Disclaimer: I own everything!!! Muahahahaha! Even you! Muahahaha! And if you believed a word of that, you are a moron! Muahahahahaha! Because I only own Andy, Marti, and their friends. The rest is borrowed.
My face was still red when I tore down the hallway in the general direction of Professor Granger’s Office. I wasn’t sure that’s where she’d be, but it was a start. She was such a nice person; I really hadn’t meant to embarrass her.
Man, what is wrong with me? I shouldn’t have charmed the door… why couldn’t I just leave things be? I’d just had to pull that one, and it’s only been two weeks since I accidentally started a food fight on my first day! Oh, sure, Bailey may have been the one who called out food fight, and all that jazz, but she wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t tripped on my own two feet and shot the pie in the air in the first place. I was a walking menace.
I dashed past a corridor and skidded to a halt. Well, I skidded and the halt came when I smacked into a suit of armor. Luckily I wasn’t enough to push it over, and it only wobbled a little. Once I was sure that it wasn’t going to topple, I turned and headed back and down the corridor I previously had passed up. That’s where I saw Professor Potter standing outside and talking to a door.
“Hermione,” he was saying, a smile on his face, “It was a silly trick, it didn’t know anything! Please come out, will you?”
“No, Harry!” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door, “It’s too humiliating!”
Man, I guess it was a good thing that she didn’t stick around to here what the door had to sing about Professor Weasley.
“Professor Potter,” I spoke up. I noticed that he was standing outside the Girl’s Bathroom. I suppressed the urge to giggle. I don’t know why I wanted to, exactly….
He turned to me, looking somewhat surprised that I was there, “Yes, Marti?”
I blushed “ Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! “ because he used my first name… I’ll say that’s one thing that was cool about Potter; when you weren’t in class, no matter who you were, he’d use your first name if he knew it. And… sadly, Deanne was right. He was a teacher, yes, but he was also a total babe. (Now, don’t get me wrong, I did not blush because I had a thing for him “ eww, a teacher? “ but who doesn’t blush when someone hot looks at you and calls you by name?)
“Um,” I stammered, “Is, uh, Professor Granger in there?”
He sighed and a very teacher-like expression set itself on his face, “Yes, Marti, she is.”
“No, I’m not!” came the muffled voice again.
I faced the door, swallowed, and entered the bathroom. There were seven stalls, only one of which was occupied at the moment. I really didn’t want to confess, but I also hadn’t meant for Granger to get hurt…
“Professor?” I asked
There was a pause, and then I heard a kind of cough or choke followed by, “Please, not now…”
“Professor Granger,” I said, without letting her finish, “I came to apologize for what happened in the Great Hall. I “ I was the one who cast the charm on the door to make that song play when someone who had… well, it wasn’t meant for you, believe me, and I’m very sorry for… for any embarrassment I caused you.” Then I held my breath and waited.
Slowly the stall door opened and Granger stepped out. Her cheeks were wet and her face was red. “You cast the charm?”
I nodded.
“Why did you do that?” Man, that hurtful look on her face was heart wrenching. If I had had any second thoughts on confessing, they would have gone out the window there and then. I had to confess, and that was it.
I looked at the ground, “I… I had just found out that Andran Audierus had kissed a girl recently, and I knew he’d be coming to dinner, so when I saw him coming, I cast it, so it would go off when he went through… Really, I don’t know why I did it.”
She pressed her lips together in a thin line and looked me over. My face went red hot… I hated confessing to something I did that I shouldn’t have done. It’s the worst feeling there is.
Finally she folded her arms across her chest, “Mr. Audierus was already in the Hall when I came through. Why didn’t you remove the charm?”
I looked her straight in the eye, “Professor, I tried! Something went wrong! I haven’t figured that out yet... as soon as I’m done here, I’m heading up to the Library to look up the charm and see what could possibly make it do something like that… of all the times I’ve used that before, in Salem I mean, I could stop it.”
There was a long pause between us. I felt so short! I mean, Granger couldn’t have been that much taller than me, but having her staring at me was completely unnerving.
