Delicate - eng version

It Can't Get Any Worse...Right?

"Is it true?"

"Who's the father??"

"Rose Weasley? As in the Gryffindor nerd?"

"There's no way you're pregnant – who'd sleep with you?!"

These are some of the nicer whispers that have been following me around since Saturday. On Sunday I stayed shut behind the curtains of my four poster bed, but Monday morning came too soon and I had to emerge from my pit. That, and I was hungry. Avoiding everyone, I found myself drifting from class to class, keeping my head down and concentrating on my studies. None of the teachers asked me any questions or made me perform any spells all day – in fact, according to them, I'm practically invisible. Of course the stupid students of Hogwarts couldn't see it like that. I haven't gotten such strange stares since second year when I chained myself to the Herbology Greenhouses for two days straight. (You see, I was trying to stop the unfair treatment of Mandrakes, and I remembered Mum set up the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare when she was at Hogwarts, so I decided to set up my own society. It was called the Society for the Promotion of Extra Rights for Mandrakes – or S.P.E.R.M. I used to wear S.P.E.R.M badges and everything, but people used to stare at me and laugh like I was an alien or something. I'm not really sure why.)

Anyway, today is Tuesday and although I'm used to the malicious whispers that are circulating, they still make me angry. None made me as angry as the one Laura Phelps whispered to her Hufflepuff friend. And as a result of it, James and I have detention tonight. It's her own fault she now has horns growing out of her thick head – she was the one who announced to the entire school that I'm pregnant. She was the one who called me "Malfoy's Little Slut" in the corridor. Malfoy's Little Slut. That has to be the most horrible thing anyone has ever called me. It's hardly surprising that James hexed her before I had the chance to. All I did was throw my half eaten banana at her.

At eight o'clock, we head to Professor Longbottom's office. It's obvious he feels a bit bad about giving us detention because he knows us so well, but it's also in his job as head of Gryffindor house not to play favourites. He makes us go through discipline files from the past sixty years and make sure they're all in order – seriously, why doesn't he just make us watch paint dry? It would be so much more interesting. James and I work in silence, sorting out detention slips into different files. I'm still absolutely fuming after what Phelps said to me and I'm fantasising about chopping her hair off and forcing her to eat it.

"Um, Red, are you okay?" James asks as I shove random pieces of paper into folders.

"I'm fine," I snap, "I'm absolutely brilliant. Couldn't be better."

"You just put Henry Lawson's detention slip into Michael Patterson's file," James points out.

"Does it look like I care?" I hiss.

Silence.

I continue throwing detention slips into random files without even looking at what I'm doing. See, every student who has ever had detention in the last sixty years has a file in the discipline cabinet. That's a lot of students. We have to make sure each detention slip is under the right name. It's so boring, I want to cry.

"How's Al taking the news?" I ask after a few minutes.

We both know that Al has a very bad temper when provoked. He's even worse than James at times. And the look on his face on Saturday clearly stated that he was furious...but not with me, with Malfoy. I haven't really had the chance to discuss it with him since the news came out.

"He's..." James starts, "he's dealing with it in his own individual way."

That can't be good.