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"Not at all. Heir Malfoy. But I would be terribly," the Potter heiress stressed as much as she could the last word, «lacking in courtesy and traditions if I didn't let you enter first the Hall."
And she emphasized the sentence with a large movement of her hand and a small scrape. Any other Ravenclaw student of second-year would have understood she was making fun of them, but the four Slytherins were unlikely to win any competition of intelligence in the short-term future.
Malfoy inflated like a frog as his ego was caressed, all prudence banished from his mind. The son of Lucius Malfoy marched in a triumphant manner in the direction of the Slytherin table, his three lackeys on his heels...only to stop a few seconds later with screams of horror. Touching the imperceptible rope of magic had activated a sort of trap with a can of paint and coloured the four second-years Slytherin entirely in orange. Not just the robes, no. The hair, the face, the robes, the hats: everything had become a vibrant, horrid and brilliant orange. Listening to the laughter behind her, Alexandra looked over her shoulder in time to see the Golden Trio running up in the stairs.
"Professor Snape! It's Longbottom , Black and Weasley!" Whined Malfoy, whose platinum-blonde hair had become a deep orange which was making him frankly ridiculous. "Look at what they've done! When my father will hear of this..."
Morag and Alexandra looked each other, and then ran to the Ravenclaw table doing their best not to laugh, as Professor Snape, black robes bellowing theatrically, left his place at the Head table and went to examine the new skin's colour of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. The four pranked Slytherin didn't seem to enjoy their new appearance, if their moaning was any indication. Crabbe and Goyle were not talking, but it was possible their speed of thoughts was so slow they hadn't still realised the trap they had just fallen into. There was also the issue painting them in orange might make them more presentable, depending on the perspective. It could hardly make them uglier, given that they were currently the persons at Hogwarts bearing the most resemblance to a certain Dudley Dursley.
Fortunately for the orange-painted students, Professor Snape was not only competent in potions, cauldrons and strange ingredients. Two twirls of his wand, and Malfoy plus cohorts were back to their original colours. Alas, the Potions master could do nothing for the humiliation the girl and the three boys had just been handed. Morag and Alexandra had refrained to burst in cries and laughter, but the rest of the crowd now assembled in the Great Hall had no such compunction. At the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables, dozens of students savoured the discomfiture of the Malfoy Heir and his allies. The Slytherins were not laughing, their unity against every other Houses prevented them to do so, but Snakes like Nott and Higgs were smirking, and no one rose to display his support to the Malfoy Heir. Even the young cousin of the arrogant and wealthy pure-blood Lyre de Male-Foi was contemplating with a disabused expression the spectacle unfolding. Unlike her relative, she knew the blow the family's reputation had suffered by acting like a petulant child.
Returning to Professor Snape, the Head of Slytherin was presently showing a face which would have made any living being flee with all celerity. With his black robes and the feeling of imminent death the teacher spread around him, the Boy-Who-Lived and his friends were not going to pass a nice moment when they would be dragged for a fateful meeting with him. At the moment, the caretaker Argus Filch was standing at attention before him, his detested cat Mrs Norris on the right, in all likelihood receiving his marching orders to captures the miscreants plaguing the corridors of the noble school. Finally, Snape ceased to speak and Filch departed the Hall to fight the crime in the corridors. The huge doors progressively closed with a loud "GONG!" and the chatter of conversations as the Headmaster rose from his large seat among his fellow professors.
"Happy Halloween!" Beamed Albus Dumbledore with a grandfather-expression which once more made him an avatar of Merlin or Gandalf on this Earth."The pumpkins are larger than ever and orange reigns supreme! Tick in!"
Fine. No sanity in his sentences this Halloween.
The golden plates and the dishes instantly filled themselves of delicious foods. Once more time, the raven-haired witch remarked a great majority of the available meals this evening were denied to the students during the rest of the year. Was Hogwarts having funds problem or did the adults simply want to avoid the future generation of magicians looking like Dudley Dursley? Alexandra felt she could very well deal with this kind of dinner every day. Well apart from the fact she would need to do physical activities every day, not just the running in the castle she did three times a week. Oh, and while the food was excellent, the clouds of bats and the large pumpkins cut to display large mouths with candles in them were not of good taste, at least in her opinion. The music which was also played by invisible musicians was a bit too dramatic for Halloween. That said an adult had chosen the songs, thus it was perhaps excusable.
All in all, it was for an acceptable dinner and Alexandra could see Hermione and Nigel shared her opinion at the Gryffindor table. There was certainly no troll to kill the ambiance tonight. No member of the staff except the caretaker was absent, so it was highly improbable a monster was currently on rampage at Hogwarts. The green-eyed girl was taking her second part of dessert of the evening and thinking about the upcoming Samhain festivities at MacDougal Manor when an awful sound echoed abruptly in the Great Hall. Like if someone had pushed a switch, the joyous voices of all the students and professors who were enjoying the moment died, with fear and surprise appearing to replace happiness and tranquillity. What exactly could have made such a noise?