That crackling sound you hear? That would be Hell freezing over. Yes, after an inexcusably long wait, it's a new chapter! I'm very sorry for the delay – I hope you'll forgive me. Basically, a bunch of other story ideas, computer trouble, and writer's block all distracted me in their turns. But I did my best to get past it all, although I can't help but feel that this chapter isn't the greatest. I hope you guys like it, though.

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling.

Certifiably Frightening
Lunatics, Hybrids, and Really Ugly Doilies

Zoe's abdomen was churning with foreboding as they neared the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Seemingly unwilling to dishearten Zoe any more than was absolutely necessary, Bella hadn't said anything else about this Umbridge woman on the way to the room. But the white-haired girl's mouth was tight and her feet were actually dragging in her reluctance to get to this class. It only served to make Zoe even more anxious. What was Umbridge like? A dragon of a woman, tall and fierce and who despised inserts like the students? The teachers (with the exception of Snape) had so far been civil to her, treating her like everyone else. What if Umbridge was horrible to inserts and the rest of the staff decided to follow her example? What would she do then?

Wait. Snape. Oh, God – he had given her detention with Lena. How could she have forgotten that? She was going to be forced to spend an evening in the company of a lunatic and a bat-human hybrid.

"Are you all right?" Bella asked her, looking concerned. "You've gone really pale."

"I just remembered…Lena and I have detention with Snape. When do I even have to go? He never told me."

Bella looked sympathetic, an expression she used so much around Zoe it was surprising her face didn't freeze that way.

"I'd forgotten that too. Don't worry – I'm sure it won't be that bad. If anything, Lena will provide some entertainment…if you don't respond to anything she says, that is. And he'll send you a note with the time of the detention."

"Oh. Okay."

She forced a smile to her face for Bella's sake, because the other girl still looked as if she'd rather face a rabid manticore than go to the upcoming class.

"There it is," Bella said, nodding towards a short line of students, all of whom seemed as unhappy to be there as Bella. As they approached the line, the door swung open, and Zoe gulped deeply. The way the students filed in wordlessly reminded her of Snape's class. Was Umbridge the female equivalent of Snape?

When she entered the room and saw Umbridge at last, she could have laughed hysterically at that last thought. If anything, this woman was the polar opposite of the Potions Master: short, plump, and with a face that reminded Zoe of a toad's. She wore a truly hideous pink cardigan over her robes, with a matching, equally hideous Alice band in her hair. Zoe could feel a smirk tugging at her lips, which she quickly disguised as a warm smile when Umbridge looked her way.

"Oh, a new student!" the professor said, a sweet smile plastering itself across her face, and Zoe was startled by how high-pitched and girlish the woman's voice was. It was the last sound she had expected to come out of Umbridge's mouth, right after a horse's neigh. She suppressed a wince as Umbridge tittered and looked her over quickly, taking in her long curls and strangely smooth skin, no doubt. Sure enough, Zoe caught a glimmer of contempt in the woman's eyes.

"Take your seats. Books out, wands away," Umbridge announced to the class in general, and Zoe grabbed a seat near the back, Bella sinking down into the chair next to her.

"Ugh," Zoe said softly as she and Bella bent to get their copies of Defensive Magical Theory out of their bags.

"I know," Bella whispered. "And that's not even the worst part – this class is even duller than Binn's."

Yesterday Zoe had spent the most boring hour of her life listening to the ghostly professor drone on about goblin riots. Could anything possibly be more uninteresting than that? She had nearly slipped into a coma! Bella must have noticed her skepticism, because she muttered, "You'll see," out of the corner of her mouth as Umbridge tapped the chalkboard at the front of the room with a ridiculously short wand. Instructions appeared on its surface – they were reading Chapter 6 today. Zoe turned to the appropriate page in her book, groaning inwardly at the tiny print. She looked ahead to see where the chapter ended, dismayed at its length. With a barely-concealed sigh, she turned back to the beginning of the chapter, rested her chin on one hand, and began to read.

