Chapter 3: Slytherin
The Mudblood was getting more than she'd bargained for in this House, no mistake. First the hostility in the Great Hall, though she seemed to have expected that – and now this. Cassiopeia's permanent (annoying) smile had started wilting, thank heavens, and she was whining for mercy like a Muggle-born should.
" . . . don't know what you mean, isn't a galleon a sort of ship?"
Crabbe started growling something, but Draco cut in; this was just too good. "A Galleon is a coin. Mo-ney. You know, that shiny stuff that everyone has more of than you? I lost three Galleons 'cause you were Sorted into Slytherin, and now I'd like them back."
"I don't have any money on me!" Cassiopeia's eyes were brimming. "Honest. I'd give it to you if I could!"
"Well, we can't have that, eh?" Draco smiled and took a step closer. "Pure-blood asks, Mudblood does. That's how the world works. I'll be nice this time, and give you a choice: would you rather lose your jewelry or your next grade?"
"Can't you be even nicer?" Such forlorn hope, it was really pathetic . . . "Please let me go. Just this once. I can get the Galleons – some extra money too . . ." Cassiopeia trailed off. "This isn't working, is it?"
"As refreshing as it is to have a Mudblood learn so quickly . . ." Draco smirked. "No. – Crabbe, Goyle: don't put her in the Hospital Wing, hey?" Then he spun around and was gone, barely keeping himself from jumping up and down; another Mudblood smacked back into place, and he could scare her as much as he wanted to. No consequences, not with Professor Snape around . . .
.x.
But consequences had come, and they were staring him out of countenance. Draco cursed under his breath – she's just a Mudblood! But scenes and feelings fluttered and whirled around until he was so dizzy that he'd stumble into dreams again –
He was eight years old and throwing up in an alleyway, nursing broken fingers. Draco had lost a tooth, and it didn't seem to have been one of the loose ones – he was afraid of that. He was especially scared of telling Father how it had happened.
. . . Draco's cousins were shocked dumb when he came reeling home – and guilty, too. They'd only meant to smack him around a little bit.
Then the boy sobbed out his story, and the cousins stopped fearing punishment. Lucius Malfoy had turned suddenly so cold: "They'll pay, son, because no filthy Mudblood can do that to our kind. But you'll have to prove to me that you'll never make that imbecilic mistake again . . ."
. . . that imbecilic mistake. Draco was trying to hide behind his cousins – that was instinct, but it was stupid considering that their actions were what he was hiding from. The Mudblood was trash, sure, but had just been walking home –
"Oi, throw a few kicks, Draco. We've got the filth down already."
But he knew he'd feel awful if he did it, and his cousins had been drinking stronger stuff than Butterbeer; for a moment it seemed like Draco should want to be a part of this, but he couldn't convince himself to.
Still, it sounded like a stranger's voice saying "No!"
"Hey, c'mon!" . . . and they were drunk. They'd been fighting. What started out as a rough rebuke blurred into a quick beating, and then they realized the kid looked awful and ran off. Draco was still lying there dazed when the Mudblood's siblings showed up.
(The imbecilic mistake being to refuse – worse, to refuse for the sake of some inchoate notion that the Mudblood should be left alone.)
. . . He was thirteen years old and eight, eleven, one day twenty – hurting and scaring Mudbloods, or more accurately – because he still couldn't stomach actually dealing the blows – using bigger friends to get the same effect. There was a strange, dark thrill to each empowering second, and he stamped very hard on the whisper of horror; maybe one day it would leave him alone. He wasn't an imbecile and he wasn't weak.
. . . then Draco was watching Cassiopeia cry, except that her face shifted strangely in a flicker of shadows: she was a different scared and funny-looking kid . . . but Crabbe's sloppy roundhouse blotted out the phantom mirror, and things righted themselves –
Only to shatter and piece together in a very strange new way. He was in one of Goyle's favourite chokeholds, and a gleeful-looking Crabbe was just drawing back for another swing at Draco's face. A pale-haired boy was swirling away in his black robes, which bleached and wavered for a moment into Lucius Malfoy's crisp gray coattails – then whoever-it-was had vanished, leaving Draco alone with a gang of his Crabbe- and Goyle-faced cousins –
The boy snapped awake and cussed himself out again. Thirteen was too old for nightmares, and this one was patently ridiculous; his father would have stopped the beating! He had nothing in common with Cassiopeia, she was nothing but a Mudblood . . .
Still, Draco's reactions the next day were not what they could have been . . . especially when the Mudblood marched right up to him and made, of all things, a demand.
.x.
"I'd like my necklace back now, please." Cassiopeia barely held her voice steady; fear was clogging up her throat, but she knew what she wanted and she would darn well get it. A reminder, Sweetpea. See the facets? This was a risk, but nobody took her dad's last present.
"I'm sorry, what?"
He didn't even remember! Oh, now she was mad. "My necklace. The one your goons stole! Give it back."
The third-year shook off a little of his stupid daze. "Look, d'you want another beating?"
"No." Cassie refused to shrink; it might've been years since she'd asserted herself like this, but that by no means rendered her incapable. "I want my necklace back. It's from my dad."
"And that makes you care about it." Malfoy's eyes were unreadable, but his face was . . . well, probably as flushed as it could get.
"Yes. It does." Cassie wasn't sure why she was answering that question – wasn't the sentiment just another weakness for this rotter to hit? She felt vaguely sorry for him, though . . . just a very little bit.
"Because he's kind to you." Now Cassiopeia could read the expression: hunger. Of a strange kind that she'd never felt. Maybe a touch more sorry now.
Still, she smiled as she said it – a very cruel thing to say, all things considered – "He's perfect. Necklace, please."
Malfoy handed it over without comment, but something in his silence nudged Cassiopeia's brain into top gear. So this boy had shadows, did he? And the people who really suffered from their shadows were the ones with a tiny, frightened light . . .