"Esmeralda! Wake up!" A voice broke through her flood of dreams, that had just seconds earlier been about her being a unicorn, spreading happiness and unicorn poop all over the world.
Esmeralda grunted and rolled over to the other side of her bed, wrapping herself into her blanket as though it was her life.
"Come on, it's five o'clock already!" Benjamin said, pulling off the blanket.
"It's still night, Benji," Esmeralda complained, hiding her head under her blue pillow.
Benjamin rolled his eyes. "It doesn't mean you can't do anything useful as you're already awake."
Esmeralda frowned. "Don't you listen to yourself, Benjamin? It's still night, there's no need to do anything else at a time like this, or any time."
Benjamin walked over to her closet and pulled out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. "You only live once you know, Esmeralda, you have to live it to the fullest!" Benjamin threw the clothes at her.
Esmeralda groaned. "I'll come, but don't expect me to run, just give me five minutes."
"For what, sleeping or getting dressed?"
Esmeralda wrapped herself into her blanket again like a cocoon and said, "The first one."
Benjamin unwrapped Esmeralda from her blanket, which took a while as Esmeralda was fighting against him, and once again threw the clothes at her face. "No sleeping, get some clothes on," Benjamin said sternly.
"Fine, but I won't jog a million times around Hogwarts!" Esmeralda said, pointing her finger at him.
"Fine, one million minus one then." Benjamin teased as he hurried out of the room to avoid an incoming shoe that was aimed for his head.
Esmeralda sat up groggily in her bed and stretched her arms out in the air, yawning before she went over to the closet where she found her uniform and robes, which she pulled out and flung onto her bed.
She sat down and buttoned on her shirt, tied her tie, put on her pantyhose, her skirt and finally her shoes.
Entering the bathroom with her robe hanging by her arm as though it was hung on a clothesline, she washed her face with water to wake her up and brushed through her hair before putting on her robes.
Twenty minutes later of groggily walking through the castle, Esmeralda found herself in the courtyard of Hogwarts, looking expectantly at Benjamin.
"Are you expecting me to give you a performance or are you just half sleeping?" Benjamin asked a bit confused.
Esmeralda squinted her eyes, trying to be more awake. "A good mix of both."
Benjamin smirked. "I see you dropped the jogging."
Esmeralda squinted her eyes once more, yawning. "Yeah, one Esmeralda De Casseres can't jog at the crack of dawn, but I can accompany you on a broom and probably crash into that tree you wished for me to crash into earlier."
"Because you're too tired to not fall asleep on the broom?" Benjamin asked.
Esmeralda yawned and stretched her arms high into the air. "No, because I suck at riding brooms and it wouldn't go any better with Esmeralda De Zombie."
Benjamin smiled foolishly. "Now I really want to see Esmeralda De Zombie riding a broom."
Esmeralda chuckled at Benjamin's fond smile when she had summoned the broom and was attempting to sit on it, falling off the end an endless amount of times.
On her billionth try, she managed to sit on the broom without falling off the end, but now she was only concentrating on balancing it so she wouldn't fall off it sideways, which probably could hurt even more as her head could smash into something far easier.
"I told you, Esmeralda De Zombie sucks at riding a broom." Esmeralda reminded Benjamin as she wobbled after him.
Benjamin turned around, jogging backwards, "Oh, I don't know, you seem fairly alike Esmeralda De Casseres and not Esmeralda De Zombie at the moment."
Esmeralda wrinkled her nose and said, "Don't be too sure about that, maybe you've never even met the real Esmeralda De Casseres, maybe you've only met Esmeralda De Zombie."
Benjamin turned around again and continued jogging. "If you say so, but I believe you're not as tired as you were half an hour ago, am I right?"
Esmeralda dangerously wobbled on her broom, only to gain balance again after five minutes. "You're partly correct by a minuscule percentage, which I estimate is around 0,01. It doesn't make much of a difference."
"Maybe a little higher percentage, maybe 0,1?" Benjamin suggested, his breath was slightly heavier now.
Esmeralda pursed her lips. "I'll give you 0,05, but nothing higher okay?"
Benjamin drew a deep breath before answering, "The battle isn't yet won."
An hour later, Esmeralda had finally mastered the skill of not wobbling too much on her broom, so there was no longer a critical danger of her crashing into a tree, much to Benjamin's dismay as he'd been looking rather forward to it.
The two stopped by the Quidditch Pitch where Esmeralda put back the school broom into the broom cupboard where she on her way out could make out the small figures of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, who for some obscure reason had decided to practice at such an early hour as this.
Deciding that she didn't feel like watching Benjamin jogging past her by the black lake every ten minutes while trying to fill the time in between devoted to breaking leaves apart only to throw them at Benjamin when he jogged past her, she sat down on one of the benches in the tribune, trying to sleep again.
Ten minutes into the Gryffindor team's practice, Esmeralda gave up on her hopeless attempt at sleeping and decided to watch the Gryffindors play, which at the moment they did not, they seemed to be hovering in the air talking to each other and pointing at someone on the other side of the pitch.
Esmeralda watched in interest as the Gryffindor team quarrelled about something making them unable to spot a group of students strutting towards them in bottle green robes holding brooms in their right hands.
Even Esmeralda was so absorbed in their quarrel, she didn't even notice when Luna sneaked onto her, sitting casually down beside her, which made Esmeralda yelp in shock before smiling.
"I believe I saw some Nargles and Wrackspurts around here just a second ago, you didn't by any chance see or feel their presence?" Luna asked in her usual dreamy voice, not making eye contact, but rather searching the pitch for something with her eyes.
