Hello there. Thanks for clicking on my story!

I apologize for any linguistic mistakes; they can happen, seen as I am not a native English speaker. Please bear with me :)
Also, of course, I do not own Harry Potter. Any characters, scenes, dialogue etc. you recognize belong to their respective owners.

Anything else? Ah yes: just so you know, this doesn't have anything to do with Cursed Child. For the sake of this story, we'll just ignore that mess, so 1) I don't have to deal with it and 2) no one has to fear seeing spoilers.

I'll stop babbling now and we'll get on with the first proper chapter:

New Age

You never told me how you found out you were a wizard - but I am sure you remember the joy. Sometimes, I cannot remember what it felt like not knowing there was such a thing as magic, not knowing about Hogwarts.
There is, however, one thing that is very clear in my mind: it sucks being a Muggle. Being an orphan sucks even more. (I suppose you do remember that part as well.) I had never been happier than when I heard I would be going to Hogwarts, a place where my quirks and little talents would be appreciated instead of having to be kept from sight.

Here is something that will please you, since you are so proud of our heritage and what not: I had barely heard anything about houses when I got sorted, but the Sorting Hat barely had to touch my head before it sent me straight into Slytherin.
The only thing I knew about Slytherin at that point was that only purebloods got to go there; a certain bushy haired girl named Hermione Granger had been practically shouting about it on the train.

I made the fateful mistake of telling Pansy Parkinson that first night that I had grown up in a Muggle orphanage. She looked at me like I had some contagious sickness.
She came grovelling later, of course, when you were on the rise again and the entire house was brimming with news about you and their parents' allegiance. Yet, much like you, I do not forgive easily.

I could almost feel Pansy's eyes on me for the entirety of the Welcoming Feast in fifth year.
The mood was better at the Slytherin table than it was anywhere else - at least, the Gryffindors seemed decidedly less cheerful than usual. Especially Potter looked sour, but for all I knew, he had every reason to.

You had returned the summer before. I had not seen you - I had only seen what everyone else had seen, too. Potter returning as pale as a ghost, clutching the dead body of one Cedric Diggory.
The Slytherins had taken bets about just how terrible the outcome of the Triwizard Tournament would be, but that had topped all our expectations.

Blaise Zabini nudged me gently in the ribs. I do not think you ever met Blaise, and I am glad of it.
Dark-haired and olive-skinned, people said he had inherited his good looks from his mother, who was some sort of promiscuous rich woman. More importantly, he was one of the few who had never cared who I descended from and thus had quickly become a friend.

Either way, he was pointing to the teacher's table. "Which of them will teach Defence this year?"

Guessing the new Defence teacher was a game we played every year. People said the job had been jinxed and frankly, some say it was you that did it. True or not, none of us could remember a teacher lasting longer than a year on the Defence Against the Dark Arts post.

My eyes scanned the table for somebody new. The only one was a very small woman clad entirely in pink, who looked like she might die shrieking in the face of Dark Arts rather than defend herself against them.

"Surely that can't be her," Tracey Davis said. "Right, Cassie?"

Tracey was, aside from Blaise, my best friend. Pale as she was, she was a right contrast to both me and Blaise, as we both had a darker tone. We had met during our first night at Hogwarts and with her wide, blue gaze had made her look as lost as I felt.

I hummed in response. "She doesn't look it," I admitted. "But Lupin also didn't look like much."

Blaise scoffed. "Lupin also was a werewolf."

"Still the best teacher we ever had," I said. "But she really doesn't look like it. Maybe Snape finally did get the job and she'll take Potions."

Tracey sighed longingly and wiped a bit of reddish blonde hair out of her face. "That would be too good to be true."
The good thing about Snape was that he favoured his own students no matter what; but if one was a terrible Potion maker, not even his preference for Slytherins could help and Tracey had long since given up hope for a good Potions mark.

I am not sure if I ever told you about Dolores Umbridge. When she got up that night to speak before the Great Hall, I did not yet know just how terrible a teacher and a person she was, but I would soon learn. Truth be told, even you would probably have hated her.

She interrupted the headmaster with a high-pitched clearing of her throat and proceeded to give a long-winded speech about tradition and the Ministry's wishes. By the time she finished, every single person in the hall seemed to have turned against her.
Perhaps it was her sickeningly sweet voice or the revolting toad-like face; perhaps it was mostly the sense of falsehood that was dripping from her every word that made her so very hateable.

Tracey had slumped next to me, looking even paler beneath her freckles. "Great," she moaned. "Now I'll fail Potions and Defence."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "You'll fail neither of them."

"That's easy for you to say," she said and - she was right.

The only subject I had ever had to worry about failing was Herbology, because I could not keep plants alive for the life of me. When we had desperately needed the Mandrakes in Second Year, when we had needed the plants to revive the petrified students, Professor Sprout had eventually banned me from doing the actual work. The plants had stopped screaming, started crying for good and absolutely refused to go back into their pot. I should probably better not have children.

(Thank you, by the way. Finding out about being the heiress of Syltherin due to a giant snake living in the castle and attacking fellow students was certainly refreshing.)

"I'll help you with Defence," I promised Tracey. "And Snape will never fail you in Potions."

"Cassie's right," Blaise said. "It's O.W.L. year, remember? He'll want all of us to pass with top grades."

