After that Cornelia fell into a routine of sorts, hardening her skin to the glares from the Gryffindors and often the Hufflepuffs although nobody ever dared to actually say anything to her face. She remained as passive as possible after her firework of a first day, quiet and watchful, often from beside Draco. She had noticed that Draco's peacock behaviour that he had adopted on his first day didn't pass, and it wasn't the Draco she had grown up knowing and loving. Her Draco was sweet, thoughtful and worried, this new Draco was sneering, spiteful and mean to those he deemed below him. Although he was the same as he had always been with her, it was jarring and sometimes embarrassing watching him interact with the other students. It seemed his old games of putting up Crabbe and Goyle against each other had branched out into putting Crabbe and Goyle up against somebody else, willing or not. It wasn't that she altogether cared for the people that they picked on, it just wasn't her sort of fun or even revenge. She found him to be too obviously villainous, almost as if he were playing the role out of a book, his tactics too childish. She on the other hand didn't like to get caught when she played with someone, which was exactly how she had exacted her revenge on Pansy.

After watching her closely for a few days, Cornelia had a good grasp on her habits and personality. Pansy loved to gossip and talk trash about her fellow students and showed no loyalties. She took pleasure in other people's pain and embarrassment but avoided being involved in the drama that she loved to watch unfold, preferring to egg on the perpetrator from the side-lines. Her pride was also extremely fragile and she would take offence at the smallest slights. Cornelia had followed her and Daphne into the bathroom once and took her time locked away in a stall, easily able to hear the high frequencies of Pansy's voice ringing through the room.

"Have you ever noticed the smell coming from Milly?" She had asked Daphne in what Cornelia was sure she considered a hushed tone.

Daphne giggled. "Is that where it's coming from?"

"Oh yeah. You know she told me the other day that she never washes her hair? And I've seen her leave the bathroom without washing her hands before. Her hygiene is really terrible!"

"Eww gross!"

Cornelia smirked inside her stall, waiting for the girls to leave the bathroom before emerging.

The next day Cornelia made sure to avoid Draco's company, claiming she was off to the library to do some studying, which technically turned out to be true, but only because that's where Pansy, Daphne and Millicent ended up heading.

Cornelia placed herself just in view of the girls, and then went to walk around the library, passing the girls and glancing over their shoulders at whatever they were working on. It was easy to read the headings at the top of their scrolls and see that they were working on their potion's homework, something Cornelia had already completed. She went back to her desk and pretended to start the essay again, frowning and making a show of finding it difficult before leaning back in her chair and glancing around the library as if for inspiration, her eyes falling on the three girls. After a moments pause she got up and made her way over, Pansy looked up at her approach and then stiffened in her seat, staring at her suspiciously. The two of them hadn't had any interaction since that first evening, Pansy making it very clear she didn't even want to be in the same room as Cornelia, which was fine by her.

Cornelia organised her features into what she hoped looked like a shy expression and gave a small smile to Pansy which she didn't return. The other two were watching Cornelia now too.

"Hey." Cornelia addressed Pansy. "Are you guys working on Snape's essay?"

"Yes." She replied stiffly.

"Oh good. Erm, I've completely lost my notes, I don't suppose you'd lend me yours for a few minutes would you?"

It was obvious by Pansy's face that she very much wanted to say no but Cornelia's reputation was clearly holding her back. After a moment of silent glaring, she thrust her notebook towards Cornelia who accepted it graciously.

"Thanks. And I'm sorry about that first night in the dormitory, I misread the situation." She beamed at Pansy, who looked like she'd been hit in the face by a heavy book, before sweeping back to her desk and poring over Pansy's notes. She could hear the girl's furious whispers behind her, and she was sure that Pansy was frantically discussing Cornelia's apology with Daphne and Millicent.

She was copying Pansy's notes, copying them with such careful accuracy that anyone would believe that she really had lost her notes from Snape's lesson. Actually, Cornelia wasn't really paying attention to the content of Pansy's notes but rather the way they were written, studying every twist and turn of her handwriting and doing her best to replicate it in her own notebook.

After 15 minutes she was satisfied with her work and went to return the notebook to Pansy, who experimented with a hesitant smile. Cornelia returned it widely before leaving the library. It was easy to be nice to someone whose downfall was imminent.

Cornelia waited for a week before she put her plan in action, and to anyone watching they would have thought the girls had made up from their previous rivalry. Not that they were best chums or anything, but they were pleasant enough.