She sniffed, “Five points from Ravenclaw, and you will serve detention with me tomorrow night at seven o’clock. Meet me at my office and we’ll go from there.”
Uh… did she take only five points and give one detention? I felt a grin spread on my face instantly. I didn’t mean to be cheeky or anything, but I’d gotten far worse punishments for it before…
“Thank you, Professor,” I said as I headed towards the door, “And I am sorry, again, for what I did.”
A faint smile crossed her face, “I know. Tell Har-Professor Potter that I’ll be out soon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I nodded and pushed my way back out the door.
Potter was waiting there, leaning against the opposite wall, his messy hair hanging across his face. When I came out, he smiled at me.
“She’ll be out shortly, Professor Potter,” I said.
He came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder, “I heard what you said in there.”
I blushed again, “Oh.” Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Can’t you be a little more articulate?
“It’s late, you need to be getting along now,” he said quietly, “But I want you to know that I’m proud of you for taking responsibility for your actions, and so quickly. Two points to Ravenclaw…” he leaned closer to me, “But don’t tell Professor Granger, alright Marti?”
I laughed, “Got it. Thanks professor.”
Whoa, yeah, he was a hottie.
*** *** ***
After Marti ran off, presumably off to hide her face, Zinny and I left the Great Hall. Neither of us was hungry, and the looks we were getting were horrible…
The day after Marti put that stupid charm on the door, I happened to have her in transfiguration with Professor Granger.
Zinny and I came in and seated ourselves in the back row. Ever since that song announced that Zinny had kissed me, and exaggerated it to boot, we couldn’t go anywhere together without getting whistles and… well, lets just say trouble. But Zinny is still my best friend, so we still wanted to sit together. That left us only one option: sitting in the very back, if at all possible.
Well, we had transfiguration first thing, and we got their early, so we took the table in the farthest back of the room. Everyone filed in, giving Zinny and me strange glances. Well, at least as soon as class started they couldn’t give us strange glances without Granger seeing them turn around.
Class was about to begin. Professor Granger had started passing out the materials we were going to be working with (wild flowers and feathers, as we were just beginning an in depth study on the nuances of transfiguring, and that meant starting small), when Marti came in, almost late. Her hair was a mess “ well, more than usual “ and she looked as though she hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. She sat in the back row, leaving only one empty desk between her and I.
It wasn’t enough. Before I realized it, I had my wand in my hand and I was about to hex her under the table, but I swallowed the urge and pocketed my wand. Hexing her would be letting her get to me, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Open your textbooks to page twenty-seven,” Professor Granger said after leaving the flowers and feathers on Marti’s desk, giving her a questioning glance, but saying nothing. “Today we will be exploring the slight nuances of Transfiguring. Seemingly simple transfigurations can often be harder than they would appear. Making a daisy smell like a rose? You are transfiguring the inside of the flower. This takes much concentration…”
Marti knocked her textbook off her desk with a loud thud. Everyone in the class turned to see what had happened… but for some reason, they turned to look at me. I glared right back.
What? Did they think she had thrown her book at me? Or did the entire class expect to see Zinny and myself snogging? Lunatics, the lot of them…
“Please pay attention, class!” Professor Granger snapped, making everyone turn back around.
The rest of class went surprisingly well. It turned out that Marti wasn’t as stupid as I thought she’d be, and didn’t try anymore pranks the entire class… really, she looked too tired to prank anyone. I almost felt sorry for her… almost.
But I didn’t once think on going back on my plan. In fact, when I was leaving the class, and the students were bundling up their flowers and feathers to be turned into Professor Granger, I over heard something that presented the most perfect opportunity to put my plan into action.
“Miss Owlsten,” Professor Granger said when Marti handed her the flower/feather bundle, “Don’t forget you have detention tonight, seven o’clock at my office.”
Marti nodded without a word. I leaned over to Zinny and whispered, “Did you catch that?”
Zinny didn’t say anything, but looked up at me and winked. So, yeah, she caught it.
