The first day of class went rather fast. Hermione and Frances elected to sit together during Arithmancy as they both knew each other rather well compared to the rest of the students in the class. Frances tried to find Hermione after the class, but she had disappeared, miraculously reappearing in Transfiguration class however, much to her and Ron's confusion. "Where'd you come from?" he asked loudly, at which Hermione just rolled her eyes, entirely ignoring his question.

Care of Magical Creatures was the last class, something that she and Neville had been looking forward to and discussing in the week before school.

They met at Hagrid's hut, who they'd recently been informed was the new professor, looking around uneasily, not sure what was in store for them. Soon enough Hagrid emerged, looking positively giddy for his first day. He had the students follow him into the forest, telling them to mind tree roots and not wander far from the group.

"What's he got waiting for us out there?" she asked Neville, who now looked rather anxious for the lesson.

He shrugged, "I don't know, but if it's Hagrid I'd reckon it might be rather exciting." Neville didn't look excited though, he looked positively sick. Frances looked to see Draco's expression, which was downright angry at the developments. She could imagine what he was muttering about to Crabbe and Goyle. Something like, "Dirty half-breed expects me to walk out into the bloody Forbidden Forest for a lesson. Just for some Horklumps or Flobberworms, it's ridiculous. I can tell already that he ought to be fired."

Frances was annoyed at just the idea of him saying something like that. When she got to the clearing where several strange creatures were waiting, she was in a bad mood too. Hagrid quickly introduced them as Hippogriff's. There were five of them, all in different colors. They paced and clawed at the ground, eyes alert and wary, waiting to be approached.

Hagrid immediately volunteered Harry to be the first to say hello, after a painfully short introduction to the beasts. He followed the instructions given to him about how to properly introduce himself, bowing low and not moving too suddenly. After half a minute of bated breath, the hippogriff, Buckbeak, finally bowed back to him. Hagrid took this as confirmation that Harry would be allowed to ride him, so he went ahead plopping him on top of Buckbeak, slapping his huge hand against its hindquarters to urge it into the air. Buckbeak took off gleefully, Harry letting out an involuntary yell as it rose above the treeline with a few flaps of its mighty wings.

Then the students formed lines behind each Hippogriff to bow to it.

Frances was the first up in front of a dark brown one, who seemed to be of the more docile ones. She was eager to make friends with it, but she certainly wouldn't risk it with one that seemed unamenable to her.

Once the prescribed motions had been carried out dutifully, the creature allowed her to pet it. It was soft, but underneath its feathers were hard muscles that assured her that it could strike her dead in an instant. Potter landed on Buckbeak, jumping off victoriously to the applause of many of his classmates.

She heard Draco scoff from the back, where he was tactfully avoiding having to meet any of the Hippogriffs. "Can't be very hard if Potter can do it! Bet these beasts aren't dangerous at all!" he announced, striding up to Buckbeak assertively. His air of unshakable confidence was thoroughly shaken when the Hippogriff reared up on its hind legs and slashed him on the arm, knocking him to the ground.

He shouted and writhed on the forest floor, Hagrid striding over and gathering him up in his arms. As he was taken to the castle they could hear his loud moaning, their professor wearing an expression of equal concern and annoyance.

Ron rolled his eyes and loudly proclaimed, "That was a really bad thing to happen in Hagrid's first class, though, wasn't it? Trust Malfoy to mess things up for him..."

Frances went down to the hospital wing after dinner that night. Pansy had told her that it was "really horrible what Hagrid's monster had done to him," so she had been feeling anxious and worried he could be seriously hurt. She nicked a few cookies in a napkin for him, not sure how else she could really help.

The hospital wing was rather full, as it was the first few days of school. It was mostly first years moaning in cots, since they were the ones that didn't know their way around the castle and were eager to get close to the Whomping Willow and other dangerous Hogwarts linchpins.

She spotted Draco as soon as she entered. He was sitting in the bed opposite of where he had ended up the last year after she stunned him. Draco was happy to see her, holding out his uninjured arm to take what she had brought him. He placed it in his lap, unwrapping it a little slower than he might if he had two working arms.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Alright, Madam Pomfrey gave me something for the pain and mended my cut so I should be fine in a few days," he said after chewing and swallowing his cookie.

Frances rolled her eyes, "Oh come off it, I know you're not just doing 'fine,' you're always up in arms about something. This situation is really not any different."

"Ah well now that you mention it, my father's aiming to get Hagrid fired."

"Fired?" she shouted, causing everyone in the infirmary that was fit to turn their head to look in her direction. In response, she lowered her voice and stepped closer. "For what? You were the one that acted a total muppet in class. Hagrid told you everything not to do and you still did it!"

Draco's expression changed to the one that he wore whenever he was about to get defensive. "It's not my fault that the oaf is introducing us to such dangerous creatures! Look at my arm, clearly they're not safe!" Frances was entirely disbelieving, and she knew somehow that he didn't entirely believe what he was saying either.

