Chapter Fifteen
A Dose of Reality
“I still don’t understand,” Sypha said. “Why would God be angry at us for using the magic He gave us. It would be like if your dad gave you a broom for Christmas and then just blew up at you if you dared to use it. Not just using it inappropriately, but using it ever.”
I inwardly laughed at the idea of my own father ever giving me a flying broom. “Sypha, that’s where you and my aunt always trip up in this argument. What if it’s not GOD giving us these powers? What if they’re coming from somewhere else? Somewhere bad?”
She cocked her head to the side. “My dad says””
I arched a skeptical eyebrow. I was tired of her appealing to her father’s supposed authority anytime we had a disagreement. Never mind the fact her father outright disliked witches of my birth; Sypha had attributed to him the most asinine opinions on movies (they’re all boring, all of them), television (it’s too complicated, I don’t understand it), and politics (the Tories had the right idea about monarchy, they just need a king who ain’t no stinking Muggle) in the past week and a half.
“I mean,” she retreated. “That there’s no reason to think magic comes from somewhere bad. Look at all the good it’s done for us. Non-magical diseases are pretty much gone for us, we can build things in hours that it would take Muggles weeks. We can Apparate anywhere we want in the world.”
I frowned, because while it was true that magic could do all these impossible
things, it wasn’t enough for me. “But what about the way it’s affected people?”
I scratched my head. “I mean look at the tossers in our house. Look at Draco
Malfoy and Daniel Rosier. Look at Parkinson!”
Sypha flinched, as if I’d slapped her by saying Parkinson’s name.
“Magic has made so many of you arrogant and cruel. How can you say it comes from God?” I sat back, tapping my wand against the palm of my hand. I didn’t want the argument to continue, but Sypha seemed determined, her jaw set, to press on.
“Are your lovely Muggles any better?”
“Yes, absolutely!” I said. “Muggles are morally better than witches and wizards. There, I said it.”
“You’re wrong,” Sypha told me. I looked away because she looked hurt. I had a hard time mustering any sympathy, though. Finally, she reached the scroll of parchment and the old text book that we’d slid aside. “Alright,” she said. “Whatever. Let’s get back to this homework.”
“Right. So, the transitive theory of thaumaturgy posits that any time a charm is cast, it must be cast on something. But this ‘prime metaphysical principle’ theory states that ‘something’ isn’t necessarily an object. You can enchant an area, a rune, even a word.”
“I got that part, but how does it relate to casting Scourgify?”
“A cleaning spell has to be targeted,” I said. “You have to clean something, but that ‘thing’ can be a room just as well as a dirty dish.”
“Well it’s really simple when you put it like that,” Sypha said. “Flitwick always explains it with big words.”
I sighed. “Sypha, chemical is not a big word. Just because you don’t know what it means doesn’t mean it’s a big word.”
“I know what it means now,” she said. “It means reagent, right? So why doesn’t he just say reagent?”
I wasn’t sure there was a direct one-one equivalency between those two words, but I accepted her definition for the sake of argument. “I think he does it so Muggleborn students understand what he’s bloody saying. I don’t think I’d ever heard the word reagent until I met Snape.”
“Well that just goes back to what my dad was saying, that
we shouldn’t brew a weak version of our lessons just to suit Muggleborns.”
“And yet who is tutoring whom here?” I couldn’t help myself; I gave a huge,
smug grin.
Sypha stared at me and narrowed her eyes. “Touché, Coplin.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll drop the smugness. I shouldn’t be smug.” It wasn’t her fault God had blessed her with a smaller brain than mine.
“No, by all means gloat,” Sypha said. “I don’t go to church, but I do think I remember somewhere the Bible says that pride goeth before a fall.”
“Look,” I said, clearing the open books from between us. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to apologize here.”
“I accepted your apology, Michelle,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”
I ground my teeth. At this rate, I was never going to get Sypha anywhere near close enough for friendship for her to want to support me for Team Captain. And that meant I’d never get her to wear the pin with Copi on it. I was about ready to give up and go to bed when something Artemis had once said about economics came to mind. “If you’re not going to at least pretend you’re my friend after I’ve helped you with your homework, can I ask you a favour instead?”
