IF THERE EVER was a sight more revolting than the bottom of a cauldron riddled with burnt rodent intestines, Luxanna would have liked to know. Because instead of the morning paper, she was now holding a spatula elbow deep inside a pewter cauldron on the floor of the dungeon, scraping the crusted remains out of the metal. Apparently, one of the Gryffindors had alerted the teachers to the little incident they'd had at the beginning of the year, and this was her punishment. Scrubbing out cauldrons.

With fingers clutched over her nostrils, Luxanna scooped out another handful of sludge and swung it into the bucket beside her, her head stretched as far away from the grizzly sight as possible. The sick crept into her stomach, but at the very least she could say she was doing better than the boy across the room, whose entire sweat-riddled forehead was sunk into the bucket as he fought back vomit. It was difficult to surmise how a boy such as Alex Dankworth, who so commonly frequented Professor Snape's detentions could still throw such a fuss about it.

"I can't... I can't... It's the third time this month..." he moaned through strained breaths. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

It was a sickening job to be sure, but one that would have been made easier for both of them had he stopped gagging for a proper minute and actually did as he was told. Every time Dankworth complained, Professor Snape would materialise behind their shoulders to scrutinise their shoddy work. Except he'd never say a word of slight, no, he'd save that for once they were already well and truly finished, so that they'd have no chance of rectification.

"Why can't we use our wands, Professor? Would get it done quicker."

"You didn't think to use your wand when you spilt an entire cauldron across the floor, so why should you use it now?"

The same was true of her, Luxanna figured. She was just glad that Professor Snape's punishment for her did not stretch to the same degree of poetic justice, or else she might have been washing cauldrons with her tongue.

Once the bell rang, Luxanna decided to linger for a moment longer and finish up her work, whereas Dankworth immediately excused himself. The boy was rotten at Potions, so he had little to lose in terms of respect. To her great surprise, she ran into him shortly after in one of the dungeon's corridors, a victim of an obvious jinx.

"Reparo," said Luxanna. With a flick of her wand, the pile of books and papers lying on the floor next to him flew into the air, shuffled, and reorganised into a neat stack.

"Right. Thanks," he told her as he stuffed the books one by one into his bag, not noticing that it was still split open so that some fell out every time he took another one from the heap. "And thanks for sorting out my notes yesterday."

Luxanna did not look at him; she was still staring at the spot by the end of the corridor where the perpetrators had rounded a moment ago, escaping justice once again.

"Get up, Dankworth."

As he stood up, the contents of his bag came tumbling down onto the ground once more, this time with much greater force than before, making him flinch.

With flushed cheeks, the boy straightened his robes and ran a hand through his hair, trying to hide his embarrassment behind a polite smile. "So, uh, how'd Snape catch you? What did you do?"

"I called Angelina Johnson a Mudblood," Luxanna said.

"Oh... Well, just so you know, that jinx just now? Completely unprovoked. All I said was..."

"I don't care," Luxanna interrupted. "Get going."

Every mess the Weasleys ever left behind had been unprovoked, that was given. If there was any element of forethought involved, they hadn't exhibited it. Every bit of their litter on the Hogwarts grounds went unpunished, except for petty wrongdoings like that, which might be treated leniently depending on their severity. It was all just part of their haughty belief that they were somehow better than everyone else.

"You just relinquished your only witness," Frost said as Dankworth scampered away.

"Where there are Weasleys, there are witnesses aplenty," Luxanna replied. "Besides, I don't want them punished for a petty crime like that, it discounts my credibility. We need to wait until they do something big."

"As you wish..."

When Luxanna turned back around, it was to be met with a team of sniggering girls—her dormmates. Their self-proclaimed captain, Triss Selwyn, a pasty-faced nuisance of a character, had planted herself in front of Luxanna, flicking her dark hair over her shoulder and making as if to lecture her. Her two loyal minions, Renza Rowle and Ruby Travers, flanked her on each side, matching snide expressions plastered across their faces.

"Talking to yourself again, Black?"

From Selwyn's point of view, it must've looked that way—hunched over, neck bent, and whispering madness into her own palm. This wasn't the first time that Luxanna had been called out on it, nor would it be the last, but for as long as she had Triss Selwyn believing that she was a nutter, Luxanna was happy. Nobody dared trifle with a crazy person, after all.

"I was just practising a few hexes to use on the Weasleys."

