ii.

AS THIRD YEARS AT HOGWARTS, they can finally make their school year start to go however they please. For example, Émile can finally drop out of Muggle Studies and join Vela and Adelaide in Ancient Runes, and on the other hand, the brunette girl finally has the chance to attend the tryouts to be part of the silver and emerald Quidditch team.

But that morning, with the gentle awakening of student spirit and the newly received schedules for the entire school year, the only topic of conversation that seems to exist at that moment is the one that surrounds the little scrawny boy at the table of lions, the little Harry Potter, who—from the way he seems to want to become one with his breakfast—is not used to being the center of attention.

"But look at that," Émile says instead of good morning, sliding next to her on the bench, "it seems like the little celebrity isn't used to being a celebrity at all."

"He's been around Muggles all his life, hasn't he?" Adelaide remembers, sitting on the other side of Vela, "the poor boy looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin."

And as if Harry Potter knew that now his name also resonated among the trio of third years at the Slytherin table, he looked up, his eyes fixed on them for just a millisecond before almost sighing in relief when a girl with messy brown hair sits next to him.

"Vee, look, look" Adelaide startles her, shaking her arm so hard it almost makes her drop her pumpkin juice. "That little girl is smiling at us!" Vela follows Adelaide's line of sight, to the Hufflepuff table, where a first-year student in her neat uniform and high pigtails watches them almost with fascination, a small smile on her face.

Vela and Adelaide smile back, making the little girl blush and Adelaide melt into giggles.

"She must be a Muggleborn," Vela points out, taking a small sip of her juice. "They're the only ones who don't know they're not supposed to be friendly to us."

Adelaide nods almost sadly, remembering her first year at Hogwarts and her attempts to get acquainted with members of other houses, only to be rejected again and again for the simple fact of being a Slytherin.

Adelaide had stopped trying to make friends last year, Émile had never been interested and Vela had lost interest in trying, because all the times she had done it, all the times she had tried to hide her tie between her books or in her skirt pockets so she could share a table in the library with other students in her year, there was always someone who recognized her as the firstborn of the Malfoy family–one of the families that had been touched by the dark hand of the Dark Lord during the First Wizarding War–thus, someone not worth having in your social circle.

"Which electives did you choose, guys?" Adrian says, appearing out of nowhere to join the Slytherin table and stealing a muffin from Émile.

Émile takes it from him before he can take a bite. "Ancient Runes and Arithmancy"

"Ancient Runes and Divination"

"Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures."

Adrian wrinkles his nose slightly at the continued mention of the subject he considers to be complete torture. "Why did everyone choose Ancient Runes?"

"Adelaide" Vela and Émile respond in unison as the first messenger owls begin to flood the Great Hall at the same time as the majority of students begin to fill the tables.

As has happened every week since she entered Hogwarts, the Malfoy family's eagle owl, with long brown wings and a hunter's bearing, places a letter in a pearlescent envelope next to her breakfast plate with the delicacy of a bird of prey, Only this time, he also does it a few seats away from her, right where Draco stands next to those two chubby boys whose names rhyme, but Vela can't remember.

As Vela begins to slide the letter out of the envelope, she can breathe in her mother's subtle scent of freshly cut roses and fresh mint.

« My little winter star,

I hope that the trip back to Hogwarts has been a prosperous and peaceful one, like every year since my heart moves between this house and the high mountains of Scotland, I ask you please do not forget to write to your mother every week as you have promised, take good care of your brother and keep him from getting into trouble. No matter how much he tries to deny it, he is still a sweet boy who loves your company.

P.S. I have sent you your favorite candies to share with your friends, your father wishes you a prosperous school year and if you dare to join the Quidditch team, he will be happy to ask permission from his work and to Professor Dumbledore to take you to buy your first broom.

With love, your mother. »

Even though her mother's soft handwriting makes her feel close, she can't help but feel her stomach tighten, as if a Grindylow is moving inside her at the mention of her father in the last lines of the letter.

The truth is that her relationship with her father has always been a little complicated, to the point of bordering on being uncomfortable, she dares to say. Vela has always known that her birth was unplanned–a reminder that her beloved grandfather loves to make at every family dinner–therefore, her father has always been more a father of a boy than a girl, even when she was little, he used to do her hair the same way he did with Draco– up to above her shoulders, short on the sides and slightly long on top so he could comb it back.

But when she began to grow up and her afternoons of playing become long walks with her mother in the family rose bushes, their interactions diminished, until last Christmas, when she made the big mistake of mentioning the Quidditch's tryouts and her friend Adelaide's desire to join the Slytherin team.

Her father's features, always calm and calculated, brightened slightly, to the point where he had even put the Daily Prophet aside to immerse himself in a long conversation about his years as a Quidditch player when he attended Hogwarts, and when Vela only understood one or two words of what her father said, she didn't have the heart to stop him.

Suddenly, there is a soft touch on her forearm, bringing her back to the Great Hall. "Everything is alright?" Émile asks him under his breath.

Vela smiles at him in response, waving her thoughts away and folding her mother's letter to put it in one of her skirt pockets.

"Hey, Vela, you said you're going to Care of Magical Creatures, right?" Adrian says, standing up, as she nods, "I signed it up too, and if I'm not wrong, if we don't leave now we'll be late."

Vela takes a last piece of chicken while Adrian puts some rolls in his pockets, and waving her hand, she says goodbye to Adelaide and Émile, whose classes take place until the second and third period respectively but since they have been doing it since first year, their tradition of having breakfast together remains.

"I hadn't noticed that Phobos isn't coming with you today." Adrian tells her as he positions himself next to her before walking through the doors of the Great Hall.

