A/N I know it's been a while, but I didn't want to give up on this story. Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling not me. Characters are definitely OOC.
Chapter Nine
When Elizabeth woke up the next morning, her mind immediately jumped to the meeting she had with Harry. He had seemed odd the night before, but Elizabeth didn't know what on earth could be wrong. She sighed and got up, there was no use worrying for now. She would know soon enough. As she looked around the room, she noticed she was the first one up. Not that surprising, she was an early riser and it was a Saturday. She got dressed at a leisurely pace and went down to the common room to work on her homework some more. She was happy to see that there was no one in the common room. She had found she enjoyed the company of the other snakes, but she was happy to have a moment of solitude.
After what she guessed was about an hour, other Slytherins started to trickle into the common room to head to breakfast. When Elizabeth saw Blaise and Theodore come down, she got up and went to join them. Blaise noticed her first and said, "Did you get up at the crack of dawn? We're the first ones in our dormitory up and I still think it's too early."
"I wasn't going to sleep away the day, there's plenty to do," said Elizabeth brightly.
"There's a difference between sleeping away the day and getting a reasonable amount of sleep," grumbled Theodore, "besides, what do you have that so desperately needs to be done? Saturdays are meant for relaxing."
"I can't say I'm particularly good at relaxing, I just prefer to stay busy. Now come on, I want to get breakfast," Elizabeth said, eager to end the conversation. She hadn't really had that much free time at the Dursleys, so when presented with so much of it here at Hogwarts, she struggled with what she should do. She didn't even have any hobbies or interests! The only thing she really knew how to do was stay busy and work.
The trio made the trek to breakfast that was slowly becoming more familiar. They argued over whether charms, transfiguration, or defense was most useful. Blaise believed that charms were the most versatile and used in everyday life. Theodore was of the mindset that defense, when taught properly of course, allowed a person to save his own life, and that made it most useful in the real world, and Elizabeth believed that transfiguration allowed a person to make whatever he needed from anything else, so furniture could be made from a ball of dust, if the person was skilled enough at transfiguration. In the end, none of them could agree, and when the other first year Slytherins joined them in the Great Hall later, the disagreement became even larger. Theodore, Draco, Crabbe and Goyle all argued for defense, though Crabbe and Goyle seemed to just side with Draco. That left Blaise, Millicent, and Pansy on the side of charms and Elizabeth, Tracy, and Daphne on the side of transfiguration. With three sides and ten people, it was a very confusing disagreement with everyone switching sides at least once and only ended when the older Slytherins began glaring at the group. In the end, the sides of transfiguration and charms united to declare that defense was the definitive loser. After all, how many times would the average witch or wizard need to defend himself or herself? That's what Aurors were for (as Elizabeth learned during the course of the debate).
The group separated with everyone going their own way. Elizabeth, along with Tracy, decided to go to the library. She had already finished all of her homework and was curious to see what books were available.
In the library, Elizabeth found herself drawn to the potions section. Professor Snape was by far her most standoff teacher, and she was determined to excel in the course and hopefully impress him in the process. She ended up thumbing through a couple different books until she came across one called Potion Theory for Beginners. Reading through it, it seemed rather simple and understanding the theory behind potions could come in handy. Elizabeth grabbed the book and went back to the table that Tracy was sitting at.
Soon, Elizabeth got drawn into learning why some potions required higher temperatures than others, as well as what made crushing and slicing very different processes and what the goal of each was. Before she knew it, it was noon and Tracy was nudging her.
"Come on, we better go and get lunch, otherwise we'll be here all day!"
Elizabeth agreed, marked her page in the book and took it to Madam Pince to check out. Madam Pince glared at her the entire time she was marking down the information before handing her the book and saying, "Return this within the next three weeks, and be sure that it is in the same condition as it is now."
Elizabeth took the book, smiled, and said, "I will, thank you!". She hurried to catch up with Tracy as the two of them headed towards the dining hall.
After lunch, Elizabeth saw Harry get up and hurried to copy him so she could meet him in the library.
The two of them went to where Elizabeth and Tracy had been reading earlier. Elizabeth turned to Harry and whispered, "What's wrong?"
Harry bit his lip and fidgeted for a second before whispering back, "Ron and I went to have tea with Hagrid yesterday afternoon," At least that explained why he and Ron had been coming up from the woods. "Anyways, while we were there, I learned that Gringotts had a break-in, on our birthday! And guess what? The intruder tried to break-in to the same vault where Hagrid got that strange package!"
Elizabeth inclined her head at Harry and said, "So?"