"Pfft, Weasley scum!" she exclaimed with boisterous laughter. "Not worth your time, I assure you. But tell me, Black, because I'm starting to get agonisingly curious... why is it that you still defend that boy?"

"Wouldn't you care to know?"

Selwyn rolled her eyes dramatically. "Really, he must be the first Mudblood to enter Slytherin in centuries! Wonder how that happened—some sort of blunder with the Sorting Hat, hmm? Either way, they should ship him off to a Muggle school, he'd be better off."

The defence line giggled. "Black paid his way in, I bet," one of them added, then immediately went quiet when she didn't get Selwyn's stamp of approval for the joke.

"I take it you don't care about the House Cup, then?" Luxanna asked.

"Oh, I care. But that one has been bringing our average down ever since day one," Selwyn stated, and then added in a voice of mock sympathy, "It's not his fault, I know, it's in a Muggleborn's blood and all—they can't help it that they're waste matter, but really..."

"Maybe if you didn't hex his shoelaces every time he got up for his ingredients, we wouldn't lose 10 points every Potions lesson. The way I see it, you're the one bringing Slytherin down."

This comment struck a chord with Selwyn, as evident by the scandalised gape on her face. "Please!" she burst out. "Just wait until Professor Snape hears about what you did to me! About what you dared to do in Defence yesterday!" An indignant huff punctuated the end of every sentence. "You'll get expelled! And they might as well just take us out of the running entirely!"

She was, of course, talking about yesterday's Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson with their new Professor Moody, when Luxanna had blatantly used the girl as target practice. Professor Moody had been demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses on a spider, and no sooner than they had arrived at the Imperius Curse (and, incidentally, at Luxanna's turn), had Luxanna decided to wriggle the eight-legged creature over Selwyn's pinched nose, then promptly crawled it over her collar, right into her hair. It was Luxanna's idea of a joke, initiated by the snide comment Selwyn had made about her father's late reputation ('You're bound to have a lot of experience in that field, Daddy must've taught you all there is to know!'). The irony lay in a secret murmured and overheard from within Cepheus's locked doors; Triss Selwyn's father had, too, served in You Know Who's ranks, but had since been arrested for his crimes and sentenced to a life in Azkaban, whereas Luxanna's father walked free, and therein lay the jealousy.

She took one step towards the girl. "You remember that, Selwyn. Remember it well. Or the next time I see you pester that boy, I might just be obligated to refresh your memory."

"Is that a threat? Is that a threat?"

The girls yelled after her, but Luxanna had already turned on her heel and was halfway down the corridor.

"Unbelievable! Just how dare you!"

"... you loon!"

"... tell Professor Snape!"

"How many doesss that make now... six? No, seven?"

"What?"

Provoked by a headache, Luxanna had avoided lunch in order to curl up in bed, a penance for being out so late last night hunting those two rodents, then waking up before dawn to serve her detention. She was sprawled over her sheets, feet steady on the ground, so that sleep might not creep up on her. Frost was helping herself to the crumbs of honey biscuits that were littered atop Luxanna's bedside table.

"I'm keeping track of everybody you've threatened so far."

"They deserved it, Frost," Luxanna claimed adamantly. "But while you're at it, make sure you include Peeves, and those two first years who nearly snapped my neck, the little pests."

"Yesss, very jussst of you. A true warrior of jusstice. Berate one Muggleborn then defend the next. You can't wash out an evil deed with a good one, Luksss."

Luxanna turned on her side to face her. "Evil? Evil? Don't pretend you weren't there when those Weasley boys nearly scorched my scalp off! Ugh! I wish the spell had caught you instead." She then turned her head back towards the roof of the bed and grunted discontentedly.

"Careful now," hissed Frost. "I seem to recall your father saying something about keeping a low profile."

To the blazes with him, too, Luxanna thought but didn't dare voice it.

Frost continued, "So far you've done everything but. In fact, the moment you set foot on Hogwarts grounds you provoked a fight. And now thiss entire ordeal with your dormmate? You got away with it far too easily. Many wizards have been sent away for much lesss... Disobedience paves a path to disaster, Lukss, you should listen to your father."

"He doesn't know what it's like for me here. How rotten people are, how insufferable... He doesn't even know the truth about his own family. I wonder just how many of his own preachings he'd practised when he was Prefect."

