Draco POV
It was still unbearably hot.
September first had come and Draco was officially not on the Hogwarts Express, headed back to school. Ginny had not responded to him-he was not sure whether to be offended or relieved at that. Given that he had broken up with her via owl post, he ought to be grateful that she hadn't found a way to jinx him in a letter.
But it still stung. Hurt, really, if he was being truthful with himself. Like a burning knife to the heart. But Draco made it a point to not be truthful with himself.
His mentor had noticed his black mood and insisted he take a day off to explore the streets of Cairo. So Draco did not even have his studies to distract him, as instead he was forced to roam around the muggy crowded streets with only his black thoughts for company. Had Ginny accepted his gift? Did she hate him? Had she already moved on? He knew she had always had a ridiculous crush on Potter-with his sister truly out of the way, had Potter realized the gem standing right in front of him?
His sister. Not his sister. His cousin. Had she boarded the Hogwarts Express, as though she wasn't the heir of the most dangerous wizard of their time? As though she herself wasn't set to become even more dangerous than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Draco stopped himself in the middle of the busy street. That thought… that thought was dangerous even on a different continent.
"Back for more jewelry for your girlfriend?" called a voice from one of the booths.
Draco whipped his head around to see that he had arrived at the cart where he had bought the amulet for Ginny. The young witch had a smirk on her face.
"Don't you Egyptian witches have some sort of school you go to?" he asked. "Uagadou has a good reputation-"
"Uagadou is several countries away," the girl said, rolling her eyes. "My father did not want for me to travel… Wizarding England is not the only dangerous place in this world."
"Then how do you-"
"Please, my parents are more than accomplished enough. I will learn more from them," she scoffed.
Draco considered this for a moment. Certainly, the amulets they produced spoke of wizards of high caliber, but to go without wizarding school…
"Aren't you lonely?" he asked. "I mean-do you know anyone your age who has magic?"
"I have met you, have I not?"
She gave him a funny look, up through her eyelashes, and Draco felt flushed, and not just from the hot, Egyptian sun.
"Hardly, I don't even know your name-"
"Auset," the girl said. "Though I don't know yours."
The girl's dark eyes were sparkling. Draco almost smirked, feeling like his old self again for the first time in a while.
"Malfoy," he said, not bothering to hide the pride he had once felt at his family name; not here, when he was miles away from home where the name had once meant something. "Draco Malfoy."
Sirius POV
Sirius didn't know how Moony had done it.
Remus had always been the least confident of the Marauders if one didn't count the rat, which Sirius definitely did not. Prongs and Padfoot had always been the ones to suck all the air out of the room with the sheer size and energy of who they were. Of course, they had been teenagers then; no wars or dementors or betrayals or deaths on their minds. Now that Sirius was standing in front of teenagers himself, all of them having very recently believed him to be a crazy mass murderer, things were different. Luckily his first class of the morning had a rather small roster. As the fifth year Slytherins and Gryffindors filed in, they were whispering to each other, arguing over who got to sit in the back row. Sirius had to smile when Ginny Weasley flounced in and took the front center table without saying a word to her classmates. She winked at him.
"This better be as good as Professor Lupin," she said just loud enough for him to hear. Sirius barked a laugh, causing a few students in the back to jump.
It was just before the bell rang that his cousin made her appearance. Sirius watched the girl that his godson had inexplicably attached himself to as she made her way to the front as well. Right before Evanna Malfoy reached the front center table, Ginny deliberately dropped her bookbag onto the seat directly beside her with a glare to Evanna. The Slytherin pursed her lips before simply taking the seat behind Ginny.
Sirius steeled himself with a breath then flicked his wand to slam the door shut behind a short Gryffindor who for some reason was carrying a camera. A girl in the back let out a little scream. The Malfoy girl gave a very un-Narcissa-like snort.
"Lesson one," Sirius said. "Your enemy is never late. So you should be early."
The students all straightened in their seats, pulling out their textbooks and all in all trying to show their new, somewhat deranged professor that they were competant students. Sirius smirked.
"Why are you getting out useless books?" he demanded.
"I would think that these are important to pass our OWLs, sir," Evanna Malfoy said, voice just shy of an impertinent. Sirius could see why his godson was so enamored.
