Chapter 29
It took time, and gentle prodding to coax Luna to keep talking. At some point, she’d lay against Taylor, resting her head with eyes closed. Taylor listened to Luna’s history getting angrier at Snape with each word, but doing her best not to show it
“…I’d barge into her laboratory, playing at being a proper witch. Mum always joined in,” Luna said. “She’d let me wave her wand, and teach me the words. She’d always promise that when I came to Hogwarts, she’d teach me all the important charms.”
“That sounds lovely,” Taylor said, floundering for words.
“It was.”
“I’m sorry,” she added lamely.
“It’s alright,” Luna whispered, her head still resting on Taylor’s shoulder.
A quiet stretch followed, and soon, Taylor heard Luna’s soft breathing.
Left alone and holding her sleeping, hurting friend, Taylor wrestled with angry thoughts. Had Snape said that intentionally to hurt Luna or was he just cruel and uncaring?
Without meaning to, Taylor had prodded at all Luna’s tender spots, gently coaxing her out of her shell, only to have Snape come and stick his beaked nose into the bleeding wound and undo all of Taylor’s unintended work.
At the edges of her mind, the bugs churned and buzzed. Even Arabelle was affected, skittering frantically inside her cage.
Something had to change.
A tiny voice inside her head told her to remember the promise. Taylor squashed that voice like it was an annoying bug. She’d endured this for far too long. Complaining to the school faculty hadn’t helped. Complaining again would probably make the man even more intolerable. She could let jabs aimed at her pass, but hurting Luna?
That was something she couldn’t forgive.
A plan formed in her mind. Targeting the professor directly was out of the question; too risky. Taylor didn’t want to become like the brunette in her dreams, using the bugs to hurt people, but there was an even better target than the man himself: his precious potions.
Morning arrived far too quickly. Taylor hadn’t slept a wink, holding her friend, plotting revenge, and moving bugs where they needed to be. Then the whole school was in an uproar packing and preparing for the train trip.
Taylor led a still muted Luna through morning ablutions, and breakfast. She shoveled food and drank coffee to stave off sleep. After that, she returned to her room with Luna only to realise she had a few glaring issues to address.
The first was Nap. She’d grown so much she didn’t fit her cage anymore. There was no way Taylor would be able to take Nap home by using that cage. It had been months, and she wasn’t blind to how everyone treated Nap. She’d pretended as best as she could that the owl was a simple barn owl, but it was time to face the truth.
She grabbed the fat bird, inspecting her from beak to tail.
Most of the white feathers had fallen or changed colour. The upper parts of her ear tufts were tawny and mottled with darker blackish colouring. The wings and tail were barred. The feathers in her underbelly were variably hued buff, streaked with darker feathers. The distinct facial disc was not very defined, but the orange eyes were distinctive.
“You’re not a barn owl,” Taylor declared with the solemnity of someone admitting to a huge sin.
“Of course not!” Harriet yelled from the other bunk.
Taylor looked at her roommate, who hadn’t wanted to be friends, tilting her head. Harriet had the look of someone who had wanted to yell those words for far too long.
“That’s an eagle-owl!”
Mira laughed, and Luna gave Taylor a tired smile that seemed to say: “Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Oh,” Taylor said, glancing back at Nap. “Dear me, you’re going to keep growing, aren’t you?”
Nap spread her wings and hooted proudly.
“You’ll have to fly home and wait for me there. I can’t take you on the train with me. The cage is too small for you, and well,” Taylor glanced at the cage in question. “It’s already occupied.”
That gave Taylor her second problem to deal with: In the weeks since they had adopted Arabelle, the critter had mellowed. Now, she only tried to bite people every once in a while instead of every time she climbed onto someone. She couldn’t let Luna take Arabelle home for fear of the spider biting her friend, she couldn’t leave Arabelle in the castle for fear of the same.
Her options were to release Arabelle into the forest or take her home.
Instead of deciding herself, she approached the cage, opened the door, and whispered to the spider.
“You can come home with me or go back to the forest.” She let the words hang for a little before saying the next part. “Stay in the cage if you want to come with me.”
Arabelle clicked her pincers and didn’t leave the cage, which, Taylor guessed, solved that second problem.
She packed the important things, doing her best to keep the gifts hidden from Luna. Most of the school books she was leaving in the dorms. The holidays lasted only a few days and it didn’t make sense to take those back.
Once done, Taylor helped Luna finish packing.
