it usually fed on whatever was in the lake.
"Um, why don't we try fish?" asked Hermione, it seemed the most logical thing to do.
They tried fish. The squid gave a short rumble and promptly spat out the sea bass Hermione had thrown in its mouth.
"Right then," Lavender sighed. "Maybe it's a vegetarian."
They tried various vegetables and some forms of seaweed.
"Maybe we should ask Hagrid what it eats," Parvati suggested when she got a face full of avocado.
"Seraphim, will you go over to Hagrid and ask what it eats?" asked Hermione. "I mean, since you don't technically get graded for this class you won't get marked down for leaving the station."
Seraphim nodded and waded out to where Hagrid was trying to get Crabbe and Goyle to stop squeezing the squid so tightly as it was about to slap them.
"Hagrid, what does the squid eat?" she asked just as Hagrid got Goyle to let go of the tentacle.
"Eh? Uh, I think it eats them squiggly water lizards that live 'round the bottom o' the lake," he said offhandedly.
Seraphim blinked. "Do you happen to have any? We're assigned to feeding it."
"Ah, yeah. I've got some in me cabin. Can yeh watch these two an' make sure they don't kill themselves?"
"Sure, no problem." Seraphim smiled wryly as Hagrid ambled off. Then she turned to Crabbe and Goyle.
Just then there was a loud splash from the other side of the squid. Neville had just fallen off the platform he and Malfoy had been working on into the middle of the lake. And Malfoy looked as if he wasn't going to do anything about it.
"H-help!" sputtered Neville. "I can't swim well!" He floundered about, waving his arms.
Hearing the commotion, Harry and Ron quickly looked around and, being the closest pair, which was still a fair distance, dropped their heavy robes and dove in after Neville.
Hermione was screeching at Malfoy to get his bloody ass in the water but the Slytherin pointedly refused.
"He's fine, look, he's almost to the buoy," the blonde retorted when called a word that had never before been heard from Hermione's lips.
"Malfoy, get in there right now!" Seraphim ordered sternly. Hagrid was still a ways off with the water lizards and hadn't seen the splashing.
"Make me."
Just as Harry and Ron reached Neville and proceeded to help him to the buoy, Seraphim sent a hex straight at Malfoy. He was sprouting donkey ears when the three Gryffindors made it to safety.
Malfoy was livid. "How dare you!" he reached for his wand just as Hagrid came up behind Seraphim with the squid's food.
"What's goin' on here?" he asked upon seeing a dripping wet Harry, Ron, and Neville and the ass' ears on an enraged Slytherin.
"She…she…" sputtered Malfoy while pointing at Seraphim.
Harry and Ron burst out laughing. Eventually Neville cracked a small smile.
"Sorry Hagrid. But Malfoy here was being a moron," Seraphim stated plainly.
"What'd he do?"
"Well, Neville fell in the lake and he just stood there so Harry and Ron had to go save him and he was just being useless so I decided to punish him," Seraphim explained.
"Now, now. Don't go doin' that," Hagrid reprimanded. "Set 'im right. An' don't do it again."
Sighing irritably, Seraphim fixed the hex. For the rest of the lesson, they shot evil glares at each other.
The next day, in Magic Theory, Malfoy was out for revenge.
Seraphim was explaining the finer points of how wandless magic helped when one was out in the muggle world while Malfoy was staring pointedly at her inkwell. Concentrating hard, he muttered a few choice words and watched gleefully as the tiny bottle shattered.
Seraphim stopped abruptly. She'd worn her favorite muggle clothing, blue jeans, a baby pink camisole, and an oversized white zip-up jacket, for the lesson and it was covered in black ink droplets.
Taking a deep breath, closing her eyes, and counting to ten, Seraphim stared at the class. After picking a spot on the wall to glare at, she performed a mess-removing charm on her clothes, obviously annoyed.
For the second part of the lesson, the class would be practicing magnifying charms. Each was given a magically shrunken textbook page; the first student to be able to read theirs legibly would receive a prize.
The whole class was soon busy with their tiny pieces of textbook. Seraphim had not said what the prize was, but as we always want what we can't have, the students were eager to get their hands on it.
Malfoy, of course, was not listening. He was busy making tiny balls of parchment and hiding the little arsenal behind his textbooks.
"You may begin," Seraphim waved off-handedly and started back toward her desk when something small and round hit her.
Whirling around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary and continued to her desk.
Five seconds later, another parchment-ball hit her nose. This time, she glared and stood up. She walked around the classroom, half checking the progress of her students and half trying to figure out just who the hell was sending the equivalent of spitballs at her.
Malfoy, of course, hid the little devils in the sleeve of his robe and pretended to be bent over his tiny piece of parchment trying to figure out how to make it grow without using his wand. Seraphim lingered a bit longer behind him, but eventually moved on.