She waited until just before their final class on Friday as the Slytherins made their way into the dungeons from History of Magic to Potions before tapping Crabbe on the shoulder and standing on her tiptoes to hiss "trip over Pansy." In his ear. The great buffoon was so used to taking orders from Draco that he just grinned at her before jogging up behind Pansy and sticking his large foot under her feet. Sure enough Pansy went down with a shriek loud enough to wake the dead and the hall erupted into guffaws of laughter from Crabbe, Goyle and Millicent. Pansy shot back up, her pug like face red and twisted as she cursed Crabbe at the top of her lungs before shooting a nasty look at Millicent and striding off with Daphne in tow. Phase 1 complete, Cornelia congratulated herself in her mind.

Cornelia was happy to see that Pansy resolutely ignored Millicent as she took her usual seat beside her in class and the tension lasted right through dinner. Phase 2 wasn't to take place until much later that night when Cornelia was sure that everyone was fast asleep. That didn't happen until 2.30 that morning and Cornelia made sure that Millicent's gurgling snores were deep and steady before creeping out of bed and sliding a large sheet of paper out from under her pillow that had the words "Wash your hair you stink!" scrawled across it in thick black felt.

Quiet as a mouse Cornelia tiptoed across the room towards the hulking and snoring figure of Millicent and hung over her nervously. Holding her breath, she pressed the paper to her headboard and sealed it there with a whispered sticking spell she had been practising all week. Back in bed and shaking excitedly, Cornelia couldn't stop grinning. She couldn't wait for the wrath that was Millicent Bulstrode in the morning, and the fun wouldn't end there. Two birds with one stone, Cornelia finally drifted off thinking happily.

Cornelia awoke to a roar in the morning. "Who put this here?!" and sat up quickly trying with all her might to suffocate her laughter.

Millicent was on the rampage already, trying desperately to get a grip on the corner of the sheet of paper on her headboard to rip it off. Cornelia was pleased to see her sticking charm was holding up nicely. Enraged by the offending words still staring at her Millicent began to attack it with her fists, the sound of splintering wood filling the dormitory.

"What the hell are you doing?" Scowled Pansy, her and Daphne approaching quickly.

"Was this you, you bitch?!" Millicent turned to Pansy, towering over her threateningly.

Pansy stared wide eyed between the paper and Millicent. "Of course not!" Her voice rising in pitch.

"It looks like your writing!" And sure enough the 'y' in 'your' had the ridiculous curve in the tail, just like Pansy's handwriting.

"I didn't! I swear!" Pansy began to squeal, cowering away from Millicent. "It wasn't me!"

"Well it was somebody in here!" Roared Millicent again, spittle flying from her mouth, her face a dark puce shade, her eyes flashing dangerously around the room.

Cornelia copied Tracey and Sally-Anne's expression of fear and confusion and Pansy took the opportunity of Millicent's eyes not being on her to dart out of her reach towards the door. "I'll go and get Professor Snape!"

"Oh no you won't!" Millicent charged towards her and gripped her arm roughly, Pansy yelped in pain. "This doesn't leave this room. When I find out who did this-" she shoved Pansy roughly away from the door "they're dead." Before storming out herself.

Daphne rushed over to Pansy who started crying noisily and Cornelia shared a gobsmacked look with the other girls. After a few minutes of the only noise being Pansy's dramatic wailing, they all began to move awkwardly to get ready and shuffle out of the room.

Once in the common room Cornelia moved onto Phase 3, darting over to where Draco was yawning by the fire.

"Hey." She greeted him as she perched herself on the arm of the chair he was sat in.

"Hi." He smiled up at her before narrowing his eyes. "What's up with you?" The smile that had been threatening to spill out all morning tugged on the corner of her lips and she cast a quick look around the room to make sure there was nobody within earshot.

"We had some drama in the girl's dormitory this morning." She murmured.

"What happened?"

"Somebody pinned a sign on Millicent's headboard telling her to get a wash and that she stinks." Draco cackled whilst Cornelia shushed him. "And I think I know who it was." She continued.

"Who?" He asked and looking into his eyes she could see that he had his suspicions of her. Well she wasn't overly worried about Draco guessing correctly, she knew he'd still play his part perfectly even if he did know it was actually Cornelia's doing.

"Well Pansy told me in the bathroom the other day that Millicent never washes her hair. She also told me that she doesn't wash her hands after she goes to the toilet. Millicent seemed pretty certain it was her handwriting this morning." She whispered conspiratorially. Draco nodded along, watching her carefully. She paused before continuing even more quietly. "I was wondering if you could do me a favour." His answering smirk was all the confirmation she needed. "Pass it on that Pansy has been telling everyone?"