Luna still hadn’t gotten better from the previous day, but at least she wasn’t behaving like a machine anymore.
Around a quarter to ten in the morning Penny gathered all the students in the common room.
“The carriages are leaving in a few minutes,” she yelled over the buzzing crowd. “Anyone returning home should go to the castle entrance. Now!” As the crowd started to move out of the dorm, she yelled something else. “And remember that you are forbidden from using charms outside school. Don’t do it, the Ministry takes the Statute of Secrecy seriously.”
That soured Taylor’s mood almost as bad as Snape’s bullying. She’d heard about the secrecy, but she wasn’t aware she couldn’t use magic at home. Why? And how? Before the start of school, she’d used a lot of spells and never had any problems.
She marched towards Penny, and her steps were a bit more forceful than necessary. “Why can’t we use spells at home? I did it a lot before arriving at Hogwarts.”
Penny nodded, looking sad. “The Ministry puts a tracer on every student once they arrive at Hogwarts. After that, when someone uses a spell outside school, they’ll know about it. Don’t do it, alright, Tay?” The older blonde patted Taylor’s head, before pushing her toward the door. “Now off with you, or you’ll miss the carriage.”
Instead of going out, Taylor ran back to her dorm room for one last bit of preparation. She cracked open windows, fed Nap lots of food and let the bird fly home ahead of time. Then, after making sure there wasn’t anyone else nearby, she brought her almost forgotten stowaways and hid them under her robes.
“Hi guys,” she greeted them. “It’s nice to see you again. Dee, Dum, even you, Bity!”
Leaving the doxy unchecked on her nest was probably a recipe for disaster.
After that, Taylor caught up with the leaving students and followed them out of the castle and towards the carriages. It was her first time seeing them. They looked appropriately magical, with no visible creatures to pull them, but her bugs had already noticed the invisible thestrals.
Luna climbed and Taylor followed soon after.
“The carriages are being pulled by thestrals, right?” she asked, trying to engage Luna in a subject she seemed interested in before.
Luna’s big, sad eyes turned to Taylor. “Yes,” she said in a voice that made sure that wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.
In her head, Taylor cursed Snape even more.
Two other students joined their carriage. Hufflepuff Pippa Rosewood and a Slytherin boy she didn’t know the name of.
Pippa gave them a shy smile, but was otherwise too busy with her nose deep into a herbology book to pay them any attention. The Slytherin, following the norm, sniffed at them and turned his nose up, pretending that they didn’t exist.
Soon after, the carriage started moving.
Taylor waited until they were far away from the castle to implement her revenge.
All night long, she’d snuck bugs inside Snape’s sanctum, mapping everything she could without alerting the professor. Much to her surprise, near the shelf with the stored potions, he had several brewing solutions bubbling inside cauldrons.
In one of those, her bugs smelled Bundimun secretion.
In a full act of spite that was probably an atrocious idea, Taylor had her bugs carry the Boomslang skin and drop it into the bubbling cauldron.
At first, nothing happened. Seconds passed and the liquid bubbled peacefully. Then the potion started bubbling faster, smoke poured out of the cauldron, and all of Taylor’s bugs inside Snape’s room suddenly died.
A ripple reverberated through the castle. She felt it through all her bugs in the dungeons and tunnels.
Taylor let out a self-satisfied huff. No one hurt Luna.
With less students visiting home for holidays, Taylor managed to snag a compartment for her and Luna alone. After both got in, she blocked the door with their trunks, taking them out only after the train had already started moving.
The gentle lulling of the carriage proved to be more potent than the two cups of coffee Taylor drank at breakfast, and she woke up to find she’d fallen asleep on Luna. She had her head on Luna’s lap, with her dreamy friend gently petting her hair, while watching Arabelle scurry around the compartment.
Taylor got up just in time to receive the trolley witch, but regretfully, she didn’t have any money for candies this time.
The trip passed in quiet, but not uncomfortable silence.
Sooner than she’d expected, the train docked on Platform 9¾. Taylor grabbed her trunk, and together with Luna, disembarked. She had this whole scenario planned inside her head. It’d been months since she last saw her mum and after a big, nice hug, she’d tell her about what she’d done to Snape.
She spotted her mum among the crowd and all plans fled her mind.
“Mum!” she cried out.
Taylor ran, leaving her trunk behind. She tackled her mother in a bear hug and buried her face in her mum’s clothing. Then the floodgates opened.