Chimaera Of Judgement

14: Something In The Water

"You did what?"

Though Albus had predicted Rose would react this way when he told her about his late-night excursion on Sunday afternoon, the ringing in his ears from her shouting caught him off guard. "Bloody hell, Rose, will you watch your volume? You're going to get me thrown out of here!"

"Sorry," she hissed, glancing over at Madam Pomfrey, whom had indeed glared in their general direction after her outburst. "But... why?"

For roughly fifteen minutes Rose remained silent, tightly bound and sitting up in her hospital bed as Albus related the story of the faux banshee and the other marble block on the edge of the lake. When he was finished, though she'd gasped and frowned in all the right places, she didn't exactly seem impressed.

"But you could've been caught, and Urran would've flogged you straightaway! Oh, come on, Al, what on earth were you thinking?"

"I know, I know... I wasn't, really. It just- dammit, there's so many questions, and I thought if I could sort one mystery once and for all I might relieve some pressure! But..."

"Yeah," she breathed. "A Muggle-born Slytherin! Blimey..."

Albus snorted humourlessly. "That's what I said."

"This is stark raving bonkers! We may have just verified that there aren't any death-dealing sirens swarming around Hogwarts, and now you've a new problem, don't you?"

"Is that what it is?" He wasn't being a smartarse, because he really didn't know what to do or think about any of it. "Jezabel Skirrow isn't in our House, she's not in our grade... sure, we get on reasonably well, but I don't think that makes us mates or anything."

"Hmm, she seemed to think you more than that in Hogsmeade," said Rose, her nose crinkling as she took a hunk of Honeydukes chocolate from her bedside table.

"Shut up."

She leaned back, wincing from some small pain. "You are right about one thing: even if she were a loathsome, lice-infested tart, she wouldn't in a million years deserve to be treated the way she is!"

"Even though she's a Slytherin?"

"Even if she were Voldemort," Rose seethed, crumbling up the chocolate she had been on point of eating. "Mind you, I still think she's creepy, and skittish, but... can't something be done? Anything?"

"Trust me, I feel the same way." Albus propped his feet up on her bed, not acknowledging the offended "tuh!" of its occupant. "Trouble is, I can't think of a thing. All we can do is tell our Head of House, but... what would he do? Tell them to leave off teasing her? Tell Dryden to put them off it? It's like all the obvious solutions would only make things worse for her, which is the opposite of what we want."

"This is making my brain hurt," she whimpered, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Don't we have enough stress from our O.W.L.s without rescuing a Slytherin from her own dungeon?"

o o o

The unpleasant truth of it is, she needn't have fretted. After the encounter at Professor Snape's tomb, they saw hide nor unkempt hair of Jezabel, even though they were now officially looking - especially around the tomb, which she either did not return to, or did so in such a secretive manner that they couldn't find her at all. Rose postulated she'd skived the rest of the year, but Albus thought differently; one of the few things she told him she did with her time was homework, and if she left school she'd have even less to do with herself. It seemed more likely to him that she'd been serious when telling him her sanctuary had been compromised, and he felt awful for forcing her out. Many hours a day did he spend pondering where she was hiding now, whether she was all right...