Chapter 8:

Leah tried her best to avoid Callisto; both her gaze and her presence. She'd go out of the way and go around the long way to class, or when she saw her approaching, she'd quickly nip into the bathroom or an empty class room. The only exception was the hour of double potions on Mondays and Wednesdays. Once, trying to avoid her on the way to Runes class, she turned at a wrong corner and bumped into someone.

"Watch were you're going, you Muggle-lover!" shouted an annoyed yet sly voice. He would have thought that she would have put up a fight, but he was left with something less.

There was no doubt that she didn't know that voice, but she just blindly shouted, "Piss off!" and ran in the opposite direction, leaving a confused yet bewildered Malfoy in the middle of the corridor.

She also avoided Pansy as she was still sneering at her every time Pansy had the opportunity. She had continually gotten support from Elise, but even then, her words weren't enough to erase Callisto's face from her mind.

Meanwhile, Callisto couldn't stand Leah ignoring her and finally cornered her on the weekend after breakfast. She watched her as she finished her piece of toast and as she got up to leave to the Slytherin common room, she also got up to meet her at the door. At first Leah didn't seem to notice Callisto coming from behind her but once she did, she broke into a hurried walk, but soon was caught up.

She wheeled around and started spitting out excuses, hoping for the world she wouldn't get thumped. "Look, I'm really sorry about what happened. It was Pansy's dare, and she made me do it. It didn't mean a thing and I totally regret even coming here. Please forgive me-"

"It's ok."

"– Huh?"

"It's ok. I'm not upset or anything."

"But -," Leah started to say.

"Alright, I was shocked a little when I found out – especially hearing it from Pansy – but I'm not upset at all."

"But aren't you going out with him? Weren't you upset when I kissed your boyfriend?" she stared at Callisto with shock.

"Ex-boyfriend," she pointed out. "I broke up with him a few days before the whole ordeal happened. And I found out from Harry that it was a dare – he didn't take it personally, by the way. He was rather flattered actually," she said starting to giggle.

Leah raised her eyebrows and simply said, "Oh."

Afterwards, Leah went back to the Slytherin common room to play with Krysta, feeling a whole tonne lifted from her chest. She hummed happily to herself as she went past the occupied plush couches surrounding the fire framed by an elaborately carved mantle. But she was stoped short when a malicious voice called out to her from one of the couches, "Why, if it isn't the muggle-lover."

"What did you call me?" Leah said coldly as she turned around to face Pansy lying lazily on the couch, her face pasted with a gruesome twist forming on her lips. 

"A muggle-lover. Do you comprehendé?"

"And why would you want to call me that? What's your problem with muggle-borns anyway?" Leah challenged her.

"I'll call you what I want to call you. And I'd call you the disgrace to the magical world – befriending those filthy mudbloods," she spat out. "You're the scum of the magical world and you couldn't go any lower than that."

Leah could hear hot blood pulsating through her ears as her temper began to boil. "Well I'm sorry that I had to lower myself to your level, you inbred troll," she said in a deadly clam voice. "Are your parents brother and sister? Because that would explain why you're an ugly-,"she would have continued her insults if it wasn't for the sudden whip of Pansy's wand that caused Leah to fly back ten feet. Leah lay on her back, spread eagle, and looked up gingerly feeling the pain radiate through her joints. Pansy looked murderous as she stood there poised, with her wand pointing straight at her heart. Leah felt a warm rod radiate heat in her pocket and took the object out to find her wand in her hand, sparking two or three silver sparks. She felt a familiar warmness erupt in her hand to the day in Diagon Alley, buying her school equipment. She gripped her wand and took aim and shouted, "Adeopunio!" Pansy was thrown into the air, taking similar effect to the first experience she hat of a Slytherin/Gryffindor duel. Take a drop of your own poison, thought Leah.

She got up and walked to Pansy's side and trod on her wand as Pansy reached out to grab it. She tried struggling to get the wand out from under Leah's foot but gave up and got up to face Leah. She stared at her momentarily, her eyes narrowed and said, "You-"

SLAP! Leah staggered back slightly and automatically put her hand to her cheek. She could feel it start to redden and the pain numbed almost instantly. She half-laughed a sneer and said, "Is that the hardest you can slap?" and brought her extended hand with all her might at Pansy's temper-ugly face. SLAP! Pansy staggered also, but this time fell onto her knees, cradling the side of her face Leah had hit. She turned to go but Pansy hadn't finished. "Oh, no you don't!" she said and tackled Leah from behind. They both fell to the cold stone floor scrabbling to get hold of each other. They kicked each other, bit each other and Leah even managed to yank out a clump of Pansy's knotty black hair. They screamed and shouted insults and rolled about the room, each trying to get the better of the other. Both of them were so preoccupied that they didn't notice the crowd that had gathered around them and a dark figure enter the room and watch them from the start with amusement, leaning against the back of the door.

It was Leah who noticed the figure there, although after a considerable amount of time had passed. Leah was in the middle of holding Pansy in a headlock, who in turn tried to grab at Leah's locks. She looked at the figure for a moment and finally realised that it was, "Oh, hi Malfoy."

