Sirith's hand was still aching something terrible, but deep down she felt great satisfaction. She had shown that rat that nobody offends Sirith Herma Lestrange and gets away with it. She was also wondering if Sev would really send an owl to Mrs Leumann from the Charity Society. Those old girls from the Society were OK, but there were some things they just didn't get. They didn't understand that if you were a Fogbell kid, you couldn't afford sentiments, even if you were a little blond girl in glasses. Or, rather, especially if you were one. You needed chrisma. If you didn't have chrisma, bigger kids would push you to the end of the queue. Sev must have understood this, since he hadn't even been shouting that much. Mum, when she had been still alive, had used the word 'masculine'. So Sev was masculine and had enough chrisma for the rest of this bloody school.

Madame Pomfrey, on the other hand, was completely like the ladies from the Society: she was nice, caring, and... not quite worldly-wise. When it had turned out that Goyle had ruptured Siri's tendon, she had made more fuss that it was worth. She called Goyle 'a juvenile bandit' and Sirith 'a poor helpless little girl'. Sirith was inclined to agree with the former, but not quite so much with the latter. She felt as if she could still taste Malfoy in her mouth, even though she had brushed her teeth very carefully. Madame Pomfrey had fixed her hand with a spell, and had put a yellow jelly from pickled murtlap on her painful, swollen muscle. That was funny! In Fogbell, murtlap extract had been added to candies that made your tongue go numb. In Hogwarts, sweets were medicine!

Overall, Siri felt quite nice. Her hand slowly stopped aching, and she could eat her breakfast in the hospital bed, like a princess. Madame Pomfrey had brought her a blancmange, and then went away to her other duties. Sirith scrutinized the pale surface of the pudding, surrounded by a pool of raspberry juice, and sniggered maliciously. Malfoy's face had had an almost identical colour. The girl marked eyes, a nose, and a mouth, twisted in a sad grimace, on the pudding's surface with her spoon.

'I hate you, Malfoy,' she spat out the words with loathing, bending over the plate. 'You swine, you rat... rotter, jellyfish, horned toad... I'll scratch out your peepers and shove them to your yap!' She poked the pudding with the spoon, causing the juice to sprinkle on the blanket, and repeated the action several times with a hardened expression. The pudding was bleeding copiously with raspberry...

'Eghm...' a meaningful grunt could be heard. Sirith froze, with the spoon raised to another murderous stroke. The owner of the biggest chrisma in Hogwarts stood in the half-open door of the sick room. He looked a bit stunned.

Drat, he had had no intention whatsoever of visiting that brat. She was not bedridden, and most probably Poppy would not find any reason to keep her under her wings for too long. But the position of the Head of House and a free half-hour before the lesson with the fifth year (ugh! ouch! Potter and the rest!) obliged him at least to inquire of Pomfrey after his pupil's state of health. Malfoy's state of health was no longer a concern of Severus – the blonde had already turned up by the end of the breakfast, with his ear raspberry pink, but whole.

Severus had not thought at all about the Lestrange imp on his way to the hospital wing (he was setting up the lesson plan in his thoughts), but even if he had been thinking about her, by no means he would have imagined the scene of an eleven year old murderess lacerating some remains with an expression of demented fury on her face, using an ominously shining metal tool to the purpose. Only after a few seconds did the terrified Potions Master realise that the red stains on the bed linen were not blood, and the jumbled mass on the tray was not human brain. With some effort he took a deeper breath and cleared his throat.

Lestrange froze like a photograph from the Daily Prophet. The only thing she lacked was a frame and a caption: JUVENILE MURDERESS.

'Don't you like blancmange, Lestrange?' asked Snape coldly.

'Egh...' she said uncertainly and looked into the plate. 'I think it's still okay.'

And she started to eat calmly and unconcernedly.

Snape sat on a chair by the bed, first scrutinizing it for stains of juice.

'Attacking Malfoy in public was really stupid,' he said in a low voice.

Lestrange shrugged.

'So was I supposed to let him off? Sure, I can see that a bigger half of the seniors toady to him, and the younger ones are all afraid,' she answered, stopping for a moment ingesting blancmange.

