Mezrielda was a difficult person to find. Bagsy, until it started getting too dark and scary, searched as much of the castle as she could. She even went to the Slytherin common room and stood outside a stone wall, sticking out like a sore thumb. She was wondering if she was at the wrong spot when a boy, almost three heads taller than her and with sharp green eyes, made his way out and gave her a disapproving look.
'What do you want?' he asked.
'Is Mezrielda Glint in there?' Bagsy asked, clasping her hands together nervously.
The boy looked her up and down. 'No,' was all he said before disappearing. He had a very distinctive walk that oozed arrogance. Bagsy didn't like him.
Eventually, she gave up and trudged disappointedly back to the Hufflepuff common room and, as she did, a ghost popped out of a wall in front of her, startling her. She swore never to wander around Hogwarts after dark again.
Tapping the correct barrel to the rhythm of Helga Hufflepuff, Bagsy ducked into the dim passageway and entered the common room. A group of Hufflepuff students had moved the armchairs and were sitting in a circle. One of the older students had conjured a circular table, and cheers filled the room as the students played a game of cards. Bagsy glanced over at them. When they placed the cards on the table miniature avatars swirled into existence above them and duelled the other figures in a brutal, and comedic, fashion. Bagsy hesitated on her way to her room, wondering if she could, or should, join in with them.
'Bagsy!' Greenda called from the other side of the common room, beyond the card playing students. She was sitting at one of the benches with a mountain of books piled around her and a slightly mad glint in her eyes. Bagsy walked over to her. 'How are you doing?' Greenda asked. Bagsy murmured something non-committal whilst eyeing the titles of the books. They were all on managing techniques. Watch your Wizards and Witches was stacked on top of Managing Magical People which was laid next to a bookmarked The Art of Being Friendly and in Control.
'Wow,' Bagsy said, her eyes widening at the sheer amount of reading.
Greenda nodded. 'I need to be taken more seriously as a prefect – I may be a fourth year, a year younger than prefects usually are by the way, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't respect my position.' Greenda closed the book she was reading to reveal the title Being a Boss and Being your Best: a Guide to all Aspiring Healers. 'I'm thinking about being a healer one day. For that you have to have good decision making and people management skills on top of knowledge.'
'That's fair enough – but are books the best way to learn this stuff? Shouldn't you ask a teacher, maybe?'
Greenda shook her head scandalously. 'The teachers have enough to do already – the point of prefects is to lighten their load, not weigh them down.' She began shoving the books into a large bag on the floor to her right. 'But that's beside the point, I called you over to ask if you were going to Quidditch try-outs next weekend. Wait, no, sorry, next next weekend.'
Bagsy stared at Greenda. 'You think I should try out?' she asked in disbelief.
Greenda shook her head. 'Oh, no, that's not what I meant. You're a first year – you're not allowed your own broom, let alone on the team.' She shook her head again. 'No, no, I just meant are you coming to show your support for the Hufflepuff team?'
'Is it normal for people not trying out to turn up?' Bagsy asked sceptically. She didn't want to do anything that might upset those trying out.
Greenda hesitated. 'Well, not really, but it's not against the rules, either.'
Bagsy frowned at her, trying to figure out what she actually meant. 'I don't know,' she tried to explain herself, her voice careful. 'I guess I just don't see the point in going.' Greenda looked disappointed, and Bagsy instantly regretted her words, but had no clue what she should have said instead.
'Oh,' Greenda said, then nodded slowly. 'Fair enough.' She smiled thinly up at Bagsy, packing away the last of her books, and a few strange looking crystals that clinked with each jostle. 'Sorry for asking. Have a good night. I'll see you around.'
Bagsy watched Greenda drag her heavy bag of books to her dormitory in confusion. Greenda seemed downtrodden and Bagsy didn't understand why. She wished she did.
The next morning, at breakfast, Bagsy kept an eye out for Mezrielda. One minute she was sitting at the Slytherin table alone, eating her food quickly, but the next time Bagsy looked, she was gone. It was a similar story at lunch so that when dinner rolled around Bagsy ate only one of the quadruple layered sandwiches before fixing her eyes on Mezrielda, determined she wouldn't slip away without her noticing.
'My, my, you're a first year! What do you have to look so dour about,' the fat friar, the Hufflepuff house ghost, tutted at Bagsy as he floated by.
Bagsy looked up at him. 'What does dour mean?'
'Well, I suppose it means sad looking,' the fat friar explained, his voice sounding very nasally. Bagsy wondered if there had been food in his throat when he'd died.
'Thanks,' Bagsy said absent-mindedly, turning back towards where Mezrielda was to find, of course, she was no longer there. Bagsy stood up and raced from the hall.
'First years, now a days,' she heard the fat friar mumble as she rushed out the doors, catching a glimpse of long, messy black hair disappearing around a corner. Thankfully, Bagsy managed to follow Mezrielda through the castle, keeping her distance. She meant to call out and tell Mezrielda of the tangle-teasing solution, but her voice was missing.
After walking up a set of stairs, Mezrielda entered the first-floor girl's bathroom and Bagsy stalled. It was now or never, so she pushed open the wooden door with a polite 'excuse me' in case it was one of the doors that needed permission and stepped inside. The first-floor girl's bathroom was a large, hexagonal room with each wall holding three cubicles and a triangle of sinks in the middle. There were no mirrors in sight, or windows, and the room felt very cramped.
Mezrielda was on her hands and knees, peering at part of the black drains that circled the outer perimeter of the space, the drain a pattern of vine stems crossing and winding around each other, the water slipping between them into the space below with a deep gargling sound.
Bagsy's eyebrows shot up. 'What are you doing?'
