The Chosen

Chapter 4: The Halloween Feast

“I really hate that class,” Jean said angrily as the Gryffindor girls left transfiguration, “I just don’t understand in any way, shape, or form.”

“You’re right Jean,” Fiona sighed flinging one of her plaited pigtails behind her shoulder, “a 3 foot essay in one night, is she crazy?”

“I think so.” Suddenly the girls heard a high-pitched scream from down the corridor.

“What was that?” Arabella asked as she peered around the corner. She got her answer when she saw a little blonde Hufflepuff huddled in a corner, surrounded by a group of Slytherins.

“They really shouldn’t let muggles into Hogwarts right Patrick?” a pale blonde girl said as she jabbed a large red head in the side. She also let out a menacing laugh. Which made the Hufflepuff girl whimper.

“Of course not, but you know what Gret? I think they made a mistake,” Patrick replied.

“Don’t call me Gret, you idiot!” the blonde screamed.

“Sorry Gretchen.”

“What are you doing?” Arabella asked glaring at the Slytherins. 

The group turned to glare at her. “Shut up you Gryffindor trash,” Ryan Lestrange spat at Arabella. Arabella suddenly snapped, slapping Ryan across the face.

“What was that for?” Gretchen yelled at Arabella. Arabella didn’t say anything she just grabbed the Hufflepuff girl, who turned out to be Christine Grant, by the wrist and lead her and the others away.

The five girls all went directly to the library, Jean wanted to get a jump-start on her transfiguration homework and everyone else just wanted to get away from those horrible Slytherins. “What happened Christine?” Lily asked when they all sat down.

“Well, I was just walking down the corridor and they just came out of nowhere,” Christine said in-between sobs. Tears were now streaming freely down her face. Lily gave a confused look at Arabella who had just come back from getting some books.

“It’s alright Christine,” Arabella said softly. Then out of nowhere Christine hugged Arabella tightly around the neck.

“Thank you so much for rescuing me!”

“Get a grip okay. It’s not like I saved your life or anything.” Arabella sat down and began to read, as did the others when they returned to the table. Lily, on the other hand, had too much on her mind to start on homework right away. She had been thinking a lot about the conversation she had with Remus.

“Christine, you know Remus Lupin don’t you?” Lily asked cautiously.

“Yes, we grew up in the same neighborhood. He’s my only friend,” Christine answered. Her face brightened visibly at the prospect of something she could talk about. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I’m just a little worried about him, that’s all.”

“But why? Aside from his being sick a lot…he’s always been like that. For as long as I can remember anyway.”

“Sick a lot?” Lily asked, a puzzled look over coming her face, “I haven’t know him long enough to notice that. He just told me a couple days ago that his family is having problems, and I just was a little worried. I mean if it’s keeping him up nights…”

“Well that’s news to me. The Lupins have always been a picture perfect family as far as I ever saw, and our families were friends, so I would have at least heard something.”

“Thanks Christine.” Lily’s face clouded over as she looked toward the window trying to imagine what he had been looking at.

“You’re more worried now, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Hey girls, I’m going to go talk to Lizzy okay?” Jean said butting into the conversation.

“Lizzy?” Lily asked, but Jean didn’t answer she just got up and left.

“Bet you twenty galleons it’s some prefect,” Arabella said laughing.

“Why would we bet, we’d just lose?” Fiona said joining in. They all watched Jean go up a tall brunette with a silver ‘P’ pinned to her chest.

“Oh what did I tell you? That girl is such a suck up!”

“No she’s not!” Lily said indignantly.

“Yes she is,” Arabella said angrily, “She hangs on every teacher’s every word and follows the prefects around like she thinks it will get her special points for her fifth year. It’s like she’s Head Girl in training or something.”

“Arabella has a point, Lily,” Fiona said in a hushed tone as if she didn’t want to agree with either of them.

Lily opened her mouth to say something else in Jean’s defense when two Ravenclaw girls walked by. “But my brother told me that’s what they do!” Said one brunette with extremely curly hair.

“Well, your brother’s not very smart is he?” said the other whose hair was much straighter.

“Bryan’s a third year!”

“So? That doesn’t make him bright.”