“What favour?” she said, arching an eyebrow.
I grabbed the Copi-pin from my lapel and handed it to her. “Wear this. I’ll get you through charms if you support me for Team Captain.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” Sypha said. “If Pansy or Blaise or, God forbid, Draco saw me supporting a Muggleborn for anything.”
“Give me five minutes and I’ll take care of that problem,” I told her.
----
In The Young Defenders I read more about Tawny Devers. Tawny was fourteen and yet just now boarding Hogwarts Express for the first time. Her parents, though English by birth, had lived in France for years, and she had attended another school called Beauxbatons while they were there. But now they lived in Surrey. On the train, she was harassed by students from Slytherin and Gryffindor, who were drawn in a comically exaggerated style, the Gryffindors having wavy manes like lions while the Slytherins seemed to slither in and out of panels like snakes.
Tawny was nearly hexed by a surly Gryffindor when a silver-haired boy in a shimmering black robe rescued her. His name was Alonso Peck and he was a Muggleborn Ravenclaw. Alonso was considered the brightest fourth year, a Ravenclaw, and could supposedly outduel any of the bullies.
Witty dialogue was exchanged and the story moved forward; Tawny was sorted into Hufflepuff and quickly became horrified with the way some students”especially the Slytherins”treated Muggleborns. She said in France, in Beauxbatons, Muggleborns were considered equals, which Alonso laughed at. He’d said that France hadn’t ever had the problems England did, and though the words Death Eaters and Voldemort weren’t mentioned in the text, the implications were clear.
Then the story cut to a secret meeting in a floating mansion above London, concealed from Muggle eyes by powerful charms, where a group of malevolent figures was meeting.
“My fellow Crimson Flood,” intoned a crimson robed wizard, “one thousand years have come and gone since the First Coming of the Dark Lord, and five since the Second.” The lines of speech balloon writhed on the page. “It is up to us to ensure his reincarnation is not further delayed. Grendelmorte must rise again this year or the Ministry of Magic will destroy us.”
I closed the book, unsure of what the story was getting at. Sure, Voldemort had the Death Eaters, but they didn’t actually control his rise, ensure his resurrection, did they? I wondered if there was something else, some metaphor buried in the story. The Dark Lord returned because some creepy wizard with a flying mansion above London said so? I didn’t like it, because in my heart I believed this: men like Voldemort came into existence of their own accord and there was nothing we could do to change that.
----
That Thursday I finally got Grant to attend the Dueling Club meeting; Lockhart continued to fumble about, and when Draco Malfoy dueled the teacher and it took several awkward blocks of Malfoy’s attacks before Lockhart finally blasted him off the raised platform with a muttered spell that didn’t sound like any of the incantations he’d taught us in the club so far. Malfoy rose from his spot on the floor with hand on his chest, his eyes shining with anger. Pansy Parkinson rushed over, raising the hem of her robes with her hands. She started cooing over him”and, I saw, restraining him from flying after Lockhart in a rage. As the two of them arrived at the Slytherin corner of the room I heard Pansy scolding him for even beginning to entertain the idea of attacking a teacher.
“The bastard deserves it,” Malfoy said. “He could have killed me using that curse! I mean, on a student? He must be mad.”
For once I had to agree that it was over the line, though I suspected Malfoy was exaggerating as to whether the curse was potentially fatal. Still, Captain Vainglory didn’t seem to have hexed Malfoy out of malevolence so much as out of incompetence, as if he couldn’t bring to mind any normal dueling spell and then muttered the first thing that came into his head. I wondered why it was so hard for a trained adult to remember Expelliarmus.
Lockhart came around and began partnering people up for dueling practice”Snape had been forcefully removed from the equation by the Headmaster after his stunt in pairing up Malfoy and Potter. Lockhart was much less interested in inter-house rivalries and hatreds so partners often ended up being two students from the same house; and predictably, tonight I was paired with Grant Danesti.
“I’ve got to fight her?” Grant said to the professor,
horrified.
“I’ve got to fight him?” I said, stunned. I was torn, because I wanted to see how far I’d come since the start of the school year”could I beat Grant? But what if I couldn’t?
