A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews! Not much to say here other than things are starting to pick up. Enjoy the chapter!
Review Responses:
The Three Stoogies, thanks, glad you like it!
jddmn13, thanks for the review! Hope you enjoy the rest of the story!
MaxineCrazy, thanks for the review! With regards to pairings, I do have some planned for later down the line (if I get to writing other fics in the series) but for this particular fic, there won't be a pairing, because the characters are so young that it really doesn't make much sense. Hope you enjoy the fic (or fics) regardless though!
Em-Wing, thanks! Glad you liked it, and nice to see you here from my Soul Eater fic~
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. If you recognize the name/can find it in the Harry Potter Wiki, it's not mine.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leaders and Followers
Circe whirled around to face them as they stood there dumbly, Scorpius's wand still clutched loosely in his hand. She stared at them, eyes wide in anger and surprise.
"What are you doinghere?!" she screeched. "This is the girls' dormitory! There's supposed to be a charm!"
Before Al could even ask her what she meant, footsteps thundered from the hall outside, making them jump. An older girl burst into the room, brown hair flying wildly around her and eyes blazing. Al choked as he recognized Tacita Aldridge, a sixth-year Slytherin and one of the meanest prefects that Hogwarts had to offer.
"What's going on here?" Tacita demanded, whirling onto them. "Why are there boys in the girls' dormitory?" But before she could even get started on questioning them, her eyes were drawn to the mess strewn about the dormitory room, to the wreckage that had been Gisela's bed. Her eyes slid past Al and Scorpius, landing on Circe, whose hands were still resting on the shoulders of a shivering Gisela.
Al took the opportunity to take a discreet step towards the doorway. Wordlessly, Scorpius did the same.
A crowd had gathered in the doorway to the dormitory, mostly girls, but here and there, Al caught sight of a few hesitant boys, carefully squeezing their way into the crowd, trying to stay unnoticed while still catching a glimpse into the room. Tacita's eyes moved over them, narrowing, and Al could have sworn he saw the crowd take a collective step back.
"Everyone out," Tacita said, although he noticed that she didn't shout it this time, likely because Gisela looked close to tears. "If I see a single boy in this dormitory when I turn back around, heads are going to roll. Take Flynn and Rosier with you, Potter, Malfoy. And someone send for Stonecroft."
The crowd scattered. Al, who had been halfway to the door, paused to let Gisela and Circe catch up. The few remaining Slytherins clustered around the entrance to the dormitory parted to let them through, and Gisela wrapped her arms tightly around herself, white as a ghost. Behind her, Circe had her mouth clamped tightly shut, as though it was taking all of her effort not to start screaming again.
Noah Dennell was waiting for them in the common room, looking pale. When they emerged from the entrance to the girls' dormitories, he stood up from the armchair he had been sitting in, turning to face them.
"I've just sent for Professor Stonecroft," he said. "The three of you should sit down and wait for him. I expect it's been quite the shock. Would any of you like some tea?" He wet his lips with his tongue, looking nervously at the entrance to the dormitory. A shiver passed through him, but Al barely noticed. His mind had snagged onto something Noah had said, and now he looked up, his eyes moving over the people with him.
Three.
Somehow, Scorpius had broken away from them, disappearing into the crowd. The only people with him now were Circe and Gisela.
Gisela started crying a few minutes before Professor Stonecroft actually arrived, soft, whimpering sobs that made it sound like she was trying very hard to keep herself quiet. Circe fluttered around her with a handkerchief, frantically trying to make herself useful, and nearly elbowed Noah in the gut when he approached them bearing two large mugs of tea. The common room had settled into a sort of hush, packed to the rafters with quiet, expectant Slytherins.
