"Aiden, you better take good care of your sister," my dad said, his index finger pointing sternly at my brother, who smirked mischievously. "Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid again."
"Of course, I'll take vewy good care of my wittle sister," he said in a baby voice, placing his hands on my shoulders as if I were a child. I shrugged his hands off me and rolled my eyes. Although we were merely two years apart, my brother loved to bring up the fact that I was younger than him.
"Dad, I'm thirteen now. I can take care of myself," I asserted, crossing my arms to show my seriousness.
"Well, last year, you were caught brewing potions in the girls' dormitory and then illegally selling them to other students," Aiden countered. "And then, you also strangled our seek—"
Whatever it was that Aiden was saying, we couldn't hear the last bit of it because there was a loud whistle, signalling the train's departure. My brother and I quickly climbed onto the Hogwarts Express and looked out the window to send our last goodbyes to our loving father.
"See you at Christmas, Dad!" I exclaimed. My father gave us a warm smile. The train gradually began to gather speed.
"Don't get too lonely!" Aiden piped in emphatically, and our father laughed.
"Oh, you need not worry. Your mother isn't always so busy."
We waved our lone father goodbye until the train turned a corner, and he was out of sight.
"Alright, I'll catch you later, peasant," were my brother's last words to me before he sped off to one end of the train, most probably to find his friends Adrianne Pucey and Miles Bletchley.
I smiled to myself, shaking my head. Some people never changed.
"Merlin, you changed so much in only two months!" I spun around and was unsurprised to find Daphne Greengrass beaming at me with her symmetrical white teeth. Her gorgeous blond hair bounced as she jumped into my arms for a hug. "Oh my Gods, you need a haircut," she added, grabbing my long curly dark hair and examining it. "Ew, I can see the split ends." I chuckled and we let go of each other. "Okay, is it me or your brother got hot?"
"Ew!" I grimaced. "Don't say that!"
"Alright, I take it back... He got hotter," she giggled. I scowled and hit her arm.
"You're unbelievable," I said, despite having a smile progressively forming on my face. "So, did you find a compartment?" I asked, quickly changing the subject.
"Yes, Tracey is saving it for us," she said, linking her arm with mine to guide me towards the compartment. "Did you see Blaise anywhere?" she added as we went off.
"No —" I cut myself short when I noticed the back of the dark-skinned boy's body protruding from a compartment right next to us. "Well, actually, he's right there."
Daphne abruptly released my arm to embrace Blaise Zabini from behind. He gently spun around and hugged her back. I slowly shook my head and momentarily looked up at the ceiling in disbelief. When were these two lovebirds ever going to make it official?
Beyond Blaise, and inside the compartment, I noticed were Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle. When Blaise and Daphne finally stopped hugging, they held hands and whispered to each other. I cleared my throat uncomfortably and they quickly let go of each other. Daphne bit her lip and took a couple of steps towards me.
"Oh, Maeve, is it okay if we stay here for a bit?" she asked in a hopeful tone. Before I could formulate a response she added: "We don't have to see Tracey right away. Besides, Blaise and I have a lot of catch up on... And I bet everyone would like to hear about your trip to France."
I had no idea where Tracey's compartment was, Daphne seemed to really want to stay here, and although I did semi-loathe a few of the compartment's occupants, I shrugged and followed her inside. To my dismay, the only spot was between Malfoy and Goyle, whilst Daphne sat between Blaise and the window, Crabbe being on his other side.
I didn't expect us to stay here for so long. I hoped for an excuse to escape, but I couldn't think of anything. The conversation topics were quite dull, and the window wasn't necessarily easy to peer out of, not without making eye contact with someone I wished to avoid at the moment.
They spoke about our homework assignments for the summer. I was unsurprised to find out that Crabbe and Goyle hadn't completed anything, and that Draco had finished its entirety during the first week of the summer break. Then, they discussed Sirius Black escaping prison and all that. They mostly repeated things I had already heard, such as him possibly being related to You-Know-Who, or being the first to have ever escaped Azkaban.
"Maeve, tell us about your trip to France!" Daphne suggested after they discussed the prison escape for what felt like hours. I was hoping to be mute for the rest of the train ride, so Daphne caught me off guard.
"Er... Alright..." I looked up, trying to think of what to say... "My grandad died, and er... Yeah, that's pretty much it, I suppose."
"How exciting," Blaise droned.
"Were there any cute boys?" Daphne enthused, her hands now on her lap and her body leaning closer to me. I could feel Malfoy shifting uncomfortably next to me. "French boys are cute, right?"
"I guess...?" I responded, doubt clearly enunciated in my tone.
Before I could add anything else, however, a loud unsettling vibration followed by a vile odour immersed the compartment. Goyle, who was sitting right next to me, had farted.