Fifteen minutes into the lesson she was about to fall asleep. Not only was the print miniscule, but the author had the driest style imaginable. Zoe found herself reading sentences over and over again without taking in one word, so determined was her mind to think about something more exciting. Her eyes slid left to Bella, who was blinking rapidly in an attempt to stay awake, head drooping. The fuzzy silence in the classroom, broken only by the sound of pages turning (some with a deliberate force, maybe in hope of provoking Umbridge into saying something and breaking the monotony) was having a soporific effect on everyone. Two boys sitting at the table to Zoe's right even had their heads on their books, obviously taking advantage of the pillow-like pages. One of them was even snoring lightly, glasses askew.

Zoe caught sight of Ginny leaning back in her chair and twirling a quill between her fingers, staring at the ceiling. After a moment the redhead yawned, stretching like a cat, and reluctantly directed her attention at her book again.

If the room had been interesting in the slightest, Zoe might not have nodded off. But every surface that wasn't a desk was covered in the ugliest doilies she had ever seen her life. Vases of dried flowers sat upon these doilies, and floral patterns were everywhere available. It hurt Zoe's eyes to look at these for too long; they were of the most lurid quality she'd ever seen. In order to save her retinas from irreparable damage, Zoe had forced herself to look at the textbook, so falling asleep was really inevitable, something that should have been expected of everyone.

Apparently Umbridge thought otherwise, because a sharp rapping near her head caused Zoe's eyes to shoot open, only to find the stubby tip of Umbridge's wand hitting the desk inches from her nose. She sat up sharply, wiping the thin trail of drool that had been creeping down her face away, and looked sheepishly at Umbridge. There was no trace of that sickly-sweet smile on the woman's face now, but something closer to repulsion.

"Miss Walker, I regret to inform you that dropping into this castle in the middle of the term does not give you airs above everyone else. Falling asleep in the middle of class is inexcusable."

Zoe's eyes drifted pointedly at the two boys to her right, who were both snoring now, and loudly at that. Umbridge's remark stung – she wasn't putting on airs! If anything, she was doing all she could not to act that way, and she told Umbridge this, perhaps more sharply than was prudent. The professor's eyes bulged, her resemblance to a toad increasing tenfold.

"Five points from Gryffindor for an appalling display of insolence," Umbridge declared in that abhorrent, high-pitched voice that Zoe now despised above even Snape's sarcastic drawl. "Speak to me in that disrespectful tone again and you'll have earned a detention."

Unwilling to get two detentions in the same week, Zoe kept her mouth closed, although she glared heatedly at Umbridge's back when the woman turned away. It was a small comfort that no one was sneering or looking disgustedly at her for losing more points, but that was probably because a) they all hated Umbridge more than her, or b) they were too bored and tired to muster up the energy and not because they disliked her any less.

Zoe had never been more grateful to hear the bell ring, and practically dove out the door and into the corridor, striding away as quickly as she could towards the Charms classroom. Bella caught up with her halfway there and said, "She's got remarkable nerve – those other two boys were snoring loudly enough to rattle the windowpanes and she singled you out instead."

"Well, we all know why, don't we?" Zoe snapped as she stomped into the room, slamming her bag down on the table loudly enough to startle Professor Flitwick into falling off the stack of cushions behind his desk. He landed with a squeak, and Bella hurried over to help him up.

"Thank you, Miss Lyons," the professor said once he had climbed up onto the cushions again, straightening his hat.

"Sorry, Professor," Zoe muttered, embarrassed, as the rest of the students started to enter.

"No harm done," the tiny man said over the loud chatter, and set off a few small fireworks to bring some order back into the room. He proceeded to announce that they would be making goblets perform cartwheels.

"And it's quite difficult the first time around, as you'll be applying some of what you learned in Transfiguration to animate the goblets as well as using some complicated wand movements."

"Wonderful," Zoe moaned to herself, and pulled out her wand. At least she wouldn't be falling asleep again.

-

Bella had cause for excitement as she and Zoe headed towards the Great Hall for lunch: she had succeeded in making her goblet perform a clumsy cartwheel. It had taken four attempts. The first two times she had shakily said the incantation the goblet had only twitched, but the third time it had flipped upside-down, and by the fourth time she managed to make it right itself again.

"Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of this," she was saying to Zoe, who, although her goblet had only combusted, looked enthusiastic on Bella's behalf. The pale-haired insert appreciated this immensely: it would have taken all the joy out of the experience if Zoe had been sulky. Her new friend was, at least, mindful of her feelings, unlike most of the people Bella encountered in the real world.

