#eye pouchie smiles

[tutuandscoot]

A collection of Mr Scott’s prettiest smiles

[nicoline1998enilocin]

Getting to know myself again

PAIRING | Bucky Barnes x Mid Size!Female!Reader

WORD COUNT | 3.5K

SUMMARY | Both Bucky and Reader have been through life-altering situations that made them unsure of their bodies. Through their eyes, we will see what they will do to show each other how they can get to know and love their own bodies all over again after everything that has happened to them.

WARNING(S) | This is your official trigger warning. Do not proceed if any of these topics upset you. Bad body image, low self-esteem, suicidal tendencies, physical assault on Reader, talk about the loss of blood, body dysmorphia.

A/N | Hi all! This fic is based around the fact that I have always struggled with my body image, but I tried to put a positive spin on it in the end. Remember, every single person is different, but perfect in their own way! 🖤

Likes and reblogs would be very much appreciated 💜

Main Masterlist | Bucky Barnes Masterlist

It was promising to be a fun night out with the girls, but that wasn't how it turned out to be. Never did you think you would end up bleeding out in the emergency room of the hospital, but that is exactly how this night ended. Alone on the gurney waiting for them to fix you up, even though you'd rather have them leave you alone so you can just go without anyone knowing you'd even be gone. No one would even miss you anyway, or so you thought. The moment Bucky heard what happened, he was racing his way to the hospital to find his best friend who needed him more than anything at this moment.

Wanda and Natasha asked you to go clubbing with them, which you usually didn't do but figured it wouldn't hurt to go with them for once. They already asked so many times, and you didn't want to disappoint them again. ''Okay, but I don't have anything to wear, nothing looks good on me,'' you say, but the two ladies didn't want to hear any of it. ''Babe, you're absolutely perfect, everything looks good on you!'' Nat said, but you figured she only said that to make you feel better, not because she actually meant it. You are in no way close to the way they look. You have wide hips, thick thighs, a pouchy belly, and boobs that are way too big for your figure. Every time you had to pick something from the racks in a size 16 or 18, your heart immediately sank to your stomach, and you just wanted to turn around and leave.

''How about we go shopping together? That way we can find something that will make you look irresistible!'' Wanda offered, but the doubt immediately crept back into your mind. Irresistible? She must be joking right? but you decide to go anyway after a deep sigh. The least you could do is see if there was anything you liked to begin with, you could use some new clothes since most of your old ones are starting to fit rather tight for your liking. The three of you are going out to the mall when you run into Bucky. ''Hey, Buck!'' you say and a big smile appears on your face. ''Hey doll, looking good as always!'' he said with a flirty tone and a wink. ''Where are you heading off to?'' he asked. ''Just shopping with Nat and Wanda, I finally caved and we're going clubbing tonight..'' you said a little unsure. ''Sounds like a lot of fun! I'll see you later,'' he said and walked away to his destination.

''Really Y/N, I don't understand why you don't just give into your feelings for him already, I can tell he is really into you as well!'' Nat said. ''You must be joking? There is no way he would fall for someone like me, he just said that because we're friends, nothing more!'' you scoffed and turned red, you knew it was a bad idea to tell them how you feel about him. You were perfectly fine being friends with him, that way you could still hang out with him whenever you wanted, no strings attached. ''Yeah, he's totally into you! How about we go pick out an outfit that will make him go absolutely crazy for you?!'' Wanda says, but you don't feel up for that. ''I'm sorry Wanda, but I'd rather just pick out something I actually feel comfortable in,'' you said with a sad tone in your voice.

Natasha and Wanda go all out in the mall, buying multiple outfits, shoes, and accessories, but you just walk out with a simple outfit, a pair of black heels, and a small silver necklace for tonight, nothing over the top. The girls talked you into getting a simple black crop top that accentuated your boobs really nicely, and a pair of blue ripped jeans that made your ass look very good. It wasn't something you'd usually wear, but you would just step out of your comfort zone for this one night, it is the least you could do. ''You look gorgeous with that outfit babe. When we go back to the compound you should show it to Bucky and see what he thinks of it. I bet you aren't leaving tonight when he sees you in it,'' Wanda said with a grin on her face.

When you get back to the compound it is dinner time, and you decided to eat some takeout with the girls in your bedroom, so you could talk about your game plan for the night. These plans usually existed of deciding what to wear, how much to drink, and finding a cute guy to take home, even though that last bit wasn't on your mind at all, since it was already occupied by Bucky. ''Allright, I'm going to go change and I'm gonna say bye to Bucky, I promised to swing by before we would leave.'' you say and you walk into your bathroom after which you close and lock the door. You take your clothes off and look into your mirror, but you immediately regret doing that when the bad thoughts creep back.

Nobody loves you when you look like this. You're way too fat to be friends with them. Lose some weight so you'll actually fit in with everyone here. How are you even an Avenger with that body? It is a shame you even exist, everyone's life would be better without you.

As much as you try to keep your tears at bay, you fail horribly and let out an uncontrollable sob and the girls hear you. ''Babe, are you okay? What's wrong in there? Can we help?'' Nat and Wanda ask all at the same time, but you don't want to bother them with your low self-esteem and bad body image. Nobody needs to know about it, you already cause enough problems just being here. ''I'm fine, sorry. Nothing is wrong!'' you say through your tears and you turn on the faucet so you can splash some water on your face. After this you step out of the cotton underwear you're wearing and grab the lingerie you bought as well today, hoping it would turn your self-esteem up a little. It was a light yellow thong and a bra in the same color that pushed your boobs up nicely, to show off some cleavage, but not so much that you're entirely uncomfortable.

After this you step into the jeans and put your belt around it, you put on the black crop top and the silver necklace. You step into your heels and open the door, finally showing the girls the way you look. ''Damn girl, you look phenomenal!'' they said in unison, and it did feel good to hear them say it, even when you didn't believe it. You still feel like your thighs are way too big, and your belly is way too visible, but you decide to push the feelings aside for now and enjoy the moment. ''Thanks. I'll just go do my hair and make-up before heading to Bucky, I'll see you at the compound entrance at 10 okay?'' you asked and they agreed, both going to their own rooms to get ready.

You decide to go for a simple smokey eye with dark blue tints to complement the jeans you're wearing, and a light lipstick to not take away from the make-up. You straighten your hair, which you barely do so it is nice to do it every once in a while to change it up. When you're done, you walk out of your room and head toward Bucky's room, as you promised. You knock on his door and almost immediately it swings open. For the first few seconds, Bucky doesn't know what to say when he sees you, his mouth hanging open a bit when he takes in your outfit and make-up. ''Damn doll, if I didn't know any better I'd think you did this all for me! You are looking gorgeous right now!'' he said and he got a deep red blush on his face when he saw you walk into his room.

''Thanks, Buck, it means a lot,'' you say with a deep crimson color on your cheeks now. He always gave you compliments about your body, but he never looked at you like that, and you couldn't help but feel like you wanted him to look at you like that more often. ''You wanted to see me?'' you asked and you sat down on his couch in your usual spot. ''Uh, yeah, I did actually,'' he said with a sigh, not sure where to begin. ''I've been feeling like absolute shit today, and I don't know why, so I was hoping that seeing you would cheer me up a bit, and it really did. I had a pretty bad nightmare again last night, and ever since then I've really been on edge today..'' he said, not looking at you out of shame that he admitted having nightmares again. ''Are they back? Your nightmares?'' you asked, they had been gone for quite a while, but every once in a while they would pop back up, mostly when he was stressed. ''Yeah...'' he said, but he didn't want to admit he had a nightmare about losing you, he couldn't get himself to that point.

He came to sit next to you on the couch, and he put his hand on your thigh as a loving gesture, which went straight to your core. You put your hand on top of his, knowing he was looking for some comfort, and a small smile appeared on his face. You stayed there and talked about it some more, and eventually it was time for you to leave and go to the club with Natasha and Wanda. ''I have to go now, but I'll make sure to keep in touch with you when I can, allright?'' you said to him and pulled him in for a much needed hug for both of you. He put a soft kiss on your temple before you let go, and his lips lingered there for a few seconds, your eyes fluttering shut when he did it. ''See you later, doll, have fun.'' he said when you walked out his door to grab your purse and phone.

Once you arrived in the club with the girls, you immediately wanted to start with some shots in order to loosen up a little, and they didn't say no to that. You could handle your alcohol pretty well, but after a few too many shots you were a little unstable on your feet. Behind you, you heard some girls talk about you, and you could hear them talk about your body and the outfit you were wearing that night. ''If you don't like the way I dress, you should really go somewhere else.'' you said, but that was a mistake. ''Those clothes aren't made for someone with your body. You look like a fat pig in that!'' they said and they laughed hard at you. This is when you had enough, and you swung your fist at the girls, hearing bones crack when you hit a jaw.

One of the girls started fighting back, and all of you ended up on the ground, Natasha and Wanda trying to pull you off but you were so angry you couldn't help yourself and kept hitting and kicking them. When you suddenly felt a knife in your stomach and after that in your chest, you slumped over and everything went black. They pulled a knife on you, and hit you pretty deep with it. The girls were immediately contained and looked over, Wanda and Natasha took care of you and pushing on your wounds to make sure you don't lose any more blood. ''Shit Y/N, why did you do that? Please stay with us, we can't lose you!'' they said and the bartender called 911.

About 10 minutes later you were hauled into the back of an ambulance, but Wanda an Natasha were held back by the police since they were witnesses and couldn't go to the hospital with you. ''Please, let us call someone to be with her! We need to call Bucky!'' Nat yelled at the police officer, and he agreed. She quickly grabbed her phone and called Bucky sobbing, barely able to get the story across of what happened. The police officer took over her phone, and said ''Hi, this is officer Jones with the NYPD. We want to inform you that Y/N Y/L/N has just been taking into an ambulance and to the hospital, after she obtained multiple stab wounds.'' he said and Bucky immediately started running out his door, not even waiting for the officer to finish his sentence after he said you were taking to the hospital.

''Woah Buck, easy now!'' Steve said when he ran past him, but he didn't listen, all he could think about was you and how scared you must be right now. When he was in the garage and on his motorcycle, he raced to the hospital not caring about any speed limits, he would deal with the consequences when all this was over. Right now you needed him, and that is all that matters.

When you arrived in the hospital you were still unconscious and you have lost a lot of blood, but they took good care of you in the ambulance. You were immediately rushed into surgery, and right after you got wheeled away Bucky arrived in a panicked state. ''I'm here to see Y/N Y/L/N, is she here yet?'' he asked frantically and out of breath. ''She just arrived and got wheeled into surgery. If you wait in the waiting room, I'll send a doctor your way once we know more.'' the lady behind the desk said in a calm voice. He called Steve when he calmed down a little, having his breathing under control now. He explained all he knew so far, and Steve made his way to the hospital together with Tony, so Bucky wouldn't have to be alone.

''Any update yet?'' Tony asked when they ran into the waiting room, but all they saw was a distraught Bucky shaking his head no. ''She's been in there for 3 hours now, I'm really worried we're gonna lose her...'' Bucky said and tears finally ran down his face now that Steve was here to comfort him. ''She'll be okay Buck, she's strong and she will get through this,'' he said with a soothing voice whilst Bucky cried on his shoulder. ''Sir?'' a doctor asked Bucky after the nurse pointed out he was waiting. ''You're here for Y/N right?'' the doctor asked. ''Yeah?'' he asked hopeful. ''She's out of surgery and she will make a full recovery. She had a collapsed lung where the knife hit her in the chest, but in her stomach there were no major organs or arteries hit. She will need to be on bedrest for a while, but like I said she will make a full recovery.'' the doctor said with a reassuring smile.

''Can we go see her now?'' Steve asked, since Bucky was too relieved and just started crying again. ''Yeah, the nurse will show you to her room. I wish her the best.'' the doctor said before walking away, and a nurse pointed her into the direction of her room. ''Oh my fucking god doll...'' Bucky said and he made a few quick strides to reach you. He placed a soft kiss on your forehead and grabbed your hand softly. ''I'm so glad you're okay, I love you...'' he said but you weren't awake yet. Steve and Tony heard it perfectly fine however, but didn't mention it until later. Right now he just needed to be left alone with you for a little while.

When you opened your eyes, you were glad to see the blue eyes of Bucky, who was looking at you waking up. ''Hey beautiful, you had me scared for a while there...'' he said softly, and your lips curled into a small smile. ''I'm sorry,'' you croaked out and Bucky couldn't help but let out a little chuckle at the sound of your voice. ''You don't have to say anything, it's okay. The doctor said you would make a full recovery, so that is good. Just... don't ever scare me like that again, okay?'' he said with a bit of sadness in his voice and you nodded a bit. You listened to Bucky talk about work for a little bit before drifting back off to sleep, and the next day he was there to take you home. ''Welcome home, doll!'' he said when you walked back into the compound, while you had your arm hooked into his for some stability.

Every Avenger was in the kitchen to wish you a warm welcome, and you couldn't help but feel appreciated, although it was still a bit much for you now. ''Thanks everyone, but I need to lay down.'' you said and Bucky led you to your room. ''Will you stay with me?'' you asked and he obviously said yes. You got comfortable on your bed and Bucky laid next to you. When he found a comfortable position you grabbed his hand and intertwined your fingers with his, so you could have a bit of comfort in this moment. ''Thank you for everything, Bucky. I know I don't deserve everything you do for me, but I'm still grateful..'' you say in a soft voice. He immediately shot up and looked at you.

''What do you mean you don't deserve it?! You're the greatest person I have ever met in this lifetime, and that is saying a lot seeing that I'm over a hundred years old. Granted I can barely remember 70 of them, but that's not the point here. You deserve everything and more doll, you deserve the sun, moon, stars and everything else. And most of all, I love you, Y/N. I have since the first time you baked me cookies when I wasn't feeling well. I love you so fucking much it actually hurts, and seeing you in that hospital bed only confirmed it to me. I love you, and I'm in love with you, doll. Don't you ever dare to say you don't deserve me, because you do.'' Bucky said, and when he saw a few tears escape from your eyes, he gently wiped them away with his thumb.

''I love you too, Buck. I have been in love with you for as long as I can remember, but I was too afraid to admit it. I can't even love myself, so how was I supposed to let you know I love you?!'' you said, only making the crying worse and full on sobbing despite the pain you're in. ''Doll, I know how hard it is to love yourself again after everything that has happened to you, but you deserve to love yourself. You're more than worth it, and everyone who tells you otherwise can go touch grass. You have an amazing personality, a laugh that lights up the room, and a body to fucking die for. That is why I love you, doll. You're absolutely perfect, and it hurts me that you can't see that. But I also understand the feeling, seeing how I went through it myself with my arm.'' Bucky sighed.

You tried to sit up, but instead, Bucky came to you, and he slowly leaned in for the kiss you were wanting to give him. You slowly closed your eyes when you felt his hand on your cheek, yours went to the back of his neck. When you felt his soft lips on yours, every single worry melted away for a second, all you could think about was you and Bucky at this moment, sharing the most gentle, soft kiss you ever had. All the love, anxiety, scared feelings, and amazement were mixed into this one, soft yet passionate kiss. You didn't want to leave his lips, but you still have to breathe so you reluctantly pulled back. ''Wow..'' is all you could mutter and a smile appeared on both your faces.

''Doll, I will be by your side forever if you want me to. I'll show you every single day how much you mean to me, and how perfect you are. I will do everything I possibly can to make you see yourself the way I see you, no matter how hard it will be every now and again.'' ''I would love that, Bucky.'' you said and you sealed it with another soft kiss, just like the one you just shared. ''But first, I have to tell Nat and Wanda that they were right!'' you giggled, and pulled your phone out to tell them that you and Bucky were finally together, after everything. ''I love you, doll,'' he said and placed a kiss on your temple before you drifted off to sleep not long after that. ''You too...'' you said.

[blackrosesandwhump]

Heyo!! Would you maybe consider doing some mermaid whump please???

I would absolutely consider it! Here you go! Hope you like it :)

The Mermaid Behind Glass

CW: mermaid whump, captivity, chains, fear, referenced punishment

Past the surface of the uncomfortably shallow water, the mermaid could see the sky. High above the crowds of people clustering around the exhibits, clouds scudded along like ships, white and grey against pockets of blue. It reminded her of the sea.

Thud. Something knocked against the side of her cage. A child’s hand. The mermaid’s gaze traveled from the tiny fingers pressed against the glass to the child’s face. A little girl gazed back at her. The mermaid shifted in the water, her tail gently swatting the chains holding her down. The little girl noticed; her eyes widened, her open-mouthed smile transforming into a startled pout. The mermaid glanced away. That look of sadness. If only the child would leave.

She shifted again, the manacles clamped around her wrists stinging her already-raw skin. Murky clouds had taken over the sky now, promising a storm, and the crowds of spectators had thinned. In their wake, a wind rose, stirring up the surface of the water in her tank. The occasional face peered at her through the glass—a young boy, an elderly woman with spectacles, a thick-bearded man with pouchy eyes. With each fewer person, a chill deepened in her bones. The Collector. The Collector would be arriving soon to close his show and feed his exhibits. But the mermaid wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t been hungry since—since that net had snapped around her and forced her to the surface. To the human world. To captivity.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now closing. Please make your way to the exits. Thank you.” She mouthed the words as the male voice boomed out across the show grounds. The same words, every day. The same unspoken threat.

From her tank, she could just see a few of the other displays. The others would be feeling the same threat, the same heaviness. The chains fastened to her wrists and tail suddenly felt white hot, too heavy to bear.

As the Collector approached her tank, a dark silhouette against the rays of sunlight slanting through the cloud layer, another face bobbed to the surface of her mind. The pirate boy, staring down at her as he helped heave the net over the ship’s railing. Staring at her, not with fear or blank wonder, but with genuine curiosity and awe. He had bruises ringing his throat, as if he’d been restrained by his neck.

As if, like one of the living exhibits in the Collector’s show, he’d been punished.

@whumping-to-conclusions @whumping-out-of-time @forthetaintedsorrow-whump

[paversandplatters]

||𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚎𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚑𝚎𝚎𝚙|| (6/10)

Apocalypse! Au (TW! Minor gore and cussing)

Reader x multiple

Chapter 6: Found you.

