Disclaimer: I own it all!!! Muahahahaha! Yeah, right, whatever! I own Marti and Andy and their friends, but the rest is borrowed, including a song by Shania Twain. Believe me, I didn't write that song, though wouldn't it be cool if I did?
“Marti! Marti!”
She did it. I know she did.
“Get off her, Owlery!”
“Marti! Are you even listening?”
Well, since they asked, no I wasn’t. I had Bailey pinned to her bed, my knees on her shoulders as I sat on her chest with my wand practically shoved up her nose. She was screaming and trying to get me off her, but I had her pinned good, so she wasn’t going anywhere.
I had opened the case, and my violin was gone. Absolutely gone, vanished. I even felt the place where it should have been, just in case it had been turned invisible, but it wasn’t. I was so stunned and angry, I wanted to tell whomever it was that was screaming to shut their face because they’re problem was nothing to this… and then I realized it was me.
And then I saw Bailey lying on her bed with a hand dramatically draped across her eyes. That Horrid wench, I knew she was the one who took it. She’d been in here with it, all alone, probably thought that I’d been the one to set off the dung bombs and the swamp and all, and decided to get me back for it! Well, ha, like I wouldn’t know who had done it! Oh, don’t ask how I ended up sitting on her, all I know was that I really wanted to hex her brains out. She was so DEAD!!!
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH IT?” I bellowed, shoving the tip of her nose upward to look like a snout with the tip of my wand.
She screamed and tried to get me off her, but didn’t answer. In the back of my head, I noticed that there were about eight or so hands on my shoulders and back, pulling me off her, but noticing and caring are two different things. I had my feet wriggled underneath Bailey, so they wouldn’t be getting me off her very easily.
“WHERE IS IT, YOU DEMON SPAWN-” a hand grabbed me around the neck and shoulders and hauled me back and away from her. I struggled with the arm, but it had me good. It lifted me over and plopped me down on my own bed, next to my case, though it didn’t let go of me.
I went limp from head to toe. The arm loosened up on me, and then I snapped around and wriggled out of its grasp. I turned around and saw that the arm belonged to Deanne.
“Marti, what’s come over you?” she asked. She looked worried. Well, she should be, I was going to kill Bailey. In her place, I’d be worried too.
My hand was shaking, but I managed to lift it and jab it in Bailey’s direction. Bailey, by the way, was in mild hysterics, and trying to be calmed by Jean and Amber. “She…took…it.” I said slowly, really not wanting to yell at my friend.
“Took what?” she asked me, looking even more worried about me.
“My violin!” I shouted, my voice rising, “My case is here, and opened, and it’s GONE! SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE IN HERE, THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT!”
Bailey burst into tears and sat up angrily, “I didn’t take your whatever! I don’t anything of yours, and if I can help it I never will!”
“YOU LIAR!” I shouted at her. Deanne turned to my case and looked at it, but really, I could already tell her it wasn’t there! “I KNOW YOU TOOK IT! TELL ME WHAT YOU DID WITH IT! TELL ME!” I found myself almost lunging at her again, with my wand drawn. Alice Longbottom jumped in front of me and wrestled my wand away from me. Hot tears began streaming down my face. In my frustration I let her take it from me.
“Fine,” I said, my voice cracking, forcing me down to a lower decibel, “Take her side, all of you! You know she hates me, and you can all see my violin is gone! I hate you, Bailey! How could you do this to me? I know I’m hard, I admit it, but I would never, EVER, steal what you love most in the whole world!” I ran from the room.
They didn’t get it. They just wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t fair, and I … I couldn’t believe they would actually take her side on this, especially since you could totally tell she did it…
I started to run out the door, smacked into the door instead “ which only made me cry harder “ then staggered down the stairs. After nearly breaking my neck in the stairwell, I bounded through the Common Room and out the door. It was gone, my Gwen, my dearest possession. Sobbing in hysterics, I just started running.
“Petrificus Totalus!” I heard from behind me. I froze “ literally “ and clattered to the ground. I couldn’t even blink.
