The Morning of the Dragon

While at Hogwarts, Bella did not miss home, and usually was so busy she did not think of missing her sister. Only if she thought and wondered about Narcissa did she. Missing her sisters was not something she remembered doing a lot of last year. It was not as if Bella did not love her sisters. She did, dearly. But she had seven classes to go to, study for, and generally occupy her time. When she was not doing class work, she had Isolde, the boys, Isolde dragging her off to spend time with Bernadette (who she also did not miss if she did not think about it), and the other second year Slytherin girls.

If that was not enough, Bella spent a lot of time scheming up ways to increase her power at Hogwarts. Being an underclassman was apparently supposed to mean she was to play second fiddle to the older students, but that was not something that sat well with her.

This year, some of the newly made seventh years did not want her and her friends continuing to sit in the chairs she wrangled the year before. That was an understatement. Almost all, if not all, the seventh years resented the idea of second years having chairs, and took them back, presenting them to older friends and acquaintances. When it happened, Bellatrix wanted to attack right there and then, that was her chair, she had a right to it. No way she was giving it up. It took all Isolde's strength, weight, and pleading to prevent Bella from launching herself at the people in question. Luckily, the boys had been close and Rodolphus, who was easily a head taller, grabbed Bella around the waist and forcibly dragged her off the best he could, merely grunting when she hit him or she landed a well-placed kick.

"You do realize they have five years of magical experience on you," Evan said, looking incredulous.

"I'm a Black! Generations of magical ability on my side! I'll make them pay!"

Rodolphus smirked at the glare on her face, "you'll get yourself sent to the hospital wing."

"Their parents will have their heads if they openly attacked me. I'd write Narcissa, she'd bring it up innocently at a party and they'd be buggered for sure."

Isolde's face paled at Bella's language, but she said nothing. The seat was nice, but it was not worth fighting a losing duel over.

"Shut it, Bellatrix," Lucius ordered, silent until now. "You have a point, but if anything like that is to work long term, we need to do it properly so we won't have to do this again next week, or next month, or next year. Once."

It was hard to argue with that. They did want the chairs long term, or at least until they could upgrade. What good was getting them if they had to keep fighting for them? By the end of the afternoon, they had concocted a plan. Much to Bellatrix' dismay, the first part of the plan was to wait for a couple of days. Let the seventh years think they had won.

However, it was a plan likely to be effective, and Bella was pleased that she was going to be in the thick of it. Her and Rodolphus knew the nastiest spells of the five of them, having spent the summer months practicing on the house elves to find out exactly what they could do at their level, which meant her and Rodolphus got to initiate taking back the chairs. It did mean that she was in the most danger to be hit with something, but that was part of the plan. Her and Isolde needed to be sent to the hospital wing because according to society they were the most defenseless and so it would be more shameful for the seventh years to hurt them. (Isolde was against this part of the plan, even after she had been convinced to go along with it. There seemed no other way to ensure their success without minor injury. She hoped the seventh years would remember that they were fighting second years and did not cause anyone major injury.)

If all of them ended up in the infirmary, that was fine, it kept with the letter of the plan. Evan would come to Rodolphus' aid and Lucius would catalog everything, sending it off in an owl to his family in horror. Lucius had easily talked himself into this position because he knew what days his father would be home and they needed their message to fall into appropriate hands as fast as possible. Of course, they would each write their family in time, but the fact Lucius' family would get it so fast would give them a leg up; he would be seen as an impartial observer and who was going to argue with the Malfoys?

They ate dinner, satisfied with their own genius, although Lucius kept reminding them to look more downtrodden in case people were paying attention.

A couple of days later, while most of the seventh years were in class, Rodolphus and Bellatrix took back their chairs, getting comfortable and prepared. Lucius set himself up over in a corner as if he was studying and Isolde sat down next to him, as if she was writing letters. Evan browsed the bookcase nearest the door. All of them had come in separately so others would not think they were up to something. But many of the other students seemed aware something was going to happen. Second years were generally not so brazen. Some left to avoid the conflict, and others moved position so as to not miss anything.

When the seventh years returned, they were not pleased to see the two sitting in chairs not allotted to them. Not angry to do anything about it, yet, the people with claims on the chairs were currently missing from the common room. Hopefully the second years would get up and leave when they arrived.

Rod and Bella exchanged a look, neither of them had any intention of waiting around. There had to be something they could do to provoke the seventh years that seemed innocent enough.

Bella pointed her wand at Rodolphus' chair, clearly speaking a charm for color changing and in a second, the chair turned a violent shade of maroon. She tried to suppress her giggles, but not very hard because she wanted to get the attention of the seventh years. Rod quickly picked up on the idea and returned the favor. A few rounds back and forth, and the other students were glancing over every couple of seconds, annoyance written into their brow lines.

Eventually one of the older students spoke up, "What do you think you're doing?"

Bella tilted her head to look at him with a straight face. "Studying." There was nothing respectful about her tone and several of the older students reacted physically to it. When she turned back to Rod, the look passed between them indicated they had the exact same idea. Rodolphus raised his wand, and with the same spell, hit the chair the boy who asked was sitting in. Bellatrix dissolved into giggles.

That did it, the seventh year headed over, red-faced in his rage, screaming about how they needed to learn their place.

