A/N: You know it's NaNoWriMo season when I'm hitting out with these quickfire updates. I don't even know what to tell you, I sat down to write the first couple of paragraphs and then I wrote the whole thing.

The first clue Marilyn was given that something wasn't quite right was when Draco didn't turn up that night while she practised. She lost count of the amount of times she did a turn or a jump, expecting to find him there, only to see the chair he usually occupied totally empty. She'd even stayed later than usual, wondering if something had held him up. Not because she wanted to see him, of course, but because she hoped to put her plan into motion as quickly as possible - and as privately as possible. The last thing she wanted was for him to get it in his head to show off by asking her to the dance while she sat at Gryffindor table, only for her to have to tell him the truth there and then. That wouldn't be pretty.

Only when her toes hurt unbearably from dancing atop the broom - and when she knew she was on the verge of risking an instant detention if she was caught wandering around the castle any later than this - did she finally pack up her things and make her way back to the Beauxbatons carriage.

His absence was something she pondered as she tried to fall asleep, and very few explanations she came up with felt anything close to right. The first…well, the first was just plain laughable. That maybe he'd heard her when she said they could never, under any circumstances, kiss again and that they had to go on like it hadn't happened. Maybe he'd listened, and was giving her space. Yeah, she'd known that to be bullshit the second her mind conjured it. What else was there, though? Was he annoyed that she'd even ask such a thing and was staying away in order to sulk? That was possible. But still, it just didn't feel right.

Maybe he knew that in staying away, he'd leave her to wonder where exactly he'd gone off to. Out of all of her theories, that felt the most likely. That he was playing mind games. He probably thought that he could stay away tonight, and then return tomorrow - ultimately making her so grateful for the gift of his presence that she begged him to take her to the Yule Ball.

Well. He was in for a shock with that one.

More than that weighed on her mind, though, as she tried to force herself to fall asleep that night. The big problem was that she did feel his absence. It should have been a welcome break, a nice bit of peace, but instead something dangerously close to disappointment had weighed ever so slightly upon her chest every time she found an excuse to twirl or turn only to see that damn chair empty. Something felt missing from her night.

Scoffing into the darkness, she rolled over with a bit too much gusto and ended up tangled in her blanket. It was absurd. Yes, they gelled well - in a weird, antagonistic way. They just bounced off of one another in a way that felt natural and easy. And yes, that damned kiss kept replaying in her mind over and over when she didn't have the mental wherewithal to bat it away. But there was a caveat. He didn't view her as his equal. Okay, Draco Malfoy didn't view anybody as his equal, but if he knew the truth of her blood he wouldn't just view her as inferior, he'd view her as subhuman. As the dirt beneath his fancy expensive shoes. It was a pretty fucking big caveat.

That's what made the whole thing so infuriating. She didn't like what it said about her that she might miss somebody like that. That they might have things in common - that they might bond over the weight of the expectations placed upon them. That she might kiss him and blush over it, rather than wanting to vomit. What she hated even more was that she knew if she'd been born a Pure-blood, she'd fancy the pants off of him. She'd be free to do so. She hoped she wouldn't - that his hatred might still mean something to her even if it wasn't directed at her, but she wasn't sure. And she hated that, too.

A crap night of sleep meant that she sat at Gryffindor table for breakfast the next morning all but snoring into her porridge. Her eyelids kept fluttering slowly downwards in an effort to lull her into sleep, and she never quite managed to notice up until they were fully shut and she had to drag them open again. It grew more difficult every time.

"Don't tell me you've graduated to something a bit more tiring than kissing," George teased quietly beside her.

"Of course not, don't be a pervert," she scoffed.

Shaking her head, she took a sip of her iced pumpkin juice in hopes that it would wake her up. It did not. Any more of this and she'd be orchestrating a scheme to steal the coffee from the teacher's table.

"It's the only way that you could possibly make all of this worse, so it's what I'm expecting to come next," he shrugged lightly.

"We get it, we get it, ha-ha, Marilyn dumb. A new topic of conversation, please?"

"All right, how about why is Draco Malfoy walking this way rather than towards Slytherin table?"

Forcing her head up, she turned her head towards the doors - expecting, and hoping, that George was just winding her up. Alas, Draco had indeed just stepped into the hall, but rather than turning right and heading towards the opposite end of the hall, he turned left and strode towards Gryffindor table. Marilyn braced herself, trying to play it cool as she stirred her spoon around her cereal bowl. Oh Merlin - she hadn't been right, had she? He didn't intend to ask her here? Surely not. He'd never be so cocky. So ridiculous.