Philza doesn't see the unexpected obstruction in the middle of the road until it's almost too late. The problem is he's far too engrossed in lecturing his younger proteges after one of them so boldly insulted his longtime companion and friend sat beside him. See the youngling seems to be plagued with diarrhea of the mouth. Philza sits behind the wheel of his rumbling winnebago, relentlessly chewing the ears off of Tommy, who is currently slumped in his seat, struggling to actually pay attention to what the older man is saying.

"May I remind you, if it hadn't been for Techno, this convoy woul-"

"LOOK OUT!" The angular masked man, deck out in leather and denim sits up with a start, eyes wide and fixed on something he sees through the massive windshield. Philza jerks the wheel and stands on the breaks. The contents of the RV shift. Water bottles, canned, goods and other heavy items tumble off the shelves and cubbies, a few crash onto the tops of Tubbo and Tommy's heads, eliciting a colorful string of curses. Both men slam forward as the trailer skids to a sudden halt. Philza and Techno flop back into their seats blinking, breathless, in the side mirror they see the long line of vehicles- pickup trucks, RVs, four-wheelers and even a few sedans- forming a chain reaction of lurching skids, every member of the caravan screeching to a stop, one by one in a billowing cloud of carbon monoxide.

“What in the hell is that?” he sucks in a breath, still gripping the steering wheel as he tries to focus on the figures standing blithely in their path less than twenty yards ahead of them.

One of them is a tall, Caucasian man, dressed in a tattered green pullover with the hood pull up and over an unsettling white mask- the only marking on it being a very minimal smiley face ‘:)’. In front of him stands a much shorter woman in an equally ragged black sweatshirt and jeans. She has one of her muddy boots propped up on the front fender of a fancy Cadillac SUV- the big black kind often used by shady government types- which is currently parked and idling in the middle of the road. The strangest part of this tableau is that the woman is smiling. Even from this distance, she aims her ultra bright grin at the convoy’s lead vehicle as though preparing to sell some new line of kitchen knives.Techno goes for his .38, which is stuffed down his boot.

“Easy Techno, easy…” Philza takes another deep breath, waving the weapon off. He’s a man approaching his early thirties, Philza wears a well worn graphic-t the design too mottled by age to be recognizable. His face marked with the faintest signs of age, his pouchy eyes radiate a certain kindness. “This seem like a group of the living, no sign yet that they aren’t friendly. Just keep your eyes peeled.”

Techno shoves the short barrel pistol under his belt.”you stay here Phil, I’ll go-”

Philza puts his hand up “No, no… Techno I’ll go. You tell the others to keep their cool and tell them to stay inside their vehicles.” The younger man reaches for his two-way radio as the older man climbs out of the cab.

Over the thirty seconds- the amount of time it takes him to struggle down the running board steps, and scuffle across twenty feet of pavement- a chemical reaction occurs. Unseen, subtle, undetectable to anyone other that the three coming to face each other in the middle of the asphalt two lane. It bubbles up within Philza unexpectedly and as powerfully as an electrical charge passing through him. Instantly he dislikes the large fellow looming behind her.

“Morning sir.” The woman occupying the road says with a gleam of neighborly congeniality in her eyes. Philza can see two others behind the tinted glass of the Escalade- Two young men sat in the back seat, their moods and demeanors are unknown. Their hands hidden, their spines rigid, muscles tightly coiled.

“Hello there…” he calls back, faking a smile. He can feel the eyes and ears of his people on the back of his neck. They need fresh souls and strong backs to help with the maintenance, fuel runs and heavy lifting involved in keep the caravan going. At the same time they must be careful. A few bad apples have passed through the group in recent months and have threatened Its very existence. “Something we can help you with?” He inquires.

The thousand kilowatt smile brightens as she adjusts the hem of her sleeves, almost as if she were readying for a sales meeting. “Didn’t want to sneak up on you back there.” She sniffs and covertly follows Philza’s gaze to the ever looming figure behind her. “You never know who you’re going to run into out here in the wilds of biter country. Your group here seem to have it down to a science, traveling in that little cavalcade of yours, always moving… Safety in numbers - it’s genius really.”

“Thank you.” He keeps his artificial smile plastered on to his face.

“That’s quite a vehicle you got there…”

“Thank you.”

“Is that a Cadillac?”

“Yessir, two thousand and seven, still runs like a top.”

“Looks like it’s been in some rough scrapes.”

“That it has..”

Philza nods pensively “What can we do for you? You seem like a woman-“ his eyes flit to the man behind her once more. “Who’s got something on her mind.”

“Names Y/n, just a fellow survivor trying to get by, avoid the unsavory types, the four us have had our full of it.”

“Uh-huh.” He scratches his chin. He knows what's coming and doesn't like it one bit. It doesn't feel right. “ what can we help you with? We’ve got some extra petrol if that’s something you’re interested in… if not we’ve got some bottled water on hand?”

She pours on the charm. “That's kind of you. These are difficult times. The biters out here are often the least of our problems, you have to be real careful. I wouldn't expect you to just take in any old stray you find along the road.” Her expression softens, her eyes filling with sadness and humility. “ Sir, we are good, hardworking people who need a place of refuge if not only for a short time, we need medical treatment, food and the safety of fellowship. It never occurred to us that solace might be found and a moving target like the one you've got here.”

The daylight has dawned enough now for Philza to clearly see the young men hunkered in the Escalade, obviously injured, nervously waiting. he swallows and licks dry chapped lips. “I'm going to have to ask if the two in the Caddy could maybe go ahead and show their hands.” She turns and gives them a nod, one by one the people in the SUV hold up their hands, revealing that they are unarmed.

Phil nods. “I appreciate that. Now may I ask the number and type of weapons you might be carrying?”

She grins. “It’s not much. Got a couple of nines and a shotgun. Big man’s got a snubby. Not much left over in the way of ammo, I’m afraid.”

He nods again and starts to say, “Fair enough, now if I might ask you to-”

Out of nowhere, a number of unexpected noises and quick movements in his peripheral vision interrupts his spiel and makes him flinch as if a bomb has just gone off. A figure from behind him approaches at a dead run, arms pumping excitedly, voice caterwauling-

“HOLY SHIT!! CHRIST, IT’S HER, I TOLD THEM IT WAS HER- I JUST KNEW IT-!!” The young protégé, dressed clad in red and white comes charging toward Y/n, Big man jerks back, reaching for his weapon taken completely by surprise.

“It’s okay! He’s one of ours!” Philza calls out shooting his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “It’s alright, he’s harmless!” Y/n has her face suddenly aglow with emotion, eyes wet as she spots the kid, seeing the grey scarf still tightly knotted around his belt. She opens her arms.

“I fucking knew it!” The young man plunges into her arms. He so much taller than she remembers, that fact makes her heart ache. “I was worried you might’ve been dead.” He murmurs, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. The woman hugs him back, stroking his head with maternal tenderness. The young man begins to softly weep.

Y/n shushes him, murmuring soothing words. “I’m not dead yet… still that ‘cranky-old ass bitch’ you met in that hole.”

The young man now sobs into her neck. “I missed you… I tried coming back for you, but I was afraid… by the time I got help, you were already gone… I just.. I just didn’t think…”

She shushes him again “Now that’s enough of that, I told you not to bother looking back now didn’t I?” Her hand move to rub circles over his back. Nick pokes his head out the window with a furtive look. “What’s the deal..? Are we staying with these people or what.” Philza looks over at the two still embracing and smiles.

“looks like you’re already apart of the family.”

Tag list:

@the-wandering-pan-ace @hvrcruxes

[lluvguts]

Cool Blue ; Chapter Three

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recurring visions of such sweet days

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☽ warnings: slight nsfw (wet dreams, unresolved tension)

☽ fic masterlist

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He stashed the photos--really he flung them like a frisbee--onto his unmade bed and slammed the door shut before Giulia could inquire about his back pressed to the door, hands on the knob, a cross of a nervous grin and a suspicious glaze over his wavering eyes. But, after careful consideration and with both his sister and father's backs turned, Alberto wiggled back into his room to retrieve the precious pictures and put them carefully on the nightstand. He felt dirty knowing he'd tossed them onto his rumpled sheets, sitting there like he didn't care about them.

But he did.

He didn't expect to register all that had truly happened until tomorrow. His eyes dropped to the glass of tepid water from that morning and the pile of photos next to it, the memories coming back.

Luca's expectant yellow eyes watching him as he traced his shapes and scales with a paintbrush on the canvas.

When Luca grinned like a little puppy and pointed at the painting Alberto had propped on his knees, of none other than the boy himself.

Luca's chin jutting out in defiance when Alberto offered to take Luca's picture home, since keeping it at his home would only result in ruining it.

And, equally defying, the sharp curve of Luca's jawbone as he stuck his tongue out at the sky, leaving Alberto still. He could see his soft features working under there. The faint pulse of his throat, a thrumming instrument but all the same slightly animal. When he had rolled his eyes and begrudgingly scooted his own painting over with a claw, splattering water on the edge, Alberto's eyes fixed on his scales ripple and shift on display when Luca moved.

Somewhere on the surface of the ocean, (the ocean skin as Luca called it fondly, but Alberto couldn't possibly think of that now) a boat's amber light hung in the darkness, the only thing to see from outside and, Alberto bit his lip, holding one meaning.

They were hunting for sea monsters on that boat. Ercole's parents, no doubt.

He walked by the bed to the window, almost in a trance, and slammed it shut. The smells of the sea were cut off, night sounds silenced. He wished he wasn't able to see it anymore, but Massimo's aged house hardly had the proper plumbing to operate let alone some goddamn curtains. It frustrated him that though the mental image of Ercole's father on the boat had lifted, that glowing yellow light remained to taunt him.

Luca said he had a family. A mother and father who cared for him and maybe loved him enough to keep him safe from the surface. But where was he now? These men, more monsters than people, with spears and blades sharper than Massimo's, scanning the calm sea with searchlights? Would the lights scare Luca?

He caught himself on the ledge of the windowsill, holding the wood frame tight. He felt it sigh under his weight it was so old.

What was happening?

"Fratello! Papa is not happy that you're letting his dinner get cold! Again!" Giulia, as Alberto could tell by her voice, was pressed to his closed door and resorted to gleeful knocking again and again.

Alberto slid the lock into place on the window, staring out into the night for a breath. Once, twice, then cleared his throat and called back.

"I'll be just a minute!" He tried to wipe the thought of Luca thrashing in the grip of a fisherman's net from his mind as he spoke, but his words came out wobbly and restrained.

Giulia's annoying pounding on the door stopped. "Okay, but I'm not doing your stupid chores for you anymore! Papa says so!" He saw her shadow hover by the bottom doorframe then whisk away to the light of the kitchen.

But through all of the sweaty panic Alberto cherished the quiet moments spent eating. Neither asked where he'd hurried off to so early in the morning while he wolfed down his dinner. (Truly Alberto wasn't sure of the answer himself, he only figured that if Luca was indeed a sea monster, maybe he was up with the rising of the sun like the fish Massimo and Alberto caught at dawn). But they, mostly Giulia, did however beg to know where that pasta was going if all Alberto did during his free time was sit and draw. They didn't know it took grueling work to paddle out to the island, and equally challenging talent to wrestle your way out of a sea monster's grip. He kept that to himself, of course, even if Machiavelli was snippier than usual at Alberto's presence when he thought about it, bringing a suspicion on what he did during the day that neither Giulia or Massimo seemed to care about.

Alberto nudged the pouchy white cat with his bare foot and Machi bit down on his heel. He pulled his legs back under the chair as far as they could go and as an apology for the fishy smell on him, and for trying to make him move, he dropped a few pieces of sausage down on the floor. He was sure that if no one else in the house was to know, Machiavelli was on Alberto's case, but the cat only growled and ate the peace offering.

He sighed. He was safe for the time being. That made him laugh around his bite of salad.

"Think of something funny, son?" Massimo looked up from his plate. Giulia had finished long ago and was only spinning her fork around in circles on the tablecloth.

Alberto nodded with a smile. "The cat."

"Speaking of cats! There's one that I keep seeing in the alley by the Gelataria, Papa, and I think that Machiavelli likes her!" Giulia perked up and was speaking with passion to Massimo now, Alberto's little quip forgotten.

"The black cat? Giulia, they're bad luck," Massimo put on his best apologetic face but it only spurred Giulia on. Alberto stared at his empty plate and debated whether now was the opportune time to slip away to his room with them distracted.

"But please, Papa! We could have kittens!" Giulia pleaded, hands splayed on the table for effect. From under Alberto's chair Machi was stewing. He stood from the table and took their plates, looking calm. Massimo was holding Giulia's small hand softly in his larger one, but it looked as though the girl was next to tears.

Alberto knew she was faking it, though. He listened smugly with his back to them while rinsing the plates and cutlery.

"Kittens are a lot of work."

"Alberto is a lot of work, but we still keep him around!"

"Giuletta. Manners."

"Sorry, Papa."

"Where would they sleep, Giulia? In your bed with you? You are allergic, my dear."

"Only mildly! And besides, if I start sneezing or something, they can stay in Alberto's room! Plain and simple."

"Excuse me?" Alberto whipped around. "Who said that I was okay with having roommates?"

Giulia giggled until her nose went pink. "You've been sharing that Pescaria smell with the two of us since yesterday, and last I checked, we didn't ask. So think of it as an upgrade."

"Like you smell any better!"

"Actually, Alberto." Massimo turned to him. "It...is an odd smell on you. It's not entirely fish."

"Yeah fratello. It's worse."

"Okay, that's it. I'm excusing myself now. Giulia you get to pick the record to play tonight."

"Go take a shower!" Giulia hollered at him, earning a grumble of disapproval on Massimo's part.

"Y-Yeah, sure thing!"

But the whole time his mind was reeling. Massimo had caught it. Giulia had caught it. Even the cat noticed it, too. Alberto pulled his tank up and over his head once the door was shut, bringing it to his nose. It smelled like sweat and salt, the usual things, but he was right. There was something else. It was mild with his nose so close, but still sharp and tangy, as if the sea-sprinkled wind had a personality that stuck to his clothes.

But that wasn't it. It was...oh no.

It was Luca.

Despite his efforts, it took him a solid ten minutes of scrubbing in the shower to get rid of Luca's smell. It wasn't that he hated it, he was used to smelling like fish from hours spent on Massimo's boat--but Machi had kept Alberto up almost all night yesterday, growling and scratching at Alberto's door because of the smell on him.

From in the kitchen, Giulia had chosen one of Massimo's more upbeat records to listen to while they finished cleaning up. He could hear her off-key singing, and Massimo's baritone jumping in with her, which made him smile.

The polaroids were still there, sticking out from underneath a sliver of the water glass. But of course they were, why wouldn't they be? Door locked, window overlooking the sea mostly covered, Alberto let his bath towel fall to his ankles. A line of shower water tickled his chin, or maybe it was sweat, he wasn't sure. He needed to get dressed. But he picked up the first of five photos.

A blurry little square of the pool that morning, just to test the camera, but around the edges sprigs of grass sprouted up through cracks in the island rock, making the picture much more beautiful than he thought.

The next three were of Luca. All taken as close to the top of the water as Alberto could get, too afraid to stick a hand under and gesture Luca to the surface, and also because it wasn't his camera. Body curled under the water, examining things along the walls of the pool too far to see, tail moving slow and practiced. His dorsal fins were the only things that translated best over film, a brilliant cool blue that Alberto had checked (and double-checked) he had the right color paint for.

He let out a tiny sigh at the final photo. Luca facing him from below, his expression a scowl, looking so human it was hard to believe that he wasn't.

But, as Alberto's fingers pinched the corners of the photos, of Luca, holding his breath as he knew it was definitely sweat he was now feeling on his neck, wasn't he human?

His chest ached, drumming a painful harmony from his frantic heart all the way down his abdomen, and if he moved the photos from his line of vision and looked down--

Oh no.

He relentlessly put everything he had into hurrying to throw on some clothes and turn off the lights. crawling into bed, so transfixed on the polaroids and—was it possible? Really? Had he just…?

No. He refused to encourage that line of thinking.

Luca was a sea monster, and probably asleep someplace far below the surface with his family, dreaming of seaweed or whatever else things that were not human thought about.

But, as Alberto lay there rigid and aching, staring at the ceiling waiting for that to go away, part of him wished he could be there with him. To make sure he was okay.

Pfft, sure. Make sure he's alright. That's all.

/ / /

Luca was not dreaming of seaweed.

But he was convinced he had died in his sleep, over a dream of soft touches. Phantom hands running down his scales, someone's calloused fingertips grazing the hollow of his throat so tenderly it made Luca squirm. Luca grabbed his imaginary person's forearm, begging to be touched. One hand remained tracing patterns on his chest while Luca felt another take hold of the side of his face, rubbing circles into his gills until he was sure he was going to pass out from the stimulation. He was so...sensitive there. Around his cheeks and his gills and especially his tail. But all he could do was tilt his face back in guilty bliss and allow whatever was happening to him to continue.

He'd never in all of his years had a dream quite like this.

"P-Please..." Luca whispered. Please stop, or please keep going? Even he didn't know.

He swore he heard a chuckle echo, a familiar chuckle, a confident one, but some sort of reaction all the same.

Luca blinked in his dream, almost crying out because the touch was gone, but then he realized it had only moved. The imaginary touches returned, this time a cool fingertip along his dorsal fin to his tail, while Luca shivered around it, biting his cheek. His legs twitched, and his tail curled around the forearm of this imaginary hand, feeling safe and comfortable enough to do so even if it was touching him in ways his mother had warned him about. The air around him (around them? no one was there) felt absurdly warm, but he realized it was only coming from his scales. The smell that hung in the air was overpowering, thick and heady in sweetness with just a trace of salt that Luca could almost taste in the air. A familiar smell...

He couldn't take much more of it. He had to wake up before...something happened. Something bad.

