Chapter 9

Saturday evening and most of Sunday saw Hogwarts abuzz with the news of the Walsh girl's heritage, and speculation about why she'd been placed in Slytherin. Like many of his House mates, Draco was of the opinion that Ava's parents hadn't been entirely honest with the twins about their birth. And, like Evette Rathbone, he was irked that she wasn't grateful for the revelation. What witch or wizard in their right mind wouldn't be relieved at being descended from a known magical family?

He'd sought out Carina, but she'd been particularly hard to pin down since the news came out. It didn't help that Professor Snape called her and Willoughby to his office, and when they returned to the common room Sunday evening, he could sense her agitation.

"Get everybody in here," Willoughby ordered the other prefects. "Now. I don't care if you have to drag them out of the bath. Just get them in here."

While the lower prefects scattered to gather the other Slytherins and sent runners to find the youngest students, Draco sidled over to Carina. She stood with her arms crossed, glaring into the lake as minnows flitted past the lit dome.

"So what did Snape have to say?" he asked, hands shoved into his pockets.

"Nothing good," she muttered darkly. "You'll find out once everyone arrives. You should go sit down."

"Not even a hint?"

"No."

Frowning, Draco left her to her brooding and claimed a seat beside Blaise, Theo, and Pansy near the fireplace.

A few minutes later everyone was assembled in the common room, even Ava Walsh, who had taken a lone seat near the cool glass dome. Draco wasn't surprised when the other first years steadfastly ignored her existence, though his brow furrowed when Carina leaned down to say something to her. He couldn't see his sister's face, but Ava's remained perfectly passive until Carina walked away. Then her eyes slid to the floor and her shoulders fell the tiniest bit.

Good, though Draco. Carina was probably making her place known.

Willoughby called for attention, and as Carina joined him at the fireplace, conversation ceased.

"Carina and I attended a meeting with Professor Snape this afternoon," Willoughby began. He faltered, glancing sideways at her. "He expressed some… concerns."

Every line of Carina's body was taut in her school robes. She studied the other students, her jaw working furiously for a moment before she spoke. Her voice was quiet, and far too steady for the clenched fist of her dominant hand.

"Congratulations," she said flatly. "Really, you should be proud of yourselves. Before the term has even begun, we have started out with negative points."

She opened her fist to display a handful of gleaming, black gems. Obsidian chips, Draco realized with horror as she tilted her hand. The stones rattled ominously as they hit the stone floor, echoing in the dead silence.

"Would anyone like to venture a guess as to why?" Carina hissed.

Nobody answered as she glared at each of them, her eyes flashing dangerously. Even Draco had sunk a little further into his seat, eyes wide. Finally Marcus Flint spoke up.

"We all know it's the little girl, Captain," he drawled. "Got all of us riled up, don't it? This muggleborn nonsense and all."

"There it is," somebody else muttered.

"Indeed," Willoughby agreed. In Draco's periphery, he saw Ava go pale and sink lower in her wooden chair. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but it appears we have a bullying problem."

Voices of dissent rose from the assembled students, but sparks flickered at Carina's fingertips and she snapped, "Shut your mouths."

Silence descended again. Draco watched Carina take three long, calming breaths before she could speak.

"For three years now we've had the House Cup snatched from us by Gryffindor House," she finally said. "We all know there's some blatant favoritism going on there, and we can't help that. But I remember what it was like my first three years here, when Slytherin House dominated in points. I remember how we worked damn hard to get those points, and we stood together as a House to do it." She glared hard at them, making sure they were all listening.

"Now, I'm not going to sit and preach to you about chivalry or honest earnings or any of that Gryffindor nonsense, but I'll be damned if I let any infighting screw us over before the year has even begun." She clenched her fists.

"Ava Walsh was Sorted into Slytherin. If you want to argue with the Sorting Hat over its reasoning, go ahead, but the decision is final. If I catch any one of you putting our chances of winning the House Cup on the line by bullying one of our own, I will personally give you detention scrubbing Moaning Myrtles bathroom every night for a month, including the boys!" She nearly shouted this last statement over the eruption of protest from her peers. Even Willoughby was looking at her in alarm, but he quickly recovered.

