Melanie observed the great hall with interest. She took particular interest in the ceiling, which was bewitched to look like the night sky.
As a creature of fire and air, she greatly appreciated the view. She stood close to Sebek and Silver, the three of them eager to see how they would be sorted into their new houses for the next five years at least.
One by one, the children were called up.
"Evans, Melanie!" McGonagall called out.
Melanie strode up to the stool, as she had an entire month of being called "Evans" so as to avoid any misteps.
It was rather disconcerting having a mere scrap of fabric sift through her memories, but eventually it came to a decision.
"Slytherin!" it declared.
Melanie dutifully went to the green and silver table. She was rather pleased with the color scheme, and had no problem with being associated with the house of the cunning.
She was however very confused at the looks she got from her new housemates. If she had to put words to it, she could only describe it as 'disgust' and 'annoyance'.
"Potter, Melody!"
Dead silence, as everyone waited with baited breath for the girl in question to take her place at the stool like everyone else. Melanie kept silent...after all, she had already been sorted.
After a tense five minutes, McGonagall continued on as if nothing happened, but there was a definite murmur in the air at the absence of the missing mage.
"Vanrouge, Silver!"
Silver had reacted somewhat badly to the realization that Lilia wasn't his birth father. Melanie had helped him to come to terms with it, and to prove that he did indeed love Silver as if he were his own flesh and blood, Lilia had recreated a lesser version of the circle used to make Melanie a full member of the Draconia family.
As a result, Lilia fully became Silver's father in every sense of the word, even if Silver didn't inherit any physical attributes like Melanie had with her adoption.
It took all of three seconds for the hat to declare "Hufflepuff!"
Silver had a confused look, but took his place among his new housemates.
"Zigvolt, Sebek!"
Melanie did her best not to frown at the whispers, mostly at his unusual hair color.
So you could imagine the shock and confusion when Sebek was just as quickly sorted into Hufflepuff, and took his place next to Silver.
It made things a bit harder for them to cover her, but that meant she would have to put in a bit more effort.
One week later...
"How are things in Slytherin?" asked Silver. They were sitting at the end of the Hufflepuff table by themselves.
Melanie let out a low, unhappy growl. Sebek sat up a bit straighter.
"That bad?" asked Silver.
"If it wasn't for the strict orders from grandmother, I would have roasted them all for their sheer disrespect on the first night," she replied.
"Which orders?" asked Sebek.
"The ones to keep a low profile," said Melanie unhappily.
Sebek had a confused look on his face.
"I don't remember her saying such orders," commented Sebek. Melanie looked at him. "I remember her being strict on you not revealing your dead name, or your actual surname. However I don't recall her saying anything about keeping a low profile."
Silver frowned as well.
"If I remember correctly, she said not to embarrass the family name, nor to let them walk all over you," he commented. "Her telling you or Lord Malleus to keep a low profile would be pointless. Your charisma stat is too high, according to father."
Melanie paused, then brightened as she thought again about the orders her grandmother had given her.
"Your right. I've been too lenient on them. I'll have to make a list of the worst offenders and instruct them on how to properly behave themselves in my presence. I can already think of someone at the top of that particular list," she said brightly. "In fact I know of a potential way to convince them to deal with their lack of decorum and avoid using my dead name as a shield."
She would have to run it by her great-grandmother of course, but it didn't fall under the set of rules Queen Maleficia had given her regarding her presence at this school.
She began penning a letter to her great-grandmother and father, partly to vent but also to run her idea past them. A brief flash of green flame, and the letter was sent.
It was so much more efficient than waiting on birds to deliver it to the valley, and it couldn't be intercepted by most mages. Her father had made sure she had that spell down pat before she even left for this school.
A few hours later, she felt a "burp" coming on.
She let it out, and a brief flash of flame appeared...along with a scroll.
She unfurled it and brightened while reading. Partly because of the rapid response from her father and great-grandmother, but also because Maleficia approved of her plan. It was in a fae's nature to be tricky, and this sort of misdirection was perfectly acceptable since she wasn't technically lying. She was just implying a certain truth without giving the full story.
According to the research Lilia had done before she had accepted her entrance into Hogwarts, her biological parents had named two people as her godparents. Due to outside circumstances, neither were able to fulfill that duty.
One of those people was a man everyone assumed to be a criminal by the name of Sirius Black.
From what Lilia had found, Black had "betrayed" the Potters to the "Dark Lord". He then tracked down yet another member of the quartet of pranksters and killed him as well as twelve others before being arrested.
Which...made absolutely no sense and Lilia had yet to find any actual evidence Black had done what everyone assumed.
First was the death of the Potters. Mages, especially those from old families like Black, took the duty of being a godparent seriously. To the point where they would take magically binding oaths that would prevent them from harming their bound godchild without some major consequences. By all accounts, Sirius had practically been adopted by the Potters by the time he had graduated, and had turned his back against his blood kin who had been strong supporters of this "Lord Voldemort".
It made zero sense that he would suddenly switch sides without any warning, and everyone just assumed he did it because of his family.
Second was the death of this...Peter Pettigrew. If he had just gotten his former best friend killed, then why got after a relatively uninvolved member of the group? All the research he had done on these "Marauders" indicated that Pettigrew was the least impressive member and was more of a hanger-on than anything. It made zero sense for him to go after Pettigrew second, when the fourth member was a bigger threat. If Sirius wanted to betray his friends and closest comrades, it made far more sense to go after Lupin first.
