Tiamat Raven wandered through the halls of Hogwarts, half trying to get lost. Getting lost would be an excuse not to go to potions class. Admittedly, it wouldn't be a good excuse, but it would be an excuse. She closed her eyes, spun around and set off in a random direction, up some stairs, around a corner, through two doors and down a short hallway that led her to...an exit to the side lawn. Tia slumped against the door frame. That hadn't worked right at all. She'd just started to turn back, when a familiar voice called out to her.
"Hey, Tia! Wait up!" Tia looked over her shoulder. Kerry Madden was running across the field, his outer robe thrown over one arm, shedding dried leaves and grass blades as if it had been used for ground cover. Or never washed. Or both. Tia sighed and brushed a non-existent speck of dust from her own sleeve. Some days you just couldn't get lost.
"Hey Kerry. Long time no see."
"Er, I saw you at lunch, an hour ago, remember?" Sarcasm never had any effect on Kerry. It was probably why he was in Hufflepuff. "You're on your way to potions, right?" Kerry continued. "I'll go with you. Maybe that way I won't be late."
Wonderful, now there was no way out of it. "Sure. I'm never late." Tia stalked back up the hallway, resisting the urge to kick the door shut behind her. In the way of finding someone to blame Kerry's appearance on, she wondered who's bright idea it had been to pair Slytherin and Hufflepuff together for potions. The Slytherins walked all over the Hufflepuffs and Professor Snape let them. They really should put Slytherin with a class that wouldn't be so easily outdone, like Gryffindor. That, of course, would be asking for an intra-school war, and she doubted the teachers were so stupid.
"Tia?" Kerry interrupted her train of thought. "You're going the wrong way."
Tia stopped and looked around. She'd done it! She was sure she'd never been in this particular stretch of hallway before. "It's a short cut," she insisted, after pondering briefly on the ethics of getting Kerry in trouble along with her. "Avoids the crowds in the main hall." Grabbing his sleeve, she dragged the unsuspecting Hufflepuff after her.
Turning down the dusty hallway, she dashed through the first door she saw, which led to some disused stairs going down. Cheerfully, despite Kerry's protests, she continued down the stairs and out the door at the bottom which opened a hidden wall right across from the potions classroom. Tia stared at it in disbelief.
"Wow!" said Kerry. "So that's how you get to class so fast!"
"Er...of course!" Tia shook her head. "You know, I just realized I forgot my potions book, you go ahead and I'll just run and get it..." She spun around and smacked straight into Professor Snape, who had been quietly waiting for them to clear the hallway. Her bag thudded to the floor as she backed quickly away.
"You mean, this potions book?" Snape said coldly, picking up a volume that had been tossed from Tia's bag during the collision.
"Oh, um...yes, actually. Fancy that, I thought I'd forgotten it..." Snape just looked at her, then sniffed loudly and walked on into the room. Kerry finished gathering the last of her things and handed them back with a wry smile.
"So," he said. "You were trying to avoid class, weren't you? I see Snape's still mad about last time."
"He'll be mad about that till the end of the year." Tia snatched her bag. "Probably till the end of next year."
"You know, you're probably the only Slytherin who can get Snape to take points from his own House."
"Don't even bring it up, please?" They headed on into the classroom. Much to Tia's chagrin they were early, and there was nothing to do but sit and try to avoid Snape's uncomfortably direct stare for five more minutes. Tia had just finished rearranging her reagents for the third time when the bell finally rang. Snape rapped on the edge of his cauldron, causing Tia to jump and nearly spill her hippopotamus hairs.
"Today we will continue to study advanced usage of rare insects for the creation of semi-solid media. As you all know, we should have finished this topic earlier, if certain people had not facilitated a rapid exodus from the classroom during the demonstration on Monday." Tia tried to keep the head of the girl in front between her and Snape. "Since that proved to be necessary, I will repeat that these potions are not supposed to be incendiary and, this is important, there should be absolutely no usage of pickled termite drones in the mixture, only queens. Am I understood? Very well." Snape let his gaze pass over Tia again, while she ostentatiously stared at the ceiling. "Now open your books to page one fifty-eight. We will begin with re-mixing liquefying reagent, since our entire stock of it seems to have mysteriously gone up in flames."
Tia gave up any pretense of pride and buried her face in her arms. Snape just didn't know when to let a subject drop! She would never live this down. What was the difference between drones and queens anyway? They both had wings and they looked exactly the same, at least until they started burning, and she had been so sure...