Lockhart looked dismayed at the idea. “I would really prefer if you didn’t fight per se.” He glanced to his left at
Malfoy in the corner. “This is dueling practice
after all. Surely you know how to disarm someone without harming them, lad.”
“Like you did with Malfoy?” Grant said.
“Um yes, that,” Lockhart gave a derisive laugh. “Young Drago is quite a bit better than I expected. He’ll make a fine duelist some day, yes indeed.”
“You used the Malleussempra!” said Grant. “Were you trying to break his ribs or something? Honestly, professor,””and Grant almost spat the word professor”“That was dangerous.”
“Yes,” Lockhart said. “Well, that’s why I’ve not taught
it to you all. I’m an expert on these sorts of things, of course, and you’re
just a student. Now here, prepare to duel her while I see if the Malfoy boy is
alright.”
Before Grant could further protest, Lockhart was gone.
“What’s Malleussempra?” I asked as we took our positions apart from each other in the Great Hall. I felt my stomach twisting into knots. I realized why I felt so ambivalent: I didn’t want to lose to Grant because he acted smug enough as it was and I didn’t want feed that ego. And yet winning was a scary proposition too, because Grant’s ego was about all he had, given the scorn the other Slytherins piled on him, the way his parents treated him, and his sisters’ constant torment. I didn’t want to make his life worse.
“Malleussempra, The Forever Hammer,” Grant said. “Kind of a nasty spell. Can be used to break bones, crack skulls. Kind of fallen out of favor because it’s considered barbaric.”
“And he used it on Malfoy,” I said to myself. “Nutter.”
I wiped sweat from my forehead. It was way too warm in here to be wearing our robes, but Captain Vainglory had insisted we all wear them to the club.
Grant bowed to me, and I returned the favor. We both took a step back and readied our wands. I searched his red eyes for any sign of getting ready to strike, but he seemed sleepy, almost distracted. I wondered what, if anything, he was thinking about. Was this all one big game to him? Did he just come to humor me? I let my anger and apprehension at this thought twist through my body and into my arm and took a step forward.
“Expelliarmus!”
I called; the red beam lanced out but Grant leaned forward and it sailed over
his shoulder. Immediately he tried to strike, shouting the same curse and
firing off a red beam of his own. I didn’t have time to dodge.
“Munitio!” I
cried. It was a sort of parry charm that Lockhart had taught us when he realized
that the vast majority of students weren’t getting Protego right. Instead of
absorbing the impact of an incoming curse, Munitio
bounced it. I waved my wand down, reflecting the curse into the ground where it
burned and fizzled out. I took a step forward, thinking about trying the
Knockback Jinx. But Grant knew I favored that spell and would have probably
seen it coming. So instead I threw out another Expelliarmus, the red beam
bouncing off Grant’s reflection charm and knocking the wand out of the hand of
a nearby Hufflepuff. Beams occasionally did that; Lockhart had not really
considered the consequences of teaching a Great Hall full of adolescents a
spell that would bounce hexes in random directions.
“Damn,” Grant said. “Flipendo!”
The Jinx slammed into me and knocked me backwards, but I
was wearing thongs; instead of knocking me over, I slid backwards with the
force, my shoes’ friction being rather nonexistent. I slammed into the wall but
I didn’t drop my wand or fall, so I figured I was still in the duel. I extended
my wand, my brain flickering through several possible spells before I settled
on the Tickling Charm.
“Rictussempra!”
I called. A silver-white beam flew out and slammed into Grant’s knee. He
immediately began belly-laughing”an unusual and frightening thing for him”and
fell to one knee. I grinned because I thought that meant I’d won the duel. I
aimed my wand again to disarm him for good measure, but before I could say
anything Grant launched to his feet, gritting his teeth through the tickling
charm. His arm unfolded from his side and his wand flashed.
“Expelliarmus!”
The red-white beam slammed into my chest and I felt my wand ripped from my grip. I landed on my bum and looked up to see Grant scowling over me.
“You put up a good fight, Michelle.” He extended a hand to help me up.
“You don’t sound too happy about that,” I told him as I stood. I looked around; a few students had watched our duel, but most were absorbed in their own duels or those of other students. They wouldn’t notice how livid Grant appeared. I’m unhappy to say this, but seeing no of-age witnesses to Grant’s rage made me feel vulnerable.
