❝ i'm chaos walking . . . ❞
❝ then i'll walk with you.❞
「 Liliana Granger knew chaos like the back of her hand.
It confronted her, challenging her to find calm wherever she could.
But some days...
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❝ Scared, little one? ❞
⋅☾☼☽⋅
Things couldn't have been worse.
Filch took them down to Professor McGonagall's study on the first floor, where they sat and waited without saying a word to each other. Hermione was trembling, and Liliana's face was buried in her hands. Excuses, alibis, and wilde cover-up stories chased each other around her brain, each more feeble than the last.
She couldn't see how they were going to get out of trouble this time. They were cornered. How could they have been so stupid to forget the cloak? There was no reason on earth that Professor McGonagall would accept for their being out of bed and creeping around the school in the dead of night, let alone being up in the astronomy tower, which was out-of-bounds except for classes. Add Norbert and the invisibility cloak, and they might as well be packing their bags already.
The cherry on top to this whole situation? When Professor McGonagall appeared, she was leading Neville.
"Harry!" he burst out, the moment he saw them. "I was trying to find you to warn you, I heard Malfoy saying he was going to catch you, he said you had a drag —"
Harry shook his head violently as Liliana looked up at him with wide eyes that said please, shut up, but Professor McGonagall had seen. She looked more likely to breathe fire than Norbert as she towered over the four of them.
"I would never have believed it of any of you. Mr. Filch says you were up in the astronomy tower. It's one o'clock in the morning. Explain yourselves."
It was the first time the Granger sisters had ever failed to answer a teacher's question. Hermione stared at her slippers, still as a statue, while Liliana fiddled with the sleeves of her cardigan.
"I think I've got a good idea of what's been going on," Professor McGonagall said into the silence. "It doesn't take a genius to work it out. You fed Draco Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I've already caught him. I suppose you think it's funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?"
Harry caught Neville's eye and tried to tell him without words that it wasn't true, because Neville was looking stunned and hurt. Harry knew what it must've cost him to try and find them in the dark, to warn them. He felt even worse than he had before.
"I'm disgusted," Professor McGonagall continued. "Four students out of bed in one night! I've never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. And you, Miss Granger —" she looked at Liliana with a bit more disappointment than she had the others "— I thought you valued trust above recklessness. All four of you will received detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom. Nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it's dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor."
