Freaks: Year Two

Anxiety? What's That?

"Would any of you care to tell me what started this argument in the corridor?" Professor McGonagall asked, looking at Alabaster and Malcolm from behind her desk.

Both of them broke out into a verbal fighting match.

"He called my brother stupid!"

"He punched me in the face!"

"Because you called my brother stupid!"

"You're stupid!"

"You are annoying!"

"You're a muggle-loving freak!"

"Well, you–"

"Enough!" Professor McGonagall exclaimed, raising her voice to cancel out the shouting of the two first year boys. "One at a time." She looked toward Malcolm and indicated to him. "You first Mr. Snyde."

Malcolm pointed to Alabaster. "He punched me for no reason!"

Alabaster turned his head toward him. "I had a reason–"

"Mr. Jackson," the Head Of Gryffindor stopped him. "Let Mr. Snyde finish and then we will get to you."

Malcolm shrugged. "That's all. We were just talking and he punched me for no reason at all."

Professor McGonagall turned to Alabaster. "Do you have any reason that led up to you punching Mr. Snyde?"

Alabaster nodded. "He called my little brother stupid!" He stood up from his seat. "He was saying how I was not good at duelling, and frankly he is correct, I am quite terrible at it, but somehow we got to the topic of my owl who is named Hoo. Do you want to know how we got to that? It is because he thought I was a squib when I am not a squib and then he said that I was odd so I asked how I could fix it and instead of giving me advice, he said that it was weird that I talked to Fiona and weird that I talked to my owl Hoo and he thought that was strange and I said Atticus named him and he said he sounded stupid! My brother is not stupid!!"

Professor McGonagall gave a nod, surprised by the play-by-play of the situation and the emotion in his voice. "Okay Mr. Jackson, please sit down."

Alabaster huffed and sat down in his seat.

She looked the two of them over. "Mr. Snyde you should not have called Mr. Jackson's younger brother stupid, that is not okay behaviour as well as calling a student odd, but that does not condone punching someone Mr. Jackson." She shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile. "Fighting is not tolerable, and–"

"Yeah!" Malcolm said. "If you are going to fight, at least fight properly, not like a muggle would do."

Professor McGonagall gave Malcolm a stern look. "Fighting of any kind whether magic or no magic is involved is not acceptable in this school Mr. Snyde."

Malcolm suppressed an eye roll and Professor McGonagall continued, "Now due to this behaviour from the two of you, I will be taking twenty points from Slytherin from each of you and you will be receiving a detention that you will both attend with Mr. Filch."

Malcolm groaned. "What will we be doing – please say you won't put us together?!"

"I am sorry Mr. Snyde but that is how detentions work." Both of the boys looked annoyed at this and Professor McGonagall said, "You need to learn how to get along. Now what I think would be best is cleaning the trophies in the trophy room tomorrow night?"

Both Alabaster and Malcolm agreed. They knew there was no way they were going to get out of it. "Can we go?" Malcolm asked.

"You may," the professor said. Malcolm stood up and was about to open the door to leave when Professor McGonagall said, "Also, no magic will be allowed when doing your detention."