Seven Years 29.

AN: Second last comedy chapter before things get dark quick. Enjoy!


There was little Merula could enjoy in the party that came afterward. Too many older witches and wizards, all of them talking about things that she didn't care for. Ministry talk, gossip, all so very bland.

The rest of the holiday break was much better though, and Merula found herself actually enjoying being with her friends for once, even if Deborah's weird taste in Muggle movies kept Merula up late at night, hand clutched tight around her wand, waiting for a shapeshifting impostor to somehow escape the South Pole.

But there were upsides too. Such as when A.J. handed her a hilariously badly wrapped box with a pair of oversized boots inside, the same brand as Granger's miniature torture shoes, but ones that had been charmed to grow alongside Merula and be actually comfortable.

It had taken both Deborah and Tiffany to pry Merula off A.J., though neither of Merula's roommates were really trying all that hard, content with making jokes at their long time friend's expense.

And then Christmas break was over, and Merula returned back to Hogwarts with her mission in mind. Lockhart had to be stopped.

It was during the first weekend back that Merula heard a strange knock on her bedroom door, a strange occurrence, since Tiffany was out, and Deborah and A.J. had no visitors to speak of, though for very different reasons.

Who, if anyone, would come looking for them?

"I'll get the door," Merula grumbled after she climbed out of bed, storming over to the door and pulling it wide, then almost slamming it back into Blaise's face, complete with a little smirk Merula did not like at all.

"I have a plan," Blaise said, the smile never shifting off his face.

Merula slammed the door into Blaise's face and turned back to her bed. She had Lockhart on her plate and no time for Blaise's probably half-baked plan.

"Who was it?" A.J. asked, not even bothering to look up from her textbook.

"An idiot," Merula grumbled, halfway through climbing back into bed when Blaise knocked again. "A persistent one at that."

"Idiot doesn't narrow down the pool of candidates," Deborah muttered. "Persistent, erm, maybe a little."

"Who knows?" A.J. asked, looking up, cat-like amusement in her eyes. "Merula, have you ever considered asking Ismelda for… lessons?"

Merula took one long look at her roommate, not understanding until she remembered what Ismelda had done to poor Barnaby Lee. Then she suddenly wanted to run from the room screaming.

But that would have meant crossing past Blaise, which was like trading a shapeshifting murder alien for a murder zombie in a hockey mask that refused to stay dead, even if Merula found the latter film series oddly funny.

Then the door cracked open, and Merula was about to hex Blaise for having the nerve to enter her room without permission when she noticed that the intruder was just in fact Tiffany, though she had almost waddled into the room as if she was a duck.

"Merula," Tiffany said with an easy grin as she hopped back up to her usual height. "Could you explain why there's three of your classmates outside? I know you're the prettiest girl of your year, but even you're too young to start dating."

Merula's brain stopped working for a long minute, and she turned to A.J., hoping for some form of translation from her friend, but A.J. even looked baffled.

"Three?" Merula finally blurted out.

Without another word, Tiffany tore the door open, revealing, much to Merula's amusement, Blaise hanging upside down from the dungeon ceiling along with… Crabbe and Goyle? What in Ismelda's non-existent pants were they doing there? And where was Draco? She never saw Crabbe and Goyle without Draco, even if she still had no idea which of the idiots was which.

A.J., from her bed, helpfully whistled, and Merula frantically gestured for Tiffany to shut the door, trying to cover her burning face with her pillow.

"Should I let them down?" Tiffany asked.

"We need to get a camera." Deborah declared. "Merula's first spurned suitors. What a shame that Gryffindor boy's camera is cooked."

Merula wanted to melt into a puddle. Or feed someone to the Selkies. She wasn't quite sure which. Probably melt. It would take too long to feed three people to the Selkies.

"Could you let them go?" Merula asked when she finally got her burning face out of her pillow, glaring at the three boys hanging upside down in front of her door. "I'd rather not be the centre of attention for the next five years."