"So?! Gringotts is supposed to be impossible to break into! And not only did someone succeed, they were trying to get whatever it is that Hagrid picked up!" Harry exclaimed, his voice slowly rising.
Elizabeth glanced to her right and saw that the seventh years studying at the nearest table were glancing over. She raised her hands placatingly and said, "Shhh. I'm sorry Harry, I just don't see why that's our problem. We were there with Hagrid when the package was picked up, but the contents of the package are none of our business."
Harry frowned slightly and continued to bite his lip. After a moment he said, "I suppose you're right, Hagrid just acted really suspiciously when the package came up."
"I'm sure whatever is in the package doesn't concern either of us." Elizabeth finished firmly, though she had to admit, now that Harry had brought it up, she was rather curious.
"You're right," Harry slumped, before suddenly jerking and saying, "Have you noticed anything odd about Professor Snape?"
Elizabeth tilted her head, "You're going to have to be more specific Har. He wears all black and appears to be doing his best interpretation of a bat. And he's the potions teacher at a school for magic, everything about him is odd."
Harry huffed a bit before saying, "No, I mean beyond just being a wizard."
"I can't say I have. But I've only seen a few times this week, he's not the type to spend excessive amounts of time with students. Why do you ask?" questioned Elizabeth.
"Well at the opening feast, when I looked at him, my scar hurt. And then in class of course he seemed to dislike me, you saw how I got in trouble for Neveille's cauldron. I asked Hagrid if he had any idea, and it seemed like he knew something he wasn't telling me," Harry quickly whispered.
"Well my scar hasn't hurt at all when I've been around him or looked at him, so the feast might have just been a coincidence. And sure he didn't seem to be a huge fan of you, but he doesn't seem to like any Gryffindors, so he might have just blamed you because you were standing near Neville and are a Gryffindor. As to your final point, I think you might be reading too much overall into Hagrid's reactions. I know it's not fair that Professor Snape hates Gryffindors, but I wouldn't take it personally, at least not yet."
"You're right," Harry sighed, suddenly he perked up and said, "So how has your first week of classes gone?"
The two of them continued to quietly talk in the library for a few hours, comparing the differences between their schedules and houses until Elizabeth noticed the seventh years that had been at the table had left and the sun was setting behind them.
"Come on Harry, we should probably head to the dining hall," Elizabeth said, while gently tugging Harry behind her.
Once in the dining hall, Elizabeth slipped away from Harry to go sit with the other first year Slytherins. After a couple minutes of regular chatter, Malfoy suddenly said, "Potter, it's been a week and you still haven't told us anything about where you came from. Did you really live with muggles?"
Elizabeth blinked at him a couple of times before realizing he was serious. The other first-years around him seemed a little uncomfortable at the sudden line of questioning, but were saying nothing to dispute it, so Elizabeth decided to answer, "Well yes. After my parents died, Harry and I were sent to live with our muggle aunt and uncle."
"And you didn't know about magic?" Malfoy questioned incredulously.
Elizabeth paused for a moment before answering. She didn't want to give the appearance of being behind her classmates, but she couldn't really lie about a fact like that. "No, my aunt and uncle decided not to share their limited understanding of magic with us."
"Are all muggles as skinny as you? After all, we do have potions and magic to make sure we stay a healthy weight," said Malfoy, rather condescendingly.
At this point, Blaise finally decided to step in, "That's rather rude, I've met muggles while vacationing in the summer and they were all normal weights. Let's talk about something else, we have seven years to learn more about one another."
Malfoy looked like he wanted to object, but before he could say anything, Pansy asked him, "Is your mother already starting to plan her annual winter ball?"
Elizabeth gave Blaise a small, thankful smile before listening to Draco and Pansy discuss the theme Draco's mother was planning for this year's winter ball despite it being only September.
In the common room that night, the first year Slytherins were yet again huddled together taking turns playing chess, chatting, writing letters home, and reading whatever book had caught their interest. They all looked away from what they were doing though when Marcus Flint walked into the common room and went to the board to put something up. As he moved away, Elizabeth craned her head to try and make out what the parchment said. Blaise was the first to be able to read it and said, "Slytherin first-year flying lessons starting on Thursday with…" Blaise groaned a bit, "Gryffindor."
A few of the other first-years besides Blaise groaned, though Elizabeth inwardly questioned why they were complaining. So far, the only class that the Slytherins had had with the Gryffindors was potions, and that hadn't been so bad.
Before the first-years to finish dramatically bemoaning their horrible luck though, Marcus had turned to their group and looked straight at Elizabeth before saying, "Alright Potter, we've changed the password for this week as you all know, so now you have a week to try and teach us how to say a new password in Parseltongue or we're keeping our current system. You can pick any word you like; after all, it won't make much difference to the rest of us."
