Defense Against The Dark Arts

Wedding(wɛdɪŋ): Noun, A marrige ceremony

1st March 2023

I'm sorry it's late but I hope you enjoy it because reading back, I think I had a lot of fun writing this!

On Friday mornings, the general population of Hogwarts acts happier by default. The students actually look almost awake, and most are partaking in conversations, unlike the usual half-asleep silence that blankets the hall on every other school morning. I think if it hadn't been a Friday, Malfoy would have been a lot less enthusiastic in tapping his spoon against his glass whilst standing on the table. Hell, he probably wouldn't have bothered at all.

But there he was, standing on the table, tapping his spoon against his glass - very classy - basically giving the air of a reluctant father at the wedding of the daughter he no longer speaks to due to him disliking lesbians and the small child that threw up on his suit. I'm not entirely sure who the daughter and small child are in this analogy, but Gryffindor and Slytherin both definitely play a part. Maybe me and Percy are the organisers for the wedding, and the Weasley twins the engagement rings . Umbride is somehow the small child. This simile is getting away from me rather quickly.

Malfoy gains a lot of attention, of course, and soon the hall is silently waiting for his speech with baited breath. He clears his throat, and puts the spoon in the glass, clearly fishing around for something to delay the inevitable.

"On behalf of Slytherin, I would like to apologise to the House of Gryffindor for the song we sung at the quidditch match. I won't take full responsibility, but I will accept any blame. The lyrics were rude and unnecessary and-" He directs this bit to a shocked Weasley family -"For what it's worth, I think you should be allowed back on your team." He finishes his speech, and rather abruptly, he sits down, and starts eating a bowl of scrambled eggs.

"Oi Malfoy!" Someone yells, to noone's surprise, Ginny is standing on the bench. "We won't accept, you're going to have to do better than that! At least you tried, I suppose," She adds, almost as an afterthought, and sits back down.

The only word I can come up with for Malfoy's face is affronted. He drops his spoon, ready to retort something that will definitely erase anything the speech managed to do, but then Umbridge comes to the rescue - not something I'm even willing to think about again, and opens her mouth giving off a squeaky hem hem. So not exactly to the rescue, but maybe I'm trying to be optimistic.

"Thank you for that apology, my dear. It was well said. However, I'm afraid Potter and the Weasley's won't be allowed back on the team, due to their physical violence."

"Yeah? Well what about our emotional violence?" Charlie, Selene's friend, is standing on the bench - something that seems to be becoming a trend - and although she perhaps could have worded it better, her meaning comes across hard and clear. "We disrespected their whole family - we shouldn't go unpunished. What they did in retaliation was completely within their rights. So maybe you should punish us too." Some of Slytherin are nodding, some aren't, but it's more than I ever thought would actually agree with it.

"Get off the table, the only thing you'll be punished for is your disrespectfulness towards me," Umbridge says tartly.

Wrong thing to say, ma'am.

"You seeing this favouritism to people that don't even want it?" I mumble to Percy. He laughs, and then someone else laughs, and then someone screams PREACH! And everyone else starts laughing and jeering.

And that's when I realised I may have -

Kind of.

Maybe.

Definitely.

Screwed up.

"You weren't meant to hear that," I try to say to the school, but it's absolute chaos, everything's gone to Tartaus, and they're raising hell with Umbridge at the helm trying to regain silence. There's shouting, coming from all the tables, and most people don't seem to be shouting about anything in particular, they just want to shout because it's a Friday and school is hard (Yeah, I bet going to school to learn magic is so difficult).

Umbridge seems to be the only teacher trying to do anything about it. Snape, who I thought would be one of the most willing to do some shouting himself, is just speaking to McGonagall about a homework detention.

Through the chaos, I manage to catch Fred's eyes, and he shouts across the hall, "YOU ACTUALLY DID IT! IT'S WITCHCRAFT," but it's almost a whisper because of how loud the hall already is. I grin back anyway.

I don't think Malfoy has a sense of self preservation. Or at least he does, right up until the point that it's probably his hamartia, but it's definitely missing today, because he decides to mutter, "The lyrics were pretty good though, you have to admit."

No, Malfoy. No one's going to admit to that, the lyrics were horrible, I think to myself, and the person Malfoy mutters this to seems to express my disdain. And the cherry on the cake is Selene, because she's grown bat ears in the time it took for Malfoy to destroy any of the credit he got from apologising. Selene hears him from all the way down the table, and catapults a spoonful of soggy cereal at him.

Time seems to slow down as the cereal flies through the air and hits him square on the forehead. He stares at her as it drips down his nose and eyebrows, his face twisted up in a grimace. He retaliates by flinging a handful of scrambled eggs back at her.

"FOOD FIGHT!" Someone yells. (I'm only eighty percent sure it wasn't Percy, and damn if that doesn't fill me with apprehensive dread. Percy is a master at food fights. He and Leo must have managed to take out at least half the camp. It's food. How do you even 'take someone out'?) The Gryffindors, never ones to back away from a fight, join in with gusto, and so do Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and McGonnagall definitely bewitched a goblet of pumpkin juice to pour itself over Dumbledore.

"Stop this nonsense at once!" Umbridge screams into the fray, and I see a Slytherin and Gryffindor lock eyes with each other, purely by accident, but they both seem to communicate something to each other, because then food is flying at Umbridge too.

And, well, what's a better way to unite, than to fight against a common enemy?

Song: Disciple by The Warning

Word count: 1060