Dear Diary (part 4a)
Nine-forty-seven p.m.
Sorting as equally uneventful as our arrival. A fine group of young lads and ladies, Dumbledore said. Some cracking candidates for next year’s Quidditch roster, Harry said. Snotty little titches, Ron said.
He’s not wrong, actually, their faces are essentially coated in the stuff. Where in the name of France have they been keeping it all?
Dumbledore’s welcome-back speech given. New DADA master introduced: one C. M. Youngblood, apparently dreadful late in arriving, and as of yet nowhere to be seen.
Polite applause all round. Nothing but the usual rigmarole.
Pulled aside for “brief prefect conference” in the middle of the post-Sorting feast. Slightly put out, because now all the treacle would be gone.
All four Heads of House present. Pleasantries exchanged. Progress reports of summer homework given. Cool stares stared.
Snape’s feelings towards me have not changed one whit over the summer months, I see; I still claim he is secretly petitioning to have me deported, but who will listen?
Discussed usual expectations as peer-leaders of our school (patrol hallways, curb rule-breaking, unstick first years from ceiling, etc.) and given this term’s dormitory passwords. The Fat Lady’s? ‘Yaffleblart’.
Am severely troubled. Is it possible for a painting to be mentally unbalanced?
Worst fears were also confirmed, just to make a real evening of it:
“Oh, and Mr Malfoy, Miss Granger - a moment, please,” Professor McGonagall finished, gesturing with two fingers. Not those two fingers, obviously.
“The password to the head dormitory is ‘iris root’,” she told us in a low tone, while Malfoy and myself contrived to stand as far apart from one another as was physically possible without actually being in separate rooms. I was rather having to strain to hear her.
“Meet in the Entrance Hall at eleven p.m. after your patrolling duties,” she went on, shuffling her papers into order and apparently choosing not to notice that neither of us would get within ten feet of her. “Mr Filch will be waiting to show you to the entrance.”
That gave me pause. I did not want to find myself anywhere near the Entrance Hall if Malfoy was going to be there.
I sidled up to McGonagall as the rest of the prefects were filing back out into the Great Hall - just in time for pudding, too, if the sheer level of noise coming through the door was any indication. Theirs was a genuinely impressive volume, one that could only ever be achieved by twenty-eight eleven-year-olds on a sugar high.
I muttered to her out of the corner of my mouth, “A word, Professor?”
“What is it, Miss Granger?”
I donned my best ‘Shame-on-you’ face.
“Is it really necessary for our sweet old Mr Filch to take us to the dormitory? He must be so dreadfully busy with… with the floors and the… walls. I mean, we’ve been at this school for nearly seven years now, I doubt if I won’t be able to find the entrance myself with just a bit of verbal direction.”
McGonagall’s eyebrows beetled suspiciously. Damn! I knew it was going too far, implying that our school caretaker actually took care of anything.
“It is not so easy to find as you presume, Miss Granger, and that is the main rationale behind its location. You have the first years’ timetables?”
I nodded mutely, heart sinking.
“Then you may join your classmates for the remainder of the feast and I shall see you in lessons tomorrow,” McGonagall said dismissively.
I blinked, then looked down at the sheaf of papers in my hand, and I blinked at them too. Had I just been brushed off?
Professors never brush me off!
“What did I do to you people?” I demanded feebly, but a bewildered McGonagall was saved from answering when the door swung open without warning.
The noise poured in again as an unfamiliar woman stepped inside, then cut off once more when she shut the door behind her, shaking rain off her cloak.
“Ah, yes,” McGonagall commented in a business-like tone, clearly recognising the visitor, and gestured a second time towards the door. “Miss Granger? Tomorrow?” she repeated pointedly.
Feeling wounded to the deepest depths of my core, I stalked out of the room.
~*~
Eleven-oh-two p.m.
Truly amaze self sometimes. Fantasize about running away and marrying self sometimes.
Well? They almost let Aberforth Dumbledore marry that goat, why not someone with multiple-personality disorder?
