Summary: A series of oneshots in the universe of 'The Rebel Snakes', exploring magic in other cultures, the intersection of magic and Muggle worlds, and the dichotomy of magic and faith. Mostly Gold-centric, with frequent appearances by the trio, the Slytherins and various others. Features linguistically brilliant Harry, morally confused Malfoy, flirty Myrtle, social justice Hermione, chessmaster Ron and BAMF Neville.

Part 2: As a first-year, David Gold gets into an argument with a hat, makes enemies, uses very old magic, and happens upon his purpose.

"Now, form a line," Professor McGonnagall instructed the first years, "and follow me."

He still couldn't believe he was really here. He couldn't believe it had been permitted. The grand Gothic arches and towers and high walls of Hogwarts were a world away from white walls and sterile sheets - a distance he'd always felt so certain he would never cross. And he'd come here alone. Avi hadn't even sat with him on the train and it was the most wonderful freedom in the world. Nobody was looking at him, nobody was asking if he was alright or if he needed any help.

David was nervous and excited and overjoyed and afraid, all at the same time. The joy was the strongest. He felt like his heart would burst.

As they entered the Great Hall there were collective gaps and whispers. So the stories his brothers had told him were true - the ceiling was really enchanted. It looked like the whole room extended upwards into the heavens. "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside, I read about it in Hogwarts, a History," whispered a girl somewhere behind him. David paused and craned his neck.

Two behind him in line, a boy who was much bigger than David shoved at the boy between them, pushing everyone forward. "Hurry up, pipsqueaks," the bigger boy grunted.

David was short for his age. He'd been terribly thin until the chemo potions stopped. Now he was pudgy from his mother's doting and looked younger than he was. He didn't like being called little. The boy between them was not as short but still much smaller than the boy who'd shoved them. He looked scared. David's eyes flashed. "Oi! You oaf! Do you fancy your nose when it's still attached to your face?"

The bigger boy, who didn't seem to fully grasp that he was being threatened by someone a head shorter than him, opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment McGonagall cast them a glare so frosty that it shut both boys up tight.

"Abbot, Hannah!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

He wished they would hurry up. Suspense was always, always worse than even the worst knowledge. What house would he be in?

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

He knew he was clever. He could be in Ravenclaw with Ben.

"Finch-Fletchly, Justin!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Hufflepuff wasn't for him. It would have been nice to be with Samson and Avi, but he wasn't like them. He wasn't loyal. Avi trusted everyone implicitly and Samson would never lose faith in a friend no matter what they did to him. David's trust in the world had been shattered one time too many. Loyalty? He picked holes in his best friends. He didn't have many friends to begin with.

"Finnigan, Seamus!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Everybody said he was brave. That was the thing you were supposed to say. But David knew in his heart it wasn't true.

"Gold, David!"

He crossed to the school and sat. The hat descended over his eyes.

"Now," whispered a tiny voice in his ear, "you're an interesting one, my lad."

Do you read my mind? thought David, very deliberately.

"In a sort of a way - you know, it's not so much reading a book as it is looking at a painting. Many changing colours and layers. Bright, very bright - razor-keen you are. And inquisitive, I see. You would do very well in Ravenclaw."

David let out a relieved breath.

"Except -"

What?

"No, no, Ravenclaw won't do at all. Too pensive, too serene. Not for you. There's passion in you. And bitterness. Gryffindor, perhaps? You're brave - reckless, even-"

Don't say I'm brave! I'm not brave!

"What makes you so sure?"

Can't you see it? It's right there. Sitting there in my head.

"Yes," said the hat. It sounded sad. "There's a gaping hole in the middle of your painting. How long did they give you?"

Maybe ten years, if the growth doesn't speed up and it doesn't metastasize anywhere else. They can't operate. See? It's not bravery when you have nothing to lose.

"Perhaps you are right... Well then. What do you want to do in that time?"

Change everything. The whole world. It's all rubbish.

"That's a tall order. Are you always so angry?"

