Chapter 24: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin
The incident with Moaning Myrtle flooded the second-floor corridor outside of the girls' lavatory for weeks. Rose felt a little twinge of guilt every time she passed it by. She'd seen the professors try to clear it up from time to time – little Professor Flitwick waving his wand, Callister standing menacingly in contemplation of the problem that was Myrtle's flood – even Hagrid had tried to clear it using barrels from his yard as buckets, to no avail. Within moments of any attempt to dry out the hallway, water would inevitably seep out from under the door of the loo. Rose considered that if Myrtle was trying to keep everyone out to let Wilkes finish her the distillation and brew an Inscription Elixir, she was doing a bang-up job.
Meanwhile, the professors (and the older students too, for that matter) were now finding it hard to keep up the level of security they'd been enforcing at the start of term. It had been more than two months since the last attack, and the younger students were chafing at their restricted use of the castle. Several of the second year Ravenclaws had been heard complaining to Professor Flitwick about not being able to get to the library for late-night studying.
In the run-up to the next Quidditch game at the end of the month, there was a spate of curfew-breaking by some of the third and fourth years. Students in each House were caught flouting the required chaperone rules; it got to the point where checking the large hourglasses that held the stones counting House points became something of a lottery every morning. Which House had lost the most points the night before? For obvious reasons (named Louis and James), Gryffindor held that dubious honor the most regularly. Eventually, Molly joined forces with Tor, one of the Gryffindor prefects, to corner Louis and James into a promise to stop sneaking out nights ("What would your parents say about you losing all these points for Gryffindor?" Molly tried in a desperate appeal, hands on her hips. "Probably to stop getting caught," James said, grinning). In the end, it was the threat of taking away James's Quidditch privileges for the next match that sealed the deal.
Gryffindor's House points had barely begun to recover when the day of the much-anticipated Quidditch game arrived. It would be Gryffindor-Slytherin this time, which promised to be something of a nasty match-up. James assured his younger cousins at breakfast that he'd make up for losing all those points earlier by absolutely slaughtering the Slytherin team. Unfortunately, Roxy overheard.
The scuffle that ensued was mild at worst – after all, they were Weasleys first, Gryffindors or Slytherins second – but one of Roxy's Slytherin teammates did have to help her clean the pumpkin juice off her Quidditch robes, and James was seen to be picking egg out of his hair even as he walked out onto the pitch.
Al had left breakfast early with the Gryffindor team, so Rose and Scorpius made their way out with the rest of the second years. The weather was quintessential Hogwarts-in-late-March fare; the snow was gone, but the chill remained, and the sky was a steely, impersonal grey. Wind rustled through the bare trees and toyed with their scarves and robes as the students hurried towards the Quidditch pitch. Annabelle and Katie chatted animatedly about Gryffindor's prospects today (good), the way Tor had looked in his Quidditch robes (better), and their delight over the upcoming Easter hols (best, though somewhat dimmed by the amount of homework their professors were already heaping on them). On Rose's other side, Connor and Willow bickered about Willow's supposed lack of Gryffindor spirit, or at least her lack of visible regalia.
Just ahead of them, the other fifth-year Gryffindor prefect – Liana, the one who wasn't on the Quidditch team – glanced over her shoulder. Her mouth moved, and Rose realized that she was literally counting to make sure all of the second years were there. She rolled her eyes. This was, in a nutshell, the reason she'd decided to come to the game today. It wasn't so much that attendance was compulsory – it wasn't, strictly speaking, and Rose could probably have found an escort to watch her in the library or stayed in the Gryffindor common room. But when Liana had walked over to the second years and, fidgeting with her long, dark braid, let them know that she'd be shepherding them out to the pitch if they wanted to go, Rose had glanced immediately over to the Slytherin table, where a fifth-year prefect named Dalston was making much the same announcement. She watched Wilkes whisper with Roma and Azalea, and then . . . and then they all got up and followed Dalston from the hall.
So Rose, too, would go to the match. After all, Wilkes wouldn't be able to do much until she was finished extracting the Solanum Venenatus venom and using it to brew the Inscription Elixir she would need. Rose didn't really have a sense of how long that would take, but given the abysmal standard of their Potions lessons and Wilkes's lack of innate talent in the subject, she figured she was safe for at least another week.
It helped that it was the Gryffindor-Slytherin grudge match, and she'd really wanted to go anyways. Given the outcome of the Hufflepuff-Slytherin match, it seemed likely that Gryffindor would stomp Slytherin this year.
She must have been grinning broadly, because Scorpius looked askance at her and said, "What exactly are you grinning about, Weasley? The cold or the wind?"
"Just imagining the look on Wilkes's face when Gryffindor wins," Rose said breezily.
