Emerald [Cedric Diggory]

Chapter Fifteen

"I beg your pardon?" exclaimed Maya, wide-eyed. "Did you just say clean the trophy room without magic?"

There were too many objections to that, she didn't know where to start.

"Yes, Miss Caufield." answered Snape, the edges of his lips turning up unpleasantly. "Since all of you have clearly demonstrated your lack of respect for magic, you will have to work without it."

"But this is labour!" Maya exclaimed, not bothering to hide her distaste. "I mean, don't you have people to do all this?"

"Yes, we do. You." said Snape, and Maya wanted nothing more than to slap that smirk off his face. "Now get to work." With that, the overgrown bat collected all their wands, and swooped out of the trophy room, leaving her and Damien alone with the five Gryffindors.

Maya let fly another barrage of curse words, in every language she knew.

Admittedly, it took a while.

"Aye, cheers mate!" George exclaimed with a huge smile. "I don't know what half those words mean, but we're going to be using them, right Freddie?"

"Right, Georgie!" came a grinning response.

"How do you even know those words?" Asked an openly curious Lee Jordan. "I've seen you come to King's Cross with that butler of yours. How does someone like that know such vile words?"

"It's because of him that I know most of them." Said Maya, although she couldn't for the life of her figure out why she was telling them that.

Once when Maya was little, her family had been on a safari in Africa and she had wandered off to look at some monkeys without telling anyone. What she hadn't known at the time was that one should never approach monkeys with food in hand.

Maya shuddered at the memory. Monkeys were demonic little creatures, and those ones had been wild, so they started attacking her for the food almost instantaneously. She screamed for help and Frederick came to her rescue, picking up a stick from nearby and fending the monkeys off as Maya hid behind him, crying.

That day, Maya had heard Frederick use almost every curse word he had learned in his time with the army.

Later, Frederick gently scolded her for wandering off, and made her promise she would never say those words aloud, especially in front of Mrs Hughes. Maya had gone to bed that night with a lifelong hatred of monkeys and an arsenal of new words at her disposal.

"I can't believe you two blasted off the entrance to the Slytherin common room." Said Ron with a shake of his head, bringing her back to the present.

Maya sneered at him. "Not all of us have flying cars at our disposal, Wesley." She snapped carelessly. "Some of us have to improvise."

His brothers guffawed as Ron turned purple in rage. "Yeah, Wesley, get a clue!" They said together.

Ignoring them, Maya turned to her best friend. "Think we now know how Filch manages to keep this castle spotless without magic." she said wearily. "He's not doing any of the actual work."

Damien grunted. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know." Maya murmured, eyeing the cleaning equipment distastefully. "I've never even seen most of these things in my life!" Maya bent down to pick up a sponge gingerly from the bucket with the tips of her fingers.

C'est quoi ce bordel? What in Merlin's name am I supposed to do with this? Maya thought, dropping the filthy sponge with a snort of disgust. Around her, the Gryffindors had already picked up the equipment and begun scrubbing the trophy cases with what looked like professional efficiency. Trying to mimic their movements, Maya picked up the sponge again, and started rubbing the trophy case in front of her. The amount of water that came out of the sponge made her jump back in alarm.

"You're supposed to squeeze out the extra water first." said Fred, and the Gryffindors guffawed at the mess she had made. Maya glowered at them, but did as he suggested.

It was silent for a while, but naturally, silence around Gryffindors doesn't last very long.

"So the rumor is that you two went completely mental and blew up the Slytherin common room, and then turned Malfoy and his cronies into hats." said Lee, breaking the silence. Maya rolled her eyes.

How was it that the story got more and more ridiculous every time she heard it?

"No, although now I'm thinking we should've done that." Damien responded with a laugh. He turned to Maya. "We could've turned Malfoy and Parkinson into hats and tossed them into the fireplace." Maya shook her head at her best friend, trying hard to suppress her smile.

"So what did you do then?" asked Fred.

"Oh, what do you care?" Maya asked them, anger flaring. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered with them, but after Snape her patience was wearing thin."Haven't you made it your life's mission to bully Slytherins regardless of what they're like?"

Fred snorted. "Don't flatter yourself, Snakie." he said to her. "Our life's mission has nothing to do with your lot."

Maya let out a bitter laugh. "Our lot? Spoken like a true pureblood." she spat out, going back to her work.

"What?" yelped George, almost dropping his sponge to the ground. "That's not what we meant!"

"Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't." muttered Damien, not even bothering to look at them.

"We don't mindlessly discriminate between people based on the so called purity of their blood!" exclaimed Fred, his face scrunching up in disgust.

"No, you only mindlessly discriminate between people based on their House." replied Maya, struggling for a calmness that she did not feel. Oh, how she hated the wizarding world!

"Let it go, May." insisted Damien, still refusing to look at the Gryffindors. Maya swallowed her anger and went back to cleaning the trophy case.

"We only bother those who deserve it." said Lee, after a while.

Maya looked down her nose at him. "Oh?" she asked. "And what did we do on our first night here to deserve your bullying?"

"Hey now, what's this shite about us bullying you?" Asked George. "We've never even spoken to you before!"

Maya stared at them, trying to see through their farce, but they looked genuinely baffled. "You don't remember, do you?" She asked, her voice oddly quiet.

"Of course they don't." grumbled Damien. "They do it every year."

"Do what?" At this point the twins looked like they wanted to tear their hair out.

Maya took a deep breath. "During the sorting, whenever an eleven year old child is put into Slytherin, what do you do?"

The three Gryffindors blinked.

"Oh that." murmured Fred.

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