Cassandra sat down in the empty train compartment, her trunk tucked away neatly beneath her seat. Like every year, she and her grandfather had arrived at platform nine and three quarters early, allowing them to avoid the crowd of late arrivals as well as the scorn Cassandra was used to receiving whenever walking about in public. At thirteen, the girl struck an uncanny resemblance to her infamous mother. With long, thick, shining black hair that cascaded in waves down her torso, smooth pale skin, and the delicate but strong facial features that were a mark of the Black family, her looks should've garnered her admiration. Instead, most people's reaction to her appearance fell somewhere between fear and hatred.
Because of that, the young witch both loved and loathed the end of summer holidays. She looked forward to spending time among her peers, the few wizards in Britain who liked or disliked her not based solely on her parentage, but because they had come to know Cassandra Lestrange in her own right. On the other hand, a new school year meant a new slew of first years, who this year would most likely include an eleven year boy whose name made her stomach twist in knots. She took a deep breath, centering herself. If the boy, or anyone else became a problem, she would deal with them.
Hogwarts had no shortage of students with family members who'd been slain by her parents' side of the war, and she was used to spending the first couple months of term in constant vigilance, lest someone decided to settle a score. She'd taken to carrying a bezoar on her person at all times since receiving a box of poisoned candy for Valentine's Day on her first year from an "anonymous admirer", and she had more dueling practice as a third year than most students preparing for their N.E.W.T.S.
Some time later, the door to her compartment slid open, and a familiar face appeared.
"There you are," the boy said, walking in. "How long have you been in here? You're always so bloody early."
"Spares me from having to elbow the riff-raff," Cassandra replied, and the two teenagers hugged warmly in greeting.
"You're a sight for sore eyes, Lestrange. If I had to spend one more day in the company of my idiot cousins, I might've stabbed myself in the eye with my wand," the young wizard said, taking the seat opposite his best friend.
"I suppose the brain damage would probably put you at the same intelligence level as the rest of the Puceys. You'd finally belong, Adrian," she said, smiling.
"Perish the thought," the young wizard replied, putting his trunk away in a corner.
The train started moving, and Cassandra turned to the window, watching the station disappear.
Another boy walked in and slid the compartment door shut behind him.
"Hey Adrian, Cassandra."
"Nice to see you, Flint," she said.
"Or shall we address you exclusively as captain now?" Adrian asked cheekily. "Oh great leader, he the possessor of all Quidditch wisdom..."
"Don't even start," the newly-appointed Quidditch captain proclaimed, pointing at Adrian. He threw himself on the seat by younger boy's side. "I've already been approached by six different second-years asking when tryouts are going to be. We're not even in the castle yet!"
"Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Marcus," Cassandra said, chuckling with Adrian at their captain's distress.
"Anyways, I figured I'd sit with the two of you, since people are usually too scared of Lestrange to bother her - no offense, Cassandra."
"None taken," she replied easily.
The trio talked about their summers and their class loads for the upcoming school year as the train sped through the British countryside. After a couple hours, Lee Jordan, a Gryffindor third year, slid back their door and said, "DADA bets, anyone?"
"Not me," Marcus replied.
Cassandra and Adrian looked at each other. This was one of their favorite games.
"Ok," Adrian started. "So, first year the winner was 'forced to flee the castle after trying to kill students in a convoluted plot,' and second year, 'disappeared without clues after Christmas break.' I'm going with… fired for sleeping with a seventh year."
"All right," the budding bookie said, jotting the Slytherin boy's bet down on a piece of parchment, that he held on top of a box in which he deposited the galleon Adrian handed him. Cassandra thought she saw a furry arachnid leg peeking out of the box, but didn't say anything. The boy had probably instructed the animal to protect the galleons collected for the annual wager placed by students on the terrible fate that usually fell upon the wizard hired to be their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Smart. "What about you, Lestrange?"
"I'm putting a galleon on killed by an acromantula in the Forbidden Forest," she said, taking inspiration from Lee's choice in guardian animal.
