In the midst of shivers of unease that flowed through the crowd of observers, a shiver of pleasure snuck by and no one had noticed. If there was a word to describe what she saw today, she would have to contend for a while and in the end simply state: beautiful.
Truth be told, she had been expecting something like this to happen, though the intensity of it was beyond any prediction in her mind. The build up of animosity and hostility, and sometimes even outright hate that she saw pouring out from those dark green orbs was undeniable, between Potter and Longbottom would eventually come to a confrontation. And what a confrontation it was.
As if he had not proved his worth before, with the other students, toying and humiliating, dueling and winning, he had done so much more with his last opponent. There was almost a scent, a taste, in the air of his desire to completely crush the other boy. Unsurprisingly, the Boy-Who-Lived was proving to be nothing more than a persona. Despite his attempt at trying to defeat Potter, he was seen as a pitiful thing in her eyes.
But really, what else should one expect from second-years? Well, apart from what she expected from Hadrian Potter and perhaps a few others. The rest... they were simply being true to their age.
Still, there was one moment, just that briefest of seconds, when he spoke in an even tone, uttering 'Morsus!', hitting Longbottom in the legs, there was a look of viciousness, of cruelty, of things she had never before seen on his face, before it was replaced with a detached look as he continued to pelt his opponent, his enemy, with hexes.
She was not gullible to think she was the only one to notice such a sight, yet there was an odd feeling about it, as if this belonged solely to her. And in a way, it did, for if she had not given him the book, would he have been like this now? Would he have stuck to the same, ineffective, spells that Longbottom did?
One thing that besmirched that prolonged tinge of satisfaction was the shared intimacy between Lovegood and Potter. She had come to terms that the girl was his friend now, and that she would need to be factored into her plans, but that didn't mean she had to like anything about the girl.
Watching Lovegood so casually take hold of Potter's arm, allowing his familiar to easily slither her way across and back to her master did not sit well with Daphne.
Greengrass' eyes weren't the only pair that had followed the Potter and Longbottom duel with keen interest. True, there were the many observers that watched the duel with interest... interest aimed at Longbottom. Only a few had watched Potter, a few who wanted to see how the boy would behave and react during the duel.
The tunnel-black eyes of Severus Snape took in every movement from the boy, how his body posture was already set in the appropriate dueling stance, his branch-like wand at the ready and firmly in the grip of his thumb, index and middle finger of his right hand, the other hand held behind his back. He smirked internally, while his face remained unmoved, at the sight.
No doubt some lessons from the Baron that the child had learned before, since it was very doubtful that they were taught that in their first year, and no doubt at all about Lockhart being too busy preening in the classroom in front of children, the only audience which might believe his exploits, to even consider teaching them something actually useful.
Really, what was Albus thinking when he hired that idiot? While he was prone to call the old man a fool quite often in the privacy of his mind, the Headmaster wasn't that great of a fool to completely ignore the obvious fraud.
Most likely, it was just one of his way of keeping the cursed position filled without the interference from Ministry, for why sacrifice someone worthwhile when there were plenty fools to spare? Oh no doubt the old man justified it in some other way to himself; in the end, it was similar to chess, trading away pawn after pawn after pawn, in hopes he might get something of worth in return.
His errant thoughts were shunted aside when he saw the spark of Incendio leave Longbottom's wand, causing a sneer to appear on his face. Typical, the brat is so full of himself that he does not even bow, and starts out the duel with a potentially harmful spell. Well, at least his snake knows better and merely deflects the weak-powered spell.
Dancing legs jinx, enlarged teeth jinx... the Longbottom brat's arsenal of spells is pathetic. And he doesn't even realize that the spells that miss him just narrowly aren't even truly aimed at him, their aim is his stamina, and clearly the brat is unused to physical exertion as he quickly tires himself out.
When the first stinging hex hits Longbottom, Snape sneers, partly because the dunderhead was foolish enough to stand still when the spell leapt from the wand, allowing it to hit him in the legs, just below the knees, making him buck forward and fall down, and partly because it is expected of him from all who might be watching.
It's truly a pleasure to see a Gryffindor, and their Golden Boy at that, humbled. Potter does not desist and humiliates Longbottom, hitting him on the head, then arms and then a throw-back jinx, not a Depulso which he was expecting, but rather a less known, but equally effective spell serving a similar purpose, which bounces off the Boy-Who-Lived down to the floor.