"They're only unsafe if you start acting like a tosser to them! Clearly you don't have a problem with things hurting you since you're always hanging around me and acting like an arsehole!"

"Is that a threat?"

Their voices had risen to shouts and in the noise Madam Pomfrey had come out in her apron and red dress, looking very cross. "Why is it, Miss Tacet, that you are always the one shouting at my patients?" She yelled, matching the volume the two of them had set. "Now if you don't mind, get out of my infirmary before I give you a reason to be in here!"

Draco leaned back on his bed with supreme satisfaction, taking a cup of water from the nightstand and sipping it, all the while making aggressive eye contact with Frances. This last act of enmity threw her into such a rage that she screamed, "Have fun pissing in a bedpan, you absolute maggot!"

As she stormed out, she saw a look of such loathing on Madam Pomfrey's face that she was certain if she didn't leave fast enough she would get jinxed. Frances slammed the door behind her as hard as she could, although much effort was required for this since it was so large and heavy.

Suddenly her thoughts turned to Neville, and how badly she needed to rant. Frances stomped into the Great Hall, hoping he was still eating his dinner. Indeed he was, and talking animatedly with Ron, Harry, Hermione, Dean, and Seamus. As Frances took a seat between Neville and Hermione, Dean asked, "Is she allowed to sit with us?" looking around confusedly.

"Piss off, Dean. Are you going to call McGonagall?"

"Well I might now that you mention it," he said cheekily.

She rolled her eyes, "You shouldn't, I've come to complain about Draco. I'm sure you all can get on board with that."

They all leaned in closer as she told them of his plan to get Hagrid fired. Their looks of absolute ire only worsened as her description of their conversation went on.

"What a git," exclaimed Ron when she had finished.

"Couldn't agree more. I don't know what his plan is now, but I'm certain there's not a good outlook for Hagrid, considering how much worse Draco's dad is than he."

"Well someone ought to tell Hagrid," Neville suggested, clearly speaking to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They nodded in agreement, having already thought about that.

"I should leave before Madam Pomfrey finds me and gets Filch to string me up in his office," joked Frances, getting up from the table.

"I'll come with you," Neville said, snagging his bag and one last sip of pumpkin juice. Once they'd gotten out of earshot of the rest, he commented, "You shouldn't have yelled at him like that."

"What? Don't tell me you've taken Draco's side, I thought I knew you better than that."

"Oh come on," he groaned, "I'm not taking his side, I'm worried about you. He might turn on you now that you've said all of those things. You still have to live with him, remember?"

They turned down the hallway and went down the dungeon stairs. "I appreciate the concern, Neville, but Draco and I are constantly fighting, this shouldn't change anything."

They were in front of the blank stone wall where the entrance to Slytherin house was hidden. Neville looked very worried. "Sure, but in all those fights it was just because he did one little bad thing. If you say Malfoy's going after Hagrid, I don't see this blowing over anytime soon. He's going to be campaigning to get Hagrid sacked for a while. Unless you're prepared to ignore what he's trying to do-"

"I would never!"

"Exactly. I'm just saying, I wouldn't get too involved with the idea that you'll be back to being friends in a fortnight."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

Neville rolled his eyes at her unwillingness to discuss the topic further, but he had long resigned himself to the idea that she would never accept advice until she was ready to. He walked off and she entered the common room, very happy that Draco wouldn't be there for at least a week.

Her first potions class of the year was almost perversely difficult, although she didn't know how she could've expected otherwise considering it was a fifth year's class and she was but a measly third year.

To her surprise, the Weasley twins were in her class. She arrived a little early than everyone else, so when Fred and George entered and immediately zeroed in on Frances, sitting alone at a table, she was entirely dumbstruck.

"Hello, Frances. How have you been the last few days?" Fred asked like he was telling a joke.

"Alright, why do you ask?" she shot back, suspicious.

George continued, "Oh, well, we heard that you got into a shouting match with your Malfoy friend. You threatened him and then turned his fingers to squid tentacles."

"I don't know who you heard that from but I'm too lousy at transfiguration to do that, although I certainly did threaten him."

"Well if you didn't attack him, what did you do?" Fred asked.

She smiled, still a little proud of what she'd said. "For one, I did tell him to have fun pissing in a bedpan. Then Pomfrey threatened to hurt me, so I had to leave."

"Wicked," they said in usision. "Anyone who knocks Slytherins down a peg is good with us."

"You know I'm a Slytherin, right?"

"Sure," George insisted, "But that doesn't mean you can't insult the people in your house."

"If anything, you're even more equipped to insult them considering all of the inside information you have," Fred added.

"What's happening right now, is this you two fishing for dirt?"

George smirked. "Do you have any?"

"I'm sure I can come up with so-"

Snape waltzed in, ordering, "Everyone be quiet and face forward, I have very little time to prepare you for your OWLS and I'm certain even with adequate time, the majority of you will never learn. Let's begin."

