Love Potion

Under Pressure

Viper captured the Creepseek flag shortly after that. I hadn't followed him. He earned twenty-five house points.

The lesson ended slightly early, and we all went back to the castle rather than doing anything else. I was slowest to change, and as there was no one to wait for me, I slumped back to the castle alone. It was very nippy. 

I had a dolesome study session of astronomy, which I was too tired to care about, though it would normally have my full devotion. Old Master Hackney's humdrum voice was particularly easy to turn into sound fuzz. I think the only noise I made the whole session was a stale humph of a laugh when Master Hackney went, "Look, Cosmo, it's the cosmos! Aheh, aheh, aheh..."

When at last it was over, I slumped down the longest staircase ever in the tower, and was so brain-wearied that I hardly blinked as it rotated just as I reached its bottom, and sent me down the wrong corridor. I walked a long way down its darkness, faintly realising that it had no windows, then reached light at a set of steps at the end of it that opened up outside the castle, just beyond the moat. It must have gone underground.

The sky had darkened very quickly. Stars pocketed through the scraps of grey cloud. In feeble retribution for my wasted astronomy session, I located the winter triangle, and Taurus, and the Pleiades among them.

When I at last arrived back at the East Tower (I had gotten caught up in a corridor that kept on bricking up its entryways whenever I walked towards them - many swear words had been cried) my brain felt so squeezed and squandered (and still infected by the ever-growing hatred of Killian-fucking-Viper) it took several questions to get myself through the door.

"How many pleats does a wizard's hat have?" an already-fagged Pedbort had asked from its perch in the iron door.

"Oh, I don't bleeding know, five?" I exasperatedly sighed.

"No, one hundred," the wizened shell-bird croaked.

I shook my fists. "Why does a wizard's hat need so many bloody pleats?! C'mon, Pedbort, just let me in!"

"What minotaur killed Maulissus of Keart?"

"Argh! Who's Maulissus? There was only one bloody minotaur, and guess what he was called: 'the minotaur'!"

"It was Harrak the Stormhorn. What is the second most poisonous plant?"

"The second most poisonous plant? Who cares about the second most poisonous plant?!"

"The answer is Nether Scratch. What is the incantation for the itchy balls hex?"

"Bloody hell! There's a hex for everything! Let me guess: 'itchius testius'?"

"That's correct."

"What the f-"

I was then finally let into the commonroom.

I came to an unanticipated sight. All the cushy sofas and pouffes had been bunched around the flickering green fireplace, where Viper, Kenzie, Tamsin, Tatiana and a couple other mean-looking sixth-years were bunched - they were prattling and cackling loudly. The table in the middle of them was littered with a bulk of brightly-wrapped sweets, and their shiny wrappers were discarded everywhere. It was stark-dark apart from the flaming sconces, meaning the room was lit entirely with green light, as the windows and curtains had all been fastened. The already peculiar scent of the dragons' (who curled clustered around the ceiling beams) breaths was mingled with some other bizarre and unfamiliar smell.

I though it was strange that no one else was in the large commonroom. It was as I suddenly watched a brave but scared-looking second-year approach the group (that gazed down at her like a dragons' nest) and timidly asked whether she and her friends could come into the commonroom, whence Viper flashed them the silver badge on his robes that I had forgotten about, the one reading 'DEPUTY HEAD BOY', and ordered them to "bug off, and isn't it past your bedtime anyway?", that I was unfortunately reminded that Viper was deputy head boy of Snellicary, and had the authority to bark them about, even if it was totally abusing his power. He had used his good grades, and other mysterious tactics, to achieve the spot - it was indeed strange that none of the other candidates' speeches were spoken in Aenglish.