Al looked around, recognizing that despite the number of people that had filtered into the common room to wait, this wasn't the whole House. There seemed to be an equal split between those that had wanted to wait out in the open for Stonecroft to see what would happen next and those that had scented trouble and gone into hiding. He caught sight of Tristan and Leander huddled near the doorway to their dormitory, looking miserable, and Morpheus Selwyn lounging in one of the long couches near the fire, his array of third and second-year followers arranged around him like dark ravens. Blond little Rheia Carran was talking softly to an older girl who stood with her back against one of the walls, arms folded. She had the same blond hair and delicate features as Rheia, and Al guessed that that had to have been Parthenia, Rheia's seventh-year sister.
He frowned, remembering the events of today's flying class, but Rheia had been at dinner with the rest of them. He had seen her there, seated across the table from Leander, Tristan and himself, and, as Circe continued to insist to anyone who would listen, she and Gisela had been in the dormitory until just before dinner and the room had been fine then.
Whoever had done this had to have done it while they were at dinner.
They waited in near-silence, the only sounds the crackling of the fire, the lapping of the lake water against the glass, and hushed murmurs rising from a few pockets of conversation around the room. It could only have been a few minutes until Professor Stonecroft arrived, sweeping into the common room with another prefect, a girl from Noah's year, quick at his heels, but it had felt like much longer. He moved past where Tacita stood guard at the entrance to the girls' dormitory, his expression grim, and she fell into step behind him.
"He's really angry," Al said, when it seemed safe to speak.
"Who? Stonecroft?" asked Noah, looking up.
Al nodded. Noah looked grim.
"He hates this," Noah said. "I mean, really hates this. Nothing gets him more riled up than when students start poking at each other over blood purity. I'm half-blood myself—I mean really half-blood," he added, when Al opened his mouth, "—Muggle mother, and Stonecroft practically saved my first couple of years at Hogwarts. They say it's because of the war."
"The war?" Al asked.
Noah looked around the room to see if it was still safe to speak, then lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Now this is just a rumor, Albus, so don't go spreading it around, but they say that Professor Stonecroft had a half-blood girlfriend about when he graduated Hogwarts. When the war broke out, they—they tortured her. They say he never got over it."
Al felt himself pale at Noah's words, his stomach souring, but he nodded quickly, falling silent as Professor Stonecroft emerged from the dormitory.
The Transfiguration professor's expression was even darker than it had been when he had gone in. In soft, quiet tones, he told the prefects to gather everyone into the common room, and within minutes the Slytherin common room seemed packed almost to capacity as the students who had tried to wait it out into their bedrooms were ushered into the room. Al spotted Scorpius making his way out of the boy's dormitory, edging along one wall and staying as far away from Al and company as possible as he eyed Professor Stonecroft warily. He didn't look at all surprised. In fact, he looked as though he had been expecting something like this to happen all along.
"I'm very disappointed that this has happened here," Professor Stonecroft said in hushed tones, once they were all gathered. Al realized with a jolt that the professor didn't look surprised either, only resigned. "Most of you have heard me lecture on this subject before, but for our newer students—and for those who clearly need to hear it again—let me repeat myself. Slytherin House once had a reputation for greatness, for intelligence, for resourcefulness, for the sheer audacity to do the unexpected, to challenge the impossible. But the House that was once the home of Merlin himself has been turned into a House of traitors and thieves, of filth who would rather stab each other in the back over the purity of their bloodlines than rise from the ashes of what was to become something greater than we were before. You know what they say about us outside of these walls, and when things like this happen, when we do things like this to one of our own, we prove them right. If we will not learn from our history, we are destined to repeat it. That is all."
He went on to state that whoever had done this would be caught, that the culprit or culprits would be punished severely, but Al was barely listening at that point. Feeling a little sick to his stomach, he looked around the room, looked at the other Slytherins as if seeing them for the first time. Other Slytherins, the other members of his House. One of them had done this, he realized, taking in Noah's pale face, Rheia's nervousness, Scorpius's resignation and Morph's bored expression. One or more of them had gone after Gisela, might still go after Gisela.
Just because she was Muggle-born, just because she wasn't like them.
He thought about Professor Stonecroft's half-blood girlfriend, remembered all of the stories he had heard from the war, everything his parents had told him and a few that they hadn't.