Mezrielda snapped up to her feet and fixed her with an icy glare. 'None-'
'Of my business – of course it isn't. That's not why I followed you.'
'You followed me?'
Bagsy stuttered. 'W-Well, it's only, I felt bad about the hair thing, so I convinced Professor Blythurst to-'
'You convinced that lazy old man to do something? Now I know you're lying.' Mezrielda folded her arms. 'What do you really want? To play another trick on me? Where's Tod anyway? Like you could get even one spell to hit me. You're so bad at magic I bet you get Tod to do all your work for you.'
Bagsy stomped her foot. 'Just listen to me, would you!' she said angrily. Mezrielda scowled at her silently. 'I asked Blythurst to tell me how to brew a potion that could detangle your hair because, well, as you said, I'm bad at spells. I have that potion right here.' Bagsy held out the tear shaped vial to Mezrielda, who looked at it before taking it from her hand. With barely hidden distaste, Mezrielda uncorked the vial and was met with a stream of insults.
'What silly hair she has!'
'And a sour face!'
'Do I spy little fangs in her mouth?'
'Ooh, and look at those scruffy robes, too,' the voices chanted out of the bottle.
'Wait! It's meant to do that,' Bagsy rushed out, seeing the furious look on Mezrielda's face. 'It's called tangle-teasing solution, it's meant to tease you, Blythurst said that-' but Mezrielda didn't care. She threw the vial across the room. It shattered on the tiled floor, and the contents washed through the vine patterned drain. The teasing grew – voices bouncing around the toilet.
'Such a sad expression…'
'So very severe.'
'You'd think she was crying!'
'But not one tear!'
Mezrielda's face went from angry to blank, as if she'd been struck across the face, her mouth hanging open. In the next moment her icy brown eyes were terrifying and Bagsy's heart started hammering in her ears.
'You rotten Hufflepuff!' Mezrielda snarled, rounding on her. 'You think you're so clever, you thought you could unbalance me with some simple child's potion? Pathetic.' Mezrielda bared her teeth, taking a step towards Bagsy, who took a step back. 'Pathetic. Like your magic, if you even have any. No one had informed me Hogwarts accepted squibs.' Mezrielda practically spat the last part, then whipped her wand towards Bagsy. 'Locomotor Mortis!' she hissed. Bagsy tried to block it, but she was too slow, and her legs locked together and she fell flat on her face with a thud. Mezrielda crouched down next to her. 'See? Can't even block a simple leg-lock jinx. You're toast come Herbology.'
Bagsy tried to fight back the feeling of hopelessness welling up within her but it was useless. She let out a sob, putting her face in her hands. 'Please don't tell anyone!' she begged, sniffing between her words. 'I can do potions and – and I can fly on brooms and – and I can do other stuff! I promise I'm not a squib! Spells aren't even that important!' She was starting to wail and Mezrielda looked shocked, as though Bagsy had been invisible to her until that moment and appeared out of thin air. She stood up as if Bagsy would burn her. Then something else caught Mezrielda's attention.
'Stars above…' she muttered, walking away from Bagsy. 'You weren't lying – that potion really does de-tangle things…'
Bagsy's sobs subsided in confusion, leaving only a few pitiful sniffs in their place. She propped herself up on her arms to look at where Mezrielda was pointing down at the floor, seeing the grate of tangled vines was untangling itself. The metal shifted and twirled as it pulled to the side, revealing a wide, shallow crevice in the floor.
'Remarkable!' Mezrielda cried. 'Bagsy, do you have parchment?' she added, urgently.
'Yes?'
'Get it out, and quickly! Hold it up in the air!' Mezrielda demanded, tilting her head to the side and walking around the room as she flicked her wand and Bagsy's legs unlocked themselves. Standing up, Bagsy looked at the shallow dip and saw words written below the potion as it drained away. The grate was beginning to close again – the words would be hidden from view soon.
Bagsy shuffled hurriedly through her bag and pulled out a scroll, holding it up in the air as Mezrielda had asked. She'd already written her name and the date at the top, but Mezrielda was in such a rush Bagsy hoped she wouldn't mind.
Mezrielda flicked her long, white wand and pointed it towards the scroll, whilst her eyes read the writing in the drain. 'Flagrate!' Mezrielda cast and began twitching her wand this way and that. It took Bagsy a few seconds to notice a sizzling, hissing noise as fiery words appeared on the scroll, burning the message onto the parchment. She glumly wished she could produce magic effects with such ease, then sniffed sadly a few times more.
Once Mezrielda was done she walked over to the scroll and snatched it out of Bagsy's hand, her eyes scanning the sentence. Bagsy walked over to the drain – it had closed up again.
'Did you get it all?' Bagsy asked, still sniffing and wiping her eyes with her robes' sleeve.
Mezrielda nodded. 'Yes,' she said, rolling the scroll up and putting it, and the secret message, in her sleeve. She glanced at the broken vial on the floor – some of the potion remained in a curved piece of glass. Mezrielda carefully picked it up and poured the small portion of tangle-teasing solution on her hair - smoothing it in. Sure enough, even with a few muffled jibes, Mezrielda's hair returned to its sleek, black glory. Mezrielda coughed awkwardly. 'Oh,' she said. 'It works.' She stood in silence for quite some time.
Bagsy blinked at Mezrielda, remembering she'd called her a squib and locked her legs together only moments before. 'It works?' Bagsy squeaked indignantly.'Next time I won't bother helping.' She wanted to say more, but she couldn't find the words. Instead, she sniffed sullenly and exited the toilet, breaking into more tears the second she thought she was out of earshot.
She didn't care what the secret message might have been, she didn't care what Mezrielda had been doing in the bathroom, she just wanted to forget Mezrielda existed.
