The rest of the week passed quickly, a blur of new classes and astonishing things. Transfiguration first thing Tuesday and Thursday mornings reunited me with the strict Head of Gryffindor House. As soon as we sat down in our first class, she began, "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then, she changed her desk into a pig and back again. Two Gryffindor girls oohed. Eros yawned.
Soon, though, it was evident that none of us would be changing furniture into animals for a long, long time. After making a lot of complicated notes, we were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Livi and two Ravenclaws had made any difference to their match; Professor McGonagall showed the class Livi's – by the far the best – how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave her a rare smile.
Meanwhile, History of Magic was not nearly so pleasant, as it was taught by a ghost who had a tendency to drone on and on and on, enough that the entire class - even the Ravenclaws - had been put to sleep by the end of the lesson and were woken, blurry eyed and confused, by the ringing of the bell.
Astronomy was midnight on Wednesdays with the Gryffindors, again, and there we had to learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets, while I tried to ignore the whispers and jeers from raucous Gryffindors. The professor swept through the class, briskly correcting mistakes and giving lectures about particular stars, planets, and their mystical properties and effects on certain spells with the help of some sort of spell that allowed the ceiling to zoom in and out in certain star clusters.
Twice a week, we went down to the greenhouses off the east wing to study Herbology, which was far too like gardening for my tastes. However, it was also one of only two classes with Bryony - the other being Potions - but both days she paired off with the Hufflepuffs, chatting happily with the others, her only acknowledgement of me being a quick smile. I forcefully shoved down the pain and worked on my plants with Liv and Eros.
Our second Defense class proved just as fascinating as the first, as Professor Gaunt went over the distinctions between a jinx, hex, and curse - which could be summed up under jinxes caused mild harm, hexes were a bit more painful, and curses led to death, mutilation, or other forms of agony.
This time, instead of pouring over theory, we spent the lesson learning the body-bind jinx. I was one of the first to master it, sending Seamus Finnigan – one of the worst offenders for the rumors of my evilness – toppling forwards onto his face and breaking his nose.
It was brilliant.
On Friday, my trio – Eros, Livi, and I – finally managed to get from the common room to the Great Hall by ourselves. It was Livi who insisted on it – apparently, half the reason she kept missing breakfast was that she couldn't find her way there and was too proud to ask help from the older Slytherins like the rest of us first years – and so we rose very early and spent much of the morning wandering around the dungeons.
We arrived at the same time as the owl post. I'd not yet received a letter, not particularly surprising, though Hedwig had dropped by to visit me at breakfast yesterday.
Malfoy, however, had received a package full of sweets from her mother, which she loudly exclaimed over, sharing a few pieces with her friends – Bulstrode, Crabbe, Goyle, Cowen, and Parkinson – while utterly ignoring our half of the table.
"What do you know about the potion's professor?" I asked Livi quietly.
"He received his potion's mastery at twenty, younger than anyone since Wilhelmine Burke," she replied quietly, "and he's said to favor Slytherin."
"Brilliant," I said.
Our class wasn't until after lunch – apparently, the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors got the first slot, alongside the sixth year NEWT students – and so I made my way to the library to work on the Defense essay and perhaps do some independent research.
The potion's classrooms – there were two, one for NEWT and one for OWL students, to keep the younger ones away from more dangerous substances – were back down in the dungeons, and after breakfast we descended into the cool, gloomy corridors.
It was chillier, here, right off the Grand Staircase, than in the rest of the dungeons. My breath froze in the air before me as we headed right at the bottom of the stairs, a straight shot to the door to the potions lab.
The laboratory itself was a stark stone room with rows of beaten, various sizes tables with burners and stools. The three of us gathered around one table, depositing our cauldrons and potions kits.
Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the register, and like Flitwick, he paused at our names. He stared at the parchment for several seconds, then said, "Astor and Bryony Potter." His gaze rose, meeting mine for a moment. His eyes were black, empty of all warmth, chilling me, and then he looked away and continued on with the roll.