Suddenly, he no longer felt so proud to be a Slytherin.
For the next few days, the incident in the girls' dormitory seemed to be the only thing that Slytherin House could talk about. Reactions ranged from outrage, to distrust, to disgusted comments about how Professor Stonecroft was blowing everything out of proportion. The House seemed split into three camps—the people that supported Gisela, the people that thought that maybe the culprit had a point, and the people who just didn't care. Regardless of what camp people saw themselves in, however, discussing the culprit became something of a favored pastime for people. Everyone had their pet theories for who had done it, and as the days wore on, those theories started being steadily distilled down into a few favorites.
An unfortunate side-effect from this was that a lot of the suspicion, particularly among the lower years, started falling on Scorpius Malfoy. It was a generally established truth by now that the culprit had to have been a boy—otherwise why bother disabling the charm that stopped boys from entering the girls' dormitory—and it had to have been done while most of the House was at dinner. Scorpius had missed dinner that day, and while Madam Pomfrey up in the hospital wing was getting on in years, it still didn't take her an entire afternoon to mend a broken bone.
Al didn't believe it, but it seemed as though he was the only one. Scorpius wasn't well-liked, was stand-offish and mean even to the Slytherins in his year, and his father and grandparents had been known Death Eaters. The rumors that his father still kept Dark artifacts at Malfoy Manor quickly spread, and Al noticed the other students in his year making an effort to keep their distance from Scorpius.
There were a handful of people, mostly fourth and fifth years that Al avoided on instinct, who seemed to think this made Scorpius better in their eyes. They started talking to him more, trying to include them in their circles. This did nothing to make Scorpius feel better. If anything, it only seemed to make him more miserable. Al had tried to convince some of the others of what he had seen during flying class, but none of them believed it. After a while of this, Al wasn't entirely convinced he believed it himself.
But Scorpius had come running when they heard Circe's scream, and he had even had his wand out. Al had the suspicion that there was more to this than he could see, but even he wasn't entirely sure what to make of all of it.
To his surprise, Rose seemed to be on Scorpius's side. Al had told her everything that had happened in the handful of days after the incident when he hadn't felt too comfortable confiding in anyone from Slytherin, and she had simply frowned at him over the top of her textbook, brow furrowed in thought, before she grudgingly admitted that Scorpius couldn't have had anything to do with it.
"It's not that I'm defending Malfoy, mind," she said. "But the spells over the entrance to the girls' dormitories are really complex charms. I don't think there's any way a first-year could have tampered with them, even if his family knows something about the Dark Arts."
It wasn't much, but it did make him feel just a little bit better about his own instincts. And his confiding in Rose seemed to have an interesting effect he hadn't predicted, in that Rose now seemed to go out of her way to talk to and befriend Gisela during Astronomy and flying classes. Circe, who had been on the warpath since the break-in, reluctantly eased some of her standards for Rose—who was a Gryffindor, a Weasley and a half-blood, and therefore the farthest possible thing from a threat—and that meant that she was friendlier to Al too, and to Leander and Tristan by extension.
Slowly, Al started to let go of his newly-acquired misgivings and start trusting the people in his year again, although he still found himself wary around the older students. Tristan and Leander seemed genuinely shocked that something like this had happened, and Al found that it was hard to believe that either of them could have done anything like this. Together, the four of them—Tristan, Leander, Circe, and Al himself—formed a sort of protective circle around Gisela, watching and waiting to see if there would be any more attacks.
Still, with days stretching on and no evidence as to who the culprit or culprits might have been, it looked like the only thing any of them could do was wait to see if they tried to strike again.
The break-in and its aftermath hadn't left Al with a lot of House spirit, but with the Quidditch season fast approaching, he had managed to drum up enough to help Leander and Tristan paint a banner for their upcoming match against Gryffindor. It was the morning of the Quidditch match, when they were seated at the Slytherin table putting the finishing touches on the great silver serpent that coiled along the length of their banner, that James approached the Slytherin table, let out a whoop of laughter, and slapped Al's back hard enough to send him falling forward into his bowl of porridge.
