"And here comes the last member of the team—Albus Potter!"
Scorpius turned to grin at the fellow classmate when he saw her standing beside him. The smile dropped from his lips quickly as though gravity itself had acted upon it. He gave her a curt nod and turned away. "Albus, no hard feelings about the match?"
"Of course not," Albus grinned as he sat down across from him. "It was a pity fall, Scorp."
"Is that so?"
"Oh, you think you could've actually thrown me off my broom on your own?"
"That's what surprised me so much," Scorpius replied, sarcasm hanging thick on his words. "The
famous Harry Potter's son being thrown off his broom by a mere Seeker? A measley little Slytherin?"
"Like I said, pity fall. Always looking out for the reputation of my rivals."
"At least you've got some talent," Patrick Parkinson grinned at Scorpius's side. "Weasley, on the other hand, was so terrible that I heard he didn't make it past first rounds of try-outs!"
Rose looked up sharply but bit her tongue to keep herself from saying anything. They were talking not about her, but her brother who had tried out for the Quidditch team early this year. He had been good--better than good. The Gryffindor captain, Rosalind Freeman, had begged him to fly for the team as a Chaser. He had turned it down though. He had tried out because Ginny had bothered him all summer, but he was not much for the 'popularity' games.
Albus laughed, "Hugo would fly circles around you and win the game before you even get all the way up in the air, Pat."
"Sounds like a challenge!" Pat sneered.
"Whoo-hoo--how about it? Hugo, Albus, Rose, and Lily against Scorpius, Pat, Gwen, and Ralph?"
"Oh, I don't play," Rose replied quickly.
"Scared, Weasley?" Scorpius said so softly that few people caught it. Rose gritted her teeth, looking at him, but he didn't match her gaze. Instead, he continued his work on his pumpkin soup as though nothing was happening around him. She felt like punching the arrogance right out of his smug face, but that would serve no purpose... other than relieving her intense hatred for him.
"Unlike some people, I know how to pick my battles, Malfoy," Rose replied calmly, referring to their first meeting at the entrance to Hogwarts over six years ago. "My brother got the Weasley genes for flying, but I'm afraid I got the short end of the stick. I'll be sure to cheer him on as he beats you, though, don't worry."
He did look up then, his silver eyes completely unreadable. She was no coward. She didn't look away. She sensed the volume of the conversations around them drop by at least three levels as everyone held their breath, waiting for the next move.
"Rose!"
Like a whip-crack, the tension was sliced by the single word. Scorpius turned back with a smile to the girl he had been conversing with before Albus and Rose had arrived and conversations resumed at their fullest capacity. Rose turned to the girl who had just called out her name from further down the table. She smiled and walked over to her.
"I believe you just saved Hogwarts from The Third Wizarding War, Carla."
Rose frowned at her best friend of four years, Jamie, as she seated herself in front of her. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Honey, the moment you walked in this room and towards the Slytherin table, every eye was following you. If Carla hadn't called out your name—" Jamie didn't bother to finish the sentence. She simply dug into her steamed carrots and let Rose roll her eyes at her.
"Nothing was going to happen. Malfoy doesn't even have the backbone to win a Quidditch match fairly."
"Mm-hmm," Jamie drawled out in her sharp American accent--one of the many characteristics about her that seemed to draw guys in like bees to honey.
"I don't know about the Quidditch match, but Scorp looked just about ready to challenge you to a duel, Rose," Carla said matter-of-factly, helping herself to the third portion of strawberry cheesecake. She stuffed it into her mouth and turned to Rose, looking slightly like a cow as she chewed it with her large black eyes wide open.
I'D LIKE TO SEE HIM TRY, Rose though. "Anyways, what did you call me over for?"
"Other than the obvious reason," Carla mumbled. She gulped down her food with a swig of juice and turned back to Rose. "I was talking to Professor Scamander about our lecture on Magical Creatures of the Ancient West and he gave me this amazing Muggle book about all these creation myths of the tribes that resided there centuries ago. I mean, most of their myths are considered pure fantasy, right? But according to Professor Scamander, some of these creatures actually did exist long long long long long time back!"
"It's not about existing or not existing, Carla," Rose replied, feeling her pulse quicken with excitement at the topic of the conversation. "People believe things so much sometimes that whether something existed or not, they twist their situations to make it exist."
"No, Rose, these things actually did exist. Just look—" She reached for her backpack at her feet and pulled out several loose sheets of parchment. "An exerpt from the bible that talks about dragons—creatures we know exist—and about another creature that can crush dragons beneath its foot! Crush it! And look at this. It's out of this one autobiography of the grandson of a chief of a Native American tribe—he talks about his clan believing in unicorns and even more powerful creatures… like the Re'em."