The other Gryffindors, and some of the other Houses, those foolish enough who lack the willpower to restrain themselves, glare with dirty looks at now triumphant and smiling Slytherin.
Foolish boy, he's done enough for today, more than enough, in teaching them humility. Now is the time to rest, and when Severus Snape places a hand, barely touching, over the boy's shoulder, he feels the flare of the child's magic still swirling about, almost like static electricity is bouncing against his palm.
'How unusual, the boy enjoyed that,' Severus notes and instructs him on abstaining from dueling for today.
Thankfully, his instruction is heard and obeyed, and the dueling platform is now free for new contestants to come up.
A pair of old, yet still sharp, blue eyes observed the whole affair, hidden from plain sight behind a simple spell. Originally, he came here to supervise, knowing that not even the presence of multiple teachers could not keep things in order if the event somehow escalated.
There was the usual amount of House rivalry, nothing too much out of line. Slytherins seemed to be picked out the least by all Professors for the duels, preferring to pair off other Houses and only Severus seemed to choose Slytherins, predictable really, and set them up against the students that Lockhart had picked out.
Merlin's beard, he was getting worse by the day. Still, the school's term isn't that far away and he would be dealt with, one way or another. He never intended to harm the education of children. But the number of people whom he trusted for that position was limited, and he would rather not waste his allies to test out whether the curse would try to finish them off before the year was out or not.
Men like Lockhart were unfortunatelly not that rare at all, and they were expendable in the name of the greater good. Not all ended in bad ways when the year was up, some had simply drifted off to better employments or decided to abandon the post for other reasons. The few who had entertained thoughts about staying for another year... well, they had their own fair share of misfortunes. Maiming seemed to be the easiest way that the curse disposed of them.
He'd tried to dispose of it, to remove it, year after year after year. Ten years spent in effortless research and experimentation, earning him only the knowledge that he could not remove it. Only a person of certain ancestry might remove it, and it was doubtful that the person that placed it originally would willingly dispose of it while he remained Headmaster of Hogwarts.
No, now was not the time for such thoughts. The students needed looking after, some more than others. A few even showed some promise for the future, but he was here for Neville, who had abstained from dueling so far. Thus his attention shifted to another boy; Harry Potter. 'Hadrian Potter,' his own mind corrected him.
The boy never allowed him in the first place to call him 'Harry'. He could not supress the regret he felt for having to take certain actions in the recent past, it truly had pained him greatly to see the child of James and Lily Potter turn out so starkly different from what they were like.
Where James found friendship so easily on his first train ride to Hogwarts, his son didn't even strive for it until the second year. Where Lily was forgiving, though she had her vicious streaks, her son was anything but. Where both of them were Gryffindors, their son was a Slytherin. Could it be that? Could it something just as simple as that, placing a child into a House, that was in his opinion, unfit for children at all? Not for the first time since his tenure as Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore thought of doing away with the Sorting Hat.
And as with every time the thought crossed his mind, the castle would express its displeasure and bring down the pressure of mere existence upon his mind. The Founders made sure their magic could not be tampered with, not if you wished to live past the intrusion into the intrinsic magic that they wove into the castle's very foundations.
So he turned his thoughts away from that, and back onto Hadrian Potter. In the meantime, his eyes had caught the event while his mind was otherwise occupied. The boy's behavior bothered him on a fundamental level, he toyed with a few of the students that he dueled against. It was easy to see that he did so on purpose, though only against a select few. Then Seamus Finnigan came up to the stand.
And quickly left it when he was thrown from it with a single spell. Then another Gryffindor. And another. And then young Neville. He should have perhaps stopped it at one point, where it became obvious that Hadrian Potter simply out-powered and outmaneuvered Neville. But he didn't.
He stood there, just like many others did, and watched how the young Slytherin pelted the Gryffindor, noting the savage glee that was on his face in one moment and gone the next, with spell after spell, until he humiliated, thrashed and crushed his opponent, his enemy.
What was troubling is that Harry, 'Hadrian', Potter used again the same stinging hexes, the ones they never taught or mentioned at Hogwarts, on Neville with malicious intent. It would not do much if he were to ask the boy where he learned the spell, the answer would be most likely of evasive nature and Albus did not feel that, though highly intrigued and concerned about where the knowledge had come from, this warranted a usage of Legilimency on the child.
