star shopping ✰ d.m.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The rest of the month was quite uneventful for Arabella. Dumbledore's Army had met three more times and everyone was showing significant improvement; Dean had finally managed to Stun Arabella after being Stunned himself plenty of times. The Minister hadn't had any more educational decrees enacted since the last one and it seemed that no one suspected a thing. And now, they had a new and much more discreet way of communicating the dates and times of upcoming meetings thanks to Hermione and her fake Galleons.

With the month of November came the start of the Quidditch season, and since there hadn't been one the previous year, everyone was eager to get back to that normalcy, even those that had previously not cared much for Quidditch. The tension between the Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses was high as the first match would be between them. This was displayed even between those who were not on their House teams; during Potions, Arabella would often catch Pansy and her friends looking at her and giggling as if they knew something that she did not. No matter how much Draco told her to ignore them, Arabella couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was coming up.

On the morning of the first match, Ron's nerves were on an all-time high. Arabella could literally feel the nervousness radiating off of him as he sat there just staring at his cereal and it was practically driving her mental.

"Sitting there thinking about all the possibilities of it all going wrong isn't going to help anything," she told him. She received no reply. He didn't even move. "Come on, Ron, just finish your breakfast. That always helps, does it not?" Still nothing. She shifted her gaze to Harry and gave him a look.

"If you can't get him to eat, what makes you think I can?" he asked her. She gave him another look and he gave her one back.

"Oh, honestly," Hermione said, rolling her eyes at the two of them before looking to Ron. "Come on, Ron, you'll feel better once you eat. You're going to need all of your strength today."

"She's right, Ron," Olivia spoke up. "You really should be eating."

"That's rich, coming from you," Fred said. "You haven't even touched your food, and you've been here longer than any of us."

"I don't need to eat. I'm fine."

"Are you stupid?" Angelina asked her incredulously. "Eat your food, both of you!"

Angelina's order didn't lead to hardly anything, as Ron took a couple bites and then put his spoon down permanently. Finally, Harry seemed to realize he wasn't going to eat anymore and the two of them left to the changing rooms along with the rest of the team.

"Hey, whatever you do," Dean said a few minutes later to Ginny and Arabella, "don't look over at the Slytherin table."

"Well now we're gonna look over at the Slytherin table," Ginny said as Hermione gave Dean a look, and two girls turned around, scanning the Slytherin table for anything new or out of the norm. Ginny spotted it fairly quickly, but Arabella struggled a bit.

"Are those crowns?" she asked, just barely making out the fuzzy shape on almost every Slytherin student's chest.

"Yes," Ginny said stiffly. "'Weasley is our king.'"

"What?"

"That's what the crowns say. 'Weasley is our king.' Oh, those maggots! They just can't leave him alone, can they?"