DRACO #2: The Dragon and the Spider

Disclaimer: I do not own anything belonging to JK Rowling or the world of Harry Potter.

…

Pansy and Theo emerge from the dungeons behind me, the former bumping my arm with her shoulder (the height difference is growing bigger by the year) and the latter asking if everything's alright.

A stupidly banal question, if you ask me.

I lie through my teeth to them. My clenched teeth. At the sight of Arachne bloody Messer sat with one of my friends in our spot at the Slytherin table. Blaise sends me a meaningful look, one that seems to say yeah, this is shit but it's also an opportunity so don't fuck it up.

Alright, mate. I'll try my best.

As a group we make our way over there. Daphne sets a mountain of food in front of Messer, undoubtedly capitalizing on the fact that she's new here and can show off a little. I wonder, briefly, if she suspects that the new girl's motives aren't pure. That she's actually here to kill someone in cold blood and disappear back to whence she came. Most likely not.

We sit around them, me right next to Messer. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, as it goes. She hasn't noticed my presence yet, too preoccupied with everyone else, and I take the time to study her up close, assess her, in a way I haven't been able to yet.

She's shucked her outer robes, electing only to wear her shirt, tie, v-neck and slacks, and her skin is tanned, seemingly glowing in the morning sunlight streaming in. Her hair is braided back from her slender face, and up close I can see a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks and all the different shades of colour in her hair: chestnut, tawny, even a hint of gold here and there. She says something that makes the rest of our group laugh, and a small pinch of confusion appears between her eyebrows.

She's gorgeous.

But she's also dangerous.

And hard to read. Her body language is impeccable, not a graceful limb out of place, and her countenance is easy. As though she's been here for years instead of mere hours.

"What?" she asks Daphne.

The latter gives some explanation to what just happened, but I'm not listening. I don't know how I expected her voice to sound – probably very similar to how it does sound, but it's thrown me off-kilter, nonetheless. More alto than soprano, it's as controlled as the rest of her, and a total contradiction to Daphne's girlish tones and Pansy's whiny trill.

"Ah. In that case, then, I'm Arachne Messer," she says.

Perfectly eloquent too, it seems. No stutter or hesitation in sight.

Blaise smiles charmingly at her in that way he has, but I know he's sizing her up. Assessing her and attempting to quantify exactly how much of a threat she poses to us. I'll have to ask him later on what he thinks – for now, he simply holds out a hand and introduces himself, "I'm Blaise. Blaise Zabini."

They shake, and Theo jumps into the conversation; "I'm Theodore Nott, but you can call me Theo." He follows this with a wink, as wayward and rogue as him. To any normal person, one would think Theo harmless – funny, witty, sometimes daring, and, dare I say it, chaotic – but one would be far from the truth under that assumption. This is merely part of his cunning, a disarming tactic, which he's perfected over the years.

I mean, for a long time he was using us for practice.

Theo's home life is wretched. That's not to say the rest of ours' aren't (which they are in their own excruciating ways), but out of the lot of us Theo has had it comparatively worse. We've known all our lives that his mother died when he was very young, that he has no recollection of her. That in and of itself must be bothering to him. But what we didn't know, what Theo hid so very well for so long, is that his father absolutely abhors him.

Theodore Nott Sr. is not a very nice man – it's no secret, really – but generally parents, however vile, hold some sort of sympathy towards their progeny, even if it is misplaced (take mine, for example – mother loves me, there's no doubt about that, but is entirely dependent on my father, who rules over our small family with an iron fist. He does love me too, I think, in his own way, and I can understand why he was so hard on me while growing up, as that's all he's ever known as an example of parenting). But Theo's father seems not to feel anything at all towards his son behind closed doors – actually, that's a lie, he always seems angry at Theo – and will use the smallest excuse to cut off Theo's monetary allowance, to lord over him and get violent at the drop of a hat, and to ground him to Nott manor more often than not.

Ironic, really, as Theo's father hates having him in the house.

