Whispers in Her Hair

by Indygodusk


Chapter 6: Second Year - Viper School & Moaning Myrtle


The mood was somber at dinner Tuesday night as all of the second years either stuffed their faces like it was their last meal or barely picked at their food. Even Harry, despite already having a good idea of how Valeria's training worked, found himself too nervous to eat well. Maybe because he knew how her training worked and this time it didn't have an end date. At least everyone would suffer together this time instead of him suffering alone and being forced to put up with their sly comments. He stashed his uneaten roll in his pocket along with a small pear.

Their first lesson was in an abandoned classroom in a dank corner of the dungeon. Greg, Vincent, and Tracey Davis only lasted fifteen minutes before Valeria lost her temper; they'd been giggling over something in the back of the group and then failing to reproduce the spell she'd just been demonstrating. She kicked all three of them out with a flurry of jinxes, disarmed the entire class, and then threatened to punish the entire group with something ten times worse if even one of them disappointed her for the rest of the night. Gulping, the remaining students made sure their friends stayed focused and helped each other with the spell to keep on Valeria's good side.

However, it wasn't all bad. The first one to get the spell to work, Millicent Bulstrode, was given a Chocolate Frog in reward and a clap on the back by Valeria. When Harry finally managed the spell just before they ended the session, Valeria gave him a firm nod and a proud smile that made him feel taller than Hagrid in a tophat.

During the next session, Theo's need to be seen as an authority reared its ugly head—that or he was trying to get kicked out like the others and didn't care about the cost to everyone else—and he actually tried to interrupt and correct Valeria about the effects of a borderline Dark hex. Theo asserted that the hex was more slow and silly than painful or intimidating and thus not worth learning. Draco nodded along with him, even opening his mouth to agree—probably with a reference to his father—before snapping his mouth shut and looking at Valeria fearfully. Theo irritatingly refused to back down or take the hint when Valeria ignored him and continued talking, even repeated himself a little louder. Students couldn't get away with disrespecting a regular professor like that so Harry didn't know what Theo was thinking of doing it to Valeria, who didn't have the constraints a normal teacher did.

Valeria finished her thought and finally turned to Theo with flaring nostrils. "Since you're determined to be a disrespectful dummy about the Swell and Twist hex, Nott, you can demonstrate instead of the practice dummies I brought."

Paling, Theo took a step back, but it was too late. "Animalis Inflonum," Valeria cast, making Theo drop to the floor with a gurgle. Daphne squeaked and jumped behind Millicent. When nothing else happened, Harry and Blaise exchanged glances and shrugs. Harry tried to include Draco in the look, but the other boy still wasn't normal around Valeria and was keeping his head down.

Not seeming worried, Valeria showed them the wand movement again and pronunciation. Over the next few minutes, Theo's boots fell off and the buttons on his robe popped as his body seemed to be filling with air, his fingers swelling and starting to twist into strange shapes. Theo mostly just seemed uncomfortable and annoyed as his lower left arm twisted into what looked like a balloon cat.

"I've learned my lesson, Valeria," Theo said, trying but failing to sound humble. "You can cancel the hex."

She ignored him.

"May I rejoin the class now?" he asked even louder.

She ignored that too.

"In the short term, the Swell and Twist hex—also known as the Balloon animal hex—may seem only like a silly inconvenience and a good joke," Valeria said, walking around the group and correcting their wand movements. Pansy got a special smile for not needing much help. "In the right circumstances it can be a very useful spell."

"Aren't balloons muggle? With the latex?" Harry asked, surprised to find a spell based on muggle toys taught among a group like this.

Valeria shook her head and grabbed his wrist, correcting his wand movement. "Latex is a natural substance sometimes used in magical manufacturing. As for balloons, the earliest were made long before magical and muggle society separated by inflating pig bladders and animal intestines. For example, the ancient American Aztecs inflated cat intestines and twisted them into sculptures to please the gods. The Dark Arts practitioners amongst them preferred sculpting with human intestines during major rituals."

"Remind me to turn down any party invitations from the Aztecs." Blaise shuddered theatrically as he practiced the wand movement again on the practice dummy Valeria had "borrowed" from somewhere.

"Seriously," Harry wrinkled his nose before turning to Valeria with a question. "You said the hex may seem only like a good joke, implying that it isn't sometimes. What did you mean?"

"The longer the hex is left untreated, the more it inflates and twists the body. Given enough time, it will start to turn from uncomfortable to painful." She gestured to Theo, who'd started rolling around on the floor as the balloon twists reached his elbows and knees and kept creeping higher.

"If the person who casts the spell accidentally overcharges it and is strong enough to keep it progressing in their absence—versus someone young and weak whose spells might falter or stall out after a short time and not get past the elbows or shoulders—the twisting can reach the neck and strangle the victim, overinflate the heart so it stops pumping blood, or burst the stomach and intestines and release acid inside the body which will eat through other organs and out through the skin. To put it simply, it will eventually cause death."

"Then Theo—" Harry swallowed, worried as he looked over. He tried to catch Theo's eye to see if he wanted help, but Theo just narrowed his eyes at Harry before jerking his head to the side, staring at the wall resentfully. "Take it off, Valeria." Harry started to move over to Theo, still determined to help him, but Valeria stopped him by stepping into his way.

"I won't let the hex kill him," Valeria said, rapping Harry's elbow to get him to lift his arm back into casting position, "but arguing and trying to talk over me was stupid and rude. Someone else won't be half as nice." She caught Harry's eye and paused, as if his reaction to her next words was important to her. "I am trying to be nice. I won't let anyone be seriously hurt in my lessons, I promise. You can trust me, Harry."

