Youngblood: Retrieval {Year 5, Book 3}

= Chapter 8 =

"Aspen? Aspen!" Fred called from the hallway, seeing a crying Aspen on the floor. "Aspen, what's wrong? Are you hurt, injured? Where? Who? If they hurt you I swear..."

"Fred... calm down." Aspen said in between sobs.

"Where does it hurt?" He asked, helping her to her feet.

Aspen looked down at her feet, then moved her hands to her heart. Fred looked at her sadly.

"Malfoy?" He asked as she nodded.

"He - I just don't understand him. We used to be friends. Even more than friends at times." She bit her lip and stumbled forward as Fred embraced her in a tight hug.

"What do you mean by 'more than friends'?" He chuckled as she hit him lightly in the chest. "Alright, alright. We should get you back to the common room. I take it you've had it rough today."

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Aspen twiddled with her quill, moving her fingers along the soft ridge of the feather. Lillian looked over at her from the seat next to her, scooting closer to whisper into her ear.

"Is everything alright?" Lillian asked.

"Yep... couldn't be better." Aspen replied sarcastically.

"Well uhm... Dove's been brooding ever since you snapped at her yesterday. Just thought you had the right to know." She replied, shrugging and scooting her seat further away from Aspen as Umbridge entered the classroom.

"Then maybe she should stay out of other's business." Aspen sighed, looking down. "But I'll talk to her later."

"Please put your wands away everyone as they are not needed because we will not be using any kind of magic in this classroom." Umbridge said in her sweet, yet irritating voice.

"This is so stupid!" Aspen exclaimed under her breath, but loud enough for the majority of the class to hear.

"Would you like to repeat that, Miss Hale?" Umbridge said, smiling angrily at Aspen.

"Uh... crap." Was all Aspen could squeak out before Umbridge took a stern look at her and said, "My office, Miss Hale."

"No! That's not fair!" She spoke up. "We should at least have the knowledge to defend ourselves against... whatever could be out in the real world."

"There is nothing in the real -"

"That's where you're wrong, Professor. Even Quirrel, who had Voldemort pinned to the back of his head, taught better than you!"

"DETENTION!" Umbridge screamed, causing Aspen to go rigid in fear and slouch back in her seat.

Lillian looked at Umbridge, then back at Aspen cautiously. Aspen shook her head, annoyed and flipped the pages in her book to Umbridge's desired page number 160.

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"Hey Dove, wait up." Aspen called, running up to her Gryffindor friend.

"What do you want?" Dove said rather harshly.

Aspen backed up a few steps. "I - uhm... just wanted to say sorry for snapping at you yesterday. I was under a lot of pressure already."

Dove nodded, smiling. "I forgive you. Oh - and here."

She passed a slip of paper to the Slytherin. "Harry told me to give you this."

"That's great... what is it?" Aspen said, looking at the scribbling of writing on the piece of parchment.

"Harry heard of your ranting in Defense Against the Dark Arts and decided to trust you with this." Dove pulled Aspen into a corner, whispering into her ear. "He wants to to train the willing students how to actually cast defensive and offensive spells."

Aspen's face lit up. "And he'd trust me - a Slytherin?"

"From the way he asked, yeah."

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Aspen opened her previously sealed eyelids, staring at the wooden door leading to her doom. Detention with Umbridge wouldn't be friendly - that much she knew. She knocked on the door silently, biting her lip in anticipation as she heard the Professor speak up.

"Come in."

Aspen nodded and pushed the heavy door open, peering around the pink-stained room littered with hanging dishes of cats and kittens. Merlin's beard was it ugly!

"Come and have a seat and we'll get started." Umbridge smiled, aggravatingly.

Aspen nodded, staying silent as she took a seat across from Umbridge's.

"We're going to be doing some lines, alright?" All Aspen could do was nod and begin to take out her special falcon feather quill.

"Oh no need for that. I would like you to use one of my... more special quills." She said as Aspen nodded nervously and placed her feather back into her pocket.

"Alright... what do you want me to write?" Aspen asked, taking the long, thin black feather.

"I must not disrespect authority." Umbridge smiled, beginning to grade papers.

"But Professor, I don't have any ink." She looked around the desk, but found nothing.

"Oh... you won't need ink for this quill."

Aspen nodded silently and began to write. The sound of the quill's sharp tip on the parchment was an annoyance - a high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard type of noise. As she wrote, the words that came out in her elegant handwriting were produced by a red liquid, only to be followed by an irritation on her hand, which turned into a searing pain.

"What the-" She muttered as she clutched her hand and stared at it.

'I must not disrespect authority' the words were seared onto her arm and left a hideous red mark with the added words embedded in her pale skin.

"Is there a problem?" Umbridge asked, sliding her reading spectacles down her nose and giving Aspen a small smirk.

"Well... no, not at all." Aspen mumbled, sighing and turning back to the parchment, which was now stained with her blood.

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Her knees grew wobbly as her head became lightheaded and dizzy. Aspen had just returned to walking down the corridors from her previous detention with Umbridge, who'd thankfully only done enough 'torturing' to give her a temporary scar on learning that Aspen was in the same house as she was - Slytherin. 

Before long, Aspen had collapsed to the floor, littering the dust all over her navy blue jeans. Her hand was clutched to her chest and tears stained her cheeks. The only thing she saw was Draco racing over to her before everything went dark.