“I should have done better,” he growled. “You nearly won
that.”
“Why should you have done better? I’ve been going to dueling club every
Thursday and this is your first time. And you still won.”
Grant immediately answered, “Because you’re””
“You had better not finish that sentence how I think you were going to finish it,” I told him.
“No!” he said, suddenly looking apologetic, though still annoyed. “It’s not because you’re a Muggleborn, it’s just because you have less experience. Right? I mean, I’ve had to put up with being hexed and jinxed all my life. It’s just that you’re so new. I didn’t expect you to learn this fast.”
“But you didn’t get your wand until you came to Hogwarts,” I said.
“I didn’t own a wand before I came to Hogwarts,” he said. “But I swiped plenty of them to defend myself from my sisters.”
“Well, you can’t rest on your laurels,” I said. “Whatever laurels are. Plus, you’ve not had to deal with
Sophitia and Jilll while you’ve been at Hogwarts, so you’re not as alert as you
normally are.”
“Are you saying I’ve gotten soft?” Grant almost laughed, though it might have
been the remnants of my tickling charm. “I guess I ought to practice more.”
I wiped sweat from my forehead again and felt it pooling around my neck beneath my robes. “What do you say we just watch the older students and learn,” I said. “We can practice ourselves later, somewhere cooler.”
----
Somewhere cooler turned out to be the shadowy wooden infrastructure beneath the Quidditch pitch. I was bundled up in several layers of clothing, the outermost being a pink hoodie with Princess Zelda emblazoned on the front. Grant, though, wore only a tee-shirt and jeans beneath his house robes. He seemed to be feeling the chill of the late February air, because when he wasn’t flicking jinxes at me, he was trembling.
I deflected a Rictussempra into one of the wooden beams. “Grant, I don’t see why we can’t practice up on the pitch itself. Nobody has the field today since Angelina Johnson and the Ravenclaw captain hexed each other arguing about it.”
“What does it matter to you?” Grant said. He launched an Expelliarmus charm at me, but missed and splintered one of the beams holding up the stands.
“Well for one, I’m afraid that we’re going to bring the bleachers down on us. For two, there’s actual sunshine up there.”
“Sunshine is overrated,” Grant said. He stepped forward
again and fired off some pretty pink curse that we’d both seen Padma Patil
perform the day before. Lavender Brown had tried to deflect it, but the curse
exploded against her charm and knocked her down.
I lunged forward, figuring that magic was not the right choice here; I punched
the curse with my left fist and sent it careening back at Grant. But it sparked
when it hit my fist, and a jolt ran up my arm. My fingers were numb and my arm
tingly.
Grant narrowly avoided getting hit by the curse himself; he stared at the patch on the ground where it had landed and was now fizzling out like a bottle of Dr. Pepper dumped unceremoniously into the dirt. He was leaning up against the cross section of two of the support beams and looked more afraid than anything.
“Grant, can we take a break”?“
Before I could finish my sentence, Grant had raised his wand again, repeating the same curse with a flicker of anger in his eyes. I tried to dodge it because my arm was too numb to try and punch it again. Instead the curse caught me in the face as I ducked, exploding in a violent pink burst that sent me sprawling on my back and into the dimmest darkness.
“You’re backing Coplin for the Dueling Team leader,” said a voice within the darkness. My eyes fluttered open, but everything seemed hazy, like I was looking at it through clouded glass. The voice spoke again and I realize it belonged to Jacinto. “What a brave girl. I mean, she’s crazy. Not a ghost of a chance she’ll actually win.”
I tried to say something, but couldn’t, as if I had no mouth. I heard another voice”Sypha’s”coming from somewhere behind me. I tried to look for her, but I couldn’t move my neck either. I had no neck.
“Sort of.” My entire view shifted, backed away from Jacinto. “I’m doing it as payment for her tutoring me.”
Jacinto smiled, that big golden boy smile of his, distorted by the fog into something like the grin the Joker wears. “And the racist jerks in our house haven’t hexed you a new orifice because”?”