Holding her eyes, wrestling with himself, Harry finally gave a slow nod and forced his tense shoulders to relax. "Okay." He did trust her word. The problem was that Valeria's definition of seriously hurt didn't match most of his classmates. Then again, neither did Harry's. In addition to magic, Hogwarts had taught him that nothing about his life was really "normal." Harry was used to being knocked black and blue by his cousin and uncle, but since coming here he'd gotten the idea that most of his yearmates had never even been punched, much less slapped across the face by their Aunt on the regular. His standards were probably just as warped as Valeria's. Sighing, he swished his wand, trying to get the spell to work on his practice dummy.

Valeria stopped his next attempt and demonstrated the movement again at a quarter speed. "Better he learn his lesson here than in a drawing room with the kind of wizards the Nott patriarch associates with. Better me than a family member he thought loved him." Her lips twisted down and the look in her eyes made Harry so uncomfortable he had to look away. "Now, don't forget to twist your wrist. Try again." She took a half-step back.

From the corner of his eye Harry noticed Draco's shoulders going tight at her words. Draco's head dropped to look at the floor and he stopped casting, perhaps remembering his own lesson at her hands or something he'd witnessed over the summer in his father's drawing room. Valeria started to turn Draco's way, so Harry let his elbow drop again and cleared his throat to draw her attention, casting the hex without twisting his wrist. It earned him another hard rap on the arm—"Ow!"—but by the time he finished demonstrating the proper movement three times in a row, Draco was normal again.

As the lesson went on and Valeria finally thought them competent enough at the hex to start teaching them the counter to it, the swelling and twisting of Theo's body kept creeping higher and getting larger and more elaborate—the small and simple cat on his arm turning into a large dragon with wings, claws, and a plume of fire. The irritation and discomfort on Theo's face turned to pain as he started to gasp wetly and moan as the twists got tighter. The sounds made Harry flinch, but he tried to steel himself to it and trust in Valeria's word.

"Stop it, stop it already!" Theo begged and demanded by turns.

Not once did he use the words 'please,' 'I'm sorry,' or 'I was wrong.' If Theo would just apologize and show respect to Valeria, would just submit, she might be willing to end it early. Or if Theo looked at Harry and asked for help, even silently, Harry would try to intervene again. But Theo had too much resentment and pride to do either. He was too spoiled. Where was his common sense? He was acting worse than Draco. This wasn't something worth making a stand about. Theo had brought this punishment on himself. As long as the hex was cancelled by the end of the session, he should be fine except for the uncomfortable memory. Whether he learned anything from it remained to be seen. Harry hoped he did.

When the end finally came, Valeria made the bloated and twisted up Theo apologize—his voice high and thin—to both her and the rest of them for being, in her words, a "silly, disrespectful fool and distraction," words that she made him repeat four times until he could get them out without stuttering, gasping, or glaring.

"I hope you learned something tonight," Valeria said, standing over Theo's twisted balloon body and looking down at him. "I could've helped you be safer and better, be more than you are now, but you didn't want that." Theo turned his head away and grimaced resentfully.

Lips pressing tight, Valeria dug her toe hard into Theo's side. "Look at me when I talk to you," she snapped. Coughing, Theo turned back and nodded jerkily. Valeria frowned. "You're hopeless. Don't come back next week. I don't want to see you." Her wand slashed through the air as she reversed the balloon animal hex.

Theo's body deflated with a long farting sound that might've been funny in another situation. Shaking out his wrists and flexing his ankles, he grabbed his boots, pulling them back on with lips pressed tight. Theo looked sweaty and pale except for the dark red distemper on his cheekbones. His robes were ripped, but otherwise he was fine.

Harry sighed as relief coursed through his body.

Then Theo had to open his mouth again on the way out the door, muttering, "Good. I don't want to see your ugly face either."

Before Harry could even wince, Valeria's wand flashed through the air and a yellow light shot out and hit Theo. His skin bubbled for a second before reddish purple boils erupted all over his face and hands, breaking open to seep yellow pus. Everyone jerked back in disgust from where Theo stood in the doorway.

"That was stupid. After all this you still decided to mock me? With your wand in your pocket and your back to me?" She shook her head. "What did you expect to happen next? Where is your Slytherin cunning? Do you feel better now? Do you think I feel worse?"

Cringing, Theo turned on his heel and ran away down the hall.

"He wasted my time and his opportunity." Valeria looked around at her six remaining students, whittled down from the original ten. "The rest of you better learn from this. I want to help you but for that to happen, you have to let yourself be helped. I'm done with the disrespect. Next time I won't be this patient or this nice." Turning on her heel, she swept from the room.

Theo spent the next day and a half in the hospital wing, coming back even more irritable and with no discernable change of heart.

Harry had expected everyone to be used to Valeria's ways by now, but they were all even more wary of her after that. Most of the others would've quit if they'd had a choice, but no one wanted to see what she considered mean if Theo's treatment had been her version of nice. There was no escape from her lessons. Valeria had decided that she wanted to teach them to defend themselves and that was that.

Flint—who'd cornered the second years to talk—also made it clear that they were all extremely lucky and better be model students for his girlfriend. Theo, Greg, Vincent, and Tracey—the ones who'd been kicked out—suffered from Flint's irritation when he publicly showed he was unhappy with them during dinner one night. Harry was just grateful that Flint didn't explain why, allowing the second years to keep up the secrecy of Valeria's lessons. His snubbing caused the four's standing in Slytherin to sink as others started excluding them from conversations and teased them more often. Someone pranked the four to talk like chickens for an hour and go around flapping their arms like wings and no one in the common room would open the door for them so they could go to the infirmary and get it fixed. They just had to wait until the spell wore off. Before it had ended, Vincent had eaten several bugs he'd found on the floor.