"Liberacorpus is the counter-spell if you want it." A.J. said, not even bothering to look up from her book. "Just jerk your wand up. It'll be good practice. You need it, just as much as you need snogging practice."

"Liberacorpus," Merula repeated, nodding to herself and ignoring A.J.'s idea of a joke. "Ok."

Merula turned around and glanced up at Blaise, the first of Tiffany's three victims, looking somewhat uncomfortable, his arms awkwardly handing down from his body, like icicles hanging from Malfoy Manor.

"Liberacorpus," Merula repeated the name of the counter-curse, and to her surprise, Blaise fell back to the ground, and even managed to avoid smashing his head against the ground.

"So," Merula said, preparing to practice on the two idiots she still couldn't tell apart. "What were you coming here to do, Blaise?"

"In my defense, I thought he was an underwear thief," Tiffany called from behind Merula. "Or at least one of them was. Why else would all three of them be hanging out by our door?"

Merula paused and looked up at the two indistinguishable idiots, more confused than anything else. What did they want underwear for? Did the House Elves forget to do their laundry? Did they need to suffer the Dobby treatment?

"Merula?" Blaise asked suddenly, snapping her mind out of her little confused daydream.

"Hmm?" Merula looked over to Blaise. "What? Do you want practice to free them? Because the counter-curse is Liberacorpus."

"What?" Blaise almost looked offended at the suggestion, but he swallowed his outrage before he asked his question. "Could I… talk to you in private?"

Merula glanced back at her roommates, then up at the upside down idiots, then back at Blaise. "Honestly, I have better things to do, and the three of you are wasting my time."

"I promise that it won't be a waste of your time," Blaise said, a wild light dancing in his eyes.

Merula shrugged, and looked back at her roommates, none of which looked particularly interested in continuing, having each opened a textbook. She still expected they would intervene if Blaise tried to do something funny, so it was fine?

"Fine," Merula muttered, half regretting her life choices already as she shut the door. "Let me free-"

"No." Blaise cut in, his hand reaching down to stop Merula's wand. "Just… let me explain."

Merula paused and looked up at the two idiots looking helpless and decided that they could remain helpless some more. It wasn't as if Draco would whine to Lucius about his two idiot minions running afoul of a seventh year, even if Tiffany was a Muggleborn.

"Fine," Merula said, gesturing for Blaise to sit at the two spare seats in front of the fireplace. "What do you want from me?"

Blaise said nothing, but he sat down in one of the seats, extending a hand for Merula to join him. It seemed genuine, but Blaise was one of a long list of people at Hogwarts Merula didn't trust further than she could throw, so she kept him at arm's length and kept her wand handy.

"You have two minutes," Merula snapped when she finally settled into the chair, sparing the two upside down idiots a quick glance. Still safely hanging by the ankles and with their wands on the ground, easily out of reach.

"I want to ruin Draco," Blaise said.

"So does half our class," Merula muttered, rolling her eyes. "Get in line. You'll be somewhere in the five thousands range."

"By ruin, I mean nobody will take him seriously ever again."

Merula paused, wondering if she should have simply hexed Blaise and been done with it. His tone sounded far too gleeful for it to end well for her.

"Aren't you going to ask me what my plan is?"

"Your last plan didn't go all that well, did it?" Merula sneered, turning back over to Blaise. "You couldn't even get a girl's uniform."

"I'm going to get a Singing Valentine," Blaise said, a wicked grin crossing his face, as if the implosion of his previous plan was of no consequence to him.

"And?" Merula scoffed. The idea sounded silly, and she saw only one use for valentines anyhow. Namely, tinder for a fireplace.

"And I'm going to humiliate Draco with it." Blaise said, gesturing over to Crabbe and Goyle, still upside down. "Which is why I needed you away from those dunderheads."

