A/N: Let's see, have I any acknowledgments for this chapter?... ah yes! The chairs inching toward(s) the fire I found from Pirate Perian's "Of Wolf and Wizard." It's not her most recommendable fic (which is merely a compliment to the rest of 'em, never fear!), but I only wish I could do a Sirius like the one in there.
Chapter III – Two Nieces Take Up Quills
This is a half-and-half chapter. It's also short.
Within those hallowed (and ever-changing) halls of Hogwarts there were, at the same time, but never once speaking to each other, two girls of the same year. Both wrote to their aunts-by-marriage before their first week of their sixth year was out. Our first half:
4-8-71
Dear Aunt Helen,
As promised, I've been keeping an eye on your boy. I don't think you have anything to worry about. James has made himself popular, as usual. He's the pet of half the older students because of all us nice cousins and our nice friends, and lords it completely over the other first years, all of whom like it. (Of course, he steers clear of the Black heir who was Sorted here into Gryffindor.) It must be nice to be the youngest. I didn't walk around Hogwarts like I'd owned it the first night.
How are the dinners to promote the Merpeople Manifesto going? My mum says you're barking about them. She also says you and Uncle Lot don't discipline James enough. That's all right with
Your loving niece
Mathilde
who then flicked down her downy quill, waved the parchment in the air so that the ink would dry, and quickly folded it. She was keeping half an ear on her friends' conversation. Lorraine was squealing about some Ravenclaw boy as Barbara did her hair. Joan and Corey were having one of the loudest and projectile-ish games of wizarding chess ever. Mitchell and Manuel were being disgusting and charming. Mathilde smiled to herself. It was good to be back. It was also nice to own the place, now even if not on the first night.
Gryffindor is the nosiest common room. Paper planes were being charmed to slam into the sides of people's heads, whether through ineptitude or mischief. Flavia Birtwhistle was singing to a willing audience of five and an unwilling audience of the entire common room, minus five. One of the sixth-year prefects was yelling at some third-years who kept lobbing objects of unknown magical properties in the fire, to see the effects thereof, which mainly seemed to be violent sparks that kept singeing the stage-struck Flavia. In the midst of this chaos Mathilde looked around for her sister and cousin. The latter was not in the common room, although his curfew must have been close. Mathilde shook her head. Juliana was trying to be studious whilst Jerry Manderling tried to get her to not be studious. Mathilde smiled. Outside the windows here at the tip of Gryffindor Tower, there was a lovely haze of deep gold.
The bulletin board was groaning under one week's worth of student-posted notices. There were notices for all sorts of clubs' first meetings of the year – Gryffindor Quidditch team, choir, flute choir, lyre choir, Chess Club, Charms Club, the junior branch of the Wizard Writers Wring (whose reputation the malapropisms of such members as Lionel Lovegood have destroyed), the Skeleton Company (for budding thespians), the Gobstones Club, the Transatlantic Penpals, the Anglo-Hispanic Penpals, the Christmas Carolers' Club, a support group for stutterers, the Stargazers' Society, the Kenmare Kestrels' Fan Club (junior branch), The Triad (the newspaper, mostly run by Ravenclaws but whose meetings were always widely promulgated in wishful hopes), various intramurals, and a rather mysterious entity called the The Purple Lethifolds' Yokohama Left Fingleberry Two-Knut Association for the Chronically Absurd, the content of whose meetings was classified by those who knew, and not very actively pursued by those who didn't. There were lists of wanted and offered Chocolate Frog cards. Some anonymous and unread wit kept posting parodies of famous Juvnip sonnets with Hogwarts references. Some much more appreciated artist had been caricaturing members of the staff for about a year now, and all five were still posted. The prefects could be unfairly selective about what was posted and what wasn't – the caricatures, yes, but the notices of The Purple Lethifolds seldom lasted long. They had forbidden the practice of posting holiday pictures, but their friends' pictures often stayed. So did Bette Turpin's with her tan and Muggle swimgear.
