There was another attack last night, a Gryffindor first year named Colin Creevey. I vaguely remembered the boy; he was the one who followed Potter around with a Muggle camera. I felt a big pang of fear-this wasn't a cat, this was a Muggle born student. And just by listening to Draco, I figured it was only a matter of time before a Muggle born died.

What was petrifying the Muggle borns? And whatever it was, did it know about me? Did the monster of Slytherin know that a Muggle born was among the Slytherins, hiding in plain sight? The thought made me nervous and I spent all of that night tossing and turning in bed. moonlight shone from above water, sending shimmering light into the room through the window.

A poster on the common rooms bulletin board. Professor Lockhart was starting a dueling club, it looked like. I stared at it along with a few other older students.

Graham Montague and Cassius Warrington were two fourth years who mainly kept to themselves. They were close with each other, though I had seen them hanging out with a couple of Hufflepuff fourth years. Graham was shaking his head at the sign up sheet.

"He's completely ridiculous." Graham was saying. "Who the hell is going to sign up for this?"

Cassius shrugged. "I might. He's done a lot of awesome things, even if he is a loser." I walked away at that point as Cassius and Graham argued with each other.

My entire friend group signed up for the dueling club, and the Christmas list of who was staying at Hogwarts this year came out the day after that. I was the first of the Slytherins to sign up to stay here over the Christmas holidays. Mum wouldn't expect me home and she wouldn't be happy to see me come home before schedule.

First years started traveling in tight packs, as if they were afraid of being attacked at any moment. I frowned at them every time I saw this: not all of them were Muggle born, surely. Maybe they didn't know, I thought, that was entirely possible.

There was also a sort of black market for amulets and tokens to ward off the evil monster, whatever it was. Longbottom surprised me by showing up to a tutoring session with a pointed purple crystal, an evil smelling green onion, and rotting newt tail.

"Longbottom, I don't think any of that stuff will work." I told him. "Aren't you a pureblood anyway?"

Longbottom pushed the items to the edge of the table. "Doesn't matter, I think. I'm half a Squib anyway." While he wasn't looking, I put the purple crystal into my pocket until the end of the lesson.

At the beginning of December, we went to Potions as usual. I sat beside Pansy as we worked on our Swelling Solutions. My potion was good looking, if not a little runny. I glanced over to Longbottom, who was sweating and looking nervous. I frowned to myself and figured that maybe Longbottom and I could help each other out with subjects other than Charms.

All of a sudden, Gregory's cauldron exploded.

I let out a sharp scream along with everyone else nearby. The hot potion splashed onto my arm, as I had accidentally shielded Pansy from the worst of the splash. My arm started to swell through my uniform. Draco had gotten a face full of it and his nose was growing like a balloon. And Gregory was covering his face with his hands, which had grown to the size of dinner plates.

Through the chaos and pain of my arm's skin tightening and expanding and Professor Snape trying to restore the calm of the screaming students, I saw something that stuck out.

Granger was creeping inside the closet that was Professor Snape's private stores.

"Professor!" Pansy called out. "Heather got hurt too! Professor!"

Before Professor Snape came over to me, I spotted Granger creep out of the storage room. But the Professor Snape blocked my view and I offered my arm to him, sniffing my runny nose and tears from the pain finally falling. Professor Snape did some sort of Deflating Draught and when the swelling went down, he said, "You'll feel better, Miss Schmidt. Calm down."

Other people had been splashed, mostly Slytherins. Theodore's lips had been swelled up so that he couldn't speak even if he had wanted to. Vincent's arm was dragging him down so that he could barely walk.

When the various swellings went down, Professor Snape swooped over to Gregory's cauldron and picked up a firecracker. He looked around at the class dangerously. "If I ever find out who did this," He whispered. "I shall make sure that person is expelled."

A week later, it was time for the duelling clubs first meeting. At eight o'clock that evening, I went with my friends to the Great Hall. The long tables had vanished and Professors Lockhart and Snape stood side by side in the center. Professor Snape looked bored and Lockhart was beaming at everyone who walked through.

"Gather round!" Lockhart shouted. "Gather round! Can you all hear me? Can you all see me? Good! Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club, in case you're ever in the need to defend yourself as I have done countless times-for more details be sure to check my entire published works.

