Slugs
Ron once said to Harry that he had better hope that Colin doesn't meet Ginny, or they would start a Harry Potter fan club. Unfortunately, reality and ideal always go against each other.
Whenever Harry saw Lockhart in the hallway, he would hurriedly avoid. But in Colin's case, it was much harder because Ginny knew Ron's schedules very clearly, and Harry was about the same as Ron.
On a Saturday morning, Ginny and Colin came to the Quidditch Stadium and heard that there would be a Quidditch Practice.
Ginny saw Luna sitting in the stands and waving at her. She ran towards Luna. Before she could speak, Luna said, "I'm Luna Lovegood. I'm in Ravenclaw. I sat in the back of the train and talked with you and Neville, you still remember me?"
"Yes, yes… " Ginny felt that this was Luna's revenge for forgetting her name last time.
"The Misfortune Cloud above your head has dissipated a bit. It seems that you are in a good mood recently… "
Is the Misfortune Cloud always there? Ginny started to sweat. She decided to keep the topic away from Misfortune Cloud. "Luna, what are you doing here early in the morning?"
"Watching the Practice."
"Ravenclaws are not practicing today."
"I'm watching Gryffindor's practice. That," Luna pointed at Colin's camera, "do you mind if I take a look?"
The Gryffindor team members still haven't shown up. The three of them were boringly playing with the camera, rock paper scissors, and word chain to pass time. Ginny was a bit impatient and unconsciously started tapping rhythms with her fingers on the bench.
"You tapped 'Go Gryffindor'." Luna looked at Ginny's hand and said.
"What?" Ginny was taken aback by Luna.
"You tapped a sentence out on the bench, you tapped out 'Go Gryffindor'."
"You know this?" Ginny almost thought Luna was Ghogho.
"Many of us, Muggles I mean, know this. It's called Morse Code." Colin seemed to know it as well.
"Ah yes, something code… "
The discussion of whatever code did not continue. The Gryffindor team appeared, and Ron and Hermione were there too. Colin raised the camera and pressed the shutter rapidly. In the silent court, the sound was particularly loud.
"Look this way, Harry! This Way!" Colin cried shrilly.
The members of the Gryffindor team stopped as if they were discussing something, which seemed unpleasant.
"Colin, stop yelling, they don't look very happy."
"I don't think it's because of Colin," Luna slowly raised her hand, "Look over there."
Several boys in green jerseys and broomsticks walked into the court, including Malfoy. It seemed like they had a conflict about the venue.
The red and green teams lined up on both sides and started the traditional part of starting a battle-trash-talking.
"Let's go over, I can't hear what they're saying," Colin said.
"What else? It's nothing more than 'We booked the court first!' 'Nonsense, we booked it first!' 'Are these actually Cleansweeps? Take those to sweep the floor' 'So what? what's wrong with these broomsticks? It's much better than those players with poor skills'... " Ginny knew the ways to quarrel very well.
"I think it's getting worse down there," Colin raised his binoculars to watch the battle, "Is the brown-haired one called Hermione? She joined in."
"Let me see." Luna grabbed the binoculars. "Oh, verbal art has turned into material art."
Without the binoculars, Ginny could see Ron used magic to attack… himself…
With the very same wand that was broke by the Whomping Willow.
Colin left the seats and ran to the Gryffindor team. Right then, Ron opened his mouth wide, and a few slugs fell on his chest.
"Are you okay?" Ginny's legs weakened and leaned on Luna.
"Ah, there," Colin said quickly, raising the camera, "Harry, can you help him up?"
"Colin!" Harry turned to look at Ginny. "You guys take Colin and go play somewhere else. We're taking Ron to Hagrid's."
"Okay… " although Ginny felt reluctant, what do you mean 'go play somewhere else', you're just one year older than me who were you to order me around… but then again they have to take Colin away or he would follow up and report Ron's whole slug-vomiting process.
Harry and Hermione helped Ron out of the court and escort him over to the edge of the forest.