Draco didn't answer but stared at her with the oddest expression on his face, Cornelia could only liken it to overwhelming pride. He did his own scoping of the room before quickly reaching up and briefly touching her earlobe. Cornelia smiled at him warmly, her chest filling with affection. He was still her Draco.

Her plot for revenge on Pansy went off without a hitch, and Cornelia was extremely satisfied when later that day the rumours she had started got back around to Millicent and ultimately resulted in Pansy sporting a shining black eye. She walked with a new spring in her step and felt immune to the normal glares she got around the school. She felt empowered, and whilst she had no idea how to go about making friends, she had somehow pulled the strings on several people to get the results she wanted. It felt good.

Not that plotting revenge on Pansy was all that Cornelia had been doing over her first month at Hogwarts. She had attended her classes with as much enthusiasm and dedication as she had with their magical theory classes back at the Malfoy Manor. Apart from History of Magic. Nobody could be enthusiastic about that with Professor Binns teaching.

She had been particularly excited about their Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, but they had been a massive disappointment. It appeared they would be sticking to theory for a long time during those classes; Professor Quirrell seemed to be scared of his own wand and was mainly teaching them how to produce pretty sparks, insisting that it would be useful if they ever needed to startle a dark creature.

Charms was a useful lesson and very rarely boring, it had the most practical wand work out of all of the classes. Cornelia did very well in charms, understanding what she thought was the relatively straight forward theory behind the spells and was often amongst the first students to cast the spell correctly.

Transfiguration was also interesting but extremely difficult. Cornelia found she often got frustrated when she didn't understand how the theory worked immediately, but it did make the success even sweeter when she eventually caught on.

Flying lessons were a joke and Cornelia decided she much preferred moving at her own speed with two feet on the ground rather than getting somehow cold and sweaty at the same time in mid-air.

She found the plants that they learnt about in Herbology interesting but didn't care for the maintenance that came with them. It was a good time to chat though and the greenhouse was always filled with voices, laughter and the odd shout.

She flat out disliked potions, not being thorough enough in her reading of instructions and prepping ingredients and certainly not patient enough to brew the potion for the right amount of time in between ingredients. She did like Professor Snape however, appreciating his extreme intelligence, dark sense of humour and lack of boundaries when it came to disciplining the students. It was nice to see the Gryffindors that hated her so much being brought down a peg or two as well.

And then there was Astronomy, which was too cold for her to care.

She was always punctual with her homework, not having any friends other than Draco and wanting to limit her contact with his cronies. It wasn't that Cornelia was completely unapproachable, Sally-Anne and Tracey had tried to befriend her a couple of times; It was just that she had no desire to be friends with them and purposefully kept them at an arm's length because of this. There was nothing wrong with the girls, they just seemed a little … childish. Although Cornelia was lonely she wasn't desperate.

And so life at Hogwarts passed in much the same way. Cornelia watched as Draco grew his vendetta against Harry Potter for reasons she couldn't much understand. She was with Uncle Lucy's opinion of the boy, there didn't seem to be much to him. He was a genuinely standard student with a bog-standard Gryffindor attitude. His best friend Ron Weasley was more interesting to Cornelia, having a dry sense of humour and a habit of saying things that others were too polite to say out loud. She often found herself smothering a smile as he told someone to "bugger off" or voiced his annoyance at how difficult a subject was loudly and scathingly.

It wasn't until early November did Cornelia find herself intrigued in another person. It was during a Charms class where they were perfecting the Wingardium Leviosa spell, a charm they had been learning for the past 2 week and one that the majority of the class now had the hang of. This made the lesson remarkably easy, casting the spell and hovering a feather for however long you felt like whilst Flitwick attended to the stragglers. It was 10 minutes into the lesson and the classroom was full of hovering feathers and chatting.

A Ravenclaw's voice suddenly rang out loud and irritated "Oi! Stop it!" whilst he attempted to swat away a feather that was persisting in tickling his nose, ears and then swooping into his mouth when it opened to yell. The class erupted into laughter, the hilarity growing the more frustrated the boy got.

"Now now that's enough!" Flitwick called out, but the feather persisted in tickling the boy. "Wands away and feathers down please!" He continued to call and feathers slowly fell through the air, all of them apart from the feather in question.

