Revenge is Sweet

Rebecca awoke early that day as it was her custom. An early riser, she had gotten used to her quiet mornings. Hufflepuff house did not begin to stir until a much later hour. Not bothering to check if any of her roommates were up, she headed down to the common room to finish her Charms homework.

Rounding the corner, she was met with the sight of a pair of violently swaying frog slippers. The shabby discolored footwear was perched atop of two ungainly legs, swallow and bone thin, which in turn poked out of hideous flowery pajamas. Eloise Midgeon was standing on her head, atop a table in the middle of the common room. She was madly chewing her hair, eyes bloodshot, her face a decidedly dark puce colour.

Rebecca ground to a halt at this ghastly spectacle. What on earth was her friend hoping to accomplish? Then she saw it. The bloody feather Eloise dragged out to stare at during every single break. The one she waived around claiming she was going to learn wandless magic: her new single-minded obsession. It was rather tiresome. Rebecca was getting ruddy sick of that stupid feather.

Becca sometimes wondered why Eloise hadn't been placed in Ravenclaw – she certainly possessed a strong drive for knowledge. But then again, the sorting hat had probably placed her wisely. Poor Rowena would undoubtedly have been thrown into despair at having a student in her house lacking all sense of decorum and capable of coming to such idiotic conclusions. What in Merlin's name could be the point of staring at the feather upside down?

Becca waived her hand in front of Eloise's face. There was no reaction: not a twitch, not a blink. Smiling wickedly, she snuck behind her before shouting and slamming her hand on the table.

Eloise, startled, smacked her head soundly on a bench as she painfully crashed to the floor

OoooooooooooooooooooooooO

Eloise Midgeon's POV

"I'm so sorry. Are you sure you're alright?" Rebecca asked for what must have been the 23rd time as she dragged me up yet another set of stairs.

Not being in the best of moods, having somehow managed to crack open my skull before six in the morning, I grunted in reply. As a jolt worsened my throbbing headache, I wished the hospital wing had been placed at a more practical location.

"I hadn't expected you to give yourself a concussion. I wouldn't have… I mean… You were just so ridiculous, staring at that stupid feather. You couldn't really expect me to resist. Could you?" She chattered on, coming to an abrupt stop when she noticed my death glare. "Uh... right. Off to the hospital wing then."

When we arrived, the doors were closed and locked.

"Madam Pomfrey!" I yelled, pounding on the door.

We made a racket for close to ten minutes before a very sleepy-eyed and irritated nurse finally opened the door. Her hair was sticking up at rather odd angles and her robe was badly buttoned, she looked fit to rip off our heads.

"You had better have a very good reason for…" she sighed in resignation when she saw me. "Oh, it's you. Come in then. Now what have you managed to do to yourself at such an ungodly hour?"

"Concussion, ma'm," I said. Rebecca had the decency to look vaguely guilty

The nurse stomped off to the potions cabinet, muttering dire oaths about foolish Hufflepuffs under her breath.

"Here! Take this," she roughly pushed a potion into my hand. "Now get out. And pick-up the reading texts on the table. We will have your first lesson when you have memorised them."

I looked at the huge pile of books, expecting them to be about rudimentary magical healing. "But these are Muggle anatomy texts!"

"And very good texts they are. Think child! Did you imagine I'd let you fool around with magical healing without first understanding the basic underlying physical constitution and processes? Not on my watch! None of those quick fixes that give many the impression they know what they are doing while really making it worse. Magical healing is extremely complex. It is all too easy to exacerbate the problem. So many do. Then they come to us to fix them when it has gone catastrophically wrong! And when we can't repair the damage, we're incompetent aren't we! We're not trying hard enough! Healing is such a thankless profession! Always taking us for granted!"

We'd never seen madam Pomfrey rant like this. She was slamming the potions back in place, her face growing darker by the second. Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she grew more flustered. I caught a covert glance of unadulterated rage thrown to one of the curtained areas of the infirmary.

Nodding, we slowly stepped backwards, afraid to set her off, before turning and running as fast as we could all the way to the great hall.

"Well, that was traumatizing," I huffed dropping my tower of books on the ground.

"Are you sure you still want lessons with her?" gasped Rebecca, clutching the wall.

"Just promise to petrify me if I ever try to show up before at least nine o'clock in the morning."

"Deal," she breathed before starting to snicker. "Beware of the early morning monster! Mad mediwitch ahoy!

Chocking in laughter, I added: "Who do you think was in the infirmary?"

OooooooooooooooooooooO

"Let me get this strait. You've given up on the atrophied muscle approach to wandless magic; the whole staring at it for hours willing it to move. You're now trying to move the feather by not paying attention to it, keeping your mind occupied with meditation and standing on your head so that an unconscious portion of your brain will levitate the feather," said my Ravenclaw friend, whom I had dragged over to our house table for breakfast.

"Yup!" I replied happily. "Genius isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I'd call it bloody brilliant," said Mandy speculatively. "But it is an interesting approach, in a mentally insane kind of way."

I loved Mandy, I truly did. Instead of laughing her head off at the stupidity of my theories like Zacharias and Rebecca, she always listened to my explanations with an open mind. Not that she ever agreed with me, but all the same.

Noticing my tender tear-filled gaze, she threw up a hand in panic. "Sweet Merlin! It's far too early for a crying-hugging Hufflepuff scene. Take pity on the reserved Ravenclaw will you?"

