Slytherin Chronicles : The Desire of Darkness

The next two days passed by quite mundanely; the first-year Slytherins received a mountain of homework that Roisin said they were most likely not to accomplish till Christmas, though it was only a handful of Slytherin first-years that were to be found in the library on Saturday morning.

Eager to get the last bits of her homework out of the way, Neve went off to the library as soon as she had finished eating her breakfast in the Great Hall, dragging a very disgruntled Roisin along with her.

Neve almost immediately regretted this benevolent action, however, because every time she had a spark of inspiration for her most recent Potions essay Roisin would sigh in frustration and make the most extravagant mess on her own essay, scribbling and crossing things out every few seconds, and causing Neve to experience serious desires to break something.

"Will you bloody well stop doing that?" Neve finally exploded.

"Sorry, but I'm having no bloody luck whatsoever in writing this stupid essay!" growled Roisin, crossing out another sentence.

"Maybe if you got out your books you'd have a bit of bloody luck," said Neve through gritted teeth, crossing out for the fourth time the wrong amount of poppy pods needed to make a Forgetfulness Potion and tearing a big gash in her parchment in the process. "Damn it!" And she began to swear under her breath in such a vibrant way that Roisin nearly fell off her chair in shock.

"Sweet Merlin! What happened to being a lovely, innocent, little eleven-year-old?" she gasped.

Neve ignored her and, scowling darkly, pulled out another roll of parchment and began to write her essay all over again.

By the time she had finished all her weekend homework, it was eleven o'clock and both her head and right hand were aching from writing so much. Five minutes after Neve threw down her quill in triumph, Roisin followed suit, having copied great chunks out of Neve's essays and thus rescued her desperate position.

"You do know that you won't be copying off me in the exams?" said Neve mildly, packing up her things.

"Of course I do," said Roisin dismissively. "I'll just stash a couple of Cheating Quills under the desk and I'll have award-worthy essays in no time."

"Ever heard of Anti-Cheating Quills?" asked Neve, as they walked out of the library.

Roisin didn't answer, though looked slightly put-out. "What are we going to do now?" she asked, striding down a corridor.

"Oh, I don't know. How about - "

But Neve didn't get to finish her sentence because, at that moment, there was a loud crash as Roisin's ink bottle fell to the floor and splattered the marble floor and the two of them in dark green ink.

"Oh, shite!" cried Roisin, her freckles stained green. She rubbed her hand around her face but only succeeded in smudging the ink further around it, making it appear as though she was going to be sick any moment.

Neve looked as though she was crying green tears because of the trails left by the ink spots as they trickled down from under her eyes. "Bloody hell," she muttered. "And jus when we most need it, I can't remember the spell to clean up this mess."

A loud meow sounded from somewhere around her ankles and Neve looked down into the glowing, lamp-like eyes of Mrs Norris, the beloved cat of the caretaker, Argus Filch.

"Uh-oh," she breathed. "Run!"

Abandoning the steadily spreading mess of ink, Neve and Roisin hurtled around the corner, down a long corridor and dashed up a staircase to the next storey, bags and robes swinging wildly behind them.

"Hold on," panted Neve, "I don't think he's coming."

Suddenly they heard a roar of rage from below. "Ink?! GREEN INK ON THE RUG?!" And with another roar, Filch began stumbling up the staircase as fast as his old legs would carry him.

"I think you were wrong," gasped Roisin.

They darted through a tapestry on their left and flew along the hidden passageway behind it, finally coming out somewhere near their Charms classroom. Panting heavily, they ran down to the end of the corridor and slammed into a door - which was locked.

"This is the end!" wailed Roisin, twisting the doorknob hopelessly. "We're going to get expelled! Patrin's going to become a witch and I'm going to live life like a Squib! Oh, what'll Gran say?"

"Oh, be quiet!" snarled Neve. "Nobody gets expelled for breaking a bottle of ink." She rummaged in her bag. "Wand, wand, where's my wand?"

"I've always wanted to come to Hogwarts," continued Roisin with even more misery, "and I haven't even been here a month and already I'm in trouble!"

"Aha!" cried Neve triumphantly, tapped her wand on the doorknob. "Alohomora!"

The lock clicked loudly and the door opened; just in time Neve and Roisin slipped through it and shut it.

"Come along, my sweet," they heard Filch say to his cat, "they can't be hiding here, there's no room."

"Idiot," whispered Neve.

"Let's check the next corridor, beloved."

Roisin leaned her forehead against the door in relief. "Well, that was close."

"I have got to teach you to put Unbreakable Charms on your ink bottles," said Neve. She frowned. "Are you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry," replied Roisin matter-of-factly, "why do you ask?"

"Because your stomach is growling."