Marcus looked at her expectantly and Elizabeth shakily nodded while quickly thinking. She didn't know what parseltongue sounded like to other people, so she had no clue what words would be easiest for them to learn. She decided to go with a word that would make sense in english. Elizabeth looked around for the nearest snake (which was luckily easy to find since the room was filled with carvings of them) before saying, "Open," as slowly as she good.
Marcus looked at her for a moment before saying, "Repeat that."
Elizabeth quickly obliged, and the next time Marcus spoke he said, "Op" before devolving into nonsensical hissing.
Elizabeth bobbed her head quickly, "That was really close, the ending was just a little off," she repeated the word.
It took about ten minutes of Elizabeth repeating the word and Marcus doing his best to hiss it back, but eventually he was able to get it. Once he was able to say it correctly three times in a row, he nodded and said, "Alright, I'll call a house meeting tomorrow to teach everyone in the house how to say it. You can demonstrate once and then I'll actually teach them since I have a better idea of how to explain it to non-parseltongue speakers. Not bad Potter," he then left the first-years to go check on some of the older Slytherins.
Tracy suddenly turned to Elizabeth and said, "Wait is it like this?" she took a deep breath and hissed, "Open".
"Just like that!" Elizabeth said excitedly. Soon, the first years were taking turns trying to say it until they all, with the exceptions of Crabbe and Goyle, were able to do it almost perfectly right before curfew.
As Elizabeth began drifting off, she felt a smile come to her face. Today had been a good day, she had finished her homework, she had been able to talk to Harry, even if he wanted to get involved in business that wasn't his, and she had been able to contribute something to Slytherin. Hopefully the coming weeks would be just as successful.
As the next week started, Elizabeth found herself getting into more of a routine within Slytherin. The first-year Slytherins went to all of their classes together, ate most of their meals together, and spent most of their free time within smaller groups in the Slytherin common room or the library. When Thursday came though, there was a hitch in the natural routine of things. As the Slytherins marched out to the quidditch pitch for their first flying lesson there was anticipation as well as apprehension at the idea of another class with the Gryffindors. Of course, the Slytherins were early to the class and arrived before any of the Gryffindors, though Granger arrived shortly afterwards.
Once the Gryffindors shortly trickled in, Madam Hooch arrived and briskly began the class. The Slytherins were all successful in calling their brooms since everyone but Elizabeth had grown up flying, and Elizabeth had learned how to call the broom last Friday, a fact she was very grateful for in that class. The Gryffindor success rate was a little lower with the majority of them managing to get the broom within two minutes. Harry, Elizabeth was pleasantly surprised to note, seemed to have been one of the first to successfully call his broom.
Once everyone had finally gotten their brooms in their hands, the students eagerly anticipated the next steps so that they could begin flying. Right as they were about to kick off though, Neveille Longbottom to float upwards. Elizabeth was entranced and slightly horrified to watch as he continued to rise with no sign of stopping. She glanced over at Madam Hooch to see if she was going to do anything to stop it like cast a spell or get on her own broom to try and stop. By this point Neville was getting dangerously high and there was no way he was getting out of this alright. Just as Elizabeth was starting to mount her broom to try and do something… Neville fell. There was a large crack, and Madam Hooch finally moved to check on him. "Broken wrist. It's fine, come on up you get," she turned to the rest of the class, "None of you move, I'm going to take this boy to the hospital wing. We shall continue our lesson when I return. Come on dear."
The two of them hobbled away and the class managed to remain mostly still and quiet until the two were safely out of earshot. Elizabeth turned towards Blaise, "She was rather useless wasn't she? Couldn't she have cast a spell to bring him down or at least soften his fall?"
Blaise nodded, "Definitely, I don't know why she didn't. Also rather irresponsible to leave a first year class of Slytherins and Gryffindors alone with brooms."
"Exactly," chimed in Malfoy, "Therefore, we should take full advantage on it. All we're going to learn today is the basics, which most of us know. If we want to have any fun in this lesson, now is the time."
"Don't be stupid Draco," said Theo, "If we get caught, we'll lose Slytherin points, get detentions, and then have to face the older Slytherins and Professor Snape. I don't think a joyride is worth that."
Draco made a face, clearly not used to being told no, but seemed to acknowledge that Theo had a point.
"So how long do you think before we're allowed to leave?" Asked Tracy. She had been the least excited for the lesson and was clearly eager to return to the dorms.
"I'd say 15 minutes," said Blaise, "After all, a student was already injured on her watch, and she left several first-years unsupervised."
