Chapter Four

Snape

Breakfast at Hogwarts was almost as good as dinner. There was French toast, pancakes, waffles, eggs and bacon, fresh fruit, and baskets of pastries. There was also porridge, but Lexi had had enough of that to last a lifetime in the three years she had been at the orphanage. She had a waffle and a glass of pumpkin juice.

Lexi was focused on her waffle when a hundred owls suddenly flew into the Great Hall. Startled, she dropped her fork and looked up.

"What-"

But Lexi didn't finish her thought before Draco's Eagle Owl and her own Hoot Owl soared down and dropped packages in front of them.

Oh. Right. Narcissa had mentioned that owls carried their mail. But who would write to her? She had never gotten mail at the orphanage.

Draco was already opening his package. He recognized his mother's handwriting and set the letter aside. He would read it later. He was more interested in the sweets. He smiled smugly and looked around gloatingly. He noticed Lexi staring at her unopened packaged and nudged her.

"Why don't you open it?" Draco hissed.

Lexi did. She opened the letter first, very curious as to whom would write to her.

Dear Lexi,

Congratulations on making Slytherin. Your father would have been proud.

I've enclosed a few pictures of your father. I thought you might like to have them. The first is a picture of him on graduation day. The second is a picture of the Slytherin Quidditch team in his seventh year at Hogwarts. Your father is in the center of the front row. He played Seeker.

We hope your first day goes well and you are making friends. Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass are nice girls. We know their parents very well. Have you met them yet? We are looking forward to hearing about your first week. Write soon.

Love,

Aunt Narcissa and Uncle Lucius

Lexi looked at the signature first. Aunt Narcissa and Uncle Lucius. Clearly it was Narcissa who had written the letter. Somehow Lexi couldn't imagine Lucius signing a letter Love, Uncle Lucius. But why would Narcissa write to her? They had just seen each other yesterday at King's Cross Station. And it was only the second time they'd met.

Once she knew whom it was from, Lexi read the letter. How had Narcissa even known she was in Slytherin? It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the sorting ceremony. Lexi shook her head.

Lexi set the letter aside and took the pictures out of the envelope. In the first picture, Regulus was wearing his school robes with a white collared shirt and Slytherin tie underneath. He had a haughty look on his face. Yes, Lexi had inherited his dark hair and dark eyes. The second picture was of the Slytherin Quidditch team. They were wearing emerald and silver robes with snakes emblazoned on their chests. Her eyes went straight to Regulus. He smiled and waved at her. But, it wasn't really Lexi that he was waving at. He didn't even know she existed.

"What's that?" Draco asked curiously.

"Pictures of my father. Your mother sent them," Lexi said. "Do you have any idea how she knew I was in Slytherin?"

Draco gave her a strange look and nodded as he swallowed a bite of his pancakes. "I wrote to my parents last night after the sorting. They wanted to know how it went."

"Oh. Right," Lexi said.

"You'd better eat. You don't want to be late for Transfiguration," Draco said, looking at her plate pointedly. "McGonagall doesn't like Slytherins. You don't want to give her a reason to take away house points."

After their first Transfiguration class, Lexi didn't know if McGonagall liked anything. She didn't think the woman smiled once the whole class. Not even when she showed the class that Lexi's match had turned silver. Instead, she gave Lexi a long speculative look.

Lexi hoped all of their professors wouldn't be like McGonagall. It turned out some of them were worse.

Professor Quirrell was supposed to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, but he didn't look like he could defend himself to save his life. He always seemed nervous. He stuttered. Oh, and he wore a turban that smelled funny.

Professor Binns was a ghost. Yes, a ghost. And Lexi was convinced that he was trying to bore them to death. The only way she could stay awake in his class was to read. She started taking a book to class.

At least Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick were all right. They were nice enough and seemed to actually know what they were talking about. But the class every Slytherin had been really looking forward to was Potions. Their Head of House taught Potions, and everyone said Snape favored them.

It turned out that Snape did favor the Slytherins with one exception. Lexi Black.

Snape started class by calling roll. He paused at Lexi's name and looked at her coldly. Was she imagining the look of extreme dislike directed at her? She had her answer when he practically spat her surname. No. She wasn't imagining it. Snape did not like her, though she couldn't for the life of her imagine why. She was in his house.

Lucky for her, they had Potions with the Gryffindors, and Snape hated them even more than he hated Lexi, especially Harry Potter.

That was the only good thing about having Potions with the Gryffindors. They really were a bunch of idiots. Neville Longbottom actually melted a cauldron. The only one of them that was halfway intelligent was Hermoine Granger. She hadn't been lying when she said she'd learned all their course books by heart. She was an insufferable know-it-all. Everyone thought so, even her own house. She was just as annoying in class as she had been on the train.

