The Renegades

Chapter 6 : The Three Broomsticks

Penelope woke up early that Sunday, with a feeling in her heart that today was the most important day of her life. She dressed and did her hair more neatly than usual. Her scar stuck out like a sore thumb, she thought as she looked at her face from all angles. Sebastian was used to it by that point, wasn't he? At breakfast, she sat with Poppy at the Hufflepuff table but seemed to have missed Sebastian. At lunch though, he came to sit next to her with Ominis in tow.

"Hi, Penelope!"

"Hi, you two. How come I haven't seen you this morning?"

"We slept in," Sebastian answered.

Sat in the bustling Hogwarts dining hall, they found themselves engaged in a lively conversation about school. Plates of food were spread before them, and Penelope helped herself to a serving of shepherd's pie, as well as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

"So, have you heard the latest about Duncan?" Ominis asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"No, what did he do?"

"Seriously, you two are so busy with your books you forget to live in the moment!" he exclaimed.

Sebastian shrugged and asked again.

"He tried out for the Ravenclaw team. He wanted to show off the fact that he could fly upside down, but he fell off in front of a whole crowd. Then he blamed it on the faulty broom," Ominis recounted, evidently still finding it hilarious.

Penelope laughed as she pictured the scene. She didn't have anything against Duncan, or at least it wasn't personal. She didn't like cowards and he was cowardice personified. She enjoyed hearing Ominis humour him but probably wouldn't do it herself. Penelope speared a piece of beef with her fork, listening intently as Ominis recounted his struggles with Transfiguration.

"Weasley's assignments are getting trickier by the week," Ominis lamented. "I swear, I spend hours just trying to get my Transfiguration spells right."

"Tell me about it. Potions is driving me mad lately," Sebastian complained.

Penelope smirked, taking a sip of her pumpkin juice as she remembered the incident with the crocodile heart, two weeks ago.

"The workload is heavier than I anticipated," she said. "Now if you add Quidditch practice and all the time we spend translating Ancient Runes to the equation..."

"Speaking of, have you found anything out?" Ominis asked.

"I thought you didn't want to involve yourself in our business," Sebastian pointed out with a smirk.

"Oh, I still don't. But I never said anything about not asking questions!"

"We did find something, but we're still trying to figure out what it is, exactly."

"Oh?"

"Can we talk about that later? Today is a far too beautiful day to be discussing this," Sebastian declared.

"You're right," she said. "We'll tell you more once we find out what we're dealing with here."

They changed topics and started talking about the Triwizard Tournament. It was set to begin in a little over a week, with the arrival of the guest students as well as the Headmasters. So far, everyone thought Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Uagadou School of Magic would participate. The latter was mainly because Natsai had let it slip to the other Gryffindors, and it spread to the whole school that way. Penelope wasn't convinced the Americans would come to Hogwarts from so far away.

Beauxbatons Academy of Magic was far more likely, she reckoned. She had attended the school from age eleven to the end of her fourth year, after which her father went missing and they moved back to his native England. She still remembered how hard it was to adjust to Hogwarts, with how different things were from her former school. She also recalled Sebastian being surprised that she didn't have a French accent when they met.