All I own is Drey.
"To start with we're in a temple in the forest. We've always known this was here. Don't know how, we just did, even before I ever came here. And when I did, there was this really strong feeling, pulling me towards the forest. That's why I was so freaked about coming here that time in forest year. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stay away from here. But I knew I could only come here when Drey was here too, otherwise it would be...spoiled, for lack of a better word." They were all seated around a flickering fire, Drey and Draco at the head as everyone else ranged around them, Seamus pulled tight against Blaise's chest. It was a very unusual scene in the fact that the fire was hovering about 20cm off the ground and was flickering from green to blue to yellow to pink, and then back again. It's light bathed the faces of the court as they faced their rulers.
"In the first couple of days when I got back we decided that as we were both here we were going to come here, find out why this place was calling us. But, when it came to it we couldn't. Its call was too pure for us to disturb, unless we absolutely needed to. And a few days ago we needed to." Drey was leaning into her brother's shoulder, eyes jumping round the hall they were in, drinking in the sight of sculptures and paintings with wonder and awe painted clearly all over her face.
"The coronation potion, the one we had to do for our project." Harry stated with conviction. Drawing exclamations from the original court. "The coronation potion!"
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"What are you going to do?"
"You know the rules about that potion."
Neville and Bill knew a little bit about what they were talking about, Harry and Seamus were completely in the dark though. With a look Draco quelled the interruptions and turned to face the confused Gryffindors. "In the old days, when all magic was accepted, the pureblood families were the rulers, they controlled vast areas of land, vast numbers of people. Like all things, there were some good, some bad. But most were good, as hard as you may find it to believe, especially our family. Our people loved us, and there was none of this black magic, white magic crap. It was the caster who had to be held responsible for the way the spell was used, the spell itself was pure. Every spell has a good side, even the Unforgiveables.
Back then, when the head of the family died and their oldest child inherited the family responsibilities, the coronation potion was used to secure the transfer of power." Then Drey took over. By using the coronation potion you receive the knowledge of every family head since the first time it was used. Hardly any families use it anymore, there's no point if no one here trusts us enough to let us rule. But our family still continued with the tradition, the knowledge was too great to lose, no matter about the danger. It's very dangerous unless the recipient has the power to control the influx of knowledge. Only the families ever knew about it." Their audience was looking dazed, except for Blaise and Pansy; their stomachs were sinking with a horrible feeling. With a nervous look towards each other the twins blurted out at the same time. "We're going to use it."
"WHAT!!"
"What the hell do you mean you're 'going to use it'?! You cannot use this spell. One, Lucius isn't dead."
"Two, how do you plan on controlling the power. You have to go through training to reach that level of control over you're mind. And you have to be older than you are!"
"And three. IT'S BLOODY SUICIDAL!!!" Pansy and Blaise roared the last point in unison. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind them, nodding in silent but emphatic agreement. Bill, Harry and Neville were turning from one person to another, as though they were watching a tennis match.
"Do you really think that we don't know how dangerous it is?" Drey stared at her friends quietly, her new power radiating from her body. Draco was exactly the same. "But we have to do this. Lucius is in Azkaban, he won't be able to stop the spell."
"And as for the power part, we've always been powerful, we've always been able to do nearly anything we wanted, and after the last couple of days. We're so much more. You should be able to tell that by the fact that we gave you new powers, and we got new members for the court."
"The only real problem will be splitting the knowledge and power between the two of us. Which is where we need you. Blaise, Pansy, we need you to write us a new spell that will split the flow into both of us."
There was silent pleading when Draco stopped speaking, Drey had locked eyes onto Pansy, Draco had focused onto Blaise, the air was charged with tension as they fought. Everyone knew that the twins were going to get their way, but their advisors at least had to keep up appearances.
With a depressed sigh and a limp nod the two advisors sealed their leaders fate. They would go through with this now, and god knows how it would end. As soon as their heads fell forward, signalling agreement, everyone sprang into action. "There are loads of spell books in the library here. It's more like the magic we could always do than the stuff at school, so that might be better for splitting the knowledge between us." With a click of her fingers Drey pulled a pale blue round ball of light. It flew off her hand and headed down a mosaic corridor, followed by Blaise and Pansy who were already arguing about linguistics and the types of magic that could be put into the spell. Vince and Drey headed off down another corridor, talking about the history of this place, finding out what it was exactly. Greg and Draco went down a third corridor, wanting to find out the same thing, but planning on searching the cellars instead of the rooms.
As the arguing voices got softer the three Gryffindors were left sitting in silence in the hall. After a few minutes and the voices had just about disappeared they sprang up and Bill and Neville headed after Drey, Seamus sprinted after Blaise, and Harry disappeared after Draco. The fire continued to flicker, casting magical shadows over the walls.
"No, I'm telling you, if you introduce gypsy magic with the Egyptian curses all that will happen is them getting cursed forever in the afterlife."
"No, they'll offset each other causing a balance between life and death. Which should create the balance we need between Drey ad Draco."