"Not really, Luna, sorry. What are they anyway?" Esmeralda asked.
Luna stared into Esmeralda's eyes, creeping her out a bit. "They're bugs that I figured would suit other names."
Esmeralda frowned. "So what's so special about them then?" Esmeralda asked her in curiosity.
Luna thought for a long while, making Esmeralda think she had already forgotten her question when she answered, "It's fun messing with peoples minds, especially when they just look at you in confusion."
"You know, I'm starting to like you even more, by every second you talk, no wonder Gilderoy got you into our group," Esmeralda said in awe.
Luna opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the loud arguing of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, who had just met the Slytherin and they did not look any pleased at all.
On the other side of the tribune, Esmeralda could make out the body of a person she knew she wasn't any fond of, a blonde, pale boy with a shining camera that could blind you just by the metal, Creevey had probably polished it five hours each day.
The boy ran down to the pitch where the two Quidditch teams were arguing about something. He probably wanted a photograph as usual. "Feel like having a better look at the teams? The place is probably full of Nargles." Luna suggested dreamily.
Esmeralda frowned. "I thought you just said Nargles were just made up."
Luna shrugged. "Maybe I was joking."
"So they're real?" Esmeralda asked doubtfully.
"Or maybe I wasn't?" Luna said as the two of them walked down to the pitch to have a closer look at the two rivalling Quidditch teams.
"I don't believe it! Where do you think you're going, Flint?" asked the Gryffindor Quidditch captain, a tall older boy with brown-blonde hair.
"Quidditch practice!" the other captain sung.
"But I booked the pitch for Gryffindor today." said the Gryffindor captain, looking like he would like nothing more than burning the Slytherin team up, leaving only ashes on the grass.
The Slytherin Quidditch captain sneered and handed the Gryffindor captain a piece of parchment. "Easy, Wood. I've got a note."
Wood scoffed before reading the note out loud. "I, Professor Severus Snape do hereby give the Slytherin team permission to practice today, owing to the need to train their new Seeker."
Wood furrowed his eyebrows in disbelief. "You've got a new seeker? Who?"
A blonde boy in the same bottle green robes as his teammates, emerged from somewhere in the middle of his team, as though he was the lucky penguin who had had the pleasure to have been warmed up by his penguin friends, it was, of course, Draco Malfoy, Esmeralda's fellow F.A.R.T. member.
"Malfoy?" A boy in the Gryffindor team asked in disbelief, Harry Potter.
Draco wiggled his eyebrows. "That's right. And that's not all that's new this year."
Draco put his black broom on the ground in a standing position before he started dancing around it like a stripper.
"Oh, please stop it, Malfoy." Hermione requested in disgust.
Draco wiggled his eyebrows even more, and continued on even more until his broom was snatched away from him by a slightly disgusted Flint.
Ron cleared his throat before saying, "Those are Nimbus Two-Thousand and Ones! How'd you get those?"
Draco rolled his eyes. "So that's how it is, isn't it? No one's going to compliment my dancing? I have never been so disappointed in my entire life, well, except for that one time when my father taught me the art of dancing and he tripped."
Everyone went silent before Flint broke the ice. "A gift from Draco's father."
Draco's lips curled up into a smirk. "You see, Weasley, unlike some, my father can afford the best." Draco waited for a while before adding, "However, father somehow still says he can't afford ballet shoes for me ..."
"At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in. They got in on pure talent. And they don't need to strip in front of anyone to get acknowledgement." Hermione said, clearly pleased with her comeback.
Draco looked highly offended, especially when Hermione had commented on his dancing and in a rage, he said, "No one asked your opinion you filthy little Mudblood!"
Ron gasped and flung his hand on his heart before fishing out his wand from his pockets. "You'll pay for that one Malfoy! Eat slugs!"
His wand lit in green and shot back, making Ron go green, falling down to his knees gaging. Hermione and Harry got down to support the now slug-puking Ron.
"Throwing up slugs are really good for your digestion system, if you're lucky, you swallow a little slug pee, which guarantees you luck in some odd thing that you don't know of until you find out," Luna commented dreamily while Ron gave thumbs up while throwing up yet another slug.
"Can you turn him around, Harry?" Creevy asked hopefully.
Harry and Hermione helped Ron up to his legs and Harry said, "No Colin! Get out of the way!" And with that, Harry, Hermione and Ron left, leaving the opposing teams staring at the pond of slugs and slime where Ron had been just seconds earlier.
Wood looked at it in disgust and said, "Yeah, you can keep the pitch, Flint."
Flint looked bewildered and then disgusted. "No, we can wait."
"I'm giving you the pitch out of free will, Flint, what does it take to please you?" Wood said disappointedly.
"Puke." Flint murmured.
Luna rolled her eyes, probably for the first time in her life, because it looked more like she was looking up at the sky and then down. "Can't you just have a game of Quidditch for fun, that's got to be a better practice than just flying around for no peculiar reason."
Both Flint and Wood thought hard for a good five minutes before Wood said, "Fine, but we don't have a seeker at the moment."
Flint shrugged. "We'll just drop having Malfoy on our team then."
"WHAT?" Malfoy screamed in a high pitched voice as he kicked the air with his legs.
"FOR PRACTICE!" Flint said angrily.
Malfoy muttered some swear words under his breath and gave Flint the finger while walking away.
Colin Creevey saw his chance and quickly lifted his camera and clicked the button on top of it, releasing the blitz.