Sitting at the Slytherin table during lunch had become something of a habit. Persy wasn't interested in sitting with the Gryffindors, for the most part, unless it was the most convenient place to level a glare at someone who had been giving Carly trouble. They kept a fair bit of distance from the other students, either way; Persy usually read or wrote during meals and never seemed to let up doing something productive. Carly couldn't imagine her wasting her time hiding under staircases, ever. She was going to have to say something eventually.
"So, Jenkins tried to corner me again yesterday." Carly kept her eyes trained on her meal and picked at the sandwich on her plate. She'd wanted to eat a heap of them the day before, but they weren't nearly so appealing now.
Persy shifted next to her, sound of the page turning in her book absurdly loud in the noisy hall. "Alone?"
"With his friends."
"Jenkins doesn't have friends. He has lackeys." Her voice was crystal clear, quiet and calm, and Carly looked up to find her holding her finger in the seam of some thick, dusty tome on Defence. "Did he touch you?"
Carly trembled at the thought, because when Persy said touch she meant hurt. "Just my wrist. I smiled and got away. He didn't find me again."
Persy nodded once, sharply enough that the hair tucked over her ear fell forward. She didn't bother to push it back again. "The abandoned corridor I showed you?"
"No. I was too far away. I was close to the Charms classroom, and there was this set of stairs-"
Persy's eyes narrowed, only the barest fraction of an inch, but Carly had come to know that Persy didn't emote much when it wasn't for show. "That's not a good hiding spot," she said evenly, but there was something higher, colder about her tone. "Not if you want to be alone."
Well, of course. Not like she didn't see everything and anything about this place. "I know. You're talking about the student who smokes under there, right?"
"The /boy/ who smokes under there," Persy repeated, as if to make sure they were on the same page.
Carly nodded, picking up her fork just for something to do. The wilted salad on her plate looked limp and sad, like it was anticipating a bad end to this conversation. "His name is Abe."
Persy's mouth turned down at the corners. "Of course it is. He's a Ravenclaw in your year. Did /he/ touch you?" She sounded incredulous, like that seemed unlikely.
"Not once," Carly assured her, "not even when he took me to the kitchens."
"You followed him to the basements."
"Well, I didn't know it was in the basement! I'd never been there before. He didn't do anything wrong. He promised not to, even."
"Scarlett," Persy warned flatly, and Carly cringed. "When have you ever believed something a man said? That wasn't your father."
Carly didn't need to spare much time to think on that one. She listened to her professors when they spoke to her about class and avoided seeing them afterward if she was alone. She kept herself in line to avoid prefects. Hogsmeade trips were a no-go. "My judgment might have been a little impaired."
Persy muttered something under her breath, probably one of the ridiculous wizard's curses she seems to keep in her arsenal. "Alright. So this is what happened. You escaped from a thug trying to threaten you and instead of going somewhere safe and alone, you let a perfect stranger give you a mind-altering substance that could've been tampered with, and then followed him you didn't know where, alone."
"Yes? No. It wasn't like that. You know who he is, apparently. Would he have hurt me?"
"No, but you didn't know that, and you're absolutely terrible at any sort of magical self-defense. Are you sure Jenkins didn't do something to you beforehand? Confundus charm?" She looked genuinely concerned. Carly knew part of her discipline was noticing when things happened that shouldn't be. When the underbrush twitched in the woods, the rabbit was dead before his itch was scratched. Now that focus was turned on her and the apparently erratic behavior she'd shown.
Carly dropped her fork and sighed, defeated. "I wasn't under a spell. He seemed safer than they did, at the time. He was already high when I turned up."
Persy slipped her quill into her book, holding her place, and hovered her hand for a long moment over Carly's. "Sweetie," she began, and it sounded more condescending from her than it had from any elderly relative, "I'm glad you're safe. But you're not very smart."
Carly deflated a little more, hair almost drooping into her pumpkin juice. "Nothing bad happened. And I'm not going to do it again."
"Then why are you telling me about it?"
An answer to that wasn't forthcoming. Carly refocused her attention on her sandwich and wondered why she'd bothered.
