Adroit: cleverly skillful, resourceful, or ingenious
March 24, 1996
Daphne Greengrass didn't spend much time with the rest of the girls she shared a dormitory with. Pansy Parkinson was the ring leader, and girls like Pansy weren't happy unless they had someone towards whom they could direct all their disgust and disdain. Oh, surely there was more than just one person on the receiving end of Pansy's sneers and condescension, but Daphne served as the example. Just because you were a Slytherin fifth year didn't mean you were automatically in the club. You still had to toe the line, lest you end up keeping the Greengrass girl company. And of course, nothing brought coyotes together like tearing apart prey.
Yes, the loathing between Daphne and Pansy had started even before they'd gotten on the train, although neither girl remembered exactly what it stemmed from. Some half-remembered dinner party both their parents (wealthy, though not anywhere close to the old families like the Malfoys or the Blacks) had dragged them to, or perhaps just a chance meeting in Diagon Alley that had not gone well. Either way, most of their fellow Slytherins considered it a sign of doomsday if Daphne and Pansy started getting along.
Daphne had no problem with this arrangement. She didn't really like the rest of her roommates anyway. If they weren't the creepy descendants of dark wizards, they were brutish or shallow or spineless and Daphne had no time for them. And Pansy didn't scare her like she intimidated Tracey Davis, or many of the younger students and even a few of the older ones. Daphne could handle her.
When she caught Pansy nicking her jewelry, Daphne flung Pansy's silver hairbrush (possibly the one nice thing she owned) into the lake and left a ransom note from the giant squid in its place. When Pansy snogged Theodore Knott in the middle of the common room (the only boy Pansy hadn't looked twice at until Daphne started writing his name in the back of her notebooks), it was easy enough for an advanced O.W.L. potions protégé to slip Tracey Davis an infatuation serum that had her sitting in Draco Malfoy's lap by the end of the day.
But there was a line that Daphne wouldn't let anyone cross. She didn't even know what it was until early spring in her fifth year, but the instant she saw her little sister running down the corridor in tears and Pansy and her court cackling behind her, she knew private retaliation would not be good enough. This went beyond a petty feud between a couple of classmates. Pansy could pick on all the rest of the younger girls, but she wasn't ever going to bother Astoria again.
A month later, when Dumbledore had gone, and the Weasley twins had made their spectacular exit and unleashed pure chaos behind them, Daphne made her move. No matter how much she wanted revenge, she was not about to let herself get caught, so she'd waited for the perfect cover. No one had any hope of tracing the hex back to her with all the mayhem. And anyway, who besides Pansy Parkinson would ever suspect quiet little Daphne Greengrass, loner of Slytherin house of giving a fellow student a stubborn pair of moose antlers even Madam Pomfrey had trouble removing?
A/N: Finally found some time to write this! Hope you like my little backstory for that one line in OotP. :) Review, yes?