Outside they could faintly hear explosions: Peeves the Poltergeist was about. The Fat Lady, guardian of Gryffindor common, was shrieking at him. With the courage typical of their House, all the prefects were edging each other to be the one to go out there and face the undignified practical jokes that would result from trying to get rid of Peeves. Earlier that week, regardless of her status, Persis Greengrass had wound up with an egg cracked over her head, yolk tricking down her red-gold hair, and the round little man floating above her and cackling abominably. "The rigours of Head Girlship!" Tiberius McLaggen had called cheerfully.
They hadn't spoken since.
Personally Mathilde had been very amused. She was supposed to like Persis – their families were friendly – but Persis could be hard to share a dormitory with. But then Mathilde regretted her amusement and made up for it by letting Persis copy a Potions assignment. Persis copied like an insatiable plagiaristic succubus. Mathilde wasn't entirely innocent herself – but then, she was not Head Girl, and an example to one and all.
Mathilde told herself that she was being mean-spirited, and to quit. She did.
James came in, the magnetic centre of rather a slew of first- and second-years. "You're late, Potter!" called Mike Zeller lazily, perhaps feeling as though he should fulfill some prefectorial duty for at least one instance that day.
"You depend on Juliana to pass Potions, Zeller!" James shot back. "Right, Jule?"
Dear God. He was a monster. Little princeling Black could never have lorded over the Slytherin common room as James did the Gryffindor.
"Oh, leave him alone, Mike," agreed Juliana absently, from where she and Jerry were bent over something at their coffee table. "Like you're always on time."
Mathilde shot him a glare, which James blithely ignored. The whole crew around him was rather in an uproar. Mathilde didn't even want to know.
---
4-8-71
Dear Aunt Denebola,
I take up my quill to you not out of any presumption, but I'm aware that it is imperative that you are not caught off guard by tale-tellers and gossips. I also doubt Sirius himself will tell you. Your elder son has been Sorted into Gryffindor.
It will be more difficult, but of course he will always have a watchful eye kept on him at Hogwarts by,
Your respectful niece
Bellatrix
Bellatrix Black was not a favourite of her aunt's. Nor of any of the adult Blacks. She was too headstrong, too unruly, too clumsy, too unmaidenly, too inept. Of course, their opinion of her improved after she had spent a few years at school. Absence augments affection, and all. She was not the best of students, but the Blacks didn't care for such things. She had powerful reserves of magical power (which she showed off most immodestly at nearly every soiree by setting off her abundant showers of wand-sparks), knew what she was about in the important things, was a voracious reader of all the right books, and a leader. As of now, her seventh year, she was the undisputed queen of Slytherin, which danced to her tune.
No – I suppose somewhat disputed. Another Slytherin prefect, the male seventh-year, Lucius Malfoy – he did look down upon her. It was the plan between the two families that Lucius would marry one of the Black girls, and originally everyone had rather expected it to be Bellatrix, for they were of the same year. But it wasn't quite working. Malfoys, being fast climbers in the social game in this century (after a century of decline which the Blacks were polite enough to only very seldom allude to), did care for decorum and high marks and sanity and trifles like that. Lucius Malfoy was the leader of a different segment of Slytherin, and whilst his and hers were not exactly in competition, nor were they exactly comfortable together. Lucius's followers were political and ambitious – Bixby, Yaxley, Jugson, the Eames brothers. Bellatrix's – Avery, Rosier, Wilkes, and the Lestrange brothers most notably – didn't understand politics even when politics was trying to throw them into prison – except perhaps for her most recent addition. Who was currently sitting beside her as she sealed her letter. Bellatrix fully intended to make him go to the Owlery, find her owl Onyx, and post the letter for her, but she would wait until it was late, past first-years' curfew. Instead she picked up a book, as had he.
This is the Slytherin common room. Unlike Gryffindor (and Ravenclaw), Slytherin does not reside in a tower but in one of the larger and safer basements. Also unlike Gryffindor and Ravenclaw (and Hufflepuff), the chairs in the common room do not inch closer to the fire once the temperature drops. They're well-trained, those chairs. Only consider how cold it gets here. In the Hufflepuff basement the temperature is a good degree or two colder than the rest of the school, it being a basement. In Slytherin, it's closer to ten degrees. Rumour has it that's because back when Salazar Slytherin was still alive (and back when Slytherin truly was all pure blood) he wanted to "chill out" any student too poor and too wimpy. Evidently quite of few of those who fell under those categories hopped right over to Hufflepuff and founded Hufflepuff dynasties. Hufflepuff was rather a crowded House – but no digressions! Back to Slytherin. Back to its cosy common. Whose bulletin board has but four small, perfectly uncluttered, pertinent notices.