"I bet you are," Zoe told her. "You did as well as anyone else."

It was, to some extent, true – Zoe wasn't the only one who had gotten extra homework as the result of some accident. None of the mishaps involving canon characters, though, had been as dramatic as Zoe's explosion.

"This exam might actually be easier for me," Bella thought aloud. She had taken three exams since arriving in the world of Harry Potter, and she had managed to fail all three of them spectacularly. Bella regretted bringing up exams when she caught sight of the expression on Zoe's face – the girl seemed to have forgotten about the possibility of being tested.

"And if I can do it," Bella said hurriedly, trying to erase the doom-and-gloom look on Zoe's face, "You'll be able to with no problem. It's already obvious you've got a better grip on things than me – remember the porcupine?"

Zoe's smile was small but sincere.

"Yeah," she said, her voice just the tiniest bit too bright. "And if I don't get the hang of it before exams, maybe I'll get some credit for providing entertainment. Assuming it's a practical exam."

Bella giggled, which seemed to lift Zoe's spirits. Bella glanced at her friend again to see a large, masculine hand stretch out towards her curtain of blonde hair.

"Uh, Zoe," she began nervously.

The hand tapped Zoe politely on the shoulder. Zoe turned to look at him, surprise evident in her face – canon characters hardly spoke to inserts unless they were making snide comments, and they never approached an obvious insert like Zoe or Bella. The white-haired girl kept her eyes on the floor, immediately too intimidated to look up at whoever it was.

"Professor Snape told me to give you this," said an older male voice – a familiar older male voice. Bella's eyes snapped up and focused on the boy. It was him – Roger Davies. Oh, my.

"Er, thanks," Zoe said, cautiously taking the scroll he was offering.

Roger was painfully good-looking, Bella thought absently. His hair was medium-length, dark and wavy, and his eyes were a penetrating blue to match his Quidditch robes – he played for Ravenclaw. The only thing that kept him from looking like an insert was the spot on the left side of his nose.

"No problem," Roger said, smiling crookedly (gorgeously, Bella corrected with an inward sigh of delight), and walked ahead of them into the Great Hall. Bella released the breath she had been holding. She had wanted his eyes to fall on her…and also hoped and prayed that they wouldn't. Love must make you contradict yourself.

Zoe was unrolling the scroll he had given her, and sighed heavily once she had scanned the one-line message scrawled on it.

"I have detention at eight o' clock tonight, right after dinner," Zoe informed her. "I bet he'll make me do something disgusting just so I throw up. And then he'll give me another detention for messing up his floor."

Bella dragged her eyes away from Roger, who was now taking a seat with some guy friends and – she realized with a pang of intense envy – Cho Chang. The pretty, Asian girl brushed a strand of shiny, dark hair behind one ear and laughed at something Roger said. Bella could practically feel herself turning green. …Metaphorically, of course.

"Oh…" she said, what Zoe had said just beginning to register. "Oh. No, no – I'm sure he would rather have a clean floor than the fleeting amusement caused by you vomiting."

"Maybe." Zoe shrugged. "I was half-kidding, anyway."

Bella let out a breath of laughter. She would not look over at the Ravenclaw table. She would not she would not she would not. Not when Zoe was so obviously depressed.

"Still," she said, keeping her tone light, "You might want to make sure you don't eat anything heavy at dinner. Just in case. How long will the detention last?"

"He didn't say," Zoe said with a frown as she scanned the parchment again. "Great. If he thinks he's keeping me in the dungeons disemboweling toads or whatever until midnight, he's got another think coming."

"That's the spirit," Bella said encouragingly. An explosion from further down the Gryffindor table caught both of their attention. A sandy-haired boy with a bemused expression and his wand raised blinked ash out of his eyes, his face covered with soot. Zoe and Bella turned around the other way at the sound of snickering. Draco Malfoy, followed by Pansy Parkinson, Crabbe, and Goyle, was smirking at the spectacle that was Seamus.

"I'd tell the idiot that there's an anti-alcohol charm in this place," Draco muttered to his followers just loudly enough for Zoe and Bella to hear, "…But that just never stops being funny."

