SEMPER FORTIS
"Always Courageous"
Chapter Twelve: Curses and Quidditch
Fighting a troll together, it seemed, was the perfect recipe to form friendships over night.
Rigel woke up the next morning questioning if the troll incident had really occurred, or had just been a particularly vivid nightmare, until she walked up behind Hermione in the common room and — upon peeking over the girl's shoulder — found her writing an essay about the beasts. Her nose wrinkled in disgust; what a dreadful topic it was.
"What's this, then?" she demanded.
Hermione flinched, yanking the quill away from her parchment in a desperate move to avoid marking it, and shot a disgruntled look over her shoulder at her friend.
"Sorry," Rigel muttered, throwing her hands up in a peaceful gesture, but her lips were twitching with amusement; it wasn't like she'd been trying to sneak up on the other girl.
"It's for Professor McGonagall," she muttered, and she was definitely flushed with embarrassment now. "I… have to turn in one foot to her about the dangers of trolls and why one should never seek them out."
Rigel snorted.
"Well, that's straightforward enough," she grinned. "Let's see… point one, they're massive and like to smash things. Point two, they apparently carry clubs in order to do that smashing. There you go, essay done. Just use really big letters."
"Rigel..." Hermione sighed, aggravated.
"What?" she demanded. "They're not exactly very complex, they're just massive! That's about all there is to them!"
Hermione ducked her head, hiding her grin behind her curls, and Rigel settled back into the cushions in a comfortable silence.
A short time later, footsteps sounded on one of the staircases, and she turned to spy who it was. She and Hermione had beaten the rest of the house to the common room, it was so early, but she'd been expecting some harried looking seventh year to come racing down; the seventh years always looked stressed.
So she was surprised by the sight that greeted her instead: it was Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, bumbling their way down the stairs with not a care in the world for how much noise they were making. An even bigger shock was the fact that they didn't make for the portrait hole — instead, Harry made a beeline straight for the girls, while Ron trailed behind him still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The boy drew up short, right at the edge of the couch, like he'd suddenly lost his momentum when he realized Rigel was watching them, despite the fact that he'd clearly been headed right for her.
"Er… hullo, Rigel," he said finally.
"Hullo," she echoed. Tentative. Testing the waters.
An eyebrow popped up at the silence that followed, almost against her volition.
"You two are up early this morning," Hermione said without looking up from her parchment.
"Couldn't sleep," Harry shrugged sheepishly. "Kept thinking about trolls."
"Speak for yourself," Ron said from behind him, disgruntled. "I was sleeping just fine until you woke me up…"
Rigel snorted.
"Well if trolls are on your mind, maybe you can help Hermione out," she said. "She's got to write a whole foot about how dangerous they are."
"A whole foot? That's bloody mental," Ron protested.
He looked more awake now, as if the power of indignation over extra homework was enough to jolt some newfound energy into him.
"I'd rather write an essay than go to detention," Hermione retorted sourly.
"A whole foot, though? How's there that much to say about them?" Harry frowned.
"Yeah," Ron put in, making a face. "They're big and they like to smash things. Done. Just write really big."
Harry nodded sagely, while Rigel slapped a hand over her mouth in a fruitless attempt to stop hysterical giggles from flooding out of her mouth.
"That's— that's what I told her to do," she gasped around the laughter.
Hermione had looked up from her work finally, staring at the lot of them with a look somewhere halfway between horror and irritation.
Ron, for his part, was staring at Rigel with a furrowed brow. His expression was infinitely less hostile than it had ever been before the troll incident, but still uncertain… like how one might look at a stray animal they were hoping wasn't going to bite them if they tried to make friends with it. It wasn't an unfair assessment; Rigel felt much the same about him as well, but the euphoria of suddenly having company to laugh with was overpowering the instincts screaming at her not to trust him. Hermione would always be her dearest friend, but the girl was just entirely too sensible sometimes.
"I highly doubt Professor McGonagall would find it as amusing as you all," the brunette witch sniffed. "And anyway, I'm already done with it. Shall we go to breakfast?"