After about ten more of the annoying little beasts, she got up and rummaged around at the bookshelf near her desk. Finding a book containing locator spells, she lay out a sheet of parchment, on which a map of the classroom was drawn, and placed one of the little cannon balls in the middle, muttering to herself. When the next projectile missile hit her, the one on the parchment zoomed to a seat near the back of the room.
"Malfoy," she whispered to herself, irritated.
The little balls from hell, she figured, came pelting at her once every minute and a half or so. After being hit square in the forehead, she counted to ninety and looked up just in time to see Malfoy readying another ball from hell and aiming in her direction.
Upon being caught in the act, he froze. Stalking over to the Slytherin, Seraphim glared her trademark glare. "Mister Malfoy," she began.
"Yes?" he drawled.
"Would you care to explain why you are flicking tiny balls of parchment at me when you are supposed to be magnifying this textbook page?" she pointed to the page in question which was still a tiny little unreadable square.
"Not particularly," he answered.
Seraphim's cheeks gained a little more color. "Will you kindly stop and return to your assignment?" she asked in a sickly sweet, I'll-kill-you-if-you-don't-listen voice.
After a small internal debate, Malfoy smirked. "I don't really feel up to it."
Seraphim nearly hexed him again. "Mister Malfoy, shall I send you to Professor McGonagall for some proper detention?" she hissed loudly. By then the whole class had left their textbook pages and were watching intently.
"A galleon says she jinxes him before kicking him out of class," Ron whispered to Harry.
"That's no fun, you'll win," Harry argued.
"Will you both shut up?" Hermione interjected.
"I'd rather you didn't," Malfoy replied, looking gleefully bored.
"I'd rather you did what you were supposed to be doing Mister Malfoy," Seraphim pulled a spare chair and sat so she was eye level with him. "I'd also rather if you didn't try to make things harder for yourself being as I am allowed to give marks for this class even if I don't give non-academic points or detentions. And for not doing your assignment, I am allowed to give you a zero for the day."
Malfoy's upper lip twitched. He thought about flicking his last parchment-ball at her but decided against it.
"Please perform the magnification charm without your wand," she requested impatiently, hands on her hips.
The class watched, fascinated, as the two tried their hardest not to curse each other.
After another small internal debate, Malfoy muttered the incantation and the piece of parchment doubled in size. "Are you happy now?" he asked smugly.
"Can you read it?" she retorted hotly.
Malfoy shook his head sulkily.
"Well, keep working on it then," she snapped, shrinking the page again. "And ten points from Slytherin for slacking off and not doing your assignment," she added as an afterthought.
Malfoy looked simply livid. "But I magnified it!" he exclaimed.
"Not to my specifications, you didn't," Seraphim retorted.
"But I-"
"Shut your mouth and finish the assignment before I take you to Professor McGonagall for insubordination."
They both looked about ready to commit homicide. Ron had to stifle a loud guffaw, pretending to have sneezed.
Seraphim stalked back to her desk and sat, muttering to herself. The words 'stupid brat' and 'insufferable imbecile' popped up often along with some choice swear words that made everyone raise an eyebrow.
Later that evening, Seraphim was wandering the grounds of the castle and came upon a very beautifully decorated room; the plaque over the doorway read Noiemrae, what she knew to be the Glammish word for 'harmony'. Inside the room were many different musical instruments. There was a baby grand piano, beautifully crafted silver flutes, a lovely oboe, and a Stradivarius-style violin sitting on a stand near a bookshelf alongside a gleaming alto saxophone. On a desk nearby rested an exquisitely designed piccolo trumpet and a gorgeous e flat clarinet.
"Wow," she breathed, reaching for the piccolo. Then she heard footsteps in the hall. Quickly excusing herself from the instrument room, she hid behind a curtain to see who was approaching.
"No way," she gasped. Draco Malfoy had just walked into the room with all of those meticulously kept instruments. Of course she knew that the childhood of a proper pureblood included many extracurricular activities, but Malfoy and music?
Soon the strains of the first movement of Vivaldi's 'Spring' from 'The Four Seasons' drifted through the half-open door.
Malfoy, the current bane of her existence, was playing Vivaldi's 'Spring.' Seraphim raised her eyebrows high. He was not playing. It was impossible. It was music; it was color and life. The melody…it wasn't possible for that boy to be playing that music that way. It just wasn't natural.
Seraphim walked back to the Gryffindor common room in a daze; the strains of 'Spring' haunting her footsteps.
Hooray, that is the end of chapter three. Please leave a review for the poor teenager on summer break who is bored out of her mind because she did not sign up for summer school and has no job. Please? Or some criticism. That always works.
Ja mata!