Oops I'm so so late, sorry about that. I completely forgot I hadn't posted this chapter here (it was posted on AO3 some months ago).
Currently un-beta-read.
Enjoy?
Pairings: Potential Hadria (FemHarry) x Tom Riddle, but more platonic than romantic, other pairings undecided.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Currently un-beta-ed. Let me know if you spot any mistakes, thanks.
Chapter Three: Back-to-School Round 2
"El que anda con lobos, a aullar se enseña." One who walks with wolves learns to howl. — Spanish Proverb
Gellert, Hadria and all of Hadria's back-to-school belongings appeared with a sharp crack at the Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, right beside the wrought-iron archway that others would traditionally exit from when entering via the usual barrier. Standing there, looking at the scarlet Hogwarts Express and the milling crowd of students and their parents or guardians, made it very easy to forget that this was another year where things would go wrong.
After all, Hadria's summer had passed so smoothly, she'd forgotten, right until they reached the Platform, that many years ago, in another time, the barrier had been tampered and blocked, preventing Ron Weasley and her from entering. Courtesy of one very dear House Elf.
Hadria suddenly wondered how Dobby was doing. She hadn't seen or heard from him since their meeting at the Malfoy's Yule Celebration, and he hadn't stolen—or hadn't been able to steal—any of her letters during the summer, and he hadn't shown up to warn her about any dangers at Hogwarts—the wards around their home would have prevented him from entering—and they'd just Apparated right onto the Platform, a good twenty minutes before the departure time.
Perhaps she should ask Draco?
"What is that monstrosity?" Gellert murmured, barely audible amidst the noise and bustle of the crowd.
Hadria turned to the direction he was looking at and saw Neville and his grandmother. Well, Neville couldn't really be seen at all—Hadria merely guessed he was there—and even his grandmother was halfway blocked by steam and people, but that hat with a stuffed vulture on it was unmistakably his grandmother's. Gellert wasn't referring to Augusta Longbottom's strange hat, however, which paled in comparison with the positively humongous fleshy alien-looking clumps that bounced as it moved through the crowd, along with the aforementioned vulture hat.
"I think that's the Giant Oyster Mushroom I got for his birthday," Hadria said faintly, though she recalled that the fungi she'd sent him had only been a little more than a third of her size.
That, however, was towering over the crowd, easily the same size as Neville himself or bigger, assuming he was carrying it in his arms, though it must be rather heavy without a Feather-light Charm—she'd tried once, and the fungi had been so displeased by the Charm that it tried to strangle her, or it would have, if it had been bigger and stronger, which it definitely was now.
Hadria could only assume—hope—that the fungi had been well-fed before they brought it out, because if it was a Giant Oyster Mushroom, although its diet didn't necessarily include humans, it would enjoy someone's cat or owl.
"Next time, get him a smaller plant or fungi," said Gellert, as they watched the fungi and the vulture hat move further away, disappearing into the thick steam filling the station. "Or better yet, get him something less dangerous."
But before Hadria could voice her doubts, he added, "What are you going to do when a plant of his attacks someone, and it gets reported, and it's revealed that you were the one who gave it to him?"
Hadria blinked, a little nonplussed.
"Wait till you lot are older," he said, almost kindly, sounding for a moment like a wise old wizard who supposedly wants only the best for you. Hadria shuddered.
The rest of his words were muttered to himself under his breath, and Hadria only caught the words "weapons" and "research" but it immediately dispelled the prior kindly old wizard feeling with the stark reminder that this was a man who had once amassed an army of Dark wizards and started a wizarding war.
Hadria suddenly hoped that Gellert wasn't actually thinking of starting another war with the aid of magical creatures and dangerous botany.
"Right, well, I'll write back. And update you about Neville's mushroom," Hadria said awkwardly, before belatedly realising that maybe she shouldn't be informing him about how Neville was growing his very dangerous fungi, lest he get more Ideas.
Gellert gave her a Look. "I should hope I won't be hearing from you or your Professors about what trouble you've caused or gotten yourself into. Again. What was that phrase? Your school motto, I believe."
"Uh… Never tickle a sleeping dragon?"
"Yes, I suppose it's a school motto for a reason, if they have an entire House for students like you," said Gellert, probably wondering, not for the first time, how she ended up in Slytherin. (Hadria would like to protest that Slytherins did stupid things all the time—they just liked to pretend they didn't.) "It's one thing to meet a dragon, and an entirely different thing to wake one up."