Managed all of the following in under thirty-seven minutes:
· herded goats - er, I mean first-years up to Gryffindor Tower (without losing even a single one on the way, I’ll add, though a rogue moving-staircase nearly spoiled my perfect record)
· pointed out helpful landmarks en route, so first years will be able to find their way back down for breakfast tomorrow morning
· organized buddy system for when above-mentioned plan inevitably fudges
· sorted out trunks having been put on wrong floor
· sent owls home for students who left toothbrushes/contact lens cases/teddy bears behind
· located lost cat
· mopped up said cat’s wee from carpet
· circumvented murder attempt when Crookshanks mistook this for territory claim
After all of which, I still had time to:
· round up on-duty prefects for quick race through upper floor corridors
· send to bed any post-Feast revellers still straggling behind
· suss out of broom cupboards any couples celebrating their reunion in rather exploratory ways
· give chase to anyone unwilling to accept detention slips graciously
Which made me really, really out of breath, sort of impressed at some people’s stamina, and only two minutes late to meet Filch in the Entrance Hall at eleven.
If I hadn’t been so upset that the dreaded Inevitable Moment had finally arrived, I would have found a spare moment to pat myself on the back. As it were…
“Our Saint Granger - tardy!” Filch deplored with an awful grin, as I came to a panting halt a few feet away from where he and Malfoy stood waiting.
“Sorry,” I puffed, bending double and adding breathlessly in Malfoy’s direction, “Your mate Zabini is a lot quicker on his feet than I remember. Does he do marathons for fun or something?”
~*~
Eleven-oh-seven p.m.
Why are raving old men so horrid? There must be a sort of invisible inner switch that trips once they reach a certain age, and then they wake up one morning, completely off their nut and thinking, “Jolly good day for harassing school-age girls and coughing on people.”
Filch didn’t seem willing to let my minor tardiness go at an apology. He continued to lay into me for several minutes more, saying wasn’t I a cheeky moral avatar, and how dreadful and shocking it was that a so-called paragon of integrity could comport themselves with such hypocritical intent.
Well. I think his exact words were, “Nobody’s shite stinks any more than it should do, heh-heh-heh!” but I don’t feel comfortable with Argus Filch theorising about my bowel movements, and have chosen to interpret. Loosely.
Eventually Malfoy - though he must have been enjoying the show immensely - seemed to lose all patience with standing out in the draughty Entrance Hall and pointed out that Filch was only delaying us further by harping on about it.
I cast him a narrow look. Rush things along a bit, why didn’t he? If it meant getting to delay the inevitable, even for one more night, I would have gladly stood here arguing about poo ‘til kingdom come - having already resigned myself to the fact that this was, unfortunately, a lost cause any way you looked at it.
Because - since I am apparently a masochist and thus love inflicting as much misery upon myself as I can fit in a single evening - I had already taken the trouble of dashing to pieces my last, meagre scrap of hope:
While in the Tower sorting out the first years, I nipped upstairs to the girls dorm - just to depress myself further, and probably make myself late to meet Filch in the process. I found, as I had hoped I wouldn’t, that there were only two beds left on the seventh-years’ floor: the empty space of carpet where my old four-poster had once stood now boasted a trouser press, for some reason.
‘The Corby Executive’ model, according to the tiny gold lettering on the side. It’s got its own collapsible ironing board, and a compartment for extra starch. I suppose that’s something.
Even so, I have been replaced. By a laundry implement.
This is almost worse than the time I came home for Christmas hols to find my parents had turned my bedroom into a micro-brewery. They’d “needed the dead space,” apparently, to accommodate their first attempts at homemade lager. I still haven’t got the smell of hops completely out of the wallpaper.
“Oi, Granger,” Malfoy called from the other end of the hall, where he and Filch were already disappearing around a corner. “Walk a lot, do you?”
Okay, so this was worse. Much worse.
I ran to catch them up, cursing enthusiastically under my breath.
~*~