Thine Own Self
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Part 4
"Lumosima."
At her whisper, Katherine's wand glowed with the barest hint of light. She had waited what seemed like hours for the other three girls to give up on the giggling and the knowing looks, and finally fall asleep. Morgan was snoring and Halme's chest moved up and down, little whimpers escaping her now and then. Kurtz had never made it in to bed -- but Katherine fully expected to see her tonight.
It was getting late.
She'd gone to bed with her wand in her hand, and didn't let it go even to locate and put on comfortable, weekend clothes -- denim jeans and a thin jumper in Slytherin green. Socks and track shoes on her feet, hair tied back, no robes to get in the way, and then there was nothing to do again but sit cross-legged on her bed, stare at the door as if she could see through it without the charm she had never bothered to learn, and wait.
Whatever Malfoy was going to do, it would come tonight. Lucius had never been known for his patience, and he couldn't risk waiting any longer or Dumbledore could return. The headmaster only left Hogwarts when things outside -- things with You-Know-Who -- were at their worst, and he always came back as quickly as possible for that very reason. No, Malfoy had to attack now or hold his peace, and he'd made far too much of himself in the last weeks to afford to do that.
David and Andrew were in the boys' dormitory, too far away to help or be helped. She spent a moment fiercely wishing that David was a girl, his obsessive study of Auror's skills only a few rooms away, then equally fiercely dismissed what wasn't to concentrate on what was. Erin and Shivani had each other, of course; she'd told them to trade off staying awake, and they might actually obey. But Rina was all alone with the first-year girls, who couldn't hurt her, but couldn't -- or wouldn't -- help her, either. And Katherine was three flights of stairs and two closed doors away from her, and she was so tired...
It would be so much easier to just let it happen. Leave the others to look after themselves, concentrate on surviving until graduation, then leave it all behind. Her fingers ran smoothly across her wand as she stared at it. Up and down. Up and down. There was a job with the Ministry with her name on it, International Relations, or Improper Use of Magic, perhaps -- something that came with power, and a solid wage, and respect. Most of all, respect. Her fingers kept moving, of their own volition. Up and down. She would be someone at last, she'd show them -- all of them, Muggles and wizards alike -- what a Muggle-born witch could do. She could fight the Dark Lord then, when she was older. More powerful. She'd fight him then.
It wouldn't be so hard, really. Up and down. Just let it happen. Up and down. Keep her head low, let Malfoy have his fun for just a few more months, and she could have everything she'd ever wanted. Be everything she'd ever wanted to be. Just let it happen.
Up and down. Then slowly, slowly, down. She watched her wand with detached fascination as it touched the duvet, watched someone else's hand release it and saw the smooth wood slip away with her resolve.
Just let it happen...
The scream seemed to fill the tower, tearing through the stone walls as if they were tissue, more screams joining it a heartbeat later. Katherine was off her bed and halfway to the door before she remembered she'd dropped her wand; when she turned to retrieve it, she found it already clenched in her hand.
No doors opened as she took the steps to the first-year room, feet barely touching the stone; Rina's cries were joined by her roommates', echoing with terror and helpless, half-heard spells. The doorknob resisted her for a moment and she wasted no more time on it, but stood back and aimed her wand. "Alohomora!"
The door slammed back on its hinges, and three terrified first-year girls scrabbled past it into her. "Snakes in the bed! Snakes!" they babbled, voices almost too shrill to be comprehensible, hands clutching at her desperately.
"Out of the way!" She peeled them ruthlessly away until she could shove past them into the room. "Rina!"
"Kit! Help us!" The eleven-year-old stood on top of a bed, wand clutched in both hands and pointed in front of her, one of her roommates next to her in an identical pose. Inches away from the girls' faces, held only by the levitation spell they'd somehow managed to cast, three vipers twisted and struck, venom dripping from their fangs as they fought through the air to attack their prey.
"Impedimenta!" Katherine shouted; as the snakes' violent thrashing slowed, she followed the spell with another: "Nodare serpenta!" The girls screamed again as the thrashing resumed, but the snakes twisted in and around each other until their bodies were caught in an intricate knot. Enraged, the snakes struck over and over, their fangs finding only each others' bodies.
"Let them drop, in the trunk!" Rina and her roommate were wild-eyed with terror, but they obeyed, their wands directing the tangle of vipers into the open trunk at the foot of Rina's bed. In two steps, Katherine was there to slam the lid closed.
"Are you all right?" she demanded of the girls. They nodded breathlessly, and Katherine realized they weren't the ones screaming any more. It was coming from outside the room, up the stairs. "Shivani. Erin."
And she was running again, barely aware of Rina a few steps behind her. The dormitory had awakened by now, doors slamming open up and down the staircase. There was shouting from the Common Room, familiar voices calling out to them, but Katherine didn't have the attention to spare.
