Creating Cupid’s Cards
Chapter 15
On the second Friday of February, after her weekly Flying lesson, which was the last class of the day, Angelina trudged over to Abe Aclebee to report for detention. The rest of the class was dispersing, heading back to the castle.
“See you later,” Emma murmured to Angelina as she too had headed up to the castle. “And thanks again for not mentioning my name.”
“Of course, though it’s not you who should be thanking me. Potter, Wormtail, and Lupin”who were the ones responsible for the fireworks”haven’t even seen a detention from it.”
True to the unspoken agreement between the feuding parties, neither Black nor Angelina had disclosed the identities of the other participants in the incident. Each claimed they had been acting alone.
“I, on the other hand, will be in detention with Abe until I’m a hundred years old,” Angelina moaned as she turned away from Emma to face whatever unpleasant task Abe had dreamed up for her this time.
It was her ninth detention in a string of punishment resulting from the disaster at the Quidditch match. Black was already standing next to Abe as Angelina approached. She frowned, looking for Hagrid, who had administered their previous detentions (helping out around the grounds doing manual labor, all without any magical assistance).
“Come on,” Abe growled and”without even acknowledging Angelina”trudged off towards the castle.
“Where’s Hagrid?” Angelina whispered to Black as they shuffled off, trailing behind Abe. Before Black could answer, Abe shouted back at them.
“No fraternizing! This is not a social engagement; ya’ll better get yar butts in gear.”
Thus they slogged along through the snow and up to the castle in silence. As they neared the steps, the tall and imposing form of Professor McGonagall appeared, waiting for them. Angelina recalled how she and Professor Flitwick had stood in stony silence as Abe Aclebee had berated Angelina after the Quidditch fiasco.
“Such behavior,” Abe had spluttered in furry, “is unacceptable. It completely undermines the Hogwarts’ teams, my authority as a referee, and the noble game of Quidditch. I move to expel Miss Lestrange!” he had finished with a yell and a bang of his hand.
Professor Flitwick had blinked in astonishment at the raving referee before finally finding his voice. “Uh, may I inquire on what grounds you wish to expel her?”
“Her behavior this afternoon!” Abe had bellowed.
“Yes,” Flitwick had mused, contemplatively, “but I’m not sure I follow. I assure you that there are no injured students, nor will the stadium sustain any lasting effects. So,” here he trailed off, looking enquiringly at Abe, “if you wouldn’t mind explaining your basis for expulsion a little more clearly?”
Abe simply blinked at Flitwick.
“I think what Filius is getting at,” explained McGonagall, “is that we have heard both Miss Lestrange’s and Mr. Black’s accounts and I feel it is safe to say that there are hardly grounds for Miss Lestrange’s expulsion.”
“Suspension then!” Abe shouted gleefully.
“For what?” Flitwick squeaked.
“The explosion! She defiled my Quidditch pitch.” A maniacal gleam entered Abe’s eyes as he said this.
“That’s dragon dung!” Black shouted. “Angelina didn’t even have anything to do with the fireworks””
“Black,” Angelina hissed. “Shut. Up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Black,” Flitwick piped. “You make an excellent point.”
Abe spluttered.
“What Mr. Black is saying, perhaps ineloquently, is that it was not Miss Lestange who lit the fireworks,” said McGonagall. “In fact, if you will recall, Miss Lestrange was simply trying to stop the fireworks. Isn’t that correct Mr. Black?”
“Yes,” he concurred, glaring defiantly at Abe.
Abe looked mutinous. “Yes, yes . . . well, I suppose just detentions then. Until I see Miss Lestrange has learnt her lesson,” he finished ominously.
“That is, of course, your prerogative,” Flitwick had said.
And so Abe had assigned Angelina a total of a hundred detentions (while only assigning Sirius Black forty). Professor McGonagall had evened the score, and then some, by assigning Black an additional sixty and deducting 50 house points from Gryffindor; Professor Flitwick meanwhile had suggested that Angelina spend half her detentions in the Hospital Wing so as to get some first hand knowledge of how dangerous misused magic could be.
Angelina sighed as she tramped up the last of the stairs to come face to face with Professor McGonagall. She gave them a curt nod before turning her attention to Abe and announcing, “I’ll take them from here Abe. Come on you two, follow me and listen closely. My fellow professors and I,” McGonagall began as she went into the entrance hall and out of the chilly wind, “have decided that it is important for you to become aware of what a privilege it is to use magic, as you are both from families with long magical histories. Such power as we are blessed to have should not be used in such trivial pursuits as childish feuds.”
