Nailed It
“Call me crazy, but I kind of thought you’d be throwing a fit about something like this.”
“Eh. It’s shiny.”
Hannah giggled but didn’t look up from carefully painting Harry’s nails candy-apple red. The nails on his left hand were a bright, poisonous green so Ernie supposed she was trying to match his eyes. Still…
“Isn’t it kind of… girlish?”
“Says who?”
“Err… everyone?”
“And you expect me to do what everyone fucking says to do?” Harry growled.
Ah. He was in one of those moods. Ernie couldn’t fault the sour glare, ever since Harry had supposedly killed the monster of Slytherin, people had been a bit twitchier than normal around him. The Slytherins were wavering between anger and fear, because Harry had killed the thousand year old pet of their beloved house, and had done it all by himself.
The Lions were being loud about how this proved Harry was using dark magics. Because if a band of well-experienced teachers could neither find nor remove the beast, than how had Harry? Their pet theory was that Neville was the one who had killed the snake, after discovering Harry telling it to go attack more students.
(Funny enough, Hermione was heard saying loudly and often that SHE had known it was a basilisk, it was so obvious if people would just do proper research!)
Ernie didn’t have many friends among the Ravens like Susan did, but they seemed to have washed their hands of the whole thing. If it had been a basilisk, if it had been the cause of the petrifications, then everything was fine and dandy and they could get back to work. If not, then the rumor mill had once again blown things out of proportion and all Harry had done was kill some poor random snake and likely a very small one.
The Hufflepuffs were once again standing their ground and keeping an eye on their smallest Badger, while at the same time keeping their distance. “Careful, he bites..” Ernie heard an older student mutter to some curious First Years. Jokingly of course, Harry had never bitten anyone that Ernie knew of, though it wasn’t an entirely inappropriate comment considering...
A grumpy Harry was a very snappish Harry. A snappish Harry with pretty nails.
“What Ernie means to say,” Susan sniffed, “is that it’s not currently fashionable for Wizards to paint their nails. I think that makes you a trendsetter.”
“I dunno, with all the pretty ribbons you keep braiding into his hair, people are going to start getting ideas.”
“Oh goodie, more ideas from the fucking peanut gallery. I’ll just wait with bated breath to hear their new ideas.”
Ernie exchanged a glance with Roger and decided now was not the time to ask about what peanuts had anything to do with a gallery. Pursing his lips together, Ernie made a sharp nod of decision. “Will you do mine next? Something less… flashy perhaps?”
“Really?” Hannah’s squeal of excitement was alarming, and Ernie almost took back his request.
“Yeah. We Hufflepuffs stick together right? So let’s show some solidarity. Right Roger?”
“Uhh…”
“I’ll do Roger’s while Hannah does yours,” Susan wasted no time at all by sitting down at the table and patting the chair next to hers. “Come on Roger! How About a nice light yellow?”
Going by the twitching of Harry’s mouth, the silliness was working and his foul mood was fading fast. Hannah blew on his nails one more time, and declared “they look dry, but just to be safe you shouldn’t touch anything for another half hour.”
Susan picked out a light, translucent yellow from Hannah’s makeup kit with- “see? You’ll barely know it’s there!”
Roger glared at them but he knew when he was beat. “You are all terrible people."