The chatter continued among both sides for a few minutes before Ron suddenly groaned loud enough to draw the attention of all the students, "Ugh, she's been gone forever, how long are we supposed to just stand around?"
While the Slytherins made slight faces at the theatrics, none of them could deny he did have a point.
"It's definitely been 15 minutes," Elizabeth said, "If we all left, I don't think anyone could blame us. After all, is it normal for students to be escorted to the hospital wing by a professor?" In a school full of teenagers who could perform magic, that seemed inefficient.
"I don't think so," Blaise said, slightly hesitantly.
"Great! Then let's go," Tracy said, picking up her bag and getting ready to walk back the castle. The other Slytherins looked at each other a little unsurely, they certainly didn't want to get in trouble with a teacher, after all, Professor Snape and the older Slytherins would be unhappy. On the other hand, the teacher had been gone for a long time, and she hadn't given them a time they could leave at. What if she ended up missing their entire lesson so they spent an hour waiting outside?
"Could we all go to Professor Snape and tell him that our teacher left for longer than 15 minutes, and we didn't know what to do?" Elizabeth asked. That way, they could both make sure he knew they were trying to follow rules and alert him to a possibly irresponsible teacher.
The Slytherins around her seemed to think for a moment before Draco said, "I think we should; after all, he will listen to me since I'm -"
"-His godson," finished off Blaise and Theodore, rolling their eyes slightly.
"Come on then," said Blaise, taking charge, "might as well go now rather than spending half an hour talking about it," he turned and marched off, Tracy quick at his side with the rest of the Slytherins following closely behind.
Before they could actually fully leave the pitch though, Hermione Granger from Gryffindor noticed their retreat and said, "Wait! What are you doing, Madam Hooch said to wait."
The Slytherin group paused for a moment, looking to Blaise, who had become a pseudo leader for the march out, or at least someone to blame. He tilted his head and seemed to consider whether he wanted to respond to her at all or not. Finally he said, "You can do what you want Granger, but we've decided it's rather irresponsible of her to leave us here. She's been gone for close to half an hour, how long are we supposed to wait for her?"
Elizabeth specifically looked at Harry and saw that he was considering the point. He tilted his head quizzically when he saw her, which she recognized as him asking her what the point of this was. In return, Elizabeth could only offer a shrug of the shoulders, truthfully she was less than impressed at this teacher's inaction regarding Neville and then the teacher's irresponsibility at leaving several first years, some who knew how to fly and some who did not, alone. While Elizabeth was looking forward to flying again, there was a decent chance someone would get hurt, in which case she wanted a teacher who could actually help prevent the situation, not just watch as it happened.
With that, the Slytherins turned and continued to walk towards the castle while the Gryffindors broke out into loud arguments. Elizabeth caught snippets here and there of the argument.
"Come on, they have got a point, she's been gone for this long. Why not just fly some on our own?"
"I think we should just continue to wait, I'm sure she'll be here soon," That was clearly Hermione.
"Those Slytherins, they think they're too good to stand here and wait for us," that was Ron.
"But how long are we supposed to wait for," Elizabeth could barely hear Harry question back.
The sounds of the arguments died out as the Slytherins continued towards the castle. They continued their trek all the way to the dungeons where they stopped outside of Professor Snape's office door. On the door was a clock-like device, but instead of hours, there were the statements, "In class", "Working, do not disturb", "Enter only if there is an emergency", "Will return shortly", and the smallest section "Office Hours". Currently the "Will return shortly" section of the clock was highlighted.
"I suppose we'll just wait out here until he gets back," said Blaise.
"Better than having to stand outside staring at the Gryffindors," Malfoy said nastily.
Elizabeth internally debated if it was worth starting a fight with Draco over the statement. She quickly decided it against it though, Draco was just overly dramatic, and as she had discovered over the past two weeks, it was often better to let him rant over nothing for a moment or two.
The group waited outside of Professor Snape's office for ten minutes, each of them at some point succumbing to sliding down the wall to sit on the stone dungeon floor. Finally, they heard someone's footsteps echoing down the hall and quickly stood up and hurried to brush themselves off. As Professor Snape got within ear shot, he arched his eyebrow in question before silently opening the door. Once he entered, he let the door hover in place for a moment to let the group know to come in.
Once all of them had huddled inside, Professor Snape said, "I trust their is a good reason you were all waiting outside of my office rather than in the first year flying class?"
"Yes sir," began Blaise.
At the same time Draco said, "Well you see sir.."
Professor Snape held out a hand, "Mr. Zabini, why don't you speak on behalf of your classmates."