Deanne turned me over and sat me up right. “Finite Incantatum,” she whispered, making me crumble to the ground, able to move again. Now, though she had my hands and I couldn’t run.
“You don’t get it, Dee,” I sobbed, “You have no idea what my violin means to me!”
She gave me a small smile and sat down next to me on the floor, “Yes I do, Marti. Look,” she held out to me a bit of parchment with a very untidy scrawl on it. “You were so distraught at the thought of losing what you love, you didn’t notice this in the case. It was lying there, obviously for you to find… and I’ve been with Bailey for longer than you have, so trust me when I tell you that she didn’t write it. Here, Marti, read it.”
I took it from her and wiped my eyes. It was hard to read, but hard doesn’t mean unreadable. Hard means it was difficult to believe.
Martina Owlsten-
This is not a gag. I now have something you want, don’t I? And, assuming you plan to look dashing sometime in the near future, you want it back. If you ever wish to have your prize back in your possession, you will do as I ask. You will not take this note to a teacher, head student, or prefect. I do not want to keep what is yours, and am more than willing to give it back to you… at a price. You will meet me this Friday night, in the astronomy tower, at midnight. There, we will make a deal. If you have read this far, then you are bound. I have charmed this parchment, so I will know if it falls into the hands of a teacher. I will also know if you say anything about it to anyone. If you do, I WILL KNOW IT. If you ever wish to get back what I have taken from you, you will follow my instructions to the letter.
-Listener
I finished the letter and tears began running down me all over again. I had probably made things worse with Bailey “ I mean, yeah, she had all that coming, yes, but she was my roommate, and it would be good to be on better terms with her eventually “ and now this letter. If I went to the astronomy tower, what would happen to me? Who did this, and what would they want from me?
I turned to Deanne, pleadingly, “Oh, Dee, what am I going to do?”
*** *** ***
Zinny was waiting for me when I climbed back through the window into the Gryffindor Boys’ Dorm. Clay and a few others were there, but didn’t seem to mind Zinny being there… oh, back in our first few years they’d protested her presence, but when they learned that she never bothered anything that wasn’t mine, and they couldn’t get rid of her anyway, they didn’t mind anymore. She was like a kind of fixture or something. Some boys had posters on the wall, others had cages for their owls, and I had a Zinny that was nearly permanent on my bed. Besides, I couldn't go into the girls dorm - and why would I want to? They have pink frilly things in there! Well, anyway, Ridley had even fallen asleep with his curtains drawn closed, so I motioned for Zinny to light up her wand, and I drew the curtains around us so we wouldn’t disturb them.
She pointed to the curtains and muttered a muffling charm on the curtains so when she started laughing, which she almost always did, she wouldn’t wake those who were asleep.
“So,” she asked, “Did you get the dress?”
“Marcia was a liar, it wasn’t a dress,” I held up the violin by the neck and showed Zin.
“Cripes, Andy!” she hissed, almost falling through the curtains, “Yeah, I’d say she lied! I’ll murder her tonight, if you want me to.”
I smiled, “Well, as much good as Azkaban would do you, I don’t think that you need to murder her. Really, I don’t think she had the time to open the case, and just guessed there was a dress inside… though, why she thought that was a dress box…”
Zinny and I looked at each other, “Loco Longbottoms,” we muttered together.
“Alright, so we have a violin now,” Zinny said, looking at it, “What do we do with it?”
I smiled, “We do as we planned. Do you have a box for it?”
She shook her head, “Nope, but I can transfigure one. Give me an old sock or something.”
“Alright,” I set the violin down carefully on the bed and leaned out the curtain into my sock drawer, and then tossing Zinny one of my older ones.
She wrinkled her nose at me when I tossed it to her, “Do both your feet smell this bad, or do you just wash your socks now and then?”
“It’s a clean one, you prat!” I snapped, slapping her arm. She just laughed and waved her wand at the sock.
“Make it a tough box,” I said, “I know we want to ransom this, but I don’t want it to get broken.”
She nodded and the sock changed. It made a long oval box, just the right size for the violin. When she’d finished, I placed it in there carefully, then slipped out of our muffled curtains and slipped the box into the bottom of my trunk, where it would be safe. It was a pretty instrument, after all.
