Treacherous | Hermione Granger Book II

|37| Chapter Thirty-Seven

T H I R T Y  S E V E N

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

"Enough demonstrating! I'm going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me--"

The teachers went through the crowd pairing people up. It took a few minutes due to the sheer size of the onlookers, but to Saffron's surprise, the crowd had diminished significantly as it seemed that many of the older students were solely there to watch Lockhart struggle and had left once that had ended.

"I'd rather just watch Snape crush Lockhart all night," said Olly disappointedly. A moment his eyes bulged in horror as Lockhart was approaching them, though, he appeared to have not heard him and proceeded to pair up Olly with Luna and Saffron with a tanned first-year girl, who had been in a group of five and had been the odd one out of the pairs made by Lockhart.

"I'm Emilia," the girl offered her hand to Saffron, who returned it with a smile. "First year Ravenclaw,"

"Saffron," Saffron nodded at her. "I'm a second year Gryffindor,"

Emilia raised her eyebrows in realisation. "Rowan and Rachels sister, I recognise you,"

"Face your partners!" called Lockhart loudly from the platform.

"Go easy on me," Emilia said with a shaky laugh. "I'm still very new to this,"

"And bow!"

"Don't worry, I am too, it'll be fine," Saffron assured her, bowing across at the girl respectfully.

"Wands at the ready!" yelled Lockhart. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents - only to disarm them - we don't want any accidents - one ... two ... three--"

A part of Saffron wanted to let Emilia disarm her. She wasn't too confident in her own abilities and would hate to hurt a first year if she were to mess up. But she also wasn't confident in Emilia's abilities, as the girl's mannerisms highlighted that she wasn't an assured spell caster yet. In spite of her thoughts, she went for it, as she trusted herself enough to not do serious damage to Emilia.

She was quicker than her and with an exclaim of "Expelliarmus!" Emilia's wand flew out of her hand and spiralled into the air above her. At the same time, the girl's knees buckled under the force of the spell and she fell down on to them.

Meanwhile, Olly had either let Luna hit him first or she had actually done so, Saffron wasn't entirely sure. All she knew was that once Luna's spell hit him, his wand flew sideways and he flew forwards. At the precise same time, the wand smacked Emilia in the face and Olly's face smacked into the floor of the Great Hall.

Saffron winced and even Luna who's expression never seemed to change looked horrified. She hurried over to Emilia, whilst Luna went to lift Olly up from where he was crouched on the floor.

"Are you alright?" Saffron asked the girl concernedly. She was lying down on her side but wasn't unconscious. The force of the wand had hit her across the face leaving a red mark on it. The girl let out a tearless sigh and accepted Saffron's hand to stand up.

"I'm okay," Emilia said, her eyes shut and arms clutching onto Saffron so as to not fall back onto the floor. "I feel really dizzy though, everything feels blurry,"

"She might be concussed," Saffron looked over her shoulder to see that Olly was standing up by himself, his hand over his forehead, next to Luna who looked extremely apologetic and forlorn. "It sounded nasty,"