Ripped Away

Year Two: Nundu, Mysterious Voices and Petrified Cats

Almost two months had passed since Heracles's second year had started, and they had been a busy two months (then again, when weren't her months busy?). Heracles had made three new mirrors, and unsurprisingly, none had been successful. Her health and general well-being were in the toilet because of that, but that wasn't anything new. Malfoy was an annoyance, which was also not anything new, but Ronald and Granger were somehow even bigger pains in the ass than they were before. Ronald because he was stewing over the fact that Heracles 'ratted him out' to his parents over the flying car incident, and Granger because Heracles had the nerve to tell her to fuck off in her home turf during Lockhart's class. They were nuisances, but nothing more since the twins usually 'took care' of those two on her behalf.

School work was as easy as it always was. Heracles already had all her work for the year turned in for all her classes, with Neville delivering her work for Lockhart's class so he wouldn't be in violation of the restraining order. And boy, had that been a big hit to his reputation. The Girl-Who-Lived, filing a restraining order against him after he tried to use her fame to further his own notoriety when she was just minding her own business at a bookstore. The Daily Prophet had had a field day. The only reason Lockhart still had his job was because the middle aged witches that fawned over him and his books were also the mothers of most of the Hogwarts students, and they weren't about to send angry letters to Dumbledore demanding his resignation over 'celebrity drama'. Heracles had snickered over the scalding words the Prophet had to say about Lockhart in their morning issue for hours. Sprout was still on probation too, and McGonagall was still on about her not going to classes. Heracles was genuinely starting to wonder if the woman was gonna keep complaining about her lack of attendance until she found a way to make her mirrors work and ran for the hills.

Molly and Arthur still wrote to her regularly to check up on her and would send her care packages of home baked goods and knitted clothes Molly made, all of which Heracles would show off like they were the holy grail to anyone who would give her the time of day. If Malfoy got to be an insufferable little twat over the boxes of candy and other things his mother sent him every week, then by the seven Heracles was gonna do the same with Molly's (in her opinion) much better gifts. It also pissed Ronald off because she was getting 'the favorite child treatment', even though he and his siblings also got sent things, but that was to be expected of him.

Heracles's relationships with her friends were the same as they always were. The twins were mischievous little wankers, Neville was the self-appointed peacekeeper, and Luna said a bunch of cryptic shit Heracles was starting to think were prophecies (which would certainly explain why the girl always seemed to know everything), and Collin was a hyperactive little photographer in the making who talked everyone's ears off. The only exception to this sense of normalcy was Ginny, who Heracles had noticed was retreating from social gatherings more and more and talking less, which was not at all like her. Heracles wanted to ask her friend what was wrong, but with everything that was going on, she could just never find the time to pull the younger girl aside, and eventually her plan of trying to speak with Ginny faded to the recesses of her mind.

Dumbledore had started pulling her into his office every other week for what he liked to call 'candy and Fawkes time', which was basically Heracles making sarcastic comments about him and anyone else she found vaguely irritating, while stroking his Phoenix and stealing his lemon drops. Dumbledore thought it was a good bonding experience for them, since he wanted to be more of a mentor to the girl he felt such a connection to, but Heracles just used it as an excuse to freely roast him and steal cool shit from his office when he wasn't looking. Stealing Malfoy Sr.'s cane had given her a taste for theft and she was hungary for more. So far, she had taken three high quality sneakoscopes and five of Dumbledore's expensive pointed hats, and the man still hadn't noticed anything... or he just didn't care. It was anyone's guess.