Evening came, and on her way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Alexandra heard a third-year Gryffindor affirm that Hermione was crying in the toilet of the girls and wanted to be left alone. The Gryffindor group who spoke about it did not appear really sorry or desolated by the news, Alexandra noticed. Noticing the dark glance Alex Sykes threw her at that very moment on the other side of the corridor, Alexandra hurried down the stairs, forgetting for the moment the sad excuse of loyalty existing in Gryffindor.
As she entered the Great Hall, the Halloween decorations put all her problems out of her mind.
A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. There were different shadow and orange magical animations, a lot of pumpkins and several decorations like skeletons, spiders and gargoyles. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had on the Sorting Feast's day. Alexandra and the hundreds of students began to eat, some with more manners than others. A large majority of the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables served themselves with dignity and knew all the correct forks and knives to use for all the meals. Others had a less perfect behaviour. Ron Weasley was swallowing and chewing his food with the grace of a pig, Alexandra saw some Gryffindors next to him taking a green colour at this horrifying spectacle of mastication. Crabbe and Goyle were other examples of bad manners and disgracing conduct.
Alexandra had just taken a second part of a meat looking and tasting like chicken when the two Defence Against the Dark Arts Professors came sprinting into the Hall. Devkins had his "I forgot something important" look. Quirell had blood on his clothes, bruises on his arms, his turban was half-detached and he was looking terrified.
Everyone stared at them. Devkins tried to articulate "I forgot, forgot..."
Quirell brutally interrupted him, shouting in a panicked scream "TROLL! THERE IS A TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!"
"Thought you ought to know." He added unnecessarily in a comatose tone. And then he fainted and collapsed on the floor. Devkins was standing like a zombie, not reacting to the panic he had just unleashed.
The Great Hall dissolved immediately in chaos. Students shouted, cried, screamed, asked questions, try to make themselves heard. It took several purple spells with loud "BANGS!" exploding from Headmaster Dumbledore's wand to bring back silence.
"Prefects," the silver-haired wizard rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"
Alexandra groaned. They were in a secure position in the Great Hall, but the man who believed he was Merlin reborn was sending them with just older students to their common room. What a strategic mistake. Alexandra had just a horrible thought then. Was not the Slytherin common room located in the dungeons? Unfortunately, before she had the time to signal this minor problem to a figure of authority, a prefect took her with her fellow first-years towards the double doors.
"Follow me!" Shouted the black-haired boy, who looked submerged by the chaos and not in the figurative sense. "Follow me! Stick together, first-years! Make way, first-years coming through! Prefect coming through! Excuse me! First-years! Prefect!"
His efforts were...insufficient to say the least. The crowd of students was coming in every direction, and Alexandra was not long in losing sight both of the Prefect and her year-mates. She nearly avoided crashing in a fifth-year Gryffindor on the second floor, but was pushed by an elder Ravenclaw not ten seconds later. Vexed from being a punching ball in the stairs, Alexandra took a moment in a nearby corridor to regain her breath and think about another path to reach the Ravenclaw common room.
After ten seconds of observing her surroundings, she knew approximately where she was, and hurried down a corridor to the left to go in the direction of a secret passage which would let her reach the fourth floor rapidly. After that...
She had just turned a corner when she heard quick footsteps coming in front of her. Quickly she hid behind the statue of a stone griffin which was fortunately not far from here. To Alexandra's surprise, it was not a Prefect but the Senior Potions Master, Professor Snape himself. Strange, as all the teachers were supposed to go with Dumbledore in the dungeons to deal with the troll, and she had thought the Head of House Slytherin would care about the fate of his students, who perhaps were on their way to meet a troll at this very instant. Snape appeared to be at the limit of running, turned to the left in a dark corridor and disappeared from her view. She breathed quite loudly in relief. If the professor had seen her, she would have had a lot of points deducted and...
"Potter!"
Alexandra had just left the place behind the griffin statue that a voice in front of her called her. But it was not Snape. It was Alex Sykes.
Groaning, Alexandra realised the fourth-year student had had to follow her when she was separated from the rest of the Ravenclaw students. Seeing his face, his intentions were not hard to guess.
"BOMBARDA!"
"Seriously, Sykes?" she replied, rolling again the griffin to escape the shockwave the fourth-year had sent towards her. "Do you know only that spell?"
"You will die Potter! BOMBARDA! BOMBARDA!"
Seeing her enemy was doing his best to destroy the corridor, Alexandra replied by drawing her wand, casting an overpowered "LUMOS!", and Sykes stopped instantly his spells, falling to his knee and screaming:
"My eyes! My eyes!"
She was debating with herself what spell to use to finish him when a disgusting smell interrupted her reflexion. It was really foul, like if someone hadn't washed in a year, or the kind of odour one obtained when dustbins were left open a long time to rot. A low grunting echoed in the deserted corridor.
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