Snape put them all into pairs to work on a potion to cure boils. Lexi and Draco were going to work together, but Snape split them up.

"I don't think so," Snape said coldly. "Miss Black, you can partner Mr. Goyle."

Snape was quite literally setting Lexi Black up to fail. If Goyle was anything like his father, he was all brawn and no brains.

Lexi moved over to Goyle's table.

Goyle looked at the potions ingredients with a furrowed brow and then looked at Lexi expectantly. What was he looking at her for? It wasn't like she'd ever brewed a potion before.

Lexi heard Draco telling Crabbe to crush their snake fangs at the table in front of them.

"Here," Lexi said, pushing six snake fangs towards Goyle, "crush these."

Goyle had apparently just been waiting for her to tell him what to do. As he crushed the six snake fangs with the pestle, Snape appeared in front of them.

"You are supposed to be working in pairs. Not sitting here while your partner does all the work," Snape said coldly. "A zero for the day, then, Miss Black. Mr. Goyle will receive credit since he is the only one that I have seen working."

Lexi stared at Snape and then looked around the room. Draco was sitting back watching as Crabbe crushed their fangs. Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson were whispering and giggling as Blaise Zabini crushed their fangs for them. On the other side of the room, Granger was yelling at her partner.

"You're doing it wrong! Here, just give it to me, I'll do it!" Granger's shrill voice carried across the room.

But Snape didn't say anything to any of them. It was so unfair. Lexi opened her mouth to argue.

"What? We haven't even been working on the potion for five minutes!"

"And detention for arguing," Snape said silkily.

Snape took points from the Gryffindors like clockwork, but detentions were a special form of torture reserved for Harry Potter and Lexi Black.

After an entire month of being unable to get through Potions without receiving detention, Lexi finally asked Draco if he knew why Snape hated her, and Draco wrote to Lucius to ask. He showed Lexi Lucius' response after breakfast the next morning.

Dear Draco,

Professor Snape was in the same year at Hogwarts as your cousin Lexi's Uncle Sirius, and they loathed each other. If he is unkind to her, it must be because he is less than fond of Sirius Black. Tell Lexi to keep her head down. Professor Snape will realize that she is less like Sirius Black and more like the other Blacks.

Love,

Father

That was the reason she'd spent four very long evenings scrubbing cauldrons? The reason she was failing Potions when every single other Slytherin got decent marks just for showing up? Lexi didn't even know Sirius Black.

Lexi decided that if Snape was going to give her detention anyway, she might as well do something to deserve it. So, she skived off the next Potions class. It got her the worst detention she'd had yet and a vicious tongue-lashing. You're as lazy and arrogant as Sirius Black, something I didn't even think was possible until I met you.

And Snape told Dumbledore the same thing he'd told her.

"Lexi Black is as lazy and arrogant as Sirius Black, a determined rule-breaker," Snape said scathingly as he paced in Dumbledore's office. "She skipped my class!"

Dumbledore looked up at that, a frown on his face. He had left the orphanage convinced that Lexi Black was the female version of Tom Riddle. It was nature versus nurture, and Lexi had both working against her. Her deepest nature was like her father's side of the family, and as for nurture…well, she had spent three years in the same grim orphanage that Tom Riddle had lived in. But skipping class was not like Tom at all. Tom had wanted to learn everything he could about magic. He understood that knowledge was power.

"She did?" Dumbledore said softly. "Why, Severus?"

"She has realized her…connection to Narcissa Malfoy. I believe Lucius Malfoy told her that I do not like her because of her relation to Sirius Black," Snape said, his lip curling in a sneer when he said his schoolboy rival's name. "She thinks I have been unfair. That, I think, is her reason for skipping my class."

"You think, or you know?" Dumbledore said sharply.

"I know," Snape said.

"Legilimency?" Dumbledore said knowingly.

Snape nodded.

"I see," Dumbledore murmured. "Did you see anything else that I should know about while you were in her mind?" His tone was casual, but he looked at Snape with interest.

"I merely skimmed the surface of her mind," Snape said.

"And from what you saw, she is already close to a member of Lord Voldemort's inner circle?" Dumbledore said softly. "Close enough that she is going to Lucius with her problems and he is offering her guidance?"

"She is close to the Malfoys, yes," Snape said. "Draco has told everyone that she is his cousin, Narcissa is always sending her care packages, and Lucius is writing to her, though I did not see him telling her to skip my class anywhere in the letter."