"Yes, Gerwald," said Hadria dutifully, because it sounded like the right thing to say at the moment.
He gave her another Look, one that said he didn't believe her one smidge. "Tyr help me, I do hope you won't be waking any literal sleeping dragons in your school."
Hadria had a feeling he was silently comparing Hogwarts to Durmstrang. Again. Though she had never been to Durmstrang, which was why she didn't have much idea how these comparisons went.
"Hogwarts doesn't have any sleeping dragons," she assured him. It didn't seem to work, as he gave her a third Look.
"I didn't think Hogwarts had any dragons at all, and yet you somehow ended up watching the hatching of one."
Then he shook his head. "Never mind, I suppose I'll have to put some faith in your Professors, Merlin knows they barely deserve it. Especially that Headmaster of yours. Now off you go. It's almost time."
She gave him a quick hug, which he returned, and the grip of his arms felt like he was barely resisting the temptation of whisking her far away to a foreign land where he could keep an eye on her all the time. She patted him on the back without half as much sincerity as she wished she could give.
There there.
Once Hadria had boarded the Hogwarts Express, she turned one more time to look out the window at Gellert's figure on the platform. Tall, with long legs, a mop of blonde hair that looked more artful than messy, a slight almost gentle smile—just a quirk of the lips—softened the harshness of his sharp features with a light wistfulness…
Hadria knew, intellectually, that Gellert was quite a charming and attractive person, but she'd never really given it much consideration before. Pansy was right, of course, and not for the first time, she wished she had a camera with her, like Colin Creevey. He looked particularly photogenic right now, tilting his head towards her when he spotted her through the window. She could then carry photos of him with her, and hand them out whenever anyone was suffering a particularly bad case of Lockhartitis.
Perhaps she ought to ask around to see where she could get one. She couldn't recall ever seeing any being sold in any Wizarding street, but there had to be someone selling them.
But it suddenly occurred to Hadria that she didn't know if anyone would recognise Gellert. There weren't many pictures of him around, even in old newspapers and history books, so it was unlikely anyone would associate him with Grindelwald unless they were Dumbledore, but Hadria is also certain he's got some kind of disguising charm in place because that's not a risk he's likely to take.
And thus, the question was whether the charm still worked through a photograph. And she couldn't ask Gellert without explaining why she knew that he was using such a charm at all.
Then someone sighed at her shoulder, and Hadria turned to find that Pansy had appeared behind her at some point in time, and was gazing out the same window.
"Isn't he just… breathtakingly gorgeous?" Pansy exhaled, sighing again almost dreamily. Her expression, the curve of her lips, matched her tone and words, but her eyes, though half-lidded, held the same calculative gleam Hadria had noticed at Flourish and Blotts, when she first caught sight of Lockhart.
Hadria shuddered, and decided she didn't want to know.
"Did you just board as well?" she asked instead.
Pansy blinked and shook herself a little, as if coming out from a trance. "Oh no, I'd actually come to find you and let you know that we've settled down in our usual compartment, since you were taking a while to show up."
"Well, let's not keep them waiting then," said Hadria, and gave Gellert one last wave, which he reluctantly returned with a wry look.
Then they headed deeper into the train.
"Fair warning, Draco's been a bit antsy," Pansy said, after a while. "You might want to throw your Jarvey at him when you see him. Who knows, maybe it'll calm him down."
Hadria gaped. "Wait, what?"
"Oh, it's nothing much," Pansy flapped her hand dismissively. "He just seems to have somehow convinced himself that if you didn't show up by ten-fifty, you wouldn't show up at all. Goodness knows where he got such an idea from. I swear he wasn't this paranoid when we were kids."
Hadria barely refrained from pointing out that in her eyes, practically almost every Slytherin was more paranoid than she expected them to be.
Though… It was interesting that Draco had such a suspicion.
On the way to their compartment, they passed by the compartment that Hermione and a few other Ravenclaws had turned into their reading room.
"Hey Hermione, have you seen Neville?" Hadria asked, poking her head in. The bushy-haired girl looked up from the thick tome she had buried her nose in, and shook her head.
"I've… seen his fungi though. From afar," Hermione said dryly. "That's the gift you gave him, right?"
"Wait, you were the one who gave him that thing ?" Pansy sounded aghast. "He's with us. Came in and said we'd have to get past his mushroom if we wanted him gone. Then he just sat himself down and he's been there since. And the abomination is taking up an entire seat on its own."
