Snow and a full timetable didn't give her a single opportunity to get outside the next day. Sariah daydreamed of sanding out her car's rust spots and filling them in, and of where she'd find the metal for its bonnet. The suits of armour that guarded the school's passageways entered her mind, but she imagined they would object to being disassembled for spare parts. Later that day, Professor Wagner commented that her transfiguration would actually be passable, if he had asked for a rusted metal tea cosy instead of a woolen one.

At dinner, Britta informed her that an enterprising Gryffindor had set up a betting pool with odds on who would find Professor Binns first: "The safe bet is on James Potter, but Eustace Brierly and Rachel Skellis are on the books too."

Full of salad and baked salmon, Sariah trudged off her detention. She fumed with the unfairness of it; she'd actually done the work this time. There was just the small technical issue of forgetting to hand it in... She trailed her fingers along the steel-cold wall as she went down the spiral staircase. Her fingernails scratched along the wall like it was a massive emory board, an oddly satisfying sensation.

As she approached, Zamboni's office door opened silently. His office was extravagant and ornate, much like his cloak. Professor Zamboni was poised behind his imposing mahogany desk. He didn't look up as she entered. She dropped her ink blotched scroll onto his desk and stepped back, awaiting her punishment.

"How kind of you to drop by," he said, slowly rising to his feet. "This evening you'll be moving some old equipment. Follow me."

That in itself didn't seem too bad. She dared to hope that it would be done within the hour. Compared to raising flobberworms, moving equipment was nothing. In the weeks following those detentions, she'd had to pull, wash, and tweeze flobberworms from her dreadlocks. Zamboni motioned to the classroom he wanted the equipment moved to, and led her to where the storage room was. While a sane person might've assumed that potions storage would be located in the dungeons, this was simply not the way that Hogwarts operated. Wordlessly, she followed him to the top of the Grand staircase. The moving stairways were obedient to where the professor wanted to go. Her calf muscles, still not recovered from yesterday, began to ache again. Just how far away was the equipment? She put a foot through one of the numerous trick stairs, almost losing her footing. Eventually they stopped at a landing, halfway up the astronomy tower. He unlocked the door with a twist of his wand.

Sariah peered into the dark classroom. It reeked of abandonment: the unfruitful marriage of damp and dust cloyed her nostrils. Zamboni lit a pair of torches, mounted on either side of an ancient blackboard, and dark shadows flickered up room's walls. He motioned to the far end of the room, where something glinted in the darkness. "I want you to carry these cauldrons down to the dungeon."

Sariah gaped at the pile in dismay. It was such a pointlessly laborious task. "All of them?"

"All thirteen of them. See me when you are done."

He turned with a flourish and left the room, his cloak disturbing the thick shadows of dust. The room was packed haphazardly with broken desks, stools, and other oddities. Dust cloths covered other objects, looming like ghosts in the dim light. Sariah sneezed, and squinted into the darkness: thirteen cumbersomely large cauldrons lay abandoned in the darkest corner of the room. She groaned as she tested their weight. Evidently, they were not enchanted. It would take hours to shift them down to the dungeon. She'd have to stay up even later to even attempt her homework. The thought made her want to yawn and scream at the same time.

Sariah pulled her dragon-skin gloves  from her robe pocket.  Luckily, she'd left them there after Herbology. The scaled gloves stopped her hands from blistering, but they did nothing to sooth the burning in her limbs, which still hadn't recovered from yesterday's run. Trudging up the stairs felt like death by the third time she attempted it.

She had just conquered the stairs of her seventh and final trip. The torches had gone out, so Sariah felt her way to the back of the room. Only one more to go. Something in the room rustled in the blackness. Her breath caught in her throat. There was something in the room with her. Sariah moved slowly away from the source of the disturbance, the cauldron gripped tightly in her hands. Only victims in horror films were dense enough to ask 'hello?' in response to ominous noises. She had no desire whatsoever to die at the hands of whatever lurked in this part of the castle. The floorboards creaked, close behind her. Disorientated, she spun around, holding the cauldron like a weapon. She was now between the thing and the door. Her palms started sweating. Suddenly, a detached white face surged toward her. She screamed.