The Slytherin Transfer

36: "Don't be dipshits."

The next morning I'm awoken abruptly by a crashing sound, and I jolt out of my dream along with everyone else in the dorm, Dorcas flicking on her light.

"Sorry!" Whisper shouts Alice, who had been coming in through the door and bumped into Mary's four poster, sending her tripping over top and landing on the floor. Any thoughts of annoyance leave all of us instantly when we see her, and soon all of our lights are on and we're sitting up. I find that my body aches and my head pounds more than ever, but my interest is still piqued.

"At last she returns," says Marlene, and Lily leans forwards.

"Well?"

"Well what?" Asks Alice in an unconvincingly dumb manner, though her red cheeks give her away as she heads for her bed.

"Oh please!" Exasperates Mary, whose hair sits in curlers, "same clothes as last night, none of us saw you before bed. You clearly snuck into Frank's dorm."

"You know, he doesn't look like he'd be very good at sex," begins Marlene thoughtfully, "but those are the ones that always surprise you."

"Gross," grumbles Dorcas, who looks the least interested but is still listening.

"We didn't have sex," says Alice, and we all groan, half of us flopping back onto our pillows.

"Then what did you do?" I ask her as she takes off her robes and finds clean clothes in her trunk.

"Well, we got back from the party late, because we had helped clean up while Slughorn brought these three dragon trainers to find a place to crash in Hogsmeade," she begins, "and then we fell asleep in the common room."

Marlene, Mary, and Dorcas all groan, but I cock my head to the side.

"Was one of the dragon trainers named Charles?"

"Yes. You know him?" Alice asks through a yawn, flattening her hair.

"That's the guy Sirius punched," I say, getting out of bed myself and rummaging through my own trunk absentmindedly. It's early, but I have to be up anyway in order to go with Sirius to McGonagall's office where the rest of the kids using Floo Powder to get to their houses will be gathered.

"What did he do?" Mary questions eagerly as I grab a pair of jeans and a sweater.

"He and his friends were dancing with me," I explain, and they give me blank looks, "I didn't want them to."

"Oh," says Mary, and Marlene scoffs.

"Sirius never punched anyone for me," she grumbles, throwing her covers off her long legs and grabbing her brush from the floor.

"Well, whenever guys were dancing with you, you wanted it," says Dorcas pointedly, and Marlene scowls as we all laugh.

Mary is the last one out of bed, and once we're all dressed and packed with what we need to take for break, we head down to the common room. Mary's going to stay at Alice's, because her parents are on a ski trip, and when all of us question where Dorcas will go, she just says she's gonna figure it out.

When I descend to the circular room with my trunk, my head pounding, I hear two voices call to me from the couches.

"Leaving us are you, Milton?" Asks Hocks, his nose now rather duck like, though still the same chocolate brown as his skin. He's strewn across an arm chair, clad in his pyjamas with Gardner on the couch next to him.

"Without a second thought," I call back their way, passing them to head over to where Sirius waits with his own luggage.

"How do you feel?" He questions worriedly, and I pull out the antidote Florier gave me to drink today.