"You are here," he began, speaking in barely more than a whisper, but the entire class caught it, leaning forwards, utterly silent, "to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses… I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
More silence followed this little speech. My breath felt like it had frozen in my lungs, and all I could think was I want that. I wanted to bewitch the mind and bottle fame, to stop death… or even to start it.
"Potter!" Snape barked, and both of us started. "Hufflepuff Potter. What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Around us, everyone looked confused. One pair of Hufflepuffs flicked through their books for an answer. It wouldn't be in it; the answer was an obscure one, I'd stumbled upon the recipe when idly flipping through the pages of one of my other potions books. And he'd know that, had deliberately chosen a tricky question.
Something in me seethed.
"I don't know, sir," Bryony admitted.
Something flickered in his eyes, and he turned to me. "What about you, Potter?"
"The Draught of Living Death, sir." My voice was flat, one of perfect deference. Not reflecting the little hissing voice in my head, the voice that wanted to see his blood spilled on the floor, the one I was ignoring.
He nodded. "Very well. Five points to Slytherin." He turned, tapping the board, and instructions appeared on the board – so that was why we hadn't had a potions textbook. "We will be brewing a simple cure for boils to determine your current skill level." His dry tone suggested that he didn't expect much.
Current skill level? We'd just started school, did he really expect us to know anything? But it seemed to be exactly that, and he told us all to divide into pairs.
Eros and I began to work; Livi happily doing her potion alone alongside us– there were an uneven number of students, twenty-five precisely, and she was the unlucky loner. We weighed dried nettles and crushed snake fangs while stewing our horned slugs, then carefully added everything and stirred it – six counterclockwise, seven clockwise, nice even strokes – then left it to steam.
All of this while Professor Snape stalked around the room, surveying everything and making quiet remarks that somehow still carried across the classroom. He paused once, at our table, peaked into my cauldron and then swept away without another word. He didn't return.
And he didn't even look in Bryony's direction.
Then, suddenly, horrid green smoke filled the dungeons. I choked on it, the air thick and heavy and pungent, burning my lungs–
Then, a cry.
Somehow, a pair of the Hufflepuffs – Wayne Hopkins and Megan Jones, I'd later learn – had managed to melt their cauldron into a twisted blob. The potion had burned through the table, and now it seeped across the floor, hissing and sizzling, burning holes in people's shoes. I climbed into the table; in seconds, everyone was on their stools or the table.
"Idiot girl!" Snape snapped, stalking over to the pair – both of whom were moaning in pain, angry red boils spreading across their arms, legs, faces, worse on the girl, who must've been standing closer – and flicking his wand to make the mess vanish. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?'
The girl whimpered as boils started to pop up all over her nose.
"Go to the hospital wing," Snape instructed the boy, who sent a livid look at the girl. "Now."
With reluctance, the boy grabbed her arm – she whimpered in pain – and all but dragged her from the classroom.
Snape rounded on the rest of the class, looking at us all with cold eyes. "If anyone else was hurt, I suggest you go as well." Nobody moved. "Well then, bottle your potions and bring them up."
Everyone quietly did as he said, not daring to speak more than a handful of words under his watch and once that was done he assigned us a paper on why porcupine quills reacted poorly with heat and dismissed us.
The Hufflepuff/Slytherin class quietly made their way back down the hall. No one spoke, and my skin crawled – it felt as if Snape was still watching, waiting for another mistake so he could pounce.
The feeling didn't go away for a long, long time.
Severus
Severus sighed, leaning against his desk as the final student streamed from the class and closed the door behind her. That had been… long. And tense. He hadn't truly looked at the girls since he'd made that ghastly visit to Privet Drive, carefully averting his gaze at their Sorting. When the Hat had said Slytherin… he'd wished it had been Lily, instead.
But his almost-sister had found another home, perhaps a better one, had fit in seamlessly with the Gryffindors while he jutted roughly against his fellow Slytherins, a broken piece among otherwise smooth glass…
He'd resented her that, once.