Not yet, at least. He had interfered too much already by taking that book away from him.
This did not bode well for the future, Dumbledore knew. While he did not truly expect great prowess in dueling from the boy, what he saw here, just a few moments ago, being outplayed so easily by his age peer, that was not acceptable to Albus Dumbledore. He ignored for now the problem that might develop in the future, a potential feud between Longbottom and Potter, and focused only on brewing and concocting plans for improving the public-proclaimed icon of the Light and his skills in the near future.
The dueling club went on, and more students had filled up the Great Hall, most just watching, some approaching the Professors and asking to participate. The dueling platform where Snape and Lockhart regulated who would participate gained the most interest, even though the event of the day, as some were calling it, was already done with.
When some students expressed disbelief at the stories told and retold, they would be merely pointed in the direction of a small Gryffindor group of students where the Boy-Who-Lived sported very nasty looking red welts across his hands, and their gazes would then turn onto the one who inflicted those. Their attention would shift quickly when someone new was announced to being called out to go to the dueling platform.
The next duo that climbed onto the upraised platform were an unlikely pair, even in a duel.
Delinda Malfoy is a prideful creature. From the day she was born, from the day she was self-aware enough to understand words and their meanings, lessons had been driven into her mind. The first and foremost of all: Pede poena claudo. And her retribution was indeed coming to a close. It had taken her some time, and even a bit of her personal allowance granted to her by her mother, to find out what had happened.
Had the perpetrators been a Slytherin, which was an improbability since the only Slytherin left in the castle during Yuletide was Hadrian Potter and he had not shown any sort of enmity towards her, despite their occasional clashes, she would have never found anything about it. Slytherins learn to cover their tracks well. The Gryffindors... not so much. They have the awful tendency to talk in places where they can be overheard. And for that, she was grateful.
She seethed when she found out about the Polyjuice incident, it explained the reason behind the points deduction, and why Professor Snape was dreadful to the whole Dunderheads group. She hated that she could not voice a true complaint. Not now, not after all the time had passed. Her father would call her a fool for not informing him of this sooner, and she had no wish to hear more of her father's lessons. No, she woul only apply one of them on her intended target.
Parvati Patil. The petite Hindu witch that somehow gotten her, 'Delinda Malfoy!' her mind protested in indignation, hair and then impersonated her. Still, she was thankful for small mercies, and glad they had gotten caught by someone, most likely by her Head of House, but that did not lessen the shame she felt at being jumped upon so lightly and then doing nothing in restitution for the offense.
Well, the time had come for it now. Delinda Malfoy had no intention of letting the witch, the bitch, get off easily for her transgression. Watching the duels that happened before had almost swayed her mind to doing something akin to what Potter did to Longbottom. She had grudgingly admitted to herself, and would never do so out-loud, that he was perhaps more of a Slytherin than she gave him credit.
In the crowd of Slytherins, where they all stood together, near each other, in the faux unity before the school, before the other Houses which would eagerly pick them off one by one should they disperse the illusion of unity, she had laughed, along with the others, when the Gryffindor Golden Boy had been brought to his knees.
And then further humiliated, abjectly so. Perhaps Potter wasn't that bad. He had not befriended mudbloods or blood-traitors, as she initially thought he might. Morgana's eyes, he didn't befriend anyone until just last year during the holidays. An odd, quirky girl, to say the least, but at least she was a pureblood. Maybe there was hope for Potter after all.
The wandering thoughts were shook away when her Head of House called to her, and she made her robes, and the clothes beneath, cling slightly more tightly against her body with a flick of her elm wand. She really did love the wand, both her mother and father had expressed pride when she had been picked by one such as this, especially as it came with a dragon heartstring. The elegant design, almost perfectly suited to her feminine beauty, to her complexion and her hair colour, fit her like a glove.
Delinda suppressed a smirk on her face and kept it poised up as if she was holding court and the opponent they were bringing to her was a prisoner to be sentenced. And what a sentence she had in mind for the witch.
The duel started off between fairly standard, the usual exchange of first-year and second-year spells they had been taught, one of the participants not noticing the intensity of spells rising and the shine in those stormy-grey eyes of her opponent. The people that were watching, students and staff, did not expect much from the match, other than the usual Slytherin and Gryffindor rivalry rising up to the surface.
It turned out more than that. Much more.