Her grip on her spoon threatened to damn near break it as he drew nearer, and then he was behind her…and after that, he continued on. Marilyn watched the back of his head, dumbfounded. Soon he reached the head of the table, turned, and then walked past the tables of the other two houses, before eventually reaching his own and taking his seat halfway down. By the time he was done, he'd more or less done a full lap of the hall.

"What the hell was that about?" She murmured.

"Nothing good," Hermione replied.

"D'you reckon he got lost? Forgot where Slytherin table is?" George said.

"Or maybe he's hoping we'll all be sitting here wondering what it was about," Fred added.

Content to chalk it up to that, mainly because she doubted she'd get a proper explanation, Marilyn sighed. Confusion and panic now gone, she was left with the tiredness again. She had an insurance plan in place for times such as these - it came in the form of a Vitamix potion in her bag - but it was usually intended for once classes were done so that she might have the energy for rehearsals afterwards, just in case there came a time when she found herself completely lagging.

But she had Potions first thing with Snape, and the last thing she needed was to doze off and miss something important. Her being a visiting student made him no less unpleasant to her than he was to just about everybody else. Grimacing, she reached behind her where her school bag was tucked beneath the bench they all sat on and dragged it up, bringing it into her lap.

"If you start doing homework at this time in the morning, you can go off with Hermione and compete for the title of world's biggest geek," George snorted.

"Unless the homework is due for first lesson, in which case you get to stay with us cool kids and risk takers," Fred added.

"No," she rolled her eyes, digging her hand into her bag "I'm…"

Something wasn't right. The contents of her bag were…wet? Oh Christ, wouldn't it just be her luck if the one day she intended to use the potion ended up being the day the phial cracked or leaked into her bag? Rooting around in her bag, she tried to fish it out and then frowned. Her things were way too wet for it to be the potion - it was little more than a shot full of liquid in the phial - but her water was on the table. What the fuck had…?

Unlatching her bag properly with her free hand, she pulled the other from it and then froze. The entirety of her hand, from her fingertips all the way up to halfway up her forearm, was caked in thick, crimson blood. It was difficult to say how long she stared at it - it couldn't have really been longer than a fraction of a second, but it felt like an eternity as her mind stuttered and halted and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Because it couldn't be, could it? She wasn't seeing this. She'd blink, and it would disappear. But she did blink, and it did not disappear. The table around her slowly grew quiet as those closest saw what she was seeing.

Someone nearby, she couldn't register who, gasped a "what the-" and then Marilyn crashed back into her body…and swiftly began screaming.

Jerking back, panic seized at her chest - and then spread through the rest of her - as she shoved the bag bodily away from her. It thudded onto the table, some of her books sliding out along with a whole lot more blood.

"Oh, shit," George groaned at her side "Marilyn, it's just a-"

She scrambled back, anything to get away from the bag, but the bench dug into the backs of her knees and stopped her - she would've gone toppling back off of it were it not for the older boy grabbing her back and stopping it (thank Merlin, because that would've been the only way the whole thing could've gotten more embarrassing) but as she searched in vain for something to wipe the away the blood clinging to her arm - because she didn't want it on her robes, either - it began to change. Darkening and thickening all at once until it was no longer a deep, vivid red but an opaque dark brown, it slowly morphed into…mud?

Realisation hit her and her screams morphed into wavering, pathetic high-pitched whimpers. If the meaning of this hadn't already been clear, it certainly would have been when a voice across the hall shouted a venomous 'mudblood!' through the silence. A few snickers joined it and some echoed the sentiment, all from the Slytherin table, but it didn't go unanswered as mortified tears rose to Marilyn's eyes. Several of the Beauxbatons students were quick to respond, shooting to their feet and shouting back in quickfire French - and she would later be told that Krum himself joined the fray, snarling at one of the nearby boys who had joined in the cry. What touched her most of all, though, was how several of those around her drew their wands, half-rising to their feet.

"Silence!" Dumbledore's voice cut through the hall, booming and furious.

The order was obeyed immediately…although not entirely, as she wasn't sure she could stop crying even if she wanted to, and she hated how much it seemed to echo about the hall, her chest heaving as she tried and failed to catch her breath. It felt like the eyes of everybody in the hall were burning into her skin, but just as she resolved to flee the hall, a hand landed heavily on her shoulder. Flinching away, she looked up to see the head of Gryffindor, her face white with fury and her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Come with me, Miss Baxter," she said "Do you wish to bring a friend along with you?"

Her vision was blurry, but her eyes met George's all the same and he rose wordlessly. The hall remained silent as they left, save for the occasional sob that forced its way out of her. They left her bag behind.

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