Candescent

The next few weeks flew past in a haze, revolving mostly around me helping Malfoy with his work, nudging Hermione forward and trying to fit in research in between. So far-zip.

Nothing, I wrote in a letter to my mother, I’ve looked in every book on the dark arts that mention Harry Potter and there is absolutely nothing about me. Professor Dumbledore told me I was supposed to be hidden, but someone had to know that I existed. I can’t have been completely hidden could I?

I never sent that letter, my mother probably was already freaking out about the whole thing, and there was no need for me to bother her with the fact that my existence wasn’t recognised in the history books.

“Alyssa,” Draco stood in my doorway. Yes, we were now on a first name basis and ashamedly I can say that we are friends. He actually wasn’t a terrible guy. I mean hey, he’d stopped dissing Hermione in front of me and I was glad of that, now it was trying to change his attitude that was my main goal.

“We’re going down to the feast, are you coming?”

“Oh, it’s Halloween yeah?” Whoops, the fact had completely slipped my mind.

“Where have you been?” he asked incredulously.

“Incredibly distracted,” I replied, standing up and putting my robes on over my uniform. “So, I suppose it’s going to be fun?”

“Not with that kind of face it’s not going to be,” Draco replied. I put on a smile and followed him out of the room.

“So,” Draco said to me, “I hear that Snape’s putting in a good word for you with Dumbledore. He’s thinking of putting you up a year – maybe two.”

I scoffed, “Then you can just watch me make a fool of myself as I listen to all the thirteen year olds who are so far ahead of me that I feel like a snail.”

“A snail?” he said looking at me doubtfully as we walked across the entrance hall and stepped into the Great Hall.

“Yes, a snai – whoa.”

The hall was amazing in its decorations. I’d never really been one for Halloween, but this almost made me regret missing the holiday for all those years.

“Earth to Alyssa,” Draco said, waving his hand in front of my face.

“C’mon,” I replied excitedly, taking his hand and practically dragging him over to the Slytherin table and sitting next to Theodore Nott and across from Pansy Parkinson. As soon as Draco took his seat, Crabbe and Goyle followed suit.

But the food was amazing and it seemed nothing could spoil the night until suddenly, Professor Quirrell, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, came running into the hall, screaming something about a troll and a dungeon. The commotion he caused was silenced immediately by Dumbledore who told us all (ineffectively) to remain calm. The prefects hurried us away from the Great Hall back to our common room, all except for me, who slipped out of the group of Slytherins right about the time I saw Harry Potter and Ron Weasley slip out of the Gryffindors.

But I didn’t have time to follow them at the same time. No, my objective was finding where Snape got to. He’d disappeared, the moment the commotion started. And so had Quirrell.

So now I was running through the castle upwards. Through the moving staircases until I caught a glimpse of Snape’s billowing cloak disappear behind the closing door of the third floor.

“Gotcha,” I whispered to myself as I ran up the stairs towards the door. The torches along the walls were already lit as I ran toward the door that stood slightly ajar. But the noise coming from it wasn’t very attractive. A mixture of a dog barking and some intense yelling.

“You fool!” Snape’s voice called out. “Get out before you get us both killed!”

I hid quickly behind a pillar as Quirrell came bursting out of the door followed closely by Snape who closed the door before holding his wand to it whispering, “Serobae”. It locked and he turned upon Quirrell. “You insolent fool!” he hissed. “You careless idiot! How could you be so dim witted!”

I even felt a little sorry for Quirrell at that moment. He looked so pathetic and small beneath Snape’s towering figure. Yet I remained hidden as an invisible observer.

“This is not a child’s game,” Snape continued. “I believe you need to decide whose side you are on Quirrell. I’ll be watching you very closely.”

He left with a classic swish of his long black cloak, but the image was slightly marred by his obvious limp. Quirrell still stood silently in the corner.

“You have failed me.”

The voice came from Quirrell’s direction, yet no one stood with him and his lips had not moved. So who had spoken?

“I am sorry my Lord,” he whispered fearfully before practically running down the corridor in the opposite direction.

I walked towards the door quietly, looking around for someone, but nobody came.

Whispering, “Alohomora”, I opened the door slightly and peeked in to see a three headed dog drifting off to sleep with the sound of a flute carrying in through high windows. I quickly closed the door, not particularly frightened by the sight, but more intrigued. Now that I had seen this dog for myself, I too wanted to know what it was guarding. And why the hell did Snape and Quirrell want it?

The question plagued my mind as I walked through the deserted castle. I noticed Harry Ron and Hermione all walking back to their common room with solemn faces and I had the feeling that they’d just had something to do with the troll. Good or bad, who knew?

“Alyssa!” Draco called to me as I entered the Slytherin common room. It seemed the party had been brought back down here since it couldn’t be had in the Great Hall. “Where’d you go?”

“I remembered that I’d lost a book on the second floor earlier today. Thought I’d better get it before someone else did.”

“You and your books girl.”

“Can’t live without them,” I shrugged with an easy smile. But even though turmoil raged within me, no one realised it was fake.