Lucy hated Hogwarts. She loved magic, practiced and studied it with something bordering on reverence. She'd never felt anything like it either of her lives. Magic set her heart soaring, made her stomach swoon with anticipation, and made her eyes sting with wondering adoration.
School did the opposite. She was essentially a twenty something- thirty something now?- studying third grade material. That also meant she lived with them. She was surrounded by the cretins almost second of the day. As if that weren't enough, they were all a bunch of racist little shits with a personal grudge against her last name. She spent most of her days in the library and empty classrooms, avoiding the common room until the very last minute. She spent her nights dodging curses and hexes and ignoring sneers and whispers. The worst had been a sickly yellow jet of light that melted the stones.
The third night, the night her body had finally collapsed, she'd woken up to someone screaming. A third year girl had tried to break into her trunk. The very trunk Lucy had warded with the most complicated thing she could find in the library. Lucius Malfoy had strode in, saw the third year with burnt, bleeding hands, looked at Lucy's proud smile, and rolled his eyes. He yelled at Lucy for being a mudblood, at the girl for losing to a mudblood, and at both of them for waking him up. Lucy had rubbed her sleep swollen eyes and asked how his hair looked so good. He had not been amused.
They didn't manage to land a hit until the first Monday. Even then it had been her own fault. She'd gone around a corner to find an older Ravenclaw bullying Severus Snape and Violet Brown. She stood over her fellow snakes and raised her wand defiantly. The boy laughed and sent off another jinx. Lucy dodged. It hit Snape, but she used the opportunity to yell "DIFFINDO!". He screamed as a red line opened across his cheek.
"Leave or it'll be your throat next."
It wouldn't have. Lucy couldn't kill a fly, let alone a boy, but he didn't know that. He ran off with his hand pressed against his bleeding cheek. Lucy turned around to find Brown and Snape scurrying away.
"We don't need your help, you filthy little mudblood," Brown spat.
"Apparently you do," a cold voice drawled.
There was the clacking of heels on stone, then Narcissa Black stepped out from behind the corner. She had the same natural grace and haughty beauty as her sister, only Andromeda didn't have that nasty glint in her eyes. She waited until the others hauled themselves to their feet and grabbed their things, then silently ordered them back to the common room. There, she hit Snape and Brown with a barrage of stinging hexes.
"Worthless," she hissed. "Pathetic. You let yourselves be overtaken by one Ravenclaw and then have to be saved by a mudblood. A mudblood. You are shame to our house."
She cursed them one final time before rounding on Lucy. Lucy stared up at her defiantly. A thousand insults came to mind, almost all of them involving Andromeda and Bellatrix, but she kept her mouth shut. She had more important things to do than die at the ripe age of eleven. Narcissa, however, must have seen them all on her face. She raised her wand and intoned a curse. Some of the sixth and seventh years watching chuckled. Lucius Malfoy looked as though he was going to ravage Narcissa right there in front of them all.
"Run along, little ones, before you're late. If you lose any points for this, I'll hex you into the ground again."
The three of them did not hesitate. They rushed through the wall and down the corridor. They didn't dare stop until they were panting at the top of a tight spiral staircase.
"Where are we supposed to be?" Brown asked. Her hands were shaking as she tried to rearrange her blonde curls. Part of Lucy wondered if this girl would be Lavender Brown's mother, but she was too preoccupied with Narcissa's curse. She didn't recognize the Latin and she felt fine. Any curse from a Black that didn't leave you begging for mercy couldn't be good.
"Potions," Snape grumbled.
He winced as he rearranged the strap of his bag, but set his shoulders back and led them through the archway. Already displaying his badass side. At eleven. No eleven year old should have to be a badass.
Yes, Lucy definitely hated Hogwarts.
The resentment churning in her stomach worsened when they came across a group of children dressed in red and green. The last thing she needed was a bunch of brats feuding with each other in a dark room filled with dangerous fumes.
"Sev!" A pretty redhead called.
She hopped over to Snape and began bombarding him with cheerful questions. Brown scoffed. She toyed with strap of her designer bag, stealing a glance at Lucy through her hair.
"Are you alright?" She whispered.
Lucy shrugged.
Brown frowned. "That can't be good."
Lucy sighed in agreement.
"Thanks, by the way. I...I shouldn't have called you that. I was just embarrassed and angry."
"Won't you just fuck off?" Lucy said, surprising herself with her own bluntness.
"There's no need to be crass!" Brown cried. She shoved past the both of them to join their dorm-mates across the hall.
