Part III, April 1966: A Bloody Mess, and a Getting Off on the Wrong Foot [PG]
There is a distinct separation of students in the classroom, a borderline of north and south, green on left, red on the right, in the dungeon classroom where potions is held and the tension can almost be seen, it’s so thick. It’s an underlying tension, centuries old, created and maintained by people no longer sitting in this room, and these students are doing nothing to fight it. They just sit at their desks, chopping and mixing, stirring their simmering cauldrons and throwing nasty glances and devilish glares at the other half of the room from over their work as Professor Slughorn glides between the rows, cooing over them, giving advice where needed.
There is one pair that breaks the divide, the work of sheer chance and poor mathematics. Two people who were, by coincidence, odd men out, and thus are forced to work together, though both would rather see the other in bloody heap in the corner. Slughorn found it delightful, thinking that the weaknesses in one would strengthen the other, failing to recognize that Edgar Bones and Evan Rosier would much rather fail the class than work together.
Andromeda feels nothing but pity for Evan for having to work in such circumstances, but it was only chance that that Mulligan Travers had had such a bad reaction to that plant in Herbology earlier in the day. Professor Sprout said that she had never seen an arm swell like that before, but that was what Gann got for touching something he wasn’t supposed to.
Cecilia and Andromeda are working tirelessly over their potion, the last of in the ingredients having just been slid into the cauldron, taking slightly more time then they should’ve, but that’s how it always is, they like to talk as they work, exchange gossip and news. They are best friends after all.
Andromeda is slowly stirring the cauldron counterclockwise, Cecilia is counting the turns allowed as they are only supposed to use twenty-three strokes and in between counts regaling Andromeda with story of Alecto Carrows and the Cheering Charm gone awry.
“It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, seventeen,” Cecilia says, the memory still bringing tears to her eyes days later. Andromeda lets out a laugh at the though of frumpy and chronically scowling Alecto being extremely giddy. “She was practically, eighteen, bouncing she was so happy. Whoever, nineteen, Charmed her did a really crap job because I have never, twenty, seen a spell go so badly.”
The word twenty-one doesn’t have a chance to escape Cecilia’s pretty lips, because suddenly from behind them there is a loud crash and an angry shout.
“You blighter! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” comes a shout from the loud Gryffindor boy, Edgar, his face an angry red.
Andromeda and Cecilia whip their heads around at the same time, and the entire class seems to screech to a halt. Andromeda can do nothing, but stare as Evan reacts violently, as he almost always does to such things. The third member of their trio possesses a quiet sort of rage that no one ever sees until it boils over.
Right now it is boiling over.
Evan stands up straight, his sleeves rolled up, his pretty face twisted with anger, and Andromeda is more than slightly afraid and entirely grateful that she not on the receiving end of his temper. “What? Me? It’s you that are mucking about and getting everything wrong, you tosser,” Evan spits.
Andromeda takes the insight to notice that spilt potion is the wrong color, the product of lack of communication between partners and then suddenly, there is flurry of movement and a crunch and the color red becomes a central focus on Evan Rosier.
Edgar Bones has just slugged Evan, and from the sound of it, his nose is broken. Andromeda’s heart leaps into her throat and both she and Cecilia gasp at the same time, her hands flying to her mouth. Evan reacts faster than both of them, punching Edgar back and at that moment, all hell breaks loose.
Slughorn tries to intervene with a well meant, “Now boys, no use crying over spilt potion.” And a Gryffindor boy, whose name Andromeda doesn’t tries to take a whack at Evan, but Cecilia reacts faster than any of them, whipping out her wand and shrieking out the oddest curse Andromeda’s ever head. Andromeda covers her head to shield herself from any overshot.
She hits the ground, her knee socks preventing her from scraping her knees, as she begins to crawl under the desks and through the brawl towards Evan, who has been knocked unconscious by someone or something, heaven only knows what, Andromeda only knows that she has to get him out of there before some errant curse thrown by either one of their own or a Gryffindor winds up causing him to grow permanent fins or the like.
She finally reaches him, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, singeing the end of one of her dark braids, and gives his collar a good pull, dragging him back along the path whence she came. He’s bigger than her, and weighs more too, and since he’s knocked out, it’s all dead weight, but she’s scared, which causes adrenaline to surge through her veins and helps her to pull him along.
Finally making it back to where Cecilia stands on the edge of chaos, Andromeda reaches out and grabs the other girl’s ankle, which causes Cecilia jump a bit, to intent she was in her focus on the fight.