I immediately slapped my hands to my nose and scooted closer to Malfoy, pushing him against the window, whilst Goyle grunted an apology and Daphne hid her face into Blaise's sweater. Malfoy and Blaise blocked their noses too and gave Goyle a look of utter disgust. Crabbe, however, appeared completely unperturbed by the revolting smell that spread throughout the compartment.
After a moment of awkward silence, I tried to stifle my laughter but was deemed unsuccessful when everyone else joined in. Goyle looked down in embarrassment, so I immediately stopped.
"Sorry..."
Tracey Davis conveniently arrived at the compartment with Millicent Bulstrode, and with Pansy Parkinson behind her.
"Daphne! No wonder you never came!" Tracey said impatiently gesturing at Daphne who was basically sitting on Blaise. Daphne released a small and awkward chuckle as she tucked a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear. "It smells like shit. Who farted?"
Goyle avoided her gaze, and I hid my laughter with a cough.
"Draco!" Pansy pushed herself into the compartment and squeezed herself between Malfoy and me, wrapping her arms around his neck. He seemed pretty smug about having a girl wrapping her arms around him, and I was thankful to Pansy for giving me an excuse to leave. As I stood up, Pansy gave me a sneaky wink, and I responded with a quick smile.
"Right, well I'm leaving..." I said, desperately wanting to get away. Daphne, as I pretty much expected, remained in the compartment with her beloved friend Blaise, whilst I promptly left with Tracey Davis and Millicent Bulstrode.
"Great, now we probably lost our compartment," Tracey muttered exasperatedly. "I wanted to be the one to get you, but Daphne insisted! I bet she was planning on finding Blaise as she looked for you..." A few steps later, she halted to glare at two Gryffindor boys occupying a compartment. "Look, I was right! Some idiots stole our compartment."
"We could just go back and hang out with the others," Millicent Bulstrode suggested apathetically, her flat, dark ash brown hair clouding half of her unemotional face. I didn't notice that before but she was chewing on what was probably a piece of gum.
"No way! I came all this way to get away from Mal — from being overcrowded," I declared indignantly, stammering foolishly. "Since, you know, we won't all fit in a single compartment."
"Just sit on the floor, you know, where you belong," Millicent proposed nonchalantly, her dark eyes boring into mine.
"Huh?" I said, unsure of how to respond to that. Millicent snorted with amusement whilst Tracey rolled her eyes.
"Alright, I'm kicking them out," Tracey decided out of nowhere. I was going to ask her who she meant by them, but then she opened the compartment door and sneered impatiently at the two Gryffindors.
I had seen those boys before. They were in our year, and we had had a couple of classes together, but I was not entirely sure what their names were. One of them had sandy hair and pale skin whilst the other one had dark brown skin and short bushy black hair. I couldn't be entirely sure, but I thought I recalled the latter being a muggleborn.
"You guys stole my compartment and I want it back," Tracey announced threateningly, interrupting the two Gryffindors in mid-conversation. Although short in size, Tracey was an excellent dueler. No one should want to challenge her.
"Nobody was here when we arrived," protested the sandy-haired boy.
"That's because we left momentarily!" Tracey retorted, placing her hands on her hips.
"How were we supposed to know that?" replied the muggleborn.
"I don't care! I want the compartment back!" Tracey demanded very loudly. The two boys glowered at her... yet, I still felt a tinge of sympathy for both of them.
"Tracey, let it go," I interjected. Tracey slowly spun around to scowl at me too. "They didn't know, and I mean, we could just go back to the others..."
"I thought you absolutely wanted to get away from Malfoy," Millicent reminded me, still chewing on her gum. I guess I wasn't very good at hiding my intentions.
"No, I don't, I just..." I trailed off. Tracey pursed her lips impatiently. "You know what, hey guys?" I was now directing my attention to the two Gryffindor boys. "Mind if we join you? Everywhere else is full. Let's just share the compartment."
"Hells no, I'm not sitting with a filthy Mudblood," Millicent said impatiently, and without waiting for any one of us, she stomped away towards the overcrowded Slytherin compartment.
"Ugh, whatever, let's just stay here..." Tracey said, but still looking at the Gryffindor boys with resentment. We entered and were about to sit down, but they broke the silence.
"We never said you guys could sit with us," the sandy-haired boy said.
"Oh, c'mon now, we come in peace! And I genuinely don't care if one of you's a muggleborn or not," I said, attempting to plead with rationality. The darker boy's eyebrow shot up.
"You don't?" he asked us. "But you're... you guys are—"
"Slytherins? Well, thank you for assuming all of us are bigoted assholes," Tracey said sarcastically and defensively. I placed a hand on her shoulder before she could pounce on them.
"Staying silent while others treat us like garbage is just as terrible."
"I'm sorry. What are your guys' names?" I asked them suddenly.