“She charmed it to barf whenever it sees one of them,” Sypha said. “So they’ll think it’s another vandalized pin like the ones Draco and Goyle were wearing.”
“That’s a really complicated bit of magic,” Grant said. “Hell, the modifications to the pins Malfoy and his clique wore were made by seventh-years. How does it identify the racists?”
There was a grunt from Sypha, and the whole world shook. “I didn’t ask,” she said. “And could you stop using that word. They’re not racists”look, Blaise Zabini is one of them. They just think wizarding learning should stay in wizarding families.”
“I fail to see how that’s any different than racism,” Jacinto said. “But honestly, the fact that the pin isn’t barfing for me is strange. Coplin and Danesti found that potion I was brewing in the woods. I think they’re convinced I’m the heir of Slytherin. Would you mind if I borrowed that, Sypha? Here, I’ll give you mine.”
Sypha reached down; her hand covered my field of vision unpinned me from her robe, and handed it over to Jacinto. He pinned me to his own lapel, and when his hand moved, I could see Sypha. Even through the fog I could tell she was unusually happy, in a way I hadn’t seen her happy… well, ever, but particularly since Parkinson had thrown her out of their clique.
She was affixing a pin of me to her lapel. “Why do you even have this if you don’t think she stands a chance?”
“The girl’s got balls,” Jacinto said. “I’m proud of that even if she’s trying to thwart my evil schemes. And what are Harper and Watson going to do about it? They couldn’t duel their way out of a house-elf sack.”
My vision grew cloudier, dimming until it was completely black again. I heard my name being called, felt a hand on my shoulder”I suddenly had shoulders again. Through pain and cold, I pulled myself back to consciousness and looked up to see Grant.
“Michelle!” he called. “Bloody hell, are you okay?”
“Copi’s in danger,” I muttered.
“What?” He leaned back and studied my face for a moment. “Michelle, I’m so sorry. I was just in shock and anger that you bloody punched my hex away and I thought I’d catch you with it again, but I didn’t mean to hit you in the face and”I’m sorry. I did something mad and I’m sorry.”
“Why does my head hurt?” I rubbed the back of it, from where a dull throb was spreading out over my cranium.
“You cracked your noggin on that support beam when you fell,” Grant said, in the most pathetic and consoling tone I’d ever heard him use. “I thought you were dead.”
“Well I’m not,” I said. I picked my wand up from the dirt. “Look, I’ll be mad at you later. I’ve got to see if Copi is okay.”
“What do you mean? Why would Copi be in danger?”
I pulled myself to my feet against the wooden beam I hit my head on. That was the least it could do for me after giving me a concussion. “When I was out, I saw from her point of view. She was with Jacinto, and… Oh gosh. He knows it was us who found his potion in the woods and he suspected something was strange about the Copi pin I gave to Sypha.”
“What were you trying to do, get Sypha cursed?” Grant
said. “I mean, I know neither of us particularly like her, but that’s just
cruel.
I grimaced. “She’s fine. I asked Copi to barf whenever she saw a blood-purity
nut. But Jacinto realized something was odd since it wasn’t barfing when it saw
him. I think he knows there’s something different about that pin.”
“Where is it now?” Grant said. “The pin?”
“It’s on Jacinto’s lapel. Come on, we have to get back to the castle!” I ran towards the retaining wall that held up the dirt the Quidditch pitch was grown on, pointed my wand at the ground, and shouted Flipendo. The knockback jinx sent me rocketing upward, where I grabbed onto the top of the wall and rolled over onto the grass. Stains on my jeans and hoodie were pretty irrelevant now that I’d been lying in the dirt.
Grant followed suit, blasting himself higher but stumbling on the landing. I helped him and the two of us ran towards the nearest exit to the pitch”and nearly bowled over Madam Hooch.
“Coplin? Danesti?” she assumed a scornful pose. “What the devil are you doing out here?”
“Practicing spells!” I blurted. It was technically true I thought it would be better to leave out the dueling part.
“Without adult supervision? Honestly, Coplin that is what the classrooms are for. Surely Professors Snape or Flitwick would have let you borrow their rooms if you needed to work on something. Stop fidgeting, Coplin, you look like a vampire in a garlic factory. And is that a cut on your cheek?” Hooch grabbed us both by the shoulders. “I’ll see what Professor Snape has to say about this.”