"You do realize she's actually in Gryffindor, right?" Scorpius said.
"Barely," Rose snorted. Katie nodded emphatically beside her. "She's practically a Slytherin. If you stand close enough, you can feel the Dark magic rolling off her." Connor chuckled, and Dax let out an undignified snort.
Scorpius seemed less amused. "Not everyone who's in Slytherin is a Dark wizard, Weasley," he bit out.
Rose normally wouldn't have pressed the point, as this was about where their conversations . . . arguments . . . on the subject had stopped all this year, but Dax had scoffed at Scorpius's comment, and she was tense already from the skirmish between James and Roxy this morning, and . . .
"But practically every Dark wizard has been in Slytherin, Malfoy," she shot back.
"Perhaps it doesn't help that people like you think everything to do with Slytherin is automatically evil," Scorpius said coolly. But then again, she expected Scorpius to keep his cool. It was something reliable about him. And something Rose found just a little infuriating, especially right at this moment. Perhaps especially because she knew he had a point.
Obviously, it would have been far too sensible for her to just admit that and drop the whole thing.
"Why are you defending them?" she asked sharply. She almost added something about hitting a little too close to home, but truly, she wasn't mad enough to insult Scorpius's family to his face.
"I'm just pointing out that it's daft to think of the world as being split into 'Good People' and 'Slytherins,'" Scorpius said.
"Are you calling me daft, Malfoy?"
At this point, Rose honestly thought Scorpius would back down. She could tell she was getting herself into a snit (had already gotten herself into a snit, really). If Al had been there, he would have made some sort of funny comment and the tension would have been diffused. But Al was changing for the Quidditch match, and now the rest of the second year Gryffindors were watching hers and Scorpius's exchange in tense silence.
And yet Scorpius didn't back down. "Do you think of the world as being split into 'Good People' and 'Slytherins?'" he asked her quietly. He held her stare for an uncomfortably long time.
She surprised herself when she dropped her gaze first. "Of course not, Malfoy." Some of the tension went out of the air, or at least out of Scorpius. Rose didn't notice he'd had his fists clenched until he relaxed. She let out her pent-up breath in a whoosh that misted in front of her.
Annabelle cleared her throat from somewhere behind them. "Right. Go Gryffindor on three?" she said hopefully.
"Not the time," Willow hissed.
Rose and Scorpius walked the rest of the way to the pitch in silence. It didn't escape her notice that the rest of the second years were giving Scorpius a particularly wide berth.
Did she believe that the world was split into Good People and Slytherins? No, of course not. Roxy was in Slytherin. Roxy was family. And while, ok, sure, Roxy wasn't exactly "good" by the strictest definition – she was impulsive and dramatic, fought regularly with her brother and semi-regularly with James and Louis, famously had never turned in a homework assignment on time in the whole of her Hogwarts career, and cultivated illegal flesh-eating plants in her room in her spare time – she had a good heart.
It wasn't as though she assumed that everyone in Slytherin was automatically evil. It was just that . . . well, an awful lot of them seemed to be really, really unpleasant. Azalea Selwyn sprung to mind immediately, a self-satisfied look on her pug-nosed face, twisting the end of her hair around her fingers as she leaned close to Scorpius in the library. Or the way Valissa MacNamara giggled behind her hand to Roma Rowle every time Rose walked by. Or the slimy, obsequious look on Zeke Smith's face when he had introduced himself to Rose's parents.
And, said the niggling voice in her head, if the Book of the Mark were real . . . how many of the names in there would belong to any other House?
Scorpius would know that too, though. And surely it was not an enjoyable realization for him to have made. As her adrenaline and antagonism dissipated in the frigid air, regret crept in. She knew she shouldn't have snapped at him that way, but he knew exactly how to get under her skin. And, worse, he knew he was doing it, she could just tell.
But wouldn't she have done the same thing in his shoes? After all, he was only defending his family and his friends.
Truly, being twelve (nearly thirteen) was impossible: old enough to understand emotions and human interactions and empathy, but young enough to not know how to put any of that into practice yet. It was like being given a wand with no spellbooks and no training.
And no access to a library.
Ugh.
Well, it was done now. They'd be friends again later, and it would be as though nothing had ever happened, because that's how it always went with them. Rose took her place among the other second-years in the stands, as far from Scorpius as she could, sitting herself between Willow and Katie. The second years sat in a cluster – aside from Wilkes, who Rose could see standing with Valissa and Roma over in the Slytherin stand. Rose shot her a glare that she couldn't have possibly seen for no reason other than spite.
The commentator, a sixth year Hufflepuff named Reggie Pendleton, was introducing the players from both teams already. Rose felt a bit of a traitor cheering for Roxy, given her spat with Scorpius, but after all, family trumped House alliance. Still, she cheered extra loudly for Al, James, and Louis when their names were called to make up for it.