And they did — all together, the four of them, like one cohesive unit. Rigel didn't realize she had been holding her breath until after that first meal together was done, and the open stares of the students from other houses had faded finally into the back of her mind in favor of half-heartedly listening in on the mild mannered debate Hermione was having with Ron over wizarding writing utensils. (The girl favored some kind of muggle method over quills, it seemed; Rigel would have to admit that she had tuned the subject out in light of the fact that she'd already been subject to the same lecture at least ten times. Whatever was so special about a pen with grips on it, anyway, she wondered?)
November rolled into Hogwarts as cold and dreary as ever, but it made little difference to Oliver Wood and his dedication to having a winning Quidditch team. Gryffindor's first match of the season was on the second Saturday of the month, and it almost seemed like Harry spent more time on the Quidditch pitch getting last-minute training in than he did in the classrooms.
The four first-years had remained together as a unit ever since the first morning that had caused such a stir throughout the gossips of Hogwarts. Each set — the young witches and wizards alike — weren't completely at ease around the other yet, but it was as if some rule had gone unspoken that they would have each other's backs now, and so every morning they met each other at the bottom of the dormitory staircases, and they carried on throughout each day together: to class, to meals, and even to studying when Hermione nagged and threatened and begged them all into it.
There was only one place, dormitories aside, that they didn't go to as a group of four, and that was the Quidditch pitch. Harry had the team practices to attend, but he also had the special solo practices that Wood had decided he needed to crunch in whatever experience he possibly could get before his first match arrived. Each evening, he would troop down in all his gear and meet the team captain to practice spins and drops and catches, and Rigel would dutifully follow him down until they parted paths — him for the pitch, and her for the lowest seat on the stands so she could watch. (And she'd be lying, of course, if she said she wasn't jealous that it wasn't her on the broom, but just being on the pitch was enough to improve her mood by tenfold each night.)
At first, Harry had seemed confused by Rigel accompanying him; Hermione and Ron had been extended an invitation too, of course, but the girl was determined to study each evening, and Ron was not as keen on sitting out in the cold watching other people play Quidditch as Rigel was, so he had opted to keep Hermione company instead, which Rigel knew already to be a ruse for attempting to copy her essays. And so, the evening trips to the Quidditch pitch had become Rigel's and Harry's ritual, and after the strangeness of being alone together wore off, he seemed to appreciate the company as they trudged through the cold fog.
Oliver Wood, for his part, had stopped and squinted at her silhouetted form in the stands for only a few moments on the first occasion, and then laughed audibly and carried on with his drills. The fifth year seemed strangely amused by her presence there, but by the third practice Rigel found herself jolting suddenly in surprise as she was snapped out of a daydream by a hand waving in front of her face.
"Oi," a voice was saying. "You with us?"
It was Wood, of course, looking at her with hands on hips like he'd said her name several times already, while Harry hovered uncertainly behind him.
"Er," Rigel stammered. "Sorry? Am I not allowed to watch anymore? Were you telling me to leave?"
Wood rolled his eyes dramatically.
"Hardly," he snorted, as if it were the silliest thing he'd ever heard. "I was saying that if you're going to be here all the time, you might as well make yourself useful. Come help throw so I can get up in the air with Potter."
The girl sat up, eyes wide in surprise and excitement.
"You want me to help?"
The captain was already halfway back to the chest of equipment he lugged out of the storage room each night.
"Not if you don't get a move on!" he shouted over his shoulder.
Rigel leapt to her feet, shooting a blindingly delighted grin at a wide-eyed Harry, who find himself scrambling to catch up with his excited friend.
From that moment on, Rigel spent each of their evenings on the quidditch pitch knee deep in equipment and drills and Wood's playbooks, sending quaffles and snitches and poorly-aimed bludgers into the air on his various cues. It wasn't as fun as being in the air herself, but it was a thousand times more exciting than sitting in the stands, and she didn't even bother to try and maintain a cool composure when she thanked Wood profusely for involving her at the end of each practice, which was always met with a nonchalant shrug and a poorly hidden grin from the older boy. (She wondered once, in the distant back of her mind, if that was what having a brother was supposed to be like, but the thought hurt so much that she banished it before it could cut deeper than it already had.)
When the next team practice rolled around, Rigel strode onto the pitch right in step with Harry instead of slinking off to the stands. She moved to Wood's side like it was her assigned place, which was met with varying looks of surprise and amusement from the rest of the group.