"It is not!"

"Oh, that's right, you'd be whining about how hungry you are." Neve sniffed the air. "I trust that you wash regularly?"

"Of course I do!" exclaimed Roisin indignantly. "What's with the questions all of a sudden?"

"Well, someone's growling and really stinks." A blast of wind from behind them nearly knocked them off their feet. "And someone's been eating fish."

As they turned around they found out exactly who. A sight the likes of which neither girl had ever seen met their eyes: a gigantic monster of a dog with three enormous heads and three pairs of glowing, yellow eyes; three black noses, twitching and quivering like overgrown black rabbits; three drooling mouths with sharp, decaying fangs. And to top it all off, all three pairs of its eyes were staring at Neve and Roisin as though they'd never seen anything alive before.

"You think it only likes fish?" gasped Roisin.

"Do you want to find out?" Neve choked out.

"No, do you?"

"No, I'm too fond of life at the moment."

They both grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open, falling through it and slamming it in front of the dog's face. Then they raced down the corridor and didn't stop running until they reached the safety of the leather sofas in the Slytherin common-room.

"What's with the marathon?" asked Ted Nott, who was sitting at a table and had been writing what looked like an essay when Neve and Roisin burst in.

"Run away from the third-floor corridor!" panted Roisin, her hand on her forehead.

"Eh?" Ted raised one eyebrow questioningly.

"If you see the third-floor corridor, run the other way," gasped Neve, clutching a stitch in her side.

Ted's eyes widened in amazement. "You two went to the third-floor corridor? But it's forbidden."

"And for a good reason," shuddered Roisin. "Bloody monsters all over the school. First Filch's damnable cat, then damnable Filch himself, and then that - that - thing - "

"You know, I think it was a Cerberus," said Neve thoughtfully, "on account of its having three heads."

"A hellhound, if I ever saw one," muttered Roisin.

"There's a three-headed dog from hell in the third-floor corridor?!" exclaimed Ted, alerting several older Slytherins a couple of feet away from him. "Just kidding, there's no such thing anyway," he quickly corrected himself.

"Be quiet, will you?" snarled Neve. "We don't want the whole school knowing. We only stumbled in there by accident when we were running away from Filch."

"Oh, it was horrible," moaned Roisin pitifully. "You should've seen the teeth on that thing! All ten thousand of them covered with stinking, yellow pus - "

"I think you mean saliva," corrected Neve.

" - And it's eyes! Oh, I'll have nightmares about that monster for the rest of my life!"

"Roisin, you have nightmares about armies of broccoli with ferocious goldfish as their steeds chasing you around Hogwarts," said Neve, "and you're worried about nightmares of a three-headed dog?" She shook her head in mock bewilderment.

"Well, you should've seen those goldfish bounce," said Roisin defensively. "Like bloody kangaroos. And they had teeth!" She shuddered.

"First three-headed dogs, then goldfish, now kangaroos ... " Ted scratched his head in puzzlement. "Will someone please tell me what's going on here?"

Neve crossed her legs in the manner of a Turk. "We found out what's hidden in the third-floor corridor," she said quietly.

"Why did you go there anyway?" asked Ted.

"We were hiding from Filch because someone - " (Neve threw a glance in Roisin's direction) " - has fragile ink bottles."

"Well, if you had remembered the spell to clean up the mess, we wouldn't have had to hide," Roisin stepped in.

Neve turned head back to Roisin and looked at her almost pityingly. "You can't always depend on me, Roisin. There will be times when I won't be near and you'll have to fend for yourself, so better start learning now." She blinked at the tapestry opposite her. "Eliminate weakness, as my father always says."

"And look where that's got you - you're a cold, detestable old maid," remarked Roisin calmly.

Neve opened her mouth to utter an angry retort but Ted stopped her with, "Why are they hiding a three-headed dog in the third-floor corridor?" He sat down on the other sofa, opposite Neve.

Neve shot him an exasperated look. "Now how would we know? We're just the ones who had a tea-party with it."

"But isn't it weird," said Ted, looking from Neve to Roisin, "that this huge, horrifying, ugly monster is sitting inside a school full of kids without anyone but Dumbledore's confidants knowing about it?"

Neve opened her mouth to say something but was once again prevented from doing so, this time not by Ted.

"What's all this about huge, horrifying, ugly monsters?" inquired Draco Malfoy, sitting down next to Ted.

"Nothing, nothing," said Neve airily, "we were just talking about you, Draco."

"Oh, really?" Draco's cold eyes sparkled. "And did anyone happen to mention how devastatingly gorgeous and wealthy I happen to be? Not to mention pure-blooded?"

"You're such an arsehole, Draco," said Roisin casually.