Merula glanced over to the two idiots, then back to Blaise, nodding at the precaution and foresight Blaise had displayed. "And what do you want from me?"

"Applause," Blaise said, pausing. "If possible, I'd like for you to drag Draco over to the other victim."

"And who would that be?" Merula asked, leaning closer, her voice a conspiratorial whisper.

"Potter," Blaise replied, a glee bordering on madness in his eyes. "Potter dismounted your brother back in the fall. Quite the sight, trust me. And half the school saw it, even if you and your friends didn't."

Merula hadn't seen it, but that was because she was busy ruining a Polyjuice potion. From the glee in Blaise's voice, she suspected it was a sight she would regret missing, but it was in the past now. Perhaps she could find a Pensieve memory one day.

"Let me see your valentine so far and I'll mail it in." Merula said, sighing and wondering what she was getting herself into. "I'll even send it via a Hogsmeade owl, so nobody could trace it back to us."

"Appreciate it," Blaise said, pulling a rolled piece of paper from his robes. "And if possible, could you get your friends involved? It would be… such a tragedy for one of our victims to escape."

"I'll see what I can do," Merula replied, taking the little scrap of paper and rising from her chair. "Expect an answer by Monday."

Blaise nodded and stood up too, walking cheerfully toward the stairs leading out of the common room. Merula watched him go before she headed back to her room, ducking under the two idiots and kicking away their wands even further from their outstretched hands.

"A.J.," Merula held up the little scrap of paper. "What do you think of this?"

"Hmm?" A.J. looked up, picking the paper out from Merula's hand. "What- huh, a Singing Valentine? Really? All that much trouble for this?"

Merula shut the door in the faces of the two idiots, not wanting the two of them to hear the plan. "Blaise wanted… some help to seal the humiliation in."

"Oh," Tiffany said, a spark of wicked light in her eyes. "Do we get to play too?"

Merula nodded. "He wants… some help in making sure the victims don't make a run for it."

"Ah," Tiffany nodded, grinning wildly. "It's Valentine's. We could… help with that. But A.J., no Laxative Potion. Not after Emily."

"Poem's fine," A.J. nodded, folding the paper into an airplane and then tossing it onto Merula's bed, ignoring Tiffany's warning wholesale. "Pretty subtle, but the in-joke is hard to miss."

Merula nodded, looking back at the closed door. "Should I let the idiots free now?"

"Let them do it themselves," A.J. said. "Speaking of those idiots, what did they want from you anyways?"

Merula paused for a moment, then she scratched her head. "I don't know, but I'll ask."

The idiots were still hanging when Merula opened the door again, and Merula ducked and grabbed both Crabbe and Goyle's wands, holding both of the wands away from the two idiots.

"So," Merula sighed, glaring up at the two boys hanging from the ceiling. "What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?"

"I don't feel so good," one of the idiots muttered.

"Deal with it," Merula said, looking down at the two wands in her hand. "Answer me or I won't give your wand-ow!"

One of the wands, as it happened, had some sort of accident in her hand, and Merula dropped it onto the hard ground, taking a step back from it and angrily waving her injured hand.

"Crabbe, Goyle," Merula growled, squinting down at the sparking wand when she was sure the wand was a safe distance away from her. "What are you doing with a broken wand? And is that Spello-tape?"

Crabbe and Goyle, for whatever reason, remained silent, and Merula looked back up to them in disgust.

"Give me a reason why I should let you idiots down," Merula snapped finally, crossing her arms and keeping a safe distance away from the sparking wand.

"Answer her or both of you are going to vomit slugs for the afternoon," A.J. said from behind Merula. "And- why do you have Charlie Weasley's wand?"

Finally, it seemed, there was a reaction from the two idiots, in that they both flinched at the mention of Charlie Weasley.

"Which one is Charlie again?" Tiffany called from her bed, attracted to the conversation like fans to a Quidditch disaster.

