Chapter 2- Being a Slytherin

Fifth year

It wasn't easy, being a Slytherin especially after the war.

The other houses saw them as sly and evil, snakes. They would always first and for most be their house personified. The sins of their parents were also theirs and the other houses would never let them forget that.

Even if you were like Rowan and Helena Avery whose parents were Daphne Greengrass and Sabastian Avery who had never become Death eaters during the war you were still grouped in with the rest of the Slytherins. Slytherins were all the same, if you wore Green you were Evil and would like to see all muggleborns wiped off the face of the earth. If you were a Slytherin you agreed with Voldemort and were just biding your time until the next Dark lord with a hatred for muggles and muggleborns alike rose to power.

Lyra thought it was a hole load of horse shit and extremely prejudiced which was sort of funny since the other houses acted like they were above it all and then also practiced the same behaviour Slytherins were hated for every single day but it was okay because in their minds they were the children of Hero's and martyrs who fought on the side of freedom, justice and goodness.

Slytherins were the opposite the children of death eaters, murderers and pureblood elitists.

The other houses often forget about people like Peter Petigrew, Ivan Abbot and Davina Artridge who were in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. They were death eaters too, they were also murders happy to serve the cause.

They also quite conveniently forgot about people like Theodore Nott, Sabastian Avery and Rhaegar Lestrange.

All of whom were Slytherins all of whom had Deatheater parents all of whom fought on their side for the muggles and muggleborns they were raised to despise. They turned their back on their upbringing, their family and everything they knew because they knew it was the right thing to do.

There were bad Gryffindors just like there were good Slytherins. They were all just people who made choices that were either good or bad. Surely those choices had something to do with who you were on the inside not what colour was on your robe at school.

The whole thing was ridiculous.

The superiority complex was definitely real.

She hated the lot of them mostly because she used to be one of them the people who fought Slytherins were all monsters. When she had first been sorted she felt like a lamb dressed up in snake skin and surely they would be able to smell that she was a pretender not one of them. She had been terrified in her first few months here.

It had been a shock to her system, coming to hogwarts. It was nothing like she was expecting.

She remembered thinking she would make fast friends with all the girls in her house and have amazing adventures within the hogwarts grounds.

She had imagined going on quests, flying a broom through the forbidden Forrest, swimming to the depths of the black lake to learn Mermish from the Merpeople themselves.

Hogwarts had always seemed like one great adventure.

And Ravenclaw.

She had imagined Ravenclaw.

In everyone of those fantasies she had been wearing Ravenclaw robes and sneaking away from the Ravenclaw tower in the dead of night.

She had always pictured being in Ravenclaw like her mother Lyanna Yaxley had been when she had attended hogwarts.

When the hat sorted her into Slytherin she had been absolutely horrified.

She had no idea at the time why she had been put there no one in her family had been a Slytherin except from her Grandfather but he was an exception, he was good, they were not.

Her perfect notions of what her hogwarts experience would be like were dashed.

She had avoided everyone like the plague in her first five weeks of being at hogwarts and cried into her bed every night, curtains shut tightly around her. She knew the other girls had heard her but they never said anything.

They neither ridiculed or comforted her and even now in her fifth year it remained that way with them. Unfamiliar but not hostile, awkward but polite, only speaking when necessary.

Yes it was hard being in Slytherin but it was especially hard for Lyra she was a Yaxley and the Yaxleys had fallen from pure blood grace when her grandfather Alexander Yaxley pureblood prodigy had married Annie Wilson a muggleborn and dirtied their bloodline for generations.

Alexander Yaxley had been one of them as pure as you could be in British wizarding society and he had betrayed them. He turned his back on his family, their beliefs, their blood ideologies and gave into love.

And it was love. Truly the most purest love that Lyra had ever seen. Lyra could hardly believe he was a pureblood actually when she had been old enough to know what a pureblood was and was given a brief summary of the war and why it was fought.

Her grandfather had always been her father figure in life.