Shouldn't I be? The universe fucked me over. I was supposed to be cured.

The hat chuckled in his ear.

"SLYTHERIN!"

He found an empty place at the Slytherin table. The conversation with the hat had left him angry.

Sitting across from him was a pale, blonde-haired boy with pointed features. "Are you the one that yelled at Goyle?" he asked, gesturing to a larger boy on his right side. It was the pusher from the line.

"Yeh, that's me," answered David, carelessly. He wanted the feast to start already.

"Are you a pureblood?" asked the blonde boy.

David had never been asked that before. He mistook it for mere curiosity. "Yes?"

The blonde boy looked impressed. "My name's Draco Malfoy," he said, offering David a handshake.

David got the impression he was supposed to know the name Malfoy already, but he didn't. "David Gold."

"Gold?" Malfoy retracted his hand like he'd been stung. "You're a Gold?"

"Something wrong?"

"You said you were a pureblood!"

"I am."

"But aren't your lot - you know - Jewish?" Malfoy said it like it was a dirty word.

"Not pureblood, that makes us?"

Malfoy wrinkled his nose. "He even talks like one."

David felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. "You want to hear me talk like a Jew?" he snapped, reaching for his wand. "Parash!"

The stinging hex hit Malfoy on the arm. He yelped. "Keep your Jewy magic away from us! We're not supposed to be doing spells yet - I'll tell Snape-"

"I don't care if you do," sniffed David.

"You will! He's a friend of my father! He'll make you clean the whole dungeons!"

"I don't care! He'll say you're wrong! He's a grown-up! You can't say things like that!" David knew it existed but he'd never heard anyone be so blunt about their hatred. He was red-faced with rage. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

"What are you, five?"

"Tzaraath sh'va!"

"What spell did you use on Mr. Malfoy?"

Professor Snape was very tall and very thin. He had a great hooked nose and black eyes. David liked his face. It had character. Snape didn't smile much - ever, maybe- but David preferred that to people who smiled for no reason.

"A skin-mottling hex, sir. It won't last long."

"How do you know?" Malfoy demanded. His face was blotchy and his voice kept rising in pitch with every word. "It's not a proper spell, is it!? It could last for ever!"

"Don't be stupid," hissed David, "I know what I'm doing."

Snape tilted his head. His expression was unreadable. "What is the incantation?"

"I - I'm not supposed to say, sir."

"I believe I am your professor, Gold, and I decide what you are 'supposed to do.'"

"It's a family secret."

"And it would have remained such, if you had not used it on a classmate."

David knew his brothers would have been disappointed. He didn't let it show. "Tzaraath sh'va. It means a skin disease. The sh'va makes it short. Temporary. It'll go away."

Snape's eyes glittered. His expression was impossible to read. "And what did Mr. Malfoy do to deserve this fate?"

David said nothing. Malfoy was looking at him with amazement.

"Well, Mr. Gold?"

"That's between him and me." Now that he was thinking straight again he had no desire for Snape's help. Or anyone's. It wasn't right. He would find a way to make it right.

Snape leaned in. "Slytherin is no place for honour among thieves, Mr. Gold."

"I don't care." Apparently it's no place for a Jew either, and yet here I am.

"In that case, fifteen points shall be taken from Slytherin. Now both of you get out of my sight."

That night, David Gold learned that Slytherin house was neither fair nor right.

The whole house was angry that someone could have out them in the negative points before classes even started. And, led by Malfoy, the purebloods who ran the dorm had taken a set against him. They ganged up on them, six or seven of them, with wands and hexes. They all seemed to think 'Jew' was an insult.

The first night he curled up underneath his blanket and cried until he slept. By the third night he'd stopped crying at all. By a week, he had gotten his brothers to teach him a warding spell that bounced most hexes away.

By three weeks, none of them dared attack him unless it was more than two on one.

He had been there a month when, alone in the common room very late at night, he heard a sniffling sound, like somebody crying. David put his transfiguration textbook aside and got up, looking for the source of the sound.

