"Well, I hear the students are crossing tables again," the Hat started, as McGonagall was working on a particularly arduous and annoying heap of paperwork. She finished a page, and waved her wand over it. It folded into a paper crane and started flapping around the room. "More of them this time. What if there were no House tables? Just… tables… and students… sitting where they please?"

McGonagall finished another page, and another paper crane joined the first. She didn't answer the Hat, and so it kept speaking. "Soon enough, those colors will just be a mealtime decoration, don't you think? If it's going to happen anyway, whether you will it or no, and you are not planning to fight against it, why keep the House system? Is it going to wither away, like an empty shell, extra baggage that students don't need to be reminded of?"

The Headmistress cleared her throat and raised her wand, turning another paper into a flying crane. "This spell works on cloth as well as paper," she threatened grimly. "And if you continue to interrupt me, you are likely to wind up becoming part of the flock."

This seemed to work. At any rate, the Hat fell silent, and she finished her paperwork. As she signed the last page, she spoke again. "The students are making friends across Houses. This does not signify an end to the system. The system is working properly for the first time in decades, perhaps centuries. You may not understand right now what you have been doing and why. But your effectiveness has not decreased, and everything you think is a flaw is actually a feature." She smiled slightly, rising and opening her office window. "I don't intend to explain it to you tonight. But soon enough, I am sure that someone else will. Soon enough, you and the others will have all the reminder that you need."

McGonagall waved her wand again, and the flock of paper cranes soared out the window, falling into a V-shaped formation, heading for their destination.

The rest of winter was better than any other time Drucy'd had yet at Hogwarts. At first, when she ventured to the Gryffindor table to visit Daniel, it seemed as though nothing had changed. "Back again, dungeon dweller?" Matt had greeted her. When she faced him, though, she didn't see anger or meanness in his face. Somehow, she understood that he was not threatening her.

"Are you looking for another reason to fly, 'Sir Bludger'?" she answered. This was apparently the right thing to do. A few other people at the table started snickering. Drucy was pleased. She knew that she never would have come up with something like that on her own. She was starting to learn from Roenna's sly wit. Matt laughed aloud and gave her two pieces of bacon himself.

He caught up with her and explained on the way to Potions. "I'm you're friend now, honest. But the other Gryffindors, especially the ones who follow me around, aren't going to come around this quickly. They're kind of expecting me to keep bothering you. I need to let them down gently, and that isn't going to happen for a few days or so, ok?"

Drucy chose to not needle him about how he was engaging in a rather Slytherin-like game of sociological chess. Instead, she acquiesced, and the insults grew friendlier and tapered off as promised. By the end of the following week, Matt had joined her little circle of friends and acquired the nickname of 'Bludger'. "Though I have to say that Daniel is a lot more of a bludger than Matt," Roenna told Drucy quietly, while they did their homework in the Slytherin common room, under the very hooked nose of Snape's portrait. "It isn't that he isn't smart, he really is. But Matt is better at wordplay. You definitely make interesting friends, Drucy." Drucy took the opportunity, of course, to point out that Roenna was one of her first.

She and Daniel weren't the only ones crossing tables now. A Ravenclaw had apparently made friends with several Gryffindors, and a couple of Hufflepuffs had started crossing to the Slytherin table. Drucy was amused to see them chatting with that Slytherin boy who had sat next to her when the other students were avoiding her. Prefect Brian caught her to congratulate you. "Thanks, Drucy. You've really got something started here, and it makes things much easier for me."

"What things?" Drucy asked. Brian was no longer an enemy, but she was sure that he was still up to something.

"Never mind," he told her. "You'll find out."

Drucy wasn't the only one who noticed something going on. "Yeah, there are some Gryffindor students who kind of disappear now and then. I noticed it on my first year. They make it out like there's some kind of meeting, a 'secret society' or something. I figured it was just the Slug Club reborn, you know?" Matt told her, as they sat outside together next to the lake.

"I don't think it is," Drucy responded. The snow had melted away today. The air was a little warmer than it had been since before Christmas holiday. She knew that spring was coming soon. "I think Brian, the Slytherin prefect, is part of it. I think he might be in charge of it. Matt, you're not a pureblood, are you? You know a lot about the wizarding world. House elves don't surprise you, and neither does Slughorn."

"Oh, I'm definitely not a pureblood," Matt answered, amused. "We're pretty well off. We do have house elves at the manor. But the Briars have been mixing with Muggleborns and Half-bloods for so long that I'm surprised we don't have more Squibs in the family. You know what, it's almost embarrassing to my family, for me to hang out with a pureblood."