"Did you manage to get another first year recruited, Oliver?" Alicia asked, eyebrows raised.
"If he did, I want to know which one of us has lost a spot," Angelina snorted.
"No one's been replaced," Wood rolled his eyes. "I made Malfoy quit skulking and now she's my assistant. McGonagall approved and everything."
Rigel's head shot up and out of the equipment trunk. She hadn't known that detail, and she didn't know how she felt about it.
"Really?" she asked, eyebrows pinched.
Wood glanced at her, seeming to pick up on the discomfort the announcement had brought.
"Yeah," he shrugged. "It wasn't her idea, but I didn't want you to get in trouble for being out of the castle every evening. You're technically listed with the team now even if you're not playing, so if we run late no one can give you detention for it."
"Surely we won't run that late?" Katie piped up, looking distraught at the idea. "Not after curfew, I mean?"
Wood scowled, casting a look over at the team's mischievous beaters.
"Depends on if everyone can focus and get the job done," he said pointedly.
Fred — or perhaps George; telling the two apart was far beyond Rigel's abilities — held up his hands with a phony look of innocence.
"We would never cause distractions," the second twin said.
"Right," Wood snorted. "You can start by grabbing your stuff and getting a move on then."
"Ah, you'd never get rid of us," the first twin grinned wickedly as he grabbed his beater's bat. "You don't have any replacements that aren't shite!"
"I don't know," the second one said, eyeing Rigel sharply; she was holding the second bat in her hands. "You looking to replace me, Malfoy?"
It wasn't outright hostile, but there was a kernel of cool dislike to his voice still, and Rigel was reminded that the fact that the twins had stopped antagonizing her on purpose, did not mean that they'd accepted her presence there at all — or that they trusted her, much less liked her.
That was alright. She didn't trust them much, either.
"No," she said coolly, eyeing first the bat and then meeting the boy's look evenly. "I'm a rubbish beater."
She held it out toward him, and it felt oddly like an olive branch.
Both twins snorted, snickering under their breath as the second beater's bat was claimed.
"That's because you're a little twig, Malfoy," one of them grinned wickedly, and then they were off, kicking into the air and leaving her forgotten on the ground.
It was just her and Harry left, the rest having moved into position for Oliver's first drill already.
Rigel exhaled, shaking her head with a rueful look.
"Well, that went better than I would have expected," she said dryly.
Harry glanced at her, with that curious but afraid to ask look he wore so often.
"What were you expecting?" he said finally.
"Dunno," she shrugged. "But not that. You'd better move before Wood yells at us."
The boy looked confused still, but the reminder of Wood's strict timekeeping had him glancing over his shoulder worriedly, and he was kicking off to follow the rest of them in seconds. Rigel followed close behind — on foot, beneath the rest, while she glanced at her watch to keep time for their first drill.
After that first team practice, after the brooms and the quaffles and such were put away and they had all trooped back up to the tower together, her presence was never questioned on the Quidditch pitch at Gryffindor's practices again, and by the time the first match rolled around she was almost as excited about it as the ones who would actually be playing.
On the final night before the quidditch match, Oliver decided — after some well-argued needling from Angelina, complete with citations from a professional league handbook — that they'd been working so hard for the past week straight that what they all really needed was a good night's rest. And so, Rigel and Harry found themselves spending the evening together with Hermione and Ron for a change. The four of them had ended up in the courtyard enjoying the warmth of some pretty blue flames Hermione had conjured up for them while they pored over Quidditch Through the Ages, with Harry looking for last minute inspiration as he'd been hit by a bout of nerves after news of his debut as Gryffindor's seeker — Wood's "secret weapon" — had been discovered by the other houses.
Their peaceful evening was ruined when Professor Snape caught sight of them, perhaps having glimpsed the illicit jar of flames as they shuffled to conceal it, or perhaps simply finding their overall appearance so guilty looking that he beat a path straight to them to confront them about it.
"He's limping," Harry muttered.
They didn't get a chance to respond before the professor was on them, but even if they had, Rigel wouldn't have been able to come up with one. She was too busy having an internal panic over the collision of what she had begun to mentally classify as her old life — the manor and Draco and green everywhere — and her new life, with all its unexpected twists and turns, and the new friends she'd made.