Slughorn appeared not soon after. He chortled and beamed as they walked through the door. Lucy threw herself into a seat in the back corner, glaring at anyone that got to near. She outright showed her teeth at Peter Pettigrew. In the end, she had the entire table to herself. Until Sirius Black and James Potter barreled through and collapsed into the seats across from her, at least. Lucy wanted to cry. There was no possible way the day could get any worse.
"Has he started yet?" Potter asked.
Lucy scowled. He cowered on his stool.
"Hey! You're that Tonks girl!" Black said. "You know my cousin?"
"Yes, I know your bitch of a cousin! That cunt just fucking hexed me."
Both boys jumped back in alarm. Sirius connected the dots first. He whistled lowly.
"I wasn't talking 'bout Narcissa, but she's always a right bitch. What'd she do?"
"Good afternoon, students!" Slughorn called. He peered at them from over his ridiculous mustache. "Now it looks like you're all here, but I'll be taking roll just in case. First, Yvonne Adams?"
"Here."
Lucy slumped over the table, stewing in her misery. All she'd try to do was protect her fellow Slytherins, show some sort of house solidarity, but noooo. Apparently, they'd rather suffer than be saved by a mudblood, the idiots. She'd spent most of the weekend practicing shields and curses in an empty classroom and she'd be damned before she wasted her hard work on those ungrateful brats again.
A sharp pain in her shin cut into her thoughts.
"Lucy Tonks?" Slughorn asked. He swished his wand to brighten the lights. "Ah, there you are! With your cousin, I see. Oh dear, are you quite alright, my girl? You're looking a bit pale."
"Fuck off," she snapped.
The class gasped. Across from her, Potter and Black looked as though Christmas had come early.
"I beg your pardon?" Slughorn asked.
"You can take my pardon and shove it up your fat ass."
"Miss Tonks! Now, I understand this is a difficult-"
"You don't understand shite you unctuous wanker."
"Lucy, if you keep this up I'll have to take points."
"Take your motherfucking points, you slimy git. They're only a way to promote ass kissing. It's all anyone knows how to fucking do. If they're not trying to suck Dumbledore's cock, they're bending over for Voldemort to fuck them up the ass."
The dungeon was deathly silent. Sirius Black had tears in his eyes. Slughorn waved his wand with a shaking hand. Lucy braced herself, her hands tight on the stool. This was it. She was going to be expelled. She'd never get the diadem. She'd have to lie and say she wanted to run upstairs and say goodbye to someone. Sirius, maybe? The Grey Lady? Who else lived upstairs? She didn't have any friends in any part of the castle.
"Finite incantatum," Slughorn said.
White light flashed and a warm feeling rushed through her body.
"Miss Tonks?" Slughorn asked.
"Yes, Professor?"
"Tell me about your favorite potion."
"The Polyjuice Potion is an incredibly complex concoction that...Sweet! Thanks, Professor!" Then, sheepishly she added, "Sorry."
Slughorn stared at her for a moment before he turned his attention to the class. "That, ladies and gentlemen, was the cursing curse in action. It lowers the victim's inhibitions and replaces their vocabulary with foul language."
"Please, Professor," Violet Brown said. "Don't take any points. We were ambushed by a fourth year Ravenclaw and Lucy stood up for us. I've got the stinging welts to prove it."
Slughorn was quite for a long time. "I am the Head of Slytherin. Do not lie to me again, Miss Brown."
"Yes, Professor," Violet murmured.
"Class is dismissed, I think. Seeing a child cursed by a near adult ruins one's inspiration. I expect a ten inch essay on the Calming Drought."
"Yes, Professor," they intoned.
"Then I will see you all on Monday."
Lucy let her feet lead her through the halls. She found herself standing outside a portrait of a fat lady on the seventh floor. She stood there wondering how different this new life could have been and how much worse it was going to get.
The weeks passed. Lucy kept her head down, only bringing attention to herself in class. She felt a little guilty for succeeding, but she wouldn't be able to excel if she focused her efforts on academic anonymity. Her worst subject was transfiguration and even then McGonnagal assigned her alternate work. She skived off history to practice dueling and study wards. Her trunk would give a NEWT student pause.
Everything came to a head in the third week of October. The upper years came in from Hogsmeade half drunk and carrying a crate between them. Lucy looked up from where she sat against the window, trying to decide if she could sneak back to her bed. Her roommates ignored her for the most part, and the older girls had stopped trying to get in her trunk after their third attempt sent Mia Mercier to the hospital wing.
Yes, she decided. They're too drunk to notice me.
She closed her history book and skirted around the room. She kept to the walls, giving the upper years a wide birth.