“Excuse me?” Arabella said tapping the curly haired Ravenclaw on the arm, “But seeing as your talking extremely loud right next to my ear, I couldn’t help but overhear. What are you talking about?”

The two Ravenclaws glared at Arabella for a moment. “The Halloween feast, of course. Mackenzie said that they have live bats just flying around,” The straight haired girl said. The way she spoke made it sound as if live bats were certainly blasphemous.

“Well they do Laura! I don’t see any reason to doubt Bryan,” Mackenzie (the one with curly hair) said angrily.

“What about the fact he told you that the sorting had to do with turning someone’s hair colors so you would experiment on your mother?”

“Ummm…Well, other than that…”

“You see it’s stupid. They just don’t do things like that.” Mackenzie started glaring at her friend this caused Arabella to burst out in laughter.

“What is so funny?” Mackenzie asked indignantly.

“You should see your face,” Arabella said before she continued to laugh hysterically. Lily, Fiona, and Christine shared extremely confused looks. Mackenzie wrinkled her nose and walked off angrily with Laura right behind. “Well, I got rid of the prissy Ravenclaws didn’t I? Oh goodness…they just don’t do thing like that…those two were priceless.”

“I don’t get it,” Christine said softly.

“Neither do I,” Lily whispered in reply.

Arabella ignored them and glanced over to Jean. Her ‘friend’ Lizzy was showing something a book to another older student while Jean kept jumping up and down to see what it was. They were both looking at her as if they wanted her to drop off the face of the earth. Arabella shook her head and went back to her essay. “Say, why don’t we go down to the Great Hall and check out these bats?”

“Why?” Fiona asked as she stared blankly at the textbook in front of her.

“Because I’m bored.”

“I don’t know Bella, We probably aren’t supposed to be there,” Lily said quietly, “What if they want to keep it secret?”

Arabella rolled her eyes, “Honestly, why would they want to keep it secret?”

“I just don’t like getting caught out of bounds.”

“The Great hall is just about as out of bounds as the Gryffindor Common room.” Arabella looked at Lily in complete disbelief; she had never known someone to be so afraid of breaking a rule. The girl was a wimp.

“I know but…”

“But what? You are such a wimp. Have you ever done anything against the rules in your whole life?”

“Well, I...um… pick on my younger sister a lot.”

“Wow, that’s impressive,” Arabella said, adding a sarcastic laugh just for an extra touch, “Just as impressive as your flying abilities huh?”

“Arabella, leave her alone,” Fiona said almost whispering.

Arabella ignored her. “Anything more dramatic?” There was a long silence. “I didn’t think so. What about a boyfriend?”

“I’m only eleven. Are you crazy?” Lily said angrily standing up and preparing to leave. She gathered up her books and headed out of the library. Christine glared at Arabella and followed Lily.

“Touchy, touchy,” Arabella said in a chastising tone. Fiona just shook her head, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

*****

Severus Snape leaned against an arch in the hallway. Most of the others had gone off to wreak havoc during their free time. He had been just sitting in the dormitory for a long while, but he got sick of that and was now headed for the library. He’d been having a rough first month. Everyone was rather scared of him because he had such an extensive knowledge of curses- this included his own housemates. Suddenly he heard two voices approaching so he ducked back into the corner.

“Lily, wait up!” called a small voice. Severus looked out to see Christine on the heels of that girl from his neighborhood, Lily.

“I’m sorry, Christine. I just want to get as far away from Arabella as possible. How dare she say those things to me?”

“I don’t know. I think she was just joking.”

“It was still awfully rude of her.” She sat down on a bench and Christine went and sat down next to her.

 Severus stepped out from behind the wall. “Can I sit down?” he asked.

Christine gasped and muttered something that sounded remarkably like “not another creepy Slytherin.”

“What’s with her?” Severus asked.  No one answered his question.

“Go ahead and sit down,” Lily said rather gloomily then she turned to Christine, “I think I’ll be going up to the dormitory.” Christine tried to stop her from doing so, by flailing her arms a bit, but Lily just kept her head down.

“Correction, what’s with her?” Severus asked Christine.

“Nothing,” Christine said and twitching nervously she practically flat out ran back to the library.

*****

“Mind where you’re going!” shouted a sandy-haired boy that Lily and just run into.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lily muttered, almost unintelligibly.