“Cecilia, we have to get out of here,” Andromeda hisses looking up from the ground, grey eyes wide, Evan’s head in her lap. Cecilia nods and ducks down to her knees between the desks, and takes Evan’s other arm and together the two of them drag their unconscious third unnoticed from the room.
Once in the hallway, they can still hear the din of the racket of the dying and messy fight still going on inside, but neither of them care-their one concern is to get Evan to the hospital wing and into Madame Pomfrey’s care.
Cecilia and Andromeda make the effort to stand with Evan between them, and begin to slowly drag his body down the hall and up the stairs to the hospital wing, which is luckily only on the first floor, because regardless of their adrenaline fueled strength, they are just two little girls and couldn’t carry him much further than that.
There is much huffing and puffing as they finally manage to heave and drag him all the way there, where Madame Pomfrey immediately springs into action, asking what happened, and demanding that they put him on the nearest bed, which both girls do with quick relief, grateful to rid of the weight, exhausted from the journey.
Andromeda is anxious, because even though she knows that Madame Pomfrey can cure almost anything, she’s afraid that she might not fix Evan because of the fact that he was hurt in a fight in class. This has not been a good day, and it does not going get better when no sooner than the matron has begun her fussy tutting and gathering of supplies than Professor McGonagall sweeps into the infirmary.
“Poppy, sorry to interrupt you while you are working, but Miss Avery, the Headmaster needs to see you, now,” McGonagall says, a cool and sharp shrewdness in her voice as she gives Cecilia a cold glance.
Cecilia freezes in her spot and gives Andromeda a look that Andromeda knows all too well. It’s one she’s seen far too often and it means that now, Cecilia is going to have to do some serious sweet-talking to explain what she was doing throwing hexes at a professor and students in potions. Andromeda suddenly feels very alone as Cecilia follows McGonagall out of the room.
“Miss Black, if you could, you’re presence isn’t needed here and Mr Rosier won’t be waking for a little while anyways. Now, shoo,” Madame Pomfrey says, ordering her out of the hospital wing, and Andromeda obeys, walking past the beds, seeing Travers still lying in a bed and she gives him a small wave and a smile before leaving.
Once in the corridors again, she doesn’t know quite what do with herself. She can’t go back to the common room, not with Evan in the hospital and Cecilia possibly getting herself expelled, and so she does what she can and just walks, wandering through the corridors, looking for some sort of respite from the uselessness she is feeling.
She didn’t even fight. She’s the worst Slytherin ever Sorted and an even worst friend. A silent tear courses down her cheek, and she fidgets with the end of one of her dark braids, feeling ashamed and hoping that Bella never finds out.
She promises herself that she’ll do better, that next time there is a fight (and there surely will be next time), she’ll be up there, throwing hexes and punches with the best of them and doing the family proud. She’ll get a month’s detention for certain, but it will be worth it.
She’s just about to brush away the tears that have fallen with her fears when suddenly she’s falling backwards, having collided with someone. She lets out an involuntary “oof” and barely manages to keep from falling right on her bum. She turns her head, eyes blazing looking for the perpetrator of such a crime.
“Watch where you are going, would you?” she spits, feeling a bit touchy having been caught in a vulnerable place and then she notices the color of the tie of the boy who has hit her.
Blue. Blue and gold. This boy with tousled hair and green eyes who is staring at her in a horrified and apologetic way is a Ravenclaw. She’s not sure if she can deal with this right now. Ever since that fateful day at the beginning of the year, she’s done all she could to avoid that house, to prove her right amongst her fellows and yet here is a Ravenclaw, having walked right into her on the worst day of her life thus far in a dark corridor so far from her common room.
He hasn’t even apologized for what he’s done yet.
She tosses one of her braids over her shoulder and stares at him, growing impatient with the day and says, “Well, aren’t you going to apologize for walking into me or has reading all those books forced you to lose all semblance of manners?”
She’s being slightly mean to this boy she doesn’t know, but she’s not sure if she cares. She doesn’t know him and will probably never see him again, and thus what does it matter if she acts more like Bella than she normally would. It’s her revenge on Ravenclaw.
He gapes at her, and blinks a few times, before touching his tie nervously and then he closes his mouth and when he opens it again, an odd, mildly squeaky, entirely stammered, “I’m sorry?” comes out.
She tilts her chin up defiantly at him and nods coolly as she’s seen Bella do a thousand times. “As you should be. Carry on.”