The cold water of his bedroom startled him into consciousness, the subdued blues and greys in much starker contrast to the tropical greens he'd dreamt of. That white-hot feeling came back, this time stronger and with a ripple of pain that burned in the pit of his stomach. When he opened his eyes the water around his bed felt warmer, like it had in the dream, and when Luca stretched out a hand his fingers were cool though his forearm was not, as if he was the one causing all of this heat.

Huh. Weird.

The last memories of the dream were still a thick haze on his thoughts, racing around and replaying the scenes over and over again until Luca buried his face into the sewn kelp of his bed to keep from whimpering.

He let his hand press to his belly, where it hurt the most, then slip down the waistband of his pants to rest between his legs. His fingers came back covered in something slick.

"Alberto..." Luca whined, rolling onto his stomach to alleviate some of the discomfort.

His eyes flung open. Alberto?

Oh.

Oh no.

[el-dibidibidorado1]

Amber

Geralt of rivia x reader

Warnings: 18+, loss of innocence

Summary: y/n works at a brothel and she has never had a costumer ever since her arrival until a witcher walks in and makes her feel the things that she has never felt.

Amber 2

__________________________

I'm not ment to be here. I was never ment to be here, but here I am, in a brothel due to my own father who sold me to pay the owners debt.

The only good thing about it was that I would clean and tidy up the rooms; but it only lasted for a while. Thanks to one of the whores who had left because she convinced an old man to take her, but it was just for some good fucking, probably until she took his money. But it's better than this place.

"Maybe its ya lucky day! A man will finally take that burden from between these legs." Mrs. Reagan said. She was in charge of us, making sure the pay was right and that we were safe. She also gave us a bit of the share.

"One day it will happen ya know." I nodded my head and continued putting some of my homemade rosemary oil on my legs and arms. 'Just in case' she said.

"Love, a real man will finally realize that your body is luxurious unlike those whores out there. I certainly love it" she pinched my pouchy stomach. I've been here for a year and a half and I've been blessed with no customers, I should be glad, but aftrer some time here I wondered what the feeling of a man's hands would feel against my body. Being in this place made me realize that I craved the touch, but wondered if my round figure wasn't enough for any man.

"Come on put on ya robes and fix ya hair. We'll be opening in a moment." She tossed me my robe. I carefully put the semi see through robe letting my breasts be seen barely. This day I let my hair out of its braids and let the wavy locks fall lightly gazing against my waist.

I sighed and left the comfort of my room or soon to be working room someday. The laughter echoes throughout the work place accompany with the smell of sweet wine.

"Y/n" a whisper at the bar made me wonder there.

"Yes mrs. Reagan" I placed my hands on the counter top and took the cup of wine she had left for me.

"Smile a bit or flirt. That's how that one made her history here." It was a drawing of the one who had left with the old man, her work brought in many men somehow.

That wasn't my intention.

Hours went by and it was almost night fall. The brothel slowed down and I still was still at the bar chatting with Mrs. Reagan about her working here.

"I almost stabbed a man. So I will protect you here, love." She lightly cupped my cheek and smiled making me do the same.

I had another cup of wine accompanied with cherries that I helped picked out earlier when a large figure sat a stool away from me. Probably another man here to get his cock wet.

"What can I get for you Witcher, the usual?" He grumbled and began removing his armor making me sneak a glance st his figure. I've only seen him a couple of times but I never actually glanced at the man. His intimidating look made me feel small and weak compared to his tall and broad figure.

His hair was silver and long, with a rough texture to it. Made me want to rub my homemade oil on his hair, but what made me hold my breath was those eyes. Amber. A beautiful amber color that unknowingly made a connection with mine, my heart skipped a couple of beats.

I realized that I had been staring long enough when his eyebrows frowned and looked away to drink his wine.

Awkwardly, I left and my feet took me away into my room looking for a comfortable aura and trying to relax my heartbeat.

I got a book Mrs. Reagan gifted me and began reading enjoying the breeze while sitting comfortably on the table. Another hour or so that passed and I had managed to place myself into the story, and I somehow missed the knock on my door until a manly hand left a couple of coins next to my hand.

I had a costumer. My heart stopped as it slowly sank in that the time had come.

"Come on" the voice was rough deep but strangely pleasant. Standing up I hesitantly look up and find the same amber eyes fixed on my face. It's the witcher. He was going to be the one, making me swallow thickly.

He stood there with a cotton shirt and black pants, arms crossed. I knew what I had to do. Hesitation rushed through me , but I managed to pulled the small knot on my back letting the sleeves fall off my shoulders, only letting my left breast peek out and feeling my heart beating out of my body.

He made his way to me and began pulling the robe down while taking a hold of my breast making me gasp. His fingers began circling my nub until I felt him clamp his fingers together making me wince.

"Get on the bed" I gently massaged my nub trying to relieve the pain.

"Now" he growls making me stumble on the bed feeling embarrassed by my nude body that my eyes watered.

He had taken his clothes off that I shivered when I felt the bed dip and he began playing with himself.

"Hmm" he trailed his hand up my thigh making me shut my legs.

"Aren't you going to do what I payed for?" He asked and I knew that if I didn't do it I would get a beating by the owner.

I was a whore.

I opened my legs and felt his thick fingers touch my core until he found my sensitive nub.

"You need to be wet if not it's going to hurt. You should know that." He angrily said into my ear without knowing that this was my first.

He grabbed my hand and placed it right on my nub, I had done this before, but alone.

"Hmm" he annoyedly hummed until I started moving my fingers finding a small spark. He kept playing with his cock making me feel hot and bothered. I finally took in his form, his actual naked form, muscles where all over his body making me crave to be hold by them. This was my chance to find out how his hands feel against my skin.

My fingers moved faster feeling the familiar spark grow and grow. A tiny sound left my lips making him stop his movements and get his attention to what was happening I'm between my legs.

"Cum now." He growls but then gets frustrated and replaced my hand with his. I yelp when his fast movements make me grip his wrist trying to slow him down but wanting more.

"O-ok" I said after a while and tried pushing his hand away feeling an orgasm rip through me making me bite down on my lip.

He showed me his hand, filled with my juices then rubbing them on his cock.

"Finally" he mumbled and felt him turn his side and pulled my body towards his. Warmness. He was warm and strong. Also it was like if his scent had hypnotized me to push myself into him melting in his arms. Is this how a man feels? Cause if it is, I'll do it.

He lifted my right leg up and wrapped his left arm around my neck making my hair get tangled in between his fingers.

With his right hand he grabbed his cock and began running it up and down my soaked lips until I felt pressure and pain drill into my core. I bit down on my lip feeling and tasting iron circle my mouth.

"Fuck" he hissed and buckled his hips making me yelp and bite down on his hand that had come up to my mouth.

"How are you tight?" He asked breathlessly. I was about to answer when he pulled out and slammed his hips into me.

His movements speed up making a few tears escape my eyes. His cock was being drilled into me, but i was not feeling aroused as I did when he finished my first orgasm.

His hands moved all over my body making me shiver at his touch. Mrs. Reagan had said that my first wouldn't be pleasuring as what people make it seem, but his touch was pleasuring enough, it made me feel strangely safe, knowing that this man killed monsters for coin.

He began grunting and grunting making me turn my head to the side and found myself close to his face. Taking it all in... he was hauntingly beautiful. His eyebrows were scrunched up with his eyes closed and lips slightly parted. I stared at him taking it all in.

Unknowingly, I lifted my hand and glazed my fingertips against his eyebrows trying to ease them, only to be surprised by his eyes.

They were mixed with emotions and lust, they were captivating. He removed his arms from me still deep in me and turned me onto my back with him in between my legs, not breaking his stare.

His weight felt delicious against my body as he continued his movements, slower and longer making my body feel the spark again.

His strokes where hitting a spot making me grip his back and wrapping my legs around his backside.

I felt myself slip a moan making his face slightly light up. He continued and continued until the full spark began begging to be let out. We both began panting, sharing the small patch of air until he speed up making my moans get louder with pleasure.

"I'm gonna- I'm going to-" he cradled the back of my head and dug his hand in between our bodies finding my sensitive nub and began playing with it while speeding his movements even more.

At this rate I felt the orgasm rip into me again making me squeeze him causing him to curse and slam his hip into me one last time.

"Fuck!" He gripped my head and bit down on the side of my neck to silence his groan, i gripped his arms hard enough making my knuckles go white.

When he let go the small patch of skin I found myself staring at his now moist lips asking for a go, but he removed his cock making me wince and layed next to me breathing heavily.

I closed my eyes feeling cold and empty.

I cant get attached to the man who took my innocence, I am a whore to give men pleasure not to find a partner.

"We are out of wine" his malicious voice removed me from my thoughts and I took the jar out of his hands. I got up to find my robe.

____________________________________________________________

I watched as she slowly moved with the jar until a trail and smell of blood had left her thighs making me look at mine. Blood. Did I take her innocence?!

"Stop!" I paused her movements as she put on her robe making her cover her body.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" I asked grinding my teeth together. Her face was full of fear making me realize that this is a brothel, it was going to happen sooner or later.

"Sit" I pushed her onto the bed making her wince. I grabbed a random cloth she had and wet it with a bowel of water she had, and cleaned myself tossing it towards her. I put on my pants and put the empty jar of wine on the table and grabbed the full one taking a huge gulp. No wonder she was tight and smelled good.

I sat on the bed and put my arm behind my head watching as she washed the blood out of the cloth.

"How long have you been here?" I questioned.

"Long enough" her real voice was soft and sweet like honey just like her stare, touch and smell.

But a woman like her would have already lost her innocence a long time ago. I felt attracted to her the soon as I noticed her staring at me. Like a drunk looking at a glass of wine.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"I was your first...why?" She finished and slowly moved to the bed laying on her side facing me.

"My roundness isn't what men want." She whispered but I was able to hear. I never even realized her figure, I was to into getting in bed with her, I didn't even see. Plus I'm no man.

I could tell that I had worn her out and i let her rest. I placed a large blanket over her feeling the slight shiver she gave, probably form the small breeze and that the sweet sweat she had over her.

"I'm y/n" she mumbled and I inched myself closer to her taking in her scent.

"I'm Garelt" I said my eyes focused on her, watching as her quiet snores echoed through the room.

The next thing I managed to fall asleep peacefully. For the first time in years.

__________________

I did it! Here it was!

I'm going to make another chapter......maybe.......probably..

[tutuandscoot]

Would it be weird if I did a post about VM and their matching smiley eye pouchies or oh, whoops too late I already did.

[thecrazyfan-girl]

Christmas Day-2

Umbridge’s pouchy eyes eyed the present suspiciously. She was under the impression that the whole of the Hogwarts population loathed her with passion.  Holding the small note bound around it, she sat down on her pink chair her eyebrows raising as she saw the neat writing.

“Happy Christmas Professor Umbridge. Thank you for being a disciplinarian. Even though you are a tyrant.”

                                                                        -Luna Lovegood

She didn’t know whether to scowl or smile. 

So it was from the Lovegood girl. The eerily calm one, who was trying to defend Potter the other day...

“What are you trying to imply Miss Lovegood?” Umbridge asked, looking at the blonde-haired girl exasperatedly, “That what I say is a lie? There is in fact a Dark wizard walking in our midst?”

Luna regarded her as if she was an object of slight scrutiny, rather than a teacher reprimanding her. “Yes Professor.” she said blatantly, without any note of aggression or superiority or smugness in her tone. Perhaps that is what annoyed Umbridge the most.

Breathing hard through her nose, Professor Umbridge removed a bucket load of house points, gave her a month’s worth of detentions, whilst asking her to walk out of the class and deliver a hastily written note rebuking Professor Flitwick in a subtle, yet hard hitting way.

The girl walked up to her, took the note and dreamily swayed out of the class, looking utterly unperturbed. 

Umbridge settled for a deep scowl and proceeded to cautiously tear the blue wrapping paper, trying to hold back her feeling of reluctance. If it is a prank or a horrible trick of any kind, the girl and her family will have me to...

Her apprehensive thoughts morphed into those of confusion, upon opening the package and finding a pink, beet-root ring?

To it was another note attached:

It is very useful for warding off Wrackspurts, and goes with your love for pink. You were the perfect candidate for this gift, Professor.

She glanced at it unsurely, and the ring glinted in the sunlight streaming from her partially open windows.

Umbridge didn’t know whether to smile or scowl.

***

Professor Dumbledore peered at the present through his half-moon spectacles affectionately. He knew who this was from, courtesy of the signature blue wrapping paper. He had the honor to be on the receiving end of the eccentric gifts of Luna Lovegood from her very first year. Although, he definitely wouldn’t call them eccentric.

He turned over the strip of parchment, and surely enough, in her neat handwriting was written: 

Happy Christmas Professor Dumbledore. Thank you for being a wonderful Headmaster. Even though you let Professor Umbridge in.”

                                                                                       -Luna Lovegood

Professor Dumbledore let out a deep laugh, re-reading the brutally honest letter. What could he do? The ministry hung around his neck like a noose. It was one of the things that angered him, but he for now could only sigh, and shake his head, knowing that it wasn’t time to repent, but rather to get work done under the ministry’s nose. The day was soon to come when the Ministry realized that the Dark Lord was back. So he hoped.

Dumbledore opened the package with care, sitting on his chair, successfully unfurling the wrapping paper to reveal a pair of woolen socks.

Dumbledore’s eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t expect such a normal gift from Miss Lovegood...

But then, he saw the small note attached and patiently read it:

They are socks with an undetectable extension charm, extremely useful during times of emergencies. I made them myself.

-Luna

Dumbledore smiled, placing them carefully with his prized possessions. 

Luna Lovegood was a miraculous little girl.

[cythians]

Aoi is a princely prick

When you procrastinate on one fic and just start writing something else

Hello! I wanted to continue writing my Iku fic but there was this loud person on my bus talking in a foreign language on the phone and I couldn't focus. I usually write on the bus so this was irritating but I vented my frustration through Aoi lol, please enjoy.

------

Today was such a day, everything didn't go as planned, his schedule was pushed around and Aoi was arriving late for almost all of his meetings.

So when this person on the train has the audacity to start calling someone in a dead-quiet cabin he felt furious. It was common manners to be quiet and never call on trains. Yeah, some of the foreigners did from time to time but they would be alerted by the staff, but this time around it was this pouchy salary man who really looked like he didn't care about the world.

Aoi had taken out his phone to text with some of the group members. At least this loud guy was doing something for him, attracting the attention. Why would an idol even be on the train? You'd ask.

Well, when everything plainly just went to shit Aoi was left without a ride home and only a scarf, hat and some regular glasses as his disguise. Praying no one would notice him... although that's kind of hard when you look like he does.

Aoi was standing, holding one of the handles with his face towards the window panes. Eventually even the earpieces he was using to listen to the song they would have to practice this afternoon, don't drown the voice next to him out anymore. Now a tick started to mentally form on his forehead, he couldn't focus on his work.

Aoi sighs, turning to the man in question, wanting to quiet him down in favour of not being discovered. The man notices Aoi looking at him in discontent and puts a finger up to his lips, telling him to shush, he felt that should be enough.

But oh, it wasn't. This dude, on his phone still starts grinning. "Yeah, sorry, some blonde here just tried to shush me"

Aoi was perplexed, the grin and the intention behind those words weren't really pretty. "Excuse me?"

The dead-quiet train overhearing their conversation, all eyes were locked onto them now and Aoi knew he couldn't escape anymore. The intercoms rang the last stop before his own and Aoi really wanted to rub his temples.

"Aoi-kun?" One person called out from behind him. Oh shit. Aoi felt cold sweat form in his neck as he closed his eyes for a second, before forming his retort.

"You're being incredibly rude" he said as kindly as possible, with his famous smile playing in as a poker face. The other guy raised a brow before lowering his phone a bit. After Aoi spoke there were at least three people standing up. His eyes glanced over the people who stood up and flashed them a quick smile. These are fangirls. Aoi knew he needed to get out of the train as quickly as he could or he would be flocked.

Luck be in his favour at that moment as the train started slowing down, it was a stop before where he needed to be but he'd walk the rest of it once he was out of sight. Before the man could even respond an 'Aoi-sama!!' screech could be heard from different directions of the train. As soon as the doors opened, Aoi slid out and immediately went a few corners to shake off any followers.

He glanced around from the corner he was in to see if anyone noticed him or followed him, but he seemed to be alone. Aoi took that moment to rest from hurrying about and slumped against the wall when suddenly his phone started vibrating wildly. He sighed as he took it out of his pocket to see the spam of tags he got on twitter and the pictures attached. Man, those girls are quick. He scrolled through a few blurry pictures of himself from just seconds ago and had to laugh at the comments underneath it that said they lost track of him.

Aoi posted a comment underneath one of the pictures with a winky-face kaomoji. Chaos ensued in that comment section.

Aoi then also went to his own Twitter page to send out a tweet:

To the person I just crossed on the train, well... I just hope you got a taste of your own medicine.

Aoi imagined what would have happened to the guy when all of the fangirls tried to go past him when he left the train. He chuckled as he locked his phones again.

Now, to get home.

[dunmerofskyrim]

78

The Kogaru were slow to be off, no matter how Simra stared at them. A pointed look, poised like a hawk on the hand and impatient in its silence. They picked themselves up and gathered to go all with the same reluctance. Simra couldn’t imagine why. Sooner they got going, sooner he’d be gone. Ought to be what they wanted.

“D’you know he’s this way?” Simra asked once they were underway.

Kaliklu was leading again, but only by a few strides. “Until the water we were only guessing.”

Simra found that less than comforting but said nothing of it. “It’s his work, then?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen it before? Been here before?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“No.”

“He a friend?” No response. “Should I be wary is what I’m asking? Scared? Ready for a fight?”

“Of course you should be wary.”

“Wary of what? Ready for what?”

“Anything,” Kaliklu said, curt and impatient with the questions now.

Simra kissed his teeth, loud and harsh, and walked fast to put distance between him and the elder. He’d get nothing more from him, that was clear. Old man was on enough of an edge now without Simra grinding it sharper for him. No help at all, Simra thought to himself. Ready for anything. Ready for anything always seemed a good way to be ready for nothing much. The world’s a place of specifics. A mess of specifics, infinite beyond thought, infinite beyond thought of thinking. Be ready for the world? You can’t. Best you can do’s prepare for what you know is in your closest corner of it. What you reckon’s around the bend.