"Dragon tamer," A.J. replied. "The younger graduate, not Bill. You've never met him, but he's also one of the Circle, even if he's never stepped foot in any of the Cursed Vaults."

"We-" one of the idiots paused. "We stole it from Weasley!"

"Only the Weasleys would hand down wands," Deborah muttered from her bed at the far corner of the room. "Defective ones at that."

"Hey Tiffany," A.J. turned over to her roommate. "Remember the Howler the Weasley brat got? About the car?"

"Huh?" Tiffany looked up from her book. "Yeah, I remember that, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"If we let his mother know about the state of his brother's borrowed wand, do you think he'll get another?"

"I'm on it," Tiffany said, a grin on her face as she grabbed a piece of parchment and tossed her book aside. "It'll be ready for Hogsmeade."

"Wait-" one of the two idiots stammered. "I-"

He was silenced when his partner jabbed an elbow into his side.

A.J. paused, scratching her chin. "Merula's never told me, but which one of you is Crabbe and which one of you is Goyle?"

The two boys fell silent.

"I'm Crabbe," the reluctant idiot said after a moment, his voice strangely short of outrage.

"I'm Gregory Goyle," the other one said. "Uhm. Nice to meet you?"

"And you've both done well." A.J. said, nodding. "Tell me, how did you disarm Weasley? And what do you want for the wand?"

The boys blinked.

"The Weasleys have been rather disappointing after the twins," A.J. shrugged. "The two little twerps are nothing in comparison to their older brothers, but this is still a prime opportunity for some good fun."

Crabbe swallowed hard, but said nothing.

"We're going to give the wand back to whichever Weasley owned it," A.J. said. "And come Monday morning I fully expect he'll have a Howler from his dear mum. But that's punishment for the Weasley being useless. There needs to be a reward for the two of you. Tell me, what does Merula usually give you for your birthdays?"

"I'm not giving you another signed Quidditch poster." Merula snapped in anger, cutting A.J. off. "Not after what you did to my Maple poster."

"Maple?" Goyle spluttered.

"Chaser for the 1990 Quidditch World Cup champions," Crabbe said. "From Canada."

Merula looked up at Goyle. "And do you remember what you did with it?"

"It's still on my wall," Goyle stammered.

Merula almost hexed Goyle for the lie. She had been there when he handed it over to Draco, who had always been jealous that Merula got a signed poster while he didn't. As a matter of fact, she was going to make him vomit slugs the moment he wasn't perched right outside her door.

"Merula," A.J. warned, her hand stopping Merula's wand from hexing the two boys. "I want this to be a teaching opportunity for you. Now, boys. What spells did you use to bring down Weasley?"

The boys looked at each other, each still upside down.

"It's alright if you don't remember," A.J. said, freeing the two boys with a flick of her wand, the two of them crashing down with not one ounce of the grace Blaise had. "Your wands can tell me the full story. I just need both of them."

Crabbe and Goyle froze on the spot, still sitting sprawled on the ground before looking at each other, then back at A.J.

"You heard me, didn't you?" A.J. asked, her voice silken yet dripping with the subtlest hints of poison as she held up the two wands. "I have two wands, but one of them belongs to Weasley, doesn't it? What happened to your wand then? If you took a wand off Weasley, you should have three. You told us that you stole your wand, not traded them in, so you should have three."

Neither of the boys said anything.

"Tiff?" A.J. called, not taking her eyes off Crabbe and Goyle. "Could you get a hold of Jenny please?"

"Get Debs to go," Tiffany called back. "Howler, remember?"

"You know Jenny the best," A.J. sighed. "Debs doesn't know where she spends her free time."

"Library," Tiffany called back, pausing for a moment. "Actually, hold on. It's Saturday. Try Hogsmeade."

"What a pain," A.J. muttered, turning back to the two boys. "Why don't I cut you two a deal?"

Merula almost choked at the words. A deal? With Not-Crabbe and Not-Goyle?

