at ten seconds to five.

Professor Umbridge tipped precisely three teaspoons of sugar into the delicate China cup filled with honey-coloured tea. She stirred it slowly five times anticlockwise and glanced up at the clock ticking above the door.

When the second hand touched twelve, she taps the spoon on the rim of the cup, setting it on the saucer and calls sweetly, "Come in."

Margaret opened the door with a click and slipped inside, shutting it behind her calmly. She took a fleeting glance around the office but it was enough since everything was a shade of pink - crepe walls, fuchsia carpet, magenta curtains, a rose lamp. It looked like a pastel pallette had thrown up.

Not to mention, the cat portraits meowing on the middle of tiny plates that were hung on the walls beside the door as well as the wall behind Umbridge. Margaret didn't usually mind cats but their constant mewing was a nuisance already. She felt like she had entered a torture chamber.

Professor Umbridge sat on the mahogany desk in the centre of the room, sipping tea and staring at Margaret unblinkingly. It looked like she cleaned her dress, ridding the ink that had spilt on it. She sat down her cup with a clink and gestured towards a smaller desk and a cushioned stool on the side.

"Sit, dear. You're going to be doing some lines for me today," Umbridge says, a saccharine smile on her face. "You will find the required items on the table."

Margaret walked to the small desk wordlessly and took a seat, putting her bag on the side.

She'd stormed out of the class when the last bell had rung and had ignored Harry, Ron and Hermione the whole way, going to the viaduct courtyard for about twenty minutes to be alone before she had to return to see the toad again.

As expected, a long-nipped, raven-feathered quill with a golden grip, and a piece of parchment, was placed on the small table.

Margaret rubbed the unscarred skin on the back of her left hand and mentally apologised to it.

However, she had no regrets whatsoever that she had defended her friends and avoided Harry from getting another detention with this wretched witch. She wasn't doing this out of pity for Harry, but the loyalty and friendship that she had formed with the Trio.

When Umbridge didn't speak, Margaret realised that she was waiting for her to talk.

"You haven't given me any ink," Margaret says, acting oblivious as she picked up the quill.

Umbridge turned to her and blinked. "Oh, you won't need any ink, Miss Xenakis. Now, I would like you to write 'I must not believe liars' please."

Margaret gripped the golden handle tight in her palm and swallowed as a sinking feeling settled in her chest. She, of all people, knew very well that Harry was anything but a liar. And now these words would be scarred on her hand forever...

She gulped, looking down at the rough paper, her shoulders tensed as if bracing herself. She then dragged her shaking hand across the parchment, writing word by word, letter by letter - I must not believe liars.

Instantly, pain flared up on the back of her other hand; the words, in her own handwriting, scrawled and scratched across the unblemished skin, leaving behind a flaming burn so similar to her anger. A single small wisp of smoke rose from the reddened skin as the sentence came to an end and the skin healed itself.

Professor Umbridge notices Margaret frowning down at her hand, and asks innocently, "Is there a matter, dear?"

Margaret looked up with a blank expression and shook her head.

"That's right," Umbridge states, slowly standing up from her seat and walking over to Margaret with her stubby legs. "Silence. It seems so easy to stay quiet, doesn't it? Because you know, deep down, that you deserve to be taught a tough lesson... Well-privileged and disobedient children such as yourself deserve to be punished rightly for the message to, let's say, sink in."

Margaret wanted to kill her. She wanted to get inside Umbridge's head and drive her to insanity, right then and there. However, she was already insane as it is.

So, Margaret stared back blankly before looking down at the parchment silently, just like Umbridge wanted, and proceeded to write the words again.

The sentenced retraced itself on her hand.

She wrote again. And it retraced again.

For hours, Margaret quietly wrote and rewrote the same five words.

The skin on the back of her hand cut itself open, then healed; then cut itself open, then healed. The sky outside turned from blue to orange to maroon as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The flambeaux lit up around the office, drowning it in a yellowish glow. The cats meowed the whole time.