Seven O’clock and Marti would definitely not be in her dorm.
Things were starting to go my way.
*** *** ***
I was so tired I could hardly keep my head up. After leaving Professor Granger, I was curious as to what had gone wrong with my charm, so I headed up to the Library to do some research. Honestly, I’d picked the Charm from a girl in Salem and never took the time to learn which one it was, exactly “ yes, I know now that that was a mistake “ so I had to search for it… and that wasn’t easy.
After an hour of rummaging through different charm books with little success, I found a book that was mainly about Parlor-trick Charms, ones that most witches and wizards use for parties and get-togethers. Of all the books I’d read so far, it seemed to be book that might contain what I was looking for…
Now, I could have given up and gone to bed, but I really wanted to know what had gone wrong. Seriously, this bothered me. Why couldn’t I undo the charm? I’d always done so before…
Well, I searched the book from cover to cover, and it didn’t seem to help me much. But, then again, the book was close to five-hundred pages long, so I figured that I’d probably held a few pages together, and perhaps I’d skipped over it. The Index, unfortunately, was torn out. Or maybe it just didn’t have one to begin with; it was a little hard to tell.
Before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep. I woke with a start. Even more startling was that it was almost midnight “ and way past curfew. I swore and ran as hard as I could back to the Ravenclaw CR.
Finally, something went right, and I didn’t get caught.
But, I overslept the next morning. Deanne had to shake me awake, letting me know that we would be late for Transfiguration… Great, all I needed was for another reason for Professor Granger to hate me. I groggily told Deanne to go on ahead without me this time, and I’d get there as soon as I could. No reason Professor Granger should hater her too.
I completely forgot about any thing like makeup or doing my hair, I just grabbed my things and ran. When I got there, the only seat was next to Andran Audierus… nice. Just who I wanted to see early in the morning when I’d not done anything to ready myself for the day except put on a clean pair of clothes. I think he wanted to hex me at one point, but I was feeling sleep deprived so I probably imagined it.
I was a wreck all through class. I couldn’t make my daisy smell like anything other than a daisy. I tried harder, and then it began smelling like a stink weed. I tried to change it a few more times and ended up making it scent-less all together.
Then I remembered that I had Detention with Professor Granger at seven. Even better. And when I handed in my flowers, my smell-deprived flowers, Granger sniffed at them, frowned, and reminded me about the detention.
The rest of the day went by in a haze. I just followed Deanne everywhere but to Potions. I kept silent and did everything Malfoy wanted, then schlepped off to dinner.
Seven O’clock came too soon.
Before I could blink, I was standing outside Professor Granger’s Office and rapping on it gently.
“Come in,” I heard her call from inside.
I held my breath and entered her office.
Then I found myself unable to move or speak. I mean, I was shocked at what I saw. It was a nice room, about the size of my dorm if not bigger, with a fireplace in the wall to my left. To the right there was a couch and a very large bookshelf loaded with books. I stared at the shelf for a while, just because it was crowded with books… I knew that many books shelves could be ski-wompus, but Professor Granger had it loaded with volumes, crowded to capacity.
Even more astounding, was that where her desk was, straight ahead, on the far wall of the room, near a window, it was surrounded with stacks of books on… charms. I swallowed.
She looked up at me from where she was sitting behind her desk and smiled at me. “Hello, Marti. Come on in, and we’ll get started.”
I tentatively shut the door and walked to her desk as quietly as possible. I do that when I’m nervous, I suppose, because there wasn’t any reason for me to be quiet during a detention. I was just concerned…
“What will I be doing, Professor?” I asked, trying to hide whatever it was I was worried about.
She looked up at me and grinned, “Don’t look so frightened, Marti. You had a lot of guts to come and not only confess, but apologize for what you did, and then I noticed you had been up late. I assume that’s why you were nodding off in my class?” I nodded, and she went on, “It got me thinking. Originally I was going to have you clean something or do some paperwork for me, but then I decided that perhaps we could tackle the idea of what went wrong with your charm. Working with me, so I am told, is punishment enough.”
