Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

38

November was somehow more boring than October.

She and Umbridge had reached an impasse as Eliza refused to give the toad more ammunition. And if Umbridge had suspicions that Eliza had continued to teach her Slytherins then she couldn’t prove it. Eliza hadn’t expanded her two groups, none of them would betray her as their grades depended on it and even if they did Umbridge would never be able to get into the chamber anyway.

To beat back her boredom Eliza had started delving more into her necromancy. Once she had felt she had a connection to the basics she had started reading through more of the book. The beginnings of necromancy started with identification. Being able to sense dead matter or death magic which Eliza could already do after the Samhain ritual which had bolstered her connection to the magic. After that the book moved on to reanimation – not with flesh though. That required more expertise, she began with small skeletons. The chamber had small animal skeletons in abundance because she knew for a fact that her seventh years brought mice down for Jormy when they thought she wasn’t looking.

So far she hadn’t had any success but she was sure she would get it soon.

She had also started looking into the animagus transformation. For education purposes only of course. She was planning on asking Sirius about it when she returned home for the holidays. She had also resolved to buy some medical textbooks, possibly from the muggle world. If she was going to be dealing with corpses it made sense to have a good grasp on anatomy.

So when she headed down to the great hall with her court one morning and found that Hagrid was back she was quite happy.

“I fail to see why that oaf being back could be a good thing” Draco sniffed pompously over breakfast and Eliza shook her head fondly.

“His lessons are fun”

“Didn’t he assign you a biting book?” asked Blaise clearly amused.

“And introduce you to Hippogriffs in third year?” said Theo.

“And asked if you could convince the kelpie to come up for his NEWT class?” Daphne finished and Eliza pouted in response.

“Like I said, fun”

Draco threw his hands up in exasperation “If I get killed in one of his lessons I’m haunting you”

“Why not haunt Hagrid?” Eliza asked curiously.

“Because it will undoubtedly be your fault” he replied promptly and Eliza gasped in mock offence. Her court then spent the rest of breakfast rattling off every time they had almost gotten them prematurely killed.

Eliza listened to them with a smile.

But as much as Eliza had been looking forward to Hagrid’s lesson and the dangerous creatures they would be studying she really wished she didn’t have to go outside.

“Come on Eliza” Draco whined as he dragged her along, trudging through the deep snow “we’re going to be late”

“I hate snow” Eliza grumpled burrowing deeper into her scarf (Tom’s scarf technically – he never noticed she had stolen it)

“I know you do” Draco replied with an exasperated fondness “but I also know that if we don’t get to class now we’ll never find them so hurry up”

“I need better friends” Eliza said as they trampled through the snow “friends who will let me skip lessons so I don’t catch hypothermia”

Draco didn’t even bother responding to that, he just slapped her round the head until she stopped complaining but she still stood by what she said. She really hated snow.