The Unseen Eye of Hogwarts

CHAPTER TWO

Scenes of Chaos

~*~

Cut to the Great Hall: Dumbledore's old, yet oddly effervescent voice echoed throughout the cavernous Great Hall as students listened respectably. Mia, on the other hand, was face-palming it, trying her best to stay awake. Eventually, the sweet smell of honey sauce over a roasting chicken knocked her back to her senses. A colorful array of food was arranged before everyone. Exotic fruits, steaming chicken and pork, and warm, buttery rolls took her mind off of Hogwarts' soap opera - for the moment at least.

She gorged. The meal was absolutely delicious. Mia wondered briefly how Cho Chang, who was a couple rows over, had barely touched her food, with the exception of a slab of pork. Mia silently laughed as she watched Ron Weasley attempt to speak to his friends through a mouth stuffed with food. Harry and Hermione, she noted, were agitatedly wiping food off their faces as a result of Ron's dangerous food projecting mouth.

Soon, the tables cleared and dessert appeared. Mia heard Draco Malfoy laughing uproariously with his cronies Crabbe and Goyle. She couldn't help but to turn around and fawn over Malfoy's beautiful blonde hair, which he flicked to the side with a sweeping gesture of his head. His grey eyes seemed cold and heartless, narrowed with mischief. His thin, curving lips, framed with a narrow jaw, tilted upwards at the corners as if in a permanent smirk. She wouldn't be surprised if he was part veela. The girls at Hogwarts thought he was gorgeous, but were all too afraid to admit it. Besides, thinking someone like Draco Malfoy was good looking was simply blasphemous, and gave you the right to be ashamed of yourself for even thinking such a heartless person could be used for eye candy. But Mia wasn't afraid to admit it. It was a natural human feeling. It's not like she was over there trying to snog the guy.

"Someone should confiscate the wand from that boy! The only thing he can do with it is melt an ice cube! I bet even that took three years to perfect!" The Slytherins laughed gregariously. Mia vaguely got the hint that it was Neville Longbottom they were talking about.

She subconsciously glanced over to Neville, making sure he hadn't heard. She felt a twinge of sympathy stir in her stomach. He was a nice boy - always optimistic and ready for anything. But she ashamedly agreed with Malfoy - he wasn't the brightest wizard around. He tended to tag around Harry Potter sometimes and seemed to have a small crush on Hermione. Harry found him quite annoying. Maybe it was the fact that he could be so buoyant about such a seemingly uninviting world, and Harry secretly envied his carelessness.

Mia found herself rubbing her eyes and yawning just as dessert had appeared. She was quite tired, and retreated to bed a half hour before everyone else. The sounds of chattering, gossiping, laughing students eventually quieted down to a dull buzz as Mia walked farther up the staircases. And soon enough, the noise died down entirely. Moving portraits arched an eyebrow at her as she passed, wondering why she wasn't down with the rest of the school. Mia was too tired to notice, and continued up the staircase.

*******

"Move it, fuck face!"

"Sod off!"

"Up Yours!"

Ah, the familiar sound of first day chaos. The halls were filled with hustling and bustling, shoving and pushing, lost schedules, changed schedules; all while trying to look cool like you knew what you were doing. Of course, it was a given that fifth, sixth, and seventh years were cool, and all those who were under them were a waste of space. It was one of the perks of being in the school's higher ranks. Personally, Mia thought the idea of all that superiority was silly.

Her first class of the day was Potions with Snape. She hated Snape, along with the rest of the school, give or take a few arrogant Slytherins. Her choice to remain silent in his class proved to be a clever tactic because Snape had no room to pick on her, or room to praise her. And of course, it let her listen in on others' conversations, which were unusually exciting, despite them being under Snape's beaky nose. Today, she had her attention diverted to a certain Cho Chang's conversation with a close friend. Yes, the drama had certainly begun. She could smell it.

"You know I'm worried about you, don't you?" came the panicked whisper of Mandy Arneson, a close accomplice of Cho Chang.

Cho rolled her eyes irately. "Don't worry about me, ok? I'm good at working under pressure."

"Well, don't let the pressure get to you. You still want to perform good for this year's Quidditch season, don't you?"

"Yes, but that's not the point," Cho whispered back to her friend, her fingers twiddling nervously.

Mia tilted her body backwards to hear the conversation a little better. To look like she wasn't trying to eavesdrop, she faked a yawn and drooped her eyelids. That way, she appeared to be leaning back from boredom instead of interest.

"Well," Cho's friend continued, "This year is going to be a blast. We're going to party every night, meet hot guys...have hot sex," Mandy trailed off, snickering to herself.

Cho half smiled.

"And speaking of hot sex, what happened to you and that Frenchman you met over the summer?"