He puts on a good show though, our Theo. As far as I'm aware, only the four of us - Blaise, Daphne, Pansy, and I – know about his home life.

Messer replies to him wryly, startling me a little as, thus far, all she's been is stoic; "Nice to meet you, Theo, but you're not my type."

Theo does that thing where he stares at you gormlessly to make you think you've offended him, something we've all be at the mercy of in the past, before grinning and shaking a teaspoon in her direction. "I like you, Arachne. You're feisty."

A dry comment leaps up onto my tongue, but Pansy beats me to it.

"You think everyone that doesn't immediately agree with you is feisty, Theo."

Messer turns towards her and the latter rolls her eyes. Pansy is, I would say, my oldest friend from childhood. Slung together as toddlers by our parents in the hopes we would fall madly in love and eventually get married, the two of us share a unique bond forged from hiding beneath tablecloths at pureblood galas and, as we've grown older, stealing elf-made wine to drink through the pain of enduring such events. There was a time when we thought we could be in love and gave dating a shot, however kissing Pansy often felt very much like kissing a sister and, after four months of struggling to be a 'couple,' decided to call it quits.

I love Pansy. Love her platonically and can't imagine my life without her, but she can oftentimes come across as a sort of chaotic swarm of energy, intimidating and unpredictable, and I briefly wonder how Messer will react to her.

"Pansy Parkinson," she introduces herself, and the two shake hands. I see Pansy sizing up the new girl too, analyzing her shrewdly. To my surprise, there's approval in her gaze, and I don't know whether to take that as a good thing or a bad thing. "Congratulations on making it into the best house," she adds.

"Thank you," Messer replies, and does a swift one-eighty.

Turning towards me.

Our eyes clash and my heart hammers. This girl is a killer, a stone-cold fox, and under the intensity of her hazel gaze I have the uncharacteristic urge to shrink into myself.

But I'm Draco Malfoy.

And as such, I do what I've always done in situations where I've been unsure of myself.

I put on the 'Draco Malfoy' veneer.

It goes a little something like this:

Start off with a dry and/or arrogant and/or witty statement. An aperitif, if you will, to let the opposition know what they're about to be in for.

Follow up with a scathing remark about someone or something one doesn't like – Potter is a good person to resort to when something doesn't immediately spring to one's mind.

(Here is a good place to add in some intimidation/blackmail if one is feeling exotic.) (But not 'my father will hear about this' as this has been seen as a joke since second year.)

Finally, finish up with a trademark smirk or sneer – something that tells the opposition that this conversation is over and creates an awkward atmosphere whereby anything further that's said will fall flat.

It's foolproof, really.

"Draco Malfoy," I say arrogantly, not missing the slight widening of her eyes as though she recognises the name (which I sincerely hope for my sake that she doesn't), before adding, "Welcome to Hogwarts, though why you transferred here is beyond me – this place has really gone to the dogs and I blame it entirely on Potter."

The corner of her mouth twitches, as if she wants to laugh at what I've said, and I find I'm fixated by the motion. The only crack I've seen in her façade so far. Perfect bow-shaped lips struggling against the cerebral confines she's placed upon them, and I can't seem to look away.

Get it together, Malfoy.

I school my features into aloofness, waiting for a response from her, but she merely turns back to her food unaffectedly, barking, "Finished my tea yet, Grass?" at Daphne.

Whilst I'm left feeling as though I've been wiped out by a bomb.

I realise I haven't loaded anything onto my plate either, everyone else digging into their breakfast with fervour, and as I start to reach for some food, Theo, through a mouthful of mashed cereal and milk, asks, "So, Arachne, how are you liking Hogwarts so far? Is it better than your old school?"

Messer finishes chewing and thinks over the question, and I pretend not to pay attention to the answer as I make myself a coffee.

"It's…" She takes a sip of tea. "My old school wasn't much different to this place," she says with a blasé gesture to the hall around us.

Coffee in hand, I only half-register the warning voice in the back of my mind telling me not to bait her as I dryly ask, "Which school was that, exactly?"

