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Chapter Five:
It's funny how easily you can make the decision to trust someone. Or rather, how easily young people seem to make that decision. For about two weeks I felt like a single mother of ten little first-years.
My world flip-flopped in a day or two; all of a sudden all of those kids wanted me to help with their spell-casting.
It started, I think, when I was standing in a hallway and decided to grab a small child and pull her out of the way of a hard-eyed Draco Malfoy. She thought I was gonna beat her or steal her books or something until she looked up to see me flipping him off with a grin on my face. She looked from me to him to me again, and I saw a glint of something in her eyes that was very Slytherin, but she gave me a hug and ran off, so I ignored it. I thought nothing of the episode; I had been too busy getting lost before to help out.
That night, as I wrote another potions essay (you'd think, being Slytherins, Slughorn would go easy on us) on a couch in the common room, the same little girl cuddled up to me and pulled out her Transfiguration essay.
"You might want to watch what you do," I whispered conspiratorially. "Slytherins don't cuddle."
She giggled. "The older kids won't do anything if I'm next to you."
I thought about this for a while, looking around the room and realizing she was right, so I conceded defeat and went back to writing.
The next morning she and friend of hers walked with me to breakfast. By the end of the week I felt like a mother goose, with a whole gaggle of first-years behind me.
The seventh-years laughed at me as I came in to breakfast, but they weren't happy that I was "coddling" the youngsters.
"They'll never grow strong if you're always protecting them, Grace!" one complained.
"All Slytherins need a hard outer shell and we make it by teasing the younger generations; that's our job!" justified another.
So I ended up helping them with their spell casting. I taught them small things, like a charm to tie someone's shoes together, or a hex to make tormentors sneeze for a full minute, and told them never to use them on an older Slytherin.
And I tried to dissuade them from following me all of the time. Especially on the way to breakfast, because Draco looked more and more tired and I was beginning to expect an extra body in my bed almost every night. I was not interested in explaining that to small children who all looked up to me.
I learned many things about my house during those weeks. The seventh-years didn't want me mothering the kids, yet when they found a bruised and battered young Slytherin they brought them straight to me. I got the name of their attacker while fixing them up, which I then told to a specific group of Slytherins, who immediately sought retribution. Between us we taught the young ones how to be a Slytherin: pay attention to the hierarchy, get tough, don't show pain, and it's Slytherins against the world, so we have to stick together.
One morning after the kids stopped following me, I was feeling pretty powerful, so I sat next to Draco, intent on doing something to make him eat. Noone else was going to—even Pansy never noticed how thin he was getting—so I decided to stop watching him and start talking to him.
He looked up as I sat down, surprise well hidden in his almost-dead eyes (but at this point I was an expert Draco-eye-reader), then continued breaking his food into small pieces to make it look like he ate some of it.
"How 'bout you actually eat it?" I asked conversationally, grabbing a muffin. "It's not hard, look." I took a bite.
"How about you take your do-good self and sit where that attitude belongs: in a different House," he stated quietly, looking at me with something akin to hatred in his eyes.
I hid the jolt of pain that went through me. "Well, if your 'friends' won't try to help you someone should," I said. "I mean, did you eat any of that?"
"I'm not one of your first-year pups. You don't have the authority to mother me," he replied, the venom in his voice gaining strength, even as his volume went down. Apparently I was too well-liked for him to be heard fighting with me. "You don't need to pretend to care so you can feel good about yourself."
"I guess if I put spinach in my eggs I wouldn't eat it either. Try the muffins, or the cheese," I replied, hoping that if I just kept pushing he'd eat something, and unwilling to let him land any punches to distract me. I also hoped that if I kept it light the others at the table would ignore what he was saying so he could get it out of his system.
"Just because you think I need help doesn't mean I want it from you. You prefer every House to Slytherin. Why don't you go sit with them?"
"Cheese. Just a bite. You need protein." I pushed a piece into his hand.
"Pushy bitch," he retorted, and seemed to grow even angrier, his eyes clouded with rage.
"And yet I'm 'not a Slytherin.' You just described Pansy perfectly." I raised my eyebrows. "Eat."
He looked like he was about to hit me, but instead he rose quickly and stormed out. I laughed quietly to myself: he ate the cheese on his way out of the Great Hall. The venting must have done him some good; he couldn't hate me that much.
I had been having private talks with Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore. They seemed to think that I could graduate early, considering my grades and my abundance of seventh-year-level classes. I hoped they were right, for if I took my NEWTs this year then my parents couldn't use school as an excuse to drag me back to America with them. Granted, Voldemort was much less of a threat there for now, but I felt like there was something holding me to this country. I was hoping they wouldn't mind me staying too much, but I knew they'd send twenty Howlers the moment I tried to bring it up. I also forwent telling Margo or Charlie my hopes, for they would automatically connect my unwillingness to be an ocean away to Draco, and I didn't really want them getting close to the truth. I was hiding a lot, and I had a bad feeling I'd be lying a lot more as the weeks went by.