After that, Draco took Greg and Vincent to apologize to Valeria. She made all three of them help her with some secret but messy favor that ended up with them coming back to the room covered in mud, though Draco was only dirty up to his knees while the other two were plastered from ankle to shoulder. Soon after that, Tracey took Pansy with her to deliver a box of the nicest Honeydukes chocolates that she could afford. Pansy later told them that Valeria had accepted the chocolates, forced Tracey to stop and learn the basic disarming charm Valeria was planning on teaching them next week, and then let Tracey go with a warning to be smarter next time. As far as Harry could tell, Theo didn't bother making any reparations. Tracey didn't come back to the lessons, but by apologizing and learning to disarm those who teased her, Valeria and Flint began speaking to her again and her standing rose above Theo's in the hierarchy, giving her a new sense of confidence as she walked through the Slytherin common room.

On the day that Valeria finally taught the rest of them how to disarm opponents, she also made an announcement. "I was trying to avoid it, but last week's experience with Nott has convinced me that you're going to have to learn hexes the same way I did, the hard way—by experiencing them first so you can fully understand the suffering involved." She frowned. "Luckily for you, you won't be alone in your suffering and I will be here to reverse them and teach you how to cast the counter."

Folding her arms behind her back, Valeria looked around at their faces. "Unless things are dire, never use a spell you don't know how to reverse, especially not in a temper. Making someone else suffer should never be an accident. It is a choice. Decide ahead of time whether it is a choice you want to make and how much suffering is needed to get your point across. There is power in self-control and forethought." She paced around the room. "Also keep in mind that different people respond differently to physical versus psychological pain. Brute force and zero tolerance isn't always the best way. Some things take delicacy. I say this because my way may not be yours."

She cast a sideways look at Harry and her lips quirked. "My way works very well for me, but Harry seems determined to go another way. I have my doubts, but we'll have to keep an eye on him to see how well he survives his time here at Hogwarts." Harry met her eyes steadily and refused to look down. He'd take her lessons to heart and use them to become powerful, but he'd do it in his own way, a way that let him hold his head high and meet his eyes in the mirror without hesitation.

-oo0oo-

The first weekend in December saw Hufflepuff playing Ravenclaw in an uninspiring Quidditch match. Most people thought the cup would come down to Slytherin and Gryffindor in the end as long as Gryffindor's Seeker didn't screw up their next match as badly as the last and as long as Harry didn't get targeted by an enchanted bludger again. Harry couldn't wait to prove himself in the game against Ravenclaw in January. He wished it was closer. Harry knew he should be paying attention to how the other Seekers flew, but the game play was predictable and boring.

A blond boy in Hufflepuff yellow, probably a seventh year, kept jumping up and waving a yellow flag with the name of the Hufflepuff seeker on it every time she flew by, drawing Harry's attention. Besides that distraction, Harry ended up spending most of the game staring at Hermione. She was sitting with a few members of the Gryffindor team a few rows down from Harry and his friends. One second he'd be looking up, watching a Ravenclaw Chaser fumble a goal, and the next he'd be tracing with his eyes the spiral curls escaping from Hermione's crookedly-placed wool hat and the swoop of her nose, pink with cold. As soon as he noticed what he was doing he'd yank his eyes back to the flapping yellow flag held by the Hufflepuff boy and then up to the flyers again, but the second he got bored with the game (not hard) he'd find himself staring at Hermione again. He couldn't help it. He didn't want to help it. He wanted his friend back. He missed her, he thought glumly.

Blaise's elbow jabbed into his side, making him jump and rub at the ache resentfully. "Seriously Harry, stop being a git and just go and talk to her. Apologize or whatever. This has gotten ridiculous. You're obviously miserable."

"No 'm not," Harry mumbled, crossing his arms and hunching down on the bench. "Shaddup."

"He's better off without her," Vincent said with a curl of his lip. "It was gross how he used to hang out with her all of the time."

Snorting, Pansy draped herself over Draco's shoulder, ignoring Draco's attempt to shrug her off. "Harry, It's obvious you want to snog her. Go down there, tell her she looks cold, and wrap your scarf around her neck, ending with a peck on the cheek. Call her cute. She'll think it's sweet, forgive you, and put us all out of your misery. Maybe even hold your hand if you're lucky. The pining is getting OLD."

"What?!" Harry wheezed, pressing hands to his chest as he pictured the brush of her curls against his face as his mouth pressed against her soft cheek, thought of being close enough to feel the heat of her blush on his lips. His heart felt like it was jumping out of his chest and his face was on fire. Would her hands be cold or warm against his and would their broom calluses be in the same place?

"Plus it'll plant a green scarf in the middle of enemy territory and piss the rest of them off." Millicent said, moving the sucker in her mouth from one cheek to the other with a clack of hard sugar on teeth. "Win-win."

Draco finally succeeded in dumping the giggling Pansy off his shoulder onto Millicent and turned to Harry. "Here Harry, I know what you should do." He blinked his eyes in an exaggerated fashion and lifted the edges of his scarf, shaking the green and silver fabric around his face. "Oh Granger, my darling, I'll oil my skin until it shines and we can dress you up and pretend you're a niffler." He raised the pitch of his voice and the volume until everyone turned, making him the center of attention. "Oh, Potter, you're so shiny! My niffler nose is tingling. I must have you! Kiss me!"

Everyone was looking at them and laughing. Hermione was looking at them.

She wasn't laughing.

Seeing red, Harry lunged at Draco, tackling him and rolling them off the bench to the floorboard. He banged Draco's head against the floor, feeling angry—so embarrassed and so angry. It was easy to feel angry lately. He lifted Draco and slammed him down again. Distantly he noticed the scar on his forehead throbbing like a war drum, urging him on to violence, to hit more and harder.