She didn't know what role Snape was going to play in her life as it was now, but somehow she expected that it would be different from how she'd known him growing up. None of her new friends liked him much, and while Rigel couldn't truly fault them for that — he was foul to the Gryffindors as a rule, and to Harry and Ron and Hermione especially, and she would never try and deny that — but she knew that it would only cause a headache if she let slip how close the professor was to her family.
"What have you got there, Potter?" Snape demanded, the moment he arrived.
Harry turned the book up right, so he could see the cover, and Rigel couldn't help but wince. She didn't know why he seemed to hate Harry so much, but she could already tell what direction this conversation was heading.
"Library books are not to be taken outside the school," Snape said. "Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor."
"But aren't we still inside the school, professor?" Rigel said coolly. "The courtyard is school grounds, isn't it? So if the rule is that books must not be outside the school, rather than outside the castle… we're still perfectly within bounds."
Snape's nostrils flared in a manner not unlike mother's, which was a disturbing thought.
"I'm certain I'm more acquainted with the school's rules than you are, Miss Malfoy," he sneered. "Argue semantics with me once more, and you'll be scrubbing cauldrons in detention all weekend."
She shut her jaw with an audible click.
Snape seemed to accept the silence as a surrender, and turned to leave — confiscated book held in hand — but then he paused, and turned back to her with a calculated look.
"I'm aware that following rules has never been your strongpoint, Rigel," he said lowly. "But perhaps you should rethink the company you keep before it's too late to change your mind. Only so many transgressions may be overlooked, after all."
And then he was gone, leaving them all behind in varying states of anger and confusion. Rigel sat with jaw dropped and eyebrows furrowed deeply, furious that he would make such a comment that made it obvious they'd known each other long before she came to Hogwarts. Ron was muttering expletives under his breath and glaring balefully, and she couldn't help but find herself agreeing with the boy.
"He's just made that rule up," Harry muttered angrily.
"What did he mean by that?" Hermione interrupted.
She was looking right at Rigel, and the blonde cursed internally. Of course Hermione would be the one to pick up on it. If it had been just the boys, she could have talked her way around the matter and distracted them with throwing insults at the professor's silhouette in the distance, but Hermione would not be so easily swayed.
"What was what?" Harry asked.
"That…comment," Hermione said, squinting suspiciously. "Rigel, what did he mean? He acted like he knew you."
"'Course he knows her," Ron muttered, looking at the brunette like she was mentally addled. "He's our professor, remember? Are you feeling alright, Hermione?"
"Not like that," the girl hissed. "He said something about her before school!"
"She's right, he did," Harry frowned.
They all turned on her in curiosity and confusion, and perhaps the accusatory looks were all in her imagination, but Rigel knew it was just fact that the truth would infuriate them. Ron, especially, would not handle the news well, but she knew they'd find out eventually even if she tried to lie about it.
Rigel sighed deeply, squeezing her eyes shut. She was trying desperately to convince herself that she wasn't about to lose her only friends, but the fear was gripping her tight.
"Snape is… Snape is my godfather," she said sourly.
Her friends stared at her, stunned.
"And Draco's, too," she added quickly, and then cursed again in her head, because bringing her brother into the conversation certainly wouldn't help tip things in her favor.
"Snape is your what?!" Ron shouted.
Rigel shushed him furiously, eyeing the group of sixth and seventh years who were glancing their way at the noise, but the boy was so furious that his face was flushed as red as his hair.
"Snape is— he's— he's your godfather?!" the boy stammered around his anger.
"It's not that big of a deal!" Rigel hissed. "He just came 'round the manor sometimes to have dinner with our parents, and they made us talk to him! It's not like he came visiting or actually spent time just with us!"
And this part was true; she'd seen a lot of Snape over the years, had even had a begrudging kind of understanding with him that if she stayed out of his hair, he didn't care what nonsense she was getting up to around the manor, but he certainly hadn't strived to fill any kind of honorary uncle role for either of the siblings. Everything she knew about the man was gleaned from stifled dinner table conversation between the adults, or else through eavesdropping on meetings in father's office.
