They'd barely settled into their seats at the Sorting Feast when Blaise Zabini stalked over to their table, for once without his Crabbe and Goyle-shaped shadows. Draco eyed the boy with disdain but Zabini wasn't interested in him.
"Potter," Zabini said, the tone absolutely scathing.
Harry looked up and shrugged. "That's my name, Zabini. Glad to know after three years you've figured it out."
"Tell your worthless not-father to keep his filthy paws off my mum!"
Hermione looked like she was going to open her mouth and tell the boy where he could go. She might have even have had some suggestions on what he could do once he got there, but Draco kicked her under the table and, with a dirty look at him, she merely folded her arms and favored Zabini with her best glare. Her best glare was, alas, wasted, because the handsome boy didn't take his own eyes off Harry. Neville set his glass down and regarded the whole exchange with interest and even Ron, Seamus, and Dean stopped their discussion of explosives to listen.
"Has it ever occurred to you, Blaisey-Blaisey," Harry said, "that my dad might not be that interested in dating advice from a thirteen-year-old?"
Zabini clenched his jaw. "She can do better than some — "
"Than a Black?" Harry raised his eyebrows. "I doubt it."
"He's not a Black anymore," Zabini said. A tiny tremble of his jaw undermined the sneer he had on. "We all know his own mother burned him from the family tapestry. I'm warning you, Potter, if they start dating - "
"You'll what?" Harry asked. "Get mad enough to actually catch the Snitch this year?"
Neville's audible snicker made Blaise Zabini scowl at him but the boy just quirked his lips into a taunting smile at the angry Slytherin and Zabini didn't say anything to him. With a glance at all the assembled third-year Gryffindors he turned his back so the High Table couldn't see him and flipped a V at them before returning to his own table and friends.
"What does Sirius see in his mum anyway?" Hermione asked, following the boy with her eyes. "If she's anything like him — "
"She's so fit," Harry said glumly. "Merlin, Hermione, have you seen her? It's like she's not even real."
"Blaise is not ugly," she conceded. At Draco's narrowed eyes she added hastily, "I mean, on the outside. I know he's a right prat, but you have to admit he's nice to look at."
"If you say so," Draco said. The tone suggested he thought she was mental on this issue.
"You don't think he's really interested in her, do you?" Neville asked.
Harry shrugged. "He doesn't really talk about stuff like that with me," he said. "I'm just as glad, really. I get the impression when I'm up here at Hogwarts he's — "
"He gets around," Draco said. "A lot. I heard Mum and Dad talking about it once."
"Right. But I don't think he ever means anything," Harry said.
"Ugh, I hope not," Hermione said. "Can you imagine Blaise Zabini as your brother? The very idea is ludicrous."
They all laughed at the impossibility of that. The worst prat in all of Slytherin, like a brother to Harry? It could never happen. Still, when he thought no one was looking Harry cast worried glances over at the Slytherin table where Blaise Zabini was very pointedly not looking back at him. Maybe he should ask Sirius - or Remus - whether his guardian was interested in more than conquest this time.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Severus," Remus Lupin stopped the man in the corridor outside the faculty lounge. "I wanted to thank you for — "
"Don't." Severus Snape regarded the man standing before him with utter contempt. "I cannot imagine what possessed Dumbledore to hire you, but rest assured I will do my best to protect the students from what you are."
"Fine." Remus took a deep breath. "Then I would like the chance to apologize for — "
"For nearly eating me?" Severus Snape quirked an eyebrow upward. "How - what's the word I want? - droll. How droll of you to think that could be done away with with merely some trite words years later."
"I have been haunted by what could have been," Remus doggedly went on. "I would never have forgiven myself. If James hadn't — "
"Yes," Snape sneered. "James. James Potter. Such a lovely boy, as I recall, always quick with a hex. Quite the puffed-up little hero he was." He pulled his robes to the side as he swept past. "Just take your medicine, Remus Lupin, and keep your unwanted apologies to yourself. I'm not here to be your confessor."