The door to the third-years' room was closed; she didn't bother with the knob this time, simply shouted "alohomora" without breaking stride. Once again, the door slammed backwards and Katherine raced through, just as a viper cannoned into the wall inches from her head.
"Serpentiwasi!" Shivani shouted from the foot of her bed, and another viper went flying. Its body slid limply down the wall to join a pile of three others there, leaving a trail of greenish blood behind it. One of her roommates, the one who'd almost sat with them the other day, echoed the spell, her young face set in grim determination, and a fifth viper splattered against stone.
Obviously that side of the room was under control; Katherine spun to look for Erin. "Over here! Help!" a girl's voice cried from behind one of the beds. Katherine went over the bed instead of around it, falling to the floor next to the last third-year. She was crouched by Erin, hands wrapped tightly around her arm, a broomstick lying next to her. Its bristles almost hid the bodies of the two snakes it had crushed; Erin's wand lay abandoned next to them.
The roommate -- Penny? Penelope? Pandora! -- looked up at her, her pupils dilated so widely from panic that her eyes were nearly black. "We didn't wake up fast enough," she said helplessly. "They bit her before we could kill them. They both bit her."
"Both?" Oh god, there was another bite on Erin's leg, already turning dark purple and swelling beneath the hem of her nightshirt. "Run. Now. Get to the infirmary, get Poppy Pomfrey. Go, now!"
Pandora disappeared out the door so quickly she could have apparated; Katherine took her place by Erin, tearing off a strip of torn nightshirt, and using Erin's wand to make a crude Muggle tourniquet on her arm. "Erin? Open your eyes, O'Malley, look at me!" She kept calling the girl, trying to remember the healing spells that kept skittering out of reach -- the Minister of Magic wouldn't need to know them. The Minister of Magic didn't need to know a lot of things... "Erin!"
The girl's head finally moved, her eyes slitting open. "...Kit?"
"I'm here." Her free hand fluttered over Erin's body, trying to soothe with no idea how to go about it. "We're getting help, you'll be all right. Just stay awake."
Erin's eyes were dulled by pain, but she managed to grin a little. "P-panicked... tried locomotor m-mortis. D-didn't work -- snakes don't have l-legs."
Katherine tried to dredge up a smile in return; it felt twisted and wrong, obscene. "And you'll remember that next time, Miss O'Malley, I'm sure. Stay still, don't talk. Help's coming."
Erin nodded slightly -- then her eyes slipped closed again.
"No! Erin!" Dimly, she was aware of David's presence beside her, of Rina staring wide-eyed until Andrew grabbed her, then burying her face in his narrow shoulder, of Shivani and the other third-year -- what was her name? it didn't matter -- standing between them and the door, wands raised against all comers. None of it made an impression; there was only the teenager that had begin convulsing at her feet.
"Let me in!"
"Get stuffed!"
"If you want her to live, let me in!"
"You tried to kill her! Get stuffed!"
"I didn't try to kill her, but I might be able to save her, if you wretched little brats will let me pass!"
Some part of her had been aware of the conversation, but when the dark, attenuated figure tried to pry off the grip she had on Erin's body, her fist swung out instinctively.
Severus Snape warded her off with one hand. "Are you all stupid?" he demanded, face pinched in irritation and something that looked vaguely like... guilt? "Or do you simply not care what happens to the girl? Let me--"
Katherine's wand had already snapped up, David moving in perfect synch. "You're. Not. Touching. Her."
Snape's eyes narrowed and Katherine braced herself, ready for any spell he could cast. So she was entirely unprepared when Snape simply pushed her aside. She fell off-balance into David, tumbling them both to the floor; before they could right themselves, Snape produced a small vial from his robes, with no trace of the flourish he usually displayed, and dripped thick, purple liquid over Erin's leg.
The girl screamed in pain as green mist billowed up; David shouted in rage and lunged for Snape, knocking him backwards against the bed. Katherine scrambled to Erin's side, trying frantically to clear the mist away from the wound. She froze, staring, when she finally saw Erin's skin.
"David. Let him go."
But David had managed to get the upper hand over his seventh-year tormentor, and had no intention of letting up now. His hands were around Snape's throat and tightening. "David! Stop!"
"What? What did the bloody bastard do to Erin?"
"He's healing her!"
David's head snapped up, then his knee caught Snape in the stomach, getting an anguished "oof" from the older boy, as he scrambled over to see for himself. The bite was still there, but the swelling was almost gone, the flesh merely red instead of virulently purple-black. "I'll be damned."
"Quite probably," Snape rasped, hands at his abused throat. "May I continue, or would you prefer it if she dies? She still might."
Silently, the other two Slytherins sat back, clearing the way for Snape to half-crawl over with as much dignity as he could manage. He tilted the vial again, pouring it over the wound on Erin's arm, then gestured for Katherine to tilt her head so he could pour the remains down Erin's throat. Erin sputtered and coughed, then went limp.