Then, because she can’t stand to be around this Ravenclaw anymore, constantly reminded of her almost failure to start and the bad day she’s been having and hoping that Cecilia has gotten out of Dumbledore’s office by now, she begins to start off down the corridor again.
“Wait,” she hears him call behind her, and she turns crisply on her heel, quickly losing her patience with this boy and this day, and she hopes it shows on her face, as she crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow.
“Yes?” she asks, irritation in her voice.
He doesn’t say anything, merely stares at her, confusion on his face and then he shakes his head, as if he’s just talked himself out of something and turns away.
She sighs and rolls her eyes. Foolish Ravenclaws, stupid boys, and all that ruckus, she thinks as she continues done the hall, strength and confidence in her walk, heading back to Slytherin, regained pride in herself, because of her display with this boy and her strength against her fear. If she was that good against one boy and the symbol of her greatest failure in a moment of weakness, then imagine later.
She’ll be totally unstoppable. Bellatrix will be so proud of her.
A cool, Black smile slides onto her face as she practically skips back to Slytherin, knowing that if anyone can talk their way out of this scrape, it can be Cecilia Avery with her angel’s face and Evan will be just fine.
Everything is going to be fine. Always fine.
It’s the end of April and Ted is sitting in the library as usual, his head bent over his books, studying for the supposedly hellish end of year exams that are months away when his best mate Edgar finds him, a split bloody lip and a nasty purplish bruise blossoming around his left eye.
The essay on levitation Charms that Ted has been writing suddenly sports a giant ink blot after he takes one good look at Edgar’s face and all he can do is gape, with his inked quill to parchment. He’s entirely grateful that Benjy Fenwick, his dorm mate and usual study partner is absent on this occasion, because he is positive that no matter how nice and tactful Benjy is, that would not stop him from making a crack about how his expression now resembles that of a dead fish.
Edgar sits down next to Ted at the table, an angry and determined look on his face and all he says is, “Bloody Slytherin bastards.”
Those three words explain everything.
He picks his quill up from the paper and sets it off to the side, moving his homework as well, knowing that he won’t be working on it so long as Edgar has a story to tell.
“What happened now?” he asks, cautiously. Fights involving Slytherins and Gryffindors are nothing new, they’ve been happening since the school began and Ted is hardly surprised that his outspoken friend gets caught up in them. He just does his duty as a Ravenclaw and watches, taking sides when he needs to and it’s always on the side of Gryffindor, as Slytherins just look down on him for simply existing.
Edgar grins despite the wounds on his, an expression that immediately turns to a grimace due to his sore face and he runs his hand eagerly through his straw colored hair, making it stand on end. Ted winces in sympathy, knowing that the unexamined cuts have to hurt and notices that Edgar’s knuckles are bruised and cut as well. This was a larger fight than normal, that’s for certain.
Ted gives Edgar a once over, craning his neck to make sure that he didn’t miss anything in his previous assessment of his best mate’s wounds and sure of enough he did. There is a patch of squirrel fur, red and fuzzy, sprouting from the back of Edgar’s neck and Edgar reaches up and scratches it, which causes Ted to raise an eyebrow and Edgar to just shrug.
Edgar clears his throat, puffing up a bit, and rubbing his bruised knuckles gently against his sweater. “Well, I broke Evan Rosier’s nose,” he says, pride in his voice.
Ted’s eyes widen and he gasps slightly. “You what?”
“Yep, made a nice crack too. ‘Twas a thing of real beauty, it was. Blood everywhere. Then he hit me back. That’s when things got bad,” Edgar tells him, eyes glittering nostalgically or possibly from a concussion, Ted’s pretty sure it could be either at this point.
“Maybe you should see Madame Pomfrey. Get that stuff looked at,” Ted says, eyeing the squirrel fur again warily.
Ed’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. Edgar does not care for the nurse on bit. Doesn’t trust her. Ted thinks that he’s being ridiculous for a boy who always in need of her.
“No, I don’t want to.”
“You’re going or else I’m telling Mia,” Ted says, calmly, standing up and starting to put his things in his bag to take with him. He knows that invoking Edgar’s sister always works like a charm in things like this. She knows just how to threaten him to get him to do anything.
“Fine. I’ll go.”
Ted smiles, taking Ed’s elbow, the only part that seems uninjured. “I knew you’d see it my way. Come on, we’d better go before it gets too crowded. You can tell me the rest of it on the way.”
Edgar grumbles in response, but shuffles his feet and follows, eager to tell his tale, which he does in a loud boisterous voice as soon as they are out of the library.
