Emily Potter - Book 2 - The Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 2

A terrible instinct took over Emily's actions, and it led her to drop her broom and her bat, unfastening one of her gloves before letting her fingers slide over the top of Draco's head, her grasp tightly pulling as much hair as she could from his head. "What the devil did you say?" Her voice had grown a tad deeper, her fury tainting her tone. Harry had first thought that his sister was holding Malfoy by his hair, but as the second passed, she only grabbed his hair forcefully, dragged him back to render him off balance, and then released him to fall on his arse in front of everyone.

"How dare you! Eat slugs, Malfoy!" Ron cursed, pulling out his lopsided wand. Before Harry could extend himself from where he stood and stop his best friend from making a grave mistake, Ron had already swished his wand at the fallen Slytherin, making everyone cover their eyes from the harsh flash of light from his curse. Emily blinked a couple of times to get rid of the hundreds and thousands of white spots that temporarily diminished her eyesight, immediately gasping when she saw greeted by the sight of Ron cowering over to the grass, pale in the face with the corners of his mouth glossed with opalescent green slime.

Confused, Emily, Hermione, and Harry reached down to hold Ron up to his feet, but he had toppled over once more just in time for a plump green slug to plop out from his mouth and onto Draco's boot. "The teachers can't know about this," Emily felt the weight of her badge tug on her conscience. "Bring him to Hagrid's hut, he ought to know what to do, right?"

Hermione looked back at her and considered her suggestion to be the best course of action. Wordlessly, she and Harry assisted Ron out of the pitch and across the grounds towards the hut by the strawberry field.

With the commotion flattening to a grand silence, Emily looked up from the slug on the ground and then at the remaining Gryffindors in front of her, her skin crawling with embarrassment from her friend's outburst. Oliver and the Weasley twins nodded at her as a small gesture of goodwill just as they filed out of the Quidditch grounds, sadly enough, she didn't feel worthy of it. Not one bit.

"Right," Emily summoned her broom and bat back to her hands and rallied everyone into a tight group as if nothing had happened. "Are we going to practice or not?"

~

Meanwhile in Hagrid's Hut,

The trio watched as Hagrid softly settled a larger than average wooden bucket on Ron's lap, his large hand patting his back all the while he vomited slugs into the bucket. Harry and Hermione paced around the hut relentlessly; Harry replayed the scene in his mind, struggling to add context to what was said and done while Hermione was distracting herself with possible solutions for Ron's magical backfire.

"Malfoy said something – I actually don't know what it means," Harry finally confessed. "It seemed... disturbing. And knowing Malfoy, it felt like he was being fouler than normal."

Hermione was the first to stop pacing, she looked up from her black leather school shoes and glanced at Harry and Hagrid who were immediately saddened by the tears in her glossy brown eyes. "He called me a mudblood." She confessed; the word bitterly spat out from her mouth. Hagrid gasped, his hand covering his mouth that had gaped open, "He did not!"

"What is that, exactly?" Harry asked.

Hermione turned to her shoes again as she rummaged what strength she had left in her, "It's what they call the witches and wizards born to non-magical parents." She muttered, finally looking up again at Harry. "What they label to someone who's a foul Muggleborn – someone like me."

"It was disgusting," Ron wretched in between drops of slugs, "It's rotten language made by even more rotten people like Malfoy."

It saddened Harry even more to understand the entire situation. He thought heavily about how magic had brought him to this secret world, a world he could call home with newfound friends turned family – and despite the beauty, there was still ugliness in the world. It was not all different from the Muggle world.