Now, he stared at the door as if willing the shadow of his former friend to walk back inside. Bryony Potter. She was so very like Lily, the way she'd carefully guided Weasley through the potion with smiles and gentle words. The sweetest and kindest parts of Lily had gone to her second daughter, but her first-
Astor Potter was a perplexing conundrum. Cold and reserved to others, smiling only at others, but those hints of warmth or viciousness… Truth be told, she reminded him of both and neither parent. Lily's eyes had never been that cold, James Potter had never had such frozen reserve, no, if anything…
If anything, Astor Eleanor Potter reminded him of Thomas Gaunt.
Astor
"I think I hate him," I concluded once we were a good three corridors away from the potions classroom.
Livi gave me a look. "It's only been one lesson."
"A lesson in which he was cruel to her sister, insulted all our intelligences, and made Hannah Abbott cry," Eros noted.
Livi glanced at him. "He made her cry?"
"She tried to be discreet about it," he said, "but, yes, there were a few tears after that remark over her parents."
"He's an ass."
They both looked at me then, Eros with a bland, bored look, and Livi a little outraged.
"He's a well respected member of the potion's community," she said.
I gave her a look.
She sighed. "Alright, he's a bastard, okay?"
The three of us fell silent for the rest of the way back to the common room, a quick murmur of "ashwinder" opening the stretch of blank wall, and then angled for what had, in the past week, become our favorite table, well away from all the noise of the rest of the common room-
Polaris Malfoy stepped into our path. "Eros, may I speak to you for a moment?"
A pause.
The silence stretched, on and on, Eros not speaking, just staring at her, and I glanced at Livi questioningly. She shrugged in response. Then, finally, Eros said, "Of course. Led the way." He sent a blindingly bright smile at us, and I blinked at him. "I'll be back in a few moments."
"What was that about?" I murmured, continuing to our table.
"Maybe they don't get along."
It hadn't seen that way in Madame Malkins - they'd been quite friendly - except… there had been tension, hadn't there? The way he'd rolled her eyes as Malfoy spoke, how he'd chastised her, that he'd only really spoken to her after Malfoy left… He hadn't seemed to like her much.
I dropped my bookbag onto the table and sank into my seat.
Despite how far it was from everything - and everyone - else, I had a near perfect view of the common room, only rivaled by the balcony. In fact, said balcony was right in my line of sight, not that there was much to see beyond shadows and the two curved staircases. I had decided on my third evening here that it had to be some sort of spell hiding those strange students, which begged the question of: what are they doing up there?
"Livi," I said cautiously, and the girl hummed, not looking up from her Transfiguration essay, "what was that speech about at the start of the year?"
The girl blinked, glancing up. "Uh, you mean what Crowle said? I suppose you wouldn't get the context, would you, being Muggle raised?" I'd noticed that, for all that Livi tried to be polite, she'd slip sometimes, especially if it was of interest to her, going on and on without any regard to things like courtesy or tact, and here was no exception. "Well, Slytherin has a bit of a horrid reputation, not entirely undeserved, but a lot of wizards who followed the Dark Lord were Slytherins, not all off them, like everyone tries to claim, in fact the most famous was a Gryffindor, Peter Pettigrew."
Then, she shook her head. "Though, that isn't all of it, not entirely.A lot of recent, infamous dark wizards have come from Slytherin House, and it's probably due to the ideals introduced by Zetta Lestrange and Oran Alardice. They were the founders of the pureblood movement, you know? Really pushed for Muggleborns to be excluded, although in different ways."
That was interesting, and probably something to read about later, but it didn't leave me any closer to solving the balcony mystery. Maybe… maybe I should just ask her, she'd be happy to explain, but… "Don't ask questions, girl," Aunt Petunia snapped, then slammed the cupboard door shut. The lock clicked, and I smothered a sob.
No, I wouldn't ask. This one mystery, I'd figure out myself.
