Thanks to reviewer Renata MM, who asked about Cho Chang and the Patils and gave me some ideas!

A very unhappy Draco Malfoy makes an appearance at last.

Summary: In the trio's fifth year, they come across a little band of Slytherins who want to make their own stand against Voldemort. Their leader - the sharp and unconventional Gold - has something Harry wants. And Hermione... well, she'd like to call it a mind-crush. An exploration of culture, class structure and exclusion in the wizarding world with shades of Hermione/OC tossed in.

"Harry?"

He looked up, and nearly fell over. Cho Chang stood so close he could smell her floral perfume. It made him feel a bit drunk. "Er. Hi."

"I wanted to ask you..."

"Yeah?" he blurted, a little too eagerly.

"...Are you still looking for other kinds of spells?"

Oh. He should not have been disappointed. He was anyway. "Always. You, ah... know some Chinese spells?" Merlin, what if she was Vietnamese and not Chinese? She was Chinese, right? Why didn't he know this?

Cho smiled. "Well - I know one or two. Nothing incredible. Just - just useful little spells. I'm sort of Westernized. But I thought I could write my grandmother... She was around before Mao. She'd remember how things used to be."

"Used to be?" Harry was suddenly aware of how profound his ignorance was.

Cho had barely smiled since Cedric's death. Now she looked wistful and sad. Harry was glad she wasn't crying, at least. "The revolution... Wizards were seen as just another dangerous group, you know, like the Falun Gong, who would not answer to the government. They emigrated or were killed. A lot of the old magic was writing-based and the magical libraries got burned... There are very few wizards left in China now." Suddenly the barest trace of a smile appeared on her face. It was like seeing the sun after a very long rain. "But it's changing. Wizards are coming back. It's a good time to resurrect it, maybe."

Harry thought that was an excellent idea.

After that, Harry made a list.

Parvati and Padma were next. It was still a little awkward talking to them, after the vague disaster of last year's Yule Ball, but they showed him a book of spells their father's father's father had written, all in elegant Hindi calligraphy. Even the Hogwarts library had something to offer on the subject of Indian magic - which, as it turned out, had infiltrated English magic in subtle ways during the British Raj ("You wanted to control us, but you also wanted to be us," said Padma, with a laugh, "We had better food and a better climate. We had colour and pretty ladies. We had a lot more fun."). Indian magic wasn't as experimental as Chinese magic or as solemn as Hebrew magic - every spell had a very clear sense of purpose, but sometimes that purpose was downright mischievous.

Seamus Finnigan didn't know any Gaelic spells to speak of ("You lot are to blame for that! Irish Magic's been dying since Glenmalure. The Black and Tans tramped out the last of it. The English wizards'd have us killed if we spoke spells in Irish. Kippered herring, Harry?") but McGonnagall knew a smattering of very blunt, pragmatic Scotch Gaelic magic, though she looked at him very strange when he asked. He talked to an Italian wizard, who laughed at him ("You're kidding, right? You know what language most of the spells they teach us are?") and a French wizard who didn't know a thing about magic in other languages before it occurred to him that he would need to brush up on his history.

When Hermione found him in the library a week later, poring with fascination over an accounting of the role of wizards in the Norman conquest, she laughed. "And to think - you lot used to make fun of me for taking Hogwarts: A History to bed with me. You're starting to be quite the linguistic historian, Harry."

"Well. It's kind of fascinating. Did you know - all the Latin magic got here through the Normans in 1066? Latin was the magical language of the Aristocracy - that's where the pureblood lineages started - but some of the old Saxon spells from the people who lived here before are still used in the 'low' realms. Cooking and cleaning spells. That sort of thing."

Hermione was beaming at him.

"Of course," added Harry, scratching his head, "that part's completely useless to the cause."

"Knowledge," replied Hermione, primly, "is never useless."

"You're very quiet, aren't you?"

Gold shifted the pillow from his head. His headache was pressing against his skull. Normally, sharing a dormitory room with Draco Malfoy meant a constant state of war. The only thing that ever got him any peace was the cloak of heavy wards he'd placed over his own portion of the room, and even then, Malfoy still found ways to try to torture him. Not that Gold didn't give back as good as he got. Today, Draco would have been a fool to start anything major. Crabbe and Goyle were both out taking a fall for him in detention. They were the only two in the dormitory. He was unprotected. As duellists they were close to well-matched, but Gold had the edge.

"Normally you never shut up." He could hear a sudden smirk in Malfoy's voice through the bed-hangings. "Imagining your next meal?"

"I'm thinking, Malfoy. You should try it sometime. Then maybe you'd stop beating the 'Gold's fat' dead horse and come up with an insult with a shred of originality to it." He pretended to sound helpful. "You could make fun of my hair, or my taste in music, or my admittedly horrible personality. All legitimate things to mock. You're missing opportunities."

Malfoy didn't seem to register the sarcasm. "About what?"

He was surely trying to hide it, but there was a loneliness in those words that was unmistakeable. Rarely did Gold allow himself to feel pity for Draco Malfoy... but perhaps this would be one of the occasions.

That said, he could hardly tell Malfoy about the next spell he planned to introduce to Potter and the D.A. "Girls," he lied, fluidly and, in his opinion, rather generously. It would give Malfoy fodder for poorly-aimed mockery for a month. That ought to make the poor little muffin feel better.

Predictably, Malfoy sniggered, though Gold didn't think it was very convincing. "Have you tried the Forbidden Forest? There might be an Acromantula out there that'd have you."