"How close does she appear to be to Draco? That is to say is he her friend? Or merely her cousin?" Dumbledore said curiously.

Tom Riddle had never had a true friend. Yes, he had followers, but no one he was close to. He trusted no one.

Like Tom, Lexi had been alone in her room reading when Dumbledore went to the orphanage to deliver her letter. She had not been playing with the other children. Also like Tom, she had not wanted help or companionship on her trip to Diagon Alley. It was clear then that she preferred to operate alone. Dumbledore was guessing she was just using the Malfoys. He didn't think Lexi was capable of actually caring for another person.

"Cousins," Snape said indifferently.

Dumbledore nodded. "She is friendless. Does she have any enemies?"

"Potter," Snape said with a small smirk. "I wish James Potter and Sirius Black could see them now…"

Dumbledore sighed. "They were friends once, but do not forget that Sirius is the one who betrayed James."

"I will never forget," Snape said roughly.

He wouldn't forget the bullying Sirius Black and James Potter had subjected him to while they were at Hogwarts together. And he wouldn't forget that Black was the reason the woman he loved was dead. Dumbledore could have kept Lily safe if only Black had not betrayed the Potters. Severus Snape hated Sirius Black.

"But," Snape added once he'd calmed down, "I am grateful that we will not have to worry about the trouble that the Black brat and Potter might have caused together since they are far more likely to duel each other than to play tricks on other students."

"While we're on the subject of Sirius, is Lexi more like him or Regulus?" Dumbledore asked with interest.

"She is Sirius all over again," Snape said scathingly.

"Yes, Minerva said that she is very much like Sirius as well," Dumbledore murmured. "Apparently they both have a talent for transfiguration, and a certain disregard for homework."

"Lazy and arrogant," Snape said. "Completely impertinent."

Snape wasn't wrong. At least not entirely. Lexi Black was lazy. Snape's class was the only one she skived off, but she didn't do her homework for any of her classes. She had better things to do in her free time than write essays.

Lexi had never been a model student. She was smart enough to get all As - or Os in the wizarding world, but she didn't care about her grades. Why would she? No one else did. She didn't have parents that would be proud of her for bringing home a report card with all As, or tell her off for getting below average marks. She didn't see why Hogwarts should be any different from her Muggle school. Her Hogwarts professors, however, did. She was getting used to their disapproving looks and stern words after class. They didn't faze her.

It wasn't like Lexi to do what other people wanted her to do. She'd always done what she wanted to do. So, after spending all day in class and the better part of her evening in detention with Snape, she would sneak out of her common room at night when everyone else was doing their homework. It was the only time she could do what she wanted to do without anyone wanting to know what she was doing. There were too many professors keeping an annoyingly close eye on her during the day. She felt smothered. At night she just had to avoid Mr. Filch. And it was easy to stay out of sight in a castle. There were a lot of rooms to hide in if she heard someone coming.

Lexi didn't know how many rooms there were yet. It could take her a few years to work that out. There were doors that weren't really doors at all, and hidden doors like the entrance to the Slytherin common room. There were doors that you needed a magic word to open. There were also secret passageways. Well, there was at least one secret passageway that she knew of, but there had to be others.

On one of her trips, Lexi stumbled upon a classroom down the hall from the library that had a magnificent mirror in it. There was an inscription carved around the top of the ornate gold frame: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

When she looked in the mirror, Lexi saw herself standing next to Regulus. He smiled down at her. She knew it wasn't real. Regulus was dead. And he didn't even know he had a daughter when he died. He had never looked at her like that. And he never would.

It must be a trick. A cruel trick. It was like one of the mirrors in a funhouse that distorted the reflection of anyone who looked in it. Only this was a magic mirror. But what did it show? Her family? But no. It couldn't show her family. Niccole wasn't there. Not that she would have wanted Niccole there. Maybe the mirror only showed deceased family members.

Lexi didn't know exactly what the mirror showed, but she returned to the room daily to see Regulus nevertheless. She wanted to see him. She wanted to know him. She liked what little she knew about him.

Lexi had less time to spend visiting Regulus and more time that she had to spend in the company of the Gryffindors when they started Flying lessons with the Gryffindors. And she didn't even get to fly. She had wanted to try her hand at flying ever since Narcissa's letter about her father playing Quidditch, but Longbottom fell off his broom and broke his wrist before Lexi could even mount her broom. He ruined it for everyone. And she'd so been looking forward to flying.

"Did you see his face, the great lump?" Draco said, laughing as Madam Hooch and Longbottom walked away.

