Chapter 5.5) School Days Part II

Selected Listening: Girl- Tori Amos

Anastasia almost told Professor Sprout about Draco stealing her necklace. Almost. It would have been a sure-fire way of retrieving it and never wearing it on a school day again, but then she remembered her father's warning about faculty recognizing the accessory, "Pomona will know instantly."

If Anastasia told Professor Sprout, the teacher would inevitably get a good look at the necklace, and then her identity could be shot.

So, Anastasia trudged to transfiguration alongside the others. Ron and Harry hadn't noticed what had happened, but Hermione was giving her glares out of the corner of her eye. She had already urged Anastasia to turn Draco in for stealing.

"What do you expect me to do, Hermione? I can't risk—" she stopped midsentence because the boys were looking at them again.

"Risk what?" Harry asked.

"Um, it's nothing," Anastasia tried to dismiss, unable to come up with a lie on the spot. She was never very good at lying even though she had to do it all the time.

"Obviously not," retorted Ron.

"Anastasia's upset because Malfoy stole her necklace when she dropped it in herbology, and she won't tell on him for reasons I have yet to understand," Hermione explained haughtily.

"What?" Harry yelled.

"You have to turn him in," Ron said, "Malfoy always weasels out of punishments. It's not fair."

"I know, I know…" she said drearily, forcing back the tears in her eyes. She wasn't going to steal the medication any faster even though Draco had stolen her necklace. In fact, it made her even more determined to let him suffer.

In transfiguration, lessons proved more difficult than the year before, and Anastasia, in her dolor, proved more ready to stab the beetle in front of her than turn it into a button, but as Minerva called roll and reached Anastasia's name, she looked up from the paper and gave a short nod, as if to say, "I'm glad to see you made it back in one piece from holiday, I expect you for tea on Friday," and Anastasia couldn't help but smile.

After transfiguration and lunch, the group trudged down to the courtyard to relax and study a bit before Defense Against the Dark Arts. This time, Anastasia was the one giving side looks at Hermione for burying her face into Voyages with Vampires for the third time that day.

"Do you want something?" Hermione asked. "You're staring so loud I can hardly read."

"He's not going to have required you to read all of his books by day one, Hermione. There's no point. Besides, how do you know anything he said is true?" she asked.

"It's in a book!" Hermione retorted, as if this somehow made it a law. Anastasia scowled and turned away.

At that moment, a little boy with a large camera ran up to their group and started talking frantically to Harry.

"Harry-I-was-wondering-if-I-could-get-a-picture-with-you…," he went on mumbling about how he was surprised to be accepted into Hogwarts because he was muggleborn, and finished with, "…and maybe you could sign it?"

"Giving out signed pictures now, are you Potter?" The familiar voice jumped out at them as Draco came strolling into the courtyard with Crabbe and Goyle. Anastasia glared in his direction and grimaced down at her hands.

Of course, Draco had to make his entrance as humiliating as possible for Harry, going on about how he was so caught up in his fame as loudly as possible. All the while, Anastasia sat grinding her teeth. Flustered and enraged, the boy named Collin spoke up for Harry,

"You're just jealous!" The little guy shouted.

"Jealous!" Draco raged. "Why would I be jealous of someone with a stupid scar across his head?"

Anastasia stood and stalked over to him.

"Could you shut up for five minutes?" Anastasia asked him, a growl on the edge of her words. There was an ooh in the crowd.

"Why should I?" Draco asked. "He's the one bragging about his fame to the first years for attention." Crabbe and Goyle chuckled.

"Really?" she asked. "From what I see, you're the one making a scene of it in the middle of the schoolyard."

"You're not going to take that from a mu-" Goyle whispered the word "-d are you, Malfoy?"

For the first time, Draco looked conflicted in his slew of insults. He made fierce eye contact with Anastasia, fearing and fuming. That was when Anastasia realized something. Draco needed her for his medication. He stole her necklace out of desperation. To a certain point, he had to play nice. Anastasia realized she had the upper hand, and a twisted smirk crept onto her face.

Lucky for Draco, Lockhart came sweeping onto the scene.

"What's this I hear about someone giving out autographs? I know who it must be!" The new professor took Harry under his wing once more and drew him away to the castle.

"Better be careful where you point that wand, Weasley," Draco said. Anastasia looked back to see that Ron had also tried to take Draco down, but his spell had ended in nothing but a puff of smoke.

"Or what?" Anastasia and Ron asked simultaneously.

"Or my father will hear about it!" he said and walked off with his cronies. Anastasia sputtered with laughter.

"Was he serious?" she asked. Ron's eyes widened.

"Surely you heard what they called you?" Ron asked. "Didn't it bother you?"

