If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Playerfanfic
————-
Heri's friends surged forward and hovered frantically. Heri's robe was pulled aside to reveal a slash in her shirt from her hip to shoulder blade. The material was soaked down the side with blood and was dripping down her skirt. The adrenaline drained out of Heri's system and she slumped into Hannah's side. "I don't know how deep it is but I doubt it'll kill me," she assured them in a tiny voice. "No one else got hurt, right? None of the other hippogriffs spooked?" Hagrid was then hoisting her up and cradling her like an infant. "Let's get yeh to the hospital wing," he said in upset tones. He then glared down at where Malfoy was being fawned over by Parkinson. "Malfoy. Yer comin' too. Fifty points from Slytherin fer ignorin' instructions and causin' injury to 'nother student. I don' think I have to tell yeh that I'll be takin' this up with the headmaster." The paleness of Malfoy's face when he heard his sentence detracted from Heri's pronouncement of him having a death wish. He was stupid, but she supposed there was some self-preservation in there. "Why did you save me?" Malfoy asked later when Madam Pomfrey had finished patching them up. His tone was as accusatory as it was confused. Heri had looked at him with all the scorn for his intelligence that she held. "I don't like you, Malfoy. I've tried being civil, but you regularly try to pick a fight and make a scene. You're rude, conceited, prejudice, cowardly, and an awful bully. "But," she continued when the boy grew red with anger, "never once have I wished you dead. You're a thuggish brat, but that's not exactly a hanging offence. You are someone's friend and you are someone's son. I don't agree with how you were raised, but it's obvious your parents love you very much. I might end up disliking them as much as I do you if I were to ever meet them, but I wouldn't let their boy die if there was something I could do to prevent it." She narrowed her eyes at him. "No matter how much a hideous, horrendous, little haemorrhoid on the arse-end of society that boy is." Heri ducked an arrow and flung herself down into a roll. Sweat trickled down her back and she panting shallowly for breath. She swung around a tree and sprinted back in the direction she came, forcing her attacker to stumble back to keep balance. Her bare feet pounded the earth as she darted from tree to tree, using them as cover. Another whizzed by her ear. She cursed and barrel-rolled into the thick underbrush. As she crawled out on the other side, a heavy hoof stamped the ground in front of her face. Heri groaned and glowered up at the stern visage of Bane, her most stringent instructor. "With such feeble evasive manoeuvres, I wonder how you've managed to survive this long." "Come now, Bane," another voice added. Firenze trotted up, his bow over his shoulder. "It has been a good twenty minutes. You give her too little credit; you know she was injured today." Bane snorted disdainfully. "A mere twenty minutes, you mean. And that injury was healed in a thrice by their healer. Get up," he directed to Heri. "We are nowhere near finished yet." Heri huffed but climbed back on to her feet. "I thought you were going to teach me how to fight and kill monsters," she said, combing out leaves from her hair. She was dressed in the bare necessities, just her undershirt and the shorts she wore under her skirt. Everything else — her robe, uniform, shoes, and hair-wands — had been left behind Hagrid's hut for safe-keeping. Bane sent her an uncompromising look. "To defend yourself from creatures that mean you harm, you must first be able to get yourself in a position where you are not in striking distance. You must be able to evade." Heri spent the rest of the evening before curfew getting herself boxed into a corner again and again. It was exhausting and infuriating but at least she could tell she was getting better. When the lesson finished for the evening, she even managed a thank you that was actually half-sincere. Before she went to sleep that night, Heri threw her invisibility cloak over herself, padded down to the common room to the nook at the base of the stairs, and pulled out her Time-Turner. She gave the bauble twenty-four quick turns. When it was once again the night before the first day of classes, Heri crept back up the stairs to sleep in the bed left conveniently open by her younger self spending the night in the hospital wing. She'd have to find a different place to sleep the next day, but for now, she was too tired to think about it. Tomorrow, she would do her second schedule of the day. Heri reread the notes she had written up during arithmancy, checking to make sure they were understandable enough that the people that begged tutoring off of her would have little trouble understanding them. — Numbers 1-9: 1: Beginning, independence, innovation, leadership 2: Harmony, unity, relationships, collaboration 3: Imagination, positivism, playfulness, creative expression 4: Building, formation, hard work, endurance, sober-mindedness, practicality 5: Change, transition, progressive thinking, resourcefulness, freedom, versatility 6: Balance, nurturing, service-oriented, responsibility/duty, family focus, domestic and work issues 7: Analysis, research, solitude, wisdom, spiritual focus, investigative, mystical 8: Authority, finances, business, success, material wealth, organization, self-mastery 9: Endings, tolerance, metamorphosis, cosmic, teaching, global awareness, perfection.
————-
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Playerfanfic