Still, Margaret didn't spare a glance either at her hand that was now on her lap or at Umbridge who had taken to marking papers.

To distract herself, her mind had come up with strange imaginations - one of which involved Umbridge's face turning into a blobfish, sporting a bright pink boa around her neck as she chased Margaret around the grounds of the school with her stout little legs. At some point, Margaret had pointed out that the bright pink boa wasn't boa the scarf, but boa the snake - which had then proceeded to fly Umbridge to the Azkaban unceremoniously. She wasn't seen ever again... Happy ending.

When the clock struck ten, five hours had passed and Margaret had filled both sides of the parchment and imagined all the humourous scenarios to distract herself from the situation she'd landed herself in. She heaved a sigh, flexing her aching fingers then rubbing her eye that felt dry after staring at the paper for so long as she vegetated on the spot.

Professor Umbridge looked up when she heard the small stool scrap against the stone floor. She watched with beady eyes as Margaret rounded up to the front of her desk and dropped the parchment and the quill on it.

Professor Umbridge picked up the paper and her brows raised slightly at the parchment filled from top to bottom on both sides with blood written sentences.

She placed it back down and asked for Margaret's hand, which the girl uncovered from her robe sleeve and held it out.

Her hand was bleeding so profusely that drops of crimson trickled down to her palm and fell on the parchment, staining it. The words were scarred raw and the skin was bruised red. Margaret could feel the pain shooting to the bones of her wrist and up her arm, as Umbridge tilted her hand with the tips of her fingers to examine it better. However, Margaret didn't so much as flinch, determined to not give the woman any more satisfaction.

"Very well. Very well, indeed," Umbridge hums, looking up with a coy and self-satisfied simper. "It seems, Miss Xenakis, that you'd be remembering your lesson for a long time."

Margaret said nothing and brought her hand back down to her side.

"Off you go then," Umbridge says, taking the parchment and the blood-quill and putting it inside the desk drawer. As Margaret walked back to the small desk on the side while wrapping her scarf around her hand, she caught a peek of Harry's parchments he must've written during his own detentions last week.

Professor Umbridge had her very own collection of papers written in the blood of her students... This woman was a sadist.

Margaret grabbed her bag and marched out of the office.

but her stomach still lurched when she looked down at her hand. She had an inkling that the common room would still be filled with her housemates, and honestly, she wasn't in the mood to be pestered.

So she did the next best thing - she sneaked around the halls.

"Lumos Maxima," she says and the tip of her wand lights a pewter silver.

Mentally thanking Remus Lupin for being an excellent teacher, she made her way around the castle, creeping at the corners and hiding behind pillars. She came across Filch and his cat around a corner but they were too far away and she ducked behind a windowsill before they could see her, suddenly starting to feel like she was ten again. Once their footsteps faded, she continued to tip-toe toward the Grand Staircase covertly as if on a secret spy mission.

She hadn't even taken five steps when someone unexpectedly cleared their throat.

Margaret's head snapped towards the side instinctively as she waved her wand around to see which Professor's wrath she'd be subjected to now; however, the only thing she heard was the portraits on the side complaining about their sleep being disturbed due to her Lumos.

"Miss Xenakis," a man greets kindly, and Margaret turns around to find that she had stumbled upon the portrait of Rodolph Spielman again; the same German man she had spoken to on her first day, still sat on his painted armchair with a painted night lamp on his side. "What are you doing out here so late?"

Margaret was taken aback. "You speak English?"

The man in the portrait grinned a wrinkled smile, "Why yes, I do. I worked for International Confederation of Wizards for years, after all!"

"But, on my first day here-"

"Headmaster Dumbledore and I have a bet, you see," Rodolph Spielman tells her, his tone laced with an underlying German accent. "I speak many European languages. But I am German. So I try to see how many students of Hogwarts would reply to my mother tongue."

"And... the bet is?" she asks.

"The bet is that no one would speak German," he replies and then beams at her. "You helped me win for the first time in years!"