He loved movie nights with his family, car trips into the countryside, he loved muggle music and books, cars and Coca Cola, Queen and Bowie.

He loved watching shows like charmed and explaining how "they would have never been able to do that spell without a wand" which then turned into a full on rant of the importance of wands and "that's not at all what vampires look like" and he loved to tell them all about the ridiculousness of these woman having individual powers "it's just not possible and if it was we wouldn't have the need for these powers when you can do anything you want if you know the right spell".

One night he explained to all four of his grandchildren, Lyra and her cousins Tobias, Atticus and Cade how he would easily best all three sisters in a duel. "It would be like duelling children a simple stunner spell would have them beaten! They don't even know any spells to block even the most simplistic attacks a stupefy or a Petrificus Totalus would have them on the ground in seconds. Without wands they are as defenceless as first years on September 1st!"

He had embraced his wife's muggle Culture and his family's banishment and resentment with open arms. He was proof that purebloods didn't have to be disgusting bigots who only cared about blood, money and high society. He was the greatest man in the world to her.

Her real father? Well she barely knew anything about him. Her mother rarely spoke of him she almost pretended as if he didn't exist at all.

Almost, when Lyra was nine she had told Lyra that he was alive, that he provided for Lyra financially but refused to be involved in any other way.

It was a harsh truth but it was nonetheless a truth she was glad she knew.

At least she couldn't paint him as some sort of hero who was kept from her and was defiantly trying his hardest to get back to her everyday as she had when she was a little girl. This was what he had chosen and it was not her.

She had accepted it a long time ago well mostly accepted it.

The truth Theo and her had uncovered last year sent all the feelings of abandonment, anger and inferiority she had felt throughout the years rushing back.

Now she had a name, a face, someone real to direct those feelings toward.

She hated Draco Malfoy with every fiber of her being and yet there was still a small part of her that reared it's ugly head in the dead of night when she was alone with her thoughts that longed to know him. It made her hate him even more.

Sometimes she would see other girls her age with their fathers and pictured herself in their place hugging and laughing and smiling together. Sometimes she wondered about him, what she had received from him, what traits they shared.

It was her deepest shame. He didn't deserve to have her wonder about him at all. He deserved to be completely forgotten by her and her mother not that he would care at all the last sixteen years of silence proved that.

And his son god she couldn't stand his son.

Scorpius Malfoy represented everything she was rejected for not having.

The perfect pureblood with the perfect pureblood mother and the perfect pureblood upbringing.

Looking at him made her feel very angry and very sick.

He was good enough to be Draco Malfoys child and she was Draco Malfoys deepest shame.

Ever since she had been made Quidditch captain at the start of this year the very first female Quidditch captain in Slytherin history which she was exceedingly proud of she had been begging for a reason to cut him from the team but unfortunately for her he was good and he didn't step out of line.

It was a cruel part of her that wanted this but she didn't care.

why should he have everything? He had gotten everything he wanted all his life.

Now Lyra had the means to take something from him and she was just waiting for an opportunity to do so.

Even though times had changed since the war and Slytherins were more accepting of halfbloods and muggleborns there was still prejudice within the house. A hierarchy shall we say, purebloods still flocked to other purebloods desperate to keep the lines pure or face disappointment and potential banishment from their family.

Connections still needed to be kept strong from the children of purebloods families weather for potential future business allies or marriage possibilities.

Purebloods weren't as against adding halfbloods into their inner circle as they had once been. Some were even friendly with muggleborns not many Slytherins were of course but go back thirty years and you wouldn't find one Slytherin that would deem fit to talk to a muggleborn without insulting their blood first.

One of the biggest changes in Slytherin had come in the form of Albus Severus Potter the chosen ones second born son.

Everyone had been shocked to say the least when the sorting hat had shouted out Slytherin after ten seconds on Albus Potters head. It seemed the hat was in no two minds about the decision, he was a Slytherin through and through.

This confused everyone greatly, Slytherin were all full of death eaters how could the chosen ones son be put into the snake pit.

