Toil and Trouble

[Stella Wright]

Stella thundered down the steps from the Astronomy classroom, quivering with anger. She had been increasingly dissatisfied with the Astronomy classes all semester, but this! This was a whole new level of disgusting behaviour. The factual inaccuracies Professor Castor had spouted were frustrating, but nothing new; most of the lessons had been like that, and at least the errors in this one were relatively minor. Stella was sure that when she wrote her homework she'd end up passive-aggressively correcting them. But these were mere insults to the vast and uncalled-for injury the so-called professor had perpetrated at the end of class. She'd done it time and time again, but never so blatantly. Now she'd made perfectly clear her utter disdain for muggles and all their achievements, and Stella was fuming. And the sheer hypocrisy of it! The bulk of their coursework Stella had learned from muggle astronomy books. Of course, she couldn't know which of those advances had been made by wizards, but she was unshakably certain that they had been made by science. And really, it was science that Castor was dismissing, and this that made Stella so angry.

Then she spotted a familiar form going down the stairs in front of her. The Slytherin girl had made it out of the classroom before Stella, by pushing rudely past other students, but she was not moving as fast as Stella's rage-fuelled descent. Stella had seen her scowling during the lesson and thought initially that it was in a similar frustration to her own, but then she had agreed with the teacher! Out loud! Stella barely knew the girl, she'd only seen her in class (what was her name? Lucinda? Something like that), but she was too furious to let this go. "I heard you agreeing with that malice Professor Castor was saying in class," she said venomously as she came level with the girl. "You should be ashamed."

 

[Lucinda Sylvester]

Lucinda's thoughts had already moved on from the Astronomy lesson she'd just attended, as she had far more important things to concern herself with - such as exactly why her magic hardly seemed to be working without the use of a wand. She'd expected a slow start as she grew accustomed to the new incantations, but right now all Lucinda could think to be the cause was the fact that the professors had barely taught her any actual magic other than summoning a broom and the two spells in Defence. The events of the lesson earlier in the week were still a sore spot for the girl, and she scowled as she continued to descend the stairs on her way back down to the dungeons. Lucinda was so caught up in rebuilding her annoyance at the Gryffindor who had laughed at her that she didn't at first realise that someone was talking to her.

It was the tone more than the words that caught her attention, and Lucinda's eyes narrowed as she whipped her head up to glare at the person who had the audacity to speak to her in such a way. Not at all impressed by what she saw, Lucinda couldn't help but smirk at the obvious anger she saw on the other girl's face - and how much angrier she was surely about to get. "Why should I be? She's clearly a terrible professor, but at least she was right about that. Muggles are stupid, it's fairly obvious." Lucinda should know - she'd spent her whole life surrounded by them, being told that magic was a silly fantasy. Shrugging a shoulder in dismissal she resumed walking down the stairs, her smugness increasing. It was always nice to be confronted with inarguable evidence that she was smarter than the other clueless people who wandered the world.

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella's fists were clenched, her whole body tense with outrage. How dare she! How could she say such horrible, untrue things? How dare she act so - so amused by it? As though the whole thing was nothing more than a joke! Briefly Stella wondered why this awful Slytherin thought Professor Castor was a bad teacher, if she agreed with her about muggles, but such musings were soon swept aside in the force of her tirade. "You're right, she is a terrible professor, and that's why. She - and you - couldn't be more wrong! Everything she's taught in this entire class is science, invented by muggles, progressed by muggles! Have you ever considered anywhere in your tiny bigoted mind how amazing that is? That they did all this without magic! Muggles have been to the moon! Wizards can't even match that! And you reduce all that to 'muggles are stupid'! You're disgusting." At this point Stella had overtaken the girl she was talking at, having paid little attention to the speed of her descent; now she had to slow down slightly to finish her sentence where the girl could still hear her. When she'd finished she sped up again, letting herself storm off away from this whole situation.