A/N: Quick shout out to Serenity10116 for reviewing every chapter! Reviews (and being done with tech week) give me motivation to write and share more!

The days until September 1st passed so very slowly for Evanna. Though she begged, she was not let out of the Manor and its grounds again. Her father's training took on a harsher quality, every day ending with more bruises and scrapes than Evanna could count. Every now and again, Draco would give her pitying looks, but her mother barely looked at her, caught up in her own version of hell.

The day she would finally escape, Evanna woke before the dawn and rushed into her brother's room.

"Get up, get up, get up!" she crowed in victory. Draco rolled over, covering his head with the blankets.

"Geroff me, brat," he growled.

"But today is Hogwarts and you need to get up!" she singsonged.

This time, Draco more growled than woke, shoving Evanna off the bed. She landed on the floor with an almighty thump, aggravating a bruise that she had gained by not being quick enough to duck a piece of chair after a particularly brutal reducto. Evanna frowned, fingering the wand she had not let go of since she bought it in Diagon Alley. With a smirk, she pointed it at her brother, snoring under his downy comforter.

"Aguamenti frigus!" she hissed.

A shot of freezing cold water spewed from the tip of her wand, completely drenching Draco. He shot out of bed with a sputter, shaking his head like a dog.

"EVANNA!" he shouted.

Evanna giggled, and took off through his door, running down the hallway to escape him as he tore through behind her, shouting and carrying on. She dodged his own streams of freezing water-Draco's aim was no where close to Lucius' after all-as he yelled curses after her.

"Evanna, Draco!" their mother's voice sounded sharp behind them. "Stop this at once!"

The two children came to a stop in front of their mother, both panting and one dripping wet. Narcissa frowned at them, managing to appear regal even in a dressing gown.

"Now, really, what would your father say?" she scolded. Draco and Evanna both looked down, trying to contain their lingering giggles. "You'd best be thanking Merlin that he was called away on business and not around for that little display. Now go and get ready-I will take you to the station."

Both Draco and Evanna scurried to do as they were bid. Evanna wrinkled her nose at the frothy silver robes her mother had laid out for her; unfortunately, the majority of the magic that she had been taught by her father was more useful in a battle with another wizard than with some frilly clothing. Reluctantly, she brought them behind the changing screen, scowling at her reflection after she put them on.

"Hurry up, children!" her mother called.

Evanna smoothed her skirt one last time, as though that would help with the poofiness, and walked out the door, knowing the house elves would send her trunk along to the train station. Draco walked out of his room, directly across from her own. She noted that he, too, was dressed in silvery robes, though with notably less lace. Her scowl deepened.

"What was mother thinking? We were hardly named for the Gemini constellation," she said. Draco sneered.

"You need to put on something else," he said.

"You think if I could have I wouldn't have?" Evanna replied incredulously.

"Well all of my autumn robes are packed in my trunk!"

"So are mine!"

"Draco, Evanna," Narcissa said with a smile, "you both look lovely."

The siblings groaned. There was no getting out of this twinned horror.

"Now, now, none of that," Narcissa chided, licking a thumb and pushing Draco's hair back, as though the boy hadn't already used a tub of Sleakeasy's. "You two are going to Hogwarts today!"

I'll see him again.

Evanna wasn't sure where the thought had come from, but she knew it was true. The infamous Harry Potter and his scar-the boy with the broken glasses and brilliant green eyes-he would be there. And away from her family…. Who was she kidding? Any opportunity she might have had for friendship with the boy had ended the year previous with her brother. She felt annoyed with him all over.

Her mother had grabbed them both by the wrist fairly radiating with energy that she had not had since before the ill-fated trip to Diagon Alley. Evanna braced herself for the sensation of Apparition-like a tube that was far too small for them all to be squeezed through, constricting her organs into weird shapes, squeezing all the air from her lungs-

And then they slammed into the ground and it was like a mind-crushing cacophony of sound around her. She slapped her hands to her ears, tears welling up in her eyes as she was dimly aware of falling to her knees, not that any of the bustling students or their families noticed.

...more and more crowded every year..

...cannot believe she got Prefect over me…

...broke up over the summer, so maybe I…

...where could those two idiots be…

...I was just going to bring my dog, but no…

From far away, she felt her mother clutching at her shoulders, Draco saying something worriedly. Her mother shooed him on, pulling Evanna to her feet and dragging her onto the train, closing the door to the carriage. The noise died away a little, though it left behind a splitting headache.

"Oh, dear-I had suspected, but I wasn't ever sure," Narcissa was saying, biting her lip in a nervous habit that alarmed Evanna even more than her own reaction to the train station outside. "I knew I should have told you about the possibility-but Lucius insisted I-well."

Narcissa looked down at her hands.

Why did I ever listen to him?

Evanna looked at her mother in confusion, unable to fully process her own thoughts, much less her ever-poised mother's strange behavior.

"Mother," she said, then thought better of whatever she thought she had been about to say. "Have you a Headache Relief Potion?"

"Oh, yes, of course, dear," Narcissa said, and with a wave of her wand conjured a small glass bottle. "Go ahead and drink it, but I'm afraid it may not do too much good. But-here-"

Her mother was unclipping something from around her wrist, and before Evanna quite knew it, she had a bracelet on-something that looked just as ancient and powerful as it felt. The noise around her ebbed away. She looked at her mother in surprise.

"Keep that on," Narcissa advised. "Other women in our family have had to wear it throughout the centuries-though your father had thought it gone from our line. I would suggest you perhaps stay in this carriage though; too many emotions are running high on the platform."

"But, Mother, what is it?" Evanna asked. Narcissa gave her a hard look, but before she could say anything, there was a long train whistle, indicating it was nearly eleven o'clock.

"I am sorry, dear, I should have said something sooner," she said. "You did so well in the alley I just-I will write you alright? And be sure to owl me what House you end up in, yes?"

With that, Narcissa Malfoy kissed the top of Evanna's head and Disapparated from the train, leaving the purple-eyed girl to blink in wonderment.