There's a couple of moments of silence. I worry that I've stepped too far, provoked her beyond reason with my question (which is a little bit ridiculous unless she knows that I know about her, about her secret, which, as I said, is ridiculous for her to possibly know that), but she crosses her legs nonchalantly and replies, "Castelobruxo," much to my relief.

Blaise, on the opposite side of the table, raps his fingers against the goblet of juice before him. I can almost see the cogs grinding in his head, mentally weighing up her answer, confirmed by him asking, "That's the one in Central Brazil, isn't it?"

"Yes."

He doesn't give anything away, doesn't even nod at her, but I can see behind his expression that her answer has satisfied him for now. Her tan is deep, hair kissed by the sun, and the both of us already know that the NEWTs she's taking match up to specialities of the school in question (the Death Eaters have an operative stationed in Hogsmeade who intercepts as much of the owl post to and from Hogwarts as they can, and so Messer's exact subject choices were brought to us not two weeks ago).

There is, however one way to test her story for certain.

And Theo beats us to it.

After picking up his bowl that's now devoid of cereal and draining the milk from it straight into his mouth in a vile display of poor table manners, he asks her, "So I take it you speak Portuguese?"

I'm drinking a mouthful of coffee as he says this, and I choke on it violently as I see surprise flash across Blaise's face across from me. Theo knows I'm a Death Eater, knows I've been given a task and that Blaise is assisting me with it, however he doesn't know any of the details. Though, out of the rest of the group, he's the one who knows the most – Daphne and Pansy suspect my initiation into the Dark Lord's ranks but haven't received any confirmation on it, and I plan on it staying that way for as long as possible.

The less people who know, the more likely I am to succeed at my mission.

But, as I was saying, since Theo's knowledge is limited, he can't possibly know of Messer's reasons for being at Hogwarts this year, and thus his question must be pure coincidence.

Hence our surprise.

"Um pouco, mas eu gostaria de aprender mais," replies Messer, holder her thumb and forefinger close together in the universal gesture to say, 'a little bit'. She gives her answer with complete confidence, not stumbling at all over the words at all and, from what little I can gather, with a spotless accent, and I find myself genuinely believing that she's come straight over from the South American school.

That is, until she looks at me out of the corner of her eye and raises a challenging eyebrow.

Arachne Messer will, quite honestly, be the death of me.

She looks away immediately, which is a good thing too as I'm sure my eyes are bugging out of their sockets, no matter how hard I try to tamper my astonishment. Theo notices my expression, bouncing his knee and giving no reaction whatsoever as he takes me in before averting his gaze to scan the room at large, on the edge of his seat like an excitable puppy.

I sincerely hope he doesn't say anything.

The conversation turns to Greek mythology, and names, as Pansy vacantly asks why Daphne has taken to calling Messer 'Spider Girl' – a very bad thing, if you ask me, giving her a nickname as though she's one of us when I'm destined to kill her in the very near future – and my name comes up. I dutifully, morbidly, intone the fate of my namesake – the dragon who dies – and the discussion quickly devolves into its usual heated debate, voices cutting across each other rudely and intellectually. I often think we have arguments such as these to implicitly spite our parents somehow, as the way in which we talk over each other is most definitely not proper etiquette, and I can see the amusement on Messer's face as she silently takes it in before glancing around the hall, obviously lost in her own thoughts.

I wonder what she's thinking. I wonder what she thinks of us, thinks of me. I wonder whether she likes Hogwarts, whether she's astounded by it like the rest of us are. I wonder about her past, about the idea that this may be the first school she's ever been too.

I wonder a lot of things about her, but, most importantly, I wonder at who she's actually here to kill.

And pray it isn't me.

…

A/N:

Hey, it's me again.

Just dropping in to post this. Might be a while until I post the next one as I haven't written anything else, but hopefully you enjoyed it!

Please review/follow/favourite/message – anything if you like it. I'm always looking for feedback so my writing can grow and would be really appreciative of anyone who provides that.

Anyways, stay safe and see you soon.

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