Ch 7. The "Battle"

"So we're lost. Perfect." Daimaen looked up and down the corridor then turned the way he had come from. "Well, we won't get anywhere just standing here," he said and began walking the way he had turned. He looked back at Hermione, who was just standing there. "Coming?" he asked.

"What are you doing?" she said.

Daimaen thought this was an odd question; it was perfectly obvious what he was doing. The he saw that she wasn't looking at him, she was looking past him. 'Trust me not to see somebody right in front of me,' he thought. Surely enough, he turned back around to see the redheaded boy that had been in Hermione's compartment on the train. He was apparently poking a painting with his wand for no reason. He jumped at Hermione's voice, as if he hadn't been expecting her to notice him.

"I was looking for you and—" he stopped, spotting Daimaen's "Slytherin-ness". "Who's he?" the boy asked rudely, pointing at Daimaen with his wand.

"Hi, Daimaen Sander, if you could please point your wand somewhere else?" Daimaen responded quickly and somewhat nervously. His second day here and he was already close to being attacked. This school had serious problems.

The boy growled, "Ron Weasly," but didn't move his wand. "You were with Malfoy on the train."

"Everyone seems to remember that… Unfortunate blood relation, only person I knew. Not my fault," Daimaen answered, then a streak of boldness hit him. "Then again, one could ask you, both of you in fact-" he glanced back at Hermione "—why you were with Harry Potter on the train. But of course, you must be friends with him. Which begs yet another question: why is it that you are both here and he is not?"

Hermione and the boy called Ron exchanged a look that Daimaen, having been cooped up with Muggles and forced (in a general sense) to do Muggle things like watching movies, had seen a great many times before. A look that said the two people had just been shown that Daimaen was not as stupid as they had previously thought. Then Ron said, "That's none of your business."

Daimaen nodded. "No, it probably isn't. Similar to how just because I'm a Slytherin doesn't mean you have to keep your wand pointed at me as if I'm some dangerous criminal. Stop pointing your wand at me like I'm some dangerous criminal."

Ron lowered his wand a little, but not all the way. It looked more like his arm had gotten tired than like someone had just politely asked him to lower it. (Daimaen did not know it, but Ron had been somewhat affected by the words "dangerous criminal", as his friend Harry's godfather was still thought of as such by the Ministry of Magic.)

"Leave him alone Ron, he's not hurting anyone. Why are you down here anyway?" Hermione chimed in, a little too late for Daimaen's liking.

"Looking for you, of course," Ron replied as if it were common knowledge (which it almost was, him having mentioned it just before half-threatening Daimaen). "You kind of ran off after lunch."

"Oh yes, like you had nothing to do with it," she said scathingly.

"I said I didn't mean it, didn't I?" Ron responded.

Daimaen winced. "Ooh, bad move." They both looked at him. "Well you never tell a girl you didn't mean it. That just lets them know you did mean it."

The two still stared at him, then said in unison, "How do you know that?"

Daimaen looked from one to the other. "My parents divorced. I live with my mom. She has a Muggle job in a diner and she doesn't like most of the people she works with. Both my brother and her boyfriend actually have friends, so I'm the one she tells stuff to." He noticed they were still staring at him. "What?"

Ron started laughing and actually let his wand arm drop. Daimaen was getting kind of mad. "What, I'm a freak because my mom's weird? What?"

Ron, still laughing, said (or tried to say), "That's…just…so…funny!"

"What is?" Daimaen almost shouted.

Ron calmed himself a little and said, "You're in Slytherin and your mom has Muggle job?"

"Yeah. And her boyfriend's a Muggle. And my brother. Well, step-brother."

"What about you?"

Daimaen laughed, a sardonically hollow sound. "Me? I just live there, man. Wouldn't if I had a choice in the matter, but I don't. Sadly."

"No, I mean, are you a Pureblood? Because I thought all Slytherins are Pureblood."

"Oh, that. Yeah, I am. Didn't I say I was related to the Malfoys? I don't like the term though. Pureblood," he half-spat. "Sounds like a dog. I like dogs, but I am no dog. Bad term anyway. It severely implies inbreeding, you know." Daimaen laughed suddenly. "I'm getting the impression that this is really weird."