Polaris
Trembling - and wasn't that ridiculous, she was a Malfoy, Malfoys don't quiver like scared little girls - she led her cousin over to a nook in the corner of the room, half-hidden behind a bookcase. She sat on the bench there, casting a quick privacy charm her mother had taught her before she went away to school, and then she glanced over to Eros.
The other boy still stood at the edge of the alcove, leaning against the wall there. His shadow fell across her, and she had to swallow back the lump in her throat. "Well?"
"Why are you friends with them?" It hadn't been what she meant to say. She'd intended to calmly and carefully explain why they were beneath him and why he should return to her group, and yet that was the question that emerged, the words that had been burning inside her for days.
He raised an eyebrow, drawling out, "Perhaps because I like them?"
She scoffed. Like them? "A Mudblood and a Potter?" No, there had to be another explanation; both were so far beneath them that it was like looking at ants. "You have to want something from them. Potter, I'd wager. Is it because she's one of the Girls-Who-Lived?"
"It could hardly hurt," he observed blandly.
"Oh? I wonder what Mummy dearest would say if she knew you were colluding with filth-"
He'd moved, fast as the strike of lightning, grabbing her wrist and jerking her forwards, his other hand jabbing his wand to her chin. Her breath caught. "If you say one word to Mother, I will hex off every hair on your head."
Her heart pounded in her ears, but she forced herself to laugh, a brittle, broken sound. "Oh, please. We both know you wouldn't dare hurt family."
Something flickered in his eyes, then, something hard and cold and… and inhuman, and now she couldn't stop her shudder, because for all that he was her cousin, he was also a Lestrange. Dark. Unnatural. Abomination.
"Perhaps." He spoke the word like a caress. "But, would you really like to test me?"
No. No, she wouldn't. She just… she wanted her best friend, her brother, or the closest thing she had to one, back.
Eros shook his head, smiling dark and wicked, and stepped back. "I didn't think so." He turned away, and something in her chest twisted. "See you later, cousin." He offered a lazy wave, then disappeared around the corner.
Odd, how the word sounded more like a threat than an endermeant.
Astor
The very first flying class of the year was the following Thursday, and, unfortunately, we had it with the Gryffindors of all people.
Very quickly, I'd determined that the students disdainfully referred to as lions by the older Slytherins had taken some offense to my sorting. It wasn't anything violent; the only class we shared was Defense, and there, under Slytherin's watchful eye, all they dared to do was mutter and grumble about how I was a traitor, and it was easy enough to evade interactions with them the rest of the time. So, really, it wasn't much of a problem.
Now, however, as we stood in two rows, Slytherins and Gryffindors facing each other as if we were about to do battle - all that was missing were swords or muskets, but of course we had wands - I was not nearly so certain.
At least I had Livi and Eros on either side – and wasn't that odd, having someone that I, even tentatively, trusted.
"These brooms are shit," Theodore Nott muttered on the other side of Eros, and there was a murmur of agreement from the other Slytherins. Even a few of the Gryffindors seemed unable to disagree, but then–
"Think you're too good for used brooms?" one of them said. Vincent… Victor… something like that, McLaggen. "I suppose Mummy and Daddie bought you a new one whenever you got bored with it?"
Daphne Greengrass snorted. "Like you're one to talk, Vance. Or, did your parents forget to buy you the latest model?"
"At least he has parents," one of the others shot back, sending a pointed glance at me and Livi.
McLaggen snorted at that. "Yeah, all of yours are dead, insane, or screaming their heads off in Azkaban–"
It was Eros who snapped, lunging forwards with his wand out–
I grabbed his wrist, grabbed him, invisible tendrils wrapping around him and forcing him back. "Eros, don't." He squirmed, trying to tug his hand free–
"Hooch is coming–" Livi hissed, too late, the yellow eyed woman appearing.
She paused on our tense group. "What is going on here?"
"Nothing, Madame Hooch," Tracey Davis said at once, voice sweet, as Eros finally stepped back in line, wand vanishing up his sleeve, "we were just having a disagreement on the state of the school brooms."