"Shut your mouths before I silence you all!" he barked. The Slytherins were slower to quiet themselves for him, but eventually they did. "Now, any questions?"

"Yeah," Marcus Flint drawled. "How will you be able to tell if one of our little misfits gets in trouble?"

"The House bond," Carina answered without hesitation. "With that in conjunction with prefects having additional authority, we'll know if any infighting occurs."

Flint frowned. "Is that a real thing?"

Willoughby twitched beside Carina. "Of course it is, you nitwit. How do you think we caught you last year when—"

"And on that note," Carina interrupted as Flint's face reddened. "Any other questions?"

"Are we just going to ignore the fact that a muggleborn was Sorted into Slytherin?" Daphne Greengrass asked incredulously. "What are we supposed to say when somebody asks if it's true?"

Here Carina hesitated, and Willoughby stepped in. "I'm hardly interested in knowing Mrs. Walsh's intimate history. Are you? Terribly poor manners, I would think."

Daphne pursed her lips and sat back on the couch, folding her arms.

Other questions rose, but Draco was less interested in them and more interested in his sister's responses. She dodged questions about Ava Walsh's blood as deftly as she evaded bludgers in Quidditch. In fact, she deferred to Willoughby to answer all such questions. Willoughby, Draco knew, was a half-blood, and he regularly visited his Muggle grandparents over the holidays. Willoughby seemed to be encouraging his peers to avoid the issue of blood altogether. Carina had nothing to say on the subject.

At last she cut off the barrage of questions with, "Enough. Classes start tomorrow morning. Get some sleep and don't be late for class."

Slowly, and with some grumbling, Draco's housemates dispersed. He meant to catch Carina right afterward, but got caught in a conversation between Theo and Pansy.

"I don't know why they don't just move her to a different House," Pansy was saying, buffing her nails. "She clearly doesn't belong here."

"Sortings are final, Pans," Theo said for perhaps the dozenth time that day. "You can't just transplant students like a mandrake, or weren't you listening?"

"Yeah, they'd scream just as loud," Blaise joked with a grin.

At length Draco waved them off and darted to the staircase that would take him to the lower lake chamber.

When he walked in, he found Carina having a somewhat heated discussion with Ava Walsh. Carina glanced up when he walked in, abruptly cutting off whatever Ava had been saying.

"Draco," she greeted him a little tersely.

"Hey," he said, then glanced at Ava. "Shouldn't you be in bed, pipsqueak?"

Ava's nostrils flared. "Shouldn't you?" she retorted. "Last I checked, you weren't a prefect."

Draco gritted his teeth, about to snap something nasty back.

"You should get to bed, Ava," Carina interrupted. "We'll talk more tomorrow."

Ava's lips thinned into a line, but she turned on her heel, pushed roughly past Draco, and vanished back up the stairs. Carina pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh, leaned her back against the glass, and slid down to the floor.

"What were you talking about?" he asked, coming to sit beside her. Above them, faint torchlight from the common room filtered through the water and cast an eerie glow over them. The water between the common room and lower lake domes distorted images just enough that it was hard to tell who occupied one dome from the vantage point of the other.

"She didn't like me specifically calling her out during the meeting. She says she's already got a target on her back and didn't need me to go making it bigger for anyone who happened to miss lunch yesterday."

Draco shrugged. "That's what she deserves, isn't it? Can't have her pretending to be one of us."

Carina's hands tightened on her knees. "Did you listen to a single word I said? Ava's a Slytherin, no matter how we feel about it. We literally don't have any points to lose if the bullying continues."

"Speaking of which, how did you get those stones? I'm pretty sure they're supposed to stay in the hourglass."

"I conjured them as an example after studying the ones in the Great Hall. There were plenty of them in our hourglass, after all." She spun her wand between her fingers, watching red sparks light the end of it.

Draco rolled his eyes. "I know you're not as upset about the points as you are about Ava."

She stilled next to him, coiled tight like a spring. "What do you mean?"