It didn't seem to help matters much, on that day.
"Oh, of course, the manor," Ron bit out mockingly.
A hot flush of anger and embarrassment shot simultaneously down Rigel's back — and wasn't that a first; she'd never been ashamed of living in a grand manor before that moment, but Ron made it sound like such an insult that it was galling. Before she could open her mouth to fire off an answer, an indignant bark about how she'd hardly chosen the man to be her godfather, they were interrupted.
"Who's your godmother?" Harry asked; he was frowning, not as consumed by anger as Ron was, but still obviously troubled by the revelation.
Her own anger fled Rigel's body instantly, replaced by a cool fear. She couldn't answer that question. Snape was her godfather and that was one thing, but she could hardly explain that her godmother had been locked up in Azkaban prison nearly Rigel's entire life, and she'd never met the witch when she was old enough to remember doing so.
"She's not in the picture," she said flatly. "I don't have anything to do with her."
It wasn't a lie, exactly. Perhaps that was why she was able to say it so convincingly.
"I suppose that explains a lot…" Hermione said quietly. "About Professor Snape, I mean."
"What do you mean?" Rigel frowned.
"He's always seemed a bit more familiar with you," her friend shrugged. "Not friendly, of course, just… familiar."
"But did you notice his leg?" Harry said suddenly, and Rigel was so grateful for the distraction she could have hugged him right then and there. "I wonder what he's done to it?"
"Dunno," Ron muttered sullenly. "But I hope it's painful."
Hermione made a scandalized sound, eyes wide and disapproving, but after the man's catty remarks Rigel couldn't help but agree bitterly.
That evening found all of them save for Harry settled into the common room armchairs, while the boy himself was off on a wild notion to retrieve his Quidditch book from the staffroom, where he thought Snape might be shamed into returning it by other professors.
After a short time, the missing member of the quartet burst through the portrait hole with a loud bang, and bolted straight for his friends.
"It was Snape!" Harry whispered loudly, like he wanted to shout it and was barely able to restrain himself. "I saw him with Filch and he was talking about it!"
He settled into the seat next to Hermione and filled them all in on the scene he'd witnessed — the bloody leg and the bandages, and what Snape had said about trying to distract all the heads of the dog — and how he was convinced that it meant Snape had let the troll into the castle on Halloween on purpose, as a diversion to give him a chance to sneak past the dog.
Ron agreed with him, of course, but Rigel and Hermione were both doubtful.
"No, he wouldn't!" Hermione protested. "I know he's not very nice, but he wouldn't try and steal something Dumbledore's trying to keep safe."
Ron disagreed completely, and while Rigel agreed with his assessment that Hermione wanted to assume the best of all of their professors no matter what, she found herself disagreeing with the boys for a different reason entirely.
"Hermione's right," she interrupted. "Not because he's a professor, but because he's just not that stupid. Letting a troll rampage and then trying to get past the dog without even having a way to get around it? That's just stupid. He wouldn't do it."
He'd have a better plan than that, she wanted to say, but the thought was lost in the face of Ron's surging anger.
"Well of course you would defend him," the redhead snapped. "Just because you're halfway decent doesn't mean the rest of your lot aren't evil pricks!"
Rigel went still, whipping her head up to glare at him.
Her arm was seized before she had a chance to shout the venomous words that were already sizzling to life on her tongue about him and his lot.
"I think it's time we all went to bed," Hermione interrupted hastily; it was her hand that was wrapped tightly around Rigel's wrist, like she was afraid of what the girl would do if she let go of her. "We're all tired and we're just going to keep disagreeing about this. Let's go, Rigel."
The blonde let herself be pulled away, but she didn't stop glaring at the boy until Hermione had towed her out of sight, wrath boiling underneath her skin.
"You know he didn't mean anything by it," the other girl said quietly, upstairs in their dorm after they'd settled beneath their covers for the night.
"Yes he did," Rigel said coldly. "Don't play dumb, Hermione."
And then she rolled over to face the opposite way, unwilling to even look at her friend any longer, and yanked the curtains shut around her bed with a rough tug.
