The Madison House
It was dark outside on the October evening as a vulture soared around the Ravenclaw common room, swooping by the bracketed torches and brushing the bronze-coloured tapestries with its outstretched wings, its progress followed by several pairs of eyes.
“You could have at least made it a raven,” Dale shrugged, throwing Darren a mildly impressed look as the boy lounged about in the opposite corner, wand pointing constantly at the bird, “It would at least have been somehow relevant.”
Darren just shrugged, blowing his blond fringe from out of his face and staring at his creation dotingly, “You’re just sore because I can do the Avifors spell, and you can’t… Besides, the emblem of Ravenclaw‘s an eagle!”
“Oh, who cares? It’s a dumb spell, anyway!” Dale murmured, stung by the remark.
“I don’t call it dumb…” Darren continued, rolling onto his back and continuing to stare up at the ceiling as his bird soared about the chamber, “I call it art!”
“Well, McGonagoll’ll have everyone’s heads if she finds you doing transfiguration in the common room,” Joanne said, peering out from under her ‘A Guide to Hippogriffs and How to Breed Them’ by the fireplace, “Remember when Matt transfigured his pencil case into that giant, 12-inch flea that got out into the school last term? She wasn‘t too pleased hearing about that…”
Matt guffawed from his table by a window, distracting Richard, sat opposite him, from his Potions homework; “Yeah,” he grinned, “But only because it was a really bad transfiguration - I don’t think she minded the fact I’d done it! And I didn’t exactly manage to get rid of the dalmation-spot design from my pencil case, so it wasn’t that hard to see!”
“It only wound up in the Slytherin common room anyway,” Catherine smirked, sat on the rug before the hearth with her rat, Havelock, on her lap, “I feel that compensation enough.”
Joanne threw Catherine a wry smile, “Do you remember how all the girls ran out into the Entrance hall in their pyjamas in the morning! I don‘t think Snape’s ever looked so mortified!”
“I find it a bit dreadful, really…” Richard muttered as his quill raced across a piece of parchment that was his Potions homework, “We shouldn‘t take pride in other people‘s misfortunes.”
“Come on, any knock-back for Slytherin is good for us! Where’s your Ravenclaw pride?” Darren piped, followed by a chorus of “Caw, caw” from the rest of the group, who flapped their arms in imitation of birds before they all laughed.
Richard couldn’t help but allow himself a smirk, but that was before a gentle ‘plop’ resounded against his parchment before him. He stared reluctantly down at his parchment, which was now covered in a fine white pile of bird poo; “Oh, Darren!” he shrieked, picking up his paper and holding it at a distance as though it were now heavily contaminated, “Your poor excuse for a vulture’s just done its business on my Potions homework!”
“Says it all about Potions, doesn’t it?” Catherine joked.
Dale was prepared for the follow up line; “Yeah, a load of --”
“Hit it, quick!” Matt suddenly yelled, springing from his chair and flapping his arm like a flustered five year old as the vulture decided it’d like to make a meal of his ear, “Darren! Get it off, get it off!”
Darren rolled back onto his front, doubling over with laughter.
“Daz!” Matt continued to scream, running a couple of laps of the common room’s perimeter with the bird clawing at his ear lobe. The rest of the small gathering just chuckled, an hysterical Matthew always proving a good show.
Catherine shook her head, “Well, I’m off to bed,” she resolved, placing her rat on her shoulder and walking off toward the girls’ dormitories, “Night, guys!”
They hardly heard her, so transfixed were they on Matthew and his vulture, though Richard did give her a quick nod, before starting over on his essay. Joanne, too, decided to follow, closing her Hippogriff book and turning in for the night.
The rest of the Ravenclaws were already in bed, it was only the small group of third years still up and about, but, with midnight approaching, that would all soon change.
Catherine placed Havelock in his cage by her bedside before climbing under the duvet as Joanne asked, from the bed to her right, “I thought you liked Potions, now?”
“What?”
“After that detention, you haven’t been half as wound up about double P on Mondays anymore.”
“I haven’t?”
“No.” Joanne slipped her book beneath her pillow and threw Cat a grin, “What did you do? Make something that’s cured the abhorrence of Potions lessons forever? If you have, can I have some, too?”
Cat shook her head and lay back, staring at the canopy above her bed, “You’re funny, you know that?”
Jo chuckled a little again, “Seriously, though, what did Snape make you do?”
Cat shrugged, “Just clean out my cauldron, like he said. As well as a few others, I might add. What more’s to know?”
“I don’t know,” Joanne sighed, her face still etched with a smile that made Cat feel uneasy, “I just reckon you’re hiding something.”