"And who the hell told you I cared about that?" Sirius demanded. The Gryffindor boy with the camera nearly fell out of his seat while Ginny grinned wolfishly. Malfoy just held his stare. He had to fight a shiver.
"As some of you know firsthand, Defense Against the Dark Arts is far more important than textbooks or OWLs," he said. "Now, more than ever, this class is a matter of life or death. I frankly don't give a damn if you pass or if you get an OWL or if you do any of your homework. The Headmaster may or may not agree with me-I don't care. My purpose is for the majority of the students in this room to still be alive by the end of this war. Many of your classmates will not."
Ginny was no longer grinning and indeed most of the class looked quite distressed. Sirius had to clamp down on the faces that floated past his mind's eye-James, Lily, the Longbottoms, McKinnon, the Prewett twins. The size of this class was a testament to how many of his generation had been lost to the same damned war. Again, children were being made into soldiers, and again so many of them would not live to have their own children or to watch them grow up.
"Sir?" Malfoy said softly. "Are you alright?"
Sirius shook himself at his cousin's voice. The girl looked genuinely concerned. It made him think of Narcissa, before Hogwarts, when she was still the nurturer of the entire Black Clan.
"Each of you will pair with someone in the opposite House," he said. "We will be dueling today-I want to see what I'm working with. The rules-remain standing and don't do anything permanent or lethal."
"Does that mean we can use Dark Magic?" a Slytherin boy drawled. Malfoy whipped her head around and leveled a glare at him that reminded Sirius of a glare that would have had him running as a child. But it wasn't Narcissa that she reminded him of in that moment.
It was Bellatrix.
"Your rules are to remain standing and to not do anything permanent or lethal," he said again, forcing himself to stare down the Slytherin boy and not to study Evanna Malfoy. That was made harder by Malfoy whipping back around to face him, those odd eyes blown wide open.
Sirius made quick work of pairing them off based on their previous year rankings. Unsurprisingly, Evanna Malfoy and Ginny Weasley were the top of their respective Houses. Seeing the current animosity between the girls, Sirius was not entirely sure that he had made the right decision in pairing them together, but they were high enough above their classmates that it would not have been fair to any of the other students.
As he would expect from a child raised by Lucius Malfoy, Evanna bowed very formally to Ginny, even as the redhead did the bare minimum that tradition required. The girls paced the allotted amount of steps away from each other, Evanna taking a perfect stance that even Sirius could not find fault in. Ginny, on the other hand, barely turned around before she launched herself into the duel, shouting the incantation for the Bat Bogey Hex.
Malfoy stepped aside, the spell whizzing past her and hitting the boy with the camera square in the face.
"Careful with the aim," Sirius warned. "The last thing you want is to hit a friend instead of your enemy."
Ginny glanced at him just long enough to nod. Malfoy took the opportunity though, shooting off a silent hex that turned Ginny's skin green. Sirius had to suppress a chortle, moving on to some of the other students, assured that the girls had not taken advantage of the opportunity to completely demolish the other. Several of the boys had, predictably, taken things a little too far that Sirius had to quickly rectify.
Overall, the kids were just that-kids. They were not fighters, not by a long shot. Sirius could not shake the sense of wrongness that this war was still falling to them, that his generation and the ones previous had not done enough to keep them from it. They would not last a minute in the chaos of actual battle, but they should not have to. How dare the world expect that of them?
Sirius was being sucked into his anger at the whole world once again, his bitterness nearly overtaking him to the point that he did not immediately notice that the classroom had stilled to watch Malfoy and Ginny. The redhaired girl had all but abandoned her wand for more muggle methods. She had Malfoy firmly in a head lock, the other girl's face looking like she would likely be sporting quite the black eye come morning. Malfoy, too, had lost her wand at some point.
"Dirty, murdering scum-"
"-don't even know-"
"-probably just looking for the opportunity-"
"-I swear to Salazar, Weasley, if-"
"-kill us like you did your own-"
Sirius saw it coming before it did-Malfoy's eyes flashed that again made him think of his mad cousin. The energy in the room felt charged, dark, as Malfoy's eyes became almost black.
"Take cov-"
Sirius had barely managed to shield the students behind him when a pulse of dark energy shot out of Malfoy, throwing Ginny ten feet from her as the glass from all of the windows shattered inward. Ginny was sliced equally as much as Malfoy, both girls looking like something straight out of the horror films Marlene McKinnon had once dragged him to.
