Chapter 2
After dinner, George made his way slowly to McGonagall's office. Fred had been quiet the whole afternoon and George knew he was taking in George's remarks about their OWLs.
McGonagall was nowhere to be seen. But next to the door of her office leaned Eleanor Seymour, her long legs stretched out. Her skirt barely reached the middle of her thighs and he could clearly see her suspenders. Her tie was undone and she had unbuttoned her shirt just until the beginning of her dark laced bra.
She had her eyes closed and was wearing some kind of black earmuffs. George could hear the faint bass of some loud angry music, which appeared to be coming from those strange earmuffs.
George halted. Her heart-shaped face was completely relaxed as she silently nodded along with the music.
"Ah, mister Weasley. Miss Seymour. Good evening." McGonagall opened the door of her office, stepped out and looked sharply at her students.
"Good evening, professor McGonagall," greeted George and he smiled. "You look ravishingly good tonight. Defeating Ravenclaw really gives you a healthy glow."
"Shush, mister Weasley." The severe look of the senior witch couldn't weaken his smile. "In you two go." She opened the door of the Transfiguration class room.
George looked at Eleanor, who still had her eyes closed.
"Miss Seymour, could you please take off that device" McGonagall snapped.
Eleanor's foot started to tap.
"Miss Seymour!" McGonagall marched forward and snatched the earmuffs off her head.
"Hey! Those were-"
"I don't care what that horrible sound was that you apparently call music, but you know the rules, miss Seymour. No Muggle devices on the school grounds. Get inside the classroom, please."
Eleanor's eyes sparked angrily. "There is no such rule, professor. I am very sorry to have found a way to make Muggle electrical devices work in an all-magical area, but I am not breaking any rules by doing so."
"Put the earmuffs away, Miss Seymour, or I will take them." The professor's lips became one thin line, while Eleanor slowly leaned forward to put the earmuffs and the black case it was connected with, in her schoolbag.
"Good, thank you, miss Seymour. Now get inside, please."
George sat down beside Eleanor, who had taken place in one of the first rows. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned backwards.
McGonagall gave them a sharp look. "You two are here with me tonight to receive your punishment. Mister Weasley, you will receive detention for being out in the corridors after curfew. Miss Seymour, you will receive the same fate for hexing a fellow student with an illegitimate spell during Transformation. Your parents will also be notified of your behaviour." McGonagall glared at Eleanor, who didn't seem to be impressed.
"It was a good example of Cross-Species Transfiguration, don't you agree, professor?" asked Eleanor.
George put on a wide grin. Who would have thought that Slytherins possessed some nerve?
"Miss Seymour, you already cost your house twenty points. One more word and I will take the double this time." The voice of McGonagall was cold as steel.
Eleanor crossed her arms, but held her tongue.
"Good, well. Please leave your bags in this classroom. For tonight, you will help madam Pince with dusting all the book covers in the east wing of the library. Use of magic is prohibited
George groaned. He hated cleaning without magic. Even his mum used magic around the house to help her. Eleanor's gaze could freeze fire.
They worked in silence. After half an hour, madam Pince made sure they hadn't conducted an evil plan to set her beloved books on fire and left them to their task.
"I can't believe I am stuck in detention with George bloody Weasel for hexing Roger Davies," muttered Eleanor, while she forcibly moved the duster over the backs of the books.
"Why are you so sure I'm not Fred?" he asked curiously. He moved his duster a little bit slower. Maybe he could discover a good book with some nice spells in it to use in one of his experiments with Fred.
"Because I am not blind," she snapped, focusing her attention on the duster.
George frowned. "Even our own mother has trouble telling us apart. You never spoke a word to us. So how?"
"Then your mother should really visit an ophthalmologist." Eleanor looked over her shoulder, pulled out an old dusty book out and began carefully reading the index. "We had classes together for almost five years now. Please. It isn't that hard."
"An ophhtla - what?"
Irritated, Eleanor looked up. "Please, Weasel. I am neither blind nor stupid. Let me serve this idiotic punishment in silence."
But George didn't let her off so easily. "Why did you curse Roger Davies?"
Eleanor rolled with her eyes and turned a page. "Because Davies kept spreading rumours about me. I had to curse him into oblivion."
"So you turned him into a pig?" George grinned.
There was one wild rumour that Eleanor Seymour had hexed a Muggle boy last Christmas because he had the nerve to ask her out. Her mother, Astraea Fawley, had to bribe the Minister of Magic and Dumbledore in order to avoid an official investigation so Eleanor wouldn't get expelled.
"Are you Gryffindorks always so backward? I cannot turn Davies into a pig because he is already a pig."
"That's very true. But, at least you know how the spell works."