"Silence!" barked Snape from his desk.

A startled Mia let all four of her chair legs drop to the ground. She hurriedly pulled a few miscellaneous ingredients out of her bag to make it look like she knew what she was doing.

"Anyway," Mandy continued, her husky voice yearning for gossip, "puh-lease tell me you decided to leave another guy hanging. You know how you are with boys, Cho - guilty of numerous fuck and runs." She snickered to herself.

"I get scared, okay? Besides, he was a drunken one night stand anyway -"

"Oh!" Mandy piped in, "which reminds me: For the party this week, Eddie is-,"

"Carmichael?" Cho interrupted.

"Yes, Carmichael. How many Eddies do we know? He's going to be bringing -."

Thwap.

Cho's, Mandy's, and Mia's head snapped up to the sound of Snape hitting a wand on his desk.

"You're not whispering to a friend during my lesson, are you Miss Chang?" Snape growled, his nostrils flaring.

"N-no sir."

Snape smirked. "And now you're lying to me? Ten points from Ravenclaw," Snape turned around, not being able to hide an evil sneer. "As I was saying..."

"God dammit," Cho whispered.

Mia slowly leaned forward, since Cho and Mandy weren't talking anymore. Though Mia wasn't incredibly fond of Cho, she usually had the best stories to tell. Cho, known to be a drama queen at times, usually stirred up about 50% of the school's gossip. But one admirable trait in her, despite the fact that she was rumored to sleep around, was that she at least had the decency to keep her love life to herself. It was rather sickening, and she was sure most of the school could agree, to hear someone's detailed account of their big date with so-and-so, so it was quite the reprieve when someone spared you all the 'juicy' details.

When the drone of Professor Snape's voice ceased, they were allowed to leave class. The rest of the day was boring for the most part.

In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid officially scarred the class from ever handling Augureys again. In what was deemed a silent study hour of examining the usually tranquil bird in its natural habitat, it turned out to be a total fiasco when Kevin Whitby tripped over a stick. This sent the flock of Augureys flying in all directions, landing droppings on the students and in a triumphant end, attacked Kevin when everyone was ducking for cover. The next time they saw him, he was fifteen feet up in a tree, blood dripping out of his nose, and his eye an ugly purple color.

"Erm...I s'pose yeh can go ter your next class now," Hagrid had said, looking rather white faced as he watched Kevin moan in pain from atop the tree. The class snickered silently as they left, except for the boy's friends who stood beneath the tree yelling at him that'd he'd be okay.

"You look great Kevin! You really do!" they cried out reassuringly.

Mia resisted the urge to point out that along with the scratches on his face, his arm seemed to be twisted at an unnatural angle.

On the way to her dormitory that night, Mia passed the Golden Trio talking animatedly to each other. She felt a slight twinge of jealousy stir in her chest, secretly wishing that she had such good friends.

"Sorry," Harry said politely, when Mia accidentally knocked shoulders with him as she passed. Mia smiled back, blushing. She managed to make eye contact with Hermione, who had been looking a bit paler and thinner this year, and Ron, who was giving her a look that said "hurry along now, we're trying to socialize like normal people!"

Mia minded the looks from the three of them and carried on.

"Party next Saturday! Sixth years and up!"

Mia turned her head around to see one of the seventh year Hufflepuffs at the entrance of the Great Hall. He had a group of friends around him. The students at school had a party every year to welcome the new school year. It was supposed to be a pretty big bash but Mia never attended. Usually a different house would host the party every year, and, in a competitive nature, gloated as to whose would be the best. Sometimes the Slytherins would host the party, but of course, only Slytherins were invited. Mia remembered wandering into a Ravenclaw party in her first year. It wasn't pretty. She left the room ten minutes later with whipped cream covering half her face, and the stinging taste of vodka and orange juice left in her mouth.

Seeing as there was never homework on the first day, she left the rambunctious atmosphere of the Great Hall and retreated to a hidden balcony that looked upon the lake by the forbidden forest. It was here that privacy was almost guaranteed. She approached the balcony contentedly, and sighed with a kind of familiar satisfaction. She lowered her gaze upon the ground's scenery. The soundless night distilled the eerie gloom of the lake's black water, which made her thankful that she was in the warm castle instead of out by the ice cold water. The thick trees and hanging branches bled over the water lazily, which occasionally rippled as the Giant Squid made its last lap around the lake. Insects skittered away from Mia as she tore her gaze away from the water, and glanced upwards instead. The sky, slightly unsettling tonight, brought scenes of chaos with its faint, twisting, purple clouds.

How beautiful, she noted, cocking her head slightly.

The girl fell into numbness as she tried to decipher the vague sight of the sky. The sudden feeling of loneliness embraced her like cancer and she left the balcony before the emotion engulfed her completely.