Dear Diary (part 4b)
Eleven-seventeen p.m.
How in the name of Buddha’s loincloth did I ever manage to accumulate so much bad karma? I can’t recall running puppies over on my bicycle, eating small children for breakfast, setting fire to the neighbours’ shrubbery…
Maybe I really do have multiple personalities. Maybe they get to go round having all the naughty fun and Hermione Granger is the one that’s got to pay for all the others’ evil doings?
I wonder what their names are…
Filch stopped his lurching progress through the corridors quite suddenly, forcing Malfoy to draw up short ahead of me. I failed to notice this in time, and walked face-first into his back instead.
“Owbuggerfuck!”
Malfoy threw me a disdainful look over his shoulder.
“Honestly, Granger, it’s not hard,” he insisted. “You just put one foot in front of the other until you’ve got where you want to go, and then you stop. The trick is to not fall over during. Look, I’ll show you - ”
“This is it,” Filch interrupted, gesturing to the door in front of us with a grubby brass plaque on it marked ‘BROOM CUPBOARD #57.’
“What?” I stared at him through watering eyes, my fingertips pressing on the bridge of my nose to keep it from falling off.
“What?” Malfoy echoed, his smirk sliding away in his confusion.
“I said, this door here’s yours,” Filch repeated, grin widening and eyes narrowing accordingly. “Pleasant night,” he added, before shambling off through a nearby hidden passageway.
“But it says ‘broom cupboard fifty-seven’,” I murmured to no one in particular, blinking disbelievingly.
“Heavens, it’s a relief you can read or we might have stood out here all night,” Malfoy remarked, but his usual rancour was lacking. Instead he was studying the door in interest, running his fingers over the hinges and along the seam between door and frame.
I frowned at the back of his head. “Most people find giving the knob a twist often does the trick, you know.”
“Shut up,” he suggested passively, then declared, taking a step backward, “This isn’t a cupboard. The hinges aren’t real.”
“What are you on about?” I demanded in mystification, then pushed him aside to have a look for myself. The hinges looked real enough to me, felt real - my fingers didn’t go through them, at any rate - but then I realised suddenly what he meant. There were no joints and the screws were fused to the rest of the mounting; these hinges were just iron wrought to look like hinges, lacking their actual function.
“Well, what bloody use is that?” I wondered aloud, stunned.
“Iris root?” Malfoy ventured.
“Beg pardon? Oh.”
The missing hinge-joints had materialised at Malfoy’s words. I reached out and turned the handle experimentally. The door swung open without so much as a creak.
Inside - was a broom cupboard. Complete with brooms, a bucket and shelves of dusty bottles, sponges and steel wool.
“Iris root again?” Malfoy tried hopefully.
A broom fell over.
“I’ve had about enough of this,” I muttered impatiently, marching inside the narrow cupboard. I kicked the errant broom out of my way and started to push aside bottles of toilet cleaner and cartons thick with dust, hoping to find a trick-switch or a hidden stairwell or something.
“Get out of the way, Granger, you’ll never find it like that,” Malfoy ordered imperiously, striding in after me.
“No, you get out of - ” My voice broke off on a startled squeak; the door had just slammed shut behind him, as if of its own volition. The cupboard went abruptly dark as pitch.
A beat passed.
“Did you - ?” I began, a bit shrilly.
“No,” Malfoy’s voice replied grimly above my head. It wasn’t an especially roomy broom cupboard; I could feel him standing a few inches away in the dark space, even if he was somehow managing effectively not to touch any single part of me with any single part of himself.
“Oh.” I shrank against the shelves at my back, just in case. A pause. “Then what did you - ”
“I didn’t do anything.” I heard him rattle the door-handle. Nothing happened. He cursed.
I am NOT stuck in a broom cupboard with Draco Malfoy this is just too absurd for words I’m going to have to write us both detention slips for this and WHAT will the prefects think -
I swallowed my panic. “Well, you had to’ve done something - “
“Shut up.”
“You - look, don’t keep telling me to shut up, Malfoy! I didn’t ask for this either, you know - ”
“I mean stop making noise, if it pleases Her Highness. Can’t you hear that?”
I fell silent, ears straining. Then I did hear it. A low rumbling noise, getting louder… and the sound of whistling air. There was a metallic ringing, like a bicycle bell, and then the wall of shelves I was leaning on slid away in a huge cloud of dust, pale light streaming through the motes.
For a heart-stopping moment, I teetered on the edge of the yawning space behind me, arms pin-wheeling. Yelping a loud curse, I leapt forward, tripped, and fell directly onto Malfoy instead. He must have been too stunned to notice, or he likely would’ve pushed me right back into the hole.
As the haze cleared, a dimly-lit lift box became visible; old-fashioned with a metal grille that closed across the front of it. It was lined with carved wood panels and threadbare red velvet. Generic shopping mall music played lowly from invisible speakers.
What fresh hell.
“I, for one, wouldn’t mind sleeping at some point tonight. In a bed if at all possible,” came Malfoy’s pointed drawl at my back. Clearly he wasn’t nearly as stunned by all this as I was.
I shot him a frown, but pushed aside the grille obligingly, stepping into the lift box with caution. It felt sturdy enough under my weight, despite its ancient appearance.
Malfoy shut the grille loudly behind him, then leaned his shoulder-blades against the wall opposite myself, folding his arms and looking everywhere but at me. Which was fine, because I wasn’t looking at him either.
The lift shuddered ominously, then jerked once and began its comparatively smooth journey upward.
~*~