Chapter Two
-Created Equal-
"That class wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be." Draco slung his backpack over his shoulder.
"Better or worse?" Alexia tucked her wand in the pocket of her robes.
"Way better." He smirked and put his wand away.
"So, what else is there to do?" She glanced at him.
"Well, I have Quidditch practice in a few minutes." Draco raised his head. "I'm the seeker."
"Hey, dude, get off the broomstick and put both feet on the ground. You're not on the field yet." She rolled her eyes.
"You can come watch if you want." He puffed out his chest.
"Yeah, and give you the pleasure?" She shook her head. "No thanks." She sped up and turned to the direction of the dungeons.
"Malfoy!" Crabbe grabbed his shoulder huffing and puffing. "You coming to the pitch?"
"Duh, you twit." Draco moved out from under his hand. "Let's go." He took a step forward and felt something under his foot. "What's this?" He bent down and picked it up.
"Looks like some sort of diary." Crabbe peered over his shoulder.
"I can see that." Draco hissed. He tried to open it. "Must be locked with a voice charm." He looked around, then took his wand and tapped his throat. "Mockus, Alexia Fowler." His voice changed instantly. "Now, let's see." He thought for a moment. "Openus…"
"Nothing Happened."
"Shut-up Crabbe. I'm trying to think." He said in Alexia's voice.
"You sound funny." Crabbe laughed. "Why can't you just use the repeatus charm?"
"Wow, Crabbe, you are good for something after all." Draco tapped the diary. "Audio Repeatum." The diary shook and then words formed on the front.
"I don't know who you think you are, but you obviously aren't me, I remember my key."
"Why does she have to be so smart?" He stomped his foot. "Why can't it be something simple like, Open Sesame." Instantly the book snapped open to the last page occupied. Draco smirked. "Well, lookie here."
"We'd better go." Crabbe looked toward the Quidditch pitch. "Oh and you might want to change your voice back."
"I know that." Draco snapped. He shut the diary, looked around, and tapped his throat again. "Better?" He said in his own voice.
Crabbe nodded his head and they made their way to practice.
Back in the common room, Draco sat down on the couch and opened the diary again. He flipped though the pages and found a family tree. He started at the bottom where Alexia's name appeared and started tracing upward.
"Draco Malfoy!" Alexia came sprinting down the stairs. "How DARE you open my diary and go through it. That's MY privet stuff!" She grabbed the diary from his hands and put it in her pocket.
"You dropped it." He stood up in his defense.
"That doesn't give you a right to open it." She boiled. "I knew I should've put that slug jinx on it.
"You shouldn't have dropped it."
"Oh go suck an egg, Malfoy." You just wait till my father hears about this. "She stomped off.
"Like her father can do anything to me." He snorted and walked out the door and up to the Great Hall. He stopped Harry sitting by himself at the Gryffindor table. "Friends finally wise up, Potter?"
"Shove off Malfoy."
"No, better not Potter. I have a lot to say to you." He stood over him. "You may as well give up now, you'll never win."
"What are you talking about, Malfoy?" Harry tried to stand up.
"You can't win." Draco pushed him back down.
"Win what?" Flashes of Voldemort and Cedric, and everything that has happened over the past two years raced through his mind.
"Anything, but mostly Quidditch." Draco snorted. "We've already had a great practice, and we're going to beat you." He strolled back over to his table. "And the house cup is ours this year."
"You say that ever year, Malfoy." Harry turned back around to ignore him.
"Don't make me mad, Potter, remember, I'm a prefect."
"How can I forget, with you shoving that stupid badge in my face every chance you get."
"Oh, you're just jealous that you didn't get one."
"And you're just mad because Alexia wont' give you the time of day."
"What?" He stood. "What makes you think she's blowing me off?"
"Because she talks to me all the time." Harry smirked at him.
"Why you little…" Draco started after him.
"Is there a problem here?" Professor Snape appeared in the doorway.
"No." Draco ground his teeth.
"Good. Malfoy, your father is here to see you." Snape looked down at him.
"Fine." Draco stormed off to the common room. As soon as he stepped foot into the common room his father started in on him.
