Double Double Toil and Trouble // Two // [ON HOLD]

Chapter Nine

That night, I was lying in my four-poster just about to fall asleep. I almost dozed off when I heard it.

"Come....come to me....Let me rip you....Let me tear you....Let me kill you...."

My head shot up from my pillow. I looked around the dormitory. Everyone was fast asleep.

I lied down again, assuming it must've been Harry messing with me. He mentioned something about having to spend his detention with Lockhart tonight. He must've been bored.

~

The next day, I explained everything that happened on the Quidditch Pitch to Nat. To say she was hurt was a bit of an understatement. I didn't blame her at all. One of her closest friends took something that she was probably really worried about since she was in Slytherin, and used it against another one of our friends.

After I told her, she never even spared him a second glance whenever he was in the same room. He might as well have been wearing Harry and I's invisibility cloak.

October approached rather quickly. The temperature outside only dropped a few degrees, but it felt like a whole lot more when you sleep in the dungeons. I had experienced this before in first year, so I packed some extra blankets in my trunk.

Some time around the middle of the month, it started raining, and it didn't stop for almost a week. However, when it did stop, the grounds were left muddy and gross. You were lucky if you didn't slip on your way to Herbology.

I, as you can imagine, wasn't one of the lucky ones. When the rain had finally stopped, Harry and I set off to the Quidditch Pitch to get some practice in.

On the way down path, we had managed to avoid most of the puddles. I took a step on a patch of ground at seemed dry, and I was sent right down next to Harry's feet.

Harry burst out laughing. I could feel the mud on the back on my cloak and grimaced. I grew annoyed of Harry's amusement and shoved his ankles, bringing him down with me.

"Oh come on." He groaned.

I sat up and brushed off my sleeves. "Nobody mocks me and gets away with it."

~

When we had had enough of that, we walked back up to the castle. We were almost completely covered in mud, but we didn't mind too much.

As we walked through the corridors, we came across the ghost of Gryffindor Tower, Nearly Headless Nick, or Sir Nicholas. He was muttering to himself. "...don't fulfill their requirements...half an inch, if that..."

"Alright there, Nick?" I asked, making our presence known. He was pale as smoke, and we could see right through him to the muggy weather outside the window.

"Potters!" He greeted wholeheartedly, and his mood dropped again. "It's nothing of importance...It's not as though I really wanted to join...Thought I'd apply, but apparently I 'don't fulfill the requirements'-" His voice was spiteful, and a look of bitterness grew on his transparent face.

"But you'd think, wouldn't you," he suddenly said, pulling a letter out of his pocket, "that getting hit forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless Hunt?"

"Yes." Harry and I said in unison. It was obviously what we were supposed to say.

"I mean, nobody wishes more than I do that it had all been quick and clean, and my head had come off properly, I mean, it would have saved me a great deal of pain. However-" Nick shook his letter open and read:

"'We can only accept huntsmen whose heads have parted company with their bodies. You will appreciate that it would be impossible otherwise for members to participate in hunt activities such as Horseback Head-Juggling and Head Polo. It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must inform you that you do not fulfill our requirements. With very best wishes, Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore.'"