Annabeth Chase and Things Are Getting Intense

Chapter Eight

A/N: So I did a thing

Slughorn's compartment was crowded. Annabeth could see that from down the corridor. She spotted Harry and Neville in there, but the other faces were obscured until she opened the door and got a full view of the little room.

"Annabeth!" Slughorn said happily. "Wonderful, that's everyone! Come, find a seat—oh, there's no room—perhaps you'd all like to scooch over for Annabeth?"

"I'll stand," Annabeth said quickly, leaning against the door.

Every seat was taken. There was Harry and Neville, of course, but then there was also Blaise Zabini, a Slytherin in Annabeth's year who was very firmly a not-cool Slytherin. Also sitting there were two seventh year boys Annabeth didn't know the names of, and, squashed in the corner, Ginny sat, looking a little lost. Annabeth couldn't help but notice that she and Ginny were the only two girls in this little 'club'.

"Well!" Slughorn said. "You already know Harry and Blaise, of course, but this here is Cormac McLaggen, and this is Marcus Belby, and over there's Neville Longbottom, and Ginny here says she knows you!"

Ginny looked at Annabeth and grimaced. Annabeth nodded at her in solidarity.

"Well now, this is most pleasant," Sulghorn said, leaning back comfortably. "A chance to get to know you all a little better. Here, take a napkin. I've packed my own lunch; the trolley, as I remember it, is heavy on licorice wands, and a poor man's digestive system isn't up to such things... Pheasant, Belby?"

Belby jumped and accepted half of the cold pheasant, smiling nervously.

"I was just telling young Marcus here that I had the pleasure of teaching his uncle Damocles," Slughorn said obliviously. "Outstanding wizard, outstanding, and his Order of Merlin most well deserved. Do you see much of your uncle, Belby?"

In his haste to answer, Belby swallowed the bite of pheasant he'd taken too fast and started to choke, turning purple.

"Anapneo," Slugnorn said calmly, pointing his wand at Belby, who stopped choking.

"Not... not much of him, no," Belby gasped.

"Well, of course, I daresay he's busy," Slughorn said. "I doubt he invented the Wolfsbane potion without considerable hard work!"

"I suppose..." Belby said with the air of a cornered animal. "Er... he and my dad don't get on very well, you see, so I don't really know much about..."

He trailed off as Slughorn gave him a cold smile and, without another word, turned to the other seventh year, Cormac McLaggen.

"Now, you, Cormac," he said, "I happen to know you see a lot of your uncle Tiberius, because he has a rather splendid picture of the two of you hunting nogtails in, I think, Norfolk?"

"Oh yeah, that was fun, that was," McLaggen said in a strong Irish accent, his confidence the opposite of Belby. "We went with Bertie Higgs and Rufus Scrimgeour—this was before he was minister, obviously—"

"Ah, you know Bertie and Rufus, too," Slughorn mused, passing around a tray of little muffins. Belby didn't get one. "Now tell me..."

He continued talking to everyone in the compartment, and Annabeth knew she had been right. Everyone present, sans Ginny, had some sort of famous relation that Slughorn knew. It turned out Zabini's mother was apparently very beautiful and had been married seven times (each of her husbands had mysteriously died and left her piles of gold). It was an awkward ten minutes while Slughorn interrogated Neville about his parents, who had been aurors before they were tortured into insanity.