She stopped at a long table positioned to one side of the Entrance Hall’s wide marble staircase and turned to face them.
“Isn’t that sort of like discrimination? We can’t help how we are born, Professor McGonagall,” Angelina said sweetly, echoing the slogan of Muggle-born activists.
“No, it is not, Miss Lestrange,” Professor McGonagall continued sternly. “We are simply expanding your intellectual horizons, which I am sure you will agree is the goal of Hogwarts.”
Angelina wrinkled her nose, but could think of no rebuttal to this. So she simply kept her mouth shut and let McGonagall continue.
“Now that you have learned the difficulties of manual labor, we also wish to instill in you a sense of monetary value. Without magic, that stunt you two pulled would have been very costly. Thus we have decided that the two of you are to hold a Valentine’s Fundraiser, the proceeds of which will go to St. Mungo’s to help children who suffer from magical spells gone wrong. Hopefully this will leave you with an appreciation for magic and an understanding of the responsibilities such a blessing entails.
“Here is your table. You will spend the day selling valentines. The students will write down who the valentine is for and what they wish it to say. They may include their name, or not, as they wish. This weekend we expect you to make the valentines you have sold, and on Sunday night you will hand them over to the house-elves, who will ensure they arrive at the Valentine’s Feast on Monday.
“Any questions? Good. Carry on.”
And with that she left them to man the booth.
The afternoon passed in relative peace, neither Black nor Angelina saying very much to one another as the students filed by, filling out forms and dropping them into the slotted box while Angelina and Black collected their money.
“Oh, excuse me, but you’re a knut short,” Angelina called to a fourth year Ravenclaw when there was only about an hour left until closing. The girl blushed and rummaged in her bag before producing the necessary coin.
Angelina distractedly took it from her and slipped it into the box, but her attention was on other things, as at that moment she had overheard Black drawl, “What are you doing here, Snivellus? This booth is for sending valentines, and who would want one of those from you? Or are you sending one to your nose?”
“Oh shut up, Black,” Angelina spat. “Come over here Sev. I’ll help you.”
“I don’t need your help, Angelina," Severus began in a snobbish tone, but moved over to her side of the table all the same. “I’m perfectly capable of””
“I don’t doubt that, Severus. I remember what happened to Rookwood on the train. But this is hardly the time for that. Black and I are supposed to be showing we’ve mended our ways, not brandishing Dark Magic about in the front hall.”
Severus opened his mouth to retort, but Angelina cut in.
“Just because we know it, doesn’t mean we should use it whenever we please. Now,” she paused and looked at the two slips of paper in Severus’s hand, “that’ll be fourteen sickles.”
Severus mutely counted out the money and handed it over to Angelina.
“See you at dinner; we’ll discuss Operation Revealing ABOG.”
Severus simply nodded as he slipped away through the crowd. As soon as he had left Angelina rounded on Black.
“Do you want to get us more detentions? Or are you just thick?”
Black simply cast Angelina his most charming smile and said, “Anything to spend more time in your heavenly presence, my Angel.”
Fuming in annoyance over both his treatment of Severus and her inability to do anything about it, Angelina turned her attention to a second year Hufflepuff and snapped, “What do you want?”
~*~
The following day, Angelina and Black stood listlessly outside the library, blinking in bemused confusion as Madam Pince twitched her wand and expelled their sack of valentine orders.
“And stay out!” Madam Pince cried in fury.
The two looked at each other, mystified, wondering where else they could go to complete the valentine project they had been assigned as part of their detentions.
“Where do we go now?”
“I don’t suppose our common rooms are an option?”
“No.”
“Well, an abandoned classroom it is then.”
With that, the two children set off down the hall.
“Sorry about getting us kicked out. Madame Pince has an unfounded hatred for me,” Black griped.
“I’d hardly call it unfounded. She must spend half her time keeping your Gryffindor gang out of the Restricted Section and the other half protecting her books, keeping the library quiet and clean, and generally thwarting your diabolical stunts. It’s a miracle she has any time for the rest of us.”
Black tossed her a sheepish grin. “Well, you have to admit, her tossing us out because I sneezed was a little outrageous.”