Anastasia shook her head.

"Not really. It's only a word."

"It's not only a word. It's a word used by blood purists to describe muggleborn magic folk. Thinks it makes them better or something. Really, if you hear anyone saying that you should stay as far away from them as possible," Ron warned.

Anastasia shrugged and grabbed her bag up from the rock they were sitting on. Hermione gathered her books and joined them, pretending as if she hadn't listened. They walked to Defense Against the Dark Arts together in silence and took spots besides a pale, annoyed Harry when they arrived.

Within the first few minutes of class, Anastasia definitively decided that she didn't like Lockhart. In fact, she deplored him. He oozed ego, and he seemed to never stop smiling. It was as if he was overjoyed to exist in his own presence.

Following a quiz that only Hermione passed, Anastasia found herself so perplexed at Lockhart's arrogance that she couldn't speak. She stared wide-eyed, frowning at him, wondering how it could possibly get any worse. But of course, he found Hermione's paper and complimented her on how much she knew about him. She earned 10 points for Gryffindor. This caused Stasia to mutter under her breath.

"It didn't have anything to do with defense against the dark arts."

"What was that?" Lockhart asked staring directly at her with that kooky smile. Anastasia blushed, not realizing he would hear, but now that everyone was staring at her, she couldn't back out.

"I said, your quiz didn't have to do anything with Defense Against the Dark Arts. That's what Dumbledore hired you to teach us, not about yourself," she said in a hesitant, but firm voice.

The class let out a short gasp, as they waited to see how Lockhart would respond to the blow. He froze. His smile faded. One of his perfect wavy locks jetted out of place from his perfectly coif hair.

Seamus coughed to cover his snicker, and Lockhart seemed to wake up, regaining his smile.

"Well, I, myself, am an artifact of defense against the dark arts. I lived it!"

And Lockhart went on with his lesson without another word about the matter, but he couldn't look Anastasia in the eye again without losing his spectacular smile.

Hermione hid her head in her book in embarrassment.

Half an hour later, Anastasia, Hermione, Ron, and Harry stumbled out of the empty defense classroom. Everyone else had ran out before the pixies had been fully accounted for.

"That was insane!" Ron complained.

"He's entirely incompetent," Anastasia agreed, holding a hand to the cut above her right eye, which a Cornish pixie had scratched onto her while trying to eat a lock of her hair.

"Would you stop it!" Hermione defended. "It's practical experience."

"If you didn't notice, Hermione, he ran away too." Harry said, "Are you okay, Anastasia?"

"Sure…" she said, "…I'm going to the hospital wing anyway. I have a headache."

Anastasia rushed up to the infirmary. While she was waiting in line, she looked over her shoulder to the cabinet where lost medications were kept. She could see through the glass that the box was completely empty. She wondered if she told Draco that if he would give her necklace back. She doubted it.

Madam Pomfrey gave her some ointment for the cut and sent her on her way.

Anastasia planned to go back to the common room and meet up with her friends once more, but she took a moment to stop in a nook and cry out her feelings. Although she had only had two first days of school in her entire life, this was the worst of the two, and hopefully the worst ever. She felt angry at Malfoy for stealing her necklace, but angrier with herself for wearing it in the first place. She felt angry at her father for hiring such an awful defense teacher, but furious at Voldemort for cursing the position so they would never have a good instructor. She felt angry at Hermione for falling for Lockhart's façade but enraged at Lockhart himself for being such a self-obsessed nightmare.

After a time, she took a deep breath, wiped away her tears, and stood from the stoop she found. Just as she did, Ginny ran in, took one look at Anastasia, and froze. She kept her journal clutched to her torso.

"Hi, Ginny. Are you alright?" Anastasia asked reflexively, even though tear stains still hung on her own face. "Are you having a good first day?"

"Um, yes, just fine," the Weasley girl squeaked and ran away.

Ginny seemed to grow shier by the minute.

On Sunday evening, Anastasia made her usual trek to the headmaster's suite. She put on her invisibility cloak in the girl's lavatory and walked down the second-floor hallway to the suit of armor on the right-hand side of the hall. She waited until the corridor emptied of students before pulling her wand out of her cloak and tapping the knight's left gauntlet three times. The door opened steadily, and she disappeared behind the wall, securing the armor in place behind her.

She stowed her invisibility cloak in her bag and walked up the secret staircase to her bedroom. She said hello to Crenshaw, who made a habit of flying to his golden perch in the headmaster's suite on a regular basis, despite her attempts to train him to fly only to the owlery during the school year. She supposed she couldn't blame him missing the luxuries of a one-owl human-sized bedroom compared to a nook in a turret with 99 roommates.