Her eyes darkened at that. "Yes, well, everyone in position…"
The lesson continued fairly normally from there. My own broom was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles, and I was not at all excited about riding it – even Bryony, who hadn't been able to shut up about flying since the announcement went up, would have to admit how unsettling flying in such beaten things would be.
"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say, 'Up!'"
"UP!" everyone shouted, to varying success.
Several brooms shot into their hands at once – unfortunately, this included McLaggen and Malfoy, what was it with M names here? –but others merely rolled over, rose halfway up and fell again, or simply didn't twitch at all. One boy's rose and hit him square in the face. The girl across from me was glowering at her own. Theodore Nott was still eyeing his own broomstick with distaste, as was Daphne Greengrass more subtly, and Eros, who seemed bored by the entire thing, hadn't even bothered to call to his.
I exchanged a look with Livi, sighing, but–
Hers was in her hand.
I blinked. Oh.
"The faster we get this over with," Livi murmured, "the faster we get out of here. All we have to do is pass a basic competency test and we're dismissed from the class."
Beside me, Eros nodded.
"Well," I murmured back, voice masked by the annoyed or fearful shouts of up, "that would be brilliant, except I've never flown before."
Livi blinked.
"Never?" Eros hissed, leaning closer. "Why didn't you tell us, we would've practiced!"
What?
"You don't–" He bit off the rest of his words, glancing around him. There was a clear message of: We'll talk about this later. Couldn't wait.
Around us, several others had finally managed to summon their brooms, though the nervous looking boy across from me couldn't get his to so much as twitch.
I told a deep breath, centering myself, focusing on that twisting, writhing bit of magic inside me, and said calmly, "Up."
The broom shot right into my hand; though it did bite uncomfortably into my palm. Livi gave me a slight smile; Eros still somehow managed to look bored and annoyed at the same time.
Unfortunately, class didn't get better from there.
We'd hardly settled in the air when one girl's broom started to drift off to the left… then higher, and higher, and–
"Come back down this instant!" Hooch shouted.
But instead the girl drifted higher.
It came as no surprise when she fell off. What was a surprise was the fact that Hooch just stood in horror, not casting anything - like, say Arresto Momentum, the Slowing Charm I'd read about in Quick Charms to Save your Life.
And so the girl hit the ground with this awful crunch, and stayed there, limp.
For a moment, everyone stared at the prone form of the girl beneath them. Then, Hooch veered down and landed beside the girl, and everyone else followed without thinking, forming a loose circle around the unconscious Gryffindor. She bent over the girl, face dreadfully pale.
"You," she pointed at Crabbe, "come help me."
Together they lifted the girl up – again, why not just use magic? And wasn't it possibly risky to move her – and started towards the castle, though not before she snapped, "If any of you so much as touch a broom, you'll be out of here before you can say Quidditch."
Silence fell across the class as she and Crabbe carried the Gryffindor away. My stomach twisted. How could she just… fall like that? And why hadn't Madame Hooch stopped it? I forced myself to look away from the group lumbering to the castle, and there, above us, the girl's broomstick hovered, rising higher and higher, drifting off towards the Forbidden Forest.
Defective.
And no wonder, these brooms were ancient.
Laughter jolted me from my thoughts, and I turned – along with the entire class – to see Malfoy laughing hysterically. "Did you see her face, the great lump?"
Her friends all laughed, while Greengrass and Davis started inching away, towards the castle. Eros, Livi, and I just stared at the Millicent Bulstrode – who'd so far followed Malfoy around like a man his god – seemed a little uncomfortable.
"Shut up, Malfoy," one of the Gryffindor girls snapped, Patel… something…
Pansy snorted. "Ooh, sticking up for the Longbottom?"
"His family is better than yours, Parkinson," Lavender Brown – one of the very first sorted – retorted. "Or, was your uncle miraculously cleared of all charges?"
The girl went rigid.