Angelina tilted her head back to scrutinize Black. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, a smile playing about her lips. “I’d say it’s lucky she lets a vagabond like you anywhere near her books. I know I wouldn’t.”
Black laughed. “Oh, I forgot, you’re just a little angel, aren’t you? Never tried for the Restricted Section.”
“Well, you do keep on insisting that I am an angel, I believe.”
“You’ll always be one to me.”
With that the two of them lapsed into an uneasy silence. Angelina never knew how to respond when Sirius got all sweet on her. He was much easier to deal with when he was teasing and laughing at her.
“So,” Angelina said after a pause, searching for something to fill in the silence. “I hear Andromeda has gotten engaged. Your family must be proud.”
“He’s a perfectly prejudiced, pompous git…Of course they love him!”
The two exchanged sardonic smiles, Black’s eyes holding a tad more bitterness than Angelina’s.
“Have they set a date?”
“Sometime this summer. You should be getting the invitation soon.”
“Oh, yes. I remember something in one of Andromeda’s letters about the parchment color being off””
“Egg-shell instead of cream,” Black recalled, laughing at the memory.
“Your Aunt ’Ella must have been furious,” Angelina said, stony-faced, referring to Andromeda’s mother Druella.
“Can you believe it! The incompetence.” Black sighed in mock-exasperation.
Angelina caught Black’s eyes and burst into a fit of giggles, Black joining in.
They completed their walk in companionable silence. Once they arrived at the empty Charms classroom, Angelina dropped the pile of books she was carrying with a thud and collapsed on a chair. Sliding into the desk next to her, Black set the sack between them and drew out two order forms. Tossing one to Angelina, he began to work on the other himself.
Soon they were well on their way; a nice pile of sparkling valentines growing quickly on an empty desk off to one side.
Angelina was busy perfecting a spell to make the card sing its message to its addressee. She figured that if she was going to waste her whole Saturday afternoon making valentines for people she didn’t know, she could at least practice her magic while she was doing it.
“Look here,” Black called, holding out a valentine slip to Angelina.
Angelina, frowning curiously at the delighted look on Black’s face, leaned over to take it from him.
“You know Martin Devin, that tall bloke from Slytherin?” Black continued, his voice brimming with poorly suppressed mirth as he handed the slip over. “He’s sending Mary McDonal, that short blond Hufflepuff, this card. Go on read it!”
Black’s eyes danced merrily as he watched Angelina scan the card.
“‘Your eyes are like mud puddles’?” Angelina spluttered in amusement. “Does he think that comparison is going to help him win her heart?”
Black sighed. “Who knows? The other day James told Evans her hair reminded him of blood from a grisly murder. She took it as a bizarre insult. The funny thing is, he meant it as a compliment.”
Angelina rolled her eyes. “Next time tell him to stick to something a little more conventional. Maybe a blood-red rose”if he has to mention blood.”
Black laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with a little creativity.”
“Oh yeah?” Angelina challenged. She picked up another valentine and read. “‘You make my heart feel as if it’s been stabbed with a dagger, my eyes bleed with tears; I love you so much it’s like a banshee, howling in my ears?’”
“Alright. But you have to admit, if you read one more sickeningly sweet poem comparing the person receiving it to a summer’s day, you’re going to be ill.”
“Fine, fine. Oh, listen to this one,” Angelina said and proceeded to read a pretentious, supercilious, and insipid card addressed to some seventh year Ravenclaw boy. By the end of the card, both Angelina and Black were doubled over with laugher, tears of mirth in their eyes.
Still laughing, Black snatched the next valentine from the pile and read it, but instead of bursting into more gales of laughter, his face fell and his eyebrows drew together.
“What is it?” Angelina asked, drying her eyes.
“Nothing.” Sirius responded, not all together convincingly. He tried to place the card out of Angelina’s reach, but she snatched it from him, her curiosity piqued.
“Oh,” Angelina said after she’d read it, the blood draining from her face as she tried to shove the valentine away.
“So you’re dating him?” Sirius asked belligerently.
“You know I’m not,” Angelina replied, her embarrassment turning into annoyance.
“Bit creepy though. He’s old enough to be your father,” Black gabbed.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Jonathan’s only four years older, and he’s just being nice,” she snapped back.
“Jonny is not just being nice.”
“Yes he is. Not everyone is biologically incapable of such niceties. That’s just you Black.”
And with that, the two fell back into a moody silence that persisted for the rest of the day.