Even though the criteria for getting into Slytherin was Cleverness, Ambition, resourcefulness, cunning and loyalty. Slytherins, though it was not a well known fact were extremely loyal.

Lyra honestly didn't know how this seemed to be a secret kept from the other houses. The death eaters were mostly Slytherin and they were extremely loyal to Voldemort but not just to him. They were Loyal to their families to their bloodlines. They were Loyal to their beliefs no matter how twisted those beliefs were.

The difference between Gryffindor loyalty and Slytherin loyalty was that Gryffindors gave their Loyalty freely, blindly and sometimes irresponsibly.

Slytherin Loyalty had to be earned.

Other houses had become slightly less hostile towards Slytherin in the way that if you were friends with Albus Potter you were left alone mostly.

Lyra was not friends with Albus Potter.

Yes Slytherins were more tolerable to half bloods and muggleborns alike but Lyra wasn't just a halfblood she was a bastard. A child of a Yaxley whose father had betrayed their ideologies and insulted them by giving up their high society life which they held so dear to them.

Her blood was unknown. If her father was a pureblood that would mean that all of her grandparents would have been wizards and that her children would be pureblood for in order to be considered pureblood all your great grandparents had be to wizards. If her father was a half blood her status would stay the same. If her father was a muggle born then the Yaxley line had been dragged even further into the mud.

Nobody knew which it was and they were not so eager to befriend her because of this. They were not unpleasant just indifferent.

"I knew you'd be hiding back here move over" said a voice that she knew almost as well as her own. Before she knew it she was being shoved further along the couch she was sitting on and more towards the window to make room for the disturbance that was now sitting beside her.

She turned to look at him he was frowning at her, brows scrunched up and his full lips pursed into a disproving line.

"We were supposed to be going to hogsmead today, did you forget?"

She shrugged her shoulders lazily and his sharp dark green eyes narrowed at her.

"Oh who am I kidding of course you didn't forget you just don't want to have to do any more socialising then the required minimum of "yes professor" in classes or "can you pass me the frogs legs longbottom" in potions. I was waiting for you at breakfast like an idiot" he said incredulously.

He continued on "honestly I don't even know why I even expect you to show up anymore, you only came to hogsmead three times last year. Next month if you are not in the great hall at 10am dressed and ready to go I am going to come up here stun you and roll you to hogsmead myself or maybe I'll just tie you to the back of my broom and fly us there" as he said this his mood seemed to brighten at the idea of Lyra tied up and forced to go into Hogsmead and make polite greetings with the towns people or nod her head in acknowledgement at certain acquaintances.

"Theo you are giving me a headache with your constant prattling on, I never said I was going to hogsmead you said we were and when I tried to tell you I wasn't you ran off to tell Puccey about your new Broom before I could get a word out" she said rubbing her hands over her face.

Theseus Nott was her only and bestest friend though she had never actually told him this. She felt she didn't need to, their relationship was more then declarations of friendship and weird twinsy lovey dovey behaviour that sort of stuff was for Gryffindors.

When she was a first year and still horrified at being in Slytherin he had tried to befriend her and she had ran in the other direction both figuratively and literally.

She didn't want to be a snake and she certainly didn't want any for friends either but he kept trying kept reaching out his hand no matter how many times it got smacked away. It took until the beginning of their second year for Lyra to agree to be his friend.

During their first year he sat beside her at most meals and always seemed to be able to find her in the library. He just kept popping up out of the blue forcing her to endure his company. He would talk and talk and talk even though Lyra rarely said anything back she would just look down at her meal or the book she was reading intent on ignoring him. He didn't seem fazed by it at all and would continue to talk until she decided she needed to leave or her head was going to explode with all the second hand information it was getting.

She was truly grateful for that, for him.

She had no idea why he had been so determined to be friends with her it's not like she was his only option.

Theo was popular people liked Theo, people didn't particularly like Lyra. She was standoffish, abrupt and sometimes very rude. She appeared snobbish to the casual observer especially the Gryffindors. If she didn't like you she couldn't really pretend otherwise.