"Dean Thomas," said the black-haired boy.
"Seamus Finnigan," the other said.
"Okay, Dean, you're a muggleborn, right?" I asked him.
"Why should that matter?"
"It doesn't! I just — look, I've never said anything bad about muggleborns before—"
"But you've also never defended us," Dean Thomas said.
"You guys should just leave. Join your other blood supremacist friends. You don't have to pretend to tolerate us just so you can sit in a compartment," Seamus Finnigan said.
I realized at that moment that I really had no way of proving them wrong. This was just how all the other houses viewed Slytherins; a bunch of manipulative and unredeemable blood supremacists.
I couldn't think of anything to say as a retort, but that didn't matter because Tracey quickly grabbed my arm and pulled me out of there. She snapped the compartment door shut with contempt, and we silently walked back towards Malfoy and friends' compartment.
I supposed it was a little out of character to have Tracey walk away from an argument, but perhaps she was just incredibly annoyed with all of this unproductive back and forth because so was I, really.
"Hey, you guys came back!" I first heard Daphne's voice when Tracey opened the compartment door. I peeked past Tracey's shoulder and looked inside. Pansy, as expected, was clinging desperately to Malfoy's arm, and Daphne was, obviously, still sat unnecessarily close to Blaise. Millicent wasn't there, oddly enough. I thought she would've been.
"There's not enough space," Malfoy said.
"Then maybe you should get lost," I said smoothly, giving him a spurious smile. He didn't seem to fully register what I was saying as he just gave me a puzzled look.
"Move," a voice behind us demanded, and I immediately recognized it as Millicent's voice. We didn't even have time to think about moving before she pushed Tracey and me into the crowded compartment. And unlike me, Tracey didn't trip over Crabbe and Goyle's large feet.
My entire body was falling forward, and my face was about to crash against the window —
WHAM!
My face smacked against the window, and my whole body was about to collapse to the ground, but someone caught me. I felt this excruciating pain dancing around my nose area, and I quickly pressed my hand onto it, wincing.
Whoever was holding me, gently guided my body into a sitting position on the floor, my back towards the window. My vision was beginning to tear up due to the agonizing pain I felt on my nose, but I could tell just by the hair that it was Malfoy and that he was now crouched in front of me.
"Are you bleeding?" he asked as he reached and grabbed my hand.
"I'm fine!" I said quickly, attempting to pry my hand away. Malfoy's eyes widened and he instantly let go of my hand when he caught sight of the blood. My hand was just as crimson red as I felt my face was. I could feel blood dripping down my face and onto my blouse.
"Is it that bad?" I inquired, panic gradually surging over me. I rapidly brought my hand back to my nose to pinch my nostrils shut. He gaped at me, presumably unsure what to answer.
"Well, get her out of here," Daphne said, a mixture of impatience and disgust in her tone. "She's full of blood!"
Malfoy immediately pulled me up and dragged me out of the compartment. All of our housemates stared at us as we walked out, their faces maintaining a look of pure horror and consternation. Except for Millicent of course, whose face remained blank of expression and who muttered a disingenuous apology.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked confusedly as he hauled me down the corridor. A couple of students gasped as they saw Malfoy drag me, a bloodied girl, along with him.
"Malfoy!" a very familiar voice called. Malfoy halted. I looked up to see my brother trekking towards us. "Is that Maeve?"
I nodded pathetically. He released a small laugh.
"What happened to your face?" he asked, eyebrows raised at me.
"I tripped and fell..." I said shortly, the metallic taste of blood still lingering in my mouth even after pinching my nose for several minutes.
"What a bloody peasant," my brother said, and I rolled my eyes impatiently.
"Can you please stop calling me a peasant, and help me out here?"
Aiden scoffed and pulled out his wand, pointing it at my nose. "Episkey."
My nose snapped back into place (I guess it was that bad) and I felt an intense surge of heat envelope my nose, followed by an icy cold wave. Suddenly, my nose felt completely fine... Half of my face felt especially bloody and my hands were dripping with red, but I felt fine — great, even.
"You'll have to clean yourself up," Aiden advised. He then turned to Malfoy. "Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid, again..."
"Dad said you were the one responsible for that," I reminded, challenging him with my eyes. He merely lifted his chin up and shrugged, openly aware of his inadequate sense of responsibility.
"Just clean your face off, you look like a vampire," he insisted, looking down at my bloodied face with repulsion. And at that, he patted my head and walked past me, once more.
"C'mon," Malfoy grabbed my arm and guided me down the corridor once more. Many people gave me a look of perplexity mixed with disgust as we strolled past them. I tried to avoid looking at them.
I was forever grateful when we arrived in the washroom. Malfoy seemed to hold back a look of utter displeasure as he helped me rub the semi-dried blood off of my face.
