Hogwarts Host Club

Wednesday came, still cloudy with a chance of rain. The dungeons were as cold as ever, the students huddling close to their cauldrons for warmth. Rachel and Edward were side by side at their cauldron, Rachel reading today’s instructions carefully as Edward stirred the potion. They still had two weeks left before it would be ready. Annette and Michael were likewise standing over their cauldron, wondering why all of a sudden it had a rather lumpy consistency.

Professor Snape billowed around the room, checking on everyone’s progress. He stopped to criticize the lumpy sludge in Michael’s cauldron, telling him he was supposed to be stirring it, like Edward was. Michael looked like he very much wanted to snarl back at Snape, but restrained himself.
Snape then moved on to peer into Edward’s cauldron, and with a piercing gaze at both Edward and Rachel, he returned to his desk without saying a word. Rachel and Edward looked at each other in disbelief, only last week Snape had actually searched for something to pick on – he said that their fire wasn’t hot enough, and that Edward should polish his cauldron better.

But not today, he just... left them alone. It was weird. Annette and Michael noticed the difference too. They were looking at Edward and Rachel curiously, their cat’s ears upright and alert. Rachel noticed them looking, and raised her eyebrows in question. Annette’s ears drooped, and she returned to her notes. Michael’s ears flattened against his skull as he scowled at her. She poked her tongue out at him, and shuffled her papers, stowing them away in her bag and cleaning up the spare ingredients ready to leave for Herbology.

***

Professor Sprout was more than amused when both Lindsay and Michael sat down in her class sporting a pair of transfigured ears. Michael was used to it, he had almost forgotten about it. Lindsay had not.
His ears were drooping to match his expression – frustrated anger and embarrassment. Rachel prodded him with her spade, telling him to cheer up. When he didn’t, she pushed her pot of Honking Daffodils into his face. His immediate reaction was to swat the flowers away, but Rachel had already yanked them out of his reach. He then leaned away from them, confused beyond compare as to why she would do such a thing.

“What the hell?” he said, looking like he was sinking into a pit of despair. Michael and Edward laughed at his expression. Rachel told him the charm would wear off at midnight on Friday; the thought seemed only to depress him further. Rachel sighed, and returned to tending to the daffodils. She caught Edward’s eye, and smiled. They had gone to the club room last night after dinner to talk, and then gone to bed before Snape came looking for them again.

***

They had Morning Break next, and by then it had started to rain quite heavily. Rachel and Michael were now in bad spirits; their flying lesson had to be cancelled due to gale force winds. Edward had Advanced Potions, and Annette had Charms. Rachel and Michael decided to return to the Host Club room and do some planning for the weekend. Saturday was when everyone was going to Hogsmeade, and the first task was the following Tuesday.

They hoped to have an exciting day on Sunday with their guests; they just had to quickly come up with a plan. Lindsay opted to join them; he had a free period and would otherwise spend the time sleeping if he did not do something to entertain himself. Rachel knew he probably was going to try and find a way to get revenge for the kitty ears, but his success was about as probable as getting Professor Moody and Snape into tutus. Not impossible, but damn near.

***

By lunchtime, they had come up with a roll of parchment’s worth of ideas, notes and diagrams, and they gathered the entire Host Club together for the lunch hour to discuss it.
“The three of us have come up with an idea for Sunday’s session. We believe we should have a Pirate-themed setting, and perhaps see if we can get a hold of the Durmstrang ship.” Rachel announced, spreading their roll of parchment out over the table. Edward peered over her shoulder to look at the diagrams she had drawn of them all in pirate costumes. They weren’t dirty scruffy pirates, but more like pirate nobility, the drawings were rough, but in full colour. They even moved like the pictures that hung on the walls of the castle.

“Take the ship? How do you ever plan to do something like that?” Annette asked with raised eyebrows. Most of the other Hosts looked likewise confused. Rachel, Michael and Lindsay all wore evil smirks.
“Let’s just say we are going to need the help of a certain pair of twins. We need firepower, and lots of it.” Rachel said, her eyed roaming the Gryffindor table to where Fred and George Weasley sat with their brother Ron.

***

Saturday came rather fast; the Host Club had posted a sign that tomorrow they would be down at the Black Lake if anyone wished to visit them. Edward was rather surprised at how popular the Host Club was becoming, Kristie now had people making bookings to visit their favourite Host weeks in advance.
Edward was now waiting in the Entrance hall to meet up with Rachel and the others so that they could all go to Hogsmeade together. It had started snowing; Edward was dressed in a thick black coat over a striped black and green jumper and plain black jeans. He had his Slytherin scarf on as well; he couldn’t find his plain scarf. He was just pulling on his dragonskin gloves when he heard Rachel call out his name.

