Dusty Detention

Adelaine and Marigold had unfortunately arrived late to Potions. Not too late…just a half hour or so. It wasn’t their fault, really; Ravenclaw Tower was chaotic that morning, and they’d both woken up late. A few sixth year girls in their house had decided it would be funny to practice sleeping charms on them.

“Can you believe this?” she grumbled to Marigold as they walked down to the dungeons.

Aitken was out sick, and the substitute was even worse than she was. He’d given them detention! They had to clean all the abandoned classrooms down in the murky dark dungeons. At least they had the magic trash bags - those things were adorable.

“Marigold, I forget,” she began, almost tripping down the stairs. “Did you have detention with us in the Great Hall at the beginning of the year?”

Adelaine and her trash bag recognized each other at once and hugged. She wondered if this would seem strange to Marigold, but it didn’t really matter. She felt a bit bad for only visiting the bag once after her last detention. My word, I do not want to be the person who loses count of how many detentions she’s had, she thought grimly, wondering just how much of a troublemaker she really was.

“I’m sure no one’s died here,” Adele reassured her friend, before second-guessing herself. “At least, I’m sure a professor hasn’t killed a student…well, I’m sure a professor hasn’t killed a student in this classroom, anyway.”

That certainly set the mood, didn’t it? Adelaine had to think of some way to liven the party up. She tossed an old (and curiously stained) rag to her bag and looked around. The classroom they were cleaning looked like a disaster area.

“What if we got this room in tiptop shape,” she suggested to Marigold. “And then used it as some sort of hang out place? No one ever comes down here!”

Adelaine and her trash bag slowly circled the room cleaning and clearing. They were currently perched a few feet from a window, dusting the shelves. Adele’s ears perked up when Marigold mentioned the Quidditch game. She rushed to the window next to her friend and stared out.

“That’s not a practice match, teams don’t have practices with each other,” she realized. “We’re missing one of the last games of the year!”

She went silent immediately at the sound of the other voices. Who could they be talking about? I bet it’s Marigold, Adele thought decidedly. If it had been about a boy and girl in the same house (Seamus came to mind) the girls wouldn’t have bothered specifying that the mystery lass was in Ravenclaw.

“Did you see who it was?” she asked Marigold, stretching as high as she could. “Whoever it was, she sounds rather unpleasant.”

Then she figured it would be easier to see them if they were lower and looking up out the window, as right now they were at eye level with their legs. Adelaine tried, but couldn't see much.

"Oh!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I saw a flash of crimson!"

Adele noted the blush on Marigold’s face and wondered whether to let it slide or question her. She tossed an old crumbling bit of parchment to her bag and peered out the window again. That blasted professor was keeping them away from one of the last games of the year; their detention really had to be scheduled for this time? They couldn’t have done it an hour later?

“So, Marigold,” she said, ready to pry. “Are you planning on telling me what happened between you and Victoria?”

She gave her friend time for that question to set in. Did Marigold realize that practically everyone knew? It was the talk of the whole school; it was no wonder Victoria seemed even more awful than normal. The thing was, no one knew what really happened. There were just a thousand different rumors going around.

Looking out the window, Adele saw that the Ravenclaw Chasers were passing the Quaffle back and forth, speeding through the air. One of them slammed the ball past Asher and the crowd went wild.

“Can’t believe we’re not there,” she muttered angrily under her breath, kicking an old vial across the room.

((OOC: I'm sensing a change in the wind...shall we have a mini DA? OMG THAT'S WHAT WE COULD USE THE ROOM FOR. OMG!))

Adelaine listened, frozen in shock. That bawdy little Victoria, who did she think she was? She was no better than a Slytherin..but then, a Slytherin had helped Marigold. So….. So, she was no better than..a frog. That’s a rather weak insult, she scolded herself.

“Marigold, I don’t understand why you didn’t go to the Headmistress straight away,” she shouted, folding her arms. “You had a witness and everything, she could have been expelled! The girl tried to kill you!”

She hadn’t meant for it to come out so harshly, but it really upset her. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand (there were many things), it was seeing people let others walk all over them. If Marigold would just toughen up and stand up for herself… The whole thing reminded Adele of the sphinx incident.

“You have got to learn to fight back, Marigold,” she said seriously, blocking out the cheering outside. “You're lucky Jacob was there, and you're lucky you were taken to the Hospital Wing immediately! There won’t always be someone there to pick up the pieces.”

Adelaine tried as hard as she could to let the unintentional insult slide past, but it was difficult. Everything Marigold had just said was against nobles, a.k.a. Adele. She knew it wasn’t exactly towards her, but it still stung. Especially since she knew a part of it was true.

“Yes, that is how the system works, but not at Hogwarts,” she said tensely. “You know that Ellington doesn’t play into all that, you know she would have expelled Victoria immediately!”

With a huff, Adele slid to the ground and was silent for a moment. She was all tangled up in her thoughts. Is that what they all think of nobles? she asked herself. Is that what they all think of me? The last thing Marigold said also sat uneasily with her. Too hard…is that what Adele was like? Peasants never liked to believe it, but a noble’s life was not all that easy, it was probably more dangerous; everything was not just handed to them. Her parents had instilled in her from an early age that every nobleman was alone. ”Trust is not something we can afford,” her father would say every time there was news of something shady in what he liked to call the game of thrones. Nobility was a tricky business.