Cat turned away from Jo after that, fearing having that terrible smirk glaring through the darkness at her all night. She wasn’t sure exactly what Jo was on about, but, in a way, she was right - the detention had changed her outlook on Potions a little. Or perhaps it had just changed her outlook on Severus Snape?
“Fiddlesticks…” she murmured as she drifted off to sleep.
~~
“Are you awake? Cat? Yoo-hoo!”
Cat groaned, pulling her blanket up over her head as she felt bright sunlight on her eyelids and heard an unwelcome wakeup call.
“Get up, Cat, or we’ll have to call Professor Flitwick in, and we don’t want him in the Girls’ Dormitories!”
Cat’s eyes opened slowly and she saw Jo sat there as she dropped the cover of her blanket from over her face, “Have I overslept?”
“Oh, yes… it’s nearly ten o’ clock,” Jo nodded with a mock sobriety.
Cat leapt out of bed and screamed, “TEN O’ CLOCK?!” before she began grabbing her uniform and rushing about, getting dressed; “Ten o’ clock and you didn’t wake me? You, you…”
Cat would have continued if Joanne hadn’t doubled up on the floor laughing. She felt her brow crease, “Jo, what time is it?” she repeated in her Very Serious voice.
“It’s only six o’ clock!” Jo squeaked between laughs, hitting her mattress with a balled-up fist and wiping tears from her eyes, “Oh, you should have seen the look on your face!”
Cat scowled, checking the other beds in the third year dormitory and seeing the other girls still asleep, though a couple were stirring after hearing Cat’s yells; “You cow…” she muttered at Jo, throwing a pillow at her.
Jo caught it, but was still laughing hysterically, so much so, in fact, that no sound was coming out her mouth any longer. Cat was just surprised that the entire castle hadn’t jumped out of their beds with their wands at the ready, shouting ‘Where’s the Fire?’
“What’d you do that for, anyway?” Cat asked as she shoved on her dressing gown and walked out down the dormitory corridor and into the central hub of the common room. They sat down on the pouffes by the dead hearth, listening to the birds outside as sing filtered in threw the mullioned windows.
“I don’t know,” Jo shrugged, “I was just feeling devilish. I was up before everyone else and I was bored.”
“You’re excited about the First Task, aren’t you?” Cat asked outright.
Jo smirked at her friend, unabashed about this admittance, “Of course! Aren’t you?”
Cat shifted a little, “I’d be more excited if it was a Ravenclaw out there.”
Jo shrugged, “Well, me too, but, c’mon, we’ve gotta give the Hogwart’s champions our two cents!”
“ ‘Our two cents’?” Cat smirked, “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go on my internet last summer.”
Jo brushed this off and dragged Cat to the window, “Just think… think what the first challenge might be! It could be something so potentially dangerous, that Champions used to die during the tasks! Of course, they won‘t now, but still… think of it!”
“Jo, death’s no laughing matter.”
“Unless you read Pratchett.”
Cat smirked, shaking her head, “I shouldn’t have let you borrow my books over summer, either.”
“C’mon Cat, loosen up!” She shook her so violently that Cat feared she might not just loosen , but fall apart, too, “It’ll be FUN!”
Cat nodded, prying Joanne’s tight grip from her arm. She returned to the dorm to get dressed soon after and they exited out of the common room and went down to breakfast. It was very early, so hardly anyone was up yet, and the Great Hall felt so lonely without its normal multitude of people contained within. As Cat and Jo crept quietly along the flagstones to their usual spot at the Ravenclaw table, their feet echoing wildly about the hall, they noticed only a few teachers at the far table, including Dumbledore, McGonagall, Karkaroff and Madam Maxine. And Snape.
Jo elbowed Cat and nodded at the Potions Master; “Supreme Git at eleven o’ clock,” she murmured.
Cat giggled as she sat down and, immediately, her and Jo’s plates filled with sausages, bacon and eggs. They were the first students up and about.
They both ate heartily, and Jo managed to get Cat discussing the prospects of the up-and-coming Task that Gryffindor’s Harry Potter and Hufflepuff’s Cedric Diggory would be facing later in the day.
“Maybe it’s a duel with an Auror!” Jo gasped, her eyes glazed over with the prospect.
“God help them if they have to face Mad-Eye, then,” Cat added.
“Or a wrestling match with a fully-grown Manticore!”
“Since when have Manticores wrestled?”
“Ooh, ooh! How about flying blindfolded atop a gryffin across the lake, whilst simultaneously hexing your opponents off their mounts!”
“I’d hate to be in the middle, then…”
“Or, or maybe…”
“I know!” Cat announced, slamming the butt of her knife and fork onto the tabletop, “It’ll be a detention in the Trophy room with Filch, followed by a cauldron-cleaning session with Snape! All against the clock! First to complete their tasks to a satisfactory standard wins!”