Another first-year sat at the foot of the steps in his pyjamas, shivering. His face looked sticky with dry tears. "Who're you?" asked David.

"Tommy - Tommy Tasker."

"What are you doing down here, Tommy Tasker?"

"They won't let me go up." The boy sniffed. "They - they found out I'm M-Muggleborn - and they say I'm making them dirty - by sharing a room-"

David set his jaw. He went up the stairs with his wand out. "Come with me."

In the dorm above, two third-years named Hector Claude and Septimus Morfan were playing exploding snap on Tommy Tasker's bed. They looked up at him. Morfan sniggered. "Well, look. It's the Jew."

"Fat little thing, isn't he? I thought pigs weren't kosher?"

Normally it would have hurt. This time he had a job to do. The insults rebounded off his sense of purpose. They were bigger than him, and more experienced wizards, and there were two of them. How could he possibly win this? He could hardly back down now. Tasker was watching him.

Maybe fighting them wasn't the answer. Maybe he could be more cunning than that. I'm a Slytherin, aren't I?

"That's Tasker's bed you're sitting on."

"We know," said Claude.

"He's a Mudblood. He can sleep on the common room floor. That's better than where he belongs."

David saw Tasker flinch in his peripheries. He fixed them with a stare. "Have you ever heard of the Golem?"

They looked like they wanted to laugh, but the quality of that stare was hard to turn away from.

"It was created by Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a Rabbi and a powerful wizard. In Prague, a long time ago, we were kept in ghettos like animals. They slaughtered our children in front of our eyes to keep us from growing too many. Rabbi Loew heard his peoples' misery and he fashioned out of clay a huge form - taller than a giant, and more powerful. Its arms were like tree trunks. Its eyes were empty and dead." As he spoke, David advanced forward with a slow and steady tread. His voice was low and rhythmic, almost musical.

"What are you doing?" demanded Morfan, looking around him uneasily.

"By the light of the flickering flame he read from the Sefer Yezira, The Book of Creation. He filled the body of clay with energies of fire, and earth, and into the new clay of its forehead he carved the Emet, the Hebrew characters for Truth. Truth holds power over life and death and so he brought breath into the Golem's body."

The flames of the lamps in the room began to flicker. "Stop," said Claude, uneasily.

"The Golem had been created for one purpose: to destroy the oppressors of Rabbi Loew's people. And when it was no longer needed in Prague, it slept, with their blood on its clay hands, until a time when it would be needed again. It has wakened many times. I think perhaps it is needed again."

"Tasker isn't a Jew!"

"You think the Golem only serves Jews?" asked David, serenely. "It defends all peoples who are oppressed and mistreated. Blood, birth, faith - it is all one to the Golem. It sees only the suffering and those who have hurt them. Now. Get off Tasker's bed. And leave him be."

They got off, staring uneasily at anything but David's calm face. "Your - freaky foreign magic doesn't scare me!" declared Claude, but the words were flimsier than a damp paper napkin. The third-years retreated down the steps to the common room, leaving David and Tasker alone.

"How did you do that with - the lights?"

"It's all in the voice," said David. That was old, old magic. The words were not important. He'd adjusted the story of the Golem of Prague more than a little for impact. It wasn't even truly Hebraic magic. His father had always told him that story in English or Yiddish, not Hebrew, but the rising and falling swell of his voice was the same as when he spoke prayers or incantations, and it had the same power. Power to transform perception. Power to influence. Subtle magic, but strong, in the right hands.

"Would - the - the Golem really come here for me?"

David smiled into the flickering light. "He would, Tommy. In fact, he's already here."

The original Golem story is rather more theologically complex. He may get deeper into it later on. I'm not sure yet. The boys behind Gold in line were Anthony Goldstein, who may appear later, followed by Gregory Goyle. I can alphabet.

I'm still brainstorming ideas, so if anyone has any specific elements they'd like to see explored, let me know! And even if you don't, drop me a review!