And there was the thing. He didn’t know what to expect. Besides the holdout of a mage with enough power and strength to change the land for half a league around. To dig a hole in the surface of Winter and fill it with high green Spring. Besides a Telvanni turncoat, stubborn and strong enough to break from the mistress of Tel Branora and flee to the world’s wild north edge. Besides a problem big enough that Tel Branora wound launch some tieless nobody northward and into the Sea of Ghosts, to go scour a bleak little rock in that waste of ice and slate-grey ocean, and bring back news Dalvur Vedith was dead. And not knowing what to expect, he had no way to prepare. Not the slightest sketch of a plan.

The stream ended abrupt in a clearing. It was overgrown, small, but stood out stark in the thatch-thick woods. Cutting it in half, the water rested in a cool silver sickle of pond, pale lilies on the surface and purple velvet flowers with lolling hand-long petals. A dancing cloud of yellow blossom-moths, same as before, twisted like smoke through the air. Hundreds, thousands.

A kind of structure stood in the pond’s curved belly, half-surrounded. A low shape with a slumped curved roof. Growth covered it, so dense it looked made of nothing but pink and white flowering vines, woody-skinned creepers. Curlicues of bramble split off its bulk like flyaway hairs from an unkempt head. But underneath the overgrowth, Simra thought he could make out stone. Rafters and ribs, reaching up from the ground and forward, like a short hunchbacked tunnel. A skeleton of scaffolds and supports in black screw-surfaced torquestone.

A slack line of growing things made something like a trellis, meandering till they met the hut and knit over and into its side. Simra wanted to think of them as trees but it didn’t quite fit. Only thing right about them was the trunks – birch thin, fine and pale, planted in close order – and only because they were in the right places. The rest was inverted. Up top, their roots fanned out like the bare bones of a parasol, naked and tasting the air. Their branches crawled thick and tangling across the ground, clawing into the dirt, all wearing a ragged plumage of leaves. Their pattern was almost regular. Quadrangles and half-circles, traced out across the clearing floor in ledges and ridges, the edges of raised planting-beds full of damp black earth.

The roots cast a stripey shade below them. Bent over one of the beds, arms buried partway to the elbows in rich dirt, Dalvur Vedith knelt by his trellis, his hut, head bowed.

Whatever Simra might’ve expected, he hadn’t expected this. The brown tatters of a simple robe hung off his sloping back. It looked like a horseblanket. Wrapped haphazard around him and held on with complicated knots and cinching lines of faded purple braid, but a horseblanket all the same. Wisps of colourless hair floated around his small dark grey head, and tickled at his jutting ears. And when he looked up and stared, his eyes were pouchy, small and bright in a deep-lined face.

“There you are.” His voice was cracked, creaking like a disused door. “I wondered, you know. Would you ever come back? I wondered. And as I felt you in my garden, I thought: well then well then, be it what it may, but an old mer can hope…”

“We do not disturb you without need, Gurrigalattu,” said Kaliklu. “You know this. Just as you do not disturb the island beyond this valley.”

“My valley…” Vedith smiled. Holes and gums, teeth and darkness.

“Your valley,” Kaliklu was quick to agree.

“So! It’s true then? You’ve come to see me. Come to see old Dalvur?”

“I have brought someone, yes. Someone who wished to meet you.”

“A visitor!” Vedith’s head cocked and twitched on its thin neck, casting round. His eyes were hollow, half-lidded and lookless. “I count five. You’ve not brought visitors before, Kaliklu.” He sniffed, long and deep through one nostril, covering the other with a dirty finger. “To what do I owe the pleasure, old friend?”

Simra thought a moment, dry-mouthed and asking himself, how much could he say and keep all his stories straight? “I’ve searched you out to pass on a message.”

Vedith’s jaw went slack. Mouth open, his dust-coloured tongue moved fitful, like he was counting what teeth he had left. “This one’s not one of yours, Kaliklu. He speaks for himself! And doesn’t, hah, doesn’t smell so much like blood. And the other?”

Simra glanced round, searching for Llolamae, and found her beside him, toes on the edge of the water that separated them from Vedith. She was puffed up, standing straight and strident. Not a little girl but a Mouth again, like when he’d first met her.

“I’m Mouth to Master Vidanu of Tel Kogaris.”

Vedith scrambled upright and onto his feet. His robe was gathered up and girded at his waist, showing the grubby knob-kneed length of his skinny legs. His face was a blur, spasming from feeling to feeling. Through terror to joy to despairing of a hope he’d never had the time to hold. He bowed and twitched, stepping back and stepping back, till he retreated into the trellis and flinched from it with a dry gasp.

“House…” he started, struggling to find breath for the words. “House business then, is it?”

Llolamae shot Simra a look of confusion. Shrugged and angled her eyes, questioning. Simra nodded quick and insistent.

“Aye,” she said. “It is that.”

Dirt-flecked hands wringing each against the other, Vedith paced a moment, back and forth amongst the beds and roots. His mouth moved silent, teething and chawing over talk that wouldn’t quite come. Whatever Simra might’ve expected, he hadn’t expected this. An old mer falling to pieces, knowing maybe what’d come for him.

Vedith stopped. “Vidanu, d’you say? Kogaris, is it? Not — I mean, that’s to say not—”

“That’s right,” Simra cut in. “Vidanu of Tel Kogaris.”

“It’s about the torquestone!” said Llolamae.

“The torque—?” Vedith’s face slackened, all the workings under his skin laxing all at once. “The what? The stone! You mean the twisty, the twisting, the one with, the one you can… Hah!” His empty eyes rolled back deeper into his skull, eyelids fluttering. Relief. “Of course, of course. Of course! Torquestone. Good name, very good name. Hadn’t thought… Well then, come in! Come over. You must. Oh, will you take tea? I have something, somewhere, very good…”

The Kogaru had bundled together into a group, talking in fevered whispers amongst themselves. The hunter spoke most, with Kaliklu listening, nodding. They were tense, anxious here. Nerves in all their faces, the set of their shoulders and turn of their bodies. Jangling nerves in all their voices. Kaliklu peeled himself from the group and spoke to Simra:

“You have no more need of us.”

It didn’t sound like a question. Simra stepped closer while Llolamae scuttled round the pond and onto its far side, capering between the beds. “That right?” he said.

“We have already stayed too long.”

“Too long for what? Have we stayed too long too and you’re not telling us?” Simra hissed. “What about getting out of here?”

“You have only to follow the water.”

“For how long? To where? Blight, you agreed to guide me! I bled for that, bargained for that!”

Across the water, Llolamae was chattering to Vedith, bright as birdsong.

“We did,” said Kaliklu, reaching out an empty hand. “We have.” The hunter plucked the wand from his bundle and passed it into Kaliklu’s grasp. He wasn’t pointing it at Simra, but the message was clear.

Force his hand and Simra would’ve bet the wand was empty, or close to it. Or that Kaliklu’s fingers wouldn’t find its touch-runes fast enough, unpracticed and unfamiliar with it. But why gamble when there was nothing to win. Kaliklu was right. Right, and scared, and like as not to do something stupid.

“Off with yourselves, then,” said Simra. They’d played their part, done as they said they would. Even so, for the second time that day, Simra couldn’t help but feel cheated.

They upped fast, silent and impatient, making to hurry away. Sooner they got going, sooner they’d be gone, and gone was where they wanted to be, they’d made that plenty clear.

“Busy busy!” Simra muttered at their backs. “Hurry hurry. Sure you’ve got fucking caves to paint. Other strangers to ambush and extort…”

Kaliklu still held the wand as they hustled towards the clearing’s edge and back the way they came, following the water. None of them looked back. Just fled, fast as they could.

[laventadorn]

Harriet smiling at Snape like an angel and him going "fuck".

i was wholeheartedly into this, but then it… turned into this?? which was probably not what you were going for. 

this is not necessarily an OotP spoiler because i have no idea yet where it’s going to go or end up; consider this experimental sketching. 

Severus had always had a good sense of his enemies’ abilities, which may have been part of what kept him alive for so long. He knew the good as well as the bad. It was felicitous that Severus was so eager to focus on what he hated; it let him exploit, target, and prepare, often before his quarry was even aware.

So he knew that Umbridge was good at sniffing out wrongdoing, almost as good as he was, and that breakfast was her favorite meal of the day. She became so absorbed in it that she forgot to maliciously spy on everyone in the Hall. That was the reason she was only almost as good as Severus; he was always spying on everyone.

But Umbridge’s love of breakfast and general dispensation of spying did not extend to the Gryffindor table – to a particular set of students, and one in particular.

Had she taken a malicious interest to any other student, any other person, Severus would only have opposed her on the grounds of despising her so much that he would do everything in his power to get in her way. But her loathing and fixation on Harriet was the worst mistake she could have made.

He took the opportunity, while she bent a malevolent eye on Gryffindor table, to doctor her morning tea. This was quite easily done: unlike himself, Umbridge was not actually paranoid. He touched up her teacup by pouring a little more tea and stirring in cream, and she turned with a simpering smile that was a horror to behold.

“Thank you, Severus,” she said. He gave a thin little smile, wishing she would choke on it – but only a little, as he wouldn’t have her go out so easily, not for the world.

Sipping her tea, which would see her breaking out in hives by dinnertime, she swiveled her pouchy eyes toward Gryffindor table again. He felt her dark wave of loathing mixed with a rapacious need to destroy, and knew what he’d see when he looked.

Harriet was staring up at them from her seat, eyes narrowed. When she saw them looking at her, she put on a falsely angelic smile. Umbridge’s hatred ratcheted up; she set her teacup down with a precise ‘clink’ that reminded Severus of a fingernail tapping a guillotine.

Harriet couldn’t have heard it, but she must have caught some change in Umbridge’s expression, for her smile only became sweeter. She turned to answer Miss Granger with a cherubic air and didn’t look up again, not even as Umbridge sliced into her morning kippers or pierced her sausage links with a sinister fork. Every laugh, each inclination of Harriet’s head toward Miss Granger or Weasley, had Umbridge snapping off her bacon like breaking brittle bone.  

As the hour struck for morning classes, Harriet rose with the rest of the unruly horde and followed the surging sea of fatheads through the doors. In passing the high table, she caught Severus’ eye with a gleam of unholy amusement. The innocent air was still laid over it, but it was impossible to miss the gleaming promise of mayhem and rule-breaking.

A cloudy feeling tried to suffuse his heart, though it was so withered and blackened that it was like trying to warm a fossilized prune.

I’ll rip her heart out before she touches you, he thought as the tide of students carried her off. The cloudy feeling darkened into something more familiar, something Dumbledore would have called unhealthy and someone else, someone who hated Severus properly, might have named evil.

But it was familiar, and it was honest. He knew Umbridge – her evil was a blacker mirror of his, running to the root. She would hurt Harriet if she could. He would move right now, if he could. Their twin purposes were only waylaid by a sense that had kept them afloat for this long, the sense that moving too quickly would see them exposed and thwarted, perhaps for good.

All he had to do was strike first.  

And he would.

[readbookywooks]

Sansa

In the tower room at the heart of Maegor's Holdfast, Sansa gave herself to the darkness. She drew the curtains around her bed, slept, woke weeping, and slept again. When she could not sleep she lay under her blankets shivering with grief. Servants came and went, bringing meals, but the sight of food was more than she could bear. The dishes piled up on the table beneath her window, untouched and spoiling, until the servants took them away again. Sometimes her sleep was leaden and dreamless, and she woke from it more tired than when she had closed her eyes. Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw the moment . . . the moment when . . . she had wanted to look away, she had wanted to, her legs had gone out from under her and she had fallen to her knees, yet somehow she could not turn her head, and all the people were screaming and shouting, and her prince had smiled at her, he'd smiled and she'd felt safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said those words, and her father's legs . . . that was what she remembered, his legs, the way they'd jerked when Ser Ilyn . . . when the sword . . . Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the years to come the singers would write songs of her grief. Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went so far as to cross the bedchamber and throw open the shutters . . . but then her courage left her, and she ran back to her bed, sobbing. The serving girls tried to talk to her when they brought her meals, but she never answered them. Once Grand Maester Pycelle came with a box of flasks and bottles, to ask if she was ill. He felt her brow, made her undress, and touched her all over while her bedmaid held her down. When he left he gave her a potion of honeywater and herbs and told her to drink a swallow every night. She drank it all right then and went back to sleep. She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on stone as a man climbed slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she could do was huddle behind her door and listen, trembling, as he came closer and closer. It was Ser Ilyn Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his hand, coming to take her head. There was no place to run, no place to hide, no way to bar the door. Finally the footsteps stopped and she knew he was just outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes and his long pocked face. That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down, trying to cover herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the point of the greatsword poking through . . . She woke murmuring, "Please, please, I'll be good, I'll be good, please don't," but there was no one to hear. When they finally came for her in truth, Sansa never heard their footsteps. It was Joffrey who opened her door, not Ser Ilyn but the boy who had been her prince. She was in bed, curled up tight, her curtains drawn, and she could not have said if it was noon or midnight. The first thing she heard was the slam of the door. Then her bed hangings were yanked back, and she threw up a hand against the sudden light and saw them standing over her. "You will attend me in court this afternoon," Joffrey said. "See that you bathe and dress as befits my betrothed." Sandor Clegane stood at his shoulder in a plain brown doublet and green mantle, his burned face hideous in the morning light. Behind them were two knights of the Kingsguard in long white satin cloaks. Sansa drew her blanket up to her chin to cover herself. "No," she whimpered, "please . . . leave me be." "If you won't rise and dress yourself, my Hound will do it for you," Joffrey said. "I beg of you, my prince . . . " "I'm king now. Dog, get her out of bed." Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the featherbed as she struggled feebly. Her blanket fell to the floor. Underneath she had only a thin bedgown to cover her nakedness. "Do as you're bid, child," Clegane said. "Dress." He pushed her toward her wardrobe, almost gently. Sansa backed away from them. "I did as the queen asked, I wrote the letters, I wrote what she told me. You promised you'd be merciful. Please, let me go home. I won't do any treason, I'll be good, I swear it, I don't have traitor's blood, I don't. I only want to go home." Remembering her courtesies, she lowered her head. "As it please you," she finished weakly. "It does not please me," Joffrey said. "Mother says I'm still to marry you, so you'll stay here, and you'll obey." "I don't want to marry you," Sansa wailed. "You chopped off my father's head!" "He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I'd be merciful, and I was. If he hadn't been your father, I would have had him torn or flayed, but I gave him a clean death." Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. King Joffrey's face hardened. "My mother tells me that it isn't fitting that a king should strike his wife. Ser Meryn." The knight was on her before she could think, yanking back her hand as she tried to shield her face and backhanding her across the ear with a gloved fist. Sansa did not remember failing, yet the next she knew she was sprawled on one knee amongst the rushes. Her head was ringing. Ser Meryn Trant stood over her, with blood on the knuckles of his white silk glove. "Will you obey now, or shall I have him chastise you again?" Sansa's ear felt numb. She touched it, and her fingertips came away wet and red. "I . . . as . . . as you command, my lord." "Your Grace," Joffrey corrected her. "I shall look for you in court." He turned and left. Ser Meryn and Ser Arys followed him out, but Sandor Clegane lingered long enough to yank her roughly to her feet. "Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants." "What . . . what does he want? Please, tell me." "He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love," the Hound rasped. "He wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He wants you to love him . . . and fear him." After he was gone, Sansa sank back onto the rushes, staring at the wall until two of her bedmaids crept timidly into the chamber. "I will need hot water for my bath, please," she told them, "and perfume, and some powder to hide this bruise." The right side of her face was swollen and beginning to ache, but she knew Joffrey would want her to be beautiful. The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that. She had not washed since the day her father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water became. Her maids sluiced the blood off her face, scrubbed the dirt from her back, washed her hair and brushed it out until it sprang back in thick auburn curls. Sansa did not speak to them, except to give them commands; they were Lannister servants, not her own, and she did not trust them. When the time came to dress, she chose the green silk gown that she had worn to the tourney. She recalled how gallant Joff had been to her that night at the feast. Perhaps it would make him remember as well, and treat her more gently. She drank a glass of buttermilk and nibbled at some sweet biscuits as she waited, to settle her stomach. It was midday when Ser Meryn returned. He had donned his white armor; a shirt of enameled scales chased with gold, a tall helm with a golden sunburst crest, greaves and gorget and gauntlet and boots of gleaming plate, a heavy wool cloak clasped with a golden lion. His visor had been removed from his helm, to better show his dour face; pouchy bags under his eyes, a wide sour mouth, rusty hair spotted with grey. "My lady," he said, bowing, as if he had not beaten her bloody only three hours past. "His Grace has instructed me to escort you to the throne room." "Did he instruct you to hit me if I refused to come?" "Are you refusing to come, my lady?" The look he gave her was without expression. He did not so much as glance at the bruise he had left her. He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a . . . a thing to him. "No," she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he'd hurt her, to warn him that when she was queen she would have him exiled if he ever dared strike her again . . . but she remembered what the Hound had told her, so all she said was, "I shall do whatever His Grace commands." "As I do," he replied. "Yes . . . but you are no true knight, Ser Meryn." Sandor Clegane would have laughed at that, Sansa knew. Other men might have cursed her, warned her to keep silent, even begged for her forgiveness. Ser Meryn Trant did none of these. Ser Meryn Trant simply did not care. The balcony was deserted save for Sansa. She stood with her head bowed, fighting to hold back her tears, while below Joffrey sat on his Iron Throne and dispensed what it pleased him to call justice. Nine cases out of ten seemed to bore him; those he allowed his council to handle, squirming restlessly while Lord Baelish, Grand Maester Pycelle, or Queen Cersei resolved the matter. When he did choose to make a ruling, though, not even his queen mother could sway him. A thief was brought before him and he had Ser Ilyn chop his hand off, right there in court. Two knights came to him with a dispute about some land, and he decreed that they should duel for it on the morrow. "To the death," he added. A woman fell to her knees to plead for the head of a man executed as a traitor. She had loved him, she said, and she wanted to see him decently buried. "If you loved a traitor, you must be a traitor too," Joffrey said. Two gold cloaks dragged her off to the dungeons. Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow." In life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound's voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. "Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants." The last case was a plump tavern singer, accused of making a song that ridiculed the late King Robert. Joff commanded them to fetch his woodharp and ordered him to perform the song for the court. The singer wept and swore he would never sing that song again, but the king insisted. It was sort of a funny song, all about Robert fighting with a pig. The pig was the boar who'd killed him, Sansa knew, but in some verses it almost sounded as if he were singing about the queen. When the song was done, Joffrey announced that he'd decided to be merciful. The singer could keep either his fingers or his tongue. He would have a day to make his choice. Janos Slynt nodded. That was the final business of the afternoon, Sansa saw with relief, but her ordeal was not yet done. When the herald's voice dismissed the court, she fled the balcony, only to find Joffrey waiting for her at the base of the curving stairs. The Hound was with him, and Ser Meryn as well. The young king examined her critically, top to bottom. "You look much better than you did." "Thank you, Your Grace," Sansa said. Hollow words, but they made him nod and smile. "Walk with me," Joffrey commanded, offering her his arm. She had no choice but to take it. The touch of his hand would have thrilled her once; now it made her flesh crawl. "My name day will be here soon," Joffrey said as they slipped out the rear of the throne room. "There will be a great feast, and gifts. What are you going to give me?" "I . . . I had not thought, my lord." "Your Grace," he said sharply. "You truly are a stupid girl, aren't you? My mother says so." "She does?" After all that had happened, his words should have lost their power to hurt her, yet somehow they had not. The queen had always been so kind to her. "Oh, yes. She worries about our children, whether they'll be stupid like you, but I told her not to trouble herself." The king gestured, and Ser Meryn opened a door for them. "Thank you, Your Grace," she murmured. The Hound was right, she thought, I am only a little bird, repeating the words they taught me. The sun had fallen below the western wall, and the stones of the Red Keep glowed dark as blood. "I'll get you with child as soon as you're able," Joffrey said as he escorted her across the practice yard. "If the first one is stupid, I'll chop off your head and find a smarter wife. When do you think you'll be able to have children?" Sansa could not look at him, he shamed her so. "Septa Mordane says most . . . most highborn girls have their flowering at twelve or thirteen." Joffrey nodded. "This way." He led her into the gatehouse, to the base of the steps that led up to the battlements. Sansa jerked back away from him, trembling. Suddenly she knew where they were going. "No," she said, her voice a frightened gasp. "Please, no, don't make me, I beg you . . . " Joffrey pressed his lips together. "I want to show you what happens to traitors." Sansa shook her head wildly. "I won't. I won't." "I can have Ser Meryn drag you up," he said. "You won't like that. You had better do what I say." Joffrey reached for her, and Sansa cringed away from him, backing into the Hound. "Do it, girl," Sandor Clegane told her, pushing her back toward the king. His mouth twitched on the burned side of his face and Sansa could almost hear the rest of it. He'll have you up there no matter what, so give him what he wants. She forced herself to take King Joffrey's hand. The climb was something out of a nightmare; every step was a struggle, as if she were pulling her feet out of ankle-deep mud, and there were more steps than she would have believed, a thousand thousand steps, and horror waiting on the ramparts. From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below them. Sansa could see the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's hill, where her father had died. At the other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fire-blackened ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swollen red sun was half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north . . . She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell. "What are you looking at?" Joffrey said. "This is what I wanted you to see, right here." A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as Sansa's chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she'd stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me see them. "This one is your father," he said. "This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him." Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look real. "How long do I have to look?" Joffrey seemed disappointed. "Do you want to see the rest?" There was a long row of them. "If it please Your Grace." Joffrey marched her down the wallwalk, past a dozen more heads and two empty spikes. "I'm saving those for my uncle Stannis and my uncle Renly," he explained. The other heads had been dead and mounted much longer than her father. Despite the tar, most were long past being recognizable. The king pointed to one and said, "That's your septa there," but Sansa could not even have told that it was a woman. The jaw had rotted off her face, and birds had eaten one ear and most of a cheek. Sansa had wondered what had happened to Septa Mordane, although she supposed she had known all along. "Why did you kill her?" she asked. "She was godsworn . . . " "She was a traitor." Joffrey looked pouty; somehow she was upsetting him. "You haven't said what you mean to give me for my name day. Maybe I should give you something instead, would you like that?" "If it please you, my lord," Sansa said. When he smiled, she knew he was mocking her. "Your brother is a traitor too, you know." He turned Septa Mordane's head back around. "I remember your brother from Winterfell. My dog called him the lord of the wooden sword. Didn't you, dog?" "Did I?" the Hound replied. "I don't recall." Joffrey gave a petulant shrug. "Your brother defeated my uncle Jaime. My mother says it was treachery and deceit. She wept when she heard. Women are all weak, even her, though she pretends she isn't. She says we need to stay in King's Landing in case my other uncles attack, but I don't care. After my name day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother's head." A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my brother will give me your head." Joffrey scowled. "You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord. Ser Meryn, teach her." This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he struck her. He hit her twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her lip split and blood ran down her chin, to mingle with the salt of her tears. "You shouldn't be crying all the time," Joffrey told her. "You're more pretty when you smile and laugh." Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if she did not, but it was no good, the king still shook his head. "Wipe off the blood, you're all messy." The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn't matter at all. "Here, girl." Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip. The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. "Thank you," she said when he was done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.