Pansy gave a small gasp, fought off Leah and straightened, trying to use her fingers to comb her messy hair. Leah didn't notice that her hair had fallen from the bun that she had had it in earlier, but stared, her arms crossed at her chest, at Malfoy as he came forward from the shadowed entrance, into the light of the fire. The crowd that they had gathered started to scatter, feeling a little disappointed that it hadn't continued for longer.

He clapped softly as he made his way towards the two girls, his amusement shadowing the smirk on his face. "That was very entertaining, Pansy, Leah. But I have to advise you, that if you're to have another cat fight, I'd do it somewhere more…" he momentarily paused and looked around at the fraction of the crowd still standing around, "…private." His grey eyes weren't cold but mildly cool this time and didn't bore into hers but sort of shimmer with amusement.

Leah raised an eyebrow, but mentally stopped from saying anything to upset the situation. Instead, Leah looked sideways shooting Pansy a dirty look but found her looking down to the floor and nursing a couple of nail marks on her arm. Leah leered triumphantly as I did that wandered through her mind.

Leah remembered what she was going to do before she had gotten herself in the fight and walked out of the room, her ripped school robes fluttering behind her. Malfoy just watched after her, eyeing the rip extending from the hem to about mid thigh.

On her way to the dormitory, she could hear Pansy whining to Malfoy about her but being promptly rejected by him. She muttered under her breath, "Attention seeking-" but stopped before she got herself worked up again.

News of the cat fight between 'the Parkinson girl' and the 'exchange student' spread like a raging bush fire and Leah was sure that almost the whole school knew of the happenings in the common room by the next night. The cause of the gossip leak was most likely from Pansy and her gossip troopers causing the story to rapidly change form over the next day.  From what should have been a cat fight between Pansy and Leah, transformed to 'evil' Leah trying to tackle 'innocent' Pansy on her way from the library (not that she'd even be there in the first place) and Pansy coming out of the struggle triumphant.

This sort of thing made Leah mentally puke and she desperately tried to ignore it. It turned out that not many people believed the gossip anyway and was also, surprisingly, helped out by the fact that Malfoy hadn't, in anyway, attempted at recreating the scene. He simply ignored it and didn't join in on the chorus of laughter coming from his friends. Leah didn't know if he was being nice (though hard to believe) or just justifying. But either way Leah was thankful, even though she didn't want to admit it.

Leah's relationships with the rest of Slytherin house became more cheerful, perhaps because she had once again become a celebrity. People from all around smiled, waved, and chatted to her. Leah started to think that she'd cat fight Pansy anytime if she could get the same sort of attention all the time.

Pansy on the other hand, glared at her all the time and unluckily, she couldn't just escape from her so easily. Most of her classes were shared with her and on top of that, they slept in the same dormitory. Leah would use Krysta whenever in the dorm, as a body guard against Pansy, but out of the dormitory, she had nothing.

They would often growl at each other or have staring contests to see who could glare at the other the longest. Neither of them wished to re-enact the fight and so to Leah's relief, Pansy never went as far as getting into one again.

Draco sat on his four-poster bed and replayed the scene of the cat fight in his head. Wow, he thought, I've never seen Leah so feisty before let alone a girl fight. He snorted as he thought, wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her. He mentally kicked himself for thinking about it for the last half an hour. He didn't mean to, but he just couldn't get the thought out of his mind. Especially the part when Leah had Pansy in a headlock. He smirked, with out meaning to, and got off the bed. This is stupid, he thought.

He walked over to his trunk sitting at the foot of his bed and scurried around trying to find something. He straightened up after several minutes to bring out a small, black drawstring pouch. He loosened the end and tipped the contents into his hand. A silver ring fell out and on the pendant was a crest of two serpents surrounding a single ruby in the center. He looked at it mysteriously – it had been a present passed on to him by his father. From his father's stories, this had been a family emblem and was passed down from generation to generation to the eldest child. Apart from those pieces of information, his father wouldn't tell him any more. Draco hated it when his father molly-coddled him like that; Draco didn't think of himself as a child anymore. Unlike that very immature fight, thought Draco. He pictured Leah walking out, her robes tattered with an exceptionally big rip going up the back. This must have been the tenth or so time that he had replayed the scene in his head and started to mentally kick himself. It's (kick)…only (kick)…a (kick)…stupid (kick)…muggle (kick)…lover! (kick) Get (kick)…her (kick)…out (kick)…of (kick)…your (kick)…head! (kick) He's mind was starting to hurt by now and decided to reason without mental violence.

This is just stupid, though Draco. I just need to get a grip on myself, that's all. Just… a…grip… But his mind was already wondering off to the other day. But as much as he tried, none of his faint attempts at forgetting the scene succeeded.

He only came back to reality when the huge bodies of Crabbe and Goyle came in to the dormitory and started telling each other lame jokes.

"Why did the hippogriff cross the road?" asked the low voice of Goyle.

"Er, I don't know," Crabbe answered.

"Neither do I. I was hoping that you did." Goyle looked stupidly at Crabbe who shrugged.

Draco's eyes rolled and he asked, "don't you have any decent jokes to tell, you two?"

"Well, I was reading a book on jokes, but they didn't tell you the answers."

"Maybe it's in the back?" Draco sighed, exasperated.

"Oh…" Goyle trailed off.

A/N: Please R&R!