Remus Lupin was a werewolf, which meant he would be far harder to take down. Going after Pettigrew made zero sense because it meant Lupin would be forewarned that someone was after their group specifically and would take precautions.
Then came the photos Lilia had...acquired...regarding Sirius Black's arrest. According to everyone there, Pettigrew had accused Black of the Potter's murder, before Black "blew up the street". His spell had apparently hit a gas main and Pettigrew had been killed on the spot, leaving only a finger behind.
Lilia had taken one look at the photos and had called "absolute nonsense". He had shown the children the photos, and had pointed out the major inconsistencies in the whole thing. The biggest one was that Peter's finger was clearly cut off, not blown off. Also, if he had been blasted like the report claimed, then there would be more body parts around. It was highly suspicious that the only thing found was an easily removed finger.
In short, Lilia, Baul and Malleus all strongly suspected a different narrative. Namely that for whatever reason, Peter had been the traitor, not Black. How or why that was the case was unknown, but it made far more sense and would neatly explain why Black had tracked the man down so soon after losing his best friend.
He wanted to kill the traitor, only for Peter to pull a fast one at the last second and pinning all the blame on him. After all, no one would think to question Black's motives with his family.
The main issue was that there was no actual trial, so all of this was just a theory. However it was the one that made the most sense.
Melanie had taken all of this in stride, as it had no impact on her for the moment. What she cared about was the fact that Sirius Black was a known "playboy" and therefor had several indiscretions with women. It wouldn't be out of the line of reason for him to have sired a bastard (or three) without knowing about it, especially if he was arrested and thrown into the mage prison in quick succession. And it would make perfect sense for the mother to hide the fact that she had birthed the child of a known "traitor/criminal", particularly since the story of "Melody Potter" had blown up to such proportions.
Having the child of a hated criminal would only cause more harm than good, so it would make perfect sense for the mother to hand over the child to another childless relative and have them formally adopted under a new surname to hide the embarrassment.
Which was exactly what Melanie planned to capitalize on. She had Black blood in her veins through her biological father's side, and according to the goblin's own records she was due to inherit at least three family magics. The Potter, the Black and the Draconia. More importantly Sirius had named his godchild the heir of the house of Black upon her birth and had filled out all the formal requirements. Should another of his blood be born, then it would automatically default to them by right.
In order to shut up the older purebloods who treated her like utter garbage beneath their feet and to establish a proper power base among her own peers, Melanie was simply going to imply she was the bastard daughter of Sirius Black.
That would establish her as an actual peer among the old blood factions, at least enough to get a proper foot in the door. After all, they would understand why she wanted to be discreet about her actual lineage, especially with Black's history and how revered Potter is among their people.
It would also give her enough incentive to tell that damn brat Malfoy to shut up once and for all. If she had to hear him whine about his father one more time, she was going to roast him.
~*~*~*~*
KABOOM
The explosion rocked the castle, and the epicenter was the potion's lab.
Silver looked in the direction of the explosion and sighed.
"Today was potions for the Slytherins, wasn't it?" he asked.
Sebek nodded, having already guessed what happened himself.
"What's going on?" asked Justin.
"Lady Melanie likely blew up the potion," said Sebek.
"She took lessons from my father in regards to cooking. It did not end well," said Silver, as if that explained everything. It didn't.
"Ok?" said Susan confused.
"Lady Melanie has a habit of being too...impatient...when it comes to anything remotely like cooking," explained Sebek.
"She is of the belief that heating it up would cause the food or potion to finish faster," said Silver.
"Which has resulted in her great-grandmother and father banning her from the potion lab unless there is someone there to handle the actual brewing aspect," said Sebek. "She can prep just fine, it's just that she has no patience for long brewing times."
"That's..." started Hannah. "She does realize potions is a mandatory course, right?"
"We did ask Professor Snape to let us join the Slytherin lesson with her, but he was rather firm that we stay with the rest of our classmates," said Silver. "He said that he would not allow favoritism, even towards his own house."
Melanie walked out of the potions lab looking rather disgruntled, but kept her silence on the matter. Her classmates, not so much.
"What happened?" asked Silver to one of the other students. A Gryffindor with rather bushy hair.
"First Neville's cauldron melted, causing the potion to spill all over him...the Melanie's cauldron imploded and Professor Snape yelled at her for ten minutes because she had the heat too high," said the Gryffindor. Silver later learned her name was Hermione. "Fortunately Melanie somehow used a shield spell, otherwise it would have coated everyone in the potion."
"She's had to learn to be quick with those if she's ever in a potions lab," sighed Silver.
It was one of the few good things about her being banned...she had a near instinctive reaction for realizing when it was about to blow, and her first instinct was to cast a quick and dirty shield over anyone in the vicinity.
Hermione stared at him for several seconds, before she slowly asked...
"This has happened before?!"
On the plus side, it took only three more lessons before Snape reluctantly paired Melanie with the second worst potion brewer in the class by the name of Neville Longbottom. Alone, they were a disaster, but together they were semi-competent. Neville was terrible at prep and remembering things, but he at least had more patience than Melanie. Meanwhile she had the recipes down, but her impatience was her undoing.