----
One quick trip to the infirmary later, Grant and I were knee deep in cauldrons, as Snape stood over us, making sure we cleaned every one of them to his liking.
“We have rules for a reason,” Snape said, looking out over his curvy nose. “Madam Hooch didn’t say as much, but I’m sure she reached the same conclusion I did. You weren’t just practicing any spells out there, you were dueling. I don’t know who you think you’re going to be fighting, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. We have a designated day of the week to practice these sorts of charms and a designated class to learn them.”
“You try learning anything about defense from that brainless fop,” Grant said.
I winced in anticipation of Snape’s response. The professor glared at Grant and practically snarled at him, “Clean your cauldrons, Mr. Danesti. It’s not the student’s responsibility to handle the affairs of teachers.”
I scrubbed my next Cauldron viciously and hastily. Copi could be in all kinds of danger; Jacinto could be torturing her, for all I knew. I had to get this bloody detention done before it was too late.
“You should have seen him yesterday, Professor,” I said. I tried to keep the word Professor as magnanimous as possible and let him think my anger was directed entirely at Lockhart. “He couldn’t even disarm Malfoy and ended up hitting him with””
“Malleussempra,” Snape said drolly. “Yes, Miss Coplin, I heard all about that from young Mr. Malfoy, complete with his characteristic exaggerations. I’ve spoken with the Headmaster about it. Now if you don’t have any other complaints to register, I’ll be grading your resent reagent exams.”
Snape turned with a billow of his black robes and stomped over to his desk.
Meanwhile, my elbows hurt.
----
After the detention was over, it was past curfew, so I headed back to my dorm and punched my pillow until it surrendered. I tried to contact Copi from the sketch of her in my sketch book, but she didn’t answer. I was so worried, I barely got any sleep; I was lucky that the next day was Saturday. I finally crawled out of bed that morning around 10, got dressed, and immediately ran to the boy’s dorm. I knocked and waited for the door to open. When it did, I stared into the face of Billy Harper, a boy with hair as black and greasy as Snape’s but a face as freckled as the average member of the Weasley family. He also looked groggy.
“What do you want, mudblood?”
“I’m here to see Grant.”
“Yeah, and I’ll let you in when Muggles learn to fly brooms. Sod off.”
From the back of the room, I heard Grant’s voice pipe up in annoyance until Billy Watson was grabbed by the shoulder and tossed aside. Grant slid through the door and shut it before Billy could respond, and I heard some sort of hex crack against the inside, the thrum of a Munitio charm, and then Billy’s distorted scream.
“I think all the doors in the castle do that if you try to hex them,” Grant said. “Brilliant, if you ask me.”
“Okay, fine.” I shook my head. “But what about Copi?”
“She looked okay to me,” Grant said. “Well, other than puking up green sick all night. Harper and Watson couldn’t get enough of that.”
“That’s disgusting.” I looked down the hall towards some other students, emerging from the common room. As usual, Arianna Davis was looming over the lot of them, making sure none of that good old Slytherin ambition broke out into a fight. She was purported to have a right hook as mean as her Bowel-Evacuation curse, which was good for unlucky Muggleborns like me and Terrance. “So he hasn’t experimented on her yet?”
“How could I know that? All I know is that she seems to be okay.”
“I’ve got to find a way to communicate with her,” I said.
“No, what you need to do is calm down, carry your sketchbook with you where ever you go today, and stop worrying about a bloody drawing.”
I winced. I couldn’t really rebut that, because he was right”Copi was just a drawing. She even told me that she shared her mind with me, which among other things, explained why I’d seen from her perspective when I was knocked unconscious. But Copi meant a lot more to me than any other drawing I’d done. Even though she was sort of me. (Or maybe because she was me.)
“It’s not that simple,” I told Grant.
Grant insisted that our first stop of the day was the library, because we just had to do all our Astronomy homework in the middle of the day. Grant said that if we waited until the actual stars were out, it would be too dark to see.
“Your vision again?” I said.
He nodded. “It’s an albino thing.”
