Betrayal of the Black

ten

DRACO MALFOY WAS PURE EVIL at times. But with the opportunity to watch her rivals play Quidditch and surveil Harry? There was no way she was going to turn that down, even if it was extremely immature.

The group of Slytherins spent the entire afternoon watching the Gryffindor Quidditch team. They didn't say much, seeing as the team got flustered just by them sitting there, but once in a while Draco would yell out a jeer. Pansy had ditched them, saying that being so high up in the stands would ruin her hair.

Celestia spent most of her time thinking of Quidditch instead of observing Harry, as she had underestimated how angry just the sight of him makes her.

She scrutinised the Gryffindor's team as much as she could. Sure, she had watched them play in the past, but she hadn't been paying much attention to specifics. One thing that stood out above everything else was how bad of a Keeper Ron Weasley was.

Celestia was able to recognise when she had a good competitor — Angelina Johnson was a superb contestant — but Ron Weasley was just a competitor. It was almost as if he had never watched a Quidditch game before; constantly leaving posts open, failing to catch the Quaffle, at one point he threw the Quaffle so hard at Katie Bell that her nose began bleeding. She didn't find pleasure in people's suffering, but there were multiple times when she had to a muffle a laugh at the comicality of it all.

By the end of their practice, Katie Bell was covered in blood and being escorted to the hospital wing by Fred and George. Ron looked nearly as red as his hair, and Harry and Angelina appeared as if they had just had the worst practice in the history of Quidditch. All in all, a good day for the Slytherins.

Later that night, the Slytherin group was once again sat beside the fire in the common room, homework spread out across the table. It was late at night, and there were a couple of other Slytherins loitering at the tables, too catching up on work.

Celestia has just finished up her essay for their Astronomy class, when she looked up to find that the rest of her friends appeared distracted. Pansy, who was sitting next to her, hadn't moved her quill in the past couple minutes. Draco appeared full of energy, constantly bouncing his leg up and down and repeatedly nearly spilling ink on Theo. Theodore had open one of the books for Potions, and hadn't turn the page in a while. Blaise seemed hyper-aware of everything around him, causing him to he completely out of focus. They had much more work this year than they ever had, and Celestia couldn't blame them - she had nearly fallen asleep in History of Magic earlier that week.

Snapping the book about astronomy closed loudly, she garnered all of their attention. "Okay, let's talk about something not work related."

"What?" blinked Draco, appearing dazed as if he had just woken up from a nap.

"The past couple days besides this afternoon have been work, work, work. Talk about something that isn't school," she explained.

Pansy perked up beside her before bending down and looking through her bag. A couple seconds later, she pulled out something that looked to be a newspaper.

"Mother sent me tomorrow's Daily Prophet. We get them a day earlier, but she usually doesn't send them to me. I haven't had the chance to look at it yet," said Pansy, beginning to unfold the newspaper.

It wasn't the most exciting topic, but it was a distraction, and hopefully distraction enough to help flow to another conversation. The Daily Prophet has been full of news later, trying to counter Harry's claims of Voldemort's return. Just today, it was announced that Sturgis Podmore had been arrested for trespassing at the Ministry, along with other more boring news.

When Pansy finally finished unfolding the paper, she only uttered one word: "Fuck."

"Oh, God," mumbled Celestia, immediately moving to look over Pansy's shoulder, she too cursed when she saw the front page. "You've got to be kidding me."