DirtCatharsis

Chapter 7

"Has it occurred to anyone else that this is probably the most brainless thing ever collectively done by students at Hogwarts?" Blaise asked no one in particular.

Hermione's shoulders tensed involuntarily. "Of course," she said, suddenly feeling quite alone.

"It's a brilliant plan," Ginny, the plan's creatrix, interjected. "It's just for a really stupid result."

"Not stupid at all!" Hermione said, anger and passion bubbling up inside her and threatening to close her throat. "We want our boys back," she said, turning to face Blaise. "In a very short month, we'll be gone from Hogwarts, out into the real world. We'll face our destinies, make the choices our parents have groomed us to make." Here she looked at Pansy Parkinson, whose parents might well have worn "Unrepentant Death Eater" labels knitted into their jumpers in letters as large and thick as Mrs. Weasley knitted them into Weasley jumpers. "And we'll have to face the consequences as adults. And for you sixth years, there's every chance that next year you won't have a Hogwarts to come back to. How many of us," she asked, looking around at the assembled faces, lit by the faint glow of several wands, "can say our lives here have been the carefree, innocent adventures of youth?" She looked at Ginny.

Ginny lowered her eyes as Tom Riddle's face came back to haunt her, so beautiful in its cruelty. How her dreams had been haunted by the nightmarish actions she'd been forced to take under the influence of that damned diary. In the dark tunnel, surrounded by the girls from every house at Hogwarts, she could admit that while Tom Riddle may not have touched her physically, at the tender age of eleven, he'd ripped her innocence from her just as surely as if he'd raped her.

She looked around at the Hufflepuff girls and knew that every one of them was remembering Cedric Diggory's beautiful, golden, vibrant charm, and how carelessly and completely Voldemort had snuffed it out. They might not have witnessed it, but none of them had missed seeing his body borne back to the school from the Quidditch pitch, covered in a makeshift shroud of a teacher's cloak.

Ravenclaw hadn't escaped its share of events. The Ravenclaws were the first to know anything that happened at Hogwarts, no matter how secret it was supposed to be. They had been the first to discover what she and Harry had gone through down in the Chamber, and the first house to be fully aware of Voldemort's return. Luna Lovegood, batty as she might be, had stood with them against Death Eaters in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.

Most surprisingly, the Slytherin girls held their own share of shadows behind their eyes. How many of them, Ginny wondered, really understand what's coming? And how fair have the rest of us been to them, assuming that they're future death eaters to a man?

There were times she fantasized about rebelling against her family's expectations, and more than enough instances where she felt that no one in her family had the slightest clue of how her mind worked. Could she truly say the Slytherin girls--even Pansy Parkinson--were inhuman enough not to feel the same way about their families?

"We're going to go out there," Ginny said, her heart beginning to pound against her ribs. And we're going to dance." Her voice was low, and her entire body trembled with some nameless emotion that threatened to steal away reason and thought. "We are going to dance in the dirt. We are going to pound our feet, and scream, and use bad language, and maybe even pound each other. Not just so the boys will look at us. We're going to scream down the heavens themselves. For Cedric." She nodded to the Hufflepuffs. "For Harry." She glanced at the Gryffindors. "For knowing too much." Her eyes met those of the Ravenclaws. "Even for Malfoy." Zabini offered her a thin smile. "For all the things our parents and teachers expect of us, and all the choices they've taken away. For this Gods-damned war that's already here. To mourn the end of our childhood. And because, for one night, each and every one of us deserves to have the magic of a dance with a boy we fancy without worrying if one of us will kill the other one in a battle the very next day."

Hermione blinked away sudden tears and swallowed a lump in her throat. She gets it, she thought. And now they do, too. Bugger, I hope it hasn't killed the mood. What she'd discovered in the library made it more important than ever that the plan go off as intended. Their future depended on it.

It took Millicent Bulstrode a sharply-heaved shoulder to get this door open. Hagrid slumped in a battered chair in the corner, and over his snores, rowboats could be heard bumping gently against one another. From outside the boathouse, she could hear the boys flinging insults at one another, and the wet sploot of many nets being cast out into the lake and dragged back again.