-

At seven-forty in the evening, Zoe had abandoned an anxious-looking Bella in the Great Hall and was headed towards the dungeons, the knot in the pit of her stomach tightening with every step forward.

"You're sure you remember the directions?" Bella had asked her for the seventh time as she got up to go.

"Go left and down the main staircase three floors, then down the first hallway. Cough at the tapestry at the very end of the corridor and take the stairs that appear all the way to the bottom, and the classroom as at the end of the short passageway," Zoe had repeated dutifully. Why the founders had to make the castle so damn complicated was absolutely beyond Zoe.

After she had hacked sufficiently at the tapestry, it shimmered and disappeared, revealing a narrow stone staircase. A draft blew the strands of hair hanging in front of her face back. The temperature dropped with every step downwards. By the time she reached the second landing, her teeth were chattering and her skin was blue-tinged and covered with goosebumps. Drawing her robes more tightly around her shivering body, she started down the third flight.

The sound of somebody coughing for all they were worth echoed off the stone walls, and a minute later the sound of someone stomping down the stairs muttering to themselves reached Zoe's ears. The curly-haired insert suppressed a groan – that could only be Lena the Lunatic.

Suddenly the hypothermia that had been threatening to take hold of her and cause her to freeze on the steps decided to stalk someone else, and Zoe darted down the stairs with renewed energy. Anything to put more space between her and Lena. It was too bad that every centimeter she put between her and the unstable insert brought her closer to Snape and the Detention from Hell.

She hustled down the short corridor at the foot of the stairs and knocked hesitantly on the door. She could hear Lena's stomps behind her, and therefore darted into the room before the door had even finished swinging open with an ominous creak.

"Eager, are we, Miss Walker?" Snape said, stepping out of a shadowy corner and fixing her with a derisive sneer. Zoe had to wonder exactly how long he had been standing in that corner, waiting to step out dramatically. She had to force herself to keep a straight face at the thought.

With a bang, the door opened again and Lena stalked in, looking half-crazed and furious as usual. Zoe edged away from the glowering girl, but bumped into the corner of one of the desks, causing it to rattle loudly and nearly fall over. She steadied it, inwardly bracing herself for the slew of insults sure to come her way from professor and peer. She wasn't disappointed.

"Do attempt to put on at least a semblance of coordination," the Potions Master snapped, although the effect of his words was undermined by Lena bellowing, "Clumsy Mudblood filth, can't you go five minutes without nearly destroying everything in sight?"

"Sorry, sir. Shut up, Morgan," Zoe said, glaring heatedly at Lena.

"That will do," Snape drawled, holding up a hand lazily to cut off Lena, who had opened her mouth with an angry flash in her eyes, no doubt prepared to scream the name of her character at the top of her lungs. Zoe smirked at her behind the professor's back as he whipped around – robes sweeping dramatically behind him – and strode towards the front of the room. Lena snarled and drew a line furiously across her throat.

"The two of you," Snape barked from the front of the classroom, "Will be preparing ingredients for a No-Dreams Sleeping Potion. You will do your jobs to perfection or suffer further loss of points and another detention. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," both of the girls muttered.

"Then begin," he snapped, waving his wand at the supply cabinets, the doors of which sprung open. "Follow the directions in the book on my desk. I will return momentarily."

With that, he strode out of the room. Zoe turned to Lena.

"Why don't I read off the supplies we'll need, and you get them out of the cabinet?"

"You dare speak to me as if I am your slave, swine?"

Fed up, Zoe drew her wand and jabbed it threateningly at Lena.

"You'd better let up on the insults – I might not be able to make you turn a cartwheel with this charm, but I can make you explode," Zoe growled, and was granted the satisfaction of seeing Lena pale slightly.

"Fine," the dark-haired girl snapped. "But I'll be the one reading off the list of supplies."

"All right," Zoe said, stepping around her and heading towards the cabinets. "You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between lacewing wings and lionfish quills anyway."

By the time Snape returned, Lena had attempted to jinx Zoe from behind four times. The first three times nothing happened except for a sound like a balloon being deflated or Peeves blowing a particularly violent raspberry, but the fourth time Lena had very nearly succeeded in hitting Zoe with a Stinging Hex. A spot on the wall a centimeter above where Zoe's head had been had a small scorch mark on it as proof. Zoe in her turn had chucked a plastic bottle of disgusting, slimy green worms at Lena's head. The insert had ducked, and the bottle had bounced harmlessly away.