A glance at her watch told her that it was time to get ready for Potions, so Luxanna gathered some of her ingredients from the jars underneath her bed and neatly arranged them into a glass container before adding them to her bag. It was a rather meticulous ordeal, but a clear workspace meant a clear mind. This had successfully maintained her Outstanding grade in Potions so far, which was probably the root of the minuscule respect that Professor Snape had bestowed upon her (if it hadn't by now crumbled into dust thanks to his earlier admonishments).

She had turned a corner at an intersection headed for the Potions classroom when a voice sounded from within a closed door behind her. Professor Moody's voice. Luxanna halted in front of the room. A moment later, Professor Snape emerged, looking dissatisfied with the sight of her.

"I take it that after five years at this school, you know how to find your way to the correct classroom, Miss Black?"

Before Luxanna could reply, however, Professor Moody stepped out from behind him. "That's alright, I wanted to have a word with Black anyway."

"Be quick, she has a lesson to attend to."

"Right, right."

Ushered inside the empty classroom, Luxanna began to feel uneasy, claustrophobic almost. But she was able to get a closer look at the curious gadget occupying the professor's eye socket—electric blue and faintly glowing, as though some malicious force was churning through its innards. The question occurred to her right in that moment: just how much could he see? Slowly, Luxanna's hand came to rest around the side of her neck where Frost was concealed with a Disillusionment Charm, pretending to adjust her collar.

"Black."

"Yes, Professor?"

His gaze pierced her, his frown only intensifying her discomfort. She did not meet that gaze; hers was fixed on a spot on the blackboard behind his shoulder. Frost was right. The punishment would come any second, she knew, and in that moment, Luxanna regretted not listening to her father. Regretted ever raising a wand to Selwyn's rodent face—it was all coming back to haunt her now.

"I have to say, that was quite the spellwork you performed in my class. Not many witches could say they actually pulled off an Unforgivable Curse at your age."

"I'm sorry, I... How do you mean?"

"You've got talent."

Whatever tension Luxanna felt was amplified a thousandfold. Her palms began to sweat. Is this some sort of trick?

"Hm... I suppose it's no surprise considering how much time your father spent honing those particular skills."

Cepheus and Alastor Moody had been colleagues, of course, and from what she had heard from her father about it, they didn't quite see eye to eye. Perhaps it had been Cepheus's dark past that kept Moody ever vigilant around his superior, or perhaps it was just the naturally secretive disposition of an auror that caused him to be that way—ever watchful. Nonetheless, Moody's remark had caught Luxanna off guard; she could swear that there had been a tone of animosity to it.

Noticing her wariness, he added, "You have to know the Dark Arts to fight the Dark Arts, eh, Black?"

It was posed as a question, but Luxanna could tell by the way he looked at her that he didn't expect her to respond genuinely.

"I should think so, sir."

"You'll have to attend detention, of course, you wouldn't want to needle Professor Snape now, would you?" He laughed. "Don't worry, I was just speaking to him about that. I made sure that you spend it with me. Next Monday at seven—my office."

"Right. Of course. Thank you, Professor," she said a bit clumsily.

Professor Moody nodded. For a moment, they simply stood there in silence—him, still as stone, and her, visibly nervous and unable to voice the question that burdened her.

Moody answered it for her. "No, I won't tell your father what you did. I can't make any promises for the others—namely your Head of House—but Cepheus won't hear it from me." Then, in a low, sarcastic tone, he added, "Wouldn't be the first time."

Luxanna nodded.

With a grunt and a nod of his head towards the door, Moody motioned for her to leave, his eye tracking her as she went. "Monday. Seven. My office, Black."

"That boy again..." Frost whispered, diverting Luxanna's attention from her Transfiguration homework to the scene unfolding behind them.

In the doorway leading to the boys' dormitory, concealed by the sizeable silhouettes of Cassius Warrington and Graham Montague (both renowned Slytherin Chasers), Alex Dankworth stood cowering against the wall in fear, an object held tightly against his chest. Though she couldn't make out what they were saying to the boy, the delight in their voices and a certain smugness in their gestures left little doubt in Luxanna's mind that whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant. She rolled her eyes; this was, in fact, a scene that she had seen countless times before.

Dankworth shook his head repeatedly, his knees threatening to buckle beneath him. His eyes darted wildly between the two ruffians, seeking help. When they finally landed on Luxanna, she quickly averted her gaze, knowing that the two bullies would likely be curious to know whom Dankworth was seeking help from.

"Lukss..." Frost was calling. "Luksss..."

Luxanna squeezed her eyes in concentration.