Remus stared at the back of the retreating potions master. "Well," he muttered. "That went about as well as I expected." He felt in his pocket for a chocolate bar and, pulling out the one he found, began peeling the paper back. "Arsehole," he added.
. . . . . . . . . .
Things went well enough as the school year began, despite Zabini's glares and Neville's odd silences, until Care of Magical Creatures rolled around. That was a disaster no one anticipated. Hagrid had produced a herd of hippogriffs for them to meet, which was fairly exciting.
"The Ministry curriculum would have us petting kneazles," one girl whispered to another. "This is so much better!"
"I know," her friend whispered back. "They're beautiful."
"Now these here are right proud beasts," Hagrid said. "They take offense easily." As the students shifted uneasily, eyeing the vicious looking claws with some concern, Hagrid explained they had to bow, had to be courteous, had to be careful, all while beaming at the students as though he were offering them a box of the most wonderful sweets. As his warnings went on people seemed to grow still more and more uneasy at the thought of approaching the creatures until Hagrid asked for a volunteer. Most students eased themselves backward, leaving Harry in the front of the group.
"Harry!" Hagrid exclaimed. "Right! No student who helped kill a basilisk could be scared of a wee little beastie like these."
A murmur ran through the assembled students.
"Shouldna said that," Hagrid muttered before adding more brightly, "Well, step up, lad, and don't forget to bow."
Harry smirked at Hermione and Draco before stepping even closer to the beast.
"'is name is Buckbeak," Hagrid said.
Harry bowed and, after a moment, Buckbeak dipped his head in return. With admirable caution, Harry stepped closer and began to run his hand along the animal's feathers and, when Buckbeak tipped his head to the side to allow greater access to his neck, Hermione and Draco tentatively joined their friend. Other students began to approach other members of the herd and soon the entire class were petting and scratching the creatures.
"You're not so ugly, after all," Draco murmured as he stroked Buckbeak's feathers. "And you're so soft, I -"
What Draco thought of Buckbeak's softness was never to be revealed, however, as the hippogriff took offense Draco might have ever thought him ugly and reared up, slashing the boy's arm on his descent. Draco fell backward as he stumbled to get away from the suddenly violent creature, and Hermione gasped and turned on the beast, her wand out. "You stay away from him," she cried, her face contorted in a mix of terror and fury. Buckbeak probably would have attacked her as well but Hagrid flung himself between the beast and the children.
"Get 'im to the infirmary," he ordered. "What did you say to 'im, you fool?" He turned and began patting Buckbeak. "It's okay, laddie," Hagrid said as he soothed the hippogriff, his back to the students. "He didn't mean it, whatever he said."
"That's it?" Hermione nearly shrieked at the professor. "You're just going to tell us to take him to the infirmary while you fuss with that thing? He could be really hurt!"
"C'mon, Hermione," Harry said. He began dragging the girl away, out of range of the freshly agitated hippogriff. "Don't make him madder."
He and Hermione helped Draco to his feet. The boy was paler than usual and blood seeped out of his arm at an alarming rate. Hermione yanked off her tie and wrapped it around his arm as a makeshift bandage and, with a furious look back over her shoulder at Hagrid, helped Draco back toward the castle.
"My father will hear about this," Draco mumbled as blood loss made it harder for him to walk and he began to sag in their grip. "Stupid oaf."
. . . . . . . . . .
Minerva McGonagall cornered Hagrid in the teacher's lounge. "If I could have a word, Rubeus," she murmured. When he didn't move she added more sharply, "In my office, if you please. Now."
No one ignored Minerva McGonagall when she got that edge to her voice.
"He dinna mean it," Hagrid said as soon as the door was closed.
"Mr. Malfoy or your hippogriff?" McGonagall asked. She sounded frigidly polite and Hagrid who was far more used to Albus Dumbledore's twinkles, swallowed hard.
"Err, Buckbeak," he said.
