I apologize for taking so long to get this up, but I was busy writing a chapter for another fic, and it took a while. However, since I got out of school last week, my updates will probably not be as sporadic.

Mask

The Slytherins were well acquainted with masks. They had been raised to wear masks, to always keep one at the ready. After all, how could one live life without a mask to use? True selves weren't always best kept at the surface.

Not real masks, of course; figurative ones. Real masks were gaudy, tawdry things, usually used as some sort of romantic item for dances and plays and games. Those masks didn't help at all; they hid the wrong things and kept the ones that should be hidden in full view.

Sally-Anne Perks slips on a mask that changes her personality and even her appearance when she is anywhere but the Slytherin common room. It would be dangerous for a non-Slytherin to see her true self instead of a shallow, giggly girl.

Pansy Parkinson puts on a hard, tough mask consisting of lies and insults and shrieks and screams. With her mask, she obsesses about Draco, fawns over him and becomes his servant. Without it, any type of servant is the house-elf, and she is Draco's good friend with whom to laugh about stupid Mudblood Gryffindors.

Blaise Zabini would never let his true personality escape from behind the curtain. All he has to do is act like he hates Mudbloods and will be a Death Eater when he grows up and no one will pay more attention to him than they should.

How could Draco Malfoy ever reveal his quirks and his heart when he wears a mask? No; all they can know him as is cold and cruel, gray-eyed and pale-skinned, Mudblood-hater and pureblood-lover. It's too much bother to let them know that he has a heart that still beats under his Slytherin robes.

Tracey Davis is a Muggle-born, has always been a Muggle-born, and will always be a Muggle-born – or, at least, until she reluctantly assumes her mask. Then she becomes Tracey Davis, your average Slytherin with a posh accent and a loathing for those not born to witches and wizards.

Daphne Greengrass is a normal person, a person with layers of personality and opinions and longings and goals. She is hardy and resourceful, always looking for the best way to do something. But then on goes her delicate, pale mask, and she is a rich pureblood with cool eyes, preceded by the swish of fashionable, elegant robes, the smirk of one who knows she's better, and the hiss of an insult.

Millicent Bulstrode is nice and helpful and loves cats, but the minute the mask is on her face, she is mean and stupid, one who lives only to hurt and to leer and to grunt, just as her appearance suggests.

Vincent Crabbe may be somewhat slow, but he is determined to be smart and to be successful, and he's trying the best he can. But it's hard to do so when your mask demands you to be one of Draco's grunts, one whose only talent is looking intimidating and landing a good punch.

Gregory Goyle's surname is similar to the word gargoyle, and what's better to emulate than a surname suggestion when he has to put on his mask? And one thing leads to another, so, of course Goyle has to be dumb, because you never hear of gargoyles being smart.

Theo Nott hates his mask, but he still finds himself putting it on. With it, he becomes the Death Eater's son, one who will obviously become a Death Eater himself. He becomes the arrogant Slytherin pureblood with a trademark smirk and snigger, a sneer and plenty of scorn.

Without their masks, the Slytherins are normal teenage students who don't know what they'll do in the world. With them, they are elegant yet cruel purebloods, represented by sneers and sniffs, by smirks and glares, by insults and wealth and power. With their invisible masks, they are future Death Eaters, Mudblood-haters, ready to use Unforgivables at the drop of a hat, all mean and cruel and evil, all arrogant and prejudiced and conceited.

They need to use the masks far too often, no matter how much they despise them. They need to use them no matter how much they frighten them. The masks are beneficial, but someday a time will come when the Slytherins will not be able to tell the difference between their times with masks and without, when their time with the masks will represent them better than without, when they are free and their own.

And the Slytherins don't know how soon that's coming.