"So…" Oleandra began tentatively. "Did you have a nice Christmas, Tracey?"
But instead of answering Oleandra's question, Tracey simply shot her frosty glare.
The pair were currently on their way back to Hogsmeade aboard the Hogwarts Express; after completing her errands in Diagon Alley, Oleandra had taken a Muggle bus to King's Cross Station, where she had run into Tracey waiting on platform nine and three-quarters.
"My Christmas was fairly—" Oleandra began, but Tracey immediately cut her off.
"I was worried!" she exploded. "You jumped off a moving train! The newspapers said there had been a massacre! Someone put up a Dark Mark above your house! I only knew you were still alive because you sent back my owl with a letter, but you might as well have written nothing! Where were you!?"
Dumbledore had cautioned Oleandra to reveal as little as possible of what had happened to her to others. Whatever she did, she could not be placed at the site of the Death Eaters' massacre, because it would only bring her problems. Furthermore, he had forbidden her from communicating any information about the Order of the Phoenix and its headquarters to the outside world, which hadn't left her much of anything to write in her response letter to Tracey, other than the fact that she was okay.
"Sometimes, I think Daphne was right about you," Tracey pouted angrily. "Keeping so many secrets, don't you trust us? Can't you trust me?"
Oleandra could feel a headache coming on. This was the part about keeping secrets that she absolutely abhorred…
"After leaving the train, I rejoined Astoria at a certain place," said Oleandra, picking her words carefully. "I really can't say any more than that."
"And Astoria can confirm that?" Tracey asked suspiciously.
Oleandra nodded, and at last, Tracey's expression softened slightly. In Tracey's opinion, if Astoria could corroborate Oleandra's story, then it meant that Oleandra wasn't keeping secrets to hide something from her specifically; someone had sworn her to secrecy.
"And…"
Oleandra's voice trailed off, interrupted by what sounded like a herd of elephants stomping down the corridor in their car. The sounds of angry shouting were growing closer and closer, until finally, the glass-panelled sliding door to their compartment was thrown open, and Crabbe stormed in, wand drawn. Oleandra immediately rose to her feet, her fingers curling into the OK hand sign.
"Thursaz!" Oleandra and Tracey cried out simultaneously.
Upon being struck with the combined might of their hastily signed spell, Crabbe was lifted off his feet and thrown back out into the corridor, slamming into the wagon's outer wall and sliding down to the floor in a crumpled heap. Somehow seemingly no worse for wear, Crabbe attempted to lift his bulk from the ground.
Oleandra stepped out of her compartment, holding the Book of the Stars in her left hand. Eyes flashing, she barked out a word; the starry grimoire snapped open and began hovering over her hand, its pages flipping rapidly as it searched for a certain spell.
But before Oleandra could attempt any further retaliation against Crabbe, two voices rang out simultaneously.
"Stop! Stop, Crabbe, I order you to stop!"
"Impedimenta!"
An invisible wall manifested itself between the two combatants, stopping Crabbe in his tracks, just as he lunged at Oleandra's throat with outstretched arms. Oleandra paused, glancing from side to side with narrowed eyes as Draco Malfoy and Cedric Diggory jogged up to them from opposing sides of the corridor.
"What's going on, here?" Cedric called out loudly. "Head Boy, coming through!"
One by one, the doors to the wagon's other compartments all slid open, as rubberneckers poked their heads out into the corridor to see what all the fuss was about. After a moment's hesitation, Oleandra rescinded the Book of the Stars' activation code; the grimoire snapped shut and fell back into her palm, whereupon Oleandra stored it back into her pouch.
"This idiot just burst into my compartment and tried to attack me," Oleandra announced, recognizing the importance of being the first to seize control of the narrative when facing a crowd. "Completely unprovoked."
"Attacking a prefect…?" said Cedric, raising an eyebrow. "That's a serious accusation…"
Now, it was Oleandra's turn to raise an eyebrow. Accusation? It was the truth! What was Diggory playing at? He had clearly seen Crabbe lunging at her, hadn't he?
"Vincent, was it?" Cedric continued, turning to the fat boy sprawled on the floor. "Is this true? Do you have anything to say in your defence?"
It's at this moment that Malfoy tried intervening; in his opinion, this was an internal matter among Slytherins, and furthermore, it involved the Dark Lord in some capacity. It was best to avoid any leaks whenever it was possible, since his return was still supposed to be a secret. One loose tongue belonging to an idiotic teenager wouldn't make everything fall apart, but it would still help sow the seeds of doubt…
"It's none of your business, is what it is," Malfoy said bluntly, scowling. "Why don't you go powder your cheeks so more, Diggory?"
However, Crabbe would not be silenced.
"She killed my dad!" he cried out, shooting a glare filled with seething hatred at her. "She's gotta pay!"
"I did no such thing," said Oleandra coldly.
"You're lying!" Crabbe screamed, his round face turning pink. "My dad told me he was gonna—"
"CRABBE!" Malfoy shouted.
The realization that he had been about to self-report about his family being Death Eaters finally got through Crabbe's thick skull, so he shut up. Oleandra was equally relieved as Malfoy when Crabbe stopped talking; airing each other's dirty laundry would only be detrimental to them as a whole.
But just when they thought that the matter would be swept under the carpet…
"Would this happen to have anything to do with the matter of the Dark Mark appearing over one of the Greengrass family's properties on the 20th of December?" said Cedric Diggory pensively, loud enough for everyone in the crowd to hear. "A grisly affair, from what I've read in the Daily Prophet… bodies everywhere, a certain Crabbe found chopped into halves…"
He then turned to Oleandra, smiling brightly at her.
"Incidentally, prefect Oleandra," he continued loudly. "There's still something I'd like to ask you about; you never DID quite make it back to London on the Hogwarts Express on that day, did you? Would you like to enlighten us as to where you went?"
Oleandra gritted her teeth as she listened to the barely veiled implication; Diggory couldn't beat her in combat, so he was dragging her into the court of public opinion!