I grinned, going back to my food. Without my friends, I don't know what I would have done. I'd been having a rather stressful week since the Aperio Vis Vires debacle. Instead of dying down, the ridicule that plagued me had not ceased to grow. Even the first year Puffs that I'd been helping out with Transfiguration had gently told me they'd found someone else. The entire school thought I was an idiot. There hadn't been so many people whispering about me since I'd blown off my nose in fourth year. I had added Snape to my list of people-to-get-back-at-though-I-probably-never-would. It was beginning to include a rather alarming number of Slytherins.

My plans of social rehabilitation by way of public duel and not yet come to fruition. Zabini was supposedly working on getting Sarah Fernley to insult me publicly. She was a half-blood seventh-year Slytherin, who was known to have fairly good duelling skills. My accomplice assured me I could beat her. Though that did not stop him from giving me encouraging little tidbits of advice: "Don't forget to use a lot of shields because you footwork is truly awful." "Remember, you won't be using any dark spells, you'll have to wait until she screws up to make your move."

In truth, I was starting to feel a tad guilty about the whole thing. It was my understanding that Fernley had a rough time of it. As a half-blood in Slytherin house, her duelling skills were the only thing keeping her from complete isolation. Publicly loosing to a sixth year Hufflepuff would destroy any of the respect she had earned from her house-mates. Despite Zabini's claims, I highly doubted she would just let that go. Besides, she had kindly shown me the way to Potions class in my first year, I owed her.

"At least I'm not as stupid as that Hufflepuff," boomed the loud voice of Ronald Weasley. "Can you believe how weak she is? Practically a squib. Though that's hardly surprising, Puff's are just a bunch of cowardly duffers anyway." A few of the other boys guwaffed heartily.

The Hufflepuff table had gone quiet, as many paused in rage. Weasley was of that breed of Griffindork that constantly ridiculed our house. No one ever seemed to remember that Hufflepuff was second only to Ravenclaw in terms of class average.

Potter did not join in their merriment. His disapproving whisper could be heard: "Ron…"

The oaf ploughed on regardless. "Did you see her ugly face? Midgeon looked as if she was going to cry. Boohoo, I'm so pathetic." He mocked, grossly imitating my bewilderment.

I hated Ronald Weasley with a passion. Had hated him since he was particularly mean to me in fourth year. Quickly coming to a resolution, I turned in my seat and jabbed my wand at him, whispering: "Pulsus baro."

The fool's head was pushed down into his bowl of porridge.

"What?.. who.." he spluttered, his face covered in grime.

"Over here, Weasley!" I waved. "The pathetic Hufflepuff, remember?"

He snarled nastily, getting up and taking out his wand. He sent me the Furnuculus curse, which I easily deflected. It smashed into a pitcher of pumpkin juice, showering Lavender Brown and Pavarti Patil.

"You call me pathetic?" I snorted. "And that's the best you can do?" A gaggle of students had formed around us. Everyone wanted to watch. It wasn't everyday, a Hufflepuff was involved in a duel. Shouts of encouragement and insults were heard, as the students egged us on. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see McGonagall and Sprout trying to make their way through.

Looking humiliated, Weasley tried the stupefy curse, but he was so angered at this point, it came out pink instead of red. I sidestepped it, continually keeping my one sided shield up. A little precaution never hurt, I couldn't have borne loosing to the idiot.

I kept my face mildly amused, my movements calm and collected. This was a show after all.

"Petrificus totalus," I waved negligently.

He dived out of the way and into the path of my two other spells, cast in quick succession. They were elegant in their simplicity. A cheering charm strong enough to cause manic-like symptoms and one of my own invention, a mild susceptibility spell, unlike the imperio curse in that the victim would not do anything he didn't really want to do. They were both mind magics; as so many spells were in the wizarding world. Obliviation, legimency, the imperio curse, mood changing charms, illusions such as the ceiling of the Great Hall, the silencio spell or the notice-me-not charm were all connected. They consisted in mind manipulation, instead of changing the physical world. Occlumency provided resistance against these spells, which was why I was so interested in learning it.

Weasley had paused in battle, a stupid ear-splitting smile on his face. Too happy to duel, his look was rather glazed.

"Why Ronald! It's a wonderful day!" I exclaimed in a mockery of camaderie, walking over and slapping his back as hard as I could.

He nodded blissfully.

"One should celebrate such a beautiful day! Right?" I spoke down to him as if he were four.

He nodded again.

"What better way to celebrate than by singing and dancing!" I clapped enthusiastically.

And he was off.

Professor McGonagall made it through the throng of laughing students first. "What happened?" she snapped.

"Oh, Weasley insulted me professor," I shrugged indifferently.

"What have you done to him?" she gasped in dismay, spotting her student.

"All I did was cheer him up a little and suggest he might like to celebrate. I'm afraid that," I smiled pointing to the prancing, singing Ron. "Is entirely Weasley."

"Fifteen points from Huffle.. " she paused as Weasley's wobbly tenor drifted over.

"… I'm brewing up a cauldron of hot strong luuuuuv…"

"I didn't even have to suggest that he might like to dress up for the occasion. He did that all on his own."

Indeed, the dork had soon decided to transfigure his robes a brilliant orange. It had gone wrong, his robes sprouting patches of feathers, which flew off every time he swirled.

Pride and honour were satisfied. I contentedly accepted my detention. It took four hours and the combined expertise of Madam Pomfrey, Professor Flitwick and Snape to return Ron Weasley to his normal state.

It had been a good morning.