History
Bakura blinked at the girl. How inane could a question be? After a moment, however, he granted her the favor of assuming that she was simply trying to be polite and answered her question after swallowing his mouthful of figs and honey.
"The day has gone well enough. I managed to get some studying done despite interruptions. Now." Suddenly serious, Bakura fixed Myrtle with a piercing stare. "You asked me about my history and I answered. I think it is only fair that you respond in kind." If he was indeed going to be spending more time with this girl he wanted to know more about her.
"All right." Myrtle went red – as she often did – and began. "My parents are muggles: people without any magic. I grew up just like any other kid, going to an ordinary school, being teased by my brother, going places with my family." She smiled at the memory, eyes gone dreamily happy, and Bakura felt a stab of envy at the fact that she still had her parents – an emotion he tried quickly to suppress.
"Then on my eleventh birthday I received a letter telling me that I was a witch and inviting me to Hogwarts. It was like a dream. Discovering that magic was real and that I could really perform it was wonderful. I learned basic spells quickly, and soon I was able to show my parents how much I'd learned." Her smiled faded. "That didn't last, though. First I received a letter telling me that it was illegal for a minor to perform magic without wizardly supervision. That was all right, though. It just made me more eager to get to Hogwarts where I would truly be able to learn about and use magic. Once I got here, however, things started going downhill.
"Here I was a girl from a family of muggles, an ordinary, ugly girl who didn't really fit into Slytherin. You probably haven't noticed, but Slytherins on the whole are very concerned with the whole idea of pure blood. If you haven't come from a family who can trace their wizardry back through generations you're looked down on, and if neither of your parents are wizards, well, that's even worse. If you come from a muggle family then you're a mudblood, a useless person who should never have been put into the school, let alone the House of Slytherin."
Brows rose. "So that's where you are now. Magic is a wondrous thing but people are not nearly so accepting." He nodded and fingered his hair, offering her a smile. "I have had the same problem for different reasons. It is annoying, but after a while it becomes easy to ignore or to find other ways of dealing with. Those who make it their business to find the weaknesses of others are generally careless of their own." He knew that his smile wasn't pleasant, but for a moment he didn't care. Then the moment had passed and he forced his face into more normal lines.
Myrtle was staring at him wonderingly. "I couldn't – I can't ignore them. They don't let me ignore them." She looked at her plate for several moments before lifting her head to stare him in the eyes. "That was why I first saw you. One of them had performed a spell on me and I had to go to the infirmary to have it undone." She didn't say anything more about it, but Bakura considered that she had made her point. The girl had, however, missed one important thing.
"I did say that if it was impossible to ignore people like that it would be necessary to deal with them. You should study defensive spells." He left her with that thought as he went back to study. It was hard to believe it, but he was actually beginning to get used to the idea of being able to read.
Whispers and stares followed him as he made his way to the library, and once there he opened a book and stared at it, not reading, simply listening to what was being said about him. It was about what he had expected. They were saying that he was the first boy who had ever dumped Diane Rosmerta, that he had tried to come onto her and she had refused him, that he was still a first-year because he was too stupid to pass, and other things of that sort. As usual, they had speculated completely wrongly and not even managed to keep the one part that had really happened straight.
Shaking his head, Bakura returned to his book, forgetting all about them as he read about different spells and practiced casting a few of them in the back of the room. It wouldn't be long before people forgot about him. This kind of interest couldn't last for long without something substantial to sustain it, and Myrtle was the only one who knew any of that.
When he came to the table for dinner that night he noticed that the far end of the Slytherin table was now as fully occupied as the rest, and rolled his eyes as he took his usual seat. Some people's curiosity knew no bounds. As he was unwilling to give them any more gossip fodder, Bakura didn't say anything about himself, although he knew that even with what he had told her Myrtle was as curious as everyone else. "People are very stupid, aren't they?"