"Finally someone agrees with me!" Neve threw up her hands.

"Ah, Draco," Ted greeted the blond boy, "just the person we might need." Neve rolled her eyes. "Do you know why there's a three-headed dog in the third-floor corridor?"

"Depends on who wants to know," Draco replied indifferently.

"He doesn't know," Neve said immediately.

Draco turned his head to look at her. "And how, may I ask, do you know that?"

"How would you know? Dumbledore doesn't include your father in his little clique of trust," Neve answered.

"My father has his ways," said Draco coldly, "and so do I." He turned back to Ted. "There's obviously something in there that the dog is guarding. I knew there was some kind of a monster in there, but I don't know what it's guarding."

"How did you know?" Neve asked mechanically.

"That's for me to know and you to guess," said Draco giving her a sly look. "Curiosity killed the cat, remember?"

Neve's eyes darkened as she remembered back to that Wednesday when she felt some sort of connection pass between Draco and herself. She hadn't felt it again ever since then ... not that she was hoping to ... but it would be good to know exactly what happened someday ...

"What could be so valuable and dangerous that it has to be hidden in Hogwarts with a three-headed dog as security?" mused Ted. He exchanged looks with Neve and Roisin, but Draco narrowed his eyes at the floor.

"You look like you know something, Draco," said Ted.

Draco did not answer immediately. He chewed a little on his lower lip and slowly raised his eyes to Ted's, carefully avoiding those of the two girls.

"My father told me that something big would happen this year," he said very quietly. "He wouldn't say exactly what, but he did say that it would be something that would elevate those who once held esteemed positions in certain people's eyes back into those positions." He paused for effect. "And also that it would include us, the Malfoys," he added.

Neve frowned. She knew the Malfoys were involved in the Dark Arts - any Slytherin worth his or her salt knew that - but it seemed that what Draco was alluding to was something way beyond an International Dark Arts Conference. There was not all that much that would bring dabblers in the Dark Arts into esteemed positions in the Ministry of Magic's eyes, that was for sure. It would take someone with very little scruples concerning the Dark Arts to establish such a thing ...

"No way ..." she breathed, her eyes fixed on Draco's face. He did not look up. She slowly shook her head from side to side. "There is absolutely no way ..."

"How - how - " Ted broke out into a coughing fit as he, too, made the connection.

Roisin simply stared ahead, but the noisy chattering of her teeth punctured the heavy silence that sprung up around them.

"Well," said Ted after a moment, "right now we have three realistic alternatives: one, sit here and get blown up; two, stand here and get blown up; and three, jump up and down, panic for not being able to think of anything, and then get blown up. How's that for starters?"

"And if nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through," Roisin contributed, still staring at some indiscernible spot in the tapestry opposite her.

Suddenly, Draco broke into peals of laughter. The act totally transformed his face, bringing colour into his cheeks and overall making him look almost like any normal, healthy child - except for the fact that it was a bitter mirth that sparkled in his eyes.

"If you've found something oh-so-very-funny about this situation, please share it with the rest of us, so we can dispell this hideous gloom that you have enveloped around us," said Neve curtly.

"It's just funny how you're all pissing yourselves with fear and nothing has happened yet," he replied. "Nobody's even asked me for proof."

"That's because you've got no reason to lie, you pasty son of a rotten weasel," Neve clarified.

Draco shot her an amused look. "Underfed bitch of a toad."

"Slimy, river-dwelling rodent with the morals of a praying mantis," Neve retorted calmly.

"Oooh! I think she's got you there, buddy." Ted patted Draco on the shoulder comfortingly.

"Why is it that when people insult me the first image that comes to their minds is some sort of unmannered rodent?" Draco sighed.

"Well, you are blonde," explained Ted, "and your chin does look rather pointy ..." Draco shot him a venomous look. "... Under bad lighting conditions," Ted corrected himself quickly.

Neve snickered loudly, but quickly stopped when she noticed that Roisin was still silently staring at the tapestry opposite her.

"Hey ..." Neve waved her hand in front of Roisin's face.

Roisin's hand snaked out from her lap and grabbed Neve's wrist. She turned her face to Neve's, which caused the latter to notice Roisin's wide, frightened eyes.

"He's coming back ..." she whimpered, "... he's coming back ..."

"Shut up," Neve said tersely, jerking her wrist out of Roisin's hand. "No one's coming back."

Draco stared at Neve from under his eyelashes. "Are you sure about that?" he asked her. He looked down and noticed that she was twisting her hands in her lap almost feverishly. He thought she was going to reply, but instead she stood up abruptly, causing her bag to fall to the floor.

"Library," she said shortly, picked up her bag, and added, "Come on, Roisin," before billowing out of the common-room.