There were endlessly tall windows, or dark green curtains over facsimiles of windows (we're in a basement, recall). The great fireplace is rather noisier yet rather dimmer in light than Gryffindor's. Instead of candles confined to the walls, there are magical balls of pure white light dancing overhead. If you sit down on one of the stately old chairs with a book, sooner or later one of those lights will bop rather merrily over to you. There's quite a lot of people playing chess. The room is crowded, but subdued. In Gryffindor it's the common room that's noisy and the dormitories that are the bastions of peace. In Slytherin it's the opposite and corridors can crackle with the tension – there is so little unity in Slytherin. "Yes," admitted Ludmilla Vance in one of her recent articles, "in Slytherin we're all conservatives, but we're all different kinds of conservatives." But nor was that true – mostly you can't count on Ludmilla Vance for accuracy – some of the most radical radicals have come from Slytherin. Not very many. But any there have been actually had an impact. Slytherin is results-oriented. It's also west-oriented, and there are some splendid Scottish sunsets where the day goes down fierily from the Branched Tower, which sits right atop the Slytherin common room.
One other thing about the Slytherin common room: there are empty chairs, yet some Slytherins are on the floor or on chairs far from the fire. Not much like Gryffindor, where the phrase "move ya feet, lose ya seat" practically originated. Slytherins will challenge each other for seats if necessary. It's not half so cutthroat as some claim it is – on a day-to-day basis – but if you try out the chair of someone more powerful than yourself, you will be shooed out when he returns, or else you will be challenged to a duel, and come to think of it you might get the duel anyway, though not as a sure-and-certain thing.
"A sure-and-certain thing" is a Slytherin-original phrase. Gryffindors still won't use it – not so much on anti-Slytherin principle as because "a sure-and-certain thing" is so foreign to their contemplations. As are contemplations.
Oh, look – some poor presumptuous non-Black second-year is getting evicted just now. Rabastan Lestrange has returned from somewhere-or-another, a seventh-year with a closed face that does not really distinguish him from many other seventeen-year-old boys. Which is the scary thing.
He sat, an arm on each armrest, examining the rest of the room – rather restlessly, but you don't just go up to someone without scouting out matters first. He first considered seeing if it was safe to talk to – but, no, Bella was here. And then, after a last scan, he saw something that made him do a double-take. Another scan, to consider things some more. Then he sauntered over, trying to convince himself that he wasn't scared of Bellatrix Black, and her relentless blows to his self-esteem.
"'Evening, Bella."
"Hello, Rab." There was a tacit question in her voice: Why don't you have anything to do? But she kept reading rather than ask. He waited, shifting from one foot to another. Then, like the carefully bred gentleman he was, he upturned the chair of a nobody fourth-year girl and sat down on it backwards, considering them with dull eyes.
"Say, Bella," he said after a moment. "What's that?" He inclined his head to the small body presumably hidden under a greasy dark head. It was clear that Rabastan had come over to find this and would not settle until informed.
Bellatrix looked up with her usual flattening gravity. "Pardon?" She managed to make the word mean the opposite of what it originally meant.
"What's that?"
"His name's Snape, and he's the most accomplished curse-caster among all the first years."
"Who?"
In point of fact he was the most accomplished curse-caster going up to at least sixth year, likely seventh, and possibly more so than herself. But Bellatrix wasn't about to lavish the praise of that acknowledgement upon him.
"He is not," said Bellatrix, "pureblooded."
"My mother is," said the miniature curse-caster quickly, in the indefinitely gendered voice of the pre-adolescent. Rabastan had to start laughing as the boy looked up. He was so little, and so ugly, and so eager, and so vulnerable, and sitting right here next to the queen of Slytherin as they both intently pursued their books, the common activity contrasting the two even more ludicrously than otherwise. And after that guffaw he proceeded to ignore the little one.
God, if there was one thing Severus Snape hated, it was being ignored!