Rodolphus answered well, "I believe our place is those chairs," indicating the chairs the older boy's friends were sitting in.

The seventh year shot off a spell, hitting Rodolphus' chair. "That was your warning. Move."

"We have more of a right to be here than you do," Bellatrix counted. "Although even if you could trace your surname back to before Hogwarts, I'm sure we'd find your ancestor was Salazar's servant rather than his peer."

A red bolt of light left the seventh year's wand, flipping both Bellatrix and her chair over backward. Isolde did not need to fake worry as she screamed and ran to see if her friend was all right. Rodolphus retaliated immediately. Bellatrix was fine, the stunner had hit the chair rather than her, and while it caused her quite the fall, she was only slightly shaken. Quickly, she entered the fray, Isolde tugging on her right arm – so as to allow her to keep hexing. A few more seventh years stood up to help their friend, and Evan dropped the book he had been looking at, rushing over to help his. Soon the air was fairly thick with spells.

When Bella saw her chance, she twisted, flinging Isolde into the path of something that made her collapse to the floor. Seeing the unarmed girl fall, one of the younger prefects sprinted out of the room to get Slughorn. With that taken care of, even if it was something she had not warned Isolde about – but Isolde had to be safer on the floor than holding onto her, Bellatrix sent off a few more obnoxious hexes. She had stopped bothering trying to dodge anything coming her way, instead shrieking bloody murder any time she got hit.

Soon after, Slughorn came hurrying in, shouting at everyone to stop, freezing everyone who failed to immediately follow orders. When the dust and smoke cleared, the head of Slytherin house was shocked and appalled. Two second-year girls from prominent families lay on the floor, one bleeding and shrieking her head off, the other possibly unconscious. Two more injured looking second years were standing with wands drawn. Four seventh years stood, wands drawn with superficial injuries only. It looked as if the second years had been trying to defend themselves, although why they would need to was unclear. Slughorn was determined to get answers.

"You four. My office. Now." The seventh years with wands drawn headed that direction while Slughorn got the second years to the infirmary safely. Once they were in the hands of Pomfrey, he hurried back to deal with the troublemakers. In the confusion, Lucius Malfoy headed to the owlery, his version of events quickly winging its way to his parents. He was far from the only one. Several other students put their observations to paper shortly after, only if to assure their parents (who would surely hear about it) that they had nothing to do with it other then being a witness.

In the hospital wing, Isolde was quickly revived, Rodolphus and Evan fixed up. Isolde had been mostly right about the seventh years, despite them being angry they had not used the worst spells they knew. Nothing to cause any of them to spend the night in the infirmary. The minute Rodolphus and Evan were declared fine, they asked for quill and parchment. Pomfrey was too busy handling Bellatrix to bother with why. Bellatrix was refusing help until she saw her sister, babbling on about how Andy needed to be warned, what if they tried to attack her. She was still trickling blood from a cut on her head, and fighting the nurse tooth and nail at every attempt deal with it. Eventually Pomfrey gave in, sending an assistant to get Andromeda Black while she wrote up the paperwork and kept an eye on her patients. Healing tended to work better when the patient was not fighting it.

"Why do you want Andromeda?" Isolde whispered.

"She'll be shocked and write home and it'll be more believable."

Isolde nodded, and explained to the boys on the other side of her. They thought it was an excellent idea, another letter would be helpful and Bellatrix was only bleeding a little bit.

Luckily, Andromeda's teacher agreed to her being dragged out of her class. The girl tore along the corridors to the hospital wing the minute she was excused.

"Bella?" she asked worriedly, ready to give her big sister a hug, recoiling when she saw the damage. "What happened? You're bleeding! And your hair smells singed!"

"Some of the seventh years attacked us. I wanted you safe in here."

"What? Who? You should write Mother and Father."

"Madam Pomfrey has to fix me up first."

"Well, I'll write them while she does that. They need to know right away. Tell me exactly what happened."

Bellatrix did not bother to embellish the story even a little, it sounded horrible enough as it was (plus all the stories needed to match), giving her the names of all the seventh years that "attacked" her. Andromeda sat on Isolde's cot scribbling away while Pomfrey cleaned Bella's cuts, trimmed her hair so the ends were no longer smoldering, and put the other minor spell damage to rest. They were all told they needed to take it easy for a while, and Pomfrey wanted to watch them for a bit, just in case, so she held them through dinnertime. Long enough for all of them to write letters and have them sent off. By the time they had finished dinner, it was not only all of Slytherin who knew what happened, a very conspicuous Lucius Malfoy eating all by himself making it all the more obvious, but most of the school, and five of the most prominent families in wizarding England.

None of their parents were pleased to say the least, the month of detention Slughorn gave the seventh years stretched into two overnight, and a reserve Quidditch player was kicked off the team entirely. The howlers that came the following week noted the societal repercussions were only beginning. Bellatrix was overly satisfied with herself, settling back into her rightful chair watching the angry twitches from the seventh years. They were added proof of her victory.

a/n: I wanted to think those who do write in and review. I read all of them and I appreciate all your kind words. I know before I was responding to each and every one of them and I'm going to try to get back in the habit of that, but I do read them all and wanted to express my thanks. For those of you who don't review (never a requirement), thanks for reading.