It was Lucius Malfoy that stopped her.
"You. Mudblood," he called. She cursed under her breath. The third years she was standing behind cleared out. "Where do you think you're going?"
She didn't say anything. She just gripped her wand and studied his figure across the room. He was annoyingly handsome. There was something inherently masculine in his appearance despite his long, white hair and glittering robes. She respected him, much in the way she suspected he was beginning to respect her. There was nothing wrong with respecting one's enemies. Some might even call it wise.
"Well?" He drawled. "Snake got your tongue?"
A few of his friends laughed. Narcissa Black watched him with adoration in her eyes.
"I'm going to my room. I don't want any trouble."
Malfoy tutted in faux disappointment. "Now that's a lie. A mudblood can't come to the dungeons without wanting trouble."
"It wasn't my choice. I tried to get sorted into Ravenclaw. You heard the Hat. It wouldn't even budge for Dumbledore."
"Ah, yes. Great and terrible and hungry." His sneer suddenly dropped into a frown. "Did it tell you who Tom Marvolo Riddle was?"
She chewed on her lip. It would be stupid. Foolish. Word had probably gotten back to him somehow. There was no reason to speed things along on that front.
"You do know," Malfoy crooned. "Will you tell us? Or will you let me make you?"
Fuck it, there was plenty reason to speed things along with Snakeface.
"I'll show you," Lucy blurted.
Malfoy raised a brow. "Indeed?"
Unfortunately, most of Lucy's passive magic came out bubblegum pink. Her handwriting was even more embarrassing. It always had been. So it was with big sloppy pink letters that Tom Marvolo Riddle rearranged itself into I Am Lord Voldemort. She managed to count to ten before Malfoy broke the eerie silence.
"You dare?" He hissed.
"I can't help that my magic-"
"Release it."
A few boys cheered. One of them, it might have been Rosier, flicked his wand at the crate. Lucy watched, gulping, as it creaked open.
The head rose first. Lurid orange and triangular with slitted red eyes. It was a snake that she'd never seen before. It could have been a ball python if it weren't for its obviously magical nature. It danced up and up and up and climbed out, it's heavy bulk thudding on the carpet. It hissed happily.
"There. Her," Malfoy ordered.
The beast followed the line of his wand and focused on Lucy's trembling figure. It's mammoth bulk curved and flexed as it slithered in her direction. Lucy cast every spell she knew. Everything, even the bone breaking one she'd read in Andy's grimoire, bounced off. The carpet singed. Chair legs broke. Stuffing exploded. She screamed them all again and again, hoping against all probability that something would hit. Curse upon curse erupted from her wand with the force of grown witch. They were blinding and powerful and they did nothing.
The snake paused not a foot from her. It eyed her curiously, it's lipless mouth quirked into a smirk. It hissed something, reared it's head back, and just as it was about to strike, two words broke the tense silence.
"AVADA KEDAVRA."
The murky green of the Slytherin common room lit up a bright, brilliant chartreuse. The snake fell to the floor with a haunting thump. Lucy's heart pumped painfully hard. It pulsed in her ears, throbbed in her teeth.
She licked her lips, finally tearing her gaze away from the body at her feet. Lucius Malfoy stared down at her with a dangerously pale face.
She could do it. It had been easy, so easy. It hurt, yes, but no more than pulling a muscle in her chest. The pain was already ebbing away. Lucius couldn't be much more intelligent than a snake. He was an animal, a murderer. He wasn't an innocent.
Something cold burned through her veins. The Bloody Baron floated in front of her. His piercing black eyes met her own. Slowly, as thought not to startle her, he raised his wrists. The metal cuffs clanked ominously.
Lucy sucked in a breath. Right. He'd spent eternity shackled with regret and shame. Her fate would be nearly so kind. She doubted she could become a ghost after the dementors devoured her soul.
"Right," she murmured to herself. She nodded, tapping her wand against her thigh nervously. Louder, she said, "Right. I'm going to get my trunk and one of you is going to shrink it for me. I am going to leave you lot alone and you'll do the same for me. You good with that?"
Nobody agreed, but nobody spoke against it either. She went to get her trunk, waited patiently as a sixth year shrunk it, and began the long trek up the stairs. She spent that night in the Room of Requirement. The next day, the Bloody Baron silently led her back to the dungeons. They came to halt outside a simple wooden door. It swung open to reveal a dark, musty room with a rusted sink and half rotted shelves. It might have been an old broom closet or an abandon end professor's office. Either way, it was hers now. It was where she would spend the next seven years of her life.