Jo nearly choked on her bacon, before she laughed so hard the hall reverberated with the sound and a few of the teachers glanced over at the two; Dumbledore’s eyes were sparkling, as they always did, though the likes of Maxine, Karkaroff and Snape looked rather affronted.
“Oh Gods, Cat, that’s brilliant!” Jo chuckled once she’d calmed down a bit, “It’d be the first task in Triwizard Tournament history that no one ever finished… because no one can polish the trophies or clean out the cauldrons enough to satisfy those two Flobberworms.”
“I believe that the Sorting Hat was having an off-day when you two were Sorted,” came the silky tone of He-Who-Possesses-The-Over-Large-Nose from behind them. Cat and Jo jumped, swallowing their mouthfuls of breakfast in convulsive gulps; “Ravenclaw is the House of wit and learning… not density and imprudence.”
Cat and Jo both flared at Professor Snape, though held their tongues.
“Then again, perhaps it couldn’t find an appropriate House in which to place you. Perhaps you should start your own House?” the Potions Master drawled on, his dark eyes filled with that empty malice the two knew too well and he took on the tone of the Sorting Hat, “‘Perhaps you belong in Madison, for those of Little Mind, where those of too few virtues will always find their kind.’ ” He smirked at his own humour, “I can think of many who would soon be joining you.”
With a callous, curt smile, he then swept away and out of the hall.
Jo looked likely to explode, “That ba--”
“Joanne Juliet Jackdaw, you keep that mouth shut, or else!” Cat warned her friend, placing her hand on her arm, “He’s not worth it…”
Jo swung about in a huff, “It’s so unfair, though, Cat.” Then she blinked as something suddenly occurred to her, “And don’t speak my full name out like that… I don’t want people to learn of my parent’s obsessive cult of assonance in their kid‘s names.” (Her brothers were Joseph Jake and Jason John, and her sisters Janet Jocelyn and Janine Jade).
“Just don’t marry a Mister Jordan or anything…”
Jo rolled her eyes, “Don’t worry… If I fall in love with a Mr. J-, I’m changing our surnames for sanity‘s sake.”
Cat smiled before they returned to the subject at hand, “But why is he so… evil?”
“He shouldn’t be able to get away with it!” Jo fumed, “Some cheek he has… at least we weren’t sorted into the house of the ‘darkly-twisted-and-terminally-evil’. What virtues has his house got except blind ambition and a hunger for power?”
“C’mon, Jo… the entire Slytherin house can’t be that bad.”
“Says you, you pacifist. You should have been in Hufflepuff.”
“Tell the Hat that - I think you’d have done well in Gryffindor.”
“I guess elements from each and every one of the houses resides in us all,” Jo said, surprising even herself with her sudden burst of deep philosophy, “The Hat just puts us where it thinks we are most strongly suited.”
Cat gave her friend a smile, “You know, Jo, you are a genius sometimes. You do belong in Ravenclaw.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
They finished their breakfast as the rest of the student body, most of them with their eyes half closed with drowsiness, began to filter into the hall.
“So, what would the Madison House mascot be, anyway?” Jo continued as they entered the Entrance Hall and made for the marble staircase.
Cat pondered on this for a moment, running her hand up the banister; “A rat,” she said straight.
Jo laughed, “A rat? That’s almost as bad as the Slytherin snake! You know what people say about rats!”
“Yeah, and they’re all wrong. Rats are clever, resourceful creatures that stick together. And they’re not poisonous, like snakes.”
“What would we sing at our Quidditch matches, though?” Jo ventured on, “ ‘Come on you rats’ ?”
Cat shrugged, “I don’t know.”
They walked on in silence until a changing staircase to the second floor forced them to take a detour past the girl’s bathrooms, “You shouldn’t choose a rat,” Jo finally said after they’d dodged the Bloody Baron on a morning stroll.
“Why not?”
“All the other House mascots eat rats.”
Cat rose an eyebrow, “You might be right on that…” she mused, “Though it’d take a lot for a lion to stoop so low as to eat a rat.”
“But it would if it was really hungry,” Jo insisted, “I think the Madison House should be… a fox!”
“A fox?”
“Yeah… often considered a pest, but doing what it must to survive! Agile, courageous, daring and quite cute.” She waggled her eyebrows, “We could be known as the ‘foxy ladies’!”
Cat shook her head, “You’d only do that to get a date for the Yule Ball…”
“True.”
“And you do realise that the only reason we’re even discussing this is because Snape used it in his latest insult of us?”
“Yeah,” Jo’s voice echoed as they continued on down the corridor and made a turn toward the common room, “But it’s too much fun to leave alone.”