[dunmerofskyrim]

39

Forges and kilns squat in the clearing, stout as beehives built from clay. A dozen smiths, fletchers, armourers, and their prentices squabbled over the flames. Streams of sparks marked their words; blades thrust into coals or quenching vats. Half-drowning their arguments, the dinning strike of hammers and the offbeat grunt of anvils. Soldiers and sellers of food hustled through with clay pots and boxes, jars sealed with twine and layers of parchment, to set their food a-simmer amongst the hot and grey-white ashes. Smoke billowed, chasing itself, then fleeing before the wind.

But that was only the heart of things. A beat like iron and oil for blood — it dinned on, battling itself, but Simra reckoned it was faltering. The smiths were doing all they could to look and sound busy. Bothered over the same bits of haggard spare metal, rummaged with pokers at the coals, howled at their prentices for more air to the bellows. They fought amongst themselves for something to do. And all the while they scarce turned out an arrowhead. A waste of tar and charcoal and a waste of wasted time.

Whereas the clearing’s edges bristled and thronged. From mats and shacks and yawn-mouthed tents, people peddled boredom, and cures for it, and more pleasant ways to pass it by.

“Scents! Musks! I have hormones, pheromones, ambergris!”

“When were you last clean, sera? I tell you, I have soaps, water hot as any foyada you care to name! And the tub I have? Why, you could stretch your legs full out and still have room to wriggle with glee! One at a time, sers, one at a time — an orderly line, sera, one at a time if you please…”

“Poultices! Cures for callus you’d walk three days barefoot for..!”

“Faces mirrored, hair trimmed, beards cut! And if you have a tooth that pains you..?”

“Tea! Shein! What you will! Who are we to judge you either way? Who are we indeed to judge! Broths on the boil and straight to your bowl! Line the tables, warm the seats!”

“Pathetic…” Simra grunted under his breath.

“What?” said Tammunei.

They were quiet, huddling close as a cub to its mother, still yet to learn it too has claws. Marketplaces, voices, the crowd and clamour — like they thought Simra could shield them from it all. But that’s the way with crowds, Simra thought. You aren’t in the crowd; you are the crowd, unapart from it. Same for cities and battles and all. How do you save someone from your own self?

“Said it’s pathetic,” Simra answered. “Scrubbed clean, all of it. A camp full of soldiers and mercenaries, and not a glint of gambling in sight. Place like this ought to be red as Autumn with bedworkers’ tents and their caterwauling from inside… They’re not selling leisure here, they’re selling fucking prudence, moderation, temperance. If those were worth tuppence then they wouldn’t come for free.”

He cut himself short but the curse came all the same. Blighted Indoril; he thought it almost aloud. But in a place that forced bedworkers into silence, and dens for sujamma and skooma into hiding, no telling where muttering the wrong thing might get you. They were all still here – the gamblers and bedworkers and dealers of sharps and numbs – Suran had taught him that much. Only they’d be buried; their goods pricier, hawked in whispers. All it takes is for one stiff robe to call something sin and the whole underbelly of things changes. For every red tent taken down and every red lamp snuffed out, another goes up in secret, charging higher for the risk and the lacquer-black gleaming novelty of the forbidden.

“I thought we were here for provisions,” Noor said.

“We are,” said Simra.

“Yet you’re mourning pleasures you might’ve bought.”

“And where’re all these provisioners you’re seeing, hm? Could it be my license and love for the profligate have blinded me to them? What d’you see with your truer purer eyes, talsintushpi?” A sour pause as Simra waited for a response that never came. “Tsscht. Thought not. Nothing here but watery broth and sawdust dumplings and bug-musk by the jar-full, and I’d bet even that’s two-thirds fake.”

Long tables spilt out from the mouth of a wide yellow tent. Days of steam had left patches on the canopy, permanent damp, dark as mustard. A few handfuls of mercenaries slumped at the trestles. Pipesmoke; stale panbreads picked at with fingerless-mittened fingers; black crescent-moons under grubby nails. Men and women, Dunmer in the main, with hollow eyes and looks curdled with hunger.

Simra slouched down beside one. A Dunmer. He might’ve been stout once, but the flesh lay slack on him now. He wore a greasy red cloak, ill-darned in a half-dozen places. The strap of his belt hung in excess past his pad-armoured knees from all the times he’d tightened it, stabbing new holes through the leather. At his hip a wicked-wide shortsword, sling, and stone-pouch. A dished round shield of bonemould and a battered bronze helmet sat on the bench beside him.

“Using those soon, d’you reckon?” Simra tapped his fingernails against the helmet’s crest. It belled dull and quiet at his touch.

The mercenary turned a pouchy red eye on Simra. A spark of fury showed for a moment – the interruption, the gall of a stranger touching his armour maybe – and then went lax and left. “What’s it to you?” he said. “Looking to join the party, latecomer?”

“Me? No. Nah. Not me. Means more for you though, right? Me, I don’t even know who’s fighting who.”

“Hm.”  Something moved the mercenary’s mouth, like working up and holding back the urge to spit. “No news where you came from?”

There was a bite and bristle in that, Simra thought — rank hypocrisy from a mer whose accent was scarce a scratch more native than his own. “Not down the road to south and west, no,” Simra said, keeping his tongue, keeping sweet and bland. “So what’s the word? Heretics, I heard.”

“Almsivists,” the mercenary grunted. “Sprouted up in the town months back. Some priest, young and bright eyed, on the run from out east. He comes in Senie one day looking a mixer, a freak. Says he’s had some vision that the Tribunes ain’t gone, only hiding. Testing us, like. Says he had a vision from Saint Ayem herself to tell him so. And on the steps of the Temple he offs his robes and shows how he’s mottled like a piebald guar — starting to turn gold, he says. Chimer-gold in patches like some pox. They lock him up of course, the Templers, but a week goes by and the city’s set him free and they’ve thrown out or killed all the Templers instead. Calling themselves the Uncursed. Locked up in there, wanting nothing to do with what’s outside while they wait on the Tribunes’ return. Something like that…”

“Something like that?”

“What I said, innit? For all I know they’re all in there, turning gold in their own sweet time.” The mercenary’s mouth worked again. This time he did spit, whitefroth and thick on the ground.

“Why the siege then? If they’re just waiting, not fucking with anyone, why bother? Just let ‘em starve behind their walls.”

The mercenary rolled his shoulders. A shrug that clicked his back and tensed his thick slack neck. “Some of the folk they threw out? Lords, merchants, priests — them as ran Senie, or as good as ran it. ‘Spose they want their town back, and before Winter sets in proper. Impatient bastards, throwing out money like that. Going begging to the Indoril…” He looked over his shoulder and hurried to speak on. “Not like I’m making plaints, mind. It’s them pays my pocket, and them that’ll see us over the walls, innit? And ‘sides, killing heretics?” A hollow laugh, shrill with worry. “I’d do that for free, right?”

Simra drummed his fingertips again on the helmetcrest. His neck itched and his scalp crawled. He looked round slow, casual as he could. Masks and plumes and pale blue silk, caught in the corner of his eye before he turned back. Ordinators, walking the marketplace. Don’t run. Don’t flee or they’ll think you’ve got a reason. Same as the Quarter; the uptown watch with their dogs and their brutal boredom. He stayed seated.

“Right you are… I’m travelling their way and all,” Simra said, sunny. “Sure someone’d thank me when I got to Daen Seeth if I came full of stories. Breaking the walls at Senie; taking back its streets. But time’s short, more’s the pity.”

The mercenary cast a measuring eye over Simra. Took in his travelling clothes, his armoured knees, sword and blades and all, then looked back to the table. His eyes wouldn’t answer the question so he had to put it in words. “Sellsword too then, are you?”

“Something like that, when it suits.”

“Not a soldier though,” the mercenary said. Something about his posture bristled.

Simra eased his hand away from the mer’s helmet. The threat hung thicker between them now — some posture or challenge in unspoken issue. “Not if I can help it, no,” Simra smiled; a closed twist of the lips. “I’m all sorts besides, but today I just wanted news. Grain too – provisions – if you know someone who’s selling..?”

The mercenary spoke after a curt pause. “Heading out east, you said? Hm. You’ll need it. Might be I know a man’s got some spare…”

Simra’s scarred hand slipped into his jacket. Found out a pocket in its stitched silk lining and fished two coins from its narrow mouth. Shils of tin and russeted iron, loose and stamped with holes; he laid them down on the tabletop. “For your help.”

“You’ll want to walk off that way.” The mercenary skimmed the coins off the table and into his palm to grease and grow warm there. He nodded a path through the tents. “Look for what’s left of the Black Lamps company. Reckon you can imagine what their standard looks like. Had a spill in the first try at the walls and now they’re supplied for more heads than they’ve got. They’ll not be raring to the breach again any time soon so they’re not counting on a good pillage. Been foraging hard instead. Might be they’ll see you right…”

“Grateful,” said Simra. Rising from the bench, his knees and hipjoints argued. Saddlesore, travelsore, aged before he’d grown old. A brief grimace pulled at his face before his muscles and bones fell silent.

“Same,” the other mer said with a backtip of his head, a jutting upnod of his chin.

“Good luck then. Y’know. When the time comes.”

You’ll need it, Simra thought. When the times comes, you’ll need helmet and shield and luck and more. Mole, mine, breach; the threat and promise that pushed comers forward and cowards back and turned one to the other in moments. The cold would keep the ground hard at least, and the footing better – no sea of hungry steaming mud here – but all the same… All the same, Simra wouldn’t have bet on the other mer’s chances. Wouldn’t have taken his place. He almost asked himself, what would his price be? But he pulled the thoughts up and threw them away. There are better ways to make coin.

[readbookywooks]