"Do you think I'm blind? I saw you avoiding questions. She might be half-blood, but she was raised by muggles. She belongs here about as much as Granger does. Why didn't you say anything?"

He watched as Carina's jaw tightened. They sat for a long moment in silence before she relaxed a little and rolled her head from side to side, presumably to loosen the muscles there. Finally she answered, "Do you know what the rest of the school has been saying about us? About Slytherins?"

"That we're no good, slimy snakes?" Draco guessed. "It's always the same rubbish they spout when they get jealous."

An exasperated sigh as Carina drew her knees up and draped her arms around them. "Not this time. The bullying was blatant, and the other Houses are appalled by the way Ava's being treated. Even other pureblood students are calling us tyrants, but the worst part is that nobody else is fazed by it."

Draco scratched his chin. "I don't understand. First you say they're appalled, and then they aren't fazed?"

"I mean that they think the behavior is appalling, but they think this is normal behavior for us. They think we go out of our way to make everybody else's lives miserable." Her voice rose with each word and she clenched her jaw to stifle the building tirade.

"They're just ignorant then, aren't they?" he suggested.

"Draco, they think we're monsters in Slytherin." Her voice was softer now, mournful. "They think all of us are being raised to either be or support the next Grindelwald, or the next V… Dark Wizard."

Draco scowled. "To hell with the lot of them then! It doesn't matter what they think. Father's right—even if they let this riff raff into the school, their weaker magic and bloodlines will die out eventually." Draco wasn't sure whether the anger pulsing in him was his or Carina's. One unexpected side effect of their tattoos was that when they were in close proximity, occasionally their emotions bled into one another.

A long moment passed between them as Draco mentally gnawed on the insults from the other Houses. Many of the comments were probably from the Gryffindors, maybe even Saint Potter and his stupid Weasley sidekick and that swot Granger. He was already mentally constructing suitable retaliation when Carina's voice jarred his thoughts loose.

"What if Father's wrong?" she asked, her voice nearly a whisper that slithered along the glass and circled back to them. Draco blinked. Had the echo distorted her question?

"Sorry?"

"What if Father's wrong? I mean, wouldn't there be only purebloods if the weaker lines were supposed to die off?"

Draco shifted uncomfortably. Carina had never spoken like this before. To his knowledge, she had never doubted the philosophies they'd grown up with.

"Either way they're less powerful," he answered uncertainly. "They're the reason we're in hiding."

"Are they though? Less powerful I mean. What about that Granger girl Father was talking about a few weeks ago?"

He flinched. "She's..."

But what could he say? She wasn't stupid, much as he wished she were. Her marks were proof enough of that, as was her classroom performance. But nevertheless, she was muggleborn.

"She's a fluke," he said hotly, keenly aware of Carina's probing gaze. "Or she must have a secret witch or wizard in her family tree somewhere, that's all."

Carina didn't answer for another long moment. Draco was used to her retreating into her thoughts, but tonight it felt strained and unusual. His foot, stretched out before him on the floor, bounced anxiously as he waited for her to speak, to brush away the conversation as nothing more than stressed musings. Surely she wasn't seriously reconsidering their family's ideals.

Carina took a slow breath as though to steady herself. "But what if she isn't a fluke, Draco? What if pure magic doesn't exist anymore?"

Draco clenched his fists. "You don't mean that. You're just tired from the last few days."

When he looked at his sister, Carina's lips had thinned into a line. "Why do you think I don't mean it?"

"Stop," he said. His voice was too sharp, but he didn't care as he pushed off the ground and rose to his feet. "If the others hear you saying things like that, it'll get back to Father and then you'll be in for it. I know you don't mean that."

He turned and brushed off his robes, but Carina hadn't moved from her spot against the glass. Draco stared at her for a long moment, trying to read her impassive expression, but it was no use. She'd learned from their mother how to keep her face perfectly unreadable, and Draco's stomach tightened with nerves. Silently he pleaded that she was just joking, maybe trying to goad him into a fight, though this was a terribly odd way to go about it if she was.