But she was breathing, and the convulsions had stopped.
"She's... okay," David breathed.
"Not yet." Snape stood, shaking his robes out with evident self-satisfaction. "But she will be. No thanks necessary," he added snidely, as the other two could only stare. The younger students gathered silently around, their open-mouthed gazes bouncing from Erin to Snape, and back.
"What the devil is going on in here?" Professor Noira's demand broke the stillness; black robed and furious, her hair and robes disordered, she seemed to take up the entire doorway. Malfoy loomed over her shoulder, his concerned expression terminally marred by an amused smirk. Until his eyes fell on Snape.
"Mr. Snape! Mr. Ryder!" Both boys jumped slightly as Noira yelled their names. "What are you doing in the girls' dormitory? What is all this about!"
"Snakes, Professor," Katherine managed to answer, when everyone else -- including Snape, damn him -- looked to her. "There were poisonous snakes in the girls' beds. They woke the tower screaming. Erin O'Malley was bitten."
"There were snakes in Andrew Ryan's bed as well," David belatedly contributed. "We killed them, then came to check on the girls. Snape... Snape brought the anti-venom."
"He saved Erin's life." The words seemed unreal to Katherine even as she said them.
"Did he?" Malfoy's voice was silky smooth and colder than ice, as he stared daggers at Snape. Snape merely lifted his eyebrows in return, then continued straightening his robes.
"Saved O'Malley's..." Professor Noira came further into the room, and the rage on her face gave way to shock as she saw the pile of dead snakes by the doorway, and the still-livid bite marks on Erin's arm and leg. "Merlin protect us... I never dreamed... Clear the way, let me bring the girl out of here! She'll need to go to the infirmary immediately!"
"I've got her." David stood, hefting Erin's body with a grunt. Katherine contributed a quick levitation charm to take some of the weight off; he nodded in thanks and started towards the door, everyone else in the room trailing after him. It was a mark of Noira's shock that she simply got out of the little group's way.
Malfoy also let them pass, but couldn't resist following them down, leaning close to Katherine as she brought up the rear. "Nicely done, Mitchell," he murmured into her ear, under the uproar from the Common Room below. "But it's amazing how these accidents happen -- almost like there's no place in Hogwarts safe for the little Mudbloods. Isn't it?"
Katherine turned just enough to meet his eyes, the narrow-eyed, superior stare that had kept the six of them awake, afraid, for two weeks. And she smiled. "Eat snakes, you son of a bitch. I've even got some handy."
His eyes flared in rage, but this time, Katherine didn't look away, didn't hunch over, didn't back down. She tightened her grip on her wand and silently dared him to try something. Anything.
20-year-old Poppy Pomfrey fussed her way into the Common Room below, Pandora right behind her, saying something about snakes in beds, children bitten, and in Hogwart's, too, what was the world coming to? But Katherine's world had narrowed to Malfoy's sneer and the wand in her hand, rowan and nagahide, smooth under her fingers. The right curse came clearly to mind, almost shimmering in the air in front of her, and Malfoy's mouth opened on a curse of his own--
And the dungeon door opened again, a familiar voice calling out over the racket. "Gone for only two weeks, and one of my Houses has fallen into chaos? Indeed, Poppy, what is the world coming to?"
Albus Dumbledore had returned.
Her curse died, uncast, on her lips, but as she turned to face the headmaster, Katherine had the indescribable satisfaction of seeing Lucius Malfoy's fingers go limp around his wand, and his face turn dead white with shock. And fear.
As Dumbledore waded through the Slytherin Common Room, David met her at the bottom of the stairs. He gave the still-stunned Malfoy a single, nasty smile, then grinned down at Katherine. "So, chalk up a win for our side?"
"Mmmm..." Erin was sitting up already, Shivani and Pandora supporting her on each side. Andrew and Erin's other roommate -- Natalie, that was it -- stood guard at either end of the couch, daring anyone to come anywhere near them, and Rina bounced next to Erin, spinning out the details of the fight that Erin might have missed. Several feet away, Dumbledore was speaking gravely to Professor Noira, who suddenly seemed very young, biting her lip and refusing to meet his eyes. Every other Slytherin in the tower did their level best to be as far away from the headmaster, the Muggle-borns, and Malfoy as possible.
"Yes," Katherine finally nodded, feeling all of the tired muscles in her body finally begin to relax. Sometime soon, she might actually be able to sleep. "I think we won."
She found Snape across the room, leaning against the fireplace as if he had no part whatsoever in all this hullaballoo; she could still feel Malfoy on the steps above her, thwarted, dangerous fury filling the air around him.
"This battle, at least," she finished quietly. "No guarantees about the war."
David nodded, sobering a bit. But only a bit -- his face was still alive with relief and triumph. "I can live with that."
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TBC