Dark

Chapter 5

Harry
“Moody!” Fred said as he plopped down on the bench next to me. “How cool is he?”
“Beyond cool,” George said, now sitting opposite Fred.
“Supercool,” said their friend, Lee Jordan. “We had him this afternoon.”
“What was it like?” I asked, eager to know.
Fred, George, and Lee exchanged meaningful looks.
“Never had a lesson like it,” Fred said.
“He knows, man,” Lee added.
“Knows what?” Ron asked, leaning forward.
“Knows what it’s like to be out there doing it,” said George impressively.
“Doing what, exactly?” I asked them all.
“Fighting the Dark Arts,” Fred said with an incredulous look at me.
“We haven’t got him till Thursday,” Ron said with a disappointed look at our schedule.
That was when Eleanor approached the table. She looked livid, though she smiled as she reached the table. She wasn’t looking at me though when she began to speak.
“Hello.” She said to Hermione. “I was just wondering if I could maybe borrow your Ancient Runes book. Malfoy and his goons stole mine last night.”
“They stole your textbook?” Hermione asked wide eyed.
“Yes, after they put me under a full body bind curse. Left me laying paralyzed in the common room all night. Anyways, we have Potions together this afternoon and I was hoping you could bring your copy and lend it to me for the night.” Eleanor gave Hermione another smile, but it didn’t meet her eyes.
“Er, yeah…of course.” Hermione stammered.
“Great, now please excuse me while I go murder Malfoy.”
With that, Eleanor stormed off toward the Slytherin table. She walked the length of the table until she was standing across from Malfoy. Suddenly she raised her wand and Malfoy was sent flying off the bench. Eleanor turned on her heel and started toward the Entrance Hall.
“That’ll be detention Miss Potter.” Snape barked over the astounded whispers that had broken out across the Hall.
Eleanor waved her hand in the air lazily as she shouted back, “Great.”
I was still staring out the doors of the Great Hall unsure of what had just happened, when Ron spoke up.
“You may not like her, Harry, but if she keeps blasting Malfoy off his feet like that, then I’m all for being her friend.” Ron snickered.
Even I couldn’t deny it was worthwhile seeing Malfoy get what he deserved. I couldn’t help but smile at that.
After breakfast we wasted away our morning in History of Magic. By the time we made it back to the Great Hall for lunch I was thoroughly dreading all future Tuesdays. History of Magic and Potions, two of my worst classes were all that my schedule consisted of today.
Ron argued with Hermione throughout lunch about being able to use her notes from History of Magic, a topic we seemed to review at the beginning of each new term. Meanwhile, my gaze shifted once again toward the Slytherin table.
Eleanor was sitting alone just as she had done the previous day. She didn’t look nearly as livid as she had at breakfast. She seemed to have felt my eyes on her again because she looked up and found me immediately. I turned away, still unsure if I believed her to be a stranger or my sister. I knew that ignoring her wasn’t right, but I honestly felt cheated when Dumbledore had revealed to me just days before the start of term that he had discovered the existence of my sister. It was still too unbelievable, even if she looked like the female version of our father. She had the same jet black hair that I inherited from him, and she even had his eyes. But could she really be my sister? It still felt like some sort of cruel joke.
By the time we made it down to Potions Eleanor was already waiting outside the closed classroom door. Malfoy was there too, and even though I wasn’t sure how I felt toward Eleanor still I was angry that he had attacked her all the same.
Just as the bell was ringing overhead, Snape pulled open the door to the Potions classroom. Malfoy and his gang filed into the room, closely followed by Eleanor. As I took my seat towards the back of the room with Ron and Hermione, I watched Eleanor make her way toward the front and take the seat next to Malfoy.
I looked over to Ron and Hermione to see they had noticed her choice as well. Ron raised his eyebrows questioningly towards me but I didn’t have the chance to answer.
“Turn to page 78, today you will be brewing a simple Muffling Draught. Let us hope that your holidays haven’t ruined your capabilities.” Snape said.
The class as a whole was digging their potions textbooks out and setting up their stations when Snape spoke yet again.
“Except for you, Miss Potter.” I looked up to the front of the room to see Snape standing directly before Eleanor. “I’ve seen you brew this potion already, instead pull out an extra copy of Advanced Potion Making from the cabinet. I want you to give the Fatiguing Infusion a try.”
Snape gave Eleanor an intrigued glance before moving off to walk around the room. She crossed the room and retrieved a book from the cabinet before returning to her desk.
I averted my attention back to my own work as Snape made his way toward the back of the room. I couldn’t help but wonder how she had gotten into our year though. It didn’t seem to make any sense. And how could Snape have seen her create a potion that we haven’t done before? Is she really that talented? There’s no way she could be this naturally talented at magic without any previous training, right?
I spent most the class trying to figure out how Eleanor had advanced so quickly. My lack of focus on my potion resulted in Snape waving his wand and making the entire attempt disappear from my cauldron. I was fuming for a minute until I caught site of Eleanor and Malfoy at the front of the room again.
Eleanor was crushing something with the flat of her knife. She picked the object up and squeezed it over her cauldron, letting the juice from within fall into the liquid. In that same moment, Malfoy was turned boasting to Goyle about his potions skills. Eleanor made one swift movement to bring the object in her hand over Malfoy’s cauldron, dripping some of the liquid into his potion before withdrawing her arm again.
I couldn’t help but snicker at this. Malfoy hadn’t noticed a thing, and whatever Eleanor was using for her own potion was not an ingredient for the Muffling Draught the rest of us were supposed to be creating.
Before the bell rang, Snape had made his way toward the front of the room again. He praised Eleanor’s potion but gave a grimace toward Malfoys, not even bothering to comment on it.
As we packed up our supplies, Snape stepped up to Eleanor again to probably arrange her detention for having taught Malfoy a lesson in front of everyone in the Great Hall. When he had left through a door at the front of the room, Eleanor approached Hermione.
“Did you have that textbook, Hermione?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” Hermione said, pulling out a book with runes on the cover, “here you go.”
“Thanks. I plan to get my book back by the end of the night, so I should have this back to you tomorrow. Maybe the day after at the latest. If that’s all right, of course.” Eleanor raised her eyebrows at Hermione.
“That’s fine, we don’t have Ancient Runes again until Friday and I’ve already completed the homework.”
“Thank you.”
I opened my mouth to ask Eleanor what she had put into Malfoy’s cauldron but she turned and walked out of the room without even glancing at me.