"You'd think he'd be used to it by now. He's had more accidents since we've been here than I've had my whole life. I'm surprised he can walk and talk at the same time," Lexi sneered, her anger at not being able to fly fueling her malice.

"Shut up," Parvati Patil snapped.

"Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?" Pansy said. "Never thought you'd like fat little crybabies, Parvati."

"Look!" Draco said, darting forward and picking up something that Longbottom had dropped. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."

"Give that here, Malfoy," Potter said.

Draco smirked. "I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find. How about up a tree?"

"Give it here!" Potter yelled.

But Draco had already taken off on his broom. He hovered by an oak tree.

"Come and get it, Potter!" Draco called.

Potter flew up to face Draco in midair. A moment later Draco threw the little glass ball up in the air and then returned to the ground. Perfect timing, too. McGonagall was coming.

Potter managed to catch the little glass ball, but he was still in the air when McGonagall got there.

They all thought Potter would be expelled, so they were surprised to see him at dinner in the Great Hall that evening. Draco, Lexi, Crabbe and Goyle strode over to the Gryffindor table.

"Having a last meal, Potter?" Draco sneered. "When are you getting the train back to the Muggles?"

"You're a lot braver now that you're back on the ground and you've got your little friends with you," Potter said coolly.

"I'd take you anytime on my own," Draco said. "Tonight, if you want. Wizard's duel. Wands only. No contact. What's the matter? Never heard of a wizard's duel before, I suppose?"

"Of course he has," Weasley lied. "I'm his second. Who's yours?"

"Lexi," Draco said. "Midnight all right? We'll meet you in the trophy room. It's always unlocked."

They walked back towards the Slytherin table.

"I'm your second?" Lexi said slowly, looking at Draco with raised eyebrows.

"You'd be better than Crabbe or Goyle," Draco said quietly, "but there isn't actually going to be a duel."

"There isn't?" Lexi said.

"No, there isn't," Draco said. "Filch is going to get an anonymous tip that there'll be students out of bed in the trophy room. Potter will be on the first train home tomorrow morning."

But Potter wasn't on the first train home the next morning. He was in the Great Hall eating breakfast at the Gryffindor table. And if they'd been surprised to see him there, it was nothing compared to how surprised they were when Potter received a large parcel. While Narcissa was always sending both Draco and Lexi packages of sweets, Potter hadn't received a single package since they'd gotten to Hogwarts.

"That's a broomstick," Draco said.

"How do you know?" Lexi asked, glancing over her shoulder at the long, thin package. Potter hadn't even opened it yet.

"I've been flying since I could walk. I think I know a broomstick when I see one," Draco said.

Draco wanted to prove he was right. So, when they saw Potter and Weasley skipping out of breakfast early, they followed them. Draco seized the package and felt it. It was just as he'd thought.

"That's a broomstick," Draco said. "You'll be in for it this time, Potter. First years aren't allowed them."

"It's not any old broomstick," Weasley bragged. "It's a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you've got at home, Malfoy? A Comet Two Sixty? Comets look flashy, but they're not in the same league as the Nimbus."

"What would you know about it, Weasley?" Draco said. "You couldn't afford half the handle. I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig."

Before Weasley could answer, Professor Flitwick appeared behind them. "Not arguing, I hope?"

"Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor," Draco said quickly.

"Yes, yes, that's right. Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?" Professor Flitwick said.

Special circumstances? Lexi wondered what special circumstances there were. He had a scar on his forehead…so of course he needed a racing broom?

"A Nimbus Two Thousand, it is," Potter answered smugly. He looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. "And it's really thanks to Malfoy here that I've got it."

And then Potter and Weasley headed up the stairs. Their laughter could be heard as they disappeared.

Draco's expression was a mixture of anger and confusion. He couldn't work out what he had to do with Potter getting a broomstick.

"Oh, come on, Draco. The Flying lesson. That stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him. You threw it and Potter caught it, remember?" Lexi stared at Draco.

"Seeker," Draco muttered bitterly. "I bet he's playing Seeker. First years aren't allowed to play for their house teams, but Potter breaks the school rules and he gets special permission to play. It's just because he's famous – famous for having a stupid scar on his forehead."

Seeker. That was the position her father had played. Lexi had already decided to try out for Seeker next year. She wanted to be a daughter that he would have been proud of if he were there. It wasn't fair that she had to wait until next year to play Quidditch and Potter didn't.

"I've broken a dozen school rules. Should I ask Snape to give me special permission to play?" Lexi said.

It was a rhetorical question. Lexi knew full well that Snape wouldn't give her special permission to do much of anything. And she would probably get another detention with him if she asked. So, she didn't say anything, but she was quietly seething.