Dani walked with her broom in one hand towards the quidditch pitch. As was custom on the first day back at Hogwarts, the Gryddindor quidditch team was allowed to practice at lunch. She loved this as being on a broom was one of her favourite things to do.
"Hey, Dani! Hurry up!" Oliver called as he flew past her on his broom. Dani laughed and quickly mounted her own, zooming up to join the rest of her team in the sky.
She was a chaser, so she hurriedly flew straight to the other team member holding the quaffle and snatched it away from them triumphantly. She flew towards the goal hoops quickly and then threw the quaffle with all her might. It sailed through the middle hoop and she whooped, flying back to high-five Oliver.
"Come on guys, let's get more serious!" Oliver shouted. He glanced over to see one of the team wrestling with a bludger on the ground and grinned to himself.
"How much more serious can we get?" Dani called. Oliver laughed back and flew over to the goal hoops, being Keeper.
Dani raced around on her broom, stealing the quaffle every moment she got and even getting it past Oliver a few times. She was having so much fun.
"Watch out!" One of the others on her team, a beater, flew close to her and swung their bat. Dani watched as the bludger that had been heading for her sailed off in the other direction.
"That was close!" she commented, giggling.
"Dani! Dani, move!" Oliver's voice reached her from where he was and she turned just in time to see another bludger heading for her. She screamed and tried to dodge it, but it smashed right into her ribs and took her off her broom, hurtling towards the ground.
However, the hard impact with the ground that she had been expecting did not come. Instead, when she looked around dizzily to see what had happened, she saw that she was now in the arms of Draco Malfoy.
Again.
"Monroe? Do you always randomly fall from the sky?" he asked, seemingly disgusted.
"Only on weekdays." she murmured, her eyes quickly falling closed again. Malfoy frowned, and was then suddenly surrounded by the rest of the Gryffindor quidditch team.
He felt strangely vulnerable and outnumbered.
"Is she okay? We've got to get her to the hospital wing!" Oliver said, stepping forward.
"What happened?" Malfoy asked.
"If you'd been watching you would've seen! She got smashed by a bludger, that's what happened!" Oliver snapped.
"Well here, you take her." Malfoy said, offering Dani to him.
"No, you should carry her. If we move her too much she could get hurt even more." Oliver said, shaking his head.
"You're joking." Malfoy said, staring at Oliver in disbelief.
"I'm not. Now come on." Oliver and the rest of the team began marching Malfoy towards the hospital wing. It was unbelievably strange. If anyone had been watching they probably would have been puzzled by it for weeks. Who'd ever thought of Draco Malfoy helping out Gryffindor's anyway? Truth be told, why didn't he just drop Dani on the ground and storm off?
He himself didn't even know why he was doing this, but they arrived at the hospital wing soon enough and Madame Pomfrey quickly set about healing Dani. Altogether it probably only took about ten minutes.
"Well, that wasn't very fun." Dani mumbled as she stood up again and stretched. She looked around and smiled to see her entire team in the room. "Aww, you guys all came to see if I'd be alright?" she teased.
"Actually, we sort of all came to make sure Malfoy didn't kill you on the way here." Oliver said, grinning.
"Oh yeah. Did he run off already?" Dani asked, glancing around the room.
"As soon as he put you down he left." Oliver said.
"Good." Dani said, nodding slowly. "He creeps me out."
"Come on! Let's go keep playing now that you're better!" George piped up, an eager grin on his face.
"Yeah, let's go!" Fred agreed.
Dani giggled and took off out the door, racing her team mates back to the quidditch pitch to continue playing their game.
That night, Dani headed down to the dungeons for her detention. She thought it was hilariously cliché that detention was held in the dungeon. It truly made her feel a bit like a prisoner at times. What would the Slytherins feel like? Having their common room in the dungeons.
She walked into the room and immediately saw Malfoy sitting at one of the chairs. Putting her nose in the air, she stalked right past him and went to sit at a table a fair distance from him. As she went by, she heard him scoff quietly.
Professor Snape was already up the front with a list of names of who was on detention and Dani watched him cross off two before putting the list away. She glanced around the room and frowned. Were they the only ones on detention? Surely not...
"Mr Malfoy, Miss Monroe," Snape drawled, leaning his hands on the desk in front of him. "I want you both to clean this entire room so that it shines. You will not be allowed to use any magic at all."
Malfoy glanced over his shoulder at Dani and she poked her tongue out at him before she could stop herself. She saw him snigger before turning back to face the front.
"The cleaning materials you will be using are here," Snape pointed to some rags and disinfectant on the desk. "You do not leave until the job is done."
Dani let out a loud sigh, but stood and made her way to the front anyway. She grabbed one of the rags, squirted it with some disinfectant and walked over to start cleaning one of the shelves. She knew when Malfoy rose to begin cleaning as well because she could hear the grumbled complaints he was making.