Draco wasn't laughing anymore. Trapped under Harry's body he punched up, hitting Harry in the mouth and coating his tongue in the sharp taste of blood. A knee caught Harry in the side while he was distracted, winding him. Harry ignored the pain and surged forward, flipping Draco belly-down and putting him into a headlock. He'd learned the technique after being on the receiving end of it from Millicent. He'd just started to squeeze down on Draco's neck to shut off his breathing when Greg and Vincent ripped him off, dangling him in the air between them. Blaise and Millicent caught Draco's arms just in time to keep him from sucker punching Harry. The two boys glared at each other, panting.

"It was just a joke, Potter," Draco spat out, shaking off the hands restraining him and adjusting his twisted clothing. The cold wind ruffled his white-blond hair and drew attention to the scratch on his forehead as it started trickling blood into one pale eyebrow, staining it dark. "You didn't have to act like some sort of savage."

"And you didn't have to act like a git. I didn't find it funny." A muscle jumped in Harry's jaw as he ground his teeth together, barely biting back the rest of the words he was tempted to say. They wouldn't help, no matter how much the pulsing in his scar made him want to keep attacking until all his bridges were burned. Harry looked down and away, not looking at his friends or the staring faces surrounding him, especially not looking at where Hermione had been sitting with the Gryffindors, unable to bear whatever expression was on her face right now.

In all the commotion they missed the Hufflepuff girl catching the Snitch and ending the game, but no one really cared except the ecstatic boy waving the yellow flag. It had been a crap game anyway.

-oo0oo-

That night, Harry couldn't fall asleep. Tossing and turning, he finally sat up, pushed back the heavy curtains around his bed, and crept out of the room to go and see if emptying his bladder would somehow help. On the way there he ran into Draco in the hall. The other boy eyed him warily, lips tight and expression sour, an expression Harry had often seen at the beginning of the year but not recently. He hadn't missed it.

Rubbing his hands through his hair, probably making it stand on end, Harry released a gusty sigh and dropped his chin to his chest. "I'm sorry, Draco. I don't like being teased—especially not about that—but I still shouldn't've attacked you like that. I probably need to work on my temper." He grimaced and toed the carpet.

"My head still hurts," Draco said coldly.

"So does my mouth. You hit hard," Harry said, swallowing some pride to play to Draco's ego. "Truce?" Harry tilted his head to the side just as a huge yawn overtook his face, making his eyes squinch shut and his cheeks hurt. "Sorry."

Blinking wet eyes, Harry looked over just in time to see Draco echo his yawn, try to say something, and then get trapped yawning again. Draco wiped a hand across his face and shook his head with a frown. He sighed with irritation. "I don't like fighting with you, Harry."

"Then why do we do it so much?" Harry asked before his head caught up to his mouth. That had been stupid, saying something to rile Draco back up again.

Luckily Draco didn't respond the way he'd feared. Instead, huffing a quiet laugh, Draco lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Because that was a lie. Sometimes fighting with you is fun. Competing with you is fun, teasing you until your ears go red and steam shoots out is fun…" the smirk melted from his face, pulling down the corners of his eyes and mouth as he murmured, "but being so angry we hurt each other, that's not fun, at least not for me, not anymore." He looked away down the dimly lit hall. "I don't like that part," he whispered.

"Me neither," Harry said, twisting the hem of his flannel pajama top around his fingers.

"Good." Draco shoved a strand of pale hair behind his ear just before his fist unexpectedly darted out and nailed Harry hard in the upper arm.

"Ouch!" Harry jerked back and rubbed his arm. "What the hell was that for?"

The side of Draco's mouth turned up in a satisfied expression. "Now I can say I'm sorry too. We're almost even. You can make the rest of it up to me by protecting me at breakfast from Pansy. I spent half that game today pushing away her octopus arms."

Harry started to laugh, half at the image of Pansy with eight arms and half at relief that repairing their relationship had been so easy this time. Draco laughed too, maybe equally relieved.

A little humility and an apology were a small price to pay to keep a friendship. Before Harry could follow that thought down the rabbit hole in his mind to his fractured relationship with a girl with crazy curls, the hard laughter made his bladder cramp sharply and rendered everything else meaningless. "Night Draco, I gotta pee!" Harry yelped as he turned and rushed away down the hall. When he finally returned to bed, sleep came much more easily.

-oo0oo-

The following Tuesday was Valeria's class again. Her remaining students—Pansy, Millicent, Daphne, Draco, Blaise, and Harry—took to calling the training sessions Viper School. They decided to see how long they could keep people from finding out what was really going on. Being underestimated was a decent strategy at their age. Terence and Miles, who'd happily been replaced as teachers, found the name funny and started teasingly referring to them as Valeria's Vipers.

At first, everyone seemed better than Harry at casting jinxes and hexes, probably because they'd grown up in the magical world and seen similar spells done by family and friends. Reading between the lines, Valeria seemed to have grown up getting hexed regularly. At least all of them were equally bad at shield charms, which Valeria finally gave up on teaching for now after admitting it was a moderately advanced spell that most adult wizards never mastered, even those employed by the Ministry.

However, as a target of attack from both inside and outside his house, Harry was uniquely motivated to push himself. After only a few weeks he'd risen to the top of Valeria's class. He'd gotten really good at disarming people and discovered that he was actually the best out of all of them at picking up new spells quickly. Draco and Pansy knew a wider variety of spells and regularly cast faster (though his speed was improving), but Harry's spells consistently had the most power and lasted the longest out of anyone in class. He still didn't want to turn into a bully, but he started moving through the castle with a lot more confidence and made plans to prank several very deserving people.

