Falling Snow

The night after the duelling club, the snow began to fall, and it swept up into a blizzard. The History of Magic classroom was cold because Professor Binns was a ghost. He didn't feel the cold, so he never lit a fire in the fireplace. Well, it was not like he could light a fire even if he thought it was needed.

I sat at my desk in mittens and a scarf, keeping warm as I read Curses and Counter-Curses. I was bored and flipping through pages. I had read this book several times, so I was bored just flipping through the book.

Tim was fully asleep and softly snoring, head propped up with a hand drool slowly running down his arm. His mouth was slightly open, and inspiration hit me at that moment.

I pulled out some notepaper; now, while all assignments had to be done with quill and parchment, I found I could take notes with a pen and paper in a binder like any other school. So I tore the note paper into small chunks, scrunching them up into little balls. 

Nudging Grant, who was reading a book himself, which was the history of the magic book assigned this year, I showed him the new and fun game I had just come up with. without saying a word I showed him the 20 ish balls of paper I had made, picking one up I lightly tossed it at Tims's face. It bounced off his nose, 'dam,' I thought; Tim didn't react to the paper ball hitting his nose, the white noise of Professor Binn's lecture working its sleepy magic. I gestured to the paper balls to Grant, and a sinister smile appeared on Grant's face.

So we played a game of who could get a paper ball into Tim's mouth first. About 50 paper balls later, I managed a hell of a shot, and it landed in his open mouth. This woke up Tim violently, with lots of coughing and small paper balls going everywhere. He fell off his chair, coughing and with a shower of paper balls that had been caught in his hair and robes from missed shots. 

Grant and I tried unsuccessfully to hold our giggles and look straight ahead. Professor Binns didn't even notice the commotion, but the other students who were falling asleep saw the aftermath. Tim was on the ground, covered in paper balls and one really wet one in his hand. 

People gave him odd looks, then saw Grant and me with red faces and huge smiles as we tried to suppress our laughter and knew what had happened.

Tim brushed himself off, picked up a handful of the paper balls, and threw them at us. And the dam broke. Grant and I nearly pissed ourselves in laughter. 

"yes, the goblin King of 1484 had quite the humorous name, Urguffer the Biter," Professor Binns said without looking at the classroom. 

After History of Magic, we had lunch, and, unfortunately, a very loud Hufflepuff was annoying the hell out of me. 

"Harry's definitely the Heir of Slytherin; he's a parselmouth; there's the reason they called Salazar the serpent-tongue." Ernie Macmillian was talking out his arse to the rest of the Hufflepuffs. Hannah Abbot was listening with keen interest.

"what's this load of bollocks," I said to Ernie. "because harry can talk to snakes, he's the heir?"

"yeah, that's right," Ernie said defensively. "that's why I told Justin to hide. We all saw Potter tell that snake to attack Justin." people around him nodded. 

"Oh, you must be very proud, Ernie. Instead of comforting your friend, you scare him and then come to lunch to scare others" I got to cross. "Are you planning to work on the paper? Because praying on people's fear for attention is what they do:" At this point, Grant dragged me away. "also, how do you know Harry told the snake to attack? It was in another language. Can you speak it as well, Ernie? Is that why you're trying to convince people it's Harry because it's you?" Grant was really dragging me now, but I wanted to shut that prick up. He had been annoying me.

I think I got my point across not to believe anything he said because some Hufflepuff now looked away from him, and Hannah had got up to help usher me away. 

"why did you pick that fight?" Tim asked. He still had paper caught in his curly brown hair, which and I both thought it better not to tell him about. Hannah wasn't in on the gag and kept looking at his hair strangely.

"oh, he's been pissing me off since the first attack," I said. "I figured he was spreading rumours. He's a loudmouth. He and that Oswald have both been doing it." 

"strange it came from, Hufflepuff," said Grant.

"Not really where all people are, and we all love gossip. Ernie loved the attention too much, and Oswald is still vindictive," I said as I started to eat some sandwiches. Ernie's voice started to get loud behind me, and I saw him in an argument with Harry. 

I swallowed the bite of the sandwich I had and the guilt that came from knowing Justin had just been attacked. 'I could have warned him, I could have done something.' I thought, 'but what if I did and somebody else was attacked and killed? It's just through the luckiest circumstance that these people don't die.' my internal war started again.

It wasn't long till peeves started flying through the great hall and screaming, "Another attack! No mortal or ghost safe!"