Chapter Fourteen
Draco bent over and touched his finger to the blood.
"It's fake," he said.
"Touched a lot of blood, have you?" I asked. Draco stood up and rolled his eyes. "How do you know?"
Draco held up his hand and I could see now that there were tiny specks of light reflecting from the blood thanks to the new chandelier above our heads.
"I don't know many people who bleed glitter," he said dryly before wiping his index finger on the front of my robes.
I took a deep breath, my fingers itching to grab my wand. Before either of us could say anything a familiar high-pitched squeal greeted my ears before a set of arms were thrown around me from behind, wrapped affectionately (if you could call it that) around my neck.
"Do you like it?" Tara asked, not letting go of me.
"What is it doing here?" Draco asked me, refusing to speak directly to her.
I glared at him and opened my mouth to retort by wheezed out only air instead as Tara's grip on my chest tightened. Malfoy's eyes widened a fraction of a second when he realized my predicament before he began smirking but made no other attempt to free me from the obstruction to my airways. I glared harder, before shaking in attempts to get Tara's arms off of me. Finally she let go and I gasped in air.
"Oh my goth! I didn't realize, are you ok?" she said, coming to stand directly in front of me.
I rubbed my neck as Draco chuckled under his breath and restrained, not for the first time that day, my desire to hex both of them. After a couple of moments I stood straight again and looked at Tara's worried face, calmly.
"You've gotten stronger," I noted.
Tara grinned, "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!"
"What is it doing here?" Malfoy repeated.
Tara pouted at him but Draco's eyes were carefully focused elsewhere.
"How did you get in the Slytherin common room?" I asked, careful to keep my voice neutral. "You aren't supposed to be -"
"I live here!" Ebony said excitedly.
Draco and I both looked at each other, unable to mask our dread and disbelief completely before we turned to look at her.
"You...live here?" I asked.
"You can't," Draco snapped.
"I can too! Dumbledore said so. He said all my classes went so well that I seemed more like a Slytherin so he re-sorted me."
"He did what?" I asked, my brain unable to wrap itself around the nonsense spewing forth from Tara's lips.
"I'm a Slytherin now," Tara said, cheerily.
"That's -" I began. I stopped before finishing my first thought, not how this works.
"Insane. That stupid mudblood loving -" Draco began.
"Don't be jealous Draco," she said. "Anyway, I'm going to my room. Come visit me?"
"Your room? Tara, I do not know what is going on but you really ought to go back to the Huflepuff dorm," I said, sounding more in control of myself than I felt.
"Quickly," Draco added.
"I can't!" she said.
"What do you mean you can't?" I asked, slowly.
"All my stuff was moved in here and I don't know the Hufflepuff password anymore. Aren't you happy we're in the same House now? It's not like your old friends are talking to you," Tara said.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, as I clenched and unclenched my fist.
"They even let me redecorate!" Tara added.
I opened my eyes to see her waltzing about the room and taking in the new, bizarre décor, her arms wide. She turned to me again, her new eyes shining bright.
"Don't you like it?" Tara asked.
"No," Draco said.
Tara stuck out her tongue. "I wasn't asking you."
"Tara, I think...I think I need to see the Headmaster."
"Why?" she asked, crossing her arms.
I felt a soft, hot wind blow across my face coming from her. Is she preforming wandless magic? I suddenly didn't feel very safe being in the same room with the ex-Hufflepuff (supposedly). Draco seemed to feel it too as I noticed he had subtly withdrawn his wand and was hiding it up his sleeve.
"I'm a prefect, I just want to make sure everything is in order for this transition," I lied, with ease.
Tara relaxed and the heat emanating from her ceased. She beamed at me again and said, "Cool! I'll wait here for you!"
"I'm going with you," Draco said.
Tara frowned, "Why do you need to go?"
Draco didn't dignify her with a response, rather, grabbed my arm and stiffly walked us from the Common Room once more.
Once we were nearing the entrance to Dumbledore's office, Draco said, "Her, a Slytherin? This is too much. There's no way Snape would allow this, even if Dumbledore approved."
"It is out of character," I observed. "But then, so is she."
Draco huffed noncommittally as we made our way to the Headmaster's office. Once we arrived outside his door, to our luck, he appeared to be inside. However, from the sound coming from within, it seemed our own Head of House had beaten us there.
"This is unacceptable," we heard as the door opened slightly. "Something is going on with that girl."
"All the more reason to keep an eye on her," Dumbledore said, though it was much quieter than our Professor's tone.
His face looked calm, impassive as Snape fully opened the door. Seeing us he said, "What are you two doing here?"
"We came to speak to the Headmaster about Ebon...Tara," Draco said.
"There is no need, the matter is settled. She will live as a Slytherin from now on," Snape said and though his face was mostly clear, I could tell that it pained him to say so.
"This is ridiciulous!" Draco exclaimed. "She can't -"
"She is," Snape said. "Now -"
"Let them in, Professor," Dumbledore called kindly. Snape sighed and strode away from the office with no further comment.
Draco and I walked into the office and Dumbledore offered us a lemon drop while indicating for us to sit down which we both refused.
"So, you have questions about Miss Gilesbie?" the headmaster asked casually as he sat down himself.
"Yes," Draco said as I said, "Who?"
"Tara prefers to go by the name Gilesbie now, a family name I understand," Dumbledore informed us. "I assume you have seen that you have a new addition to your house?"
"No, I do not," Draco said. "We do, however, have one confused Hufflepuff girl."
"No, it is as she and Snape says, Tara was resorted and has since become Slytherin."
"That's preposterous!" Draco exclaimed.
More calmly I added, "It breaks all school tradition to do such a thing. The Sorting Hat has never been wrong."
"Ah," Dumbledore said, in the same way that you knew you were in for one of his 'wise' speaches. "But which of us remains unchanging in time? Even now, can you truly say that you are the same as you were at eleven?"
"More or less," Draco said.
"He talks about his father less," I added, helpfully.
Draco glared. "Is that necessary right now?"
Dumbledore laughed and said, "Some of us change less than others. But we all change. We may become more like the House we were sorted into, especially if we find our place there, our friends. Or we may become less like our House. I have often wondered about whether or not we sort too young."
"We are a school for those eleven to possibly eighteen years of age, from what I understand if you were to wait for us to 'settle into our adult personalities' before sorting you would have little time to do so," I said. "I understand the debate but to resort any person who feels out of place in their house half-way through school seems -"
"Ah, impractical? Perhaps. But is it practical to let a student who has felt so out of place remain where she will not thrive? Already she has been doing better since switching houses," Dumbledore said.
"You don't honestly think that's what's changed her," Draco said.
"He's right, Headmaster. I have known Tara for a long time, this change of hers has to be due to some magic and she has had to have someone help her again. I doubt whether this new transformation is for the best. And the effect it is having on us, the rest of us, it is like...some sort of enchantment," I said.
"I'm sure it seems that way to you," Dumbledore said. "But just give it time, and you may come to see it as I do."
"I doubt that," Draco muttered as Dumbledore escorted us out.
Author's Note: So I had a different chapter prepared way back when but due to a computer error I lost a lot of my story's newer chapters. Yeah, that cliffhanger? Wasn't supposed to be so long, which in essence made this resolution extremely anti-climactic. Very sorry for that.