To Hell ~ Fred Weasley

Chapter 6.

Helena had gone up to bed quite pleased with the arrangement she had settled with the Weasley twins. She knew she would have to make a few changes in her already tight schedule to follow through but she was willing to do it.

The next morning the weather didn't get any better, the rain had stopped but it only brought a chilling breeze, especially in the corridors. Nina was thankful a scarf was part of the school uniform, although she would have to mentally prepare herself for the colder months ahead.

If it were up to her, she would skip breakfast in order to get more hours of sleep but she knew her stomach would growl at her later if she did. So along with the rest of the students, she headed to the Great Hall and prepared her plate.

Cedric Diggory had waved at her from the Hufflepuff table mouthing "Everything okay?" since Angelina had shortened their usual study time in the library the other day.

Nina waved nodding her head, quickly staring down at her food to hide her embarrassed face.

Close from her were Harry, Ron and Hermione. As usual, the two latter were now discussing their pets. Apparently, Crookshanks had put some stress in Ron's pet rat, Scabbers, since the cat arrived. Last night, Crookshanks chased the poor old rat around the common round unleashing panic from Ron.

"Just keep that thing away from Scabbers, alright?" Ron said.

"He can't help it, Ronald. It's in his nature!" Hermione defended.

Harry was between the two already annoyed by the subject.

Today, the fifth years started with double Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid. They had a dull lesson compared to the first one where Hagrid had taught them about Hipogryffs. But now they had been dealing with the ever so boring Flobberworms for one month now.

After news broke out that Draco Malfoy had insulted the proud creature resulting in merely a scratch on his arm, Draco's father had pulled up his Ministry strings to warn Hagrid about dealing with dangerous creatures such as Buckbeak and he would soon hear from them to discuss how they would deal with the situation.

Nina couldn't believe they had to study useless worms just because Malfoy had been a pretencious git. Hagrid excused himself for a minute because he became upset still feeling ashamed of the whole mess of a situtation.

The Gryffindors were sharing the class with the Slytherins who were for the most part tolerable and polite. Others, however, seemed to have made it their life's work to let people know how mean they could be.

One of them, Marcus Flint, was talking with his friends saying "how stupid of a teacher you had to be that you could only teach about worms?"

Helena always minded her own business but when things got too out of line, she would step up. And right now, she was angry.

"Shut up, Flint!" she snapped. The rest of the class fell silent as it was a rare thing for Nina to loose it during a class.

"You don't know how moronic you sound right now!" she blurted, turning to face the amused Slytherin. "Or maybe you do. Never mind!" Helena continued to write on her paper furiously. Her parchment looked like it would caught on fire by the way she was scribbling away.

"Oh, please, mudblood. Go back to your notes!" Marcus yelled laughing amongst his crew.

Most of the students present gasped by the word, others stayed silent with shocked and disgusted faces.

Nina whipped her head around, slamming her Monster Book of Monsters shut and walking up to the Slytherin, swinging her arms with clenched fists.

"What did you call me?" she said through gritted teeth, looking up at Marcus dead in the eye, forgetting there was a crowd behind her.