In celebration of surviving a month under Valeria, Pansy masterminded a group prank for the Vipers to pull against the second-year Gryffindors. They set off a series of messy spells in the hallway one morning that had everyone distracted and laughing while Theo and Daphne snuck behind the Gryffindors and sprayed them with a potion that dried clear. It went off without a hitch.

Part two of the prank had Harry waiting an hour for the potion to fully dry and absorb before sneaking up to the Gryffindors (in his invisibility cloak since it was the middle of the day and they didn't want to risk the same distraction technique) to sprinkle a delayed-release powder on them. He started with Weasley and the other Gryffindor boys, though he only did the lightest dusting on Longbottom since he sort of felt bad for the guy. The Gryffindor girls were walking separately from the boys near a crowd of Ravenclaws, so he only managed to get Brown's left half and Patil's right arm. Hermione walked mostly by herself in an open space, so she would've been easy to cover with powder if he'd tried. He didn't. He just… couldn't, even for something as harmless as a prank. His friends should've expected it anyway; he'd made his stance on that particular Gryffindor very clear (even if he still hadn't managed to apologize to her yet).

Fifteen minutes later in the middle of Potions class, the Gryffindors all turned "Greener than a shamrock!" as the Irish Finnegan loudly exclaimed when the powder finally activated with the potion. They also smelled like freshly crushed pistachios, an unexpected side-effect.

"Except for Hermione, " Brown grumbled under her breath quietly enough that only Harry heard her beneath the pandemonium as she brushed unhappily at the green polka dots on her robes and cast jealous looks at the still pristine Hermione, who looked equal parts relieved and surprised as she failed to find any traces of green on her body.

"My poor robes!" Patil wailed, holding up a sleeve that was streaked half-black, half-green.

"At least it's just your robes. Look at me! Hell, it's everywhere! I'm the worst of everyone. Except—hey Hermione, you're completely clean. How'd you manage that?" Weasley was holding out locks of his hair and rolling his eyes to try and see if he had any red hair left. He didn't.

Hopefully none of the Gryffindors noticed how half of the Slytherins turned and glared at Harry during this conversation about Hermione, especially Pansy.

"Most of you seem to have forgotten that this is a Potions classroom and not the showroom at Madame Malkin's, even though it is an improvement on the usual scarlet," Professor Snape drawled before taking points from Gryffindor for disrupting the class and insulted them on the color of their potions. He refused to let anyone leave to wash off until they'd finished brewing and turned in their potion for the day. Slytherin's snickers and snorts filled the classroom during Snape's entire speech.

It had been pretty great until Snape decided that Harry looked too happy. "Potter, that choking owl sound you call laughter is disturbing the class. I'd take points except that would punish model students like Mr. Malfoy." Draco sat up straighter and folded his hands on his desk like a total kiss up. "Even a know-it-all like Miss Granger is liable to mess up her potion listening to that sound, much less whatever horror Mr. Longbottom would brew." Because of course Merlin forbid Harry ever be happy when Snape was around to do something about it.

Hermione's face turned bright red while Longbottom paled. He immediately knocked over a bottle, spilling Eye of Newt all over his table and robes. Sighing, Hermione moved over to help him clean up.

All of the Slytherins had been laughing—Pansy's laugh was especially loud and came perilously close to sounding like a hyena—but of course Snape never said a negative word about any other Slytherin in Potions except for Harry. If he'd been a Gryffindor, he'd probably have lost house points in every single class just for breathing. Harry scowled.

Snape stalked over, dark robes billowing, until he loomed over Harry. "Since Mr. Potter's vanity demands he be the center of attention, he can feel special by staying after class by himself and cleaning up any green smears left in the classroom."

The Gryffindors exchanged smirks and started wiping the greenest parts of their robes against the nearest surface, trying to make more work for Harry. By the end of class, there were streaks of green all over the floor, seats, and tables on the Gryffindor side of the room. Even a mysterious smudge on the ceiling above Weasley's chair that Snape took great pleasure in pointing out to Harry. Blaise and Pansy lingered after class and offered to help clean too, but Snape glared and sent them running with a few well-placed threats.

As Harry scrubbed green off a chair leg with a rag soaked in some noxious potion that made his eyes water behind his glasses, he brooded on how there wasn't a teacher at Hogwarts that he despised more than Professor Snape; not even Lockhart, who embarrassed him in every class by making Harry costar in dramatic reenactments from his books; not even Quirrell, who'd turned out to be possessed by the shade of Voldemort. Snape was the absolute worst.

At least Weasley's ears had stayed a glorious shade of green for three days straight—he might've gotten twice as much powder sprinkled on him as everyone else but he was also twice as irritating and deserved it. Even Weasley's older brothers couldn't help but tease him by pointing out that red hair and green ears were the perfect look for Christmas.

While Viper school could be fun and interesting, it could also—not surprisingly—be painful and scary. When that happened, everyone turned their ire on Harry and Pansy for bringing them to Valeria's attention. Millicent probably put him in a headlock at least once a week, Draco nitpicked all his failings and Blaise elbowed him so often he had a permanent bruise on his ribs. Commiserating with Pansy—who suffered through twice as many headlocks as he did plus Daphne's passive aggressive manipulations—led to them becoming unexpected allies and friends. If you ignored her inexplicable crush on Draco, Pansy was confident, funny, strong-willed, and had a blunt way of speaking that could be refreshing. However, she could also be a jerk, a common failing in most of his friends come to think of it. Harry wasn't allowed to publicly tell people that Pansy was his friend because she told him flat out that she didn't want to be bullied for it or have her parents find out and get weird like Draco's dad.