Did she just say we’d be… that’s is? No climbing into small places to dust, or cleaning the fireplace, or the chimney? I smiled in spite of myself.
“Come,” she said, motioning to a stool in the front of her desk, “Take a seat and we’ll get started.”
*** *** ***
I left Zinny in charge of causing a distraction in the Ravenclaw Common Room. She said something about some fireworks and dung bombs… I didn’t listen too much because it was probably better if I had deniability. But, while she was doing that, and after she showed me which window was the girl’s dorm, I put my plan into action.
I took my broom and flew it up to the window Zinny had indicated and magically opened the window. I didn’t dare enter the room… from what I heard from Marcia Longbottom, the room was charmed much like the Gryffindor Girl’s dorm. I wasn’t sure if something would make noise, or a professor would be alerted, so I hovered outside the window. From what Marcia told me, it was the bed beside the window, and there should be a large back case under the bed, rather than in the trunk. I could barely see it from where I stood, but with a swish and flick of my wand, I levitated it up onto the bed and carefully made it unzip itself.
A violin? What? Marcia told me it was some fancy dress… that liar. Oh well, my plan could still work.
Having obtained my prize, I used a sticking charm and the levitation charm once again to put the note in the case.
Zooming back to Gryffindor tower, I almost felt bad for Marti.
Ha, that’s almost, but almost doesn’t cut it, especially after that song in the Great Hall. She’d be sorry for that one. Guaranteed.
*** *** ***
“Okay,” Professor Granger said aloud after our two and a half hour search, “We’ve narrowed it down to a party trick, a measuring charm, one that measures how many times a person has been kissed…”
I nodded, “And it rhymes it to whatever happened.”
Professor Granger looked up from behind the book she was reading, “Are you sure you never knew the name of it? Anything at all? Perhaps the incantation?”
“No,” I said, “It’s just a general movement, two bounces and a swish with my wand, and I think real hard on the kind of things I want it to say. I learned that my first year, from a friend of mine.”
“Well,” Granger said, glancing up at the wall of books before us, and selecting two, “That’s better than nothing. Here,” she handed me one of them, “Try looking it up in this one by the movement, and I’ll try this other one.”
I sat down the book I was looking in and took the one she gave me. It was for miscellaneous charms that no one really remembers. I started skimming through it, seeing if something seemed familiar. I skimmed through nearly half of it before something caught my eye…
“The Ersatz Echo charm…” I muttered to myself, “developed by Horatio Ersatz around a hundred years ago… takes a recent romantic event, no matter how small, and sings out… Hey, I think this is it!”
I gave the book proudly to Professor Granger and pointed to the paragraph about the Ersatz Echo Charm. She read over it carefully, then smiled at me, “Well, if this isn’t it, it’s close enough. Let’s see what is says about the charm.
“It was designed as a party trick, a door charm for New Year’s Eve “ well, that would explain the kissy song “ in the early nineteen hundreds. So it could be placed at a moments notice, without attracting much attention, it has no incantation, as most spells do. Ersatz designed it for unknown reasons, though he was known to throw many parties through the years. The spell, while harmless in nature, is not generally accepted as good magic due to its indiscreet nature and unpredictability.” She gave me a look.
“I get it,” I said with a frown, “It’s rude. Is that all it says on it?”
She shook her head, “No. There’s a paragraph here that explains what it does and how to do it and how to remove it…. Alright, here it says: Because there is no incantation, this is not a precise charm. It should make light of young couples who are courting, and who have kissed within the last twelve hours. It does not affect married couples, unless the Wizard or Witch has kissed someone other than their spouse,”
I suppressed a giggle, “Well, that would explain why so many fancy-pants think it’s rude,”
Professor Granger smiled, but kept on reading, “It has odd side effects on those who are not married and are…” her cheeks went a little pink, “in love.”
My eyes widened and I started at her. “Keep reading, please.”