Anastasia walked into the den, where her father already sat in the dining nook with dinner on the table.

"Hi grandad," she said quietly, and slid onto the bench across from him. Albus had laid his head onto one hand, his eyes blinking slowly across the table set with corned beef. "You look tired."

"Yes, well, maybe you have some insight on the issue. What are your thoughts on Professor Lockhart?" he asked sluggishly.

Anastasia froze and didn't say anything. Albus smirked a bit on one side.

"Therein lies the problem. I've heard nothing but complaints from faculty, and I'm a bit tired of hearing from him myself. Today, he requested satin sheets for his bedchamber! I had three house elves in my office this morning, crying because he's been nothing but nonsense!" Albus rolled his eyes in annoyance, stretched, and dropped his arms to his sides.

"No offense, grandad, but you shouldn't have hired him. He's yet to teach us anything about actual defense magic. He's always talking about his grand adventures but doesn't teach any of it," Anastasia said and began fixing her plate.

Albus laughed.

"Yes, he informed me of your cheeky statement, and when I realized he was talking about you, I suggested that my students have high standards. I'm hoping that might kick him into gear."

They enjoyed the rest of their meal quietly, and Anastasia gave vague answers to any questions about how her week was going. She decided not to tell him about the stolen necklace. She was embarrassed to have lost it so quickly, but she did need to clue him in about the conversation she had with Hermione in Diagon Alley, and what Narcissa Malfoy might have overheard. At the end of the meal after a chocolate trifle, Anastasia bucked up her courage.

"I need to tell you something…" she said with a sigh, putting her fork down on the porcelain. She had to tell him, or else things could get even worse.

"Yes, dear? I'm listening," he said, licking a bit of chocolate off his thumb.

"Hermione and I were kind of talking about some things when we were at the ice cream shop in Diagon Alley, and we thought we were out of hearing distance, but it turns out someone was sitting behind us…and some information might have slipped to them."

"Oh…" Albus said, eyes wide, but he tried to keep his voice steady. "Who was it? And what slipped?"

"Narcissa Malfoy…" she started nervously and winced for impact.

His eyebrows raised and he seemed to have a breathy chuckle to himself.

"Alright…alright…not a problem," he waved off, "child, you almost gave me a heart attack."

Anastasia felt as if she had been slapped. She had spent years hiding her identity. The year prior, Albus had threatened to use a memory charm on anyone else who found out anything more about her situation.

"What do you mean, not a problem? I definitely mentioned me living in the headmaster's suite, and how I have to constantly hide my identity, and we talked about—" Anastasia stopped talking, she hadn't actually addressed her hypothesis with her father yet. Startlingly, his smile had only gotten wider.

"Yes, what is it?" Albus asked, smile twitching with the laughter he was trying so hard to hold back.

"Well… it seems my fainting spells seem to be connected to Draco Malfoy's asthma attacks…they happen simultaneously…along with almost any other injury."

And at this, Albus's expression froze, and shock settled in.

"Oh…" he said again simply. He rose from his seat, brushed off his robes, and ran to the stairs to the headmaster's office.

"Oh?" Anastasia followed him all the way down, and found him at a blank piece of parchment, quill poised, as if he were about to write a letter. His pale blue eyes flickered back up to her.

"Are you certain? Absolutely positive it's not a coincidence?" he asked.

Anastasia nodded.

"Almost absolutely positive," she said. "I don't have anything to confirm though."

"Well…," he started, putting his quill down, "we'll have to keep an eye on that. For now, there is no reason to fret. Narcissa Malfoy will not say a word about your identity or the predicament between you and Draco."

"What? Why wouldn't she?" Anastasia asked. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. All this time, she had to keep everything so secret, and now her father seemed relieved.

"Tell me, did you catch her reaction when you said those things? You must have seen her face at some point if you were able to identify her."

"Well yes, as she was leaving, she looked almost scared…but I assume that was because of what I said about Draco's illness being connected to mine. I think she may have wanted to ask more questions about what I meant."

"Yes, I'm certain that is the case," Albus said, staring into Anastasia's eyes, "amongst other things." Anastasia stepped backward.

"Why would she want to talk to me? If I'm posing as a muggle born student, and their family hates muggleborns. You should have heard the way Lucius treated me when we ran into them at the bank, it was like I was the scum of the Earth!"

Albus nodded, unsurprised.

"If it were Lucius Malfoy with this information, we would already be in trouble, you wouldn't have had time to tell me. But Narcissa is much a different strategist. She won't say anything to anyone unless it will be of benefit to her. Currently, there is no way she can benefit from your identity being revealed, even to her husband, so we have no reason to worry."

But Anastasia worried all the same.