She emerged from the boathouse and reached for Ginny's hand. The hand that slipped into her own was slim and elegant, as opposed to Ginny's broad, strong one. Blaise Zabini stepped up next to her. Hermione glanced at the other girl and was shocked to see tear tracks on her cheeks. "It isn't fair," she said. "We're Sorted when we're barely out of nappies, and we grow up thinking our way is the right way, and they expect us to make the same decisions as they did, when we don't even know what else is out there or how else to be. And then, once we realize what we've done, we've forgotten how to change things--we're slaves to expectation." She gripped Hermione's hand tightly, as if she were a lifeline.

Hannah Abbott moved past them, leading the Hufflepuffs, who fired off witchlights in a large circle around the mudflat. Lavender, Parvati, and Padma pointed their wands at Hermione's Muggle radio. With graceful flicks of their wrists, they tossed glowing strands of magic out into the trees around the mudflat. Amplifying cones sprouted from the magic lines. They stood back. "Hermione, Ginny, we're ready for your music," Parvati said solemnly.

Blaise let go of Hermione's hand. Hermione linked hands with Ginny. "Accio musica!" They said together. The spell they'd built up in the Astronomy tower fell like rain around them, coalescing into the radio. They'd researched music and built a play list of music with heavy drumming and tribal influences, based on Ginny's suggestions and Hermione's research into cultures both Muggle and magical.

The music began as a low, steady drumbeat, and together, they stepped into the circle.

* * *

Ron had been about to throw a punch at Pucey when the other boy stopped dead in his tracks. At Ron's feet, Harry and Draco were locked in a mutual headlock that guaranteed both boys would have sore necks in the morning. Stunned at all of a sudden having nothing to hit, Ron just followed Adrian's stare. And finally noticed the girls.

They stood in a circle of witchlight, in that iridescent blue-green-gold of lights that had magical origin and burned cool to the touch. He could hear the music, feel it in his throat, and recognized it as something Hermione listened to on her Muggle radio occasionally. The girls were all barefoot, and bare-legged, too, wearing nothing more than thin cotton shorts and t-shirts.

His first thought was that perhaps Madam Hooch instituted a new phys-ed class for the girls. Then he realized that the girls were unchaperoned, and in fact, so were the boys. Then he saw one girl make a fierce leap into a thick puddle of mud. Another girl darted forward out of the crowd and dove head-first into a slide that carried her halfway across the circle. She stood up and her wet, muddy t-shirt clung to her body. Ron blinked, and blinked again. Was that bitchy Blaise Zabini, Slytherin tart of the week? Then he rubbed his eyes as she joined hands with the unmistakably blonde Hannah Abbott. A Slytherin--and a Hufflepuff? With no imminent bloodshed?

It was as if he'd been underwater for a very long time. He swam up from misty, dark depths and remembered that he was seventeen, and in the presence of masses of scantily clad femininity. "Bloody hell," he whispered.

Pucey nodded. "Bloody hell," he echoed. "I've--I used to have dreams about this."

Ron shot him a look. "Mine involved cherry gelatin."

"Pumpkin pie filling." At Ron's look, Pucey shrugged. "I've a weakness."

The girls began shouting, and around them, wet rope nets hit the beach of the lake with wet thumps. "Cor, wouldja look a'that?" Seamus Finnegan's thick accent rolled through the humid darkness.

"Pumpkin pie filling?" Ron tore his eyes away from the circle of girls who had begun to stomp and dance in the mud in earnest. The thought of a Slytherin having normal human thoughts was an alien thing to him. He looked at Pucey and for the first time saw not the Slytherin badge and robes of moneyed quality, or the arrogant swagger, but a boy his own age, sharing in the Bona Fortuna of watching girls in a mudfight. "You know, Pucey, you could be my kind of pervert," Ron said.

Adrian shrugged. "We're not so different." He glanced down at Potter and Malfoy. "It's just that--well, they're trying so hard."