"Oh," she mutters, trying not to think how odd this encounter was.

"Well, you should be back into your common room by now," Mr Spielman says. "Have you lost your way?"

"Uh... no," Margaret mumbles, clenching her left hand under the scarf. "No, I haven't lost my way. I simply wanted... to get away from the chaos, you could say."

The elderly man nods, "That's understandable. However, I would insist that you go back to your common room now. I saw Professor McGonagall doing her usual rounds a few minutes ago; reckon she'd be in the east wing now."

"I will go back, but in a while," she tells him. "I can't really explain it... but I'm not very fond of being surrounded by people all the time, and I think my friends would be waiting for me. I want to make sure they're asleep by the time I return."

Rodolph Spielman stared at her, and for a moment, remained unmoving like a muggle painting. Then he nodded, grabbing a painted sleek black stick from his side and getting up from his armchair.

"Very well then, Miss Xenakis. However, if you stay here you're going to be caught by a professor soon enough," he says, then gestures her to follow him.

He moves to the edge of the frame and disappears for a split second, then reappears in the painting on the left - which was oddly a scene of countryside complete with a mooing cow and a farmer napping on its back. Mr Spielman ignored the sleepy complaints of the man in the painting and moved on to the next one.

"Come now, Miss Xenakis."

Margaret follows the elderly man in the portrait, mesmerised once more with magic and its different forms. Rudolph Spielman walked from painting to painting, ignoring the annoyed shouts and glares from the inhabitants, leading Margaret down the hallway they were in.

When he finally stopped, Margaret noticed that they had reached the entrance of the Grand Staircase. Before she could ask why the elderly German had brought her here, a full-sized vertical painting spoke up from the side.

"Take time every day to rhyme what thou say..."

The painting portrayed a man in a red robe, writing on his desk, with a starry sky and a full moon behind him.

"Percival Pratt," says Mr Spielman.

"Have come to enter, have thou?" Percival Pratt sang. "Only the ones with wise get through."

"He's a poet," Mr Speilman states.

"You don't say?" Margaret says flatly before something occurs to her, and she turns to Mr Spielman, baffled. "Wait, did he say enter? Is there a secret passage...?

"To the boathouse outside, yes," Mr Spielman replies. "However, there is a riddle you'd have to solve, Miss Xenakis. Why don't you introduce yourself?"

Margaret blinked, suddenly curious to see the boathouse. She knew what happened there in the future; however, she also knew that no one would suspect her to be there at the moment. The place was usually told to be deserted. So, she cleared her throat and stepped up to Percival Pratt's portrait.

"Hello, my name is Margaret Xenakis," she says, and Percival Pratt's quill stops moving as he looks up.

"I'm a man of few words - I rarely speak. Find someone else if discourse thou seek," says he.

"Not to speak, no. I wish to enter the passage you are guarding," she tells him. Percival Pratt smiles a small smile.

"Pity, truly," he says, then goes back to his writing. Margaret's mouth fell open; was she just insulted by a painting?

"I'm sorry?" Margaret says incredulously, turning to Mr Spielman who gave a supportive nod.

"I hath guarded the passage faithfully for years, not one student hath courage to adhere!"

"Oh boy," she gives a tired sigh, turning her head left and then right to see if there was anyone around. Luckily, she was still alone. "This guy likes rhyming words, doesn't he?"

"Yes," Mr Spielman says encouragingly, "that's right."

Margaret frowned. Rhyming words. Percival Pratt was a poet... What had he said when she first arrived? Take time to rhyme or something.

"Uh, let's see," Margaret mutters before looking back up again, "Er, Mister Percival Pratt... sir, I seek to enter the passage... you, er, thou guard- the pen- oh, erm, the quill, is mightier than a sword!"

Percival Prat looked unamused and supremely unbothered.

Margaret groans, "Oh this isn't gonna work..."

"Go on," Mr Spielman says. Margaret pursed her lips. She wasn't Taylor Swift to rhyme on the spot.