"Nice. I don't think we got that one yet," Jordan said, looking over the parchment. "Nice doing business with you."
As the door was closed, Cassandra turned to her friend. "Teacher-student affair, Adrian? Really? How pedestrian."
"Acromantula in the Forbidden Forest?" The boy countered.
"What? There's a whole colony of them there. Klaus kept bringing me their dead babies as gifts last year, took me forever to convince him having dead spiders the size of a small dog dropped on me from the sky was not my idea of a nice gift without hurting his feelings," she explained.
Adrian shuddered. "Where is your creepy pet, by the way?"
"What are you, a muggle?" Cassandra chided. "Since he's bonded to me, Klaus is my familiar, not a pet. And he's making his own way to the castle. He'd never forgive me if put him in a cage."
"You mean he'd peck your eyes out," Adrian replied.
"He wouldn't seriously injure me," Cassandra protested. "At most, he might rip some of my hair out. Ravens are brilliant creatures, but they can be terribly temperamental. And you know how vengeful Klaus is, so I'd be careful about insulting him where he might hear you."
"Yeah, we all remember the Weasley incident of '90." Marcus said, and all three teenagers laughed at the memory of the twin Gryffindor pranksters running through the great hall trying to escape the conspiracy of ravens lead by Klaus pursuing the duo, violently pecking at them before Professor McGonagall managed to stun the birds.
"Well, it's not my fault they took my warning about Klaus as a challenge. They had it coming, kidnapping and turning him red and gold like they did. It took days for that spell to wear off," Cassandra said.
"He did try to eat their brother's rat," Marcus said.
"I would've bought him another one," Cassandra said defensively. Honestly, it was a mystery how the rodent had survived so long with all the owls and cats roaming the castle.
"On the subject of Weasleys, can you believe Charles chose not to go pro?" Adrian said.
"Talk about wasted potential," Marcus said, proceeding to go on about the pool of mediocre players Oliver Wood, the new Gryffindor captain, would have to pick his new seeker, and how this year's cup was theirs to lose. Meanwhile, Cassandra and Adrian exchanged amused looks. That was not why Adrian had brought up that particular topic.
Despite their opposite House and familial loyalties, the older Weasley brother had been the star of every single romantic fantasy Cassandra had had since the beginning of second year, when after a Slytherin-Gryffindor quidditch match, shirtless, muscular and sweaty Gryffindor captain Charlie Weasley had shaken her hand and complimented her on her skill as a beater. 'Vicious arm you got there, Lestrange.' Those six words had gotten her through endless hours of Binn's dull lectures on the goblin rebellions.
And she wasn't the only one. During the last few months of school before summer holidays, Adrian Pucey had had a sexuality crisis brought about by the realization that his admiration of his fellow quidditch players' physiques wasn't exactly platonic. Charlie Weasley had played a big part in that. He and Cassandra had bonded over the impossibility of acting on their shared crush.
The compartment door slid open yet again; Cassandra scowled, considering if the detention she might get for magically locking it would be worth the peace she and her friends would enjoy for the rest of the ride. At the sight of her little cousin and two of his friends, she decided the answer was yes.
"Cousin," the pale boy said, slightly bowing his head in acknowledgment.
"Draco," Cassandra answered neutrally. She had no animosity towards the boy, seeing him sporadically in events her grandfather thought fit she attend, but she'd found his almost desperate need for approval and easy-to-wound ego tiresome. Seeing her younger cousin spiral whenever someone contradicted his overinflated perception of his family's - and by extension, his own - greatness was an unpleasant experience for someone who'd been forced to grow a skin as thick as dragonhide as a little girl simply to be able to go out in public without being undone by the looks and words grown wizards would throw at her once they recognized her.
"Mother suggested I reach out to you once I was sorted into Slytherin, but I saw no need to wait," he said.
Of course you didn't, Cassandra mused.
"I hardly think there's anything between the train and the Slytherin table one would need advice with," she answered. Draco looked disconcerted for a moment.