Ron and Hermione both nodded, and Ron said, "It's not every day I have a polite conversation with a Slytherin. Usually they either ignore me or make fun of me."

Daimaen understood completely, having such happen to him a lot in his old school. "I personally think all this house stuff is rubbish. It agitates people, causes animosity. People are mean to each other just because they're in different houses. It's ridiculously stupid. And let me guess, each house has a Quidditch team too, don't they?" Hermione and Ron both nodded again"Yeah, you see? Everyone's always competing and it's not constructive. Instead of moving forward and learning from our differences, we're actually moving backward. It disgusts me," he said bitterly, then added, "Although, Draco's hair disgusts me more. I've been thinking of asking him exactly how many tons of gel he puts in his hair every day."

Ron and Hermione laughed but stopped suddenly. Daimaen closed his eyes for a second and sighed. "He's right behind me isn't he?" They nodded, and Daimaen turned around.

"Sander, you're my cousin, so I'll give you some advice. You wouldn't want to be seen with the likes of these two. A mudblood and a blood-traitor. Didn't you know?" Draco said smugly, apparently ignoring the hair comment.

"I'll decide whom I'll be seen with, thanks, Cousin." Daimaen put a sinister emphasis on this word, then continued with a Malfoy-like smirk, "And how about it? How many tons of gel, exactly?" He watched as Draco started to stamp away like an angsty thirteen-year-old whose Mommy said he couldn't go to his favorite band's concert, then turned back to Ron and Hermione. "He's such a child," he said, then caught Hermione's wide-eyed stare at something over his shoulder. He immediately whipped around, wand out, and shouted, "Protego!"

Daimaen's shield charm effectively reflected Malfoy's mediocre jelly-legs jinx back at him with enough force to knock the pale boy to the floor. Daimaen walked over and looked down at him. "Jelly-legs? Weak, Malfoy. Very weak." He laughed mockingly. "You didn't seriously think you could enforce upon me your stupid rules, did you?" he asked, watching Malfoy's attempts to regain a standing position with an amused look on his face.

"My father—" Malfoy tried to interject, but Daimaen waved the sentence away. "To hell with your father. He's a self-righteous fool who serves an even greater fool who, as it's said, is more snake than man. And he's doubly a fool to think that he's safe. Or that even you are." Draco's eyes shot daggers at Daimaen, but the older boy just laughed. "What, I wasn't supposed to say that? Your pathetic master going to come after me now that I've insulted his lapdogs?" Daimaen looked around in mock-fear. "No? I guess not, then. He doesn't care about you as much as you think, maybe."

Draco, still glaring, replied in a weak tone that wasn't his or hardly more than a hiss, "You'll pay…no one, no one insults me…"

"Going to send your oversized, dinosaur-brained goons after me, are you? Try. My detention will be worth it." Daimaen realized suddenly that Ron and Hermione were whispering to each other. He didn't turn around, but stayed quiet a moment to catch the conversation.

"Ron, we're prefects, we've got to do something!" That was Hermione.

"Come on, you can't pretend it isn't great to see Malfoy getting his ass kicked, and the best thing is, it's a Slytherin, so he can't take points off!"

"Yes, he can, Ron…"

"But he won't. Just let them alone Hermione!"

Daimaen grew uninterested. He muttered the counter-jinx for Malfoy and said in a low tone, "Scram." And, surprisingly, he did. Daimaen then turned his attention to the other near-duel in the hall…

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References/Notes:

>> "...Like I'm some dangerous criminal. Stop pointing your wand at me like I'm some dangerous criminal." --- Kinda from Man of the House (the one with Tommy Lee Jones) when the one girl is lying about where the other one went and he says, "So is picking at you clothes. Stop picking at your clothes..."

>> "You didn't seriously think you could enforce upon me your stupid rules, did you?" --- Somewhat from Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Saruman says, "You did not seriously think that a hobbit could contend with the will of Sauron?" (This doesn't happen in the book.)