Somedays, Harry didn't know why he even liked Pansy.

He regularly asked himself why he liked Draco.

It would be easier if people were straightforward, but who said life was ever easy? If he wanted straightforward, he shouldn't have become a Slytherin. Blaise was the only friend he had right now who acted relatively straightforward, or at least straightforward for a Slytherin, though Blaise was also his only roommate with parents who weren't political or affiliated with Voldemort in the last war. Blaise could be pretty lighthearted and was loyal and kind to those he liked, even if those people were in other houses (though usually those were limited to pretty girls). Theo was the opposite, never acting straightforward at all, friendly enough when it suited him but never quite loyal, prioritizing his personal safety and status over everyone else, though especially over people in other houses and those who weren't purebloods. Greg and Vincent were pretty straightforward, but only because they weren't smart enough not to be. They weren't really Harry's friends either, though Harry thought that Greg might be okay if he wasn't always shrinking himself down to fit inside Vincent's and Draco's shadows. As for Draco… well, he was about as straightforward as a muggle paperclip (and would hate the comparison, which made Harry even more fond of it).

-oo0oo-

With the Christmas break starting soon, everyone turned their focus to taking their finals. Having learned several practical and slightly despicable ways to retaliate and defend himself helped Harry travel the castle with confidence. He even let several different Weasleys see him walking all alone a few times, hoping one of them would take the bait and attack the lone Slytherin so Harry could try out some of his more unpleasant jinxes, but so far no luck. They glared, muttered insults, and even went so far as to finger their wands, but nothing that justified Harry casting a Valeria-level spell. With snow falling outside the windows, making flying unpleasant and occasionally unsafe, life became studious and boring.

Harry tried catching Hermione alone coming out of the library several times, but never succeeded. He missed her friendship so much it felt like a constant ache in his chest. He didn't know what to do. His pride still resisted apologizing in front of everyone else, but as time wore on, he started wondering more and more if pride was really that important. It was getting to the point where only a public apology would fix things.

In the rare moments when Harry wasn't busy with studying, freezing at Quidditch practice which kept getting moved due to bad weather, or getting jinxed in Viper school, he and his friends tried to figure out the identity of the heir of Slytherin. They were discussing the rumors one Tuesday night as they waited for Valeria in a second floor hallway outside a girls' bathroom for a "training exercise in a novel environment," whatever that meant. Probably something bad for them and amusing for Valeria. Hopefully it would give them an advantage in the dueling club Professor Lockhart had just announced that he'd be starting soon.

Draco glanced around the hallway dramatically to gather their attention before speaking. Harry was about to roll his eyes until he heard Draco's topic. "I heard from my father that the last time the Chamber of Secrets opened, a girl died."

Gulping, Millicent rolled her wand between her fingers and whispered uneasily, "Do you think us girls need to worry about the monster more than boys do?"

Draco sighed condescendingly and patted her shoulder. "No, my father says we're all safe in Slytherin because the monster only kills mu—" his eyes darted over to Harry and he quickly amended what he'd been about to say "—muggleborns."

Harry frowned on principle.

"Good save," Blase whispered loudly with a snort, causing Draco to twitch with irritation at being called out.

"Anyway," Draco grumbled, "as I was saying, despite the rumors circulating about first-year Halle Harper, there are not actually any muggleborns in Slytherin right now. Harper's family isn't well-off, but my father confirmed for me that at least her mother is a pureblood, though he's not sure about the father. Whatever the case, that means everyone in Slytherin is safe from the monster."

"And just how does the monster know who's a muggleborn, half-blood, or pureblood? I've never heard of any magical spell or creature that could tell the difference," Daphne hissed, pressing back against Millicent's bulk as if to hide herself behind the bigger girl.

"Because there is no real difference," Harry said firmly, still determined to convince people to abandon pureblood propaganda, despite the uphill battle.

"Well, Slytherin was a genius, wasn't he? Maybe he found the one monster who could tell the difference and locked it in the Chamber," Draco said impatiently, waving away their arguments. "My father would certainly pull me out if there was any real danger, so there has to be some way to tell. I can promise you that as long as I'm here, you're all safe."

"Or maybe the heir of Slytherin just figures out blood status based on rumor and tells the monster who to attack." Pansy glanced up and down the empty corridor uneasily. "If they don't like you, you're dead."

"What if the heir gets it wrong?" Daphne asked hesitantly, chewing on her bottom lip and wrapping her arms around herself. "Rumors lie all of the time."

Draco put a hand on his hip and put his pointy nose in the air. "My father says the monster only attacks muggleborns and my father is never wrong."

Irritated at the continual mention of Draco's father—who was wrong about a lot of things in Harry's opinion—Harry scoffed. "Sure, and are you still going to feel that way if the next person is killed instead of just petrified? And if it's a muggleborn—does that make murdering one of our classmates okay in your mind? I didn't think you were so cold-hearted. C'mon, Draco, be honest. You don't really want people dying. Think for yourself!"

"Well, I mean…" Draco trailed off, flustered and confused.

"Maybe those spiders have the right idea," Daphne said shakily, leaning even harder into Millicent as she gestured to a long line of brown spiders trooping down the hallway and out of the castle through a crack in the windowsill. It was still weird, despite not being the first time Harry had seen the behavior this year. "I don't want anyone to die. Maybe we should all leave the castle until they catch whatever did it."

"I don't want to leave Hogwarts," Harry blurted, feeling suddenly short of breath. He'd just gotten permission to stay at school over the Christmas holiday. He was supposed to have until the summer before he was forced to go back to the Dursleys and lost permission to use magic again. He slid his hand into the pocket of his robe and felt for the apple he'd stashed there two days ago, squeezing it in his fist and trying to calm down. "We haven't even been here for four months!"