At last she sighed, closed her eyes, and rested her head against the glass. In a resigned voice she said, "Never mind, Draco. You should get to bed. Classes start early."

If he frowned any deeper, Draco worried he would give himself premature wrinkles on his face. "What are you going to do?"

"I'll go to bed in a minute. I just need time to think."

Her words trailed off and Draco knew she was withdrawing into herself. He hesitated at the stairs, but headed to his dormitory anyway. Once he climbed into bed, he studied the tattoo on his arm. The ink on his arm shifted with choppy waves and fitful sails, Carina's ship riding uncomfortably through them. The mast flew a flag bearing the Malfoy family crest, and Draco stared at it for a few seconds before blowing out his lamp and rolling over in his bed.

Draco knew that Carina imbued symbolism into everything she did, and he didn't like the way one corner of the flag had begun to fray.


The next morning found Draco in a black mood. All night he'd woken from nightmares of Carina fighting with their parents over blood status, screaming insults and hurling curses until she was forced from their family home and blasted off of the Black family tapestry, a revered relic from their mother's family. His stomach twisted in anxious knots through breakfast as he mulled over his conversation with Carina, making a proper meal impossible to eat and nearly making him late for class.

Carina hadn't been quite right since the Quidditch World Cup, and now she was saying things that worried him. He spent a good portion of his classes either glaring at his lesser classmates and lashing out at anyone who looked at him the wrong way, or debating with himself about whether or not to write their mother about Carina's behavior. He only hesitated because he knew Carina would be furious with him for interfering. She preferred to handle problems on her own, or at least lead the charge in handling them.

He was still in his mood at lunchtime when an owl dropped a copy of the Daily Prophet into his lap. He passed it off to Pansy, in no mood to rifle through the stories until she gasped incredulously.

"Ooh Draco, look at this! There's an article in here about the Weasleys," she crowed, nearly shoving the paper into his face.

Draco scanned it, mostly bored until a misspelled name leaped out at him from the page. He reread the passage and a wicked grin spread over his features.

"I think I'll keep this one," he said, folding the paper and tucking it into his bag despite Pansy's whine of protest. What he needed was a good distraction, and this article provided an alluring opportunity.

Draco turned his efforts from concerning himself with Carina (Draco did not fret, thank you very much) to scanning the corridors and faces in class. His patience paid off just before dinner as he ascended from the dungeons into the entrance hall and spotted a ginger head sticking out like an infected sore thumb among the crowd.

"Weasley! Hey, Weasley!" he called, striding forward with Crabbe and Goyle on his heels. He pulled the newspaper from one of his deep, inner pockets as Weasley, Potter, and Granger all turned to look at him.

"What?" Weasley asked, already frowning.

"Did you know that your dad's in the Prophet, Weasley?" Draco asked, grinning smugly. "Listen to this!" He cleared his throat, opening the paper with a flourish to the article titled Further mistakes at the Ministry of Magic.

"It seems as though the Ministry of Magic's troubles are not yet at an end, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Recently under fire for its poor crowd control at the Quidditch World Cup, and still unable to account for the disappearance of one of its witches, the Ministry was plunged into fresh embarrassment last week by the antics of Arnold Weasley, of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."

He looked up, basking in the reddening of Weasley's face as he said, "He's so forgettable they can't even get his name right. Just like you, eh Weasley?"

Weasley growled something, but Potter grabbed his arm as Draco read on, regaling the entire hall with the story of how "Arnold Weasley" had embarrassed the Ministry by getting involved with a false alarm raised by Mad-Eye Moody just before the school year started. He flashed a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley standing outside a rickety old house that looked liable to fall on them at any moment.

"Does that sign say 'The Burrow' on it?" he asked Weasley. The other boy was now thoroughly reddened and shaking with fury. "Quite fitting for a pack of dirty little weasels, I think. Has your mother gained weight, or is she popping out another one of you vermin?"

"Shut up, Malfoy," Potter snapped, trying to drag his friend away.

"Weren't you staying with them this summer, Potter? I'm sure you can tell me whether the happy couple is adding another brat to their brood. His mother's heavy enough to pop any day now."