"You're a prefect, it's your—"

"Shut it, will you? I'm trying to listen."

"Yeah, why don't you give us a go, Dankworth?"

"... be friends with you."

"And as friends, we have to be honest with you."

"Yeah."

A laugh.

"You don't have a chance at..."

"... mainly just for fun, alright? My mum told me..." Dankworth began, but was curtly interrupted.

"Your Muggle mum? What's she know?"

"... but your mum's got a better chance at joining the team than you do. She can polish the brooms."

"Better yet, she can polish..."

Another round of laughter ensued, inspired by Cassius Warrington's distasteful joke whose ending Luxanna did not hear.

However, she could not help but revel in her own astonishment—Alex Dankworth was foolish enough to attempt joining the Quidditch team when it was well established that Warrington and Montague held a firm monopoly over the pitch. It was rotten business, but it's what kept alive the chance of Slytherin winning; the players knew each other's tactics well, knew their weaknesses, knew their strengths and knew each other—there was no room for newcomers. If they were to let just anybody in, they'd not scrounge up even second place. That's how things were, and it was down to Dankworth to realise it, which he evidently didn't.

Luxanna closed her book and excused herself from the common room, much to Frost's disapproval. In the girls' dormitory, she was met with a more devious, more sly sort of unpleasantness in the form of Triss Selwyn. Her hair was tousled, her brow was creased and her eyes had the same gleam they always had whenever she approached Luxanna, ready to take pleasure in ripping into her with vicious glee.

She perched on the edge of her bed and offered Luxanna an innocent smile. "Hiya, Black."

"Selwyn," Luxanna greeted with a hint of distaste, dropping her bag next to her own bed.

The other three girls that shared their room (Rowle, Travers, and Spinster) were changing into their pyjamas, still chatting amongst themselves about trivial matters, but Luxanna knew they too were eagerly listening in on the conversation.

"Heard you got detention," said Selwyn eagerly, as though she had been waiting all day to announce this.

"Of course," replied Luxanna arrogantly. What she truly meant was, 'Of course you heard, you nosy chit.' But that would have been exactly the sort of reaction Selwyn thrived on.

Selwyn laughed. "Ah yes, my fault, I must apologise, I did have a chat with Professor Snape about it; he said it's only fair. How unfortunate. But then, you shouldn't have gone and broken another school rule, now, should you? And as a prefect, too... don't you think that's... well, just a smidge embarrassing?"

When Luxanna didn't reply, she continued, "I think detention's too tame a punishment, actually, but I should hope that it'll teach you some manners."

"Mhm..."

"So, still eager to catch those weasels, I assume?"

"Yes."

"I hear they're planning to enter the tournament," Selwyn said conspiratorially, not even to Luxanna specifically, but out of sheer thirst for gossip.

"I heard that too," added Rowle from across the room. "Heard it from that cow, Johnson, this morning at breakfast."

Luxanna, whose back was faced towards Selwyn, turned around and stopped brushing her hair to look at the girl. "Nonsense," she stated, "they're too young. Even they aren't stupid enough to forget that there's an age limit."

"Do you take me for a liar?"

Luxanna ached to reply with an arrogant 'Yes,' but thought better of it. She was far too tired to incite an argument, so instead she said nothing. Still, if what Selwyn had said was accurate, it piqued her curiosity—what if they were planning to circumvent the age restriction somehow? A nauseating picture formed inside her head: crimson red banners hanging from the ceiling, fluttering triumphantly; underneath them, the Weasley twins together, smiling, and raising the prized cup in victory as the entire school applauds with cheer... She shuddered.

"Black! Your hair! Your hair's on fire!" Selwyn screeched all of a sudden.

She jumped, her hands flying instinctively towards her head to brush away the flames. They didn't exist, of course; there was nothing there—no burning, nothing. It was just Selwyn pulling one of her favourite tricks.

"Merlin, it never gets old!" quipped Travers.

"Did you see her jump? Oh my God!"

Luxanna drew the curtain of her four-poster—nearly ripping it in the process—to conceal the sight of Selwyn clutching her stomach with laughter. But the attention the wicked girl sought was still glaring at her through the gap in the curtains, and eventually Luxanna would crawl under the covers of her bed into the suffocating darkness to hide from the eyes she knew were glued to her back.

"Awww, that was rude, Triss, you went and hurt her feelings."

"We're just teasing, Black!"

This was the reason she would always, always come in late, once everybody was asleep.