She would either completely ignore you or say something rude and stare at you until you got the hint to go away and never come back.

She was good at making people uncomfortable, scaring them off. Everyone but Theo for some strange reason.

They had formed an unlikely friendship, an alliance, a companionship and because of this Lyra started to hate Slytherin a little less and less as time went on. Her second year had been much better then her first with Theo by her side as a friend rather than a reluctant companion.

Laughter sounded from the portrait hole Lyra and Theo snapped their heads up to have a look at who was making the commotion.

There was Scorpius Malfoy and his best friend Albus potter coming into the common room. Lyras eyes narrowed.

She hated running into him or being in the same room as him. Her mood always turned sour the second she saw him and how easily he seemed to find being in Slytherin how much he fit in with them.

Before Lyra had found out the truth she barely noticed Scorpius afterwards she couldn't help noticing him.

She was always aware of him. Her eyes seemed to always find him wherever he was. She told herself that it was best to be aware of him so she could avoid him but she was also curious.

If nothing else she was curious about him. It was the only thing she felt towards him that wasn't anger and resentment.

She watched carefully as he and Albus clutched their sides their hair windswept and unruly. Albus Potters hair was always unruly but it was unusual for Scorpius to be anything but put together and perfect.

They had clearly been doing something that involved a lot of running probably from a teacher or one of Albus's cousins.

They moved towards the chairs near Lyra and Theo. Albus looked gleeful and filled with ease Scorpius looked apprehensive. He could tell that Lyra didn't like him he didn't know why but it was definitely obvious at least to him. She yelled at him and berated him at Quidditch practice which as captain was her job but she seemed to target him more than any other player, she would narrow her eyes at him whenever he was near enough and she would often just abruptly leave the room whenever he got too close.

They sat down at the couch opposite Theo and Lyra. Albus caught Lyras eye and put his hand to his head in a salute.

"Captain" he said to Lyra in acknowledgment.

Lyra looked at them sternly said nothing back then pushed Theo away from her and stood up. She headed towards the portrait hole, she needed to get away from them before she said something rude.

Theo made a quick apology telling the boys that she was on her period and it turned her into a monstrous she witch. The boys looked at him in uncomfortable horror but continued to watch as he quickly followed after her shouting as he walked.

"Where are you going? I was still talking, don't walk away from me Lyra!"

Lyra shook her head stopped and turned around to look at him her cold grey eyes trained on him.

Theo not ready for the abrupt stop rammed into her nearly toppling them over the side of one of the green leather sofas.

Her grey eyes now glared at his green ones which seemed to be twinkling in amusement.

"Monstrous she witch" she asked him her eyes hard but her tone was light.

"What else did you want me to say? The truth?" He questioned.

"How about nothing, I don't owe either of them an explanation" her tone now matched her eyes at the slight acknowledgement of her parentage. It was something she had forbidden them from speaking of.

He ignored her and continued on.

"Where are we going then" he said to her hooking his arm into hers and leading her back towards the portrait hole.

She smiled and leaned into him her mood lifting as they got further and further away from the Malfoy heir.

"Library" was all she said.

Theo sighed "right of course we are because why would we go anywhere even remotely fun".

"You don't have to come"

Theo looked at her seemingly annoyed for the first time since he had found her in the common room.

"Of course I have to come, what else am I meant to do? Go to the three broomsticks with Anthony, Cade and Hadrian and have to suffer through the torture of them talking about witch weekleys fifty hottest potions mistresses across the globe" he scoffed "no thanks".

"Your in luck then today's topic is methods vs talent how to be the perfect potioneer"

He groaned "of course it is."

Hope you guys like this story idea I just had it in my head like what if Draco had a daughter but one he didn't claim.

A halfblood daughter. I've thought about it a few times over the years and decided to make a story out of it.

I decided that the main story should be from fifth year onwards about a year since she found out about Draco being her father. Her and Theo are the only ones in hogwarts who know about it and she is determined to keep it that way.

Please tell me what you think. Thanks for reading.

Xxx