"Better than Pansy Parkinson."

"Well I wouldn't expect you to know what real breeding looks like."

"Breeding, because it's not enough that she already looks like a prize horse, you've also got to make sure your offspring won't be missing toes. Is she your cousin, Draco, or your half-sister?"

Malfoy huffed. "There are still more than enough true purebloods to keep the line vital."

"You are eighteen different kinds of creepy." Gold rolled over again, putting the pillow back over his head.

For a while, there was blissful silence. Then, out of the blue, "What do you think of Granger?"

For a moment Gold was too stunned to speak. "...I think she's the most talented and intelligent witch in this school," he answered, when the shock finally wore off. Really, why was he surprised?

"Well I think she's a foul, ugly rat-faced mudblood," said Malfoy, with relief evident in his tone.

"Right."

Malfoy didn't seem to catch the disbelief in Gold's tone. "But I suppose you fancy her just because she's brainy," he said, with a fair go at dismissive contempt.

"Of course I do," answered Gold, without a trace of apology. Gold could admit to liking a Muggleborn - and Malfoy envied him for it. What if I told you she cornered me, dragged me by my collar into the abandoned loo and snogged me senseless? He imagined Malfoy's head venting steam until it finally burst. It was almost too tempting. Never mind the fact that it was only his brains Hermione liked, and not the rest of him. Gold didn't begrudge her that. He was surprised enough that any of it had happened.

"Pathetic," said Malfoy, as if he were trying to reassure himself.

"Whatever you say, Malfoy. May you be very happy with Parkinson. I'm sure your children will have only modest intellectual delays and really very small tails, easily removed with modern surgery. Good-night."

"You should learn some respect before that fat mouth gets you in any more trouble."

"Feh."

"When Crabbe and Goyle get back-"

"Feh."

"I am speaking to you, don't ignore me!"

Gold sat up, pulling back the bed-hanging to meet Draco's eyes. "You know, if you're that desperate for someone to talk to, Moaning Myrtle is really a very lonely soul."

Malfoy's face twitched. "I'm not desperate." But he hadn't denied the rest.

Gold sighed. The headache flickered. "Something's on your mind."

When Malfoy spoke again it was in a very different tone. He sounded very young. "Do you ever think... is there a spell to do it all over? Go back a few years and just sort of change things?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Time-turners get very unstable past about a month."

"What about your... Jew magic?"

Gold rolled his eyes. "If there was I wouldn't tell it to you, but there isn't."

"But if there was-?"

"Would I use it?" Gold thought about it. "Probably. We've all made shit decisions at some point."

"Some worse than others," mumbled Malfoy, so quietly that Gold nearly missed it.

"Well, then again, maybe I wouldn't. The way I see it, I am fully in control of my destiny at any given point in time. No-one forces me to keep to his chosen path; I force myself." He was fully aware that Malfoy's questions were not truly directed at Gold, but at himself. Gold had certain freedoms of expression that Draco Malfoy did not. It was an opportunity to plant the seeds of an idea in Draco's head. The other boy had a predilection for throwing pity-parties, and perhaps he had earned them, but they seldom seemed to lead to action. Gold had absolutely no patience for self-pity.

"Other people can force you," argued Malfoy.

"Only insofar as they can create you. Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does."

"That's rubbish."

Gold had to bite his tongue to keep himself from snapping that's Jean-Paul Fucking Sartre, you little shit. Somehow he managed it. "My options may be limited by circumstance, Draco, but I have options. What are yours?"

"None of your concern, blood traitor."

Gold could tell he'd overstepped. "It's a rhetorical question, Malfoy."

"Is it, though?" Suddenly Malfoy's voice was not small and youthful but low and dangerous. He sounded, Gold realized, like Snape. "I'm sure you'd love to know all about my options. I know you're friendly with Potter - aren't you?"

Gold reached for his wand. "I wouldn't say 'friendly'."

"Granger! You said yourself you fancy her." Malfoy had his wand out too. "And now you're spying for them. On your own house. I might have known - never trust a kike-"

That was it. Gold lost it. "Karat basar!"

The curse cut a deep slice in Malfoy's cheek, but it didn't stun him. "Crucio!"

The torture curse rebounded off Gold's wards, but he felt them weaken and tear. They hadn't been erected to withstand unforgivables. "Oppugnum!"

Lamps, books, papers; objects hailed towards Malfoy's head. Malfoy threw up a shielding charm. By the time the flurry of loose pages had stopped, Gold was on his feet, wand at the ready. "Tambah yashen!"

Malfoy dodged the stunning spell. The force of a reducto grazed Gold's shoulder, leaving a shallow gouge, and battered into the wall behind them. Wooden panelling fell in splinters. Bedposts had started to come down.

"Nakash!"

Malfoy was thrown bodily to the stone floor with tremendous force. Breathless, he hissed a flame hex. It set the bed hangings aflame and caught Gold on the wand arm, singeing him before he could put it out fully with water-charm. Malfoy was limping for the door.

"Get back here, you khnyok little weasel, I'm not done with you-"

Gold started after him, out the door - and ran straight into the bulk of Crabbe and Goyle.

Please leave a review!

I have, for the most part, chosen not to translate anything Gold says in either Hebrew or Yiddish, but 'khnyok' is too good to waste - it explicitly means a bigot, an ultraconservative person, an intolerant person, but it bears connotations of weakness or cowardice.

Here's hoping my Irish attitude towards post-colonialism doesn't bother anyone.