There was a sudden commotion. Students were rummaging about, ready to leave for the common room. My eyes scanned the table to find Draco Malfoy looking about importantly. He had been made prefect that year - along with me.

I know you have been prefect as well - I saw you on the lists and I saw your little trophy for special services to the school. Were you proud?
To me, it was an expected honour, albeit one that I welcomed. I had always thought it would feel more triumphant, though.

First years were swarming around me for the entire walk down to the dungeons, little pureblood boys and girls with expressions ranging from haughty to terrified. I wondered if I had been that small in first year.
Draco enjoyed pinching them when they were not looking or hexing them so their hair grew in weird colours. We were only halfway through the dungeons before I had to punch him in the arm.

"Will you knock it off?" I said.

"Why?" Draco raised an eyebrow at me. "What else are we prefects for?"

I could have named any number of reasons and none of them included torturing first years. I told him none of them. "I'm telling you to stop, so that's how we'll handle it."

He looked sour, but did not start an argument - we both knew I would not hesitate to hex him if I thought it necessary.

You used Draco later, mostly because you thought he would fail.
Which he surely would have - but you discounted a very important thing, then: no matter what stands between us, Slytherins stick together. Draco Malfoy might have been a coward and a bully, and we might not always have been friends, but he was one of my people.

The first years were ushered into bed and when the last flimsy footsteps had disappeared into their dormitories, I plopped onto a couch by one of the big windows opening to the lake, right in between Tracey and Vincent Crabbe.

Do you remember the common room? The green tinge of the light, the warm crackling of the fire, the soft gurgling of the lake lapping against the windows?
Did the Giant Squid already exist when you were here? One of my favourite things was seeing it swim by with mighty pushes.

"I'm exhausted already," I announced. "And it's not been a day."

"Well, you did have to go and become prefect," Pansy Parkinson said, wrinkling her nose as if she had not wished for the position herself.

"Nothing I can't handle," I said and waved her comment away. "Besides, who else would do the job?"

She looked as indignant as I had imagined.
In that moment, I figured becoming Head Girl would not be such a bad idea after all. Being made prefect had been a matter of course; I was, by far, the best student in Slytherin and someone who was well liked by both teachers and students.
Becoming Head Girl did not appear to be that easy. I would face the concurrence of Hermione Granger, and that was not easy to compete with.

I am sure you have at least heard of her. Perhaps you know her only as Harry Potter's friend, but around Hogwarts, they called her the brightest of witch of her age, which was a title that irked me quite a bit. I could not deny it though - and maybe you heard that as well - she was truly brilliant.

"Can you believe Snape did not make it? Again?" Blaise said. He was lounging in a loveseat off to the right side of our couch, and had propped his legs over the armrest. "They'd give the job to anyone, but not to him."

"I'd kill for a year of Snape in Defence," Pansy said. "I'd finally stand a chance."

Personally, I thought Pansy would not stand a chance even if her own mother was teaching Defence. No one could give out good grades for nothing.

"But if we're unlucky, he'll die on the job," I reminded her. "Or worse, what with how Lockhart ended. He, and all of us, are probably safer that way."

"I bet that's not why Dumbledore denies him," Draco piped up.

At that time, I had no idea why Snape was the way Snape was and frankly, I do not have much of an idea today; but I did think that Draco was absolutely right. Whatever it was that compelled Dumbledore to keep Snape from the post he so very much wanted, it was not the worry for his safety. He did not care about anyone elses.

The year before, our headmaster had hosted the Triwizard Tournament, sent his own students into fights against dragons and threatened to drown others. One of his students had died during it. Granted, that might have had a little more to do with you than it did with Dumbledore, but still.

"Well, maybe Snape can get the job for our last year," Blaise suggested. "Who cares if gets kicked out after that?"

"How terrible of you," Tracey said. "I'd feel awful if something would happen to him."

There had, indeed, been some awful things that had happened to Defence teachers in the past - Lockhart had lost his memory, Moody had been locked in a box for the entire year and Quirrell, he had straight-up died. You know that, of course, for you had a big part in it.

I wonder - did you ever consider revealing yourself to me? Did you watch me, while you spent the entire year at Hogwarts? I admit that it hurt, finding out you were so close and yet never approached me. Do you not think I deserved better than that?

"We'll see," I said and suppressed the yawn that struggled to break through. "Maybe we should call it a night."

Tracey let out a long sigh of relief and rolled her shoulders. "It's about time someone said it!"

Though no one celebrated my suggestion of going to bed as exaggeratedly as Tracey, they all seemed happy enough to follow my suggestion. The exhaustion did not seem to be limited to prefects.

We all slunk off towards our dormitories.
I am not sure how much they changed between our times, but to me, the Hogwarts dormitories were the cosiest place on earth. The four-poster beds, covered in green and protected by elegant hangings, wrapping me - for once - in safety.

The company was another thing. Out of the five girls, I was close with Tracey and on reasonably good terms with the others, though I barely tolerated Pansy Parkinson.
From what I hear, you never had friends, and I can only pity you - but I also understand. People are sometimes hard to endure.

"Hey," Tracey said as I was searching my trunk for sleepwear. "Do you think this will be a good year?"

Even though I did not believe it in that moment and even though it would be a bad year and even though it would only be the start of a series of bad years, I said, "You know what? I think it will be the best we ever had."

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