"Oh, good for him," said Hermione approvingly, which was apparently the end of their short conversation because she went back to reading right after. Padma Patil glanced up then and waved, the gesture more akin to warding off a pesky creature than a greeting.
So Hadria took the hint and herded Pansy along, who looked mildly outraged by the dismissal.
"Because of that thing, we haven't got enough space in our compartment," Pansy huffed as they continued down the aisle.
Hadria was about to ask what she meant, when she saw that the path ahead of them was blocked by two solid figures. Approaching closer, she could make out the two of them stubbornly trying to evict Neville from the compartment.
"We've been instru—We've been told… We've got to follow Malfoy," Crabbe was protesting.
Goyle added, almost whining, "We don't like it but… it's the… We have to."
Hadria glanced at Pansy, who clicked her tongue and explained, "Apparently, due to the relationship of their parents, Crabbe and Goyle are expected to follow Draco around, but of course, that didn't really happen last year, and their parents got wind of this. So now, they're insisting that they've got to be with Draco for at least the train ride. Merlin knows they'd rather have a compartment all to themselves so that they can fill every seat with snacks."
"Right," said Hadria, for lack of anything better to say. Then she thought about it. "Well, why can't they just share a compartment with Draco? I mean, separate from us."
The train compartment on the Hogwarts Express could easily fit six children—or eight, if they squeezed a little—but she counted: including Neville's mushroom, they would need eight full seats if they didn't split up, because Crabbe and Goyle would take up quite some space themselves, and she didn't know how much space the mushroom needed but it was massive. And she would prefer sitting beside Neville and his carnivorous pet to sitting beside Crabbe and Goyle… For one, Neville was someone she actually liked to talk to, as opposed to Crabbe and Goyle. For another, she had observed that the two of them didn't have the cleanest eating habits, and often had crumbs or syrup on their robes.
Draco must have heard her from inside the compartment, because there was a sudden loud yell of, "You can't do this to me!" and then in a lower voice, "Look, if I don't tell, and you don't tell, and no one else tells, our parents won't have to know you're not with me."
Except that anyone who walks past Crabbe and Goyle's compartment would immediately know that Draco wasn't with them. The same went for their compartment.
"We can cast a charm to obscure the glass of both our compartments," Blaise suggested. "Of course, it won't prevent people from finding out when they open the door anyway, but we can lock the doors too. Well, the doors don't take very well to locking, but a Sticking Charm should work."
In the end, Crabbe and Goyle acquiesced to Blaise's suggestion, and Draco and Blaise went along to secure another compartment for them. Neville, still seated in their original compartment, with a large oyster shell on the seat beside him, looked—well, he looked a little smug.
"Uh, congratulations I guess?" Hadria offered, because she wasn't sure what else to say.
"Thank you," Nevilled beamed. "You may sit beside King. He doesn't bite."
Hadria eyed the dormant Giant Oyster Mushroom and decided not to question it. She took the remaining seat with some wariness. Pansy, however, had many things to say about it.
"King? You named it? It's royalty now? Will you start building a shrine for it next?"
Neville smiled back at her. Hadria wasn't sure if it was because he didn't have the right words to retort, or was too satisfied with his mushroom to care, but it was very effective nonetheless, causing Pansy to splutter in the face of his cheerfulness.
"Speaking of shrines—" Hadria said, attempting to divert the topic.
"Oh, that one," said Pansy. "You'll have to ask Blaise about that—I don't know either. Honestly, I'd ask Draco but he's been a bit barmy recently."
Hadria blinked. She could have sworn Pansy had a crush on Draco, and they'd been together for a time, at least from what she observed in her previous life, though it had happened a year or two later, but she couldn't imagine how it would occur if this was how they were like now.
Curious and feeling nosy now, she decided to ask, "Do you think you'll ever have a crush on him?"
"What? " Pansy stared at her for a few seconds. "Well—I mean, he's good looking. And blonde. And—" She closed her mouth, opened it, closed it again, and waved a hand as if it could illustrate her point.
Merlin, Hadria thought to herself. Pansy has a type. Of course Pansy has a type.
She still couldn't see it though. But then her parents did get together, and she still couldn't figure out how that happened. Actually, she'd never figured out how Ron and Hermione had gotten together either—they seemed to have started liking each other at some moment when she wasn't looking. And she'd only had a passing crush on two people before, in her previous life, and they both ended—well, not well, but, a little short of a disaster. Suffice to say, she didn't have enough experience to judge.
The compartment door was shoved open and two tall redheads leaned in.
"Oh good, ickle Malfoy's not here," said Fred with glee.
