Status: active

Scars

No rest for the wicked

“Filch told Dumbledore you broke his leg?” Hannah asked, trying to make sense of the situation. She, Ernie, and Susan had been quizzing Eliza about her punishment all morning. They seemed to be in shock, as had she last night, but now she didn’t really have any other choice but to accept it.

“Yes. Well, me and Malfoy.”

“But I was there! I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Susan said, trying to be supportive, but even though what she was saying was true, it didn’t change anything. It wasn’t like Susan was going to convince Dumbledore or Filch otherwise, and even if she could, Eliza would never ask her to do that.

“It just isn’t fair,” Ernie said, slamming his fist on the table. “You’ve never even as much as gotten house points taken away before!”

Ernie was always the first to defend Eliza. Hannah and Susan insisted it was because he fancied her, but she never bought into their suspicions. He was just her friend, the same as he was with the two of them. They just wanted something new to gossip about.

“It’ll be okay,” she insisted, although she must not have sounded very convincing, because if anything they looked more upset than before. She sighed heavily. “It will be. Stop worrying.”

The three of them smiled, but neither of them looked any less concerned. It was to be expected, though. Everyone always worried about Eliza. Whether it was her family or friends, people never believed she was strong enough to handle any single problem on her own. It wasn’t true, but she was tired of trying to convince them of that.

Luckily, Professor Sprout provided a change in conversation by handing the four of them their timetables. Eliza was decently surprised to see Potions on her schedule. She had goals of becoming a healer, meaning Potions was an absolute must, but Snape didn’t allow anything less than an Outstanding in his N.E.W.T level course. So, she had spent majority of her summer distraught over not receiving an Outstanding, completely oblivious to the fact that there would be a change in professor, a professor that apparently didn’t have as high of standards.

“Lots of free time this year,” Susan observed, smiling widely.

Hannah looked at her incredulously. “You do understand the workload we are going to have this year, right? There will be no such thing as ‘free time’. That time is supposed to be used on homework unless you want to fall behind.”

Susan rolled her eyes. “Calm down, crazy. It’s only the first day.”

Hannah stood up, grabbing her bag. “We’ll see who’s crazy tomorrow when we’re already up to our necks in school work!”

“Wait for me,” Eliza said, standing up as well. They both had Defense Against the Dark Arts first. However, she instantly regretted her decision. Hannah spent the entire walk to class ranting about how important this year was, and how irresponsible Susan was being for not taking it more seriously. Luckily for Eliza, she didn’t want an opinion or commentary, she just wanted a sounding board, so that’s what she was.

After a full day of classes, Eliza found everything Hannah said to be true—this year was definitely no joke. She already had three essays due by Thursday. Not to mention, she received a note from Dumbledore, reminding her about detention tomorrow night. She had absolutely no idea how long that was expected to take, so she figured she should at least try to get a decent jump on her essays before then.

Wednesday night came much faster than desired. She barely received any sleep the night before, causing her to doze off multiple times during classes and dinner. She made sure to be on time to detention, though. She didn’t want to get things started on the wrong foot. She and Filch didn’t have much of a relationship; which was considerably a good thing. Filch spent most of his time trying to catch students breaking the rules, and Eliza hated getting in trouble.

Filch’s office was dark and dreary. There were chains and manacles hanging from the ceiling, and a giant file cabinet marked ‘Confiscated and Highly Dangerous’. Eliza stood over in the corner; neither Filch nor Malfoy was there yet. She started to feel very nervous. She didn’t know what to expect. Over the years, Fred and George had told her several horror stories about him. Tales that involved whipping and disembowelment. Eliza couldn’t handle punishment like that. She wanted to do something simple like write lines.

The door opened, and in strutted Malfoy. He looked highly unsatisfied, as he should be. He was at fault for all of this, after all. He half-heartily looked around before sitting in Filch’s chair. Eliza wasn’t sure if she should say something or not. She couldn’t even remember ever having a conversation with him before.

“What’s your name again,” he asked, pulling Eliza out of her reverie. She looked at him with wide eyes. She hadn’t expected him to speak first, or well, at all.

She heisted. “Eliza…Prewett.”

“Are you a pure-blood?” She wasn’t surprised by the question. The Prewett family name was one of the sacred Twenty-Eight, after all.

“My father was a wizard, but my mum is a muggle.”

“Oh,” Malfoy said, and immediately lost any interest he’d had in her.

The door slammed open, and Filch stumbled in. There was a cast on his left leg that started at his foot and ended half-way up his thigh. He was using forearm crutches to walk, but it didn’t appear to be going very well.

“Sorry I’m late,” he grumbled. He was wheezing and looked considerably out of breath. Crutches were not an easy contraption to master, especially with his poor health and age. “It’s harder for me to get around now that you lot broke my leg.”

“Mr. Filch, sir-” Eliza wanted to apologize. She knew it wasn’t her fault, but she felt badly about the circumstances. There was a lot working against the poor man already.

“I don’t want to hear it!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking. Her stomach twisted in knots. “Now, obviously, in my condition, I can’t do much. Tonight, I need the two of you to polish all the silver in the trophy room. It hasn’t been cleaned all summer.”

Malfoy hopped to his feet. “Easy enough.”

Eliza agreed. Everything she’d imagined was far worse than this. She followed Malfoy to the door, ready to get the task started.

“Not so fast.” Filch said. Eliza swore she could hear amusement in his voice. “The best way to polish silver is by hand, so no magic.”

“That will take hours,” Malfoy whined, as if Filch cared about that at all.

“Better get started now, then. And be sure to do it right the first time. I will make you restart if I notice even a single fingerprint.”

Malfoy and Eliza made their trek to the third-floor in silence. The trophy room was larger than she remembered. There were close to 100 different crystal glass displays around the room. Each contained various different awards, trophies, cups, plates, shields, and statues, and seemingly all of them were made from silver, naturally.

“You can take that side of the room, and I’ll do the other.” Malfoy said. He didn’t give Eliza a chance to object before walking away. She didn’t really care, though. It seemed fair enough and she wasn’t the type to argue for the sake of arguing.

It took nearly three hours for the pair to finish. Filch checked in on them every hour on the hour, but never had much of anything to say. Polishing silver was tedious work, and by the end, Eliza’s felt like her wrist might fall off. Malfoy had the same irritated expression on his face that he did when they began. She wondered how a person could be that miserable all the time. Sure, she wasn’t in the best of moods, but she wasn’t mad at the world over one lousy detention. Maybe a month from now her opinion would be different, but as of right now, she was just happy they were done and hoped their next chore would at least be less boring.

“See you Saturday,” Eliza said, biting her lip. He didn’t even glance in her direction before striding away, heading straight for the staircase. She anticipated this is what majority of her Wednesdays and Saturdays would consist of, silence and avoidance of eye contact. She wasn’t necessarily upset by this because she assumed things could always be worse, he could have spent the entire time insulting her.

Eliza grudgingly made her way to the Hufflepuff common room, unenthused about the long night she still had ahead of her. It was almost midnight when she reached her dorm room, and she hadn’t even made a dent on her essay about nonverbal spells. If every week was like this one, it seemed she would never get another decent night’s sleep. Of all the years to get her first detention, she picked the worst, she thought, dipping her quill in ink. She could only hope, somehow, something good would come of all of this.
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Please let me know what you think! I promise things will get more exciting... once Malfoy decides to stop being a prick...