Then, McLaggen had to cut in. "You did something to her broom, didn't you?"
"Don't be stupid," Daphne Greengrass cut in, then went immediately pale when everyone looked at her. She raised her chin. "Tampering with the enchantments is incredibly complex. No first-year could do it."
"Confessing your guilt, Greengrass?" another Gryffindor – Clinton Batt – asked.
She blinked. "What, no–"
"You seem to know an awful lot about brooms," McLaggen said.
"You probably were involved," another Gryffindor boy said, and this was turning into a lynch mob, wasn't it?
I stepped forwards, ignoring Livi's attempts to tug me back. "None of us did anything to the poor girl."
The Gryffindors all seemed to pause for a moment.
"I never thought," one of them finally said, "I'd see the day when the Girl-Who-Lived would defend a bunch of slimy snakes."
"Snakes aren't actually slimy," Livi pointed out rather matter-of-factly. "They're actually quite cool and dry to the touch." Everyone was staring at her incredulously, now, because what did this have to do with anything? Nothing, nothing at all, but it was distracting, a diffusion of sorts. "It's the shininess of their scales that give the illusion that they may be wet or slimy, but it's not at all true."
"What are you," someone finally said, "a Ravenclaw?"
Eros snorted. "You don't have to be in the house of wit and learning to educate yourselves. Something some people," he gave a disdainful look at McLaggen and Batt, "are too foolhardy to realize."
McLaggen went rigid, his entire body vibrating with tension, and then he raised his wand and hissed, "Locomotor Wibbly!"
Eros
The spell hit Livi right in the center of the chest, and she fell over, toppling into Daphne Greengrass and knocking both girls to the ground. Greengrass spluttered and shoved the girl off her as one of the Gryffindors yelled, "What are you doing? We'll get in trouble!"
And then everyone was moving at once, fumbling for their wands or gaping in surprise or whipping around to watch. Everyone, that is, but Astor, he noticed. She already had her wand in hand, but, unlike McLaggen, she wasn't firing any spells.
She was just standing there, waiting.
Another spell shot at them, but Nott deflected it with a flick of his wand, the spell zooming around the group of Slytherins, crashing into a tree. Well. That was surprising.
Everything happened quickly after that:
Tracey Davis ended the jelly legged curse on Livi…
Vance McLaggen sent another spell, aimed at Astor, and this time his friends had gotten over their shock and joined him…
Polaris snarled and sent several spells back, turning Clinton Batt's ears into antlers and missing Vance McLaggen, hitting the bespecled boy and making his teeth enlarge ridiculously…
Cowen collapsed to the ground as she was hit by a spell…
Then, several spells slammed into some sort of invisible barrier halfway between the two groups. A professor came marching down the slope, his open black robes whipping behind him like angry shadows. His eyes however – red and violent as fresh blood – were glimmering, and…
Was he smiling?
"I commend your excellence with several basic jinxes," Professor Gaunt said, sending a cold smile at the first years – all of whom were suddenly terrified; the Gryffindors of the professor who'd surely favor the house named for his ancestors, the Slytherins of a man who seemed so at ease with the Dark Arts. Even Eros felt a chill cross his skin.
Only Astor looked calm, still holding her wand and not having moved at all since the first spell was cast, and yet somehow nothing had hit her.
"However," he continued in a hushed voice so like Snape, and was that a talent all Slytherins learned? "It is forbidden to duel outside of class or the dueling teams." He surveyed them all, still smirking. "Who threw the first spell?"
The Gryffindors shifted uncomfortably, none answering, and he turned his gaze to the Slytherins, raising a brow.
"It was Vance McLaggen." Eros had to force the words from his throat, and when the man turned to him, his heart skipped a beat. This is the man Mum worships… this is the reason Dad's in Azkaban… And, most of all, this man was someone he didn't want to anger, and who he'd been expected to be loyal to since he was born. "He attacked Livi. We were defending ourselves."