“Love, in any amount, has been to known to change the nature of the charm, from telling exaggerated lies, to spilling the truth in a mocking fashion. If this change occurs, the charm cannot be removed by the original caster. A confession by the caster is required, a truth to stop the truth. Ersatz is still said to be working on party charms that are less menacing.”
We each sat in silence. There it was, the truth of what went wrong. All the people I’d cast that charm on, back in Salem, were giddy and young… not in love with anyone. They were too young to love anyone. But… someone who had passed through the door had to have been in love with someone else. And then most of what was said after that had to be true. That meant for sure that…
“Oh, Marti,” Granger said, putting the book on the table and leaning back in her chair, “Please tell me at what point you tried to take the charm off.”
I gave her a sympathetic smile and thought about it. This was something she wasn’t expecting it to mention love… I could only assume why.
“Well, I think that I cast it when I saw you coming. I didn’t want it to embarrass you… not that I knew anything, or anything, I just thought… well, I’d heard… It was right before you came in.” I finished lamely.
She looked at me, “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “And it wouldn’t come off… so that means that Andran or Monkey- I mean… Zinny must be in love…” several words caught in my throat and stuttered their way out, “Y-you d-d-didn’t trigger it.”
She closed her eyes and looked away briefly. “Alright, Marti, we each have our answers. You can go now.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, dashing lightly to and then out of the door.
I walked slowly up to the Ravenclaw CR, thinking about this information I now had. Andran was in love? With who? Was there a way to learn who this person was? And, most importantly, was there a way I could use this information? Not right away, of course, because it was too soon since my last prank, but perhaps it would be fun to enchant some mistletoe around Christmas time…
There was a commotion out side the CR when I arrived. Deanne was out side the entrance, waiting to get in, along with thirty other Ravenclaws.
“What happened here?” I asked her.
She scoffed and looked at me, “Some jerk set off a bag of dung bombs and fireworks and opened up some kind of a swamp in the Common Room!”
“What!” who would be that devious? Other than me, obviously.
Deanne nodded, “I know. I was the first one to get there and… Bailey tried to clean it up, but the swamp overwhelmed her. We had to get professor Lovegood to come in. She’s cleaning it up now, and we’re all waiting to get back in.”
I snickered, “Bailey couldn’t handle the swamp? Ha, that’s a good one.”
Deanne shook her head, “Marti, I know you don’t like Bailey, but this time you shouldn’t tease her. She was IN the Common Room when it went off. I think she got stuck in some kind of a bog hole. She was really traumatized.”
I rolled my eyes, “Alright, I’ll let this one slide… though I do plan to tease her more for it later, after she’s come to her senses.”
It was a good fifteen minutes more before Professor Lovegood emerged looking somewhat dazed “ though she always looked that way “ and allowed us back in. The place was as good as new, and Lovegood assured us that the smell of peat would fade soon enough. Deanne and I headed up to our dorms. I, for one, was tired. Deanne said she had to pick up her Defense Against the Dark Arts essay.
We plodded up the stairs and opened the door. Bailey was lying flat on her bed with her hands across her eyes. I was half tempted to throw something at her, but I figured a bog hole was worse than anything I could do to her, so I let her be.
I started to flop on my bed and froze. My violin case was sitting on my bed. I always kept it under my bed…
“Hey,” I said to Deanne, “Did you leave my violin case on my bed, Deanne?”
She shook her head, “Haven’t touched it. You didn’t leave it there?”
Something wasn’t right here… I sprang to the other side of my bed and examined my case. It was unzipped…
Oh, please, no…
I carefully opened the lid…
*** *** ***
A blood curdling scream echoed off the walls of the school, startling several owls and making them flutter off their various perches around the school. Enid, a small barn owl who was sitting in the window of his Hufflepuff owner’s dorm room, ruffled his feathers haughtily. It was most impolite, he knew, for any owl to screech that loudly. How very rude.
Sorry that took so long in getting up! I promise to try and work harder to get the next chapter up sooner! Believe me, I hated waiting as much as you did!