PASTE
“You expect me to put this, where?” Theodore asked, holding the strange jar of semi-liquid turquoise slop. Evangeline and he sat in the bleachers of the Quidditch arena, the Hufflepuff team practicing below. The new keeper, Herbert Fleet, was doing a decent job at combating the chasers: Preece, Macavoy, and Applebee. He was certainly a downgrade from Theodore, but a necessity. Diggory, on the other hand, was doing just as fine a job. She didn’t mention that to Theodore.
“It’s a paste, somewhere near the healing properties of bitterroot balm. It should help,” she urged, “with the pain, maybe even with the healing.” Theodore threw her a suspicious glance. His cane rested beside him, but it wasn’t the new one father had given him. It was sleek and wooden, with a metal handle.
“Isn’t bitterroot balm a dark blue?” Evangeline glared at her creation. Maybe she should have added some food dye to make it less suspicious - though that may have messed with the makeup of the potion.
“I said near, I’ve tested it. It’s safe,” she insisted. And she had. No ill effects for weeks after she had used it on her finger. Unless you counted a slight numbness that was slowly fading. But Evangeline figured a slight numbness had been what she was going for anyway. Certainly Theodore could use a little of that. He fiddled with his cane.
“Sorry, sorry. Guess you and mum have never killed me with a weird looking potion before,” he said, inspecting it again.
“It’s not drinkable though, do remember. I can’t promise it won’t kill you if you taste it.”
He cleared his throat, “right.”
“And only use it about once a month. You can go up to every two weeks if it doesn’t seem to cut through the pain right but definitely not every day,” she instructed, “Could hurt you then too.”
“This is sounding like an awful lot of hurt, Evangeline.”
“Well you’ve already got that don’t you?” He was silent for a moment before he chuckled lightly and nodded. A chaser raced right by him when he was just about to respond and he got swallowed up in the play. Preece passed to Macavoy, then he up to Applebee, then all the way back down to Preece, who had gotten close to the third goal while Fleet was distracted by the rest, and made a goal unobstructed. The chasers were all smiles and Fleet even grinned after a while, shaking his head at his own blunder. But Theodore winced and Diggory seemed to be cringing from his spot above it all as well. Evangeline watched her brother, waiting.
“That’s a classic, a simple moment of misdirection. They weren’t even that fast or that sneaky. Fleet should have seen that - no should have heard that. If he can’t block that in a practice setting he’ll never block it in a match,” he explained, more to hear himself think than to have Evangeline listen. She nodded though, saying nothing and going back to watching the practice, trying to see what she could see of what Theodore had just explained.
“I could have blocked that,” he said after a while, quietly, almost reverently, like he were speaking out against God in the middle of a sermon, “Like it was nothing.”
That was the rub, wasn’t it. He could have blocked that shot in his sleep, he might have let the play go through because it was a practice, but in a game he would have been brutal. He had been brutal. Evangeline’s face twisted in an inherited agony, ‘a lot of hurt’. Yes, he had it. But it was not for what happened in the past, it was for how that had robbed him of his future. And she couldn’t cure that, not with a potion, not with a balm, not even with words. So she patted his shoulder and left him to stew. He waved a half hearted goodbye and gestured to her dubious paste with raised eyebrows.
She made her way down from the stand, walking back towards the main castle. The autumn air was crisp and as it blew picked at her bones. She drew her robe closer to her for warmth and Edmund scurried farther up her shoulder from her hood, burrowing until he found a warm spot in between her scarf and her neck. The great hall and some of the corridors were well decorated for Halloween. Huge carved pumpkins dwarfed out most of the teacher’s dinner seating, though they seemed to manage just fine.
Classes were done for the day and it was Halloween, while there was still homework to do Hogwarts was alive with some excitement. A few people exchanged candies and there was the general buzz in the air carried with a little bit of melancholy that most were not home for their own traditions. Evangeline thought back to how she would normally be spending Halloween: her mother and father mostly absent and shipping her off to whatever Halloween party had seemed most advantageous. Usually that meant a Malfoy Halloween. Once, they had thrown their own party, but her parents were swiftly pulled away because of some magical animal set loose on some sort of prank. That was their business, the care and sale of interesting magical creatures: and it had made them some very good experts.
And wizards were often stupid on Halloween.
Evangeline made her trek to the Ravenclaw common room, pausing at the door, which as she knocked rang out, “I am the beginning of every end, the end of every place, the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, what am I?”
She thought for a moment, the grand scale of all time and space flashing through her mind before she caught herself with a reminder that it probably wasn’t that deep.
“E,” she said, to which the door swung open.
No riddle had felt like her first one had. Not again. They all seemed so mundane. That didn’t mean they weren’t hard, no she had seen much worse than the riddle she had just got. Several times she had had to wait for an older Ravenclaw to come along, pity her, then solve the riddle and allow her to pass through. But even when she couldn’t solve them, they didn’t have the same feel as the first, the same seen quality to them. Patil was sitting on one of the window seals before the stairs up to the dorms, carefully completing a charms assignment, her eyebrows furrowed with concentration. She didn’t look up as Evangeline approached and tapped the top of Patil’s head with the book she was carrying.
“You get rid of the monstrosity that was in our room?” This was Patil’s kind and understanding way of asking Evangeline if she had given the vital, lifesaving balm to her dearest brother.
“Yes, he seems more weary of it than you,” Evangeline responded in a lighthearted tone. Patil glanced up at her, her own face softening only a fraction.