When I slipped back into the curtains, Zinny was lying on her back, with her hands behind her head, staring at the canopy over my bed, her feet down on my pillow and her head at the foot of my bed. I put my head next to her feet and stretched out beside her. We just laid there for a moment, before Zinny spoke up.
“So, Andran,” she said in a small voice, “What are you going to make her do to get it back?”
Hmm, that was a good question. I hadn’t quite decided yet.
“Dunno,” I said, frowning at the ceiling.
Zinny was quiet. “Ha,” she laughed suddenly after a moment, “You could always collect from her like Marcia did from you,”
I frowned, “You mean snog her?”
“Yeah…w-why not?” she stuttered with a slight cough.
I shrugged, “Well I could…” Zinny got really quiet again, “But I don’t know I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m not smooth with girls, and… well, doing that is just somewhat perverted. It’s one thing to kiss a girl in a game of spin the bottle, of if she likes you and all, because they know what’s coming, but for ransom? Nah, I don’t want to be a perv.”
Zinny propped herself up on her shoulders and looked down at me, her short hair sticking up in a funny way. “Okay, so what do you want?”
I smiled at her, “You look like a cockatoo,”
She shoved both her feet in my face “ thank goodness they didn’t stink “ and laughed, “Careful, Andy, or you might wake up tomorrow wearing a hula skirt!”
I wrestled with her legs, trying to get them out of my face, as she was trying to put her big toe in one of my ears. “What a miracle, Zin, you shaved your legs!”
I saw her go very red from her place by my own feet, and she doubled her efforts. “That’s it,” she said, “You’ll be wearing that hula skirt to potions for that one!”
“Wait a minute,” I said, shoving her legs aside and sitting up to looked at her, “What did you say?”
*** *** ***
Deanne and I were totally at a loss for what to do, except to be at the astronomy tower at midnight when the note said. And it was hard for us to even discuss it, as the note said it would know if we told anyone. Deanne half believed it was a bunch of nonsense, but while she was probably right, neither of us were willing to risk it.
“Alright,” Deanne said, once again taking a stab at trying to discuss what we were going to do in a round about manner, “Concerning this small issue, I will go with you.”
“To the…” I caught on my words, as we worked on our homework in the library together, “…the place?”
She nodded. “To make sure nothing bad happens.”
“But what if… Listener sees you?”
She shook her head, “I can hide. But you need some backup there, just incase this is of a, uh, carnal nature.”
I sighed and looked absently at my parchment, “So I guess all we have to do now is wait.”
*** *** ***
The morning after Zinny and I had worked out the fine details of our plan, we began to prepare for it. Zinny looked up the spells we needed and I got the materials. We spent our lunch making up the contract.
“No, no,” Zinny said taking the parchment from me, “A third party has to create the contract if you are going to sign it, and that means me. If you write it, it won’t be magically solid, alright?”
“Fine,” I said, “But you write what I tell you to write, alright?”
She grinned at me, “Don’t worry about that. I’d be more concerned with the way Marcia Longbottom is staring at you right now,”
“Huh?” I glanced around just in time to see Marcia walk past us and sit farther down the Gryffindor table, glaring at us for most of the way, “Is she still sore that you kissed me?”
Zinny shrugged, “Beats me. She and I have never gotten along, and she’s been pissed ever since I discolored her bunny slippers a week ago.”
I raised an eyebrow at her, “How’d you do that?”
She grinned at me wickedly, “I dumped the bottle of her favorite colored nail polish on them.”
“Oh, okay then. So, back to the contract, it needs to say that she has to perform as I specify, and must do it for at least five minutes.”
Zinny looked up, “What if a professor stops her?”
I shrugged, “We can add that to a clause. If a teacher stops her, or a student unwittingly “ meaning she can’t tell someone to make her stop,”
“I know what it means,” she interjected.
“Then the five minutes will be accounted for, and her violin is safe. Are their any other clauses we should add in?”