Pansy and Blaise were shouting across the table, waving their arms around and quoting passages from dusty books, pointing emphatically when they found something that argued for their case. Around them the others were sitting in a circle, eating the chocoballs, every flavour beans, levitating sherbet balls, and all the other snacks the twins had conjured out of thin air, and drinking from the bottles of butterbeer. This was better than any play or TV show any of them had ever seen. When the two stopped for air they blushed when they heard the clapping, cheers and 'encores' being shouted at them by their audience. "Ooops." They murmured guiltily. Embarrassed they sat down and started eating their share of the goodies. It didn't go unnoticed by the twins that they were sitting on opposite sides of the circle, obviously still mad over the argument.
"What are we going to do?" Neville asked, subdued. His question brought the others back to reality, no matter how much they wanted they could not stay in the temple forever. They had to go back to Hogwarts, face the inevitable questions. Drey sighed from her position curled up on Bill's lap. "We go back. Harry and Draco do their project on the coronation potion. But we make sure that hardly anyone knows what it really is." Her voice was muffled as she was speaking into Bill's chest.
"What about us. I mean, the rest of Gryffindor is going to be furious, never mind McGonagall. It's going to be hell in the tower, you saw what they were like when you came out of the forest." Seamus sank into Blaise's chest, his glum face was mirrored by the other Gryffindors as they realised he was right. They had all felt the anger from Ron and the other members of their house, it would only get worse. Harry would be condemned before everyone, the Boy Who Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world, being this closely entwined with Slytherins, it could only cause problems. And Bill, everyone knew who the court were, and how, in effect they served the twins. He was a teacher, and no one knew about his relationship with Drey, god knows what would happen, to him or Charlie, who would be made guilty by association seeing as how he had never condemned the court, and always seemed to have a little extracurricular interest in Pansy.
"It won't matter. Years ago a prince of something came to Hogwarts, he brought his court with him. They gave him a special suite of rooms, I see no reason why we shouldn't use them." As Draco had been speaking a slow smirk had climbed onto his face, his eyes gleamed as he stared at his audience, seeing the cogs in their brains turning to catch up with his idea, and similar smirks spread across their faces, even Neville, who looked very Slytherin at that moment.
"If we move in there the house rules dissipate, we'd be out of the heads jurisdiction." Pansy was chattering in excitement, her face flushing pink.
"Where is it?" Harry asked, just as excited as the others, he and Neville had been cast out from Gryffindor since the beginning of term, it would be good to get away.
"Down by the dungeons." Drey answered, seeing the slightly distasteful looks on their faces she continued, affronted. "What's wrong with dungeons. They're perfectly nice places, besides, there's no need worry, they're not quite in the dungeons. There's a separate wing underground, they're in that, and the roof of the main room in clear so you can see outside. Happy." There was a sarcastic tilt to her head as she finished, wondering what the problem with Gryffindors and dungeons was.
"Happy. Just one question, can Ginny come to?" There was silence after Neville's question; the Slytherins grew hostile and stiff to the touch at the mention of it. Trying to ignore the danger signals Bill continued Neville's point, "Charlie too, if that'd be all right." At that Drey and Blaise moved away from Bill and Seamus, Drey heading over to her brother who stood and wrapped his arm around her. The rest of the original court stood and moved into positions behind them.
On the ground Harry looked nervously around, Neville was chewing on his bottom lip, wondering why he had had to open his mouth. Seamus was wondering if this meant he would be back to staring at Blaise across the room. Bill's eyes flickered between his girlfriend and her twin.
"Why?" Draco's voice was cold, and to Harry's surprise the air seemed to fog slightly. Hesitantly he replied, wondering what had happened to cause such a reaction in his friend. "Ginny's being frozen out of Gryffindor as well. She was sticking up for all of you when you disappeared; she slapped Ron when he started insulting you and hoping that you stayed in the forest. And Charlie's been defending you some of the time as well." His voice grew stronger as he spoke, he was defending his friends, they had a right to this protection as well.
There was silence for the next ten minutes as the twins appeared to consider their decision, with moral support from the court. In reality. "We can't have them there as well."
"We don't have a choice, they're family know, if they trust them, so should we."
"How do we know if they can, there are still secrets we have to protect, even from those three, how are we going to cope with two more."
"We're Slytherins, do you honestly think we can't keep some secrets from a few Gryffindors?"
"So they're coming then."
"We don't have a choice. Who knows, maybe it won't be so bad."
"If they were really sticking up for us then, it might work."
With remarkable unity the whole group nodded in acquiescence. "They can come." With that statement the issue was put to the side for the time being. With a wave of Drey's hand their clothes were changed from the uniform into black trousers, or a dress for Pansy, and a shirt of their court colour, or the top half of Pansy's dress.
With a smirk they arranged themselves into the court positions they used when they were out to make an impression. Then with a pop they disappeared and reappeared in the great hall, in the middle of dinner.
Pansy and Blaise's last thought before they left was, what are they still hiding from us?
Thanks to everyone who reviewed:
Beserker Nightwitch: yeah. Citrine's orangey/red, kind of a fire colour which is why I chose it.
Silverone3: the Gryffindors were anry because they (Ron especially) wanted to be superior to the Slytherins, wanted to believe that they were just kids with a silly little club called a court, and that the feeling of power coming from them was just an illusion. But when they came from the forest they felt the power and the majesty coming from them, and so they were angry. I think I'm going to try and bring one of the couples together every other chapter, that's the theory anyway.
Beth5572: thanks. I think I might try a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Stargate next, with Faith related to someone on the team. I love crossovers.
Can people please review, because I'm not sure if this chapter worked or not. ;)