“Good,” she responded, turning her attention back to the charms. Evangeline took a look down at her paper, and, upon realizing she didn’t understand any of it, suddenly regretted skipping charms the previous day. She told herself that she would deal with it later, instead waving goodbye to an unresponsive Patil and going up the stairs two at a time.
Turpin wasn’t in the room and Evangeline had a sudden and weary suspicion that she and Brocklehurst were up to something that she probably wouldn’t like. She unwrapped her scarf, catching Edmund before he fell out of it and placing it neatly on the chair beside her bed. He wiggled out of her arms and into the pile of still warm fabric. Sitting down on her bed, she opened her book (A Guide to Potions Testing) and lost herself in it - ignoring Turpin when she came in and reminded her of dinner but relenting when Li kindly knocked on the door post and invited her down. They walked together toward the Great Hall and joined the rest of the Ravenclaws at the table.
The Great Hall might have looked nice earlier in the day, but for the great Halloween feast it was truly in a class of its own. Grand pumpkins were everywhere, not just resting on the floor but floating in the ceiling next to the usual floating candles. Everything smelled like nutmeg and sugary candy and cinnamon. Fall leaves in the most brilliant colors decorated the tables. She and Li had gotten there a bit late, so the first course had almost been wrapped up; but there was enough time for Evangeline to grab some sort of protein, some roast potatoes, and a mass of vegetables. She was just pouring her pumpkin juice when the dessert melded onto the tables.
“Have you seen Mandy today? I only saw her at potions! Thought I’d see her here but she’s not at the table far as I can tell,” Li said, taking a bite of her meal, “I was late because I was looking for her.” Evangeline, absorbed in her own food at the time, took a moment to process what she was saying.
“I assumed she was with Turpin, cooking up some scheme for Halloween.”
Li pursed her lips, “Scheme? I don’t think Mandy would be involved with that, Lisa either.” Evangeline retorted with a single eyebrow raise. She didn’t really know Brocklehurst and Turpin all that well, but everytime she had seen them together she had gotten the deep impression of two rats rubbing their hands together with some master plan to steal all the world’s cheese.
“We could ask Turpin then,” she said after Li’s face told her she needed more of an answer, then returned to Li looked distraught.
“She’s not here either!” Evangeline’s face was a mix of confusion with a tad bit of alarm. That couldn’t be good. She looked now, through the table’s inhabitants - picking out Patil who sat a few people down from them, carefully trying to find a dessert that didn’t involve pudding. Li was right, Turpin and Brocklehurst were nowhere to be seen. She gave a glance to the other tables. Theodore was picking through some sort of pumpkin pastry, Potter and the youngest Weasley were having some sort of furious discussion at the Gryffindor table, Malfoy sat proudly and prestinely while trying to get some ice cream into his mouth. They weren’t there either.
“Well let’s finish out dinner first,” if we get the chance Evangeline managed not to mumble, “Then go and look for them afterward. Maybe we could ask Patil too.” Li nodded, though she put the next morsel of food into her mouth with a bit of hesitation.
Evangeline was just about to snatch a treat for herself when Professor Quirell burst into the Great Hall with a yell.
“Troll! Troll in the dungeon!” Well that really wasn’t good.
Li gasped in horror, dropping the slice of pumpkin bread she had been holding above her plate. A few others had much more dramatic reactions, screaming, with several of them springing up from their seats. Quirell himself fell loudly onto the floor after his warning, but Dumbledore silenced the commotion with the mighty boom of his voice, instructing all prefects to lead their houses back to the dorms. Evangeline took the pastry she had had her eye on as the rest of the table stood.
“Lisa and Mandy! They won’t know! What if they were in the dungeons- what if they-” Li rambled next to her anxiously. Both of them were moving with the group of mostly orderly Ravenclaws.
“They’re not going to go into the dungeons, Li,” Evangeline mumbled, catching Patil’s eye as she looked back. She was frightened, but in control.
“Well how do you know that? What if they really were doing a prank? What if they were in the dungeons for it? Oh Merlin’s beard! What if they let the troll in?” While they certainly could have been up to no good, Evangeline was sure they wouldn’t be going into the dungeons. Turpin hated the place, preferring the light of the Ravenclaw windows. And besides, there wasn’t any reason for them to go anywhere near it. As for the case of the troll, no one in first year would be capable of that no matter their connections.
“They’ll be fine. I swear, they’re probably just back in the common room now,” she consoled. Li looked a bit bolstered by that, yet still unsure. They made it out of the Great Hall, about to go up the many stairways that would lead to the Ravenclaw common room. The Gryffindors would be with them for part of the trip… what about the Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs? They’re common rooms were literally in the dungeons, it didn’t make any sense to take them down there. It seemed that the Slytherin prefect had concurred with that line of reasoning and he was leading his house across a corridor rather than back down to the dungeons. The Hufflepuffs, their common rooms nearby the kitchens, seemed to have made the decision to continue heading downward. Maybe they figured if the house elves were fine they probably would be as well? Besides, the troll wouldn’t be able to get into their common room and shouldn’t be near there in the first place. Evangeline had steadied herself then, Theodore would be just fine. But as she took her first step up the stairs, a glint of silver caught her eye.
Theodore. His cane made a clicking sound even amongst the rabble of a school in panic. He was heading the direction opposite to the other Hufflepuffs, down toward where the Slytherins should have gone. He had a determined look on his face, even eager, but as he took each step he grimaced with the slightest bit of pain.
And he was utterly alone.