30 Days of Puckurt Drabbles Day Twenty-Three
Welcome to Day Twenty-Three of 30 Days of Puckurt Drabbles in June: 2012 Edition!
Here be the rules; don't forget to include a rating if the piece is rated higher than PG.
Here be the rules; don't forget to include a rating if the piece is rated higher than PG.
Equally unexpected was being called down for a midnight feast with the entire school in their pajamas, which was even weirder than it sounded, and Puck really thought that a specific few students should have been sent back upstairs to put on more clothes. Because wow.
No one seemed to care about that, though, or most of anything else besides the fact that the monster that had been roaming around the school - that was apparently a giant snake, which would have freaked him out except it was already dead - had been taken care of and they wouldn’t have to close the school. Plus, hey, that girl wasn’t dead after all, so actually no one had died from the thing they’d been freaking out over all year long, but Puck decided not to point that out because he was sure it would have come out bitter and annoying even if it was a good thing.
Not only that, but at some point during the feast, the four missing students (plus one ghost, and Puck didn’t even want to think about how they’d managed to give the potion to someone who generally passed through any and all physical objects) appeared in the doorway and the hall erupted in cheers, and Sam looked ready to pass out from relief when Colin dashed over to their table.
“I actually saw it!” he exclaimed, grinning widely over Sam’s shoulder when he was enveloped in a tight hug. “I saw it and it was so cool, but they told me it ruined the film or I’d have a picture to show you guys.”
They were all back. Everyone was alive and healthy and celebrating, and all on the same night, within a few hours, and the food was delicious. Oh, and Gryffindor won the House Cup, did he mention?
And it all just felt… unlikely. Like the end of a movie his Ma watched on a rainy Saturday night (the ones that made her complain about men, not Nazis). ‘Cause, he’d spent pretty much the whole year with this ball of tension stuck deep in his chest, and it only ever let up when he was in the air, and now they were telling him he didn’t need it anymore, but he just couldn’t let go of it so fast.
Maybe that was because, while they’d gotten a detailed description of the snake’s killing, all they really knew about the guy who’d been controlling it - the Heir of Slytherin or whatever - was that he’d been “taken care of.”
What did that even mean? Like the snake had been taken care of? Or like a fourth-year who’d been messing around and now had a month’s worth of detention when he came back next year? Puck wasn’t sure he was going to be relaxing until they talked to him about that a little more.
He could probably ask Ginny about it; they’d talked a few times and she was pretty friendly. Except she was kind of the only one who still looked upset, so he should give her a couple days, but after that, yeah. They’d probably expelled whoever it was, at least, and that would make him feel better.
Until then, he was still tense, still tight around the chest but with something sharper, like a mangled kind of relief. Or a rubber band that had been pulling out around his chest for months that suddenly snapped back against his skin.
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Kurt was starting to look tired, sitting beside him and slumping just a little over his plate of trifle. Maybe Kurt had actually let go of his own tension when they’d told him to. Either that, or he was tired enough to be falling asleep in his dinner.
“Hey.” Puck tapped him on the shoulder, making him jerk up a little before turning. He looked a little dazed, so maybe Puck had been right about him being tired. “Hey, how’re you doing?”
“Great!” Kurt smiled, and Puck would’ve believed it if he couldn’t remember the way Kurt had hugged him when they’d first gotten the news (long and tight and shaking just a little under the pressure). But whatever, it’d been a long year. He’d let it go. “I mean, it’s great, isn’t it? Awesome.” He paused, blinked once or twice. “I think I’m maybe a little tired though.”
“Who isn’t?” Puck had already seen at least five different students fall asleep at their tables - never for long, because it was way too loud in here for them to really take a nap - and many more looked way on their way.
“Colin, I assume. He’s slept for months, shouldn’t he be awake by now?”
Colin was, indeed, pretty much overflowing with energy, darting around the table to talk to everyone who would listen, with Sam trailing a few feet behind.
“Yeah, guess he’s got it set. Hey, you think he’ll be nocturnal now? Since they woke him up so late?”
“It’ll be a weird adjustment,” Kurt agreed. “It probably feels like it should be morning.”
“Think he could keep it going? I mean,” Puck continued when Kurt shot him an odd look, “it’s not like we have many classes left, and if we don’t have finals either…”
Kurt paused and titled his head a little to the side like maybe he was considering it. “Na, his parents probably want him back on a normal schedule.” He smiled vaguely as he looked out at the students around them. “Normal, huh. Everything’s normal now, all of a sudden. Kinda crazy, right?”
“Yeah.” Puck frowned. He wondered whether, if he blinked his eyes enough, the colors would change around him or something like that. It just felt like something should be more different than this. “Crazy.”
Snap.
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...But wouldn't that be horrible when the battle at Hogwarts rolled around oh gosh :( :( :(
(P.S. I'll be horrible anyway but still.)
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