"See you on the pitch, Al!" James said as he ran past them, grinning and twirling his wand in his hand.
Al came up spluttering and coughing. When he looked down at their banner, he saw that the serpent they had been painting was now crushed beneath the paws of a roaring Gryffindor lion. Al glowered at his brother as James turned and ran back into the crowd. Leander was glaring at James as well, and beside him, Tristan was looking down at their banner in dismay, a paintbrush still in one hand.
"Al, your brother—," Leander began.
"I know," said Al, scowling as he accepted the napkin Leander had passed him and began to wipe his face. A part of himself was already beginning to envision scenarios of karmic retribution, like James losing Gryffindor the match by falling off his broom. "Believe me. I know."
"Revorisio," said a voice from behind them.
A shimmering silver light settled over the banner. When it faded, the lion was gone, and the Slytherin serpent was once more coiling across the canvas, the way that it had been a few moments ago. He looked over his shoulder to see Lorcan and Lysander Scamander standing there, Lorcan already beginning to put his wand away.
"Did it work?" Lorcan asked, approaching the banner. "Oh, good. I wasn't sure if he had actually changed the banner or was just using some kind of illusion—it was either that or Finite Incantatem."
"That was brilliant!" said Leander, staring at Lorcan like he had descended from the heavens. "I couldn't even think of the counter-spell. How did you know how to do that?"
Lorcan glanced away, an embarrassed flush on his face. "It was nothing, really," he said, "Ravenclaw Tower has a lot of spare spellbooks lying around. I just did a little bit of reading…"
"No, that was fantastic!" said Leander, prodding the snake with one finger and earning him a glare from Tristan as he smeared the paint. "It's good as new!"
"I just didn't want James Potter to get away with that," said Lorcan. "It seemed really rude of him. Can we sit?"
"Please," said Al, moving aside to give Lorcan room. The Ravenclaw boy settled into a seat between Al and Leander, whereas Lysander sat down on Leander's other side, poking the snake's tail with his own wand. "You're Lorcan Scamander, aren't you?" Al asked, wanting to make sure he had the name right.
Lorcan nodded. "And you're Al Potter. We have pictures with you, I think, from back when Lysander and I were six."
"I think I remember that," said Al, thinking back. Lorcan's mother had been good friends with Al's parents, but from what he had heard, she traveled a lot. He hadn't seen or heard much from the twins since before Hogwarts.
"Is your grandfather really Newt Scamander?" Tristan asked. "The one who wrote Fantastic Beasts?"
"Great-grandfather actually," said Lorcan, "But yes. Actually, I just came by to see how you were doing with that Transfiguration essay. Professor Stonecroft said it was going to be a major part of our grade."
Al's eyes widened, and he quickly exchanged glances with Tristan and Leander. "I—uh, haven't started yet," he said. "You?"
"Are you joking?" Leander asked. "That essay's not due for two weeks!"
Lorcan blinked, looking momentarily surprised that two weeks in advance was not generally considered well-past time to start working on an essay.
"Lorcan's almost finished with it actually," Lysander murmured dreamily from his end of the table, where he was still poking the snake's tail.
"I'm not," Lorcan said, insistently. "Not even close. I'm still going to need to rewrite it when it's done."
"Rewrite it?" Leander asked, looking at Lorcan as if he had grown a second head. "But what's the point, if you've already written it?"
Al, who was used to this sort of thing from Rose, quickly smoothed things over by promising Lorcan that when he had started working on his essay, he would let him know. That seemed to mollify him, and Lorcan and Lysander left the table with a promise to cheer for Slytherin during the match. Leander stared after Lorcan as he left, as though he still couldn't believe it.
"Writing essays twice," he muttered under his breath. "Am I glad I'm not in Ravenclaw..."