When the noise of the crowd had died down, Reggie's magically amplified voice continued. "And I'm told we have a special visitor to our game today – let's all give a warm welcome to Ms. Viola Vesper, the mayor of Hogsmeade!"
In one of the far stands, Rose could just see a severe woman stand from her position next to Headmistress Sprout and wave, briefly, to the crowd. A more staid round of applause echoed through the stands. "I didn't know anyone who wasn't at Hogwarts could come to these," Rose said as they sat down.
"Oh yeah," said Connor from the row in front of her. "Anyone from Hogsmeade can come up. My dad said that's how the scouts from the professional teams check out recruits."
Anything else Connor might have said was lost in the trill of Madam Griffith's whistle and the whoosh of brooms as the game began. As Rose had predicted, it was nasty from the start. Not two minutes in, Madam Griffith's whistle screeched a foul on Genevieve Stout, one of the Gryffindor Chasers, by the Slytherin Seeker of all players. Three minutes later the whistle blew again, a penalty for Slytherin this time, as James had retaliated for the hit on Genevieve by throwing his bat at the Slytherin Seeker. Rose could see Roxy screaming across the pitch, either at her teammates or at James.
Al had looked dismayed when Madam Griffith called the penalty on James, but had taken to circling the trio of Gryffindor Chasers protectively. A Bludger came whistling towards him, and Rose and Scorpius both yelled his name, but he turned at the last instant and . . . WHAM!
"And that's a great hit from Al Potter, the promising young Gryffindor Beater, stopping Slytherin's Kelley from scoring," Reggie was saying, "And Gryffindor's Dawlish picks up the Quaffle . . . he's weaving down the pitch . . . nice dodge from Dawlish there, leaving him just up against the Slytherin Keeper, Frey . . . and he scores! And Gryffindor draw first blood, up ten-nil."
The Gryffindor stand exploded with cheers.
But soon enough, Slytherin's Chasers scored on a hard drive down the field. Then Gryffindor went up by twenty on a pair of brilliant plays led by Ashfield, and some fast flying from Fred blocked the next Slytherin attempt to score. It was only thirty-ten Gryffindor, but the energy from the Gryffindor stands made it feel as though they were up by much more.
When Gryffindor scored again, the game started to turn nasty. Slytherin's next foul was on Fred – a clearly intentional ramming by one of the Slytherin Chasers that left him visibly unsteady on his broom.
"Foul!" called Rose, and everyone else in the Gryffindor stand.
"FOUL!" echoed Pendleton. "An egregious display by Hulber, and – "
Rose didn't hear what else Pendleton was saying, because at that moment she happened to squint over at the stands across the field . . . and couldn't spot Wilkes's wan face in the Slytherin crowd. She blinked and looked again. No, there was Azalea, and Valissa, Roma, Beatrice, Fiona, Bastian . . . and no Melisenda.
Bollocks.
In a heartbeat, Rose knew what had happened.
Wilkes had used the distraction of the game to sneak out. She was going to have another go at whatever she was trying to open in the castle, this time without having to worry about running into anyone else or getting caught. Every Professor would be here, at the game.
This was more important than Quidditch.
Rose turned, about to nudge Scorpius, but at the last minute remembered that they had just had a very public spat. Pride warred with logic. They had fought. He was still her friend. He'd called her daft. She could use the backup. He thought she was prejudiced. He was probably right.
Pride won out.
Without a word to anyone, Rose turned and made her way down the stand. Willow and Katie and Annabelle would just assume she'd gone to the loo, she figured.
She set out across the grounds, back towards the castle. Wilkes was nowhere in sight, but Rose was confident enough in where she'd gone.
"Where are we going?" Scorpius's voice came from somewhere behind her, and she started, whirling around.
Author's Note: Where is the Maurauder's Map in all this, you might ask? Didn't James have it last year? (Yes). Surely he's gotten it back from Roxy by now, to help him avoid detention when he keeps sneaking out (James is a little like a kleptomaniac, except with sneaking out of Gryffindor Tower instead of stealing things; he simply can't help himself. Honestly, he and Louis spend more time exploring the castle than actually causing havoc, but telling professors that when they're caught never seems to help).
Roxy still has the Map.
Roxy is, in fact, aware that James and Louis keep getting caught sneaking out of Gryffindor Tower after hours, and that they have gotten numerous detentions and lost a total of somewhere near 400 points for Gryffindor (over the course of the whole year so far, not in one fell swoop).
Roxy wants Slytherin to win the House Cup this year, and is not above using underhanded methods to achieve this.
Hope everyone has had a great week! Thanks for reading :)
- bbh