Harry Potter 50 Shades of Gray

Draco stared blankly before her question sank in. Then, a true and proper terror overtook his expression. Cyrna couldn't help but laugh. "It's not funny!" Draco hissed at her. "With all that wailing and whining, none of us will be getting any sleep!"

"Then you should thank me, Draco," Cyrna said smugly.

Draco looked skeptical.

"I happen to know the cleaning spell."

"Scourgify?" asked Theodore who was walking close enough to hear the conversation.

"That's not something we learn in first year," Daphne noted.

"It's fourth year," said Blaise with surprise from somewhere behind her.

Quickly, Cyrna downplayed her ability. "Only because of the amount of magic required to cast it. The spell itself is pretty simple."

Draco still seemed reluctantly impressed. "Well if you successfully save our eardrums tonight, we'll call it even."

Cyrna felt rather amused. "Deal."

The rest of the journey was decidedly less tense, and by the time they had reached the fields, most of the Slytherins had decided to make a challenge out of harvesting the spikes. They pushed and prodded each other to go first. And eventually, Draco stepped up and gave it a go. However, there had been a miscalculation. While the Spiky Bush was more sluggish during the evening, they had just been fed by the rain from the early morning. They had excess energy to burn, so to speak. A lot of excess energy.

"Incendio!" Draco shrieked, having just barely avoided three rapid projectiles. He scrambled back up the hill and tossed her the three spikes. "Merlin's beard! I almost died!"

Blaise rolled his eyes. "Don't be so dramatic."

"I'd like to see you try."

"They did look faster," Daphne allowed with some confusion. Cyrna explained the matter, and Daphne looked rather sorry. "I shouldn't have pushed for today."

"How many spikes do you need?" asked Blaise.

"I was thinking twenty."

Draco smoothed back his hair. "I'm not repeating that five more times."

Perhaps out of respect for Malfoy's challenge, Blaise made an attempt, but left with a torn robe and another plant casualty with only one spike to show for his efforts. Furthermore, they had all heard of the Ravenclaw who had miserably had his thigh torn clean by a spike. The rest of the Slytherins withdrew with dampened enthusiasm.

"Draco, are we leaving now?" Millicent asked tentatively.

Daphne looked uncertain. "We're already in enough trouble from Madam Sprout—" There were two very burnt, and very dead Bushes—"It might be better to come back another day."

Pansy scoffed. "Yeah, not happening."

But Cyrna was already right here. And with all the Slytherins present, there was no safer circumstance to collect the spikes; Voldemort, and thus Quirrell, wouldn't want to reveal himself to the children of his closest followers just yet—neither would he want to harm them.

"You can't be serious," said Theodore when she walked down the hill.

Cyrna answered with a small smile. She knew she was going to be tipping part of her hand to the rest of the Slytherins, but as long as she withheld her intelligence and continued her mediocre performance on the practicals, she figured that she would be fine.

Blaise let out a long whistle. "We'll hide your corpse since I'd hate to be complicit for murder."

"Except people definitely saw Cyrna leave with us," Daphne said coolly.

"My mistake."

Ignoring the rest of the chatter, Cyrna relaxed her muscles, taking a stance not unlike the one she favoured when duelling against Perenelle.

The air shivered.

And from then on, it was a dance of footwork, each step flowing neatly into the next. There was never a moment where she feared for injury because she knew her abilities. She'd spent months on combat with Perenelle. Even if she had never won, she was no longer the ungainly fawn who had tripped over her own feet when trying to execute a simple dodge. It was showmanship of her reflexes, integral to duelling and combat, but without any allusions to her competency in spellwork.

Cyrna gracefully backed out of the bush's range when the last spike had fired and collected her spikes—all of this completed without casting a single spell.

When she returned to the top of the hill, the Slytherins regarded her with very different expressions. Pansy looked as if she had bit into a lemon, Draco seemed spooked, and Blaise gave her a calculating look.

"I exercise a lot," she lied blatantly.

"And I'm a Hufflepuff," said Theodore.

Daphne was delighted. "You've got to be my duelling partner next year!"

The Slytherins spent the rest of their time in one of the many gardens, and though they had gathered in discontent, by the end of the day, the Slytherins returned to the castle closer than they had been before. Even Crabbe and Goyle, who usually remained silent without Draco's directive, had occasionally chimed into the conversations.

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