"They seemed nice, though," said Tristan, turning back around to face the table. "Although that other boy seemed a little strange, poking at our banner like that—whoa!"
Al and Leander whirled around immediately at Tristan's exclamation, looking back down at the banner.
The snake, which up until that moment had been a stationary, painted serpent, was now moving.
It was on their way to the Quidditch pitch, with Tristan carefully carrying the now-animated banner in his arms and Leander talking excitedly about how Slytherin would win the Quidditch Cup this year, that Al caught sight of Professor Stonecroft walking briskly along a side corridor, his expression stern. Trailing along behind him was Parthenia Carran, Rheia's older sister. The sight piqued his curiosity, and he quickly drew to a stop, waving Tristan and Leander on ahead.
"I'll catch up," he said, when they stopped to argue. "Save a seat for me!"
Before the two of them could protest, he ducked down the side corridor, following Professor Stonecroft. He and Parthenia walked until they reached a deserted corridor, and stopped at the end of it, talking together in low voices. Al, who was hiding around the corner, and who was much too far away to hear what was being said, only knew that Parthenia looked defensive, and that Stonecroft looked on the verge of anger. He waited as long as he dared, but when the two of them showed no signs of leaving or raising their voices, realized that he was pushing his luck and quickly made his way out to the Quidditch pitch. By the time he arrived, the Slytherin side of the stands was crowded, and he couldn't see Tristan or Leander anywhere.
He did, however, see Morph Selwyn. The third-year boy waved Al over when he saw him wandering around aimlessly, gesturing at the seat next to him, which one of his lackeys quickly vacated.
"Lost something, Al?" Morph asked.
"My friends, actually," Al said. "You haven't seen them, have you?"
"Lynch and Nott? They're up by the front," said Morph, gesturing through the crowd at the group of Slytherins gathered around the railing. "Wanted to get a good view."
"Thanks," said Al, about to turn, then hesitated. There were rumors about Morph too, rumors that he knew more about the school and about his fellow Slytherins than any third-year had a right to. His mind flashed back to Parthenia and Stonecroft, and the question was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "Hey, Morph…what do you know about Parthenia Carran?"
"Carran?" asked Morph, frowning as he considered the question. "She's a leader."
"Sorry?" Al asked, not understanding.
"The way I see it, there're two types of Slytherins," said Morph, shrugging. "Leaders—the ones with the vision, the grand ideas, the schemes—and followers, the ones who sense that sort of thing and cluster around them. Your friend Nott, for example: classic follower. Passionate and solid, but probably never had an original thought in his life. It's not just Slytherins. It plays out this way in other Houses too, of course, but Slytherins have it especially strong. Carran's a leader. She has all the qualities of one, which makes her especially interesting, because I have no idea who her followers are."
The way he said it seemed to say that it wasn't often that Morph had no idea about anything. Al frowned, absorbing that.
"Why do you ask?" Morph asked, eyeing him.
"Oh—um—her sister's in our year, so I was just wondering," said Al quickly, dancing around the subject of Parthenia and Stonecroft. Morph's frown told him that he didn't really believe it, but he simply nodded, turning his attention back to the pitch.
"If you're going to sit with your friends, you should go," he said. "Game's starting soon."
Al nodded, about to leave. He had made it a step before a thought struck him and he turned, looking back at Morph.
"Uh—Morph?"
Morph looked up, meeting his eyes.
"You said Slytherins are all either leaders or followers," said Al, already feeling embarrassed about asking the question. "Which one am I?"
To his surprise, Morph smiled. It wasn't an entirely pleasant smile. It was a little predatory, a little too much like a smirk. "I don't know yet," he said. "That's why I've got my eye on you."
Al nodded quickly at that, not sure how to react. He felt apprehension start to blossom somewhere inside of him, in the pit of his stomach. "Well, thanks for the help," he said, turning around quickly and heading down to the front to join his friends.
"Anytime, Al," he heard Morph say as he moved, the third-year settling back into his seat. "Anytime."