We poured over star charts for two hours, until I was certain that I was going to get Cancer from breathing in too much of the Horsehead Nebula. The last star I drew on my homework chart was Alpha Centauri, which reminded me of a science fiction show I’d once watched on the telly at home.
“Alpha Centauri is the closest star to Earth, you know.”
“Did I mention I lived next door to an observatory?” said Grant. “I lived next door to an observatory.”
“Oh, right.” The Walkers Midst Carrion archive had the world’s most massive magical telescope sticking out of the top of it, and Grant had lived right next door to it until he moved to Johannesburg two years ago. “Scientists say that we might go there someday. Make it the first planet we visit outside our solar system.”
“Muggle scientists may say that,” Grant said. “Wizard scientists are more interested in discovering a genetic marker for magic blood or figuring out if magic is a wave or a particle.”
“It’s a wave, obviously,” I said. “It interferes with eclectic devices. That’s why I can’t play a Gameboy here.”
Grant labeled the Andromeda Galaxy, put his quill down, and glared at me. “What the bloody hell is a Gameboy?”
I grinned. “Not telling you. I’ll show you, one day. When school is out.”
“Aren’t you two a little young to be discussing wave/particle physics?” said a boy’s voice. I turned to see a tall brown-haired boy with a face so exquisite it reminded me of the men on the covers to my mother’s sexy vampire novels. I felt myself blushing, mostly because I was in my wrinkled house robes and he was dressed like Romeo, vest, trousers, and poofy sleeves. He was at least two years older than me.
“Uh, yes,” I said. “Yes we are.”
“Cedric Diggory,” he said, extending a hand. I shook it. “A friend of mine noticed your necklace there and thought you might like to be invited to the chapel service tomorrow.”
“Chapel service?” I blinked.
“That’s right. The Headmaster’s all big on accommodating every sort of person, and agreed to let us host a chapel service on Sunday morning. I don’t actually expect it to last that long, on the count of nobody coming, but I figured it was worth a shot.”
“Seriously?” I blinked, my world turned upside down again. Which, I suppose in a way meant that it was turned right-side up. “I thought I was the only Christian student at this school.”
“I reckon not!” Cedric said, laughing. “It may be the 90s, but for better or worse, it’s still the biggest religion in the United Kingdom. So, will you come? It’s in the Great Hall before breakfast.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling the weight, suddenly, of all the Sundays missed, all the nights I didn’t pray and chose a comic book over my Bible. It wasn’t exactly guilt, but a sense that a part of me was missing, that I’d cut off an arm when I agreed to come to Hogwarts.
“We’ll I’m not bloody going,” Grant said. “No offense, but when your holy book presents stuff I could do with a wand as incredible miracles, I can’t really take you seriously.”
“Well, that’s a fair point,” Cedric said. “But I’m not here to debate you.”
The boy wondered off and I leaned forward and hugged my
sketchbook. Suddenly Endy Summerby didn’t seem like the most attractive boy in
the school. Though, I doubted that Cedric Diggory would be quick to date a
first year, even if I was as old as a second year.
Still, I could have my crushes, right?
While I was lost in thoughts of Cedric (and Endy coming
to fight the older boy for my honor), I began to notice muffled screaming
coming from somewhere in front of and below me. I looked in the floor and saw
nothing, only then realizing that the noise was coming from my notebook. I
tossed it down on the table and rushed to open it to Copi’s page.
She was leaning against the tree in the background, huffing and puffing. As she
ran towards the page, little pencil lines of sweat flew off of her.
“Michelle!” the little drawing said.
“What’s wrong?” said Grant. “Is it Jacinto?”
“Yes!” she took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure why pencil lines needed to breathe”and what did she breathe for that matter? Paper?
“Where is he?” I said.
“I don’t know. He’s left me at the stone circle across the covered bridge. He had Sypha there and he told her how you’d been using her to get to him. He said he was going to go find something of his that could destroy me. I don’t know how long he’ll be.”
“This is mad,” I said. “Stay here in the sketchbook, Copi. We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
I shoved the sketch book and all my astronomy stuff in my backpack and ran towards the door of the library, the librarian screaming at us for the racket and the running.
My heart was pounding again. I had to move fast.