The Mudblood

Chapter 98 : Year 5

The art for this chapter was made by https://www.quotev.com/NessaTheJellyBean and I love it! (:

Like Darrin Hunt, Katie Bell went to St. Mungo's, though we'd cursed her rather than poisoned her. Malfoy was utterly furious with me, and he now presented me with no responsibilities, treating me more like a house elf than a partner or even an assistant. In his eyes, I had screwed up both of our attempts at the task, and...well, he was basically right. His plan was flawed and destined to fail, but maybe if I had picked a different target, things might have gone differently.
October passed by anyway despite our failures, and no one seemed to suspect that Malfoy and I had been behind Katie's cursing...except perhaps Harry, who now glared at us across the Great Hall during every meal and glanced back in our direction every few minutes during D.A.D.A. I sincerely hoped that he wouldn't confront me about the matter, since without Darrin's promised lying lessons I was still a fairly pitiful liar.

November 2nd, a brisk but sunny day, was the date of our first Quidditch match, as well as Astoria's birthday. Ashley had conjured a cake for her to eat for breakfast in bed but it had landed on her face, which caused a major meltdown. The birthday girl had locked herself in our bathroom, forcing us to use the fifth year boys' one instead. Melody, of course, had found the whole thing sadistically hilarious.

Instead of going to breakfast, I spent an hour pacing inside of the locker room's broom cupboard, psyching myself out about the match while simultaneously and shamefully hoping that Malfoy might join me to share my unnecessary amount of stress.

When I exited the closet, I was met by an overabundance of shouts and quarrels bouncing off the walls of the locker room. Most of the boys had already changed, but I did catch an unfortunate glance of Crabbe struggling to yank his shirt over his head.

"Your dumb boyfriend is the reason that I can't play!" Carl Vaisey was shouting at Ashley as he dramatically clutched his head between his hands. "You shouldn't be allowed to play for it! Neither of you should!"

"They're both going to play," Urquhart interjected as he strapped his padding on. "They have to, or we really won't have a team. Baddock already has to play for you, and Malfoy's sick so Harper's playing for him—"

"Malfoy's not here?" I blurted from where I stood in the doorway of the closet.

"Given that he usually steps out of that cupboard with you, no," Urquhart retorted wryly, his eyes cold.

"So that's why she was in there. Hoping to get some snogging action before the game. Not a bad tactic."

At first, I couldn't pinpoint the origin of the familiar voice, but then I noticed him leaning over by Urquhart's locker, wearing a cloak and his Slytherin scarf with a green hat over his dirty blond head.

"Darrin," I breathed before dropping my Air Wave Silver and sprinting across the locker room to envelop him in a hug that he did not return. Rapidly, I pulled away and straightened myself.
"Uh—er—sorry," I stammered as I scratched my head. "I'm just...so glad that you're okay."

"Why, because you're desperate for lying lessons?" he mused with the raise of one eyebrow.

"Um, yeah," I answered, eyeing him skeptically. "And I didn't want you to die."

"Hm, I was a bit indifferent about death," he replied with a casual shrug. "I was curious as to what comes after life."

"You're...lying?" I suggested with uncertainty.

"Of course I'm lying," he snorted before shaking his head. "I'm going to have to track down the first year that poisoned me and give him a good hex. Lucky for me, he won't be hard to find, because I can always tell who's lying."