"I preferred to leave him in my room," Vela says, "maybe if I find a space between this period and the next I will go for him."

Even though she can feel the heaviness of her dear friend's absence on her shoulders, Vela knows that it is better to have left him in the safety of her room than risk him to want to eat a fairy in the middle of the first Care of Magical Creatures class. But Vela can't say that it was easy to leave him behind, not when the little manipulator had started crying like a baby.

I'll pick up snacks for him after class, Vela tells herself, as she repeats it a couple more times all the way to class so she doesn't forget.

──── ∗ ⋅. ✵ .⋅ ∗ ────

Like a seed sown in fertile soil, Vela can see her brother's rivalry with Harry Potter begin to germinate, just as she had come to suppose on the day of the sorting ceremony.

She notices it in the way Draco tends to stand more upright and haughty when the black-haired one is around, the way he tells those silly stories about having run away countless times from muggles who wanted to catch him or the way how he talks about all the places he has visited in his short and innocent years because his parents are rich and therefore, so is he.

Vela knows her brother's behavior is one their mother wouldn't like, but their father would completely approve. And as the responsible older sister that she is, she's supposed to advise him, say something like "don't be stupid, turning Harry Potter against you is turning all of Hogwarts too," but the truth is, she's not that kind of sister.

No, she'll let her brother figure out that little detail for himself, but if the occasion calls for it and someone dares to raise their wand or hand against him, well, they'll find out why—if her aunt weren't in Azkaban—, she would be her favorite niece.

And she has to admit that it's mildly amusing the way her dear little brother puts so much effort into their feud when Harry Potter clearly has better things to do, like constantly remembering himself that he's a wizard.

"–assuming everyone here has completed their reading on Easy Ancient Runes," Professor Bathsheda says, her long brown skirt moving with her as she walks, "we'll move on to Advanced Rune Translation so please get out your dictionaries, quill and parchment and we start with the bases not mentioned in Laurenzoo's book for an easy and effective translation of advanced runes taking the basic ones as a starting point."

Vela sighs, as she begins to take out the Advanced Rune Translation book, for a second she must admit that she really thought it would be a bit more of a busy class, in the sense that maybe they would translate runes to decipher ancient spells, not to translate Children's Stories. And looking to her left side, from the way Émile seems to be struggling with sleep, she's not the only one who had higher expectations.

The only one who seems to move with fluidity and grace is Adelaide, sitting in the front row of the class and with three dictionaries of Ancient Runes on her table, and from where Vela is, she can notice small flashes of wrinkled corners indicating that she has already started her reading.

There is a tapping on her right side that makes her turn towards the window where Adrian–who is supposed to be in Divination–stands holding a small scroll that says "Flight practice, first years, are you coming?"

Vela shakes Émile, who is just a blink away from falling asleep.

"What -? The class is over?" He asks, his eyes slightly half-lidded from sleep from staying up late. She shakes her head to point toward the window, where Adrian is waiting for them.

Clearly, Émile doesn't need to be told twice, quickly waving his wand as he mutters a bauleo under his breath to begin putting away both his and Vela's things. Fortunately for her, Professor Bathsheda is another version of Professor Sybill Trelawney – too immersed in her world of runes and translations that she doesn't notice when both students slip out of class.

They must run through the hallways with only their socks, their shoes in one of their hands to avoid attracting the attention of the rest of the teachers who are in classes; only when they are near the green, slightly damp grass do they put their shoes back on, running towards the Quidditch Pitch to hide behind the stands to prevent Madame Hooch from seeing them.

They can see the first years between the spaces between the boards of the stands, with their long black capes that they must wear all the time fighting with their brooms to listen to their command while others wait patiently for the next instructions from the flight teacher.

Vela knows that one of the first years who picked up his broom the first time was undoubtedly her brother, because from the moment they could stand for more than a minute on their own, their father taught them to ride a broom, or at least, he taught Draco and tried it with her, since she couldn't be more than a couple of meters above the ground without crying.

"Vela," Adrian calls her in a whisper, while she tries to cover her giggles with her hand when she sees how a red-haired boy's broom had crashed into his face, "isn't that your brother flying?"

"Nah, he's not stupid enough to disobey Madame Hooch on his first day."

"Madame Hooch is not here."

"What?" but the question is taken away by the whistle of the broom whizzing overhead, silver hair shining against the afternoon sun, and right behind his brother, Harry Potter follows, buzzing like a bee on his broom, holding it and handling it with a security that only those who were born on one reflect.

Vela doesn't understand a word that Draco seems to be shouting at Harry Potter, but she doesn't need to know, not when the tense shoulders and the red glow dancing in his ears seem to tell her everything.

Suddenly, Draco throws something to fly back towards the rest of the students, while Harry Potter flies in the opposite direction.

Adrian whistles under his breath as he stops just a few feet from one of the castle windows. "That is being born with talent."

"But what are you three doing here?"

The three are startled, causing Émile to hit one of the boards of the stands, making him curse. Madame Hooch raises a slightly surprised eyebrow in his direction, yet her gaze is hard, and Vela knows they're in trouble.

Madame Hooch opens her mouth, surely to take points from Slytherin house, but then her eyes drift to the group of first-year students surrounding Harry Potter, and following her line of sight, Vela can see Professor McGonagall running towards them.

And that is the sign that Émile, Vela and Adrian need to start running, but not before hearing the clear "15 points less for Slytherin!" from Madame Hooch, none of the three really care, not when any of them can give double points back to Slytherin in less than the blink of an eye.

But the real fear hits them when the rest of the students leave their classes, including Adelaide, who looks more than willing to wrap them in bat mucus at any moment.