The Beetle at Bay

Harry's question was answered the very next morning. When Hermione's Daily Prophet arrived she smoothed it out, gazed for a moment at the front page and gave a yelp that caused everyone in the vicinity to stare at her. 'What?' said Harry and Ron together. For answer she spread the newspaper on the table in front of them and pointed at ten black-and-white photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards' faces and the tenth, a witch's. Some of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban. Antonin Dolohov, read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at Harry, convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett. Algernon Rookwood, said the caption beneath a pockmarked man with greasy hair who was leaning against the edge of his picture, looking bored, convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic secrets to He Who Must Not Be Named. But Harry's eyes were drawn to the picture of the witch. Her face had leapt out at him the moment he had seen the page. She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly in the picture, though he had seen it sleek, thick and shining. She glared up at him through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin mouth. Like Sirius, she retained vestiges of great good looks, but something--perhaps Azkaban--had taken most of her beauty. Bellatrix Lestrange, convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom. Hermione nudged Harry and pointed at the headline over the pictures, which Harry, concentrating on Bellatrix, had not yet read. MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS 'RALLYING POINT' FOR OLD DEATH EATERS 'Black?' said Harry loudly. 'Not--?' 'Shhh!' whispered Hermione desperately. 'Not so loud--just read it!' The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from Azkaban. Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, confirmed that ten high-security prisoners escaped in the early hours of yesterday evening and that he has already informed the Muggle Prime Minister of the dangerous nature of these individuals. 'We find ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half years ago when the murderer Sirius Black escaped,'said Fudge last night.'Nor do we think the two breakouts are unrelated. An escape of this magnitude suggests outside help, and we must remember that Black, as the first person ever to break out of Azkaban, would be ideally placed to help others follow in his footsteps. We think it likely that these individuals, who include Black's cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, have rallied around Black as their leader. We are, however, doing all we can to round up the criminals, and we beg the magical community to remain alert and cautious. On no account should any of these individuals be approached.' 'There you are, Harry,' said Ron, looking awestruck. 'That's why he was happy last night.' 'I don't believe this,' snarled Harry, 'Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?' 'What other options does he have?' said Hermione bitterly. 'He can hardly say, "Sorry, everyone, Dumbledore warned me this might happen, the Azkaban guards have joined Lord Voldemort"--stop whimpering,Ron--"and now Voldemort's worst supporters have broken out, too." I mean, he's spent a good six months telling everyone you and Dumbledore are liars, hasn't he?' Hermione ripped open the newspaper and began to read the report inside while Harry looked around the Great Hall. He could not understand why his fellow students were not looking scared or at least discussing the terrible piece of news on the front page, but very few of them took the newspaper every day like Hermione. There they all were, talking about homework and Quidditch and who knew what other rubbish, when outside these walls ten more Death Eaters had swollen Voldemort's ranks. He glanced up at the staff table. It was a different story there: Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were deep in conversation, both looking extremely grave. Professor Sprout had the Prophet propped against a bottle of ketchup and was reading the front page with such concentration that she was not noticing the gentle drip of egg yolk falling into her lap from her stationary spoon. Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Professor Umbridge was tucking into a bowl of porridge. For once her pouchy toad's eyes were not sweeping the Great Hall looking for misbehaving students. She scowled as she gulped down her food and every now and then she shot a malevolent glance up the table to where Dumbledore and McGonagall were talking so intently. 'Oh my--' said Hermione wonderingly, still staring at the newspaper. 'What now?' said Harry quickly; he was feeling jumpy. 'It's ... horrible,' said Hermione, looking shaken. She folded back page ten of the newspaper and handed it to Harry and Ron. TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER St. Mungo's Hospital promised a full inquiry last night after Ministry of Magic worker Broderich Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his bed, strangled by a pot plant. Healers called to the scene were unable to revive Mr. Bode, who had been injured in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his death. Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode's ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement: 'St. Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident. 'We have strict guidelines on the decorations permitted on our wards but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr. Bode's bedside table. As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr. Bode to look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom, but a cutting of Devil's Snare which, when touched by the convalescent Mr. Bode, throttled him instantly. 'St. Mungo's is as yet unable to account for the presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information to come forward.' 'Bode ...' said Ron. 'Bode.It rings a bell ...' 'We saw him,' Hermione whispered. 'In St. Mungo's, remember? He was in the bed opposite Lockhart's, just lying there, staring at the ceiling. And we saw the Devil's Snare arrive. She--the Healer--said it was a Christmas present.' Harry looked back at the story. A feeling of horror was rising like bile in his throat. 'How come we didn't recognise Devil's Snare? We've seen it before ... we could've stopped this from happening.' 'Who expects Devil's Snare to turn up in a hospital disguised as a pot plant?' said Ron sharply. 'It's not our fault, whoever sent it to the bloke is to blame! They must be a real prat, why didn't they check what they were buying?' 'Oh, come on, Ron!' said Hermione shakily. 'I don't think anyone could put Devil's Snare in a pot and not realise it tries to kill whoever touches it? This--this was murder ... a clever murder, as well ... if the plant was sent anonymously, how's anyone ever going to find out who did it?' Harry was not thinking about Devil's Snare. He was remembering taking the lift down to the ninth level of the Ministry on the day of his hearing and the sallow-faced man who had got in on the Atrium level. 'I met Bode,' he said slowly. 'I saw him at the Ministry with your dad.' Ron's mouth fell open. 'I've heard Dad talk about him at home! He was an Unspeakable--he worked in the Department of Mysteries!' They looked at each other for a moment, then Hermione pulled the newspaper back towards her, closed it, glared for a moment at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters on the front, then leapt to her feet. 'Where are you going?' said Ron, startled. 'To send a letter,' said Hermione, swinging her bag on to her shoulder. 'It ... well, I don't know whether ... but it's worth trying ... and I'm the only one who can.' 'I hate it when she does that,' grumbled Ron, as he and Harry got up from the table and made their own, slower way out of the Great Hall. 'Would it kill her to tell us what she's up to for once? It'd take her about ten more seconds--hey, Hagrid!' Hagrid was standing beside the doors into the Entrance Hall, waiting for a crowd of Ravenclaws to pass. He was still as heavily bruised as he had been on the day he had come back from his mission to the giants and there was a new cut right across the bridge of his nose. 'All righ', you two?' he said, trying to muster a smile but managing only a kind of pained grimace. 'Are you OK, Hagrid?' asked Harry, following him as he lumbered after the Ravenclaws. 'Fine, fine,' said Hagrid with a feeble assumption of airiness; he waved a hand and narrowly missed concussing a frightened-looking Professor Vector, who was passing. 'Jus' busy, yeh know, usual stuff--lessons ter prepare-- couple o' salamanders got scale rot--an' I'm on probation,' he mumbled. 'You're on probation?' said Ron very loudly, so that many of the passing students looked around curiously. 'Sorry--I mean--you're on probation?' he whispered. 'Yeah,' said Hagrid. ' 'S'no more'n I expected, ter tell yer the truth. Yeh migh' not've picked up on it, bu' that inspection didn' go too well, yeh know ... anyway,' he sighed deeply. 'Bes' go an' rub a bit more chilli powder on them salamanders or their tails'll be hangin' off 'em next. See yeh, Harry ... Ron ...' He trudged away, out of the front doors and down the stone steps into the damp grounds. Harry watched him go, wondering how much more bad news he could stand. The fact that Hagrid was now on probation became common knowledge within the school over the next few days, but to Harry's indignation, hardly anybody appeared to be upset about it; indeed, some people, Draco Malfoy prominent among them, seemed positively gleeful. As for the freakish death of an obscure Department of Mysteries employee in St. Mungo's, Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed to be the only people who knew or cared. There was only one topic of conversation in the corridors now: the ten escaped Death Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few people who read the newspapers. Rumours were flying that some of the convicts had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were supposed to be hiding out in the Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Sirius Black had once done. Those who came from wizarding families had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemorts; the crimes they had committed during the days of Voldemort's reign of terror were legendary. There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: Susan Bones, whose uncle, aunt and cousins had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during Herbology that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be Harry. 'And I don't know how you stand it--it's horrible,' she said bluntly, dumping far too much dragon manure on her tray of Screechsnap seedlings, causing them to wriggle and squeak in discomfort. It was true that Harry was the subject of much renewed muttering and pointing in the corridors these days, yet he thought he detected a slight difference in the tone of the whisperers' voices. They sounded curious rather than hostile now, and once or twice he was sure he overheard snatches of conversation that, suggested that the speakers were not satisfied with the Prophet's version of how and why ten Death Eaters had managed to break out of the Azkaban fortress. In their confusion and fear, these doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to them: the one that Harry and Dumbledore had been expounding since the previous year. It was not only the students' mood that had changed. It was now quite common to come across two or three teachers conversing in low, urgent whispers in the corridors, breaking off their conversations the moment they saw students approaching. 'They obviously can't talk freely in the staff room any more,' said Hermione in a low voice, as she, Harry and Ron passed Professors McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout huddled together outside the Charms classroom one day. 'Not with Umbridge there.' 'Reckon they know anything new?' said Ron, gazing back over his shoulder at the three teachers. 'If they do, we're not going to hear about it, are we?' said Harry angrily. 'Not after Decree ... what number are we on now?' For new notices had appeared on the house noticeboards the morning after news of the Azkaban breakout: BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach. The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-six. Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor This latest Decree had been the subject of a great number of jokes among the students. Lee Jordan had pointed out to Umbridge that by the terms of the new rule she was not allowed to tell Fred and George off for playing Exploding Snap in the back of the class. 'Exploding Snap's got nothing to do with Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor! That's not information relating to your subject!' When Harry next saw Lee, the back of his hand was bleeding rather badly. Harry recommended essence of Murtlap. Harry had thought the breakout from Azkaban might have humbled Umbridge a little, that she might have been abashed at the catastrophe that had occurred right under the nose of her beloved Fudge. It seemed, however, to have only intensified her furious desire to bring every aspect of life at Hogwarts under her personal control. She seemed determined at the very least to achieve a sacking before long, and the only question was whether it would be Professor Trelawney or Hagrid who went first. Every single Divination and Care of Magical Creatures lesson was now conducted in the presence of Umbridge and her clipboard. She lurked by the fire in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney's increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about ornithomancy and heptomology, insisting that she predicted students' answers before they gave them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea leaves and the rune stones in turn. Harry thought Professor Trelawney might soon crack under the strain. Several times he passed her in the corridors--in itself a very unusual occurrence as she generally remained in her tower room--muttering wildly to herself, wringing her hands and shooting terrified glances over her shoulder, and all the while giving off a powerful smell of cooking sherry. If he had not been so worried about Hagrid, he would have felt sorry for her--but if one of them was to be ousted from their job, there could be only one choice for Harry as to who should remain. Unfortunately, Harry could not see that Hagrid was putting up a better show than Trelawney. Though he seemed to be following Hermione's advice and had shown them nothing more frightening than a Crup--a creature indistinguishable from a Jack Russell terrier except for its forked tail--since before Christmas, he too seemed to have lost his nerve. He was oddly distracted and jumpy during lessons, losing the thread of what he was saying to the class, answering questions wrongly, and all the time glancing anxiously at Umbridge. He was also more distant with Harry, Ron and Hermione than he had ever been before, and had expressly forbidden them to visit him after dark. 'If she catches yeh, it'll be all of our necks on the line,' he told them flatly, and with no desire to do anything that might jeopardise his job further they abstained from walking down to his hut in the evenings. It seemed to Harry that Umbridge was steadily depriving him of everything that made his life at Hogwarts worth living: visits to Hagrid's house, letters from Sirius, his Firebolt and Quidditch. He took his revenge the only way he could--by redoubling his efforts for the DA. Harry was pleased to see that all of them, even Zacharias Smith, had been spurred on to work harder than ever by the news that ten more Death Eaters were now on the loose, but in nobody was this improvement more pronounced than in Neville. The news of his parents' attackers' escape had wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him. He had not once mentioned his meeting with Harry, Ron and Hermione on the closed ward in St. Mungo's and, taking their lead from him, they had kept quiet about it too. Nor had he said anything on the subject of Bellatrix and her fellow torturers' escape. In fact, Neville barely spoke during the DA meetings any more, but worked relentlessly on every new jinx and counter-curse Harry taught them, his plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or accidents and working harder than anyone else in the room. He was improving so fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them, the Shield Charm--a means of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker--only Hermione mastered the charm faster than Neville. Harry would have given a great deal to be making as much progress at Occlumency as Neville was making during the DA meetings. Harry's sessions with Snape, which had started badly enough, were not improving. On the contrary, Harry felt he was getting worse with every lesson. Before he had started studying Occlumency, his scar had prickled occasionally, usually during the night, or else following one of those strange flashes of Voldemort's thoughts or mood that he experienced every now and then. Nowadays, however, his scar hardly ever stopped prickling, and he often felt lurches of annoyance or cheerfulness that were unrelated to what was happening to him at the time, which were always accompanied by a particularly painful twinge from his scar. He had the horrible impression that he was slowly turning into a kind of aerial that was tuned in to tiny fluctuations in Voldemort's mood, and he was sure he could date this increased sensitivity firmly from his first Occlumency lesson with Snape. What was more, he was now dreaming about walking down the corridor towards the entrance to the Department of Mysteries almost every night, dreams which always culminated in him standing longingly in front of the plain black door. 'Maybe it's a bit like an illness,' said Hermione, looking concerned when Harry confided in her and Ron. 'A fever or something. It has to get worse before it gets better.' 'The lessons with Snape are making it worse,' said Harry flatly 'I'm getting sick of my scar hurting and I'm getting bored with walking down that corridor every night.' He rubbed his forehead angrily. 'I just wish the door would open, I'm sick of standing staring at it--' 'That's not funny,' said Hermione sharply. 'Dumbledore doesn't want you to have dreams about that corridor at all, or he wouldn't have asked Snape to teach you Occlumency. You're just going to have to work a bit harder in your lessons.' 'I am working!' said Harry, nettled. 'You try it some time--Snape: trying to get inside your head--it's not a bundle of laughs, you know!' 'Maybe ...' said Ron slowly. 'Maybe what?' said Hermione, rather snappishly. 'Maybe it's not Harry's fault he can't close his mind,' said Ron darkly. 'What do you mean?' said Hermione. 'Well, maybe Snape isn't really trying to help Harry ...' Harry and Hermione stared at him. Ron looked darkly and meaningfully from one to the other. 'Maybe,' he said again, in a lower voice, 'he's actually trying to open Harry's mind a bit wider ... make it easier for You-Know-- 'Shut up, Ron,' said Hermione angrily. 'How many times have you suspected Snape, and when have you ever been right? Dumbledore trusts him, he works for the Order, that ought to be enough.' 'He used to be a Death Eater,' said Ron stubbornly. 'And we've never seen proof that he really swapped sides.' 'Dumbledore trusts him,' Hermione repeated. 'And if we can't trust Dumbledore, we can't trust anyone.' With so much to worry about and so much to do-- startling amounts of homework that frequently kept the fifth-years working until past midnight, secret DA sessions and regular classes with Snape-- January seemed to be passing alarmingly fast. Before Harry knew it, February had arrived, bringing with it wetter and warmer weather and the prospect of the second Hogsmeade visit of the year. Harry had had very little time to spare for conversations with Cho since they had agreed to visit the village together, but suddenly found himself facing a Valentine's Day spent entirely in her company. On the morning of the fourteenth he dressed particularly carefully. He and Ron arrived at breakfast just in time for the arrival of the post owls, Hedwig was not there-- not that Harry had expected her--but Hermione was tugging a letter from the beak of an unfamiliar brown owl as they sat down. 'And about time! If it hadn't come today ...' she said, eagerly tearing open the envelope and pulling out a small piece of parchment. Her eyes sped from left to right as she read through the message and a grimly pleased expression spread across her face. 'Listen, Harry,' she said, looking up at him, 'this is really important. Do you think you could meet me in the Three Broomsticks around midday?' 'Well ... I dunno,' said Harry uncertainly. 'Cho might be expecting me to spend the whole day with her. We never said what we were going to do.' 'Well, bring her along if you must,' said Hermione urgently. 'But will you come?' 'Well ... all right, but why?' 'I haven't got time to tell you now, I've got to answer this quickly.' And she hurried out of the Great Hall, the letter clutched in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. 'Are you coming?' Harry asked Ron, but he shook his head, looking glum. 'I can't come into Hogsmeade at all; Angelina wants a full day's training. Like it's going to help; we're the worst team I've ever seen. You should see Sloper and Kirke, they're pathetic, even worse than I am.' He heaved a great sigh. 'I dunno why Angelina won't just let me resign.' It's because you're good when you're on form, that's why,' said Harry irritably. He found it very hard to be sympathetic to Ron's plight, when he himself would have given almost anything to be playing in the forthcoming match against Hufflepuff. Ron seemed to have noticed Harry's tone, because he did not mention Quidditch again during breakfast, and there was a slight frostiness in the way they said goodbye to each other shortly afterwards. Ron departed for the Quidditch pitch and Harry, after attempting to flatten his hair while staring at his reflection in the back of a teaspoon, proceeded alone to the Entrance Hall to meet Cho, feeling very apprehensive and wondering what on earth they were going to talk about. She was waiting for him a little to the side of the oak front doors, looking very pretty with her hair tied back in a long pony-tail. Harry's feet seemed to be too big for his body as he walked towards her and he was suddenly horribly aware of his arms and how stupid they must look swinging at his sides. 'Hi,' said Cho slightly breathlessly. 