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hi VOTE hi
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Last night, I got two hours of sleep at most.
I was studying for the History of Magic exam I took only hours ago. In hindsight, I probably didn't need to stay up. I probably would've done better if I had gotten enough sleep. But I couldn't fall asleep because of the stress for that last exam, so I stayed up reviewing the notes I'd been pouring over for weeks.
So I'm running on two hours of sleep, and it's currently three or four in the morning, but I still can't fall asleep.
It's the stress.
We searched the school five times over before deciding she wasn't there, and then we told whoever we could find. Umbridge wasn't back, so we found Snape, told him we had a missing student. He and the other professors didn't miss a beat before scouring the school just as we did, turning up empty. At that point, they had to alert her parents. Her mother arrives within the hour, a damning presence with her angry eyes and quiet mouth.
"You lost my daughter," is the first thing she says when she arrived. It isn't a question, it isn't a clarification, it is a seething statement that makes Professor Flitwick tremble slightly from the ferocity in her still, dark eyes. "You lost a student."
"Seven students, actually," Pansy mutters lowly next to me, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as she leans into my side. I wrap an arm around her, glancing over her head to look at Blaise, who is leaning against a wall with a stony expression on his face, eyes glancing rapidly so as to not miss a single detail.
Professor Snape clears his throat, one hand placing purposefully stop Flitwick's head and promptly moving him out of the way to step in front of Mrs. Zabini. "I assure you, Mrs. Zabini, we will find your d—"
"I know where she is," Mrs. Zabini interrupts coolly, turning her chin up in a manner that reminds me so starkly of Celeste.
Snape's eyebrows rise slightly. "Do you, now?"
"Yes," Mrs. Zabini snaps, losing just a fraction of her composure as she exhales sharply through her nose and clutches her robes tightly. "I know my daughter, believe it or not. She's at the Ministry. A friend sent me a message saying he'll get her and my husband back, and any second now—"
She stops herself short when a lynx gracefully glides down the hallway, blue and shimmery and leaping a couple inches above the surface of the floor. A Patronus.
Mrs. Zabini's face grows grim as she turns to face the lynx and nods.
It opens its mouth, and a man's voice says, "They're in St. Mungo's, the fourth floor. There's been an attack at the Ministry. I'll meet you there shortly, I have quite a bit of work to do. I'm sorry."