The look Eleanor shot him, could have killed him. "The only reason why I hexed Henry Talbot, the son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was because he kept drooling over my ass during Christmas dinner. He hinted that I even should sleep with him out of hospitality. I thought it would be only appropriate that if he wanted to behave like a pig, he could as least look like a pig."
Impressed, George looked at Eleanor as if he had never seen her before.
Yes, he knew the rumours which went around. It was the kind of hearsay his mother loved to gossip about with her friends. Eleanor Seymour, the daughter of an important Muggle and Astraea Fawley. The Fawleys were once part of the Sacred 28, but they were kicked out when Astraea's father married a Muggle.
According to the rumours, Astraea had never forgiven her father for that treacherous betrayal. She tried to marry her way back into the Sacred 28, but after Sirius Black cold-heartedly turned her down, she seduced the richest man in the country. A rich Muggle who was a member of something they called nobility, whatever that may mean. George only knew that they were very important to Muggles and that they were among the richest of the county. It was whispered that Eleanor Seymour possessed even more money than the Malfoys.
George guessed that those rumours were mostly true. But there were also other, more darker rumours. Whispers of the fact that Astraea had murdered her own mother out of vengeance and got rid of her father at the same time. Evidence was never found, but everybody agreed that old Lorcan Fawley and his Muggle wife had died in the most strangest circumstances.
Others whispered that Eleanor Seymour was not a Halfblood, but that she was in fact the illegitimate daughter of Sirius Black, the mass murderer who had broken into the Gryffindor tower last night. These whispers always emphasized the fact that Eleanor Seymour - or Black, as she should be called - was the one true heiress to the Black family. It would make her one of the most influential witches, since she would have an almost Pureblood status and more money that anyone possessed in the wizardry world.
"I didn't think a Slytherin would risk the fact to be caught."
"That's just because you Gryffindorks have stupid prejudices about us snakes," she snapped, clapped her book shut and picked up the duster again.
"You never try to show another side of yourselves," argued George.
"Because you couldn't see that other side if it hit you in the head," she snarled at him. Her eyes blazed angrily at him.
George fell silent.
They finished an entire row in quietness.
From the corners of her eyes, Eleanor could see that George sometimes lingered at certain books, as if he tried to remember the titles.
"What are you doing?" she hissed at him, when they started another row.
George grinned mischievously. "You Slytherins are not the only ones at school that possess a little dash of ambition, Your Highness."
"It's Your Grace," she corrected him out of habit.
George shrugged and turned his focus back on the books.
Eleanor slowly turned her head to him, her eyes holding a calculated look as if she tried to see him in a different lighting.
She knew the twins. Not that well, since they only had two classes together and never exchanged a word with one another, but enough to build an overall picture.
Although there was a lot of ancient bad blood between the two houses of Slytherin and Gryffindor, Eleanor never much cared to keep the hatred alive. She just didn't care that much about house pride. Most of the Gryffindor thought with their chest hair instead of their tiny brains, but so did the majority of the male Slytherin population and probably the rest of the guys from the other two houses.
The only two boys who acted like they possessed just a little bit more quantity of brains were the Weasley twins. Although they lived for pranking everyone around them - Eleanor remembered vividly how they once managed to turn Mrs Norris into a hairless creature in one night -, she always thought there was more to them than the eye saw. For her, it was no surprise that the twins managed to receive good grades, no matter how shocked the teachers were by that fact. Most students and staff thought the Weasley twins didn't have the brains to study or master difficult spells. But, as Eleanor went through all the pranks she had knowledge of, she knew that those pranks consisted of some difficult spells.
And that, she decided, was sneaky. Daring. Bold. She nibbled on her bottom lip while she intensely focused on George. His duster was laying forgotten on the floor while he slowly read a page. His face was pulled in upper concentration as his index finger traced the lines, no doubt searching for a spell to use in a new prank or to experiment with.
It was a real bummer that he was not in Slytherin, since the twins had all the traits the great Salazar would have admired.
Unlike any other student in Hogwarts, Eleanor could keep easily keep the twin brothers apart. George Weasley was not a bad looking guy, just like his brother Fred was. They had flaming red hair that was kept messy and they were covered in freckles, but somehow it looked good on them. The twins were tall, even taller than Eleanor when she walked around in five inch heels, and they had broad shoulders, due to their Quidditch training as Beaters.
But the real difference was in their personality. George was the quieter, gentler half of the twin. He moved more graciously and hold himself somewhat differently than Fred.
"Staring much?" George smiled, while he looked over the page at her. He had that devious smile around his lips that Eleanor reminded of a naughty five-year-old. His light hazel brown eyes sparkles and he gave her a wink. "Can't blame you."
Eleanor rolled her eyes and focused on the books in front of her. "Keep dreaming, Weasley."