McGonagall eyed him with what looked like fury simmering behind her eyes. "A student in my House - my House - was hurt today because you introduced inappropriate creatures in your class," she began.
Hagrid gulped and began to explain that the beasts were really quite gentle but McGonagall cut him off. "I don't care if they love to have their bellies scratched and give kisses and hugs," she hissed. "You made a gross error in judgement introducing a class of third years to them and, as a result, a student was seriously hurt. Then you aggravated that error by just telling another student to walk him to the infirmary."
Hagrid began to squirm.
"Fortunately," McGonagall went on, "the boy won't lose the arm and Poppy was able to get enough blood replenishing potion into him that he'll be fine." She took a deep breath. "I might even be able to keep the Malfoys from asking for your head on a platter but, Rubeus, if they do, I will not stand in their way, do you understand me?"
Hagrid nodded, his own face white.
She sighed. "Do yourself a favor, Rubeus, and stick to the traditional curriculum. I realize it bores you, but if you'd just had them working with kneazles - or better yet flobberworms - the worst thing that would have happened would have been a scratch."
"Kneazles can be right nasty," Hagrid objected. "Smart creatures, can smell an animagus a mile away, but they can have a temper, just like ca…" He trailed off and closed his mouth. "Right," he said after a moment. "I'll just be going then," he said.
. . . . . . . . . .
The owl from McGonagall arrived slightly ahead of the one from Draco. Narcissa read both missives and Lucius watched her try to contain her growing fury but she appeared to fail at that and, at last, she handed the letters to Lucius without saying a word. He read them and his eyes grew harder and colder with every line.
"What do you want to do?" he asked. That what he wanted to do was have the teacher fired and then, quite possibly, skinned alive and roasted over an open fire went without saying. Draco was his only son. His heir. He would do anything for the boy, anything at all, because family was the most important thing. He had joined Minerva McGonagall as a spy, turning his back on the most dangerous man he'd ever known He'd done this on nothing but his wife's seemingly impossible story of a time traveller from the future bearing a Dark Mark on his arm because he never, ever wanted his son to know what he'd endured as one of that lunatic's followers.
No, Draco's arm would remain unMarked.
The unMarked arm the boy had almost lost in an accident at school because of an inept, careless, unprofessional, pathetic excuse for a teacher.
"Obviously the beast needs to be put down," Narcissa said.
"There will have to be a hearing," Lucius said. It wasn't that he didn't agree with her. He did. He just wanted to be sure she understood he couldn't just march up to the school and demand the damned hippogriff be executed.
"Then bribe the judges," Narcissa snapped. "I want that creature dead, Lucius. No one, and I mean no one, is allowed to hurt our son."
"Consider it done," he said.
He set Minerva McGonagall's letter back down and returned to Draco's. The boy sounded scared, that showed even through the bluster and outrage. That wasn't what drew Lucius Malfoy's attention, however. Draco related the entire incident in detail and what stood out to Lucius was what had happened after the soon-to-be-dead beast had attacked his son.
"Did a thirteen-year-old girl really pull her wand on a hippogryff?" he asked Narcissa. "Do you think he's exaggerating? It would have killed her."
"Well, the professor apparently put himself between the thing and the children, but, yes, I don't doubt she was that rash." Narcissa shrugged. "You know how Gryffindors are," was what she said but what she pictured in her mind was the exhausted woman who'd dripped blood over Narcissa's priceless carpets and erased her own existence to bring a warning into the past. "Passionate things, and brave, but a bit impetuous. They don't look out for themselves properly."
"I guess we'll have to make sure she's looked after, then," Lucius said as he folded the note.
. . . . . . . . .
A/N - You can check the status and update schedules of my works-in-progress on tumblr at colubrina dot tumblr dot com slash wip
Thank you shayalonnie, who alpha reads for me, and turbulenthandholding, who beta read this chapter, as well as all the lovely people who take the time to share their thoughts.