'One doesn't say 'a bigger half,' Snape corrected her automatically, knitting his brows. 'And I'm not saying that you should've allowed him to push you over, but that you should have settled the matter differently. Come to me, for example. I'm your Head of House, aren't I?'

Sirith looked at him, her grey eyes cold.

'Yes? And what would you do to him, Prof? Give him a beating?'

'We don't beat students in Hogwarts,' answered Snape in equally cold manner.

'Nooo...?' She rose her eyebrows in imitation of his own ironic expression.

Severus kept his face immobile, but he felt his cheeks reddening with a treacherous flush of embarrassment. Lestrange had hit straight into the bull's eye of his greatest problem. He had hit her, but he could do very little to this spoiled brat as long as his father stood behind him. And, to tell the truth, few things would bring him greater satisfaction than giving Mister Prefect a good thrashing.

'Whatever I would do to him, it would not be biting his ear off,' he said dryly. 'It's not our style, Lestrange. Not out methods. WE are intelligent.'

'We?'

'Imagine a lion attacking a hunter. What happens then?' Snape answered the question with another.

'It eats him?' said Sirith.

'It gets shot,' Snape smiled maliciously. 'That is lion's courage, Gryffindor's courage. They throw themselves in blindly, and get their heads smashed. The snake's philosophy is different. Snakes hide in the grass and bide their time. Snakes are wise and prudent; they bite by surprise and vanish. Why do you think you got sorted in Slytherin? That funny hat doesn't throw dice or sing 'Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...'. If you got into the House of the Snake, it means you have suitable inclinations. So don't behave like a stupid lion cub. If you want to get up to mischief, at least do it in intelligent manner.'

Sirith nodded slowly, looking at him with something close to idolatry, which made him feel uneasy. Why the hell was he actually giving this lecture to a stupid eleven-year-old?

'Aha, so if I want a revenge on Malfoy, I should do it in intelligent manner, and not get caught?'

Snape gritted his teeth surreptitiously.

'I was speaking theoretically. Don't you dare to take revenge on Malfoy! To take revenge on Malfoy is stupid and dangerous. And, at any rate, how would you manage it, with his overgrown companions by his side all the time?'

'I still had a bite off his eat,' retorted Siri with inexorable logic and unconcealed satisfaction in her voice.

'Right,' drawled Severus. 'And you are sitting now with a compress on your arm and suspended from school. Plus, given the right circumstances, Goyle might have torn your hand off.'

'Like a troll...' mumbled Siri under her nose.

'I've never been in favour of physical violence. Psychological methods have always been my preferred venue, dear child,' said Snape sourly, rising from the chair. 'And by the way... You've got a week detention in the Potions laboratory. Perhaps cleaning test tubes will calm you down somewhat.'

'With you? Super, neat and cool!' the girl exclaimed with elation. 'Thank you!'

Snape was struck dumb. He managed to leave the room with a stony face, but in a state of mental paralysis. Only in the corridor did he begin to breathe deeply. He was aching for a smoke. With a manic expression he started to suck on a pencil he had taken out of his pocket. He had a terrible premonition that this imp would manage something the Dark Lord, the Golden Trio and several generations of brats had failed to accomplish – she would completely destroy his mental health.

He was also wondering about something else. Of course, there was nothing frightening about the sight of a brat abusing a plateful of pudding. The whole situation was actually comical. Severus had not know himself, at first, what the cause of the cold sweat running down his back had been. Still, he felt a throbbing pain of the bad memory somewhere close to his heart. Lestrange... Naturally, there were hundreds of Lestranges in England alone, and probably thousands in France. Sirith Herma Lestrange from Fogbell did not have anything to do with THOSE Lestranges. She could not have! Could she? But still for two nightmarish seconds he could see another face superimposed on the childish face of that terrible wench – a face of a mature woman, bearing an identical expression of fury and insanity. He knew now of whom she reminded him: she was a blond version of Bellatrix Lestrange, imprisoned since sixteen years in Azkaban. Thankfully, simple arithmetics gave the obvious, logical, and highly comforting answer – she was not HER daughter.

Otherwise, he would not have advanced two knuts for Draco Malfoy's life.

To be continued