When Snape stepped into the room, however, the two of them were the picture of cooperation, with Zoe peaceably slicing up a root, imagining Lena's head in place of it, and Lena quietly grinding the shell of a scarab beetle to dust with a mortar and pestle, no doubt with similar mental imagery. Snape observed their progress and sniffed in a derisive manner, but didn't comment. Zoe assumed that meant they were performing satisfactorily.

Nine o' clock came and went. Zoe abandoned her carefully sliced root and began draining the juice out of the seeds in a black, twisted pod. Lena began working on another ingredient as well. If not for Snape's presence a few feet away, the two of them would no doubt had been criticizing the other's work mercilessly. As it was, the two worked together in hostile silence.

A few minutes after ten o' clock, Zoe fixed a stopper in the bottle of armadillo bile she had carefully measured out from a larger jug. The bottle was immediately snatched from her grip by Snape, who for two hours hadn't commented except to sneer at the meager amount of juice Zoe had produced from her seeds and bark at Lena, who had nearly dropped the jug of armadillo bile when she was getting it out of the cabinet.

"Clear up your mess," Snape said, setting the bottle of yellow liquid on his desk, "And then you're both free to go."

The two complied. Once out of the room, Zoe loitered at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Lena to get farther ahead. She was relieved that the detention hadn't been as bad as she had expected – at least the presence of Snape, as unpleasant as it was, had prevented Lena from being as irritating as she was possible of being.

Zoe started up the stairs, Lena's footsteps having faded. She retraced her route, and managed to get up to the Entrance Hall without getting lost. She checked her watch. Since it wasn't midnight, as she had suspected it might be by the time Snape released her, she might start that Herbology essay. Lord knew she needed to do as well as she possibly could on the homework to make up for the horrible exam grades she was likely to get.

She had just started for the main staircase when a low rumble reverberated through the area. It seemed to have no source, and did not die away. Rather, it grew in strength. Just when it reached the point where Zoe had to clap her hands over her ears, unable to stand the volume, a bright flash of light momentarily blinded her. It was accompanied by a loud, long yell of fear. The light died away suddenly, as did the rumbling sound. Zoe blinked, trying to recover her vision. A loud, painful-sounding crash and the gasping of someone trying to recover their breath made her redouble her efforts.

A moment later she could make out a dark blotch on the floor across the hall. Zoe abandoned the staircase and hurried towards it, her vision returning to her more quickly now, the spots before her eyes fading. It was now clear that the splotch was a person, a person with their back to her and who was groaning in pain.

"Are you okay?" Zoe asked in concern, and received a moan in response.

"Guess not," she muttered, and placed a hand on his – for the person was boy, she had discovered: a teenage boy in jeans, ratty trainers, and with brown hair that brushed the collar of his black T-shirt – shoulder so she could turn him over.

"Here, I'm going to roll you onto your back," she said, and pulled his body towards her. He was breathing a bit more easily now, and focused on her face. He brushed his hair away from his face, eyes locking on hers, and she gasped aloud. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, but the eyes behind them were beautifully shaped, honey-colored, and intense. Even after his fall his hair hung perfectly, the strands in front swinging back from where he had pushed them away to hang in front of those amazing eyes in a very becoming way. His nose was perfectly shaped, as was his face…and his mouth. Zoe dragged her eyes away from that particular feature and met his eyes again.

"Who…who are you?" she asked.

The boy adjusted his glasses, which had been hanging somewhat crookedly due to his fall, and answered, "Remus Lupin."

-

a/n: Hopefully that will stir things up. I can't believe I had the audacity to end this chapter with a cliffhanger after I made you guys wait so long. But it just seemed like a good spot to stop. Maybe you'll be able to guess what the (slightly, er, modified) teenage version of Remus Lupin is doing falling from the sky? (Part of the reason would be he's a favorite character of mine, of course…I mean…oh, look: a dust bunny.)

If you can bring yourself to do so after such a horrible delay, review please! Constructive criticism is welcome, as always.