"Fifty points from Gryffindor for such deplorable behavior. McLaggen, you and your co-conspirators will be serving detention with me for the week."
All four of them went pale.
Ivanthe Cowen snickered, and Gaunt's gaze snapped to them. Eros swallowed. "Do not think that you will escape punishment. Forty points from Slytherin."
"What–" Parkinson choked on the rest of her words when Nott elbowed her in the gut, and even Goyle had the sense to glare at her.
"Gryffindors," Gaunt continued, "you will return to your dormitories." All of the students in red seemed to let out a breath, relaxing as they realized there'd be no further punishment. "However… I will be discussing this with your head of house."
That seemed to make McLaggen's group more worried than anything else, and Eros had to admit, he would hardly be surprised if McGonagall took more points off them than they'd already lost.
With a pointed look at the students in green, Gaunt strode back towards the castle. Understanding that message, the Slytherin students streamed after him.
He led them all the way through the castle, up to his office on the fourth floor. Unlike the stark stone walls of most of the rest of the castle - including his own classroom - these ones were paneled with dark wood. Bookshelves had been built into the walls, elegant nooks that covered much of the wallspace; what did not contain books was left empty with the exception of a single portrait of a slumbering man or held a wide window overlooking the deep ravine that gauged through half of Hogwarts, the pair of bridges crossing it, and several towers and the main wing of the castle.
The professor strode across the green and silver carpet as they all filed behind the pair of armchairs, leaning against his massive mahogany desk to survey them all with those blood red eyes. "Well?"
None of them dared to speak, then–
"Well, what, sir?" Pansy Parkinson asked, raising her chin, and Eros's heart skipped a beat. Foolish girl.
His eyes darkened. "Well, what happened to cause you all to behave so stupidly?"
A wave of tension spread among the first years: Nott and Malfoy stiffening, Greengrass raising her chin, Davis shrinking back behind her friend, Livi's jaw tightening, Goyle shuffling. Eros could almost hear the thoughts that must be crossing their minds: Stupid? We didn't do anything wrong! They attacked us!
"We didn't–" Avery began, but Professor Gaunt cut him off.
"You behaved like a bunch of brash Gryffindors." His words cut to the bone, harsh and cruel. None of his earlier mirth was present in his expression. "I expected better from the house of cunning and ambition, but perhaps the Sorting Hat was faulty this year."
Those words cut deep, and even Eros winced at it.
"We are better than this," the professor continued in a slightly milder tone. Slightly. "The reputation Slytherin House has garnered in recent years is, regretfully, abysmal. It is also quite deserved." Several intakes of breath at that. "It was Slytherins who ravaged the nation not ten years ago, who saw the destruction of so many of our precious monuments, who spilled sacred magical blood in a foolish war."
"Foolish?" Now, it was Nott who hissed the words.
"Yes." His eyes blazed bright and burning. "Foolish. Slytherins are not ones who wantonly destroy and ravage. We slink in the shadows, planning and plotting, and only strike at when the moment is ripe.
"It is regrettable, but much of the school views Slytherin as a threat to their safety and peace of mind. They will be watching us for any mistake, and we will be treated harshly for such an error." He looked at each and every one of them, and when it was Eros's turn, his breath froze in his lungs. "If today had gone differently, if a different professor had found you, it would've been you blamed for the incident." He held up a hand, forestalling any more interruptions. "Regardless of the truth of the matter, we are slimy snakes," he smirked at Livi, and she paled, "and it would've of course been us at fault against the honorable, chivalrous Gryffindors."
"Now," his eyes swept over them again, "do you understand?"
One by one, they all nodded; none dared to speak.
"Good." He stood again. "I expect you to consider this next time you consider engaging in such foolish antics."
The fact that he would be displeased if they didn't hung in the air around him, unsaid, but each of them heard it, and it haunted their minds as they streamed out with his silent dismissal. As they descended the spiral staircase of the Turris Magnus, one thing rang through all their minds: Professor Gaunt would be watching them… and next time, he wouldn't be so merciful.