"Well, okay... No one's around to see me make a fool of myself anyway," Margaret says, shooting a look at Mr Spielman. She continues, "I seek to enter the passage you cover... give me a chance, to, er, prove I'm... clever."

Margaret cringed at her poor attempt of rhyming a sentence, but thankfully, Percival Pratt looked at her once more with a smile.

"Well done, thou did not run," he tells her. "Now, find three faces as I've said, or simply stand around instead!"

"What?!"

Margaret covered her mouth with her free hand as soon as her voice bounced off the walls of the corridor. She angrily turned back to the absolute prat of a painting.

"What?" she whispers. "Is that a riddle?"

"It is, indeed," Mr Spielman answers from the painting on the right where he had been standing the whole time. The inhabitant seemed to be an elderly woman who looked uninterested in the noise they were making at the ungodly hour as though she was used to Percival's ridiculousness.

"But that's absurd!" Margaret whispers back sharply.

Percival Pratt suddenly perks up, his painted blue eyes wide, "Solved the riddle! Well done, you. Looks like a reward is due!"

Margaret stared at their weirdo with a confused expression, turning back to Rudolph Spielman who seemed to be equally perplexed. However, before she could question it, the portrait of Percival Pratt swung open creakily to reveal a dark corridor beyond.

"Who's there?!"

Margaret's head snapped to her right from where the distant yell had echoed.

Maybe it had been a long day or maybe it was the lack of food that resulted in Margaret's brain not working at full capacity; because without thinking twice, she stumbled into the corridor past the painting and pulled the door close.

Instantly, the air shifted.

It was different, somewhat colder and damper from the air inside the castle. It took her a moment to realise that she did not know where this corridor really led and that she had believed a painting who might've just tricked her into a death trap.

Shiitakes mushrooms on a stick of gold, why was she so stupid?

"Lumos Maxima," she says and the small pewter light shined brighter at the tip of her wand.

Margaret scrunched her eyes closed and when she opened them again, her eyes were glowing a bright scarlet.

She could see the corridor now - some five feet wide and ten feet tall, covered in cobwebs and smelling of algae. She turned back to see if she can knock and ask Percival to let her out, surely whoever it was that had heard her would've been gone by now. However, when she turned to face the entrance again, the door had sealed itself and turned into a gapless stone wall.

She was trapped.

Rudolph Spielman appeared in the painting of Armando Dippet in the Headmaster's office. Armando Dippet, the Headmaster before Dumbledore, scoffed in offence at the invasion but did not say anything.

"Good evening, Headmaster," Rudolph greets, causing Dumbledore to turn away from the bookshelf he was standing near.

"Good evening, Rudolph," Dumbledore says, the heavy book hovering in front of him shutting with a thud, throwing dust everywhere. "What brings you here this fine evening?"

"As you had asked, Professor," Rudolph begins, "the girl, Miss Xenakis, solved the riddle in record time!"

"As anticipated," Dumbledore says. "I reckon she would be on her way?"

"Yes, Professor. If she follows the path, then undoubtedly," Rudolph replies. He frowns slightly, "Professor, may I ask... why?"

"We all require to anew the connection with ourselves following a distinctive situation. For Miss Xenakis, it has been long overdue," the wise Headmaster answers. "Thank you, Rudolph."

Rudolph Spielman nodded and backed away from Dippet's painting, seeming smaller and smaller before disappearing completely into the background.

Dumbledore turned back to the bookshelf and the large dusty book floated back down towards him again and opened up.

"Who was it?"

"I'm a man of few words - I rarely speak. Find someone else if discourse thou seek," says Percival Pratt.

"I want to know who you let through just now."

"Too bad, boy. It is a wonder why thee-"

The boy sighs, "The password is absurd."

Percival Pratt blinked his painted eyes. "Well done, you - looks like a reward is due..."

The portrait swung open once again and let the pale boy through.

The long, dark corridor had soon turned into a seemingly endless staircase, and Margaret was starting to sweat out of sheer anxiety.