"You hate to let them down," Ron said. "And yet, you don't know how they manage, day in and day out, going strong when you'd have given out long ago."

Pucey shrugged again. "It's the being a tool of destiny thing, I think."

"Harry's never been comfortable with that. It's the way he was brought up," Ron said.

"I'm talking about Malfoy," Adrian replied. "He's just as much a tool of destiny as Potter."

"Bollocks," Ron said. "Every kid in our world didn't grow up knowing who Draco Malfoy was."

"Every kid with Slytherin parents did," Pucey said. "You couldn't wedge a broomstick between the Malfoys and You-know-who, and when we were growing up it was always 'Lucius this, the Malfoy heir that, if you don't make a friend of Draco Malfoy you'll never make anything of yourself.' "

Ron had trouble comprehending that. His mum and dad hadn't cared if any of their children's friends were famous or wealthy. In fact, Mum even went out of her way to make sure they took the occasional trip to the playgrounds at Ottery St. Catchpole to play with the Muggle children there. Even when Bill brought a vampire girl to a family dinner, Mum hadn't missed a beat. She'd simply raised an eyebrow at the girl and asked, "Will chicken blood be all right, dear, or would you prefer pig?" And then she'd sent Charlie out to the butcher's, and that night, they had pork for dinner while Bill's date sipped from a soup tureen charmed to keep its contents around thirty-seven celsius. "Dad always just told us to make friends with people we actually like."

Pucey snorted. "Our parents groomed us to make alliances rather than friendships. Friendships were a bonus. I think I'm bloody lucky to actually like Malfoy."

"Is that a lot of work?" Ron asked, fully expecting a kick for it, but curious nonetheless.

Pucey folded his arms. "Sometimes. Draco's not had an ordinary time of it. Nursery rhymes in the Malfoy household started with 'Avada Kedavra.' Bloody disturbing. And Lucius didn't hesitate to drum into his son's head that he was, first and foremost, a Malfoy, with all the responsibilities and privileges therein."

Ron frowned. His own childhood, full of love and boisterous antics with his brothers, was marked by the constant awareness of being a Weasley, but he was beginning to suspect that it didn't mean the same thing as being a Malfoy. Being a Weasley meant there would be half a dozen defenders of your back, and half a dozen other alliances you were obliged to honor, as well as half a dozen siblings who got first crack at you if you bolloxed something up.

Beng a Malfoy would be something entirely different. He remembered his own brush with Lucius Malfoy his second year, and the cold-blooded bastard's never-quite-proven attempt to use his sister as the sacrifice that would bring Tom Riddle back to life. The fact that Lucius was willing to use a child to further his ends made Ron shiver, even though sweat was running down his neck. What would it be like to grow up with that for a father? Malfoy must have had little fluffy Dark Marks on his feetie pyjamas as a toddler. "Poor bastard," he muttered aloud. "You Slytherins have your own load of problems, don't you?"

Pucey shrugged yet again. "Same as you. In spite of high marks in Divination, we don't know the future either."

Ron didn't say it out loud, but it seemed to him that the Slytherins had less choice than the average Hogwarts alumnus did. A completely alien state descended on him--one that involved Malfoy and sympathy in positions not at complete odds with one another. "Bugger," he muttered. Now you've done it, Pucey, he thought. The whole world's changed for me and I can't ever go back.

Absently, he noted that his hand was still clenched in a half-hearted fist. Without even thinking, his body still held the tension of anticipated violence. A thump against his legs nearly knocked him off balance, but he wouldn't have been a Quidditch Keeper without having a little stability.

Pucey's eyes met his, then they both looked at what lay at their feet. Harry and Malfoy were locked in a tangled heap of spindly arms and gangly legs, growling like a couple of rabid dogs over half a cat. Malfoy had his hands around Harry's neck, but Harry had both elbows digging into Malfoy's collarbone. "Firkin'...sod it...arse-head...feck!" It was hard to tell where the one ended and the other began.

"Er," Ron said, although he wasn't sure if it was to Pucey or just himself. "I'd be a lousy-arsed friend if I let him miss something like this."

* * *