Beta'd by the splendid InsaneScriptist.
Of peace and transience
The thirteenth year of Dorea's life was blessedly, beautifully crisis-free, unless you considered her brief panic over what to wear on her first ever date to be a crisis. The summer before her thirteenth birthday had been spent visiting all her Potter properties, since it was about time she got to know them what with being the heir and all, and she had spent a lot of time with Remus going over the books for her businesses and talking about why he was investing in certain things and supporting some ventures over others. It was most interesting and useful despite involving quite a lot of maths.
Ten days before her birthday Abraxas Malfoy died of Dragon Pox, which led to Aunt Cissa and Draco not attending her party. Dorea couldn't really bring herself to mind their absence despite being a little saddened by the late Lord Malfoy's death. Abraxas –he had insisted on Dorea calling him by his first name– had been one of Great-Aunt Cassiopeia's more frequent gentleman callers after Papa was released from Azkaban and the elder lady had started receiving guests; he had always treated Dorea like a person rather than a baby. He'd been utterly charming, always smiling and had given her all manner of interesting gifts over the years. She'd always been respectful of him though, because Abraxas had a certain gleam in his eye that said danger no matter how much he seemed to enjoy doting on her. At his Will-reading three days before she turned thirteen she found out he had left her his string of racing Granians and a lot of very beautiful and expensive jewellery, which was all very inappropriate. There wasn't anything anybody could do about it though, since he probably hadn't planned on dying just yet and the gift would have been moderately appropriate if she had been even one year older, for all that the jewellery probably should have gone to Abraxas' daughter-in-law –Auntie Cissa– or be held in trust for Draco's own daughter.
On her actual birthday she discovered there was a present from him, likely picked out and delivered before he got so sick, which she had opened in private since there was no way to write him a thank-you letter. It turned out to be a variety of books on Atlantean Soul Magic –he'd been an adventurer before marrying–a basic Alchemy primer and a jewel box full of uncut gems and small bars of various different metals. Dorea had been delighted at the prospect of a new field of study to investigate and had immediately hidden everything in one of her trunk's secret hidey-holes. She already had plans to build herself a new and better trunk, but she was very attached to Great-Auntie Isla's one and didn't want to trade up just yet.
The beginning of her third year at Hogwarts had gone smoothly enough, with Hermione finally getting herself a pet –a large and unfortunate-looking half-kneazle she had named Crookshanks– and both Daphne's and Ric's little sisters starting their first year. Both were sorted into Slytherin where their elder siblings could keep an eye on them, but what with Ric being in his NEWT year Dorea had been the person Arietta Avery had come to with her problems. Ric was after all seventeen now and an adult, so for all that his baby sister all but worshipped him she didn't go to him with things like needing help with school-work.
Ade Pucey had somehow made prefect alongside Odile Witt, which kept him busy as the new year-group was twice the size as the one above it. It made sense really, as the new students had all been conceived in the year following the end of the Voldemort War when for the first time in over a decade British Wizarding Society had been free from fear and violence. Astoria and Arietta had another seventeen fellow Slytherins in their year, which was rather astounding. Rence found it hilarious that Ade had been selected and needled him at every possible opportunity all through September, by which point the novelty had worn off a bit and he turned his attention back to his studies. Rence and Ade were after all fifth-years now and would be taking their OWLs in the summer. That Dorea had already taken two of hers and done so well had both irritated and reassured Rence's year-group, as it made them seem less difficult. Rosier had asked to borrow her History books to study from and Dorea had happily lent them to her, specifying that they were not to leave Slytherin Dungeon as she didn't want them getting confiscated. That Rosier was not the only student reading them did not surprise her in the slightest; Binns and Bagshot were a poor combination for any genuinely interested student of History.
Dorea had decided to study Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as her electives, since Care of Magical Creatures was only useful if you intended to work in that field and she was familiar enough with Muggle society not to need Muggle Studies. She would probably sit the exam anyway though, just like her cousins had, as it was an easy O. Divination she scorned on principle and refused to even contemplate: she refused to trick her mind into believing that she had no choice. Free will was absolute, so prophecy only bound her if she allowed it.
Arithmancy was like maths but not quite and had various divinatory properties, but Dorea ignored those in favour of how it could be used in rituals, wards, alchemy and spell creation. She was about average in class and enjoyed it. Runes was different: it turned out her self-study had put her ahead on the rest of the class by a good margin so Professor Babbling made her sit the end-of-year test then adjusted her schedule so she could attend the forth-year class. It was at the same time as third-year history, but since Dorea wasn't taking that it wasn't a problem. Hermione seemed a little put-out by that, but it couldn't be helped. Getting pushed up a year meant Dorea was taking Ancient Runes with Gregory and Stephanie, which was fun since she didn't usually see much of either of them. Now she could sit in class with them and study with them in the library.