"While that's boiling we can go over the ratios of termites to assassin bugs that should be used in the final mixture. That is, unless anyone in this class thinks they have more experience in such matters than I?" Tia peered out of a crack between her fingers. Snape was staring at her. "Raven? Perhaps you would like to tell us what the correct ratio is?"
Tia dropped her hands, defeated. "The correct ratio is five-sixths to one," she muttered.
"Hmmmm? We couldn't hear you, Raven."
"Five-sixths to one, sir." Tia snapped, and then could have hit herself for letting it come out like that.
To her surprise, Snape didn't jump on it. "Very good Raven. Take five points for actually studying to rectify your mistakes." There was a groan from the Hufflepuffs. Well, it wasn't like five points did much to equalize the massive loss she'd gotten for, um, scorching the entire lab. Not to mention the extra minus from Madame Pomfrey for the sudden overflow of patients in the infirmary.
"Are you going to help me with this, or are you going to sulk for the whole period?" Kerry asked, next to her.
"I'm not sulking. I was...thinking about my mixture. Very carefully." Kerry giggled. "Oh shut up."
"Calm down. I think Snape's over it. Didn't he just give you points? A vendetta against his own House couldn't last long."
"Against the House, maybe not, but against me...he can make my life miserable without bringing points into it."
"Oh come on, he's not that vindictive."
"You've never shared a common room with him."
"Point. We'd better get to work, he's heading this way." Tia scrambled for her reagents, and only Kerry's quick hand kept her from adding the entire vial of assassin bug juice to the cauldron.
Tia floated on a cushion of air she'd carefully constructed between her and the Quidditch-field grass. The clouds floated by overhead, sailing towards a sunset that was only just turning orange. She watched one that looked like a dragon until it broke up. Finding that somewhat depressing, she followed another that, if she squinted her eyes just so, could be a dragon. Maybe. Okay not at all. It looked like a rabbit, but she wished it was a dragon. It all came of having a name most people could only call 'original'. Most original name in the whole school. This year anyway. Stupid parents. Had to give her a name that teachers would never, ever forget. Stupid other parents, for giving their children boring names. Stupid everything. Tia was feeling decidedly out of sorts, and glad of it.
"So, how was the rest of your day?" Kerry plopped down on the grass beside her, sending up a spray of dried leaves that completely defeated the purpose of her air cushion.
"About the same." Tia grimaced and started picking leaves out of her hair. "We were studying salamanders in Care of Magical Creatures, and of course they gave me the only non-magical one in the group, by accident, they said. Ha! Then McGonagall wouldn't let me bring my potion supplies into her classroom. 'Miss Tiamat Raven,' she says," Tia mimicked the Professor's voice perfectly, if a little high-pitched. "I hate that! All because I corrected her that one time on the origins of my name! Some people just can't stand to realize there's something in the universe they didn't already know. 'I don't allow inflammatory substances in my classroom.' When did she ever say that? Hmmm? So I left it out in the hall, where of course Peeves took off with it. That stupid little pseudo-ghost! I had to chase him all over Hogwarts, and even then he wouldn't give it back until I threatened to let the Bloody Baron shave his ectoplasmic head. With a dull razor!
"As if that wasn't enough for one day, I was horribly late for Charms because I had to go dump my cauldron and stuff in the common room, since Peeves managed to get chalk-dust all over it. So of course Flitwick used me for a guinea pig to demonstrate all the new enchantments. Except our dear Professor got one wrong, yes, and I had to stay after class for an extra twenty minutes while he worked out how to get my hands unstuck from the frog." Tia picked up a twig and snapped it in half, then in quarters, then eighths. "I ran back to the common room, but of course I was too late. We just had to have cleaning inspections today, and there was Professor Snape staring pointedly at my cauldron which someone's cat had knocked all over the rug, and me with bits of frog still dripping off my robe...ow!" Tia hissed and pulled a splinter out of her finger.
"Oh." said Kerry. Tia threw a rock at him. "Hey...at least nothing else could possibly go wrong today."
"No, but tonight is still a viable option." Tia glared up at the darkening sky. "Five years of study, perfecting my techniques, and in one day I'm transformed from A-student to all-subject jinx. I think I'll leave school."
"Oh come on, it's not that bad. It'll blow over."
"I know. Can't you just let me gripe for once without trying to make it better?"
"Nah. It's not in my nature."
"Stupid Hufflepuff."
"Hey, not all of us want to be in Slytherin."
"I don't see why not."
"Well, there's always Snape..."
"Point." They sat in silence for a while, watching the stars come out.
"Then of course, there's all those dark wizards that keep popping out of the woodwork."