“Hi Edward, hope you haven’t been waiting long.” She said, slightly breathless. She was wearing a dark purple dress with leggings underneath, tucked into thick, fur-lined boots. She also wore a thick pink overcoat and black scarf, and carried a shoulder bag patterned with flowers. The gold ribbon was still in her ponytail, and she seemed... different. Edward couldn’t quite decide what it was that was different, but he decided it didn’t really matter.
“Nah, haven’t been here long. Where’s everyone else?” he asked casually, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Rachel looked up the Grand Staircase with a scowl.

“They wanted to sleep in so I said I’d meet them later at the Three Broomsticks. So we can go now, if you want to that is.” She said, looking at Edward now rather than the other students passing them in the Entrance Hall. He smiled, and he knew that she knew he was much more than happy to go down to Hogsmeade with her alone.

***

They stopped in Zonko’s, Dervish and Banges, as well as Honeydukes Sweet Shop on their way up the High Street towards the Three Broomsticks. Edward opened the door for her, and Rachel hurried inside as the wind began to pick up and blow the snow about. They edged through the crowd to a spare table up the back. Edward went and bought a butterbeer for Rachel and himself.
They stayed waiting for perhaps half an hour, before Edward asked Rachel if she wanted to go looking for the others. She didn’t look pleased, but agreed. They got up, and went back out into the snow, and up the road towards the Shrieking Shack. They checked all the shops on the way past, but found only Michael and Ashley... in Madam Puddifoots.

Eventually they found the others making battle plans for tomorrow back in the Three Broomsticks; they had missed each other by about five minutes. The Host Club, with the enlisted help of Fred and George Weasley, had a fully-formed battle plan to commandeer the Durmstrang ship. It involved fireworks, Dungbombs, Instant Darkness Powder, and a clever bit of magic.

***

The group split up to head back to Hogwarts, leaving mostly in pairs. Rachel’s bag was stuffed with things she had bought in the shops, plus another bag-full that Edward was carrying for her. Most of it was clothes, and material to make things with for the Host Club. They talked all the way back to the school, about what they did on the holidays, what interesting things had happened to them in their first five years at Hogwarts, as well as about their families.
Edward was glad to have someone he could talk to about his Muggle mother. He told Rachel about her, even showed her a picture. Edward’s father was also in the picture; Edward looked just like him, except he had his mother’s brilliant blue eyes. Edward’s mother had reddish brown hair, much like Rachel’s.

Edward also told her about how he played Quidditch with his childhood friends in his backyard, and all about his estate. He lived in a large white mansion built by the same people who did the Malfoy manor. He had half a dozen purebred Huskies as pets, and an eagle owl called Kira, who was probably up in the owlery sleeping about now.

In turn Rachel told him about her Muggle parents. Her father was a police officer, and her mother ran a small shop in the area where they lived. Rachel had a cat called Smokey, and her sister Lauren had one called Charco. They had a small dog at home, but couldn’t bring him to Hogwarts.
Both Rachel and Lauren had been attending Muggle schools when they got their letters from Hogwarts, Lauren had been worried she wouldn’t be a witch at first, but turned out she was gifted with magic just like her sister. On the summer holidays they would go home and help their mother with the shop, Rachel would spend her time doing art and writing stories; Lauren would catch up with old friends and go shopping.

Eventually the pair reached the Entrance Hall, where Edward would have to descend to the Slytherin’s dungeon common room, whilst Rachel ascended to the seventh floor to her own. She looked... sad, when the time came to say goodbye for the day.
“I had a really nice time today. I just wanted to say thank you, Edward.” She said, smiling and taking the bag he had been carrying for her. He tried to smile, but in truth he wished they didn’t have to be apart so much. He wished they could have at least been in the same house, but he supposed his “cunning pride and ambition” was just too different to Rachel’s “daring, nerve and chivalry”.
She noticed his oncoming gloomcloud, and brushed his fringe out of his eyes. He looked into hers, and saw that she understood what he was feeling. She gently set her bags on the ground, and hugged him. After a moment of confusion, he hugged her back, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and resting his cheek against the top of her head.

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.” She whispered, pulling away to look up into Edward’s eyes, and smile. He smiled back, and said he wanted her to sit with him at dinner tonight. After a slight pause, she agreed.
At that moment Michael, Annette, Brie and Lindsay arrived, and hailed the pair. Rachel grumbled to herself, and all but threw her bags at the other boys, hissing at them like a cat and threatening them with transfigurations if they kept interrupting her like that. Annette and Brie all but flew up the Grand Staircase to avoid getting their serving of angry Rachel.

Edward laughed as Rachel turned back to say goodbye. Ashley breezed into the Entrance hall at that moment, and planted a swift kiss on Michael’s cheek before vanishing in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room. Rachel shook her head with a smirk, and looked up at Edward. He smiled again, brushing Rachel’s fringe off her forehead before kissing it gently.
“I’ll see you later then.” He murmured, watching with amusement as Rachel’s cheeks burned scarlet. She swallowed awkwardly and nodded, before hugging him again and hurrying off after her friends. Edward sighed to himself, and set off down to the dungeons where his common room was.


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