Rose snorted in a very unlady-like manner. "The Re'em is a mythological creature."
"Rose," Jamie interrupted, leaning forward. "Muggles don't believe—no, they are positive—that dragons and unicorns don't exist but we study them like they study evolution in their classrooms. Why can't you believe that something might exist that we don't think does? Like… I don't know, pixies."
Rose opened her mouth to reiterate and stopped. "What did you say?"
Jamie looked at Carla, then back at Rose. "Pixies…? Why, did I say something wrong?"
"You don't believe in Pixies?" Rose asked, knowing it was a joke. "Good one."
"Wait, you do?" Jamie laughed, looking as though she just found out her grandmother still believes in Santa Clause. "Pixies don't exist, Rose."
"Yeah, very funny—"
"What's so funny about it?" Carla piped up, also looking at Rose as though she was crazy.
"I see the point you're making," Jamie chuckled. "Just like I was saying—pixies can exist, we just don't know about them yet."
"Pixies were one of the first Magical creatures we studied at Hogwarts—third lecture of the second year of Care of Magical Creatures."
"Wouldn't that be amazing!" Jamie sighed, returning her attention to her pudding.
"Jamie," Rose scoffed. She turned to Carla whose expression did not comfort her all that much over Jamie's. "Okay, you know what, you guys? If you want to continue being childish and playing this stupid joke on me, go ahead. I'd rather eat dinner and just head back to the library—lots of work to do. Toodles." She did not catch the bewildered looks on her friends' faces as she turned around and walked back to her previous spot. She dropped back into her chair and was about to reach for some food when a thought struck her. She reached down for her backpack at her feet, pulled out her Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures, and flipped to the index. Her fingers trailed down the list of names. Nundu, Occamy, Phoenix, Plimpy, Pogrebin… she blinked and read the list again. No 'pixie'.
She flipped through the pages to between the chapters on the Phoenix and the Plimpy. Page 289 was the last one on the Phoenix, then thirteen blank pages after which the Plimpy began on page 302.
"Wha--?" She let her fingers trail over the empty pages. Where did the Pixie entry go? Then, as she watched, the blank pages disappeared completely from beneath her fingers, just disintegrating into invisible dust. Page 289—Phoenix. Page 290—Plimpy.
"Rose. Rose!"
She snapped out of the daze and looked up at Emanuel Swanston, a sixth year Slytherin who had liked Rose for over two years now and was nervously holding out a platter of cheesecake for her. "W-Would you like some?"
She smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes. "N-No thank you, I'm kind of full. Albus—" She turned to see the entire table staring at her silently. She cleared her throat, her heart hammering inside her chest. "I-I'll be in the library," she whispered to him. Without looking at another face, she grabbed her backpack, clutched the Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures to her chest, and practically ran out of the dining hall.
"Pixie," she whispered the word to herself over and over all the way up the stairs and down the corridors to the library. She was afraid that if she did not repeat it to herself, she would forget it. "Pixie… pixie…"
She ran past the Mr. Trench who was snoring rather loudly at the front desk, and into the Magical Creatures section of the library. She made her way to section P and searched—"Pixie, pixie, pixie…" Nothing. Gritting her teeth, she reached for encyclopedia after another. No entries of pixies.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" She said not too quietly.
"Hey, keep it down," a student whispered around the corner.
Rose's palms were sweaty. She gulped as her throat suddenly felt dry as though she had eaten a palmful of sand. She rounded the corner and found the young girl—perhaps a second year—sitting at a table next to the window.
"Have you studied the pixie yet in your Care of Magical Creatures class?"
"The what?"
No, no, no… this couldn't be happening. "The pixie… little blue creature with wings—likes pranking people?"
"I don't what you're talking about," the girl replied rather snootily. She looked Rose up and down, rolled her eyes, and returned to her book. Rose remained frozen to the spot for quite some time, then slowly went back to the table where she had spread over fifteen books in search of any mention of a pixie. Her own Encyclopedia lay in the middle, sprawled open to page 289 and 290. Rose touched the pages again and closed her eyes.
Among some of the most pesty creatures known on the planet are the pixie… the words were imprinted into her mind as clearly as Jamie's face telling her she honestly did not think Pixies existed. Chewing the inside of her lip, she pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote 'Pixies' in large block letters on it. "You guys exist," she told the parchment. "So where the hell did you go?"