“Marigold, we should start a club,” she muttered, the idea just dawning on her. “A defensive magic club!”


((Game of thrones...I couldn't help myself.))

Adelaine set to thinking and planning at once. It would have to be a well-kept secret, spread only by word of mouth. She didn’t know Jacob well, so she wasn’t sure if he had the credentials to make him a leader, but it was worth a shot.

“It isn’t good for one person to have so much power,” she said, sounding like her father. “Perhaps we could recruit a few people to be in charge?”

Jacob was an option, but then she thought of Finn. A fifth year, excellent in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he literally got on well with anyone and everyone. Suddenly, Marigold changed the subject to a rather dangerous topic. It really wasn’t something they should be talking about, there was no point in Adelaine even considering marrying someone beneath her rank…

“Erm, I don’t, um” she sputtered nervously, then cleared her throat. “I suppose if I could choose…that is to say, if Seamus were ..noble…I would…Um…”

It was in that moment when she realized she clearly was more fond of Symon Fendrel than she thought. Why else would that hypothetical question be so difficult to answer? She hadn’t spoken to Symon since the dance, but this conversation brought that night to mind; what had he been about to tell her?

“I don’t know who I would choose,” she decided. More like decided to be undecided. “If you could choose, who would you marry? Out of any of the lads we know.”

“At least you can choose,” she reminded Marigold. “You could never marry Jacob, though Ware isn’t the most prominent house. But you could choose to marry Asher if you liked. If you married someone like that, who respects you, you won't be seen as a 'baby maker'.”

Adelaine stood on her toes to see out the window again. The game was nearly over, and it sounded like Ravenclaw was in the lead. She made a mental note to find Seamus and Gavin immediately after to ask for all the details.

“Sometimes I wish I was in your position,” she muttered, staring out at the grass. “Everyone thinks nobles can have anything they want, but we never get to choose for ourselves. As far as I know, I’ll be shipped off to some lord down south as soon as I come of age.”

Tristayn was in Cambridge, which was awfully far. The furthest south she’d ever been was Scarborough, on a trip to the seaside. Am I still betrothed to him? she wondered earnestly. The last time her parents had written her was on their recent journey to York, and they made no mention of him. York…Symon was of York. What were her parents doing there?

“I’ve got to talk to Symon!” she shouted, panicking as it all came together.

Adelaine watched as the crowd dispersed from the Quidditch Pitch, and thought about what Marigold was saying. She didn’t know much about the peasants’ hierarchy, but servants like the Belets were pretty much on the bottom of the chain. As far as she was concerned, a young noble girl didn’t have much more freedom.

“He respects you, I’m sure,” she said thoughtfully. “But he’s a thirteen year old boy with much more on his mind.. He could be shipped off to war at any moment, or taken out of school and married.”

Letting that sink in, she thought about the dance and tried to piece it all together. Was her assumption correct?

“At the dance, Symon kept saying we needed to talk,” Adele stated slowly. “And my parents, they recently journeyed to York, which the Fendrels hold. It’s probably just a coincidence, but my father and Lord Fendrel have never been too friendly with one another, and there wasn’t a tournament or anything. What else would he be doing there?”

Adelaine was a bit light-headed with all this talk of marriage and Symon and boys. She spread her cloak out on the ground and laid down.

“Well, I hate to admit it,” she said honestly. “But Symon and I have much more in common than Seamus and I do…Symon understands what I go through as a noble, I mean we both grew up in the same kind of house, and we’re both from the north.”

When did these feelings even come about? At the beginning of the year, she wanted to spend every second with Seamus, they were the best of friends. Then she met Symon and realized how much less mature Seamus was than she would have liked, and how little they had to talk about other than Quidditch and Ravenclaw and things like that.

“What was that?” she sat up suddenly, hearing a loud CRACK in the hallway.

Adelaine furrowed her brow and glared at the professor as he left. Who on earth did he think he was? She set to thinking immediately, and paced back and forth as Marigold cleaned. He was only a substitute, he couldn’t have any real power.

“He can’t take points!” she exclaimed, feeling quite confident. “Only the Headmistress and professors can give and take points, not substitutes. Right?”

She sat right back down on her cloak and smiled. This was almost the most rebellious she had ever felt. Adele wanted to just walk right out of here, go find Seamus and Gavin at the pitch, go to dinner, and then go to the headmistress.

“Couldn’t we tell Ellington about this?” she asked thoughtfully. “He threatened you! Not violently, but sinisterly enough..”

Thinking about this brought her high down just a bit. Men and women would never be equals, though their headmistress was a woman (obviously). It wasn’t even illegal for a man to beat his wife, though Adelaine had always thought it should be. Although, it also wasn't illegal for a woman to beat her husband.

“Well, we could at least tell her about the points,” she decided, drumming her fingers on the floor. “Let’s go, Marigold! Come on, the bags know their way around, let’s just leave!”

Adele skipped down the hallway with a grin, knowing her friend would follow.