The tension was thick at breakfast the next morning, between the anxiety over the house's first Quidditch match, and the quiet feud fostered between Rigel and Ron. Neither of them was talking to the other, and had sat on opposite sides of Harry and Hermione, who were attempting to carry on a conversation which was stilted by the fact that the angry pair were each determined to ignore anything the other said, no matter how relevant.
By the time they made it to the Quidditch pitch, Hermione looked thoroughly miserable to be seated between the two of them, and Harry's anxiety had melted away in favor of visible relief when Fred and George had tugged him away and into the team's huddle.
As the match got to rolling, the awkward silent tension between Rigel and Ron only furthered as the Slytherin team headed by Marcus Flint seemed determined to foul in every way possible. She wasn't, of course, rooting for them — her loyalty lay solidly with Harry and Wood and all of the Gryffindor team she'd been oddly adopted into, as evidenced by the red and gold scarf she was proudly wearing, for the first time ever.
But the broom, more than anything, solidified their feud.
Rigel had been just as stunned as Hermione and Ron when Harry's broom began to buck and contort and attempt to throw him off of it in every way conceivable, but she found herself at odds with a furious Ron once again when the boy became convinced — upon catching sight of Snape, eyes fixed on Harry and mouth moving feverishly — that the professor was jinxing the broom in some way.
"Come on, Hermione, you can't seriously believe this," she said desperately.
Ron was spitting incoherently next to them, gesturing wildly between the professor and their friend, and Hermione looked wildly back and forth between the two.
"I'm sorry, Rigel, but what if he's right?" the brunette cried, and then she was off.
Rigel shot out of her own seat just a moment behind her, but the Muggleborn still managed to outstrip her by quite a distance. By the time she arrived, the bottom of Snape's robes were already encased in blue fire, and he was jumping in alarm and stomping furiously at the hem of them even as Hermione scurried back along, grabbing Rigel and towing her back the way they'd come.
When they burst back to the surface of the stands, it was just in time to see two things: Harry had caught the snitch… and his broom was lying on the ground beside his sprawled form, seemingly recovered from its seizing fits. Contrary to the cheering crowd around her, the sight set Rigel to scowling, unhappy not that Harry had pulled off two incredible feats, but that he'd done so at the exact same time as Hermione's attack on Snape. It was a coincidence, she was certain, but they would never believe her now.
She allowed Hermione to tow her along back to Ron, who seemed to have forgotten his anger over Snape in light of Gryffindor's victory, but her legs felt like lead weights as she trudged along behind them all to the hut of the housekeeper, Hagrid, whom Harry had evidently made friends with sometime before she'd begun spending time with him. It was an odd experience, and the enormous man didn't seem to know quite what to make of her after Harry had introduced her to him, but Rigel felt a surge of appreciation for him as he protested against her friends' absurd conclusion that Snape had not only been trying to hex Harry, but had also attempted to break into the chambers behind the three headed dog.
In the face of an adult voicing her same doubts, Rigel had protested once again that Snape was not that stupid, that he would never try to curse Harry in broad daylight in front of so many witnesses, but it only set her and Ron off to arguing again. When the four of them left the groundskeeper's hut that evening, they'd learned three things: the dog's name was Fluffy, it was indeed guarding something, and that something involved both the headmaster and a man named Nicolas Flamel.
And Rigel was so consumed by both her anger at their foolish accusations toward Snape, and an all-consuming, paralyzing despair at the thought that she was about to lose all of her new friends over the disagreement, that it never even occurred to her that she could tell them that she already knew exactly who Nicolas Flamel was.
AN: Hey y'all! Chapter thirteen is partially done already, I'm considering cranking out the rest to post on Christmas Day since it features Rigel's first Christmas at Hogwarts. If anyone actually would want to read it tomorrow, let me know, because if not I won't stress about finishing it in time lmao. Let me know your thoughts either way please!
And a quick shoutout to anyone who is struggling this holiday, having to deal with a new reality for what Christmas is like without lost loved ones: I'm in the same boat right now and I hear you and I feel you. This shit is hard as hell. You're not a grinch if you're not feeling very festive right now — grief has a way of sapping all the magic away. Take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, and find joy where you can — even if it's just a tiny, every day thing that you celebrate. It's the little things that will get us through.
POSTED: 12/24/2021