Severus observes the duel with boredom in the forefront of his mind. The duels after Hadrian Potter had been dull in comparison, but then what could he expect from such an unusual child, who befriends the Bloody Baron, brings in a serpent familiar and befriends the odd first-year Ravenclaw before anyone else from his own House? The thought nearly caused a tug on his lips.
His mind flicks away thoughts that way or another, while his eyes keep close watch of the duel that's been going on for a few minutes now. The mind is reeled away from whatever pondering it was headed to as he recognizes the wand movement that Delinda Malfoy is finishing just now and her mouth utters the words that would most likely make her wind up in detention again and lose points.
"Serpensortia," she almost purrs the word, a smile evident on her face.
Severus Snape scowls, while many onlookers gasp at the spell's results; a desert cobra appearing out from the outstretched wand, right down in the middle of the platform. The reptile coils upon itself before rising menacingly in the air, its hood flaring and now staring around at everyone.
Mentally sighing, Snape makes his wand appear from out beneath his sleeve and into his pale, spidery fingers, ready to banish the serpent from wherever it came from.
"Nobody move," he commands to the students that are now backing away in alarming speed from the platform, "I'll get rid of it."
"Allow me!" shouted Lockhart, brandishing his wand at the snake and a loud bang followed his hand's movement; the snake, instead of vanishing, flew ten feet into the air and fell back to the floor, closer to Parvati Patil, with a loud smack. Enraged, hissing furiously, it slithered straight towards her.
Snape accelerated his own approach and had the banishment spell already in his mind, but found himself prevented from acting. For an inexplicable reason that he cannot even begin to comprehend, Longbottom had rushed out from the crowd and came alarmingly close to the dangerous serpent. Spectacular, just what he needed, a lecture from Albus later on as the brat lies in the hospital wing, recuperating from a poison bite.
His worries were for naught.
The unexpected and unwelcome happens.
The boy hisses. A sound which should not pass human lips, it is not the sound a reptile might make when hissing, it is utterly inhuman and human in its roots. It is terrifying, and Severus suppresses a shiver at hearing it. The serpent turns to Longbottom and looks at him oddly, as if contemplating something and then bares her fangs at him, before turning back to Patil, hissing in a threatening manner.
"Vipera Evanesca," the words leave his mouth, vanishing the serpent to wherever it came from, too late to prevent what just happened. What had just been uncovered and exposed for all to see. The absence of noise in the Great Hall is deafening.
The aftermath that followed even more so. Accusations, outrage, shouting. And then from out of nowhere, the Headmaster appeared, demanding silence, trying to soothe nerves, to allay fears.
'Too late for that, you old fool, now you've got to explain why your bloody Boy-Who-Lived is a Parselmouth," Severus muses, not without some small amount of satisfaction at the old man's impending troubles.
In the sea of widening eyes, escaped gasps, cries of fear and panic, stomping of feet running away and coming closer, a pair of eyes that seem to bore into Neville Longbottom, for a reason completely unknown to all but this particular mind, go completely unnoticed.
The word had spread, faster than the first petrification. Predictably so, nearly all of the school turned against him. Their precious Boy-Who-Lived. The Gryffindor Golden Boy. He was shunned by most students now, receiving dirty looks, hateful and fearful glares with each passing day.
The Boy-Who-Lived was a Parselmouth. Even his own House looked at him oddly, keeping themselves at a distance from him, though not going as far Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw did. Slytherin however enjoyed the whole thing, because the focus of the school was no longer on any of them, but a Gryffindor instead. Poetic justice perhaps?
The boy could be seen now only surrounded by his closest friends, the four never leaving his side, in classes or outside of them. Several students noted he had gone to visit the Headmaster on more than one occasion since it happened.
Many had expected the Headmaster perhaps to allay the student body's fears and concerns, expected him to speak out at dinner time and tell them everything was alright. Many had looked up to the grandfatherly Headmaster, only wanting to have their worries taken care of.
No such thing happened.
It started out the same, as it always had. Nothing changed for the second calling.
A dark place, a faint glimmer of something moving within it. Something else. The shape of a person undetermined, a part of the blackness that engulfs all. For reasons unfathomable, it provides safety.
A grinding of stone. No. Words spoken from a distance, a hoarse throat brought to life.
Something moving across an endless surface of dirt. An echo. A scent. A color. A hiss. An indication. A word.
"— are —"