Zinny scribbled for a moment then looked up, “Personal injury? If she breaks a leg, she can’t do it, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t try, right?”
Yeah, that was good, “Make it accidental person injury… and lets add in emergencies with a five minute delay… in case something happens that we didn’t expect,”
“Like a fire or another food fight?”
“Yeah… with the five minute delay, we have enough time to make sure it’s a good reason, and can remove the charm. That should do it, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah,” Zinny said, with growing laughter, “She’ll be squirming in her skirt when she reads this one!”
Movement behind Zinny caught my eye, “Hush Zin!” I whispered when I saw that Alice Longbottom was walking by giving me a suspicious look as she went to sit by her sister. When they both seemed to be absorbed in conversation, we picked ours back up.
“Okay,” Zinny hissed, “This contract is ready. All she has to do is sign it when you do to make it legally and magically binding. Are you sure you still want to do this?”
I glanced over at the Ravenclaw table where Marti was sitting, beside Deanne Liles. Her eyes were swollen and red looking, and she wasn’t eating much; mostly she pushed her food around her plate.
Okay, I’m not heartless. I’m fair. She deserved what she was going to get, one hundred percent.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
*** *** ***
Midnight came faster than I was expecting. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or upset over that fact, as I knew that this meeting would lead me back to my violin, yet I’d have to pay in some way that Listener chose. And who was Listener? I didn’t get that one.
Deanne went early, at eleven o’clock, so she could hide and not be seen. I waited by the fire in the CR until it was eleven-thirty. I swallowed and reached under the couch to retrieve my broom, Nina. Rather than sneak through the castle and risk getting caught, I decided to fly there. It was safer, and faster.
Nina was my Nimbus 2001. A few summers ago, I was forced to spend some time visiting Muggle schools, and so I packed away my wand, broom and everything else magical. Somehow, my wand ended up beside my broom, and stayed that way for three months. The result in this was that Nina now had a kind of… a personality; I guess you could call it. She was fussy, and sometimes got too excited about flights, and if someone else rides her, she will most likely buck them off. But it’s not like she could talk or anything, and she didn’t have a favorite color. I guess a personality was just my interpretation of a strange broom.
“C’mon, Nina,” I whispered to the wooden handle as I opened the window and mounted her, “Lets go for a flight to the astronomy tower, and try to stay away from windows, alright?”
She wiggled beneath me for a moment, and then we were in the air. I kept to the walls that didn’t have windows, because having someone like Professor Lovegood or Granger spot me was something I didn’t need right now. It took a bit longer than expected, but we made it before midnight.
We landed smoothly, but as I dismounted, Nina gave a violent buck and I flopped to the ground.
“Nina!” I shouted angrily.
“Blaming your clumsiness on a broom, eh?”
I scrambled to my feet and looked behind me. There, leaning up against a pillar in the shadows was Andran Audierus.
“What are you doing here? Go away, you’re going to ruin it all!”
Then “ oh man, I wanted to strangle him there and then “ he gave me this smug grin. You know, the I-think-I’m-so-smart-because-I-think-I-know-something-more-than-you-even-though-I-probably-don’t look… that arrogant jerk. He was NOT going to get my violin smashed to pieces. I drew my wand and pointed it at him, “I mean it, Andran. Get out of here. If you don’t-”
“If I leave,” he said, taking a few steps in my direction with that terrible grin, “Then how are you going to get your violin back?”
My jaw dropped almost to the floor. HE had taken it? “You?”
“Who else? I thought that would have been obvious to you. You did, after all, know the latin base of my name.”
Oh my heck... could I have been denser? Audierus is derived from the latin word for listen. I knew that, I knew that from the moment he spoke to me on the Hogwart's Express! Man, I was dumb!
My wand found its way back to my pocket. “Alright,” I said, feeling tears wanting to come again while I fought back my anger, “Let’s get this over with. What do you want from me?”
He squinted his eyes, “Hate me that bad, do you?”
I shook my head, “This doesn’t have anything to do with you. I want my violin back. I didn’t come here to play games.”
A slight look of shock flashed for a moment. What, was he stupid? Eh, his monkey probably put him up to all this.