"But what if one of us accidentally makes the heir mad and he or she sets the monster on us for revenge, not caring that we're purebloods?" Millicent fretted, clenching and unclenching her hands.

"My father said it won't," Draco said.

He was roundly ignored as Millicent continued. "Even just being petrified would be disastrous. That Mandrake Potion they're making won't be done until the end of the year. If you miss that much school, you'll probably have to repeat classes all over again with the younger years. Do you know what that would do to your reputation? No one would respect the idiot who got petrified and had to be held back with the little kids." She abruptly began pacing, making Daphne stumble as her support disappeared. "People already assume I'm dumb just because I'm a big girl who stands up for herself."

"No we don't, Millie," Pansy said firmly. "The people who matter know your brain's bigger than your waistline."

Millicent stopped and threw up her hands in exasperation. "Really, Pansy?"

"What?" Pansy put her hands on her hips. "I was being nice!"

"You know I hate it when you mention my weight." Millicent glared. "And don't call me Millie."

"But you brought it up first, Millie."

"Girls," Harry broke in before they started firing jinxes. "Focus on the problem. We need to figure out who the heir is, what monster they're using to petrify people, and put a stop to it so the school stays open."

"Won't the teachers do that?" Blaise pointed out. "Hagrid said they already ruled out gorgons."

"Supposedly," Harry said belligerent. "It could still be a gorgon."

Draco sent him a suspicious look, his pale brows twisting up. "Wait, you're not still hung up on tapestry Medusa are you? I thought you got over that crush last year."

"What's this?" Pansy leaned forward with a smirk. "Harry has a crush?"

"On Medusa?" Millicent asked, eyebrows going high.

"No!" Harry snapped, feeling his ears go hot.

Draco smirked. "Even if it is a gorgon—"

"Dubledore thinks it isn't," Blaise pointed out.

"—even if," Draco said snootily, "the chances of it being a beautiful medusa instead of a hideously ugly gorgon are incredibly low. No one's seen a medusa in centuries, Harry."

Harry scowled. "Or they have and the person couldn't tell anyone because they're now petrified."

"You'll be the one petrified if you try to kiss a medusa," Pansy giggled.

Harry squirmed as embarrassment swamping his mind. "I—I don't want to kiss tapestry Medusa and—and Terence and Miles think she's hot..." he trailed off grumpily.

"I doubt they're dumb enough to want to kiss a medusa though," Draco scoffed.

"I said I don't want to kiss her!" Harry shouted, face hot.

"At least we'll know what it is then, if we find Harry petrified like this," Blaise pursed his lips and lifted his arms as if embracing a lover, smacking his lips together loudly.

"That's it," Harry lunged for Blaise, planning on stuffing his robe in his mouth to stop the teasing. Blaise scrambled down the hallway with a laugh, Harry hot on his heels. "None of you need to worry about petrification because I'm going to kill you first!"

Just as Harry raced past the bathroom door, Valeria stepped out and grabbed him by the back of his robes, jerking him to a stop and making him choke as the collar dug into his neck. "We're ready." Letting go of Harry, who staggered to the side with a cough, she held open the door and gestured everyone inside. "C'mon. Inside."

"Who's we?" Daphne asked warily as they all trooped past her into the deserted girls bathroom.

"A medusa?" Blaise whispered loudly and wagged his eyebrows, making the girls giggle. Blaise dodged the punch Harry aimed at his arm and widened his teasing grin.

"Oh no," Millicent groaned, looking around the bathroom and rubbing a hand across her face. "Please say we don't have to practice in front of Moaning Myrtle. There's a reason no one's used this bathroom in fifty years."

"What?" Harry asked just as a ghostly girl in an old-fashioned school uniform shot out from one of the bathroom stalls. The ghost's hair was in pigtails and she wore round glasses even bigger than Harry's.

"Well that's nice!" the ghost hiccuped before giving a huge pout. "I was going to focus on attacking the boys and leave you girls alone, but now I've changed my mind!" Her voice went from squeaky to bellowing by the end of her sentence, making Harry's eyes go wide as he took a step back.

Gritting her teeth, Pansy elbowed Millicent. "Good going, Millie." Millicent elbowed her back, making Pansy stagger to the side and scowl.

The ghost's emotions flipped as she drifted over to the boys and suddenly simpered, giving a little giggle. "Hi, I'm Myrtle," she said in a high-pitched and breathy voice.

"Um, Harry Potter. Nice to meet you," he said, giving her an awkward smile. She giggled and hid her face in her shoulder, swaying back and forth.

"Everyone line up against the far wall by the sinks," Valeria ordered crisply. They all shuffled warily into place, still uncertain what they were doing in a bathroom.

"Hey, that faucet has a snake on it. Go Slytherin! Maybe that's a good sign that tonight won't be too bad." Blaise pointed to one of the sinks. "Are we doing teams for this? Because if so I'd love to be with our amazing teacher Valeria and the bella Myrtle." He winked at the ghost and gave her the practiced smile that made the dimple in his cheek come out. Like most girls, Myrtle succumbed to his charm and use of Italian, twirling one of her washed-out pigtails around her finger and giggling.

Millicent and Pansy rolled their eyes in unison. "I can't believe he's flirting with a ghost," Millicent grumbled.

"I can," Draco snorted, passing his wand from hand to hand nervously.

Valeria cleared her throat. "For tonight's training, the winner is the person who escapes the bathroom with the most wands. How you get the wands is up to you. You can use the disarming charm, jinxes, fast hands, or headlocks. I don't recommend using an unforgivable curse, but it's not like I can stop you either."