Draco's pale face looked a little pink at that statement, but he seemed to acquiesce to the request. Blaise continued, "Well sir, we were in our flying class when one of the Gryffindors suddenly began to rise and then after going probably about 20 feet in the air, he fell." Professor Snape arched his eyebrow again at this, but said nothing and waited for Blaise to continue, "Anyways, the professor decided to escort him to the Hospital Wing and told us to not get on our brooms. Of course, all of us listened, but after 30 minutes of waiting, we decided it had been a very long time, and we should leave. We decided though that we should probably tell you, so you don't believe that we are trying to skip class sir. We left because the teacher was being highly irresponsible." Blaise finished, while he had mostly managed to look perfectly calm throughout the explanation, Elizabeth could see he was slightly biting his lip as Professor Snape deliberated.
He drawled, "It is not usually my place to question the practices of a colleague. When said practices though place students, especially my students, in possible danger, I have no choice but to speak up. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I will make sure it is addressed and that none of you are punished for your behavior. Just be sure to not develop a habit of walking out on classes or there will be consequences."
The Slytherins all said, "Yes sir."
Snape stared at them a moment longer, seeming to pause on Elizabeth's face before saying, "You are dismissed, I suggest going to the Common Room to do homework. If I'm not mistaken, you have an essay due for potions tomorrow."
The Slytherins all hurried to leave, with each of them saying some form of "Goodbye sir" or "Yes sir".
Once in the Common Room, the Slytherins divided themselves into smaller groups. Tracy and Millicent went upstairs to their shared dorm as did Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle. Pansy and Daphne settled onto one of the available couches and began talking about the newest edition of some magazine called Witches Weekly that had come out, and Elizabeth, Blaise, and Theodore each went to retrieve a book or parchment from upstairs and settled down to read, do homework, or write a letter home.
Surprisingly, the only times Elizabeth had felt like the odd one out here in Slytherin was in the mornings when the mail would come. Most of the other Slytherins had received care packages from home or at least one letter in Theo's case. Elizabeth knew the others had noticed her lack of letters, but thankfully, they had refrained from making any comments so far. Hopefully, they just assumed that her muggle relatives didn't know how to send letters by owl, which was probably true anyway.
The Common Room was relatively quiet, only the soft chatters of conversations, the crackle of the fire, and the sound of quill scratching on parchment to break it up. When Elizabeth had gone upstairs to find a book to read, she had intended on grabbing one of her potions books, but when she had looked in her trunk she had seen her book about the mind arts. When she had picked up the book, aptly named Mind Arts for Beginners, she hadn't had any clue what the mind arts even were, and she still didn't. She had debated for a moment before deciding to start the new book, if it was confusing or poorly written, she could always come back for her potions book.
Sitting at the table and reading it now though, Elizabeth found herself entranced. Apparently, wizards could read people's minds if they learned how to, though as the book reminded, the mind is not a book, so the phrase "reading someone's mind" should not be taken literally. It seemed like the two types of magic discussed in the introduction, Occlumency and Legillmency, were difficult to learn, but once you did, they were powerful tools. It would probably take her years, but Elizabeth was determined to master the two arts.
Before Elizabeth knew it, it was time for dinner. The first-year Slytherins gathered together and walked towards the Great Hall. Once inside, Harry saw Elizabeth and gestured for her to come over. She mumbled a quiet, "One moment," before peeling away from the group and walking towards Harry.
He reached out for her arm, which she willingly gave him, What is it? She questioned.
He glanced towards the head table at Professor McGonagall and then at an older boy at the Gryffindor table who seemed to be gently shaking his head. Harry sighed, I guess I can't tell you, but you'll see soon. It's crazy Liz! You'll never believe it!
Elizabeth tilted her head, but decided to accept Harry's response, for now at least. She was sure she could get the answer out of him once he was away from the other Gryffindors, he had never been great at keeping secrets from her. Well alright, if that's all for now, then I suppose I'm going back to my table.
Harry nodded his head and let go of her arm, allowing Elizabeth to return to the Slytheirn table.
"What did Potter have to say," asked Draco.
"I'm honestly not sure, he was excited and said he couldn't tell me."
"Probably some secret plan Gryffindor has come up with to attack Slytherin," Draco said suspiciously.
"Maybe," Elizabeth said, while turning her attention to the food on the table, effectively ending the conversation. There wasn't much point to speculation.
Once dinner ended, the Slytherin first years fell back into the routine they had been building for the past two weeks, though Elizabeth couldn't quite remove her curiosity in what Harry was hiding. She had a new goal for the weekend, to find out what it was.