Verboten

Repellius Intruda

    "Erm..." he suddenly became conscious of the complaint from Umbridge in his hand. If he said no to Sprout, she would be offended. If he agreed, she'd be shocked. Which was worse?

    The pressure rose until he handed over the letter and Professor Sprout unsealed it with the tip of her wand. She summoned a pair of circular spectacles out of thin air. Her eyes skimmed the paper, widening with each line.

    "Well, Erwin Smith..." she began.

    "It was my fault, Professor, I was the one who contradicted the way Professor Umbridge teaches," he said hastily, rubbing his sweaty palm on his robes.

    He had expected Professor Sprout to tut disapprovingly or to say "I am surprised with you."

    Instead, she said: "It says here you argued with her. Did you call her actions unjustifiable, Smith?"

    Erwin looked down in shame.

    But then he looked back up quickly when he heard her merry laugh. "How chivalrous, Mr Smith! Who would have thought you would stand up for Hanji Zoë Bennett, of all people?"

    His face reddened ungraciously. "She wrote that?"

    Professor Sprout cut through him. "Now, now, I do not want to stay in these dungeons while we speak! It's a terribly gloomy place, I can't stand all this darkness... smells worse than the pus of a mimbulus mimbletonia... "

    "But Professor, aren't you disappointed with me getting detention? I'm seventeen now, and I'm Head Boy, for God's sake-"

    Professor Sprout laughed gaily again, lighting her wand to see the way. "You're not the first Head Boy to get detention, Smith. Why, James Potter, even in his seventh year, couldn't go three days without angering a teacher."

    "James Potter? Harry Potter's father?"

    "Of course! You HAVE heard of him, haven't you?"

    He nodded. James Potter was just not someone a Hogwarts student wouldn't know.

    "Anyway, he was one of the school's best Head Boys. And his wife was also Head Girl; bless her soul... maybe your Head Girl will end up marrying you too!"

    They squinted as they got out of the dungeons into a staircase that led to the Great Hall. "But there is no Head Girl, Professor, she and her family disappeared..."

    "Oh, Headmaster Dumbledore hasn't told you yet?" she giggled. "Well, may it be a surprise. I'll send an owl to your Head of House informing him of the situation you're in, okay?"

    He kept silent. Maybe Sprout was okay with him getting detention, but Snape surely wouldn't be.

    Professor Sprout then dismissed him, making him feel slightly better than before.

    Hanji was nothing less than a hero in the Ravenclaw common room.

    As soon as she came in, with her detention slip still in hand, they all erupted with cheers and calls. Apparently they had gone straight from their disastrous DADA class to here, where they decided to explode all over Hanji with their "how?"s and "why?"s. Despite their excellent reputation as the cleverest class of the school, they were a huge bunch of ne'er-do-wells, Hanji being the cleverest and baddest of the bunch.

    "THAT WAS CRAZY!" Roger Davies hollered, rubbing Moblit Berner over the head in excitement. Moblit gave a squeak of "please stop, Roger."

    "I'LL TELL YOU WHAT'S GOING ON," Marcus Belby cheered. "HANJI JUST GAVE UMBRIDGE BURNS THAT EVEN MADAME POMFREY WON'T BE ABLE TO HEAL!"

    "YEAH!" The room chorused.

    Hanji, secretly pleased with all the attention, only blushed and said it was nothing. "Besides," she added. "I have Flitwick to face, and he sure won't be happy."

    "Please," Davies scoffed. "You get detention nearly every week."

    "But I don't think Umbridge is an okay person to get detention with," she murmured. "Harry Potter told me how he got into trouble with her too. It didn't end well..."

    "You really believe Harry Potter, do you?"

    The intense chattering stopped abruptly when they heard that question pipe up from Luna Lovegood, of all people, who was sitting on one of the sofas by the huge bronze globe, reading the Quibbler, her father's magazine.

    "Come off it, Luna. You believe him too." Davies said.

    "I know. Daddy says he always knew You-Know-Who would return." She slowly got up and smiled at Hanji, squirming past the rest of the Ravenclaws. "But do you?"

    "Yes," stated Hanji boldly. "I do believe You-Know-Who's coming back, Lovegood. Why else would Umbridge pretend that everything's fine and dandy despite Smith's observation? Oh, he showed her all right... all I did was support him. I even got him in trouble."

    "Come to think of it, I never thought that Humongous Bighead would fight against that hag," Davies realized. "Why did he do that?"

    "He really convinced me. God, he's scary..."

    Luna smiled dreamily. "Not really. Erwin is nice when you speak to him alone. I think it's his friends that kind of influence him."

    Hanji blushed when she felt everyone's eyes back on her. "Well, I dunno, but it's kind of true."

    The Ravenclaws exploded with renewed gossip.

    "So he's your new boyfriend?"

    "A Slytherin?"

    "I thought Ackerman was your boyfriend!"

    "SHUT UP! No, of course Smith's not my boyfriend. That's ridiculous! I don't even like him."

The students exchanged sly looks, and Hanji scoffed, storming up to the new seventh-year girls' dorm.

She tried to ignore the noisy lie detector in her brain.