“Here,” he reached out with a parchment and quill. “Read and sign this. It’s a magically binding contract. You complete your end, you get it back.”
I took it from him and unrolled it, then began to read it. Okay, it was a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, blah-blah, and then…
“You want me to WHAT?”
“Do you or do you not,” he said, “want your instrument back? This is what you get for what you did, you,” he pointed to the parchment in my hands, “brought this upon yourself.”
I glared at him for a few moments, before I sighed. “Got any ink?”
*** *** ***
“Marti, you can’t do this! This is… this is…”
“Deanne,” I sighed as she stuttered for a word to describe what I was about to do, “This is the only way he’ll give it back. And I have already agreed to do it, so there’s no going back.”
She looked at me wide eyed, “There has got to be another way.”
“I wish, Dee,” I sighed again, straightening my hat, “but I signed the magical contract. And he signed it too, so he’s obligated to give it back or I am completely allowed to tell McGonagall. So, here I go. If you want to go on ahead, I’ll let you take a seat before the pandemonium starts,”
She shook her head in resignation, “Alright, but I am not happy with this, Marti.”
I gave her a weak smile, “Neither am I.”
Five minutes later, I burst through the doors into the Great Hall, where most of the school was eating breakfast, wearing a grass skirt, two coconut halves connected with string, and a hat made from a pineapple that had various fruits stuck to it. At least I’d been allowed to wear my underwear under the skirt.
I felt like that Lady on the banana stickers.
Gritting my teeth, I touched my wand through my throat and magnified it to echo through the hall, after which I began singing the song Andran said I had to sing “ lucky for him I knew it, because it was a Muggle song “ which was “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, by Shania Twain, and begun to do the best hula dance I could.
“I’m goin' out tonight, I’m feelin' all right, gonna let it all hang out! Wanna make some noise, really raise my voice! Yeah I wanna scream and shout!”
Bailey Brocklehurst fell off her chair laughing “ I’d invited her to make up for blaming her “ and I even noticed Deanne had the giggles. Most everyone in the Great Hall was in hysterics in seconds.
But this was only half of the deal.
I hula-ed my way over to the Slytherin Table, where I proceeded to leap up onto it and conga/mambo-ed my way down the table, singing all the while, “No inhibitions, make no conditions! Get a little out of line! I ain’t gonna act politically correct, I only wanna have a good time! The best thing about being a woman, is the prerogative to have a little fun and…”
The teachers were in a huff, but while on the table with laughing students all around, they couldn’t catch me. And most of them were laughing too, so that made things even harder.
“Oh, oh, oh! Go totally crazy! Forget I’m a lady! Men’s shirts, short skirts! Oh, oh, oh! Really go wild, yeah, doin’ it in style! Oh, oh, oh! Get in the action, feel the attraction, color my hair, do what I dare! Oh, oh, oh! I wanna be free, yeah, to feel the way I feel…”
When I hit the chorus, I spotted Andran, who was laughing along with everyone else. I caught his eye turned around and mooned the Gryffindor Table. Well, with my underwear on. “Man! I feel like a woman!”
*** *** ***
Hey, she just mooned me! Hey!
“Zinny, did you see that! Zinny?” I looked on the floor, to find Zinny there, barely able to breathe.
Ah, and then Potter made his way over to Marti, and I started laughing again…
*** *** ***
Ah, bending over like that left me open for Professor Potter to grab my arm. He was laughing, yes, but he hauled me out of the Great Hall, just the same. But that was fine. According to the contract, if I was stopped from dancing for five minutes by a teacher, it was legal and my violin was safe. I was alright. Still....
Why do the craziest things happen to me?
Okay, okay, so I had something to do with this one, so perhaps I should rephrase that.
Why do I do dumb things?
I hope you all liked this chapter, and I hope it made up for the sorta-cliffy I left on the last chapter. I hope to start on the next chapter soon, but I do have to do some plot work so I apologize now if it takes too long. Remember, Read and Review! I respond to all reviews!
Oh, and thanks to all my loyal readers! you guys rock!!!
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