Eleanor
I spent the break between Potions and dinner in the library. I had propped open Hermione’s copy of our Ancient Runes textbook and spent the hour taking careful notes and translating the simple passages from where I had left off the previous night when Malfoy had attacked me in the common room. Before long though the break period was over.
Rather than heading towards the Great Hall with the other students, I opted to skip dinner. As I crossed the common room I could feel the phials in my pocket clinking together. There wasn’t any explicit rule stating that I couldn’t keep samples of my own potion. When I got to my dormitory I threw open my trunk and hid the phials inside. You never know when you may need to knock a person out for a couple of hours.
I ventured back out into the common room, pleased to see that it was empty. As I had hoped, everyone had made their way to the Great Hall for dinner. So I retreated back toward the dormitories, but instead of turning left toward the girls’ rooms I turned right. I walked down the corridor until I came to a room labeled “Fourth Years”.
I slowly opened the door, hopeful that no one was inside. I had lucked out, all of the fourth year boys were gone. I crossed the room and started looking through drawers and under beds, unsure which bed in this mess of a room belonged to Malfoy.
Eventually I found my textbook wedged under one of the mattresses. I turned to leave but then the idea came over me. I rummaged through the boys’ belongings a little while longer until the found the box of sweets that Malfoy had gotten from his mom the previous day. It had been shoved under one of the beds, which led me to assume it was Malfoy’s bed. I opened the trunk at the end of his bed and quickly found what I was looking for. I pulled the shampoo bottle out and gave it a quick tap with my wand as I muttered a simple incantation. I placed the bottle back in the trunk and left the room.
By the time I had found my textbook and managed to set up my revenge for Malfoy, dinner was almost over. I stashed my textbook back into my own trunk in the fourth year girls’ dormitory and made my way toward detention with Snape.
I found him already settled into his office when I walked in. The room was much as it had been over the summer holidays, cold and filled with creepy jars containing strange specimens. When I entered, Snape looked up at me and moved his hand to indicate the chair across from where he sat at his desk. I cautiously took the seat, unsure what to expect of a detention here. The entire experience of being here at Hogwarts was still so new in a lot of ways.
“I’d like for you to explain what happened in the Great Hall this morning.” Snape demanded.
“I hexed Malfoy, sir.” I answered simply.
“Yes, I saw. Why?”
“He placed me under a full body bind curse last night, sir. He then had Goyle steal my Ancient Runes textbook before they left me on the common room floor paralyzed for the entire night.”
“I see. Well we don’t tolerate attacks on other students in the Great Hall. So you’ll be sorting the files on the desk back there for the rest of the night.” Snape gave me a strange look as I moved toward the back of the office.
The files were old and difficult to read due to torn pages and old ink. In the end I had spent a total of four hours sorting files before Snape dismissed me.
When I returned to the Slytherin common room I was again grateful to see that most of the students had already gone off to bed. It was quite late already, but I still had a lot of work to do. I retrieved my homework from dormitory before settling myself at a table in the common room again. Thankfully I wasn’t bothered by anyone, though I could have sworn at one point I had caught someone standing at the entrance to the dormitories out of the corner of my eye. When I looked up again, though, they were gone. So I continued working into the early morning hours.