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” Lily continued to walk away with her head down.

“Wait, shouldn’t have blown up like that. My name’s Evan, yours is?” Lily turned to look at him and flushed. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out so she turned down the hall and walked back to the Gryffindor dormitories.

*****

The Halloween Feast took place that evening, and it turned out that Mackenzie’s brother had indeed been right about the live bats. Over at the Slytherin table, Gretchen Malfoy didn’t look too happy about them. She kept watching the bats overheard suspiciously and guarded her food as if she was afraid the bats would try and steal something from her.

“Narcissa,” said Evan, the same boy that Lily had run into earlier that day, “Isn’t that red-haired Gryffindor your friend?”

“What’s it to you?” Narcissa asked defensively.

“Well, I saw her today. She looked pretty upset about something.”

“Oh,” Narcissa said with some relief, “I thought you were going to tease me.”

“No, I just wanted to tell you. I mean, since you’re her friend I thought…”

“It’s okay Evan, I’ll go talk to her after the feast.” Neither Narcissa nor Evan saw Gretchen scowl with rage.

*****

“And then he just said ‘That’s my dress’!” Sirius said as the punch line to a joke that made absolutely no sense to any of the girls, but it apparently made sense to Peter since he started cracking up.

“Pretty good one Sirius, but I fear you did not get the desired effect,” James said to him.

“I know, I was really looking forward to seeing what happens when someone shoots pumpkin juice out their nose.”

“You guys are such boys,” Arabella said angrily, even though she was smiling.

One of the prefects, Lizzy, was reading a textbook at the table and Jean was leaning over trying to catch glimpses of it over the older girls shoulder. Lizzy just rolled her eyes and pulled the book closer to her face.

“Lily,” Fiona said kindly, “Arabella was just joking before.”

“Maybe,” Lily said and then continued eating, trying to ignore Arabella’s happy laughter. In Lily’s mind the worst part of what she said was that it was true, every word.

*****

“Hey, Lily,” Arabella called to her friend as everyone filed out of the Halloween feast.

“Yes,” Lily said, turning to look at her.

“I…I’m” Arabella was studying the ground very intensely and biting her lower lip, “I’m really sorry about what I said today. I shouldn’t have said it the way I did, although if you talk more you might make some real friends.”

“Hey you two!” called out a cold and bitter voice belonging to Gretchen Malfoy. Arabella and Lily both turned around to look at her. “Now listen to me. Stay in your place. You don’t belong trying to go and make friends with people who are obviously way above your station.”

“What are you talking about?” Arabella asked angrily as she moved closer to Gretchen, her fists clenched.

“Bella,” Lily said softly, “Just ignore her. Really, she’s just not worth it.” Arabella nodded as started to walk away with Lily.

  

“You can’t just walk away from me, you filthy mudblood!” Gretchen screamed. All movement in the corridor stopped.  Arabella also stopped walking. She turned to Gretchen and slapped her across the face. “God, Figg, two fights today. What will the teachers say?”

“Yes, Miss Figg, what will the teachers say?” asked a cold voice from behind her. Arabella turned back very slowly to see Professor Pearson standing there, her face looked very grim.

******

Lily twitched nervously under Professor McGonagall intense gaze. “Can you please tell me what happened?” The professor asked.

“Yes professor,” Lily said nervously, “ Arabella and I were talking and then Gretchen started yelling at us.  She said something Arabella was obviously insulted by and then Arabella slapped her.”

“What did she say that was insulting?”

“Something like…. don’t walk away you filthy mudblood.”

Professor McGonagall’s eyes widened slightly. “Well,” she said, “I will be taking 10 points for your outburst Miss Figg. But just between you and me, I believe I would have done the same thing.”

After this minor discussion and severe warning that if Arabella got caught slapping anyone else, even if provoked with a knife, she would be given a detention, Arabella and Lily found themselves walking slowly back to Gryffindor tower without saying a word. That is until Lily broke the silence, “Bella?”

“Yes.”

“This is going to sound really sappy, but you know how you said if I talked more I’d get some real friends?”

“Yeah.”

“I think… that I managed to get a real friend being just the way I am.” Arabella smiled widely.