"Nothing wrong with that. Personally, I think I'd make a great dark wizard."
"That's not funny."
"You brought it up."
"Point." There was silence again.
"So, Tia...speaking of dark wizards...how's your dad?" Kerry looked sideways at her.
"That was the stupidest lead-in I've ever heard. If you wanted to ask, why didn't you just do it?"
"I don't know. I mean, I do, but it's stupid. After you and your mom moved out of the area, and I didn't hear from you all summer, I was kind of worried. Then we came here and you've been, well, kind of odd."
"Odd? Me? Fancy that, coming from you. How so?"
"Just like that. You talk real fast and jump all over the place and avoid certain subjects without really seeming to."
"I wasn't avoiding it, but you said..." Tia stopped. "Oh. Well I guess I don't really notice a difference."
"Of course not. But I didn't talk to you all summer, so I do."
Tia was quiet for a while, thinking. It was not a good day for this. Why couldn't he have brought the subject up before? It made sense, though. The Raven and Madden families had been friends for a long time, and Tia and Kerry had pretty much lived in each other's houses growing up. Of course he'd notice. She considered bursting into tears and fleeing from the field, just to make him feel bad, but she didn't. She'd feel too stupid about it later. Finally she sighed and decided to get it over with.
"They released him from Azkaban this summer. That's why we moved away."
"Oh." Kerry tried to conceal the worry that passed across his face and failed miserably. "That's...good."
Tia shook her head. "You accuse me of avoiding subjects and suddenly you can't talk straight. It is not good, but not the way you think." She glared at Kerry, who was looking for something disarming to say, no doubt. "The mindless husk they released from that slime-hole of a prison is no threat to anyone. He's a babbling idiot, Kerry! He can't speak intelligibly most of the time and when he does speak...he says the most terrible things without even knowing it. Can't concentrate on anything. Doesn't see, or even think so far as I can tell. We had to hand-feed him all summer. There's...nothing left there. Nothing to be afraid of."
"That's...good." Kerry said again, then whacked his forehead with his fist. "Tia...I'm sorry..."
"Oh drop it, you're right. It's good. They wouldn't have released him if he was whole. Dangerous. What I want to know is, why release him at all? Why not tell us he's dead, get rid of him quietly? Why send us back a shell, a body with no...person? Just to make room in their stupid, overcrowded prison. To take the drain off the Ministry's treasury and dump it on my mother and I. As if we could afford this better! After all that happened!" Tia's second rock ricocheted off one of the Quidditch posts. The sound echoed off the stands surrounding the silent field.
"But that's not all." Tia continued, cutting Kerry off before he could say something she didn't want to hear. "I think...it was kind of...a warning. You know? 'This is what happens. Evil never wins. Don't cross us, or you'll end up like him.'" Tia hissed under her breath. "Don't you see? They're warning us. One of our family went bad. Horribly, terribly wrong. Why not another? Why not mother? My uncle? Why not me?"
"Tia, I think you're getting a bit carried away. Lots of wizarding families were involved in the...war...in one way or another. Everyone's got relatives, friends, acquaintances that...went bad."
"Of course." Tia smiled slightly, just visible in the dark. "But my family is born and raised Slytherin. Generations of Hogwarts-graduate Slytherins. And you know..." Tia leaned forward with a mock-conspiratorial whisper. "Most of the wizards that went bad were from Slytherin. Almost all, in fact. You'd really be hard-put to find one that wasn't. V-Voldemort himself was from the House. Everyone knows there's something about us, the certain quality, undefined, that makes Slytherins evil..."
"Tia...stop it..."
"And then, of course, I got sorted into just that same house...like father like daughter, yes? Maybe I'll catch the Slytherin bug, hmmm? Better send out that warning..."
Kerry stood up suddenly. "Okay, I know exactly what's wrong with you Slytherins. You are suffering from a severe case of ego-flu. Get off your high horse, Tia. I know you're just dying to believe the Ministry of Magic is frightened of you, but they have lots of other stuff to think about, yes? You're hardly shaping up to become a second You-Know-Who, eh?" Kerry gathered up his cloak and stalked off towards the entrance.
"I didn't mean it that way!" Tia scrambled to her feet, but Kerry was already half-way to the exit. "Hey! Wait." When he didn't slow, she stamped her foot, refusing to chase after him like a stupid child. "You brought it up!" She yelled. "You asked! Why ask...if you don't want to know..." She trailed off, staring at the empty exit.
"Idiot," she whispered, not quite sure if she meant Kerry or herself.