"Are you afraid of blood, or what?" I asked, quite amused by the sneer on his face.
"No," he replied quickly. "It's just that... this is a servant's job. It's beneath me."
"Well, you don't have to help me. I'm fine on my own," I pointed out, moving my face away from his hand. I reached out to grab the wet and bloody towel (we took one of the towels that was meant to dry hands) from his hand, but he pushed my hand away. "Just let me do it."
"Shut up," he said, pulling my face closer with his clean hand so that he could scrub some more with the other.
"Are you done, now?" I said, a few moments later, not making any effort to shield my annoyance. "I can do it myself, you know. I'm not a child."
"You're unbearably irksome, you know," he said simply, ignoring my objections. I frowned. "Stop moving your face."
A few minutes later, he stopped rubbing, and I looked in the mirror to see that my face was now blood-free... Just a little pink from all the scrubbing. Draco was now vigorously washing his hands in the sink.
He shut the faucet and turned around to face me, flicking his wet finger at my face. I sneered as I tried to wipe off the drops of water from my face, and he laughed as he dried his hands with a clean towel.
"Thank you," I said, a bite of sarcasm in my tone, "but that wasn't necessary."
"Of course it was," he countered, and I tried to ignore the weird tingling feeling in my stomach as he smirked deviously. "Your face was too bloody for me not to help you wash it off."
"I meant, you flicking water on my face."
"What?" he said innocently.
"Never mind ... Let's just find the trolley lady or something, I'm starving," I said. I grabbed his arm and guided him into the corridor. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I quickly let go of his arm. "Actually, I'm not hungry — Goodbye." I turned my back to him and was about to run away, but—
"Anything from the trolley, dears?" The trolley lady came out of nowhere behind us and was talking to some students in a compartment. I turned around and saw that she was gesturing to the variety of sweets on the trolley. After a split-second of consideration, and of noticing all of the delicious sweets, I walked over to her trolley and bought some Pumpkin Pasties that I was craving.
"Not hungry, huh?" Malfoy said, one of his eyebrows perked up as he approached me.
"It's for — for him," I said, spontaneously giving the pasties to a red-headed boy who was picking some sweets as well.
"Hey, thanks," he beamed at me for a second until his gaze landed on the blond git behind me. The trolley lady then moved on to the next compartment. When her figure moved past Malfoy, he could properly see what the red-headed boy looked like.
"Weasley!" Malfoy spat, straightening his upper body. "Why are you giving charity to this Weaslebee?"
"Because — because he's my friend," I lied wildly. Weasley's face scrunched in bemusement, but he didn't deny what I said.
"What?" Malfoy looked utterly bewildered.
"Yeah, you've got a problem with that?" Weasley added.
"You—" Malfoy pointed his finger at me, and his face contorted unpleasantly. His light eyes moved back and forth between Weasley and me. "You have seriously changed, Blackwood. I don't know if it's Hogwarts or France, but you are not the same witch as you were before."
"What's going on here?" Another Weasley who looked identical to the first one walked out of the compartment. They were twins. "What is Malfoy doing here?"
The train was beginning to slow down. I thought this meant we were nearing Hogsmeade Station, but when I peered out the window opposite from the compartments, I realized we were still in the middle of the forest.
"None of your business, Weasley." Abruptly, the train came to a complete halt and we staggered a little in the process. The lights flickered off. "What in the Hells?" Malfoy yapped.
At both ends of the corridor, where the exits were, tall and dark figures emerged. It suddenly felt very cold. Malfoy pushed past us and cowardly squeezed himself into the compartment. The first Weasley grabbed my arm and pulled me inside with the other Weasley. We couldn't see anything, and I bumped into someone's legs, but we managed to sit down anyway.
"George, Fred, is that you two? Why does it sound like there's more of you?" That was the voice of another boy in the compartment.
"Yes, but don't worry about them, for now — are you alright?"
"Yeah, what's going on out there?"
"I dunno..."
I tried to look past the blurred windows outside but could barely make out the trees around. One thing I could notice, however, was how abruptly frozen the window was. Cold air seemed to have swept in out of nowhere and we all rubbed our hands together and hugged ourselves in an attempt to warm up our shivering bodies. My heart sank, and my eyes began to dampen.
A dark silhouette passed in front of our compartment, and we all jumped in our seats. I wasn't sure who it was, but someone was gradually pushing me against the window. The ominous shape halted in front of the door, making the glass gather frost. Before the dementor could creep the door open, a bright light emerged out of nowhere and drove it away.
A man's voice cried: "He's not here!" Shuffling sounds could be heard in the distance. Whoever had chased the dementor away was long gone by now.
"Who was that man?" Malfoy asked, his voice quivering. I could tell that he was sitting right across from me.
No one answered him. Likely because no one knew the answer.