It doesn’t finish until they are in the hospital wing and Ted is both impressed and horrified by the events in the Gryffindor and Slytherin Potions class. He would never in a million years have thought to hex a professor and he can’t believe that someone did, but isn’t surprised due to what he’s seen and the stories he’s heard that it was a Slytherin.
Madame Pomfrey is on them the instant they step foot in the infirmary. “Another, eh?” she says, giving Edgar the once over and making a face at the fur on his neck. “The blood and bruises are nothing, but the fur, that’s another matter. On to a bed for you, Mr Bones, preferably, one away from the Slytherins.”
She turns to Ted. “You can leave,” she tells him and Ted is not going to fight her, because she more than just a little bit reminds him of his mother on the rampage.
“Bye Ed,” he says.
“Bye Ted,” Edgar replies from the bed, misery in his voice as he squirms and tries to get up and follow him when he sees the imposing jar in the matron’s hands and Madame Pomfrey scolds him.
Ted is walking through the hallway, back to the Ravenclaw common room, secure in the knowledge that Edgar is safe in Madame Pomfrey’s hands, even if Edgar did squirm and try to run away before she even did anything.
He feels bad about it all, that Edgar is so noble and stands up for his convictions, that Edgar has convictions at all, when he never really does anything but study and worry that he’s not going to be allowed to come back here next year. He knows that’s a foolish thought, he’s got some of the best grades out there, his only truly dismal ones being Potions and History of Magic, but that’s the same for a lot of people, so he doesn’t feel a vast amount of shame in either of those facts.
He’d miss this place if he were to leave it. This is a fact he knows to be true in the depth of his heart. He belongs here, even if there is an entire house of students who say that he doesn’t.
His shoulder suddenly collides with something both hard and soft at the same time and he realizes at that moment that he hasn’t been paying much attention to the world around him, something that he is often accused of in more than a few of his classes.
He stumbles back, blinking rapidly and trying to gain a grasp on the situation before it blows up in his face and he winds up like Edgar. Oh god, he hopes that he doesn’t wind up like Edgar.
Luckily, this is just one girl. But he processes, that the jet-black hair and cool grey eyes are far too familiar to belong to a stranger. Well, she is a stranger, but he knows her.
And he suddenly wishes he could be anywhere but right there at that moment.
“Watch where you are going, would you?” she spits, her tone cool, practically a sneer on her face as she dusts off her skirt and looks up at his face.
He can’t even sputter a reply. She tosses on of her dark braids over her shoulder and looks down at him, impressive given the fact that she is smaller than he is.
He looks at her face, and finds it and her both familiar and pretty, if more than just a bit pretty, but he can’t quite place where he’s seen it before, and he notices that there are streaks of tears on her face, as if she’s been crying and he feels bad and wants to know why and if there is anything he can do.
“Well, aren’t you going to apologize for walking into me or has reading all those books forced you to lose all semblance of manners?” she asks, breaking his reverie and he gapes at her, not knowing what do or say, feeling bad for not saying earlier and feeling awkward and uncomfortable in his own shoes and skin.
This girl scares him and fascinates him, and he closes his mouth and opens it, gaining the courage to say something and swallowing the spit in his dry mouth, and manages to stammer out something that sounds more like a question than an actual apology.
“I’m sorry?”
She seems to accept this, because she tilts her chin up towards him and nod slightly. “As you should be. Carry on.”
Then, as if this exchange was nothing, not odd or uncomfortable or completely out of the blue and not a two-way street, she begins to walk away, with complete and utter confidence, the likes of which Ted cannot even begin to fathom let alone possess.
Then, not know what has come over him, just knowing that he can’t let her walk away without at least knowing if she’s all right, because she was crying alone in the dark corridor he calls out after her.
“Wait.”
She turns on her heel, arms crossed, looking more than a bit irritated and scary and still looking down on him, and he feels stupid, despite his house and grades and doesn’t dare ask her anything.
“Yes?” she asks, coolly.
He stares her, not knowing what, if anything he could say or ask one such as her to comfort her for something he doesn’t know. So he shakes his head and turns away. He was a fool for even bother to think he could.
He hears her walk away, and continues himself back to the Ravenclaw common room, not knowing what to make of that exchange, but realizing that in the grand scheme of things it hardly matters at all.
He’s got things to do, like a Charms test to study for and Benjy has got to hear about this fight, if only because Benjy would get great amounts of amusement out of it, as always.
It’s been an odd day, to say the least and Ted realized that that was the first time; someone who was smaller than him can still look down him, even if it doesn’t make sense.
