Pulling Strings - Theodore Nott

11. Spellbound

For what felt like the next hour, Ophelia tried to get out of there. First, she tried the more logical approach and started searching the room for something to pry the door open; a letter opener, a knife, the pointy tip of a quill, clearly nothing worked and it only made it worse since she managed to cut one of her fingers with the knife.

It wasn't a big deal, thankfully, so she simply sucked it up and continued with the less logical approach; calling for help. This also proved to be unsuccessful because she was all alone. By the time that she started hearing the mumblings of other students outside it was far too late and immediately the loud blast of music covered all her attempts to be heard.

She took a small break then, judging by how much time she felt it had happened, she had to resign herself and lose all hope of ever making it to her date. She thought of Justin and her heart ached, not because she had any deeper feeling for him other than attraction so far, but because the image of him waiting for her before eventually giving up, haunted her. What must he be thinking of her? That she was a bitch? A Slytherin brat that had stood him up on purpose?

She wouldn't be surprised by it but it was unfair. She could be occasionally a brat, but this time it hadn't been her own doing.

Her blood started to boil when she remembered Nott's smug smile while he dangled her wand in front of her, before closing the door and depriving her of her freedom. What an arsehole! She didn't know what had gotten into him. Was he really so worried that she would embarrass him in front of the whole school? She could be discreet and meet with Justin without the rest of the school finding out as well as he did with his many little secrets but, of course, in his world it was easier to lock her up.

A sudden need to break something took hold of her and she had to fight the hardest not to find something of his and break it into a million pieces. So, she took a deep breath, tried to drown out the noise from outside the door and gave it a last shot. This was her last hope to get out of here.

A long shot, to say the least. Still, she focused all her energy in the words Alohomora, but it was useless. Time and time again she tried and everytime she opened her eyes, the door remained closed and locked. She huffed. Why didn't they encourage them to perform some wandless magic in this school? She knew that in other parts of the word such as Africa it was more common, why couldn't they do it here too?

She loved her wand but...it could be lost, stolen, broken and then what? It seemed like a fault in the system on their part. Plus, they used to do it, up until they turned eleven and started learning proper spells with wands.

Right then, she had officially run out of options. There was nothing more to do now than to sit and wait for someone to open this blasted door from outside. She sat once more on the floor, her back leaning on the door and tried to let the time pass. That worked for about...five minutes until she was back on her feet. She couldn't simply stay seated there doing nothing.

If she couldn't get out of Nott's room, she was going to make him wish he had never locked her up in there in the first place.

The darkness of the room had been ignored by her up until then, seeing as she hadn't needed light to kick and scream to the door. But now, she was on a mission and as such, she needed to be able to see. Which...once again it was impossible to do so without her wand. Great.

Rooms were supposed to be always lit up magically at Hogwarts but if the room didn't recognize you as their resident it would simply not work. It was supposed to be to discourage students from going into other students' rooms without their permission, not a bad idea in theory but a very poor one in execution. Did Dumbledore never thought about the possibility of a fucking moron locking her in his room? Surely not.