Cornelia cast her eyes across the rest of the Slytherins all of whom were finding the situation highly amusing apart from Theodore Nott who contrastingly looked entirely bored. However, when her eyes lowered to his hand which was laying casually in his lap beneath the desk, she saw he held his wand pointed steadily towards the feather.

The feather continued to attack the boy as ferociously as a feather can, Flitwick getting more and more wound up before waving his own wand and vanishing the feather altogether.

"Quiet!" He shouted in a squeaky voice. "That was not amusing at all. Two extra feet will be added onto the length of everyone's essays for the disruption of my time!"

Judging by the lack of blame and moaning towards Theodore, it seemed that nobody else had noticed that he was responsible for the act.

Cornelia hadn't had much to do with Theodore before, nobody in Slytherin really had. He kept himself to himself, rarely speaking up in class unless asked and seeming quite content in his own company. He would casually overlook the other student's activity during classes and would tuck himself away in a warm corner of the common room with a book outside of classes, or would take long walks around the grounds. He occasionally ate with Zabini and two would sit with their heads together talking quickly in low voices and chuckling every now and then.

After that charms lesson Cornelia was surprised to find that he was behind the majority of classroom disruptions, seemingly picking students from other houses at random to prank. His tactics were always remarkably sly and clever and half of the time the student he was pranking couldn't be sure if the end result was their own fault or simply bad luck.

Cornelia watched him subtly with glee, excited when she caught him at his tricks again which was surprisingly often, it was like a secret she alone was in on. He wasn't an excellent student but he seemed content with his abilities and generally bored enough in lessons to seek his own form of entertainment.

It was during a potions class that Theodore finally noticed Cornelia watching him as he orchestrated another prank, this time on Ron Weasley, levitating extra valerian sprigs in small increments into his Forgetfulness potion. He had just dropped his third batch into his cauldron when his eyes darted around the room and caught Cornelia's. He didn't drop her gaze and she smiled hesitantly; He didn't return it. Instead he stared at her until Cornelia was the one to awkwardly look away, confused by his completely blank expression.

She didn't speak to him right away, and more days passed of her quietly observing him. This time however Theodore made sure to turn and seek out her gaze either during or after one of his pranks, again with that same blank expression that was impossible to read. Eventually Cornelia was so tired of the game they were apparently playing that she plucked up her courage to place her telescope beside his during their astronomy lesson late one Wednesday night.

"Hi." She murmured as they shared a, by now, familiar look.

"Hi." He returned, his voice surprisingly welcoming almost as if he had been waiting for her to talk to him, and this time he returned her small smile. She felt a rush of warmth through her and she recognised it was similar to what she felt when she was alone with Draco – it was comfort.

They didn't speak for the rest of the lesson only occasionally sharing little smiles in between peering through their telescopes, but they walked side by side back down from the tower, Draco peering over his shoulder at them with a faint frown on his face. It was the first thing Theodore pointed out.

"It looks like Draco is missing you."

"He's got his cronies." Cornelia dismissed, nodding her head at Crabbe and Goyle.

"Interesting company?"

She giggled a little. "If you like watching paint dry."

"Useful though I expect."

"Draco thinks so."

"Why do you think he needs a pair of bodyguards?"

She thought for a moment, the quiet between them maintaining the same level of peace she had felt up on the astronomy tower. "I suppose it means he can say whatever he wants to whoever he wants."

Theodore smirked and after peering at him curiously for a while Cornelia prompted him to share his thoughts.

"Do you need bodyguards?" He asked pointedly, his eyes twinkling knowingly at her.

"Why would I need them?" She frowned, confused by direction of the conversation.

He paused before asking "Will you teach me that sticking spell?" and Cornelia's head whipped back to face him so quick that she almost cricked her neck. He laughed softly at the look of indignation on her face. She desperately wanted to know how he knew about her involvement in the incident between Pansy and Millicent, the only other person who knew was Draco and there was no way he would share that information with Theodore. But then she remembered how cautious and undetectable his pranking was and couldn't find herself to be overly surprised that he knew. She told him so and he laughed again.

"How long have you been watching me?" He asked.

"I could ask you the same." She replied.

"See? People like us don't need bodyguards." He grinned and she beamed back, it seemed like they understood each other already.

Ayooo, we're getting into it. Isn't Cornelia a scheming little witch? I loved writing how she pulled off her revenge plan on Pansy, I thought it was quite wicked for an 11 year old! It's nice writing a morally ambivalent character. I think it's clear why she's drawn towards quiet, sly Theodore, and I'm looking forward to developing their friendship more. One can only imagine what they can achieve together with their fox like minds!

Until next time.