Astra

VIII - The Heir of Slytherin

THANKFULLY, HERMIONE HAD somehow won the argument due to her simply not stopping. This left Ron to point his accusations elsewhere, which was still ridiculous, but less wrong than Astra. James and Lily told her about their plot to find out if Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin. Though Lily told her that she must have stopped them from brewing the polyjuice potion, both Astra and James saw nothing wrong with it. Hermione was smart and would not mess up the potion, and if she told them that the heir wasn't Malfoy, then she would have to make up some excuse about why and who it was.

However, the only problem with that was that she had to be better about her bathroom times. Apparently, the trio had decided that Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was the best place to brew the polyjuice potion, so Astra always asked James, Lily, or Regulus to go check on the bathroom before she went in. Regulus had now been spending more time on the new mystery: Who the Heir of Slytherin was. He had spent time spying on each of the Slytherins, but found that none of them were doing anything suspicious. That left the only option for someone to not be in Slytherin but act like it, someone that wasn't in Hogwarts, a professor, or someone acting through another. Regulus seemed to think that the last option was most likely, so he was now looking at everyone to see if there was anything that anyone had that could possibly possess them.

Since the disastrous episode of the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not brought live creatures to class. Instead, he read passages from his books to them and sometimes reenacted some of the more dramatic bits. He usually picked Harry to help him with these reconstructions and sometimes Astra, though he also seemed slightly frightened of the young girl, and decided not to push her when she glared at him. So far, Harry had been forced to play a simple Transylvanian villager whom Lockhart had cured of a Babbling Curse, a yeti with a head cold, and a vampire who had been unable to eat anything except lettuce since Lockhart had dealt with him. Astra found it quite amusing to see her fellow classmate go through this form of torture. It was quite hard to keep a straight face as James and Lily had taken to watching Harry's acting and were laughing the entire time, taking advantage of the fact that no one could hear them.

***

On Saturday morning, Astra woke up early as usual, but this time for a good cause. Another Quidditch match was taking place and even though she never truly supported either side, it was always fun to watch. James and Regulus had tried to convince her several times to try out, seeing as she was amazing on a broom and could probably take over any of the positions, but she simply didn't want to. Astra was never one for attention, and Quidditch was full of it.

However, the game wasn't going as planned as a bludger chased Harry around everywhere. Lily and James were holding each other tightly and Regulus had gone to see what could have been jinxing the bludger. In the end, Harry had lost all of the bones in his arm, but Regulus couldn't find out who had caused the bludger to act that way.

The next day, James and Lily woke her up and brought Regulus to them, and told her about the house-elf named Dobby that had jinxed the bludger and closed off Platform 9 3/4, and had also visited Harry over the summer.

They were also met with the news that Collin Creevey, a first-year who had been following Harry around with a camera everywhere, had been petrified. As she made her way to the common room, she found even more people glaring at the back of her head, while the first-years cowered in fear. Part of her found it amusing how so many people thought that  2nd year Gryffindor was responsible for the attacks and part of her wished that she was able to steal Harry's invisibility cloak. She quickly rushed to her usual passage to the kitchens, trying to avoid glares the few times she had to walk in the halls.