"They're saying Harry Potter is in the train, in one of the compartments at the back," the boy said.
"Ooh," she said. The boy-who-lived would certainly be the kind of celebrity her cousin would be interested in and intimidated by, which would most likely cause him to fall back on the arrogant attitude his father used as both a shield and a weapon. Unless Harry Potter was a complete pushover, which would be incongruent with his fame as the only survivor of the killing curse and the reason for the Dark Lord's downfall, there was no chance that meeting would end well. "And you plan on introducing yourself to him?"
"It would be only right that a scion from a pureblood wizarding family offers to help him introduce himself to our society," Draco said, squaring up his shoulders. "No one knows what he's been doing for the past ten years, after all. Who knows what he might've been taught."
"I see," Cassandra replied. If her cousin wanted to embarass himself by assuming that a half-blood wizard whose late family had been murdered by the Dark Lord for opposing his agenda of pureblood supremacy would gladly accept the guidance of a Malfoy, she wasn't going to stop him. "Good luck."
Draco nodded to his cousin, and all three boys retreated, closing the compartment door. Cassandra turned to her best friend.
"So, your cousin's a git," Adrian said. She smiled her assent.
"Do you think he's really in the train… Harry Potter?" Marcus asked.
"The math adds up," She replied simply. The two boys looked at each other, seeming uneasy.
"Does that…" Adrian started. "How does that…" The boy huffed, seemingly unable to voice his thoughts. "I mean he's the reason…"
"My parents picked a side," she interrupted, knowing what her friend was trying to ask her. "And their side lost. I'm not going to look for a rematch."
Both wizards nodded, seemingly accepting her answer. She found herself glad for Flint's natural tendency not to ask too many questions unrelated to Quidditch, and Adrian's restraint in questioning her in front of others. The loss of the war wasn't a subject she allowed herself to dwell on. Whenever her mind strayed in the direction of the reasons that had guided her parents' actions, she immediately redirected her thoughts to the present. They had lived in a world of ideology, but she lived in a world of consequences. And there was nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, in antagonizing the boy-who-lived.
It wasn't until they were seated side-by-side at the Slytherin table, waiting for the first years to be sorted that Adrian brought up the topic of their earlier conversation.
"So you're really not bothered by the whole Harry Potter thing?" He whispered to her. "You're not gonna make him your mortal enemy or whatever?"
"My family wasn't arrested until over a year after the end of the war," she whispered back. "They could've done what most of other families did and lied to save their own necks, but they chose to go down with the sinking ship. Potter didn't make that choice for them. So no mortal enemies for me this year." She looked at her friend, who seemed relieved. She would be too, in his place.
Cassandra was barely paying attention to the kids being sorted until Professor McGonagall called out a name that made her stomach drop and her hands go cold and clammy.
"Longbottom, Neville!"
She watched the round-faced boy who she'd never met before trip and fall on his way to the stool, and willed herself to be still. She would show no emotion. She would not feel bad for him. His clumsiness was not her fault. The hat took a long time with him, and every second made her stomach more and more queasy. When it finally declared him a Gryffindor, Cassandra had to make an effort not to let her body sag in relief. At least he wouldn't be in her House. They were two years apart, and not in the same House. Maybe she could avoid him completely. She looked back at the stool when she heard laughter, and watched the boy jog back to return the hat he'd run off wearing. By the love of Merlin. Was he always this… pathetic? 'Not my fault', she chanted in her mind, 'not my fault'.
Cassandra managed to mostly tune out the rest of the ritual, only politely clapping when she heard her cousin being sorted into her House and Harry Potter going to Gryffindor.
That night, as she lay on her bed, she tried to rationalize away her concerns. It didn't matter that the boy who had ended the war that had consumed her parents was in the castle. Or that she might at any time run across the young wizard who had grown up an orphan because her family had tortured his parents to insanity. Or that her squibhead cousin had been sorted into Slytherin. She'd managed two years with no major disasters and minimal life-changing events; she'd manage another one.