'Hi,' said Harry. They stared at each other for a moment, then Harry said, 'Well--er--shall we go, then?' 'Oh--yes ...' They joined the queue of people being signed out by Filch, occasionally catching each other's eye and grinning shiftily, but not talking to each other. Harry was relieved when they reached the fresh air, finding it easier to walk along in silence than just stand about looking awkward. It was a fresh, breezy sort of a day and as they passed the Quidditch stadium Harry glimpsed Ron and Ginny skimming along over the stands and felt a horrible pang that he was not up there with them. 'You really miss it, don't you?' said Cho. He looked round and saw her watching him. 'Yeah,' sighed Harry. 'I do.' 'Remember the first time we played against each other, in the third year?' she asked him. 'Yeah,' said Harry, grinning. 'You kept blocking me.' 'And Wood told you not to be a gentleman and knock me off my broom if you had to,' said Cho, smiling reminiscently. 'I heard he got taken on by Pride of Portree, is that right?' 'Nah, it was Puddlemere United; I saw him at the World Cup last year.' 'Oh, I saw you there, too, remember? We were on the same campsite. It was really good, wasn't it?' The subject of the Quidditch World Cup carried them all the way down the drive and out through the gates. Harry could hardly believe how easy it was to talk to her--no more difficult, in fact, than talking to Ron and Hermione--and he was just starting to feel confident and cheerful when a large gang of Slytherin girls passed them, including Pansy Parkinson. 'Potter and Chang!' screeched Pansy, to a chorus of snide giggles. 'Urgh, Chang, I don't think much of your taste ... at least Diggory was good-looking!' The girls sped up, talking and shrieking in a pointed fashion with many exaggerated glances back at Harry and Cho, leaving an embarrassed silence in their wake. Harry could think of nothing else to say about Quidditch, and Cho, slightly flushed, was watching her feet. 'So ... where d'you want to go?' Harry asked as they entered Hogsmeade. The High Street was full of students ambling up and down, peering into the shop windows and messing about together on the pavements. 'Oh ... I don't mind,' said Cho, shrugging. 'Um ... shall we just have a look in the shops or something?' They wandered towards Dervish and Banges. A large poster had been stuck up in the window and a few Hogsmeaders were looking at it. They moved aside when Harry and Cho approached and Harry found himself staring once more at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters. The poster, 'By Order of the Ministry of Magic', offered a thousand-Galleon reward to any witch or wizard with information leading to the recapture of any of the convicts pictured. 'It's funny, isn't it,' said Cho in a low voice, gazing up at the pictures of the Death Eaters, 'remember when that Sirius Black escaped, and there were dementors all over Hogsmeade looking for him? And now ten Death Eaters are on the loose and there are no dementors anywhere ...' 'Yeah,' said Harry, tearing his eyes away from Bellatrix Lestrange's face to glance up and down the High Street. 'Yeah, that is weird.' He wasn't sorry that there were no dementors nearby, but now he came to think of it, their absence was highly significant. They had not only let the Death Eaters escape, they weren't bothering to look for them ... it looked as though they really were outside Ministry control now. The ten escaped Death Eaters were staring out of every shop window he and Cho passed. It started to rain as they passed Scrivenshaft's; cold, heavy drops of water kept hitting Harry's face and the back of his neck. 'Um ... d'you want to get a coffee?' said Cho tentatively, as the rain began to fall more heavily. 'Yeah, all right,' said Harry, looking around. 'Where?' 'Oh, there's a really nice place just up here; haven't you ever been to Madam Puddifoot's?' she said brightly, leading him up a side road and into a small teashop that Harry had never noticed before. It was a cramped, steamy little place where everything seemed to have been decorated with frills or bows. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Umbridge's office. 'Cute, isn't it?' said Cho happily. 'Er ... yeah,' said Harry untruthfully. 'Look, she's decorated it for Valentine's Day!' said Cho, indicating a number of golden cherubs that were hovering over each of the small, circular tables, occasionally throwing pink confetti over the occupants. 'Aaah ...' They sat down at the last remaining table, which was over by the steamy window. Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, was sitting about a foot and a half away with a pretty blonde girl. They were holding hands. The sight made Harry feel uncomfortable, particularly when, looking around the teashop, he saw that it was full of nothing but couples, all of them holding hands. Perhaps Cho would expect him to hold her hand. 'What can I get you, m'dears?' said Madam Puddifoot, a very stout woman with a shiny black bun, squeezing between their table and Roger Davies's with great difficulty. 'Two coffees, please,' said Cho. In the time it took for their coffees to arrive, Roger Davies and his girlfriend had started kissing over their sugar bowl. Harry wished they wouldn't; he felt that Davies was setting a standard with which Cho would soon expect him to compete. He felt his face growing hot and tried staring out of the window, but it was so steamed up he couldn't see the street outside. To postpone the moment when he would have to look at Cho, he stared up at the ceiling as though examining the paintwork and received a handful of confetti in the face from their hovering cherub. After a few more painful minutes, Cho mentioned Umbridge. Harry seized on the subject with relief and they passed a few happy moments abusing her, but the subject had already been so thoroughly canvassed during DA meetings it did not last very long. Silence fell again. Harry was very conscious of the slurping noises coming from the table next door and cast wildly around for something else to say. 'Er ... listen, d'you want to come with me to the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime? I'm meeting Hermione Granger there.' Cho raised her eyebrows. 'You're meeting Hermione Granger? Today?' 'Yeah. Well, she asked me to, so I thought I would. D'you want to come with me? She said it wouldn't matter if you did.' 'Oh ... well ... that was nice of her.' But Cho did not sound as though she thought it was nice at all. On the contrary, her tone was cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding. A few more minutes passed in total silence, Harry drinking his coffee so fast that he would soon need a fresh cup. Beside them, Roger Davies and his girlfriend seemed glued together at the tips. Cho's hand was lying on the table beside her coffee and Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it. Just do it, he told himself, as a fount of mingled panic and excitement surged up inside his chest, just reach out and grab it. Amazing, how much more difficult it was to extend his arm twelve inches and touch her hand than it was to snatch a speeding Snitch from midair ... But just as he moved his hand forwards, Cho took hers off the table. She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly interested expression. 'He asked me out, you know,' she said in a quiet voice. 'A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though.' Harry, who had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the table, could not think why she was telling him this. If she wished she were sitting at the next table being heartily kissed by Roger Davies, why had she agreed to come: out with him? He said nothing. Their cherub threw another handful of confetti over them; some of it landed in the last cold dregs of coffee Harry had been about to drink. 'I came in here with Cedric last year,' said Cho. In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said, Harry's insides had become glacial. He could not believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated over their heads. Cho's voice was rather higher when she spoke again. 'I've been meaning to ask you for ages ... did Cedric--did he--m--m--mention me at all before he died?' This was the very last subject on earth Harry wanted to discuss, and least of all with Cho. 'Well--no--' he said quietly. 'There--there wasn't time for him to say anything. Erm ... so ... d'you ... d'you get to see a lot of Quidditch in the holidays? You support the Tornados, right?' His voice sounded falsely bright and cheery. To his horror, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears again, just as they had been after the last DA meeting before Christmas. 'Look,' he said desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, 'let's not talk about Cedric right now ... let's talk about something else ...' But this, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say. 'I thought,' she said, tears spattering down on to the table, 'I thought you'd u-- u--understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n--need to talk about it t--too! I mean, you saw it happen, d--didn't you?' Everything was going nightmarishly wrong; Roger Davies's girlfriend had even unglued herself to look round at Cho crying. 'Well--I have talked about it,' Harry said in a whisper, 'to Ron and Hermione, but--' 'Oh, you'll talk to Hermione Granger!' she said shrilly, her face now shining with tears. Several more kissing couples broke apart to stare. 'But you won't talk to me! P --perhaps it would be best if we just ... just p--paid and you went and met up with Hermione G--Granger, like you obviously want to!' Harry stared at her, utterly bewildered, as she seized a frilly napkin and dabbed at her shining face with it. 'Cho?' he said weakly, wishing Roger would seize his girlfriend and start kissing her again to stop her goggling at him and Cho. 'Go on, leave!' she said, now crying into the napkin. 'I don't know why you asked me out in the first place if you're going to make arrangements to meet other girls right after me ... how many are you meeting after Hermione?' 'It's not like that!' said Harry, and he was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed about that he laughed, which he realised a split second too late was also a mistake. Cho sprang to her feet. The whole tearoom was quiet and everybody was watching them now. 'I'll see you around, Harry,' she said dramatically, and hiccoughing slightly she dashed to the door, wrenched it open and hurried off into the pouring rain. 'Cho!' Harry called after her, but the door had already swung shut behind her with a tuneful tinkle. There was total silence within the teashop. Every eye was on Harry. He threw a Galleon down on to the table, shook pink confetti out of his hair, and followed Cho out of the door. It was raining hard now and she was nowhere to be seen, he simply did not understand what had happened; half an hour ago they had been getting along fine. 'Women!' he muttered angrily, sloshing down the rain-washed street with his hands in his pockets. 'What did she want to talk about Cedric for, anyway? Why does she always want to drag up a subject that makes her act like a human hosepipe?' He turned right and broke into a splashy run, and within minutes he was turning into the doorway of the Three Broomsticks. He knew he was too early to meet Hermione, but he thought it likely there would be someone in here with whom he could spend the intervening time. He shook his wet hair out of his eyes and looked around. Hagrid was sitting alone in a corner, looking morose. 'Hi, Hagrid!' he said, when he had squeezed through the crammed tables and pulled up a chair beside him. Hagrid jumped and looked down at Harry as though he barely recognised him. Harry saw that he had two fresh cuts on his face and several new bruises. 'Oh, it's yeh, Harry,' said Hagrid. 'Yeh all righ?' 'Yeah, I'm fine,' lied Harry; but, next to this battered and mournful-looking Hagrid, he felt he didn't really have much to complain about. 'Er--are you OK?' 'Me?' said Hagrid. 'Oh yeah, I'm grand, Harry, grand.' He gazed into the depths of his pewter tankard, which was the size of a large bucket, and sighed. Harry didn't know what to say to him. They sat side by side in silence for a moment. Then Hagrid said abruptly, 'In the same boat, yeh an' me, aren' we, 'Arry?' 'Er--' said Harry. 'Yeah ... I've said it before ... both outsiders, like,' said Hagrid, nodding wisely. 'An' both orphans. Yeah ... both orphans.' He took a great swig from his tankard. 'Makes a diff'rence, havin' a decent family,' he said. 'Me dad was decent. An' your mum an' dad were decent. If they'd lived, life woulda bin diff'rent, eh?' 'Yeah ... I s'pose,' said Harry cautiously. Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood. 'Family,' said Hagrid gloomily. 'Whatever yeh say, blood's important ...' And he wiped a trickle of it out of his eye. 'Hagrid,' said Harry, unable to stop himself, 'where are you getting all these injuries?' 'Eh?' said Hagrid, looking startled. 'Wha' injuries?' 'All those!' said Harry, pointing at Hagrid's face. 'Oh ... tha's jus' normal bumps an' bruises, Harry,' said Hagrid dismissively 'I got a rough job.' He drained his tankard, set it back on the table and got to his feet. 'I'll be seein' yeh, Harry ... take care now.' And he lumbered out of the pub looking wretched, and disappeared into the torrential rain. Harry watched him go, feeling miserable. Hagrid was unhappy and he was hiding something, but he seemed determined not to accept help. What was going on? But before Harry could think about it any further, he heard a voice calling his name. 'Harry! Harry, over here!' Hermione was waving at him from the other side of the room. He got up and made his way towards her through the crowded pub. He was still a few tables away when he realised that Hermione was not alone. She was sitting at a table with the unlikeliest pair of drinking mates he could ever have imagined: Luna Lovegood and none other than Rita Skeeter, ex-journalist on the Daily Prophet and one of Hermione's least favourite people in the world. 'You're early!' said Hermione, moving along to give him room to sit down. 'I thought you were with Cho, I wasn't expecting you for another hour at least!' 'Cho?' said Rita at once, twisting round in her seat to stare avidly at Harry. 'A girl?' She snatched up her crocodile-skin handbag and groped within it. 'Its none of your business if Harry's been with a hundred girls,' Hermione told Rita coolly. 'So you can put that away right now.' Rita had been on the point of withdrawing an acid-green quill from her bag. Looking as though she had been forced to swallow Stinksap, she snapped her bag shut again. 'What are you up to?' Harry asked, sitting down and staring from Rita to Luna to Hermione. 'Little Miss Perfect was just about to tell me when you arrived.' said Rita, taking a large slurp of her drink. 'I suppose I'm allowed to talk to him, am I?' she shot at Hermione. 'Yes, I suppose you are,' said Hermione coldly. Unemployment did not suit Rita. The hair that had once been set in elaborate curls now hung lank and unkempt around her face. The scarlet paint on her two-inch talons was chipped and there were a couple of false jewels missing from her winged glasses. She took another great gulp of her drink and said out of the corner of her mouth, 'Pretty girl, is she, Harry?' 'One more word about Harry's love life and the deal's off and that's a promise,' said Hermione irritably. 'What deal?' said Rita, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. 'You haven't mentioned a deal yet, Miss Prissy you just told me to turn up. Oh, one of these days ...' She took a deep shuddering breath. 'Yes, yes, one of these days you'll write more horrible stories about Harry and me,' said Hermione indifferently. 'Find someone who cares, why don't you?' 'They've run plenty of horrible stories about Harry this year without my help,' said Rita, shooting a sideways look at him over the top of her glass and adding in a rough whisper, 'How has that made you feel, Harry? Betrayed? Distraught? Misunderstood?' 'He feels angry, of course,' said Hermione in a hard, clear voice. 'Because he's told the Minister for Magic the truth and the Minister's too much of an idiot to believe him.' 'So you actually stick to it, do you, that He Who Must Not Be Named is back?' said Rita, lowering her glass and subjecting Harry to a piercing stare while her finger strayed longingly to the clasp of the crocodile bag. 'You stand by all this garbage Dumbledore's been telling everybody about You-Know-Who returning and you being the sole witness?' 'I wasn't the sole witness,' snarled Harry. 'There were a dozen-odd Death Eaters there as well. Want their names?' 'I'd love them,' breathed Rita, now fumbling in her bag once more and gazing at him as though he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. 'A great bold headline: "Potter Accuses ..." A sub-heading, "Harry Potter Names Death Eaters Still Among Us". And then, beneath a nice big photograph of you, "Disturbed teenage survivor of You-Know-Who's attack, Harry Potter, 15, caused outrage yesterday by accusing respectable and prominent members of the wizarding community of being Death Eaters ..." ' The Quick-Quotes Quill was actually in her hand and halfway to her mouth when the rapturous expression on her face died. 'But of course,' she said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione, 'Little Miss Perfect wouldn't want that story out there, would she?' 'As a matter of fact,' said Hermione sweetly, 'that's exactly what Little Miss Perfect does want.' Rita stared at her. So did Harry. Luna, on the other hand, sang 'Weasley is our King' dreamily under her breath and stirred her drink with a cocktail onion on a stick. 'You want me to report what he says about He Who Must Not Be Named?' Rita asked Hermione in a hushed voice. 'Yes, I do,' said Hermione. 'The true story. All the facts. Exactly as Harry reports them. He'll give you all the details, he'll tell you the names of the undiscovered Death Eaters he saw there, he'll tell you what Voldemort looks like now--oh, get a grip on yourself,' she added contemptuously, throwing a napkin across the table, for, at the sound of Voldemort's name, Rita had jumped so badly she had slopped half her glass of Firewhisky down herself. Rita blotted the front of her grubby raincoat, still staring at Hermione. Then she said baldly, 'The Prophet wouldn't print it. In case you haven't noticed, nobody believes his cock-and-bull story. Everyone thinks he's delusional. Now, if you let me write the story from that angle--' 'We don't need another story about how Harry's lost his marbles!' said Hermione angrily. 'We've had plenty of those already, thank you! I want him given the opportunity to tell the truth!' 'There's no market for a story like that,' said Rita coldly. 'You mean the Prophet won't print it because Fudge won't let them,' said Hermione irritably. Rita gave Hermione a long, hard look. Then, leaning forwards across the table towards her, she said in a businesslike tone, 'All right, Fudge is leaning on the Prophet, but it comes to the same thing. They won't print a story that shows Harry in a good light. Nobody wants to read it. It's against the public mood. This last Azkaban breakout has got people quite worried enough. People just don't want to believe You-Know-Who's back.' 'So the Daily Prophet exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?' said Hermione scathingly. Rita sat up straight again, her eyebrows raised, and drained her glass of Firewhisky, 'The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl,' she said coldly. 'My dad thinks it's an awful paper,' said Luna, chipping into the conversation unexpectedly. Sucking on her cocktail onion, she gazed at Rita with her enormous, protuberant, slightly mad eye. 'He publishes important stories he thinks the public needs to know. He doesn't care about making money.' Rita looked disparagingly at Luna. 'I'm guessing your father runs some stupid little village newsletter?' she said. 'Probably, Twenty-five Ways to Mingle With Muggles and the dates of the next Bring and Fly Sale?' 'No,' said Luna, dipping her onion back into her Gillywater, 'he's the editor of The Quibbler.' Rita snorted so loudly that people at a nearby table looked round in alarm. '"Important stories he thinks the public needs to know", eh?' she said witheringly. 'I could manure my garden with the contends of that rag.' 'Well, this is your chance to raise the tone of it a bit, isn't it?' said Hermione pleasantly. 'Luna says her father's quite happy to take Harry's interview. That's who'll be publishing it.' Rita stared at them both for a moment, then let out a great whoop of laughter. 'The Quibbler!' she said, cackling. 'You think people will take him seriously if he's published in The Quibbler!' 'Some people won't,' said Hermione in a level voice. 'But the Daily Prophet's version of the Azkaban breakout had some gaping holes in it. I think a lot of people will be wondering whether there isn't a better explanation of what happened, and if there's an alternative story available, even if it is published in a--' she glanced sideways at Luna, 'in a--well, an unusual magazine--I think they might be rather keen to read it.' Rita didn't say anything for a while, but eyed Hermione shrewdly, her head a little to one side. 'All right, let's say for a moment I'll do it,' she said abruptly. 'What kind of fee am I going to get?' 'I don't think Daddy exactly pays people to write for the magazine,' said Luna dreamily. 'They do it because it's an honour and, of course, to see their names in print.' Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap was strong in her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione. 'I'm supposed to do this for free?' 'Well, yes,' said Hermione calmly, taking a sip of her drink. 'Otherwise, as you very well know, I will inform the authorities that you are an unregistered Animagus. Of course, the Prophet might give you rather a lot for an insider's account of life in Azkaban.' Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's drink and thrust it up her nose. 'I don't suppose I've got any choice, have I?' said Rita, her voice shaking slightly. She opened her crocodile bag once more, withdrew a piece of parchment, and raised her Quick-Quotes Quill. 'Daddy will be pleased,' said Luna brightly. A muscle twitched in Rita's jaw. 'OK, Harry?' said Hermione, turning to him. 'Ready to tell the public the truth?' 'I suppose,' said Harry, watching Rita balancing the Quick-Quotes Quill at the ready on the parchment between them. 'Fire away, then, Rita,' said Hermione serenely, fishing a cherry out from the bottom of her glass.

