Slowly, like she was trying to float, Tracey got up from her desk. There were more gasps. Daphne felt like she'd been Petrified in place within her chair.
"Tracey?" said Lavender in a small voice. "Please don't do all that again. Please?"
Now Pansy was showing definite nervousness as Tracey swayed toward her desk. "What d'you think you're doing?" Pansy said, not quite managing to sound indignant.
"I told you," Tracey said menacingly. "I'm going to devour your soul."
Tracey bent down over Pansy, who sat frozen at her desk; and, with their lips almost touching, made a loud inhaling noise.
"There!" said Tracey as she straightened. "I ate your soul."
"No you didn't!" said Pansy.
"Did too!" said Tracey.
There was a very slight pause -
"Merlin, she did!" cried Theodore Nott. "You look all pale now, and your eyes seem empty!"
"What?" screeched Pansy, turning pale. The girl leapt up from her desk and began frantically rummaging through her bookbag. After Pansy drew out a mirror and looked at herself, she turned even paler.
Daphne abandoned all pretense of aristocratic poise and let her head fall to the desk with a dull thud, as she wondered whether going to the same school as all the other important families was really worth going to the same school as the Chaos Legion.
"Ooh, you're in trouble now, Pansy," said Seamus Finnigan. "I don't know exactly what happens when a Dementor Kisses you, but if Tracey Davis kisses you that's probably even worse."
"I've heard about people without souls," Dean Thomas said gloomily. "They have to dress all in black, and they write awful poetry, and nothing ever makes them happy. They're all angsty."
"I don't want to be angsty!" cried Pansy.
"Too bad," said Dean Thomas. "You've got to be, now that your soul's gone."
Pansy turned, and stretched out a begging hand toward Draco Malfoy's desk. "Draco!" she said pleadingly. "Mr. Malfoy! Please, make Tracey give me back my soul!"
"I can't," said Tracey. "I ate it."
"Make her throw it up!" yelled Pansy.
The heir of Malfoy had slumped forward, resting his head in both hands, so that nobody could see his face. "Why is my life like this?" said Draco Malfoy.
A wild babble of whispers started up as Tracey returned to her desk, now smiling in satisfaction, while Pansy stood in the midst of the classroom, wringing her hands and tears starting from her eyes -
"Be. Quiet."
The soft, lethal voice seemed to fill the whole classroom as Professor Snape stalked in through the door. His face was angrier than Daphne had ever seen it, sending a jolt of genuine fear down her spine. Hastily she looked down at her homework.
"Sit down, Parkinson," the Potions Master hissed, "and you, Davis, take off that ridiculous cloak -"
"Professor Snaaaaaape!" wailed Pansy Parkinson in tears. "Tracey ate my sooouuul!"
Chapter 75: Self Actualization, Part 10: Responsibility
It was a looping, meandering alley in the midst of Hogwarts, wandering like a stray lock of hair; sometimes crossing itself, it seemed, but you couldn't ever get to the end if you gave into the temptation of apparent shortcuts.
At the end of the tangle, six students leaned against rough stones, robes black against the grey walls and trimmed in green, eyes darting from one to each other. Torches burned in the windowless sconce, casting light to ward off the darkness and heat to ward off the chill of the Slytherin dungeons.
"I am certain," Reese Belka snapped, "absolutely certain, that was no true ritual. Little firstie witches can't do that kind of magic, and even if they could, who's ever heard of a Dark ritual which sacrifices a sealed horror for - that?"
"Were you -" said Lucian Bole. "I mean - after that girl snapped her fingers -"
Belka's glare should have melted him. "No," she spat, "I was not."
"That is, she wasn't naked," drawled Marcus Flint, his broad shoulders leaning back in apparent relaxation against the lumpy stone surface. "Covered in chocolate frosting, yes, but not naked."
"This day Potter has offered great insult to our Houses," said the grim voice of Jaime Astorga.
"Yes, well, I'm sorry to be blunt," Randolph Lee said evenly. The seventh-year duelist rubbed at his chin, where a faint fuzz of beard had been allowed to grow. "But when someone sticks you to the ceiling, it's a message, Astorga. It's a message which says: I'm an incredibly powerful Dark Wizard who could've done anything to you I damn well pleased, and I don't care if your House is offended, either."
Robert Jugson III gave a soft, low laugh at this, a chuckle that sent chills down several spines. "It makes you wonder if you picked the wrong side, doesn't it? I've heard tales about messages like that, sent at the old Dark Lord's bidding..."
"I'm not ready to kneel to Potter just yet," said Astorga, staring hard into Jugson's eyes.
"Neither am I," said Belka.
Jugson was holding his wand, and he turned it idly back and forth in his fingers, pointing it up and then downward. "Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" said Jugson. "Everyone's got a price. Everyone smart."
This statement produced a moment of silence.
"Shouldn't Malfoy be here?" Bole said tentatively.
Flint gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. "Whatever Malfoy's plotting, he wants to put on an air of innocence. He can't be seen missing at the same time as us."
"But everyone knows that already," said Bole. "Even in the other Houses."
"Yes, very clumsy," said Belka. She snorted. "Malfoy or no, he's just a little firstie and we don't need him here."
"I will owl my father," Jugson said softly, "and he will speak to Lord Malfoy himself -" Abruptly, Jugson stopped speaking.
"I don't know about you, dearies," Belka said with fake sweetness, "but I don't plan on running scared from a false ritual, and I'm not done with Potter and his pet mudblood."
Nobody answered. All their gazes were looking past her.
Slowly, Belka turned around to see what the others were staring at.
"You will do nothing," hissed their Head of House. Severus Snape's face was enraged, when he spoke small spots of spittle flew from his mouth, further dotting his already-dirtied robes. "You fools have done enough! You have embarrassed my House - lost to first-years - now you speak of embroiling noble Lords of the Wizengamot in your pathetic childish squabbles? I shall deal with this matter. You will not embarrass this House again, you will not risk embarrassing this House again! You are done with fighting witches, and if I hear otherwise -"
If you thought they'd be sitting next to each other at dinnertime, after that, you'd be quite mistaken.
"What does she want from me?" came the plaintive cry of a boy who, for all his extensive reading in the scientific literature, was still a bit naive about certain things. "Did she want to get beaten up?"
The upper-year Ravenclaw boys who'd sat down next to him at the dinner-table exchanged swift glances with each other until, by some unspoken protocol, the most experienced of their number spoke.
"Look," said Arty Grey, the seventh-year who was leading in their competition by three witches and a Defense Professor, "the thing you've got to understand is, just because she's angry doesn't mean you lost points. Miss Granger is angry because she got all frightened and you're there to be blamed, you understand? But at the same time, even though she won't admit it, she'll be touched that her boyfriend went to such ridiculous and frankly insane lengths to protect her."