Potter tensed, and now both he and Granger were hanging onto Weasley to hold him back. "You know, your mother looks like she's got something foul under her nose. Does she always look like that, or is it just your stench she's smelling?"

A hot fury flared in Draco's chest and he clenched his fists. "Don't you dare talk about my mother," he warned.

"Keep your fat mouth shut then," Potter shot back as he and Granger wheeled Weasley around.

It was Draco's duty to retaliate against the insult to his family, and a blind rage came over him as he drew his wand. He aimed at Potter and muttered a spell under his breath. Unfortunately, Goyle bumped him at the wrong moment and his spell went a touch wide, narrowly missing Potter's fat head.

Draco might have tried to get off another spell as Potter scrambled for his own wand, but he quite nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice bellowed behind him, "OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!"

Half a second later, a tingling sensation cascaded over Draco like a bucket of ice water and the entire hall shot up around him. He was on his stomach, and as he tried to get up onto his knees, he lost his balance and fell onto his side. Panicked, Draco looked down at his hands and in their place found tiny, pink paws attached to white fur-covered legs. He tried to shout for Crabbe and Goyle, but his voice came out as a panicked squeak.

Oh, Sweet Salazar.

He'd been turned into a rodent.

Draco trembled as he lifted his tiny rodent head and studied the people around him. Potter was staring at him, stunned, with his wand dangling limply by his side and his jaw hanging open a little. Everybody was staring at him, not moving although there was certainly some snickering. How dare they!

His eyes darted about wildly, looking for whoever had turned him into this thing when he felt an uneven clunk-thump, clunk-thump through the flagstones beneath his feet. Mad-Eye Moody moved into his field of vision and Draco shrank in on himself. There was a reason they called him mad, after all.

Moody moved to Potter, saying something to him as Draco looked up at Crabbe and Goyle. Both of the great lumps were staring down at him, as dumbfounded as their other classmates at his new form. Draco chittered at them in panic and they exchanged a look before Crabbe bent down to pick him up.

"LEAVE IT!" Moody's gravelly voice hollered, and Crabbe froze. Moody whirled around and Draco saw his short life flash before his eyes. Without thinking he turned tail and darted between legs in a desperate bid to reach the dungeons. His calls for help came out as frantic squeaking. His tiny heart pounded double time with his feet—and then suddenly there were no longer stones beneath him.

Draco's stomach wriggled as an invisible hand lifted him into the air. He jerked upward past the faces of his classmates and over their heads, and then he was falling through the open air. He squealed in terror, jolting to a stop just before he hit the ground and bouncing back up again. His brain and other internal organs jostled about as he tumbled end over end and a cacophony of noise swelled around him. Colors blurred and he couldn't make sense of up or down.

He flailed helplessly, thinking that this was not what flying was supposed to be like. Flying was supposed to be smooth and freeing and controlled as he guided his broom wherever his heart desired—not whatever torture he was presently being subjected to.

Then he was slowing and for a moment Draco thought the ordeal was coming to a merciful end. That is, up until the moment he saw Moody jerk open Crabbe's trousers and Draco was plunged into a hot, sweaty place he never wanted to be. He squealed and scrabbled at the fabric, descending until he squeezed out of a tight opening near Crabbe's filthy shoe. He stumbled, dizzy, and splayed out on the cobbles.

The invisible hand wouldn't let him move as he pressed against the cool stone. He could hear voices, one of them gravelly and unconcerned and the other a woman's stern brogue tirade. He was so disoriented that he could barely make sense of which way was up, let alone decipher the words around him.

And then there was a flash and he was sprawled across the floor in his school robes, thankfully human. He scrambled to his feet, stumbled into his friends, and lurched away from Crabbe. He'd seen far too much of that boy and wanted to put as much distance between them as possible.

Someone caught his arm, and for a moment Draco was grateful for the support. Once he looked up into Moody's face though, he wished the professor had just let him fall over. It would have been preferable to staring at the man's unnervingly vibrant blue eye.