[readbookywooks]

The Writing on the Wall

What's going on here? What's going on?" Attracted no doubt by Malfoy's shout, Argus Filch came shouldering his way through the crowd. Then he saw Mrs. Norris and fell back, clutching his face in horror. "My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" he shrieked. And his popping eyes fell on Harry. "You!"he screeched. " You ! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll--" "Argus!" Dumbledore had arrived on the scene, followed by a number of other teachers. In seconds, he had swept past Harry, Ron, and Hermione and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket. "Come with me, Argus," he said to Filch. "You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger." Lockhart stepped forward eagerly. "My office is nearest, Headmaster - just upstairs - please feel free--" "Thank you, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore. The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore; so did Professors McGonagall and Snape. As they entered Lockhart's darkened office there was a flurry of movement across the walls; Harry saw several of the Lockharts in the pictures dodging out of sight, their hair in rollers. The real Lockhart lit the candles on his desk and stood back. Dumbledore lay Mrs. Norris on the polished surface and began to examine her. Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged tense looks and sank into chairs outside the pool of candlelight, watching. The tip of Dumbledore's long, crooked nose was barely an inch from Mrs. Norris's fur. He was looking at her closely through his half-moon spectacles, his long fingers gently prodding and poking. Professor McGonagall was bent almost as close, her eyes narrowed. Snape loomed behind them, half in shadow, wearing a most peculiar expression: It was as though he was trying hard not to smile. And Lockhart was hovering around all of them, making suggestions. "It was definitely a curse that killed her - probably the Transmogrifian Torture - I've seen it used many times, so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her..." Lockhart's comments were punctuated by Filch's dry, racking sobs. He was slumped in a chair by the desk, unable to look at Mrs. Norris, his face in his hands. Much as he detested Filch, Harry couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him, though not nearly as sorry as he felt for himself If Dumbledore believed Filch, he would be expelled for sure. Dumbledore was now muttering strange words under his breath and tapping Mrs. Norris with his wand but nothing happened. She continued to look as though she had been recently stuffed. "...I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogou," said Lockhart, "a series of attacks, the full story's in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once..." The photographs of Lockhart on the walls were all nodding in agreement as he talked. One of them had forgotten to remove his hair net. At last Dumbledore straightened up. "She's not dead, Argus," he said softly. Lockhart stopped abruptly in the middle of counting the number of murders he had prevented. "Not dead?" choked Filch, looking through his fingers at Mrs. Norris. "But why's she all - all stiff and frozen?" "She has been Petrified," said Dumbledore ("Ah! I thought so!" said Lockhart). "But how, I cannot say..." "Ask him!" shrieked Filch, turning his blotched and tearstained face to Harry. "No second year could have done this," said Dumbledore firmly. "it would take Dark Magic of the most advanced--" "He did it, he did it!" Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. "You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found - in my office - he knows I'm a - I'm a -" Filch's face worked horribly. "He knows I'm a Squib!" he finished. "I never touched Mrs. Norris!" Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls. "And I don't even know what a Squib is ." "Rubbish!" snarled Filch. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!" "If I might speak, Headmaster," said Snape from the shadows, and Harry's sense of foreboding increased; he was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do him any good. "Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said, a slight sneer curling his mouth as though he doubted it. "But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?" Harry, Ron and Hermione all launched into an explanation about the deathday party. "...there were hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there--" "But why not join the feast afterward?" said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Why go up to that corridor?" Ron and Hermione looked at Harry. "Because - because -" Harry said, his heart thumping very fast; something told him it would sound very far-fetched if he told them he had been led there by a bodiless voice no one but he could hear, "because we were tired and wanted to go to bed," he said. "Without any supper?" said Snape, a triumphant smile flickering across his gaunt face. "I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties." "We weren't hungry," said Ron loudly as his stomach gave a huge rumble. Snape's nasty smile widened. "I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful," he said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest." "Really, Severus," said Professor McGonagall sharply, "I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong." Dumbledore was giving Harry a searching look. His twinkling light-blue gaze made Harry feel as though he were being X-rayed. "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus," he said firmly. Snape looked furious. So did Filch. "My cat has been Petrified!" he shrieked, his eyes popping. "I want to see some punishment!" "We will be able to cure her, Argus," said Dumbledore patiently. "Professer Sprout recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris." "I'll make it," Lockhart butted in. "I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep--" "Excuse me," said Snape icily. "But I believe I am the Potions master at this school." There was a very awkward pause. "You may go," Dumbledore said to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They went, as quickly as they could without actually running. When they were a floor up from Lockhart's office, they turned into an empty classroom and closed the door quietly behind them. Harry squinted at his friends'darkened faces. "D'you think I should have told them about that voice I heard?" "No," said Ron, without hesitation. "Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world." Something in Ron's voice made Harry ask, "You do believe me, don't you?" "Course I do," said Ron quickly. "But - you must admit it's weird..." "I know it's weird," said Harry. "The whole thing's weird. What was that writing on the wall about? The Chamber Has Been Opened ... What's that supposed to mean?" "You know, it rings a sort of bell," said Ron slowly. "I think someone told me a story about a secret chamber at Hogwarts once... might've been Bill..." "And what on earth's a Squib?" said Harry. To his surprise, Ron stifled a snigger. "Well - it's not funny really - but as it's Filch," he said. "A Squib is someone who was born into a wizarding family but hasn't got any magic powers. Kind of the opposite of Muggle-born wizards, but Squibs are quite unusual. If Filch's trying to learn magic from a Kwikspell course, I reckon he must be a Squib. It would explain a lot. Like why he hates students so much." Ron gave a satisfied smile. "He's bitter." A clock chimed somewhere. "Midnight," said Harry. "We'd better get to bed before Snape comes along and tries to frame us for something else." For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. Filch kept it fresh in everyone's minds by pacing the spot where she had been attacked, as though he thought the attacker might come back. Harry had seen him scrubbing the message on the wall with Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover, but to no effect; the words still gleamed as brightly as ever on the stone. When Filch wasn't guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like "breathing loudly'and "looking happy." Ginny Weasley seemed very disturbed by Mrs. Norris's fate. According to Ron, she was a great cat lover. "But you haven't really got to know Mrs. Norris," Ron told her bracingly. "Honestly, we're much better off without her." Ginny's lip trembled. "Stuff like this doesn't often happen at Hogwarts," Ron assured her. "They'll catch the maniac who did it and have him out of here in no time. I just hope he's got time to Petrify Filch before he's expelled. I'm only joking -" Ron added hastily as Ginny blanched. The attack had also had an effect on Hermione. It was quite usual for Hermione to spend a lot of time reading, but she was now doing almost nothing else. Nor could Harry and Ron get much response from her when they asked what she was up to, and not until the following Wednesday did they find out. Harry had been held back in Potions, where Snape had made him stay behind to scrape tubeworms off the desks. After a hurried lunch, he went upstairs to meet Ron in the library, and saw Justin Finch-Fletchley, the Hufflepuff boy from Herbology, coming toward him. Harry had just opened his mouth to say hello when Justin caught sight of him, turned abruptly, and sped off in the opposite direction. Harry found Ron at the back of the library, measuring his History of Magic homework. Professor Binns had asked for a three foot long composition on "The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards." "I don't believe it, I'm still eight inches short said Ron furiously, letting go of his parchment, which sprang back into a roll. "And Hermione's done four feet seven inches and her writing's tiny." "Where is she?" asked Harry, grabbing the tape measure and unrolling his own homework. "Somewhere over there," said Ron, pointing along the shelves. "Looking for another book. I think she's trying to read the whole library before Christmas." Harry told Ron about Justin Finch-Fletchley running away from him. "Dunno why you care. I thought he was a bit of an idiot," said Ron, scribbling away, making his writing as large as possible. "All that junk about Lockhart being so great--" Hermione emerged from between the bookshelves. She looked irritable and at last seemed ready to talk to them. "All the copies of Hogwarts, A History have been taken out," she said, sitting down next to Harry and Ron. "And there's a two-week waiting list. I wish I hadn't left my copy at home, but I couldn't fit it in my trunk with all the Lockhart books." "Why do you want it?" said Harry. "The same reason everyone else wants it," said Hermione, "to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets." "What's that?" said Harry quickly. "That's just it. I can't remember," said Hermione, biting her lip. "And I can't find the story anywhere else--" "Hermione, let me read your composition," said Ron desperately, checking his watch. "No, I won't," said Hermione, suddenly severe. "You've had ten days to finish it--" "I only need another two inches, come on--" The bell rang. Ron and Hermione led the way to History of Magic, bickering. History of Magic was the dullest subject on their schedule. Professor Binns, who taught it, was their only ghost teacher, and the most exciting thing that ever happened in his classes was his entering the room through the blackboard. Ancient and shriveled, many people said he hadn't noticed he was dead. He had simply got up to teach one day and left his body behind him in an armchair in front of the staff room fire; his routine had not varied in the slightest since. Today was as boring as ever. Professor Binns opened his notes and began to read in a flat drone like an old vacuum cleaner until nearly everyone in the class was in a deep stupor, occasionally coming to long enough to copy down a name or date, then falling asleep again. He had been speaking for half an hour when something happened that had never happened before. Hermione put up her hand. Professor Binns, glancing up in the middle of a deadly dull lecture on the International Warlock Convention of 1289, looked amazed. "Miss - er -?" "Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets," said Hermione in a clear voice. Dean Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown's head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom's elbow slipped off his desk. Professor Binns blinked. "My subject is History of Magic," he said in his dry, wheezy voice. "I deal with facts , Miss Granger, not myths and legends." He cleared his throat with a small noise like chalk slipping and continued, "In September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers--" He stuttered to a halt. Hermione's hand was waving in the air again. "Miss Grant?" "Please, sir, don't legends always have a basis in fact?" Professor Binns was looking at her in such amazement, Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him before, alive or dead. "Well," said Professor Binns slowly, "yes, one could argue that, I suppose." He peered at Hermione as though he had never seen a student properly before. "However, the legend of which you speak is such a very sensational , even ludicrous tale--" But the whole class was now hanging on Professor Binns's every word. He looked dimly at them all, every face turned to his. Harry could tell he was completely thrown by such an unusual show of interest. "Oh, very well," he said slowly. "Let me see... the Chamber of Secrets... "You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago - the precise date is uncertain - by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution." He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued. "For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school." Professor Binns paused again, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old tortoise. "Reliable historical sources tell us this much," he said. "But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing. "Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic." There was silence as he finished telling the story, but it wasn't the usual, sleepy silence that filled Professor Binns's classes. There was unease in the air as everyone continued to watch him, hoping for more. Professor Binns looked faintly annoyed. "The whole thing is arrant nonsense, of course," he said. "Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist. A tale told to frighten the gullible." Hermione's hand was back in the air. "Sir - what exactly do you mean by the horror within'the Chamber?" "That is believed to be some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control," said Professor Binns in his dry, reedy voice. The class exchanged nervous looks. "I tell you, the thing does not exist," said Professor Binns, shuffling his notes. "There is no Chamber and no monster." "But, sir," said Seamus Finnigan, "if the Chamber can only be opened by Slytherin's true heir, no one else would be able to find it, would they?" "Nonsense, O'Flaherty," said Professor Binns in an aggravated tone. "If a long succession of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses haven't found the thing--" "But, Professor," piped up Parvati Patil, "you'd probably have to use Dark Magic to open it--" "Just because a wizard doesn't use Dark Magic doesn't mean he can't , Miss Pennyfeather," snapped Professor Binns. "I repeat, if the likes of Dumbledore--" "But maybe you've got to be related to Slytherin, so Dumbledore couldn't -" began Dean Thomas, but Professor Binns had had enough. "That will do," he said sharply. "It is a myth! It does not exist! There is not a shred of evidence that Slytherin ever built so much as a secret broom cupboard! I regret telling you such a foolish story! We will return, if you please, to history , to solid, believable, verifiable fact!" And within five minutes, the class had sunk back into its usual torpor. "I always knew Salazar Slytherin was a twisted old loony," Ron told Harry and Hermione as they fought their way through the teeming corridors at the end of the lesson to drop off their bags before dinner. "But I never knew he started all this pure-blood stuff. I wouldn't be in his house if you paid me. Honestly, if the Sorting Hat had tried to put me in Slytherin, I'd've got the train straight back home..." Hermione nodded fervently, but Harry didn't say anything. His stomach had just dropped unpleasantly. Harry had never told Ron and Hermione that the Sorting Hat had seriously considered putting him in Slytherin. He could remember, as though it were yesterday, the small voice that had spoken in his ear when he'd placed the hat on his head a year before : You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin would help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that... But Harry, who had already heard of Slytherin House's reputation for turning out Dark wizards, had thought desperately, Not Slytherin! and the hat had said, Oh, well, if you're sure... better be Gryffindor ... As they were shunted along in the throng, Colin Creevy went past. "Hiya, Harry!" "Hullo, Colin," said Harry automatically. "Harry - Harry - a boy in my class has been saying you're--" But Colin was so small he couldn't fight against the tide of people bearing him toward the Great Hall; they heard him squeak, "See you, Harry!" and he was gone. "What's a boy in his class saying about you?" Hermione wondered. "That I'm Slytherin's heir, I expect," said Harry, his stomach dropping another inch or so as he suddenly remembered the way Justin Finch-Fletchley had run away from him at lunchtime. "People here'll believe anything," said Ron in disgust. The crowd thinned and they were able to climb the next staircase without difficulty. "D'you really think there's a Chamber of Secrets?" Ron asked Hermione. "I don't know," she said, frowning. "Dumbledore couldn't cure Mrs. Norris, and that makes me think that whatever attacked her might not be - well - human." As she spoke, they turned a corner and found themselves at the end of the very corridor where the attack had happened. They stopped and looked. The scene was just as it had been that night, except that there was no stiff cat hanging from the torch bracket, and an empty chair stood against the wall bearing the message "The Chamber of Secrets has been Opened." "That's where Filch has been keeping guard," Ron muttered. They looked at each other. The corridor was deserted. "Can't hurt to have a poke around," said Harry, dropping his bag and getting to his hands and knees so that he could crawl along, searching for clues. "Scorch marks!" he said. "Here - and here--" "Come and look at this!" said Hermione. "This is funny..." Har ry got up and crossed to the window next to the message on the wall. Hermione was pointing at the topmost pane, where around twenty spiders were scuttling, apparently fighting to get through a small crack. A long, silvery thread was dangling like a rope, as though they had all climbed it in their hurry to get outside. "Have you ever seen spiders act like that?" said Hermione wonderingly. "No," said Harry, "have you, Ron? Ron?" He looked over his shoulder. Ron was standing well back and seemed to be fighting the impulse to run. "What's up?" said Harry. "I - don't - like - spiders," said Ron tensely. "I never knew that," said Hermione, looking at Ron in surprise. "You've used spiders in Potions loads of times..." "I don't mind them dead," said Ron, who was carefully looking anywhere but at the window. "I just don't like the way they move..." Hermione giggled. "It's not funny," said Ron, fiercely. "If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my - my teddy bear into a great big filthy spider because I broke his toy broomstick... You wouldn't like them either if you'd been holding your bear and suddenly it had too many legs and..." He broke off, shuddering. Hermione was obviously still trying not to laugh. Feeling they had better get off the subject, Harry said, "Remember all that water on the floor? Where did that come from? Someone's mopped it up." "It was about here," said Ron, recovering himself to walk a few paces past Filch's chair and pointing. "Level with this door." He reached for the brass doorknob but suddenly withdrew his hand as though he'd been burned. "What's the matter?" said Harry. "Can't go in there," said Ron gruffly. "That's a girls'toilet." "Oh, Ron, there won't be anyone in there," said Hermione standing up and coming over. "That's Moaning Myrtle's place. Come on, let's have a look." And ignoring the large OUT of ORDER sign, she opened the door. It was the gloomiest, most depressing bathroom Harry had ever set foot in. Under a large, cracked, and spotted mirror were a row of chipped sinks. The floor was damp and reflected the dull light given off by the stubs of a few candles, burning low in their holders; the wooden doors to the stalls were flaking and scratched and one of them was dangling off its hinges. Hermione put her fingers to her lips and set off toward the end stall. When she reached it she said, "Hello, Myrtle, how are you?" Harry and Ron went to look. Moaning Myrtle was floating above the tank of the toilet, picking a spot on her chin. "This is a girls bathroom," she said, eyeing Ron and Harry suspiciously. " They're not girls." "No," Hermione agreed. "I just wanted to show them how er - nice it is in here." She waved vaguely at the dirty old mirror and the damp floor. "Ask her if she saw anything," Harry mouthed at Hermione. "What are you whispering?" said Myrtle, staring at him. "Nothing," said Harry quickly. "We wanted to ask--" "I wish people would stop talking behind my back!" said Myrtle, in a voice choked with tears. "I do have feelings, you know, even if I am dead--" "Myrtle, no one wants to upset you," said Hermione. "Harry only--" "No one wants to upset me! That's a good one!" howled Myrtle. "My life was nothing but misery at this place and now people come along ruining my death!" "We wanted to ask you if you've seen anything funny lately," said Hermione quickly. "Because a cat was attacked right outside your front door on Halloween." "Did you see anyone near here that night?" said Harry. "I wasn't paying attention," said Myrtle dramatically. "Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm - that I'm--" "Already dead," said Ron helpfully. Myrtle gave a tragic sob, rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, splashing water all over them and vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend. Harry and Ron stood with their mouths open, but Hermione shrugged wearily and said, "Honestly, that was almost cheerful for Myrtle... Come on, let's go." Harry had barely closed the door on Myrtle's gurgling sobs when a loud voice made all three of them jump. "RON!" Percy Weasley had stopped dead at the head of the stairs, prefect badge agleam, an expression of complete shock on his face. "That's a girls bathroom!" he gasped. "What were you -?" "Just having a look around," Ron shrugged. "Clues, you know--" Percy swelled in a manner that reminded Harry forcefully of Mrs. Weasley. "Get - away - from - there -" Perry said, striding toward them and starting to bustle them along, flapping his arms. "Don't you care what this looks like? Coming back here while everyone's at dinner--" "Why shouldn't we be here?" said Ron hotly, stopping short and glaring at Percy. "Listen, we never laid a finger on that cat!" "That's what I told Ginny," said Percy fiercely, "but she still seems to think you're going to be expelled, I've never seen her so upset, crying her eyes out, you might think of her , all the first years are thoroughly overexcited by this business--" "You don't care about Ginny," said Ron, whose ears were now reddening. " You're just worried I'm going to mess up your chances of being Head Boy--" "Five points from Gryffindor!" Percy said tersely, fingering his prefect badge. "And I hope it teaches you a lesson! No more detective work , or I'll write to Mum!" And he strode off, the back of his neck as red as Ron's ears. Harry, Ron, and Hermione chose seats as far as possible from Percy in the common room that night. Ron was still in a very bad temper and kept blotting his Charms homework. When he reached absently for his wand to remove the smudges, it ignited the parchment. Fuming almost as much as his homework, Ron slammed The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 shut. To Harry's surprise, Hermione followed suit. "Who can it be, though?" she said in a quiet voice, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. "Who'd want to frighten all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwart's?" "Let's think," said Ron in mock puzzlement. "Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum?" He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced. "If you're talking about Malfoy--" "Of course I am!" said Ron. "You heard him - You'll be next, Mudbloods!'- come on, you've only got to look at his foul rat face to know it's him--" "Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?" said Hermione skeptically. "Look at his family," said Harry, closing his books, too. "The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; he's always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin's descendants. His father's definitely evil enough." "They could've had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!" said Ron. "Handing it down, father to son ..." "Well," said Hermione cautiously, "I suppose it's possible..." "But how do we prove it?" said Harry darkly. "There might be a way," said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. "Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect--" "If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won't you?" said Ron irritably. "All right," said Hermione coldly. "What we'd need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions without him realizing it's us." "But that's impossible," Harry said as Ron laughed. "No, it's not," said Hermione. "All we'd need would be some Polyjuice Potion." "What's that?" said Ron and Harry together. "Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago--" "D'you think we've got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?" muttered Ron. "It transforms you into somebody else. Think about it! We could change into three of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us. Malfoy would probably tell us anything. He's probably boasting about it in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear him." "This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me," said Ron, frowning. "What if we were stuck looking like three of the Slytherins forever?" "It wears off after a while," said Hermione, waving her hand impatiently. "But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions and it's bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library." There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher. "Hard to see why we'd want the book, really," said Ron, "if we weren't going to try and make one of the potions." "I think," said Hermione, "that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance... "Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that," said Ron. "They'd have to be really thick..."