Rather amusingly, this year's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was none other than her cousin Richard, who soon had all the female upper years swooning after him and proved a highly competent educator. His lessons were interesting, they actually got to practice spells and the various Dark Creatures he either brought into class or showed them images of livened up the classroom considerably. He even got special permission from the Ministry after Christmas to have a Dementor brought into the school –properly escorted by an Auror of course– which he followed up with a lesson on the Patronus Charm. By the time exams rolled around her cousin had been enshrined in the minds of all his students as Best Defence Teacher Ever, so hearing that he was on a limited one-year-contract and would not be coming back was incredibly disheartening. Richard however confided in Dorea that Uncle Iggy had sponsored his teaching year so he could investigate the 'curse' on the Defence position without attracting suspicion. It turned out there actually was a curse: it was a Living Curse, a very powerful one cast by Tom Riddle that meant that, for as long as he was technically not fully dead, no Defence Professor would last more than one year unless he was the one hired for the job. It struck Dorea as an incredibly petty waste of otherwise rather impressive magic.
Third year was also the year that puberty happened for Dorea; she'd grown two inches over the course of each previous year, meaning that on the first of September she'd been five foot five, but after starting Hogwarts again her body went into overdrive, making her bones ache, her appetite expand to disconcertingly unladylike proportions –not that it stopped her from eating her fill– and, most peculiarly, to the development of curves. Bad enough that she had to go for new uniforms at New Year due to being five foot seven already, but she also had to buy new supportive underwear and by Easter it was very obvious, even in the unflattering Hogwarts uniform, that she actually had breasts. Thankfully however she wasn't the only one: Millie Bulstrode had come back from the summer holidays with a very generous cleavage, Trey's short stature made her succumbing to puberty blindingly obvious and even Dee needed to have her uniforms adjusted at the front. Hermione was proving to be a late developer, though her temper was certainly a lot shorter than it had been last year.
It took Dorea until mid-November to find out about the Time-Turner, which prompted her to exercise her right as Patron and give Hermione a gruesomely detailed lecture on why Time-Turners were restricted and what prolonged usage could do to your mind and magic. Hermione had lost her temper at 'being ordered around' at which point Dorea had lost her own composure and demonstrated to her thoroughly cowed audience that she did, in fact, possess the infamous Black Temper. In spades. The confrontation had ended with Hermione bursting into tears and trying to punch Dorea in the face –Rence had leapt into the breach and deflected her– but the Muggleborn had, after calming down, given the item back and stopped attending Muggle Studies and Divination. In an expression of gratitude at her friend's good sense Dorea had helped her enrol into the Ancient Studies class, paying for Hermione's lessons out of the Vault she had received from her late Uncle Cygnus for irony's sake. This had thoroughly dissipated Hermione's resentment and their friendship had proceeded as normal, slightly distant but perfectly amicable. Not that Hermione knew Dorea was paying for her classes, but still.
Third year came with the perk of Hogsmeade visits, which were fun as they were a rare opportunity to get away from the school for a while. Most of the seventh-years didn't actually bother going anymore, either having tired of the limited charms the small village could offer or using the time to sneak out of Hogsmeade to visit family and friends on the sly –if either they or said relatives could apparate– but to Dorea and her friends it was all still new and exciting. The first trip was on Halloween, which Dorea actually enjoyed for once as Tom Riddle conspicuously failed to spoil her day. The second trip was a week before the beginning of the Christmas holidays, enabling everyone to do a bit of Christmas shopping.
Unfortunately it was at this point that the tension that had been simmering between Fred and George Weasley since the previous February finally boiled over, resulting in George hiding in Slytherin again for five days and Fred alternating between betrayed fury and abject misery. Thankfully the previously-older twin got his head out of his arse before the first day of the holidays and by the time Dorea returned at New Year both Fred and George seemed much happier. That Fred had stopped messing around in Potions and George had taken up the flute utterly bamboozled the entire school, with even the teachers wondering what the prank was. Of course the fifth-year Slytherins were all incredibly smug, as they had seen it coming a mile off. They were quite fond of 'Jerry Prewett'.
February brought Valentine's Day and Dorea's first ever date: it seemed Rence had noticed her crush and decided to reciprocate. Rather than take her to Madam Puddifoot's in Hogsmeade –which was so despicably twee it made her want to throw up– he coaxed a picnic out of the house-elves and they sat out by the lake to eat it. Dorea would have been more nervous about sitting right at the edge of the Forbidden Forest if she hadn't known that Baz had depleted the Acromantula colony down to nothing over the past year, finally chowing down on the two Elder spiders and the unhatched eggs only the previous week. The forest was now officially Acromantula-free, much to the basilisk's disappointment. Apparently she considered the giant spiders to be the tastiest snack food in existence, her exact words having been, "so more-ish and crunchy!" Admittedly not having eaten a full meal in over a century meant Baz was a very hungry basilisk, so the complete destruction of the colony was in retrospect rather predictable.