"Draco, didn't I tell you to be nicer to her? You have no idea what could have happened if I hadn't intervened? Do you?" He fumed.
"No, what?" Draco crossed his arms.
"Don't use that tone with me." He pointed to the chair. "Sit! If I hadn't promised to make you behave you could have been in a world of trouble. She's a lot more like you than you think. Be nicer to her. Her father doesn't play around, and neither does the rest of her family." He pulled up his robe sleeves to reveal a freshly made scar. "Be good!" He fixed his robes and stepped into the fireplace and vanished.
Alexia came down the steps. "Be good." She snickered.
"Who are you?" Draco stood up and gaped at her.
"Oh alright, alright." She sat on the couch. "I'm not going to tell you everything because I don't like sharing with people, I've never been made too and I won't start now, but I will tell you what I want to tell you." She pulled her legs up Indian style underneath her. "I'm a Fowler, my mother is a Fowler and so is my father, and we originated here." She placed her hands on her knees.
"Here in…"
"No, Draco, but close enough."
"So, what you're telling me is you're a…"
"Pureblood, yeah." She looked at him. "Have been my whole life."
"What does your father do?" He tried to pick her brain.
Alexia smiled. "Sorry, Malfoy, my information center has shut down." She looked into his eyes.
Draco met her gaze and couldn't look away.
"Draco, Draco." Crabbe snapped his fingers in front of Malfoy's face.
Draco blinked out of the stare and looked over at Crabbe. "What do you want?"
"You started speaking in some weird language and in some weird voice."
"I was doing what?" Draco raised his eyebrow. He looked at Alexia.
She turned her head from the fire to look at him and winked. "What's a matter Malfoy?"
"What did you do?" He said exasperated.
"What are you talking about?" She pushed her eyebrows together. "Crabbe, could you do me a favor and get me a drink?" She smiled at him. He nodded and walked away. "I was reading your soul." She chuckled.
"My mind you mean?"
"No darlin' you're soul. It reveals even more than you know about yourself."
"How DARE…" He tried to yell at her.
"Told you I'd get you back."
"What?" He growled.
"Oh, PLEASE! Only the Dark Lord himself can read a soul, and only those who know about him would get as mad as you when threatened." She shook her head.
Draco tried to come up with a comeback, but drew a blank. "I can't believe you made me blank, no one makes me draw a blank." He pouted and walked up to his room.
"Here's your drink." Crabbe handed her the cup.
"Go tell Malfoy about our trick." She nodded toward the boy's dorm.
"He's not going to be too happy." Crabbe cracked his knuckles.
"He'll get over it. Tell him I want to talk to him at breakfast tomorrow."
"Okay." He put his hand on her shoulder. "Good night."
"Night."
Crabbe stalked off up the stairs and into his room. "Malfoy, there's something that I have to tell you."
"What?" Draco barked.
"Well, we, Alexia and me, got together and planned a trick to play on you. I didn't want to, but then she gave me that puppy face and I did. Anyway, you never spoke funny, or said anything. It was all a joke." He stepped backward to avoid the anticipating blows from Draco.
"A joke?" He stood up. "I've never been the butt of a joke." He thought about it. "What does that mean?"
"Sounds like she's flirting." Roger, a roommate of Draco's, came over from his bed.
"She's what?" Draco whipped his head around to see him.
"Flirting." Roger chuckled. "Surely you've had someone flirt with ya before."
"Well actually no, no other girl has even caught my attention." He looked toward the door.
"So, does that mean you like her?"
"NO!" Draco snapped.
"Ah, when one is too hasty to answer that usually means you do." Roger pulled up a chair. "Listen, Malfoy, there is nothing wrong with having a crush on someone."
"I don't have a crush on her, Roger!" He snorted and sat on his bed. "I don't like her. I don't like her at all." He grabbed his Defense Against the Dark Arts book and opened to the chapter about Voldemort.
The next morning he woke up to the yells coming from the common room. He, not wanting to miss any action, ran downstairs to see Crabbe & Goyle rolling in the floor clutching their stomachs. "What's this?" He nudged Goyle with his foot.
They couldn't stop moaning, Crabbe managed to point to a bottle of something on the table.