At dinner, Ginny heard that Ron got detention and had to polish the silver in the trophy room tonight, and thought that Luna must have read it wrong, the Misfortune Cloud was actually on Ron's head. Aquamarine was happened to be nearby to hear the news. She snorted softly and said, "Both sides made mistakes and fighting only to dispute the right to use the Quidditch Stadium. In my opinion, this is completely a farce. How could I not afford good broomsticks for my brothers? Draco's flying skills are also very good. Ron had no right to say he relied on his father's money to get into the team. Ah, childish kids. Take the blame."
Then, she gracefully held the coffee and walked away.
Since both sides made mistakes, how come Ron was the only one who got so unlucky?
Ginny felt indignant. Especially the last three words-take the blame, strengthened her determination to help Ron scrub trophies together tonight.
She met Luna on the way to the trophy room.
Luna happily said that she was looking for Ginny. She asked Ginny if Ron was still vomiting slugs."
"If he still does, eat some salt, the slug will melt when it meets salt, or eat a frog, the frog will eat the slug."
"What about the frog in the belly then?"
"Eat a snake, and the snake will eat the frog."
"And what about the snake?"
"Eat some slugs. Look what it says here." Luna opened the illustrated book, "Slug's slime is deadly to snakes."
Ginny knew that keep on asking wouldn't do Ron's health any good, so she said decisively, "Thank you, Luna, Ron has stopped vomiting long ago."
Luna looked a little disappointed.
Ginny sneaked into the trophy room and saw her frowning brother. He was not completely well yet, and from time to time he threw up a tiny slug. Ginny wondered if she would get hit if she told him Luna's treatment theory. She found a rag and started scrubbing hard. "Stop dazing. Get on cleaning if you want to get some sleep tonight."
"What are you doing here?"
"Helping you, of course. Where's Harry though? Didn't he got detention too?"
"He got lucky. He only has to answer Lockhart's fan mail."
"Hum… he definitely thinks you got a better deal."
"Go back, you don't wanna get caught by Filch." Ron looked at the door and said anxiously.
"He won't be able to come for a while, I saw him in the South Tower picking on some first years. Come on, do it quicker. I'll leave when we finish." The two of them scrubbed faster and tried hard to reach Filch's standard of clean trophies: illuminate the room.
If you think the trophy room is too dark, can't you just install a lamp? How did you even come up with such crooked ideas? Illuminate the room with trophies… Ginny couldn't help but thought Filch was very unreasonable.
After three hours of hard work, the "illuminate the room" program was coming to its end. Ginny and Ron started chatting.
"Bruv, you really had a bad day, did you?"
"Not just today, I've been having bad days for a long time… Ginny, do you ever feel… " Ron paused.
"Go on, feel what?"
"Never mind, it's probably nothing. Not something you wanna hear."
"Just say it or else I won't be able to sleep tonight wondering about this."
Under all kinds of threats and intimidation from Ginny, Ron spoke up.
"Sometimes feel that Aquamarine is a little bit… weird… have you ever experienced this before… like… she's looking at you, and then you would say something stupid unconsciously. Or do some stupid things… Of course, I'm not saying I wouldn't do stupid things besides this, but… You know what I mean? I think when she's by my side sometimes I do more stupid things… Maybe it's because she is too great… so people feel stupid around her… or I'm just overthinking I don't know… am I making you confused?"
They didn't get the chance to dig deeper into that topic. Ron vomited again, a pretty bad one. He rushed into the bathroom.
Dear Ron, of course I know what you mean. You have finally found that out! Go vomit, I won't let you die in vain! I'll keep the art of scrubbing trophies running until the very end! I will keep the good reputation of the Weasley family and I won't let you down!
Ginny worked hard to scrub away the traces of the slug on the trophy.
Okay, "TO" is clean enough… "M", done… damn, how come "RI" is so hard to scrub… "DD" looks pretty good now… and lastly… "LE"...
Done! The perfectly clean "TOM RIDDLE"!
Ginny was stunned.
Tom Riddle!