Dorea thoroughly enjoyed her introduction to dating and romance: it was like a dream where nothing could touch her. Unfortunately however the shine wore off by the end of the school year, leading them to decide that they were better off staying friends. Dorea was closer to Rence now though and a number of the girls in his year teased him about his devotion to her. It wasn't romantic though; in retrospect it never really had been. Rence just wanted her to cherished and safe, which explained his tendency to distract people who were angry with her for one reason or another.
Part of what killed off Dorea's first crush was the advent of the exam season, as her renewed focus on her studies led her to realise that her affection for Rence had been mostly chemical. They didn't share the same goals or even the same basic moral code, so the relationship would never have worked anyway. Dorea honestly admired the older boy for his dedication to maintaining a certain degree of chivalry in the face of his own ambitions, though Rence still hadn't quite decided what he wanted to do with his life. As a half-blood of modest means Rence would need a job upon graduating, but the only subjects that really brought him any pleasure were combat and art. He did enjoy runes, but only as a means to Enchant things. Dorea had jokingly suggested he go into jewellery or something like that, which had made her friend look very thoughtful and mention that he might just look into it. If he did, Dorea certainly wasn't going to complain. If he was any good she might even sponsor him! While he might not ever be as good as Fairbourne's, he could certainly do no worse than Madam Belinda's utterly tasteless wares!
Her summer holidays began with the news that Peter Pettigrew had finally died in prison. While not exactly bad news, it did send both her Papa and Remus into pensive moods for a few days, after which they resolutely threw off their gloom in favour of a manor-wide prank war that soon sucked in both Weasley Twins –on opposite sides– Great-Uncle Septimus, Uncle Iggy and Theo, though Dorea still wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to persuade his father to let him stay away from the Nott family home for three weeks. Her response to the mayhem was to enlist Aunt Lucretia's assistance in Warding her rooms against intrusion, invite Hermione over and get stuck into the Alchemy primer Abraxas had left her. Hermione was utterly delighted to get to investigate such a rare subject, especially when it shared half its roots with Muggle chemistry. Unfortunately Hermione lacked the imagination and instincts to truly shine in alchemy, but she still had a really great time learning the basic principles. There had been a few tense moments over the house-elves, but talking to the now very frail Tansy had helped the Muggleborn get her facts straight and she'd thankfully dropped the prospective crusade to free the oppressed before it really got started.
More disturbingly, spending that long in Black Manor meant Hermione had found out about Dorea's swordsmanship lessons and had volunteered that one of the things she did with her father during the summer was go shooting. Not just target shooting, but clay pigeon shooting. The whole idea of firing on moving targets fascinated Avery, who demanded more explanations and persuaded both Deborah and Hermione to help him copy the system for spell practice. Dorea just watched in bemusement as Deborah somehow acquired an actual clay pigeon trap, installed it to one side of the end of the Long Lawn then assisted Hermione in setting up a Rune system to fire it.
Hermione proved a crack shot with the Reductor Curse, making Dorea wonder exactly how well she'd do with a Muggle gun in her hands. It took Ric a while to adapt to the system but he quickly improved once he got into the swing of things. Dorea herself turned out to be startlingly good, though she privately thought it was connected to her uncanny spatial awareness and all those years spent chasing snitches with Omen Owls. They just loved chasing those things, for all that their idea of play was rough enough to damage the tiny fluttering wings beyond repair after a while. Deborah wasn't very good at it at all, but she seemed to consider it a challenge and persisted. Ric then started showing up at the Manor every day to 'help' her, which Dorea found rather cute. She hoped that her former swordsmanship tutor would get his act together and propose soon; he'd graduated now and Deborah was seventeen too, so there was no reason why not. Besides, both her Papa and her Uncle Jimmy Oatley actually liked Ric, so it wasn't like they'd oppose the match. Her cousins had much more freedom of choice in who they would marry than a good many other families; certainly they had far greater freedom than Dorea herself did.
Dorea's respite from the machinations of Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore lasted past her fourteenth birthday right up until the Quidditch World Cup, the aftermath of which made her realise that no matter how good she had it right now, society's problems were still festering under the surface. Then she found out about the impending Triwizard Tournament and decided that there was no way it wasn't a trap. It had been disbanded due to the casualties piling up it the first place! Who for, how and why were immaterial; the fact remained that the opportunities for mischief in the upcoming school year would be pretty much endless. Thus it was pointless to speculate overly much, but it would be a good idea to be prepared. Very prepared.
Oh well, at least she'd finally worked out how to cancel the parseltongue locking spells on the Planetarium so Professor Sinistra could have her lessons at a civilised hour next term. The students would be grateful for not having to keep late hours and brave the top of the Astronomy tower in the icy depths of a Scottish winter.
