Jinx Not-So-Malfoy and the Heir of Slytherin

Chapter 7

VAS HAPPENIN?

THE POTTERMORE STORE IS OPEN AND I JUST BOUGHT THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS! NOW I DON'T HAVE TO DO AS MUCH EDITING! YAY!

They have the new light covers. I, personally, LOVE the new covers. They're SO like, pretty and stuff.

I'm composing this Harry Potter Medley. I'm taking bits and pieces from songs in the first five movies and putting them together into like, one song. I hope it'll sound good in the end.

Hermione, Ron, and I were in the common room. Harry came tramping into the room covered in mud and headed upstairs to change. Most people were talking, doing homework or, in the case of Fred and George Weasley, trying to find out what would happen if you fed a Filibuster firework to a salamander. Fred had "rescued" the brilliant orange, fire-dwelling lizard from a Care of Magical Creatures class and it was now smouldering gently on a table surrounded by a knot of curious people. Harry came back down and started talking about a deathday party and getting caught by Filch and a bunch of other stuff.

I wasn’t paying attention.

Harry was at the point of telling Ron, Hermione, and I about Filch and the Kwikspell course -- well, Ron and Hermione. I wasn’t listening -- when the salamander suddenly whizzed into the air, emitting loud sparks and bangs as it whirled wildly round the room. The sight of Percy bellowing himself hoarse at Fred and George, the spectacular display of tangerine stars showering from the salamander's mouth, and its escape into the fire, with accompanying explosions, distracted Harry and I took this moment to shove Harry out of my chair.

“What was that for?” he asked, annoyed that I pushed him onto the floor.

“You were sitting in my chair,” I said, like it was obvious.

“Your chair,” Harry repeated.

“Haven’t you noticed that I ALWAYS sit in this chair, no matter where we’re sitting in the room? You were even there when I claimed it a year ago,” I reminded him.

“It is true, you know,” Hermione said helpfully.

By the time Halloween arrived, Harry was regretting his rash promise to go to the deathday party -- mostly because I kept complaining about missing the feast again. The rest of the school was happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in, and there were rumors that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for the entertainment.

“A promise is a promise," Hermione reminded Harry bossily. "You said you'd go to the deathday party."

So at seven o'clock, Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked -- I did the army crawl behind them -- straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps instead toward the dungeons. The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step -- or whatever you call what I was doing -- we took.

Since crawling was getting tiring, I got up and heard what sounded like a thousand finger-nails scraping an enormous blackboard.

“Is that supposed to be music?" Ron whispered. We turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

"My dear friends," he said mournfully. "Welcome, welcome... So pleased you could come..."

He swept off his plumed hat and bowed us inside. It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Our breath rose in a mist before us; it was like step-ping into a freezer.