TRUEST BLACK- S.B daughter

[34]

For all Hazel knew she could be walking to her death or worse, see her mother's face before she even was prepared. But pushing her thoughts aside she left the comfort of her dorm and went to Hogsmeade.

Snow came around earlier this year to Hogwarts, the grounds were already under a white blanket of fluffy snow. Hazel played with her wand as she hummed to herself while walking towards where Harry told her to go. She knows nothing about this strange meeting/date Harry asked to attend.

She walked down the main street past Zonko's Wizarding Joke Shop, where she was not surprised to see Fred, George and Lee Jordan, past the post office, from which owls issued at regular intervals, and turned up a side-street at the top of which stood a small inn. A battered wooden sign hung from a rusty bracket over the door, with a picture on it of a wild boar's severed head, leaking blood on to the white cloth around it. The sign creaked in the wind as she stood there.

Hazel hesitated outside the door. Finding the courage inside of her she entered the old place.

It was not at all like the Three Broomsticks, whose large bar gave an impression of gleaming warmth and cleanliness. The Hog's Head bar comprised one small, dingy and very dirty room that smelled strongly of something that might have been goats. The bay windows were so encrusted with grime that very little daylight could permeate the room, which was lit instead with the stubs of candles sitting on rough wooden tables. The floor seemed at first glance to be compressed earth, though as Hazel stepped on to it she realized that there was stone beneath what seemed to be the accumulated filth of centuries.

Hazel then remembered Hagrid mentioning this pub in her third year: 'Yeh get a lot of funny folk in the Hog's Head,' he had said, explaining how he had won a dragon's egg from a hooded stranger there. It still ceases to amaze the young girl how Hagrid never questioned the man with an illegal creature.

Hermione, Ron and Harry were already sitting there and when the latter saw her he smiled at the girl for the certain fondness he feels over her.

The people she could recognize by name were Neville with Dean and Lavender, who were closely followed by Parvati and Padma Patil with Cho Chang (A Ravenclaw girl from her year) and one of her usually-giggling girlfriends that Hazel found so annoying she was seriously considering leaving, then (on her own and looking so dreamy she might have walked in by accident) Luna Lovegood, who Hazel recognized as the girl that sometimes liked to fed the Thestrals as well; then Katie Bell, Alicia Spinnet and Angelina Johnson, Colin and Dennis Creevey Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hannah Abbott, a Hufflepuff girl with a long plait clown her back whose name Hazel did not know; three Ravenclaw boys, Ginny Weasley, closely followed by a tall skinny blond boy with an upturned nose whom Hazel recognized vaguely as being a member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and, bringing up the rear, Fred and George Weasley with their friend Lee Jordan, all three of whom were carrying large paper bags crammed with Zonko's merchandise.

All the people inside let her to believe this wasn't just some stupid meeting Harry told her to attend. Hazel took a sit next to George and Fred being the only people she actually talked to, not surprisingly she was the only Slytherin.

"Er," Said Hermione, her voice slightly higher than usual out of nerves. "Well--er--hi"

The group focused its attention on her instead of Hazel, though eyes continued to dart back regularly to her.

"Well . . . erm . . . well, you know why you're here. Erm . . . well, Harry here had the idea--I mean" Harry had thrown her a sharp look, "I had the idea--that it might be good if people who wanted to study Defense Against the Dark Arts--and I mean, really study it, you know, not the rubbish that Umbridge is doing with us-- because nobody could call that Defense Against the Dark Arts--Well, I thought it would be good if we, well, took matters into our own hands" She paused, looked sideways at Harry and went on, "And by that I mean learning how to defend ourselves properly, not just in theory but doing the real spells--"