Professor Snape shuffled through some papers on his desk and frowned, obviously not finding what he was looking for. With a sigh, he stood and headed for the door.
"Do not leave. If you do, I will know."
Dani watched as he left and blinked. Then she grinned.
"If you tell on me I'll kick your butt." Dani said as she dropped her cleaning materials and ran to the front of the room to look through the drawers in the desk.
"What are you doing?" Malfoy asked, leaning against the wall and raising one eyebrow.
"Exploring." Dani said simply. "Ah-ha!" She pulled something from the drawer and held it up. It was a necklace.
"Wow. You've discovered treasure." Malfoy said in a monotonous tone.
"Oh, get off my back. It's pretty!" Dani said.
"It's boring." Malfoy murmured, rolling his eyes.
"Well if you can find anything more interesting in this room than this, by all means let me know!" Dani shot back.
"Fine!" Malfoy pushed away from the wall and walked over to a shelf, searching through the contents placed there.
"It's gorgeous..." Dani mumbled as she ran a finger over the gem in the centre of the pendant.
"Gosh, you sound like you're in love or something." Malfoy commented, shaking his head.
"Like you'd know how I sound when I'm in love!" Dani snapped. "Honestly, you- oh my gosh I feel sick." Dani squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from him, buckling over slightly.
Unknown to her, Malfoy's eyes widened at exactly the same moment as he also experienced an intense feeling of sickness.
"Whoa. That was weird." Dani straightened again, feeling fine once more. She turned to look at Malfoy and then hurriedly slammed the drawer shut and literally leapt over the desk as she had heard the door opening and did not want to get caught.
"Mr... Malfoy? Miss Monroe?"
Professor Snape stood in the doorway, a frown on his face as he looked from one to the other.
"What's going on?" came a voice from behind him.
"Uh, Genevieve I think we'll schedule your detention for another night." Snape said, turning to the girl who stood behind him.
"Why? What's going on?" she asked.
Dani stared at the girl with wide eyes. Her hair was the exact same colour as Malfoy's. Was she a first year? She looked too old.
"Ever seen her before?" Dani whispered across to Malfoy. He shook his head.
"Never."
"Genevieve, please leave. You will serve your detention later." Snape said, firmer now than before.
A thud sounded in the room and everyone looked towards one of the cupboards in confusion. Dani's heart-rate sped up. Was there some kind of deadly monster being locked in there? Was it going to escape? Were they all going to die?
"Genevieve if you do not leave in-"
"Okay! I'm going!" The girl glanced at Dani and Malfoy again, lingering.
"You must've seen her somewhere before!" Dani hissed.
"Well I haven't! What about you? Don't you know everything?"
Dani would have replied with a witty comeback, but she became pre-occupied with holding a hand over her mouth and trying not to throw up. As quickly as the feeling had come, it was gone again.
"Alright this is getting annoying." Dani muttered. She looked up and her eyes widened in shock and she took a step back.
"Where are-"
"Where did they go?" Dani asked loudly. "They were right there! Are they dead?"
"Oh for goodness sake, you're such a drama queen!" Malfoy groaned. "Could you for a minute act like a person with a brain?"
"Malfoy! I don't think you quite understand the situation! Professor Snape and the blonde girl have disappeared! Their lives could be in danger!" Dani yelled.
"Monroe..."
"Yeah, I know. They probably just walked out while I had my eyes closed, didn't they?" Dani asked.
"Well, no, but that doesn't mean you have to go all psycho!" Malfoy winced slightly, as if expecting Dani to start screaming again because of what he'd said.
"Oh come on. You got it exactly right! I'm a drama queen, so relax." Dani rolled her eyes.
"Right." Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
The door opened and Professor Snape walked in again, going over to his desk and placing some papers that he had brought with him down. He looked up at the two of them and folded his arms.
"Oh! Whoops." Dani hurriedly over to continue cleaning, slipping the necklace inconspicuously into her pocket. Malfoy sighed and also went to keep cleaning.
After the room had been thoroughly cleaned and Dani had found out that there was no monster in the cupboard and only a lot of empty space, they were allowed to go back to their common rooms.
"Dani!" Jackie ran over to her and hugged her. "That was the longest detention ever recorded in the history of long detentions!" Bri laughed at her over-exaggeration.
"I'm glad you missed me." Dani chuckled. "Anyway, I'm tired. C'mon." Dani headed off towards the stairs leading to the girls dorms and Jackie followed along behind. Is she holding her moose again?
"Uh, I'll be there in a minute." Bri said, walking to the lounge in front of the fireplace.
"Is she alright?" Dani whispered to Jackie.
"She's fine. I think she's waiting for someone." Jackie whispered back. Dani's mouth fell open and she wriggled her eyebrows at Jackie.
"We're getting all the goss' tomorrow!" she hissed, running up the stairs quickly. Jackie giggled and ran after her.