"Don't mind us, we're just here to introduce our lovely younger sister," said George, sounding like he would be disappointed if they didn't mind them.
"C'mon Ginny," Fred turned to look at someone behind them. Hadria didn't think Ginny could "c'mon" if the twins didn't make way for her, as they were both very much blocking the doorway.
There was some shuffling and squeezing, which ended up with George in Draco's seat by the door, and Fred standing in front of Hadria—positively towering, Hadria wanted to know how Weasleys could grow this tall and lanky—and Ginny staying by the door, looking like she wished her sight was still obstructed by both twins.
Hadria gave her an encouraging smile.
Hadria used to dislike the limelight, or rather, being known for feats that she didn't think deserved as much praise as they had been accorded—she would prefer to be known for things she did do that were actually impressive, like her Quidditch flying, rather than things her parents did, or things she did only because she felt it was the right thing to do, that anyone else should do in her place. But nonetheless, she'd always held some fondness for her fans. Not the general mass that changed their opinions on a whim, but people like Colin Creevey and Ginny Weasley, who were so very sincere and endearing in their own way.
Ginny did not look particularly encouraged by her smile.
"This is Ginny Weasley, our sister," said Fred, pushing Ginny forward, unheeding of Ginny's attempts to use him as a shield. "Don't worry, she's not like Ronnikins."
"At least, what we mean is that she isn't automatically a Slytherin-hater," George elaborated.
"Well, ickle Ronnikins isn't actually so bad, once you get to know him but…"
"That route's pretty much closed for you."
"And dear Ginny here, is very precious to us."
"By which we mean, if you hurt her, you'll find that we're capable of a lot more than pranks."
At this, Ginny let out a disgruntled, "I can take care of myself."
"Of course you can," Fred snorted. "We have no doubts about that ."
(Hadria wondered what Ginny had been doing at home to obtain that response.)
"But still, we'd rather be safe than sorry, and I'm sure it'll hurt no one if you had more people on your side," added George, as the Twins gave the group in the train compartment identical threatening smiles that wouldn't look amiss in a horror story.
Well, Hadria didn't have a problem with looking our for Ginny. In fact, it would be swell if she could integrate her into her current group of friends. She thought Hermione might appreciate having someone else who had just as much sense as she had guts.
"If by my life or death I can protect you I will," Hadria announced with a straight face. "You have my cloak."
Everyone, save the Twins, who were fond of such strange tangents themselves, stared at her for a short bemused moment. She wagered part of it was because they didn't actually know what she meant when she mentioned her cloak.
Then Neville, looking like he didn't actually know what was going on but had some instincts developed from long exposures to Hadria, declared, "And you have my plants. And King."
"And my… my wand?" Pansy said uncertainly, eyes darting back and forth. "What… Why does this sound like an oath? Why are we swearing an oath of allegiance to a Weasley? What have I done?! "
"That is a very good question. What's going on here?"
Draco stood at the door, with Blaise behind him, surveying the train compartment.
There was a Weasley collapsed in his seat chortling, Pansy who looked utterly horrified, Neville who seemed torn between confusion and amusement, Hadria who had a very self-satisfied grin on her face, another Weasley clutching the compartment door as he tried to stand up straight but was failing due to the force of his laughter, and a third—new—Weasley who was completely red, her face almost the same shade as her hair.
"I think Blaise could offer a knife of his," said Hadria blithely, providing the two boys with none of the context they required. "And… Draco could offer uh… his father?"
Almost instantly, the chortling in the background escalated into peels of sharp high-pitched hysterical giggling, not unlike the laughter of hyenas, which then abruptly petered out into wheezing, and even that was eventually reduced to silent convulsions.
Everyone eyed the Weasley Twins.
"I think," said Ginny in a small voice (which did not match the grin threatening to break across her blushing face) to no one in particular. "I think you might've killed my brothers. Congratulations?"
But this only earned her an incredibly incredulous look from Draco, and Neville leaned over the giant oyster shell between them, and whispered, "You know, I think we should keep her."
Merlin, Hadria had thought at that moment. Perhaps he's been Corrupted after all.
That's all for now~ Feel free to let me know if you have any comments or questions!
And because I only realised I was behind on ffnet because I was going to post the chapter after this, the next chapter has also been written already. I will be uploading it either tomorrow or this weekend.
In other news, I am in the process of rewriting the first few chapters of this fic. The first chapter/prologue has already been rewritten and uploaded, and old readers can check it out, to see if yall can spot the differences XD