Myrtle giggled again as everyone went taunt and wary, eyeing each other now as enemies instead of allies.

Swallowing audibly, Daphne's face went as pale as the ghostly Myrtle. Sometimes Harry wondered how Daphne hadn't failed out of the Vipers yet, considering how meek she could be. Then again, she always tried her hardest and gave Valeria respect and obedience, so maybe that was her secret.

"I'll be waiting for you in the hall." Valeria strolled to the door, turning around at the last second with a smirk. "Also, you'll need magic to get out, as I'm locking the door behind me—a little lesson on how wands make it easier to escape and whether not having one makes you powerless. Have fun playing with Myrtle." The door swung shut behind her, the lock giving a loud snick as it shot into place.

Before anyone could move, Myrtle started cackling. She rose into the air and raised her arms like a symphony conductor. "Ba-dum!" she shouted, cutting down her arms and zipping around the room in excitement.

In seconds, all of the toilets and sinks exploded, shooting streams of water into the air and drenching them. Myrtle jumped at Millicent, sending a ghostly fist through her face and making the other girl flinch back and slip in a puddle, landing hard on her back with a huge splash that made Millicent drop her wand. Daphne grabbed it and sprinted for the door, but as soon as she cleared the sinks Harry shouted, "Expelliarmus!" Both Daphne's and Millicent's wands slapped into his hand. He only had a moment to feel smug before the others were upon him, sending him flying backwards into the nearest bathroom stall.

Myrtle's bathroom became a war zone. The next twenty minutes were a wild blur of crazy spells, flying fists, splashing water, choking headlocks, and ghostly scares. Harry was soaked to the bone, covered in scrapes and bruises, and sporting several jinxes. His bloody nose had leaked worse than the faucets until someone's sponge jinx had crossed with someone else's wormy nostril jinx, leaving him with wiggling worms for eyebrows and sponges stuck up his nose, which had helpfully clogged the bleeding and kept it from running back down his throat to choke him. The wormy eyebrows tickled but they also acted like gutters, directing the water to the sides of his face and keeping it out of his eyes, proving themselves to be more useful than not.

Taking a break from the fun to catch his breath, Harry realized that he only needed two more wands. It was time to end this. Scaling to the top of the bathroom stalls while everyone was distracted by Myrtle squirting them in the faces with water over by the sinks, he silently jumped from the top of one stall to the next until he reached the opposite side of the room. Casting a tripping jinx, he knocked Draco onto Pansy. Harry jumped down before they could recover and landed on Draco's back, squishing him on top of Pansy and making them both forget to guard their wands for a critical moment. Harry ripped them from their wet and slippery fingers and hit them with his strongest jelly legs jinx to keep them from following too quickly.

Racing forward, keeping an eye on them in the mirror so the spell wouldn't cancel, he barrelled through Myrtle's ghostly body when she popped up in front of him, jumped over Daphne's balloon animal arms when they almost snared his feet in their loops, and shouted, "Alohomora!" at the door with all his power, making it unlock and bang back against the wall with the force of his magic. Blaise tried to tackle him from the side but Harry swerved just in time, making Blaise belly-flop onto the floor with a mighty splash that filled Harry's mouth with water. The coughing slowed Harry down enough that Millicent got a handful of his robes and started to yank him back. Harry found himself being choked by his collar for the second time that night, but it was too little too late. He was too stubborn to let a little choking slow him down. He flung himself through the doorway and out into the hall, landing on his hands and knees at Valeria's feet with a "Ha!" of triumph. Millicent flattened his legs a second later, making his chin knock against the ground hard enough that he bit his tongue bloody. Something in his foot also snapped, hopefully the celery sprouting between his toes and not a bone.

"All right there, Harry?" Valeria asked with amusement, glancing between him and the people in the bathroom as water flooded out into the hall.

"Feel free to come back and visit any time!" Myrtle called happily, stopping the unpredictable spewing of sinks and toilets. The gurgling sound of water going down the drain filled the air.

Millicent let go of Harry's legs and crawled the rest of the way out of the bathroom, sitting against the wall panting as the rest of their hexed and bruised cohort followed. "One of these days you're gonna lose, Potter," she grumbled.

"Darn straight," Pansy said as she slowly jiggled her way out of the bathroom with wobbly steps. Harry came up on one elbow and magnanimously cancelled the last bit of his jelly legs jinx that hadn't dissipated yet instead of making her wait another thirty seconds

Turning to Valeria, Harry couldn't stop his grin. "That was brilliant!" He passed over the five wands he'd won from his classmates and clambered to his feet, making sure not to put too much pressure on the left food with its crooked stalks of celery sprouting from the laces.

"Congratulations," Valeria smiled. "Looks like you had fun."

"I did!" Harry exclaimed. Winning was just the candle on top of the cake. "Let's do this again next week!" His words were greeted with a chorus of groans that made him laugh. He had to stop to swallow the blood seeping from his bit tongue so he didn't choke on it accidentally. Draco unexpectedly kicked the back of Harry's knee, sending him falling into Millicent, who pulled him into a head-lock.

"No way are you winning again," she panted, blocking the elbow he shot at her side. "Next time you're going down first."

Harry couldn't stop giggling long enough to get himself loose. Besides, he was too tired and the worms above his eyebrows had started crawling up into his hair, tickling his face. Nevertheless, he'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. He hadn't had so much fun in ages.


AN: Thank you to my glorious Betas Iforgottocall and dizzysappedweak! In Chapter 7 we see the Dueling Club and Harry dueling Ron with unexpected results, the Christmas Holidays and some surprise gifts, Slytherin's next Quidditch match, and finally a conversation between Harry and Hermione—a short conversation, but it finally gets the ball rolling on this apology thing. Phew!