The Chaser's Heart

Year 3: Merula Snyde

It took me a week and three more days training and flying to cool off enough to the point where I felt like I could speak with Tulip without strangling her.

'Tulip, could I have a word?' I asked her one evening after supper.

We were in the dormitory. I had been watching her more intently the last few days and knew what her routine was. I knew she went straight to supper after our last lesson of the day and then came back to the dormitory after.

'Eleonora Knight,' she straightened up and gave me an odd look. As always, her mad toad was nearby, seated on her pillow. Disgusting. But I needed her, now wasn't the time to make faces at the toad. 'Which word would you like to have?'

'Look, I know you know about my brother's room,' I said cutting to the chase. Her eyes went slightly wider like she wasn't expecting me to confront her about this.

'You found it, then,' she said, recovering her composure almost at once.

'Why didn't you tell me?' I asked. 'And why is it locked? What was inside?'

'It was a bit of a mess to be honest,' she shrugged. 'I didn't find anything that seemed to important.'

'How did you find it?' I asked, feeling my voice start to rise, so I shoved my hands in my pocket and tried my best to look calm and collected. 'I mean, did you go looking for it?'

'I was looking for the Cursed Vaults,' she said.

'Why?' I asked, grateful at least that she was answering my questions.

'After the Start-of-Term Feast,' she explained. 'You got into so much trouble opening the last Cursed Vault that Dumbledore told the entire school not to go looking for more. So I wanted to find the next one.'

I had to fight not to roll my eyes. Tulip was a troublemaker, and not a very subtle one. The dungbomb pendant on her necklace was a bit of a giveaway. I ought to have known she'd get jealous of someone else getting attention for getting into trouble. Even if the last thing I wanted was attention. I just wanted my brother back. That was the only reason I was even searching for the Vaults at all.

'And you found my brother's room instead?' I asked.

'Yeah,' she nodded.

'Do you have the key?' I asked her.

'I have one of them,' she nodded.

'Where's the other one?' I asked.

I still had a thousand questions, but I knew Tulip wasn't going to be to able to answer them all.

Tulip grimaced.

Of course, nothing was ever easy.

'Who has it?' I pressed.

'Merula Snyde,' she answered. I groaned.

Merula Snyde and I were not friends. She was loud, obnoxious, narcissistic and just downright rude. She had made it abundantly clear during our first-year that she did not like me and never would and I was only too happy yo return the feeling. I ought to have known she was involved somehow. She as determined as I was to get into the Vaults. However, she wanted the glory which I could care less about.

'She wanted to team up after the Start-of-Term Feast and we found the room pretty quickly,' Tulip went on. 'Only then we had a row and that's when we put the locks on the door, so neither of us could get in the room without the other knowing about it.'

'Brilliant,' I said, sinking down into my bed and putting my head in my hands.

Now I had to work out how on earth I was going to convince Snyde to give me the other key. In theory, it shouldn't be too difficult. She was so vain and had loads of weaknesses, I could probably work something out fairly quickly. But my mind wasn't functioning properly at the moment.