"Ugh," Rae
groaned, as she crouched on the floor of the Potions room with a Q-tip,
scrubbing away at a spot of flobberworm mucus, "I cannot believe
this!"

Outside, the day was
bright and sunny. The distant sounds of the Quidditch match between Ravenclaw
and Slytherin could just barely be heard through the room's single, tightly
closed window. It was the kind of Saturday that just begged to be spent out of
doors. Of course, Rae and the "A-team," as they were now called,
wouldn't be enjoying any of it. They were stuck inside in the dim Potions room,
serving out their detentions from the previous week's escapades with the
Babbling Beverage.

Adelaide stared at her
pink detention slip, a frown shadowing her face. "What exactly does
Professor Darkstorm want us to do? I am so confused by these directions -
they're so vague!" 

"I don't even know,
Addie," Rae snapped, "I haven't even looked at that one yet.
Professor Darkstorm ordered me to do this first. It was just a joke... sheesh!"

"Hm, so am I supposed
to write a 3000 word essay with jellybeans?" Adelaide inquired.
"Apolline, what do you think this says?" 

"Don't ask me, I
understand it even less than you do..." Apolline interjected. "At
first I thought we had to write an essay ABOUT jellybeans! I was already
halfway done when I realized that wasn't the subject at all..."

"An essay on
jellybeans? That would be kind of sweet..." Adelaide trailed off.

Aranya was lying across
the top of her desk, her legs swinging as she held the paper above her and
looked up at it. Her face was scrunched up as she tried to decipher it.
"Maybe he means that we need to write it USING jellybeans? You know, like
using candy to write?"

"Interesting
theory," Adelaide commented, looking down at the small pile of jellybeans
scattered on the table. "Hey, where's Anne? I haven't seen her..."

"Oh, who knows,"
Rae grumbled. "She probably managed to get out of her detention somehow...
perks of being a Head Girl. Meanwhile, somehow I have managed to get TWO!"

"Maybe you shouldn't
have made that flobberworm joke, no matter HOW funny it was," Adelaide
replied. Rae glowered at her as silence fell upon the room.

A couple of minutes later,
a door creaked open and slammed shut. The girls all looked up in surprise as
Anne walked stoically into the classroom.

"They didn't let you
off the hook, then?" Rae queried, shocked to actually see the Head Girl
join them. 

"Professor Nivera
gave me detention. I intend on doing it, since what I did was wrong,"

Anne replied resolutely,
as she walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out an old leather-bound
book.  "The Professor wants me to write a 2000 word essay on the
safety of trying potions that I did not brew, and Professor Darkstorm wants me
to add on 2000 words about how a head girl should behave."

"Ouch! That's worse
than ours! Well, theirs, anyway..." Rae got back to work with the Q-tip,
nearly breaking it in half as she scrubbed at a particularly stubborn bit of
mucus.

"I still don't know
HOW you got stuck with the Q-Tip. It must have REALLY annoyed him. I mean, a
toothbrush I can understand, but... Sheesh. And just one, too." Aranya sat
up and slid off the desk, pulling the chair out and sitting down in it.

"They are right you
know... we all did wrong. I am glad they took it easy on me, being my first
detention and all." Anne walked over to an empty table and pulled out her
parchment and quill.

"Easy? I wouldn't
want to write a 4000-word essay for detention, but that's just me anyways. Am I
a bad Ravenclaw for saying that? It's just that those particular topics that I
can't write 4000 words on," Adelaide scoffed. "I'm much better at
writing creative pieces than informative ones."

"Well, but Addie, we
do have to write 3000... that's close enough! And with jellybeans! And I have
to scrub the floor!"

"True that,"
Adelaide heaved a sigh. "I am not looking forward to this essay."

"But... 'Wiggle'...
it just leads naturally to flobberworms..." Rae remarked, still fixated on
her own dilemma. She heaved a great sigh. "This is going to take forever -
like, literally. A Q-tip! AND I still have to do that essay. Wait a
minute," Rae paused from her scrubbing, and looked up at the other girls,
who were still staring dumfounded at the detention assignment. "You said
we have to write with jelly beans? How does that even work?"

Apolline balled up her
third parchment since the beginning of the detention, threw it on Rae and
mumbled, "Ca marche pas, c'est tout!"

Rae looked quizzically at
Apolline. "Nous avons le vin rouge? J'aime le vin rouge.... Yeah, no. I
have no idea what you just said. Just like those directions." Rae sighed
again, picking up the Q-tip once more. "I better finish scrubbing this
flobberworm mucus so I can start on that essay. Writing with jelly beans...
what will he come up with next?"

"It's Professor
Darkstorm. He could come up with anything," Adelaide replied sassily.

A hush fell over the room
once again as the girls attended to their tasks, Rae on her hands and knees on
the floor, Anne, martyr like, at the table, and the other girl's hunched over
desks, their hands in a variety of awkward positions as they etched out faint
words on the parchment. A single jellybean only produces so many words. It soon
became apparent that they were going to run out of jellybeans... and the essays
weren't even half done!

Finally, Aranya threw her
jellybean down in frustration. It bounced off of her parchment and then flew
into the air, landing into a glass of pumpkin juice beside Apolline. "Ugh!
This is ridiculous! I can barely get out four words before my fingers end up
rubbing against the parchment, and then it rubs out the words I just wrote.
This is impossible!" She let out a groan and slammed her head onto her arm
on the desk.

"Why don't you try
writing with lollypops?" Anne suggests. "They will look the same but
go a lot further." 

With a gasp Aranya sat up,
looking over at her. "Brilliant! I see now why they made you Head Girl,
you smarty pants, you," she said with a playful grin at Anne. "But I
don't have any. And I don't know where I can get any."

"Professor Quilmane
always has some in his office," stated Anne "Maybe he will give us
some or we can just have a quick look around."

"All right, then,
lets go," Rae declared. "I'm tired of scrubbing this floor any way!
Professor Darkstorm knows it will take me all night, so a few extra minutes
won't matter."

The five girls snuck out
of the unattended detention room. Seeing that the coast was clear, they linked
arms and started down the hallway, singing "Lollipop, lollipop, oo la la
lollipop..."