Mark slept in until ten
the next day, and he felt amazing when he actually got up. He went downstairs
to find a feast in the common room. “Hey, Mark!” Hailey greeted him. “We were
actually just getting ready to remove the food from the table. We were having a
Hufflepuff-style breakfast!”
Mark sat down in an empty seat and lots of Hufflepuff
students started chatting away, trying to get Mark involved in a conversation.
He turned red from embarrassment and shoveled food down his throat to avoid
talking.
“Hey, knuckleheads!” a tall boy shouted. He was the same
boy who had sympathetically patted Mark’s back at the Great Feast. Many of the
Hufflepuffs turned to look at him, but few actually seemed to listen to his
next words. “Quidditch practice begins in five
stinkin’ minutes! Get out here!” Several people, who were apparently
members of the Quidditch team, rushed to go outside.
Others quickly left, too, soon after, apparently to see
what kind of team Hufflepuff had that year, leaving Mark, three boys, Hailey,
and Sofi Freeman in the common room. “Why does everyone love Quidditch so
much?” Sofi wondered aloud.
Exactly, Mark
thought.
“Why do people like football?” Hailey shrugged. “Perhaps
we’ll never know.”
“Football?” Mark inquired. The other three boys nodded in
agreement.
“Football is a Muggle sport,” Sofi explained. “People go crazy about it. Well, Muggles do,
anyhow. I don’t understand football any more than Quidditch.”
Muggles…? These
people must be mudbloods!
“How do you know
about Muggle activities?” one boy asked in amazement.
“They’re not from magical families,” Mark answered for Sofi
and Hailey. He turned to them. “Aren’t you? That must be why.”
“Yes,” Sofi nodded. “Unfortunately, Slytherin figured it
out, and they keep calling me mudblood.”
“That would be the perfect prank,” Mark snickered. “What if
we placed a curse on you so that anytime someone called you a mudblood, they
got turned into a pig?”
They shared a good laugh over that. Eventually, Sofi sighed
in wishful thinking. “I wish Hogwarts actually taught curses like that.”
“Me, too,” one boy agreed.
“I think we all do,” Hailey laughed.
“Hey, you’re the prefect, aren’t you?” one of the boys
asked Hailey. “Shouldn’t you actually be present at practice?”
Hailey turned a few shades of red and rushed out the door.
“She’s new to it,” Sofi told the others. “Over the summer, she couldn’t stop
raving about how she was going to be a prefect, and now she doesn’t exactly
know how to be one.”
“You live close to her?” one of the boys asked. He had a
very thick Muggle accent that Mark couldn’t place.
“She’s my stepsister,” Sofi nodded. She glanced at the door
anxiously. “I’m going to go watch the Quidditch practice. I prefer to be near
Hailey when I can.”
She left. Mark glanced at the other two boys. “So…how are
you?” he asked.
Mark discovered that it
was much nicer to remain alone outside, far from the Quidditch arena, watching
the clouds float by carelessly. He wished he could get by carelessly, too, but
he figured that would lose more house points in Potions Class.
So there he sat, alone. Until he heard someone say, “Um…”
Mark stood up hastily and whirled around. “What are you
doing here?” he asked Sofi.
“Hailey told me about this place,” she shrugged. “She said
that at night, you could actually hear singing from the Forbidden Forest.” Mark
glanced at the dark forest, which, as the name implied, was forbidden to the
students.
“I hope you hear the good creatures singing,” Mark
remarked. “Realistically, it’s probably a werewolf howling.”
“Nothing’s realistic here,” Sofi told him. “I
mean…really…could you ever imagine anything this beautiful?”
This confused Mark. Suddenly, he remembered that she was a
mudblood. “I guess it must be cooler for you. I grew up knowing a bit about
magic.”
“Not as exciting for you, then?” Sofi asked playfully. She
gave him a wide grin.
“Nope, if it was exciting, then I wouldn’t lose lots of
house points in Potions Class.”
“Ah, so that’s what’s bugging you,” Sofi nodded. “Everyone
worries about that. And rightfully so, too. I don’t have to.”
Once again, Mark was confused, although no explanation
jumped to mind this time. “What do you mean?”
Sofi took off a neckless she had been wearing, which had
been concealed by her Hufflepuff robes, and Mark stared at the small bottle
that hung at the end of the chain. In it was a molten gold liquid. “It’s called
Felix Felicis,” she told him. “Liquid
luck. It supposedly makes the drinker extra lucky, for a short period of time.
I drink a drop a day, right before potions class. So far, I’ve never gotten on
Snape’s bad side, so I guess it works.”
“Where did you get it?” Mark exclaimed. “It’s way beyond
your brewing level, I know that for a fact. Way beyond Kiera’s brewing level,
even! And it takes six months to brew, and I’d reckon you didn’t know about
magic six months ago.”
“You know your potions,” Sofi grinned.
“Well, I know of this one, and that’s because I tried to
brew it once,” Mark shrugged awkwardly. “My family needed to buy a new house
after that incident. But still, where did you get it?”
“I don’t know,” Sofi shrugged. “I just…a package appeared
in my room back in the Muggle world. There was no return address, but I know
that it must have been from some influential wizard or witch.”
“If you need help finding him or her, let me know,” Mark
offered. “I kind of want some liquid luck, too.”
*Approves*
ReplyDelete