But as Merula turned back to argue, she saw desperate hope in the eyes of both boys and a predatory gleam in A.J.'s eyes.

"Ok," Not-Crabbe muttered. "What do you want to do?"

"Did Jenny hand you the Polyjuice Potion?" A.J. asked.

The boys flinched, exchanging a glance before they answered. "Fred did. Or was it George?"

"Ah," A.J. muttered, pulling a stray strand of pink hair back behind her ear. "I suppose if anyone was to find Polyjuice on short notice it would be them."

Merula swallowed, content to watch the interrogation on the sidelines.

"Tell me then," A.J. said. "In addition to the Howler, what would happen to you if I hand you over to the Prefects? Better yet, what would Percy do to you?"

One of the boys choked.

"We lost quite a large amount of points early this year because of what Draco did. I wonder if we can make it up on the two of you? Just imagine the sight. Two scrawny Gryffindors marched through the halls in stolen robes, wands in hand, ready to be read at any notice. Tell me, would you even have House Points left after that?"

Suddenly, Merula understood, and she looked over to the wands. Not-Crabbe and Not-Goyle had obviously not taken the wands of the real Crabbe and Goyle, which meant that the wands that Merula had picked up off the floor were their real wands.

Which meant that one of the boys was Weasley, and the other was either Granger or Potter.

"Aren't there three of you?" Merula asked.

One of the boys swallowed but said nothing.

"Answer Merula or answer to your brother." A.J. snapped. "Your choice."

"Hermionie turned…" One of the boys started.

"Into a cat." The other boy finished, which confirmed that Potter was one of the Not-Slytherins before them. Almost certainly Not-Goyle. Not-Crabbe knew who Maple was. A boy raised in a Muggle household certainly wouldn't.

"Polyjuice or Animagnus?" A.J. scoffed, waving a hand when the boys opened their mouths again. "I'm joking. She's not old enough to try that particular potion."

The boys fell silent again.

"What were you doing down here anyway?" A.J. asked finally, leaning against the wall as she looked over to the two captured Gryffindors.

Merula noticed the two boys glance at each other, but they didn't say anything.

"Tell me or I'll break your wand too," A.J. pointed over to Not-Goyle, or Potter, but Merula couldn't really tell the two apart anyhow. Neither was very bright or very interesting. "And then I use what's left of it as tinder."

Not-Goyle opened his mouth, but said nothing.

"One," A.J. held up the wand, a pale, polished thing that Merula recognized as Potter's.

Not-Goyle still said nothing.

"Two," A.J. held the wand with both hands now, one on each end of the pale wand, ready to snap it in two at a moment's notice.

"We're here for the Heir!" Not-Crabbe shouted.

"And…" A.J. turned to look back at her door. "What, you were trying to ask Blaise Zabani?"

Not-Crabbe shut up.

"Three," A.J. said, then threw the wand in the direction of the fireplace.

Not-Goyle leapt roughly in the direction of the wand, but he missed it by scant centimeters, and ended up face down on the hard, cold ground, right where he belonged.

A.J. simply walked over to him and planted a foot into his back. "Next question. Answer honestly and I'll let you go."

Not Crabbe flinched at the offer, while Not-Goyle, still face down on the floor, only managed a little wiggle.

"Who was it that you were going to ask Zabani about?" A.J. asked. "In short, who do you think your suspect is?"

"Don't-" Not-Goyle spluttered.

"Oscausi," A.J. barked, and in a moment Not-Goyle had no mouth to speak from anymore. "Answer me or both of you go back to the ceiling."

"I-" Not-Crabbe spluttered.

"I don't care," A.J. snapped, her wand pointed at Not-Crabbe. "Name. Now."

"You," Not-Crabbe stammered. "You were our main suspect."


AN: New chapter in the span of a week? Why not?

Next chapter: When you swept me from my broom, on that lovely November day.