Draco picked it up and looked at them. "It's gone!" He looked at them. "You drank it all didn't you?"
"Of course they did." Alexia joined him and the rest of the house. "Here" She gave them each a glass of potion.
Within seconds the yelling and moaning had stopped and Goyle was helping Crabbe up onto the couch.
"Better?" She bent down to look at their faces.
"Thanks, that was horrible." Goyle rubbed his still aching stomach.
"What was it?"
"Seems like it was a gastrous potion." Professor Snape walked in.
"Yeah, I figured it was, s I gave them the detrosag potion to counteract it." Alexia patted Crabbe's leg. "But they really should go to Madam Pomfrey to be completely cured."
"Yes," Snape looked around the room. "You, make sure they get there."
"Okay." Roger helped them up and they disappeared into the dark hallway.
"Good work, Alexia, now get ready for classes." He nodded to her and walked away.
Alexia grabbed the glasses from the floor and started back to her room to retrieve her books.
"Wait." Draco peered at her through slitted eyes. "I'm a prefect…"
"Point…Malfoy?" She interrupted.
"Don't interrupt me." He grabbed her arm.
"Get over yourself." She jerked her arm out of his grasp and walked off.
"No one does that." Draco hissed. "Not to me."
"She just thinks she's better." A few Slytherin girls surrounded him. "Honestly Draco, I don't know why you put up with her." One of the girls brushed his arm with her fingers. "Can't your dad take care of her?" She pouted. "Doesn't he have connections?"
Draco looked around at all the girls. "Connections?" He gulped. Visions of Voldemort, the death eaters, and his father ran through his mind.
"Yeah, I thought he worked for the Ministry."
"Oh." He let out a sigh of relief. "Yes, he does work for the Ministry, but why do you want her gone so bad?"
"She's bad for the house." Another girl jumped into the conversation. "IU saw her talking to Potter a couple of days ago."
"What!" Draco's blood boiled.
"Yeah," the last girl picked up on his anger and wanted to egg it on. "I do believe that I saw her sitting with him outside just yesterday."
"Oh, all of you need to go to the bathroom."
"What? Why?" The first girl scowled.
"Because you're all full of crap!" She shook her head. "Sitting with Potter? Okay, if you say so." She snickered, and then headed out of the common room and vanished.
Draco broke free from the girl's barrier and grabbed his bag. "I'll take care of it." He then went to class.
As the weeks went by Alexia and Draco acted awkward to around each other. Neither of them spoke to each other. Alexia buried herself in her books and spent a lot of time with Roger and the other, older Slytherin boys. Around the middle of December the decorations for Christmas were beginning to appear all over the castle. The first semester was rounded up and all the students were in a frantic state of packing, studying, and trying to get everything done. The Slytherin team was getting very good. They had already beaten Ravenclaw, and was training harder than ever to beat Gryffindor when the next term started. A week before the students were to go home for holiday, Dumbledore gathered them all into the Great Hall.
"We have a guest speaker today." He opened his arms in welcome.
Damian Fowler came striding up the walkway between the Slytherin and Hufflepuff table.
Alexia squealed.
"This is Mr. Damian Fowler. He is a nobleman of the Old Wizards. He is a very important member of the Ministry, and a much respected member of the Wizarding community."
"Thank you Headmaster." He said as he approached the platform. "I'm here to talk to you about…" He went on and on about his job. Alexia listened intently to every word her father said. After Damian was done he made his way down to Alexia. "Can I have a word with you?"
She stood up and followed him out of the Great Hall and into the foyer. "What is it?"
"Sweetheart, I know how much you had your heart set on coming home for Christmas holiday but…"
"Something's come up and you have to go away." She sighed and looked at the floor.
"I'm really sorry."
"Daddy, I never get to spend anytime with my job…" He put a hand on her shoulder.
"Well tell him to shove it. I'm more important." She wiped a tear from her eye.
"You don't mean that?" He cupped her face in his hands.
"You know I don't. But I would like some time with you." She looked into his eyes.
"How about I stay here a little longer and we go for a walk." He straightened up.
"Really?" Alexia's eyes lit up.
"Really. Which way should we go?" He looked around.
"Outside."