"Class dismissed," Sirius said quickly. Several Slytherins tried to go to Malfoy, as if looking for orders, while a few Gryffindors tried to go to Ginny. "I said class dismissed! Everyone out except for Weasley and Malfoy!"
There was just enough growl to his voice that the students hastened to listen, though, Sirius noted, the Slytherins waited for a nod from Malfoy.
"The hell was that?" he demanded, even as he magicked dittany to begin applying itself to the girls' wounds. "You two know more than anyone that we do not have the luxury of playing games!"
"If you'll excuse me, sir, I cannot help that Gryffindors are too simple to recognize any sort of nuance," Malfoy said between gritted teeth.
"I hope you noticed, Sirius, that she has clearly been using Dark Magic for a long time! She probably already has the Dark Mark!"
"How many times do I have to tell you-I do not have the Mark nor will I ever-"
"Then where the hell were you-"
"Not all of us can live in a fantasy land with no consequences-"
"No-my father was in St Mungo's for months last year!"
Sirius quickly cast a silencio charm over both teenaged girls, pinching his nose. He was thoroughly regretting his deal with Dumbledore, no matter how much he knew Harry would have hated being taken out of Hogwarts.
"Look, you two are in this class to learn how to survive, not to kill each other over schoolgirl squabbles!" Ginny opened her mouth as though she was going to say something, but Sirius' spell was still in effect. "I am sure they are very serious and make you want to claw each other's eyes out-I've been there-but it will not be in my classroom. Understood?"
He waited until both of them nodded before he released his spell. "I'll write you both notes if you want to go get cleaned up before your next class."
"It's fine, Professor Black," Ginny said, throwing another vicious glare at Malfoy. "I'd rather get out of here."
Though Ginny flounced out, Malfoy lingered. Her previous anger seemed to have faded and instead the girl seemed filled with some sort of insurmountable sadness. Sirius moved behind his desk to write the promised note. She took it silently and simply fiddled with the parchment in front of his desk.
"Ms Mal-" he stopped himself. This was someone important to his godson, however ill-advised that importance might be. "Evanna?"
The girl looked up, something about those strange eyes making her look much older than any fifth year girl should. "She doesn't know."
Sirius frowned. "Know what?"
Evanna looked at the door and without permission, silently shut and warded the door with her wand. It was impressive magic from someone so young. "She doesn't know that I was there. At the Ministry. She was my best friend, but now…."
Evanna trailed off, ducking her head. Again, Sirius found himself wishing that he had just taken Harry and fled to the Bahamas or somewhere equally luxurious instead of having to deal with the emotions of teenaged girls. He could imagine that Lily and Marlene were laughing at him, wherever they were now.
Sirius nodded slowly, coming around to sit on the desk. "So why don't you explain it to her?"
"The fewer people who know the better."
It sounded like a rehearsed answer. Sirius cleared his throat.
"I don't know if you realize, but we are family-"
"I know my genealogy, thank you," the girl said coolly. Of course, as a proper pureblood witch, she would know her entire family history from the time of Merlin, practically.
"I was trying to say-if you want out, I can help you," he said softly. "My-my brother did not reach out until it was too late. If I can help even one family member out of the Death Eaters, I will."
Her eyes flashed again, making her look like Bella as she rippedy up her left sleeve. There was nothing but pale skin there.
"I am not a Death Eater," she said again. Sirius held up his hands. She deflated a little. "Thank you for the note, Professor. Perhaps next time you could pair me two on one with some of the Slytherins instead of Gin-Weasley?"
Sirius had to hold back his chuckle at her cheekiness as his younger cousin swept from the room. Yes, he could understand Harry's fascination with the girl. He could only hope that that fascination would not be as disastrous as he feared.
A/N: It's been awhile! All I can say is that I am greatly regretting saying out loud last year that putting off starting teaching would allow me to have an easier first year-I think I jinxed myself! This year has been the furthest thing from easy! I'm afraid to put out there that things are settling for fear of jinxing myself again! So instead I will say, I hope you liked this chapter and I am going to do my best to update at least once a month during the school year. But, unfortunately, no promises.