"But you're rich," Drucy pointed out. "And my family is rich. You know, if I only hung out with Slytherins, I'd never hang out with you or Daniel. And if I only hung out with rich people, I wouldn't hang out with Daniel or Roenna. And if I only hung out with purebloods, I couldn't spend time with any of you. Don't you ever wonder what that's all for?"

"Yeah, I do," Matt said, his tone serious, and they fell silent for a long moment. "Ok," he finally said. "You know what, I think I'm going to poke around and see if I can find out what this 'secret society' is all about. If someone else is gathering up students from all the Houses, I think we'd like to know about it, right?"

But a couple of weeks passed and Matt had discovered nothing. Drucy tried to sound out her sister, but Esme wouldn't give her any clearer answers than Brian. One evening, Drucy sat herself in her usual seat under Snape's portrait, stuck on her History of Magic essay, as the room slowly emptied. She grumbled to herself as she checked her book, hoping to find enough information to pad out her work by another couple of paragraphs. A dry, familiar voice answered. "Page 262, silly girl." Snape's portrait paused for a moment. "You haven't been by to talk to me in a few months now."

Drucy looked up, surprised. Her mind had often filled with new and strange thoughts as she'd befriended Matt and made peace with Brian. Now, she wondered how many people talked to Snape's portrait, and whether faces in portraits could ever get lonely. "I'm sorry," she finally said. "I've been really busy, but I should have stopped by to at least say hello."

He shrugged. "It's my job, now, to help guide young Slytherins. If you think you can walk on your own, so much the better for you."

"Do you think I can?" Drucy asked in a fit of pique.

Snape sighed. "I'm not blind to your doings. I know how you've been handling your challenges. I've heard that you have finished your remedial Charms work and are back on schedule. I know that you've made friends with the Gryffindor bully. I was listening when your sister warned you that not everyone can be Conquered by Peace and Kindness. She's right, and you'd do well to heed her warning."

"Everyone's people," Drucy pointed out. "I think I've always felt that way, but now I'm really learning how to understand it. I had to learn to see them… Brian Tack, Matt Briar, even Headmistress McGonagall… even my own mother… like people, and not like the bully, the scary authority figure…"

"And you'd do well to remember it," Snape told her. "But you have yet to face evil. Come now, don't give me that look. Matt Briar was never evil. He was just a stupid little boy who got his comeuppance. Plenty of Gryffindors need to get their comeuppance at least once, if they're ever going to straighten themselves out. But you haven't faced evil… not yet."

"Do you think I will?" Drucy asked timidly. Snape was so confident in his words, and she knew that he was wise. If he thought this was a concern, surely it was one.

Snape assumed that superior tone that she'd grown to enjoy. "Everyone does, little girl."

Drucy thought about that for a moment. "What do you think I should be doing, then?" she asked humbly.

That seemed to please Snape. "You've made some good friends," he told her. "Now, you should be practicing with them. Practice dueling. It can be done quite safely. I'm sure Professor Flitwick has told you a great deal of nonsense about charms and curses having the same root. That nonsense is mostly correct. One of you should throw charms and smaller, safer curses, while the other deflects them. You, in particular, need to learn how to deflect spells."

"I don't know if I can," Drucy admitted. "This wand… it's better than it was, it's cooperating more, and I'm getting better with it. But it's really not good at things like shield magic."

"I could see that." Snape's portrait seemed to be thinking for a moment. "Your wand is behaving because you are exerting authority over it. You are showing mastery of yourself, and you are less afraid of it than you used to be. Still, it may be a while before you become adept at its weaker functions. I've been told that's one of the reasons why Ollivander usually only uses the three standard cores. They all have preferences, but they are all fairly useful for a wide range of spells. At least, the spells taught at Hogwarts…" He looked back at her. "I have two main suggestions for you. The first is that you try to use Parseltongue as often as possible with your wand. Levicorpus aside, most students don't start practicing nonverbal spells until much later in their education, and this gives you the same advantage against an opponent who has already learned how to cast nonverbally."

"Do you think I'm going to have to deal with an evil person who knows nonverbal spells before I've learned how to do them myself?" Drucy asked cautiously.

"I don't know," Snape's portrait admitted candidly. "As for your wand, you should be practicing shield spells every day. But, in the interim, sit still and listen well. I am going to teach you an advanced dueling technique called Offensive Blocking."

Snape was as good as his word and better. Though Drucy got to bed quite late, he did help her fill out the rest of her essay before they quit for the night.