What followed was a double Potions so excruciating that Frances was sweating at the end of it, the twins and Angelina Johnson, who'd decided to sit with them, doing the same. They had to leave to get to their next class, but she had no class immediately afterward, so she approached Snape with a question that had been weighing on her for several months.

"Professor?"

"Make it fast, Mrs Tacet, I have to go speak to the headmaster in a few minutes," he grumbled, looking at his gradebook with a furrowed brow.

"Yes, sir. I don't know if you remember, but you gave me that book about legilimency last year an-"

"Don't tell me you lost it."

"No, sir. But I have been able to do it, a few times actually."

"That's good, but I don't see why you need to discuss it with me if you're so… successful at it." He was looking at her with an impossible to read expression.

"It's good, yes, but I can't control it."

"How so?" Snape raised an eyebrow.

She looked at the ceiling, searching for a way that could explain it saliently. "Well, so far I've only been able to do it on purpose to Crabbe, who doesn't exactly have the best mental defenses, so I can't quite consider that a victory." Snape shrugged a little in agreement. "But I haven't been able to do it on anyone else, except accidentally."

"How does one accidentally perform legilimency?"

"It only happens when I'm feeling empathetic towards them, like if they're talking about something that makes them sad."

"I see." Snape put his book down and looked gravely at her. "Mrs. Tacet, are you aware that the Dark Lord is an accomplished legilimens?"

She shook her head.

"No, I expected not. Even in his childhood, before he knew of his parentage and ability to do magic, he was performing legilimency. He did this without a wand and without an incantation and I think I'm right in assuming you were performing it in a similar way. If so, I'd say you have an aptitude for the art."

"Really?" she blurted.

He nodded. "Really. It seems you get your power from empathy, which is the opposite of how the Dark Lord does it, and coincidentally the opposite of the way the book teaches you."

"So I'm powerful?"

"Yes, Mrs Tacet, but I will not be praising you further."

She frowned, "I'm not asking for praise, just for clarity."

"Unimportant, the thing you should take away from this is that you must find a way to control your power. I have nothing to teach you if this is the only way you can do legilimency, you must teach yourself."

"Myself?"

"Yes, and I would recommend getting a hold of it sooner rather than later. This is not something to be trifled with. You can anger many people by rooting around in their brains. Either learn to control it, or get used to many people hating you. Now, I'm going to Professor Dumbledore's office, so run off and do your Potions work. It's harder than it looks."

"Well it looks hard already," she half-laughed.

He escorted her out of his classroom and locked the door behind them. "All the more reason to start today. Good luck, Frances."

His final words seemed very out of place as the nicest thing he'd ever said to her, but she didn't dwell on it too long. Instead she hunkered down in the common room for the next two hours and tried to do the Potions work. It really was harder than it looked.

Later in the night she dragged herself into bed, feeling in need of a good 24 hours, when Pansy whispered from her adjacent bed, "He's mad, you know."

"I figured, Pans."

"Really mad."

Frances turned over on the bed so she could face Pansy, who was already looking at her with wide eyes and a serious expression. "Did you ever consider I might be mad too?"

Pansy's face screwed up in thought, finally she murmured, "No, I didn't. Why are you mad?"

"Well, I'm mad that Draco thinks a cut amounts to a firing for Hagrid an-"

"It's more of a gash, really," she interrupted.

"Not the point, Pans. Why does he think he gets to ruin someone's life just because he acted like a fool and faced the consequences?"

"To be fair, I don't understand why you're friends with him and still surprised that he acts like this. It's just how he is, and you don't have to like it. You've got me, and you've got Neville. If Draco really makes you that unhappy, why do you still try?"

"Ugh, God. I just feel like I've invested this much time in him already and I can get him to a point where he's actually great."

"He's not a piece of real estate, you can't just fix him up and sell him to the highest bidder." Pansy looked irritated at the mere notion.

"I never said anything about selling him off."

A clever smile came over Pansy's face. "I think I know what this is about then," she confessed impishly, "You like him."

"I do not," Frances hissed.

"Do too, why else would you care about being friends now if you weren't saving him for later?"

"I told you before, Pans, he's not my type."

"Well that's why you're putting all this effort in, isn't it? Trying to make him your type. Anyway it doesn't matter what you said two years ago, you were just trying to protect my feelings since I fancied him."

"That's totally unfair. You can't use a lack of evidence as evidence, I'm really not interested." This wasn't a lie, although the frustration in Frances' voice really made it seem like one. She truly hadn't ever considered him in that sense. It was fair to say that she thought he was attractive, but he was just an incredibly infuriating friend. She didn't have an explanation as to why she did still care so deeply though.

Pansy snickered. "You're a terrible li-"

"Will you two just go to sleep? You're awful whisperers," Millicent Bulstrode barked from across the room.

Frances knew without needing to see that Pansy was rolling her eyes. "Alright, Millie, pull your panties out of your bum, we're going to sleep."

Millicent huffed haughtily.

As Frances turned to her side to try to get some sleep, Pansy murmured, "He likes you too, or he wouldn't have put up with all of the fights."