Littered With Stars {Book 7 in the Star of Gryffindor Series)

Chapter 14 - A Million Reasons Why I Don't Trust Nico Jasper

~Albus~

As if the first week of school hadn't been eventful enough already, several other things happened over the weekend. First, and probably best, Kimmel called me up to her office on Thursday night to tell me that she was really concerned that I had too much of a burden to carry on my own, and she'd decided to appoint an interim headgirl, just for now. I didn't question the wording; acting like Ciara might just show up at some point was ridiculous, of course, but I also wanted to believe it was possible, even if I knew it wasn't.

Of course, she asked if I had any thoughts, in a tone of voice that said she'd probably already made her decision and my opinion wouldn't affect it at all. Since there didn't seem to be anything to lose, I suggested Poppy, since she'd already been helping me a little anyway. To my surprise, that was actually who Kimmel had been thinking about already. As long as we understood that the "no patrolling with your significant other" rule still applied, she didn't see any issues with it. Poppy was smart, respectable, and generally well-liked among her peers, as Kimmel put it, which was more than I could have said for the headgirl last year, at least.

Poppy said yes without even thinking about it, which was a relief. I hadn't thought she'd said no, necessarily, but I'd been scared she might not want to. It was a lot of pressure, after all. I'd never been so aware of people paying attention to me before, even when rumors had spread throughout the years that I was the next Voldemort, or the person Astra was cheating on Marcus with, or anything else. It was weird, having people look up to me. I wasn't sure I liked the attention that much. Colette told me to get over myself, because there were far worse things to get attention for.

Another thing that happened didn't actually affect me that much, except that it really upset Colette, so I was automatically involved. This term, Kimmel had apparently started enforcing a lot more rules with the staff, which were handed straight down from Russey. Haverna told us that the most worrying was one that insisted that anyone caught in "suspicious activities" would be immediately reported to the Prime Minister. Despite the fact that Colette was of age and general working with the supervision, or at the least knowing consent, of Haverna, our professor was convinced that spell creation would definitely count as suspicious activity, and she had strictly forbidden Colette from doing it anymore.

Colette took that surprisingly well, when Haverna told us after her class on Friday. She said she understood, even if she did sigh and complain about it. Haverna didn't argue with her about foul language as she called Kimmel and Russey every expletive she could think of. She just nodded, and told her that in a few weeks, after everything had settled into a more normal routine, they could talk about a way they might be able to continue secretly.

I shouldn't have trusted luck that much. As soon as we'd left her classroom, Colette whispered to me that she would do her best, but if she needed to create a spell, this wasn't going to stop her. With the choices of starting an argument I wouldn't win or not antagonizing her, I opted to sigh and tell her to do whatever she liked.

Poppy, Colette, and I had dedicated that weekend to figuring out a game plan for talking to Isla and Ryder. We'd sifted through all of our research from last year to find everything we could about them. As we sat down in the library Saturday afternoon, already ignoring our first charms essay of the year, Poppy pulled out two binders with pages and pages of articles and information she'd printed off the internet. That had been her summer project, she explained self-consciously as Colette and I flipped through them with unhidden awe. She'd found every bit of information she possibly could about each child, and printed it all off. Magical resources had been copied or hand-written at the front, and muggle articles were scanned or saved and printed in the back.