Over Moody's shoulder, Professor McGonagall was glaring daggers at the man, flanked by both Carina and Lyra. Carina turned her face away abruptly, but the hand she raised to her mouth couldn't quite disguise the horrified amusement on her features. Draco's face heated with the betrayal and humiliation of it all.

"Right. It'll be detention for you, boy," Moody growled at him. "Snape'll be your Head of House then. Off we go."

As Professor Moody marched him down to the dungeons to meet with Snape, Draco glanced back over his shoulder and his face burned at the grins in triplicate on the faces of Potter, Weasley, and Granger. He scowled at them all, then turned to face the music.


Later that evening, Carina met Draco as he paced the common room like a caged beast, still fuming. He had opted not to show his face at dinner, and now the hunger clawed at his stomach. He glared at Carina when she tapped him on the shoulder.

"I brought you something," she said, offering a napkin folded carefully around a small shepherd's pie. It was still warm, but Draco didn't take it from her.

"Fat lot of good you were back there," he snapped. She glared at him and drew her hand back.

"Fine. If you don't want it, I'll eat it myself," she retorted hotly.

"No!" Draco reached out and snatched it from her, dropping into a seat at one of the study tables near the glass. Carina silently handed over the utensils she must have nicked from the great hall, and Draco dug into the pie. She sat across from him as other students filtered into the common room and made themselves comfortable. Daphne, Tracy, and Millicent had pulled out homework while Blaise and Theo congregated with a few other classmates in a corner for a game of Exploding Snap. To Draco's relief, Crabbe and Goyle were nowhere in sight.

"So what happened?" Carina asked when he'd finished about half of the pie.

"What do you mean, what happened? I got turned into a bloody rat!"

"It was a ferret, actually."

"Whatever!" Draco was sorely tempted to flick a piece of the crust at her, but his stomach was not yet satisfied, and so he shoved the morsel into his mouth instead. Then he relayed the conversation with Weasley and Potter, watching Carina's face turn stony at the insult leveled at their mother.

"You know I couldn't let that slide," Draco said, finishing the last of the pie. Carina slid a bottle of pumpkin juice across the table to him, jaw clenched. "I tried to hex Potter, but I missed and then the next thing I knew, I was small and furry and being bounced in the air like a bloody ball!"

Carina made an odd choking sound and coughed into her elbow. Draco glared hard at her and she composed herself, though the hint of a smirk lingered on her face.

"Think it was funny, do you? Is that why you stood there staring at me?"

Carina frowned at him, all traces of humor vanished. "Draco, I had only just gotten there. I was talking to Professor McGonagall about my animagus project when Lyra found us and told us what was happening. All three of us came running, and the professor took over when she saw you. She's the one who transfigured you back and gave Moody an earful."

"You still shouldn't have laughed," he grumbled.

Carina snagged the pie tin from him and scooped the last bite into her mouth with an extra fork she'd hidden up her sleeve. "No, I shouldn't have. But really, Draco, it was the most comical thing to happen all day!" She grinned at him and vanished the remains of his meal, leaving him with only the pumpkin juice.

"I was still eating that!" he protested.

"No you weren't. You were sulking." She produced a chocolate frog and pushed it across the table to him. Begrudgingly, he accepted it.

"I don't sulk."

"Oh Draco, you're the best sulker I know after Snape," she teased lightly. "Don't worry, little brother. It will blow over soon. Just don't do anything rash in the meantime, like pick a fight with your nemesis."

Draco glared at her as she stood and brushed imaginary dust off her robes, but his mouth was too full of chocolate to retort properly. Despite her teasing, he did feel a little better as she settled into her favorite chair between the fireplace and the glass dome, pulling out a hefty stack of files. He knew she was right about the whole matter blowing over, but all the same, he drained his pumpkin juice and strode over to join Blaise and Theo's game. After all, Malfoys did not sulk.


A/N: Just to cover all my bases, anything you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling. Anything that doesn't is most likely mine.

Anyway, I'd love to her your thoughts on this chapter, any predictions on what will happen later in these characters' story arcs, and just what you think of the story in general. Your support means the world to me, and I hope you're all staying safe and happy!