"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape!" Lockhart swung his arm to give a grand entrance to Professor Snape, who looked very annoyed. "He knows a tiny bit about dueling himself, so he's agreed to do a demonstration before we begin. Don't worry, youngsters, you'll still have your Potions professor by the end of it."

Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and they bowed. They raised their wands like swords in front of them.

"On the count of three," Lockhart announced. "We will cast our spells at each other, obviously we won't be able to kill. One-two-three!"

Both of them swung their wands and fired at each other. There was a flash of scarlet light and Lockhart was knocked off his feet, his wand arching high in the air. I let out a hiss of excitement when I recognized the Disarming Charm, one of the spells we were supposed to be learning this year in Charms.

Lockhart got to his feet rather unsteadily. "There you have it! That was the Disarming Charm! As you see-I've lost my wand-oh! Thank you, Miss Brown. Though Professor Snape, it was pretty obvious what you were going to do."

Snape looked like he could murder Lockhart and I would be lying if I had said I disagreed with him. Lockhart finally said, "Enough demonstration! I'm going to come amongst you and put you into pairs."

They moved through the crowd and started putting us into pairs. Pansy was put with Hannah Abbott, and I saw Longbottom across the room getting paired off with a Hufflepuff boy named Justin Finch-Fletchley.

"Miss Bulstrode," Professor Snape said, finally getting to us. "Partner with Miss Granger. Miss Schmidt, go to Miss Patil."

I blinked. "Which one, sir?"

Professor Snape raised an eyebrow at me. "The Gryffindor one."

Parvarti Patil narrowed her eyes and glared hard at me when we finally got to each other. Lockhart cried out that we needed to face each other. Patil fully faced me, distrust in every aspect of her face.

"Wands at the ready!" Lockhart called out. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm-only to disarm-we don't want any accidents. One-two-three!"

"Expelliarmus!" Patil and I both shouted at the same time. Two bright flashes of red happened and I felt my wand get yanked from my hand as I landed hard on my butt. Patil let out a cry of pain as she landed hard on her side. Her wand was gone too.

All over, people were having less than ideal results. Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley were both lying on the ground, panting. Weasley was holding up and ash-faced Finnigan. Millicent had wrestled Granger to the ground and had her head in a headlock.

I got up as the two were separated and picked up the two wands, pocketing my own and handing the other to Patil. She took it back with distrust in her eyes.

"I don't like what you're doing." She said bluntly.

"Helping you?" I asked dryly.

"No." She snapped. "Hanging out with Neville."

I stared at her. How the hell did she know about that? She rolled her eyes at me. "Neville's not the most secretive, you know. It only took a couple of weeks of asking him before he said you were tutoring him in Charms."

"Who all knows?" I asked, my voice sounding lower than I thought it would have been.

"Just me and Lavender and Dean and Seamus." Patil counted them off on her fingers. "I'm assuming none of your friends know about it. Can't imagine they wouldn't be keeping quiet about it. But whatever, just don't hurt Neville. He's our friend, and he's a bit more trusting than he should be."

I thought about how Longbottom was whenever I was with him. How he was quietly confident in what he knew, and questioned more than I had originally given him credit for. I found myself thinking that maybe Patil and the rest of his Gryffindor friends didn't know him as well as they thought they did.

"Longbottom and I are just working on Charm." I told her as the other students started gathering in the center of the room. "He's getting good at it, just needs more faith put in him." With that, I turned on my heel and left Patil and joined the rest of our peers in the crowd.

Draco and Potter were dueling. I just joined the crowd when a snake was launched out of Draco's wand and towards the people standing nearby. Finch-Fletchley was the one closest to the snake.

There was a sudden low and horrible sounding strangled hiss coming from...Potter. I stared in shock as Potter edged towards the snake, speaking to it in that strangled hiss. The snake turned away from Finch-Fletchley and towards Potter, completely docile now.

Potter looked to Finch-Fletchley, who looked terrified and angry. "What're you playing at?" The Hufflepuff shouted before running out of the Great Hall altogether. Professor Snape stepped forward and raised his wand, the snake disappearing with a puff of black smoke. Weasley grabbed Potter by the sleeve and tugged him away, leaving the rest of the hall staring after him in shock.

Harry Potter was a Parselmouth.