Autumn 1991

Ronald Weasley

"That doesn't sound like a good idea," Harry said as both he and Ron stepped into the entrance hall.

"Probably not," Ron agreed. He knew that a war had just begun and he didn't want to take a side, but he also had no choice. Malfoy had confronted him on the first day and while Theo wasn't exactly a great person, he didn't threaten to break anyone's bones. At least, Ron frowned, he hadn't heard Theo say it to anyone's face. If Malfoy was going to blame Ron for whatever Theo did, it wouldn't make a difference if he did nothing.

Ron's stomach twisted in uncomfortable ways. He wondered if Sal would be disappointed in him when he came clean about in-fighting. It wasn't exactly what he was supposed to be doing as the Guardian, but he also couldn't focus on his job if Malfoy was going to keep confronting him. He needed some room to breathe, just a few weeks of calm to catch himself and get a handle on everything before whatever storms would inevitably follow. It seemed like he could only do that if Malfoy was destroyed. Ron swallowed, he hoped Blaise was wrong.

Ron looked up from the floor and nearly tumbled over as he forced himself to stop suddenly. Two girls, Slytherin first years, stood unmoving in the centre of the archway, purposefully taking up as much room as possible. The one on the left was a little taller, her blonde hair tied in a neat ponytail, and her face almost expressionless. The one on the right was a shorter brunette with rather rosy cheeks and a small but seemingly polite smile. They made no effort to move.

"Er— Hello," Harry tried. His words were met with a brighter grin from the brunette and a narrow glare from the taller girl.

"Potter," the taller girl responded, "aren't you supposed to be spending time with Gryffindors?"

Oh great.

"He's my friend," Ron inserted himself. "He can spend time with whoever he likes."

"If he isn't aware of what he's doing," the tall girl nodded. "If he was, I'm sure he'd change his mind."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"You're going to make Weasley a target," she said with an icy tone. "His brothers already glare at him behind his back, and you're not helping."

They do!?Ron habitually bit his cheek. He felt the sudden urge to look over his shoulder, as if one of the twins might have been waiting behind him with a hex.

Ron wondered if the girl was right. Maybe Harry was making him a target, Dean Thomas might have been a little harsher just because Ron was Harry's friend. The boy who lived becoming friends with the only vile Weasley? He could see why that would anger some Gryffindors. Worse, he wondered if the same thing was happening in reverse. The only reason Malfoy had confronted him and Harry was because of something that Ron had been roped .

Harry held his arms to his chest. "I didn't realise,"

"Weasley doesn't either," the girl interrupted him. "You can tell me if you'd rather be a Slytherin, Potter. We won't judge you for wanting to be a winner."

"I'm fine with being a Gryffindor," Harry replied.

The girl seemed to consider this for a moment and then tilted her head slightly to the left. "Lies like that might make someone believe you, but it won't work with me."

What? Lies?Ron glanced at Harry, he was almost sure that his friend wasn't lying.

Harry turned to him at the same time. "I think I'm going to go sit down," he said softly. Ron understood that it was just an excuse to escape whatever was happening. Ron didn't blame his friend, one confrontation a day was more than enough.

The tall girl watched as Harry left, her eyes staring narrowed and on the back of his head until he finally disappeared into the crowds.

"Daphne Greengrass," she said and offered her hand. Ron went to shake it but the girl quickly pulled it away and gave him an almost offended look. "You don't shake a girl's hand like that," she scolded.

"Oh, sorry," Ron apologised although he wasn't sure what exactly he had done wrong. If anything, he felt like she had been the rude one to Harry.

The short girl beside Greengrass snorted and introduced herself. "Tracy Davis, you can shake my hand if you want."

Ron took the brunette's offer while Daphne watched him carefully as he did so. Ron almost felt like he was being judged or tested in some way.

"We came to speak to you, not Potter," Daphne said. "I don't actually care if you're friends with him, I was just providing some advice. You don't have to take it, I just wanted him to leave."

"It was kind of rude,"

"The truth isn't rude," she said back. "It's better that you learn that from me, Weasley. Pansy Parkinson is truly rude, and you wouldn't want to hear what she'll say."

"Right," he mumbled, not sure he agreed with the assertion.

"We wanted to ask about you," Tracy added. "You know, find out why you're in Slytherin?"

Ron nodded, he had been asked the same question almost every day by somebody. Most of the time the students who asked weren't even in Slytherin and were just trying to find out why he was so different from his brothers. He couldn't tell them the truth.

"I don't know," he lied.

Greengrass narrowed her eyes again and they seemed to burn holes in his skin. Her light blue gaze was filled with doubt.

"You're lying," she guessed correctly, though she didn't make an effort to guess the real reason. Ron was certain she wouldn't have gotten it right if she thought for a full month straight anyway.

"I don't know," Tracy said. "He could just not know." She too studied him for a moment before snorting again. "I mean, he does kind of look like a Slytherin. Doesn't he?"

Daphne nodded slowly. "He's not sleeping well, dark shadows under his eyes and his left eye fidgets sometimes. He could be breaking the rules, sneaking out at night."

I'm right here?

"You aren't sneaking out," she addressed him. "You're staying awake because you're either afraid of sleeping or too busy worrying about what you've gotten into. If you were sneaking out, you would have been caught by now. You're not very subtle, Weasley."

Ron's heart beat faster, as he knew she was eerily close to the truth.

"I have nightmares," he admitted. It was the kind of half-truth that sometimes worked in place of a lie.

Tracy reached out and put her hand on his arm. "I used to have nightmares too. Most of them were about horror movies though."

Movies?Ron had never heard the word before.

"He doesn't know what those are," Daphne guessed correctly, again. She had a habit of doing so and it made Ron feel slightly exposed. "He's a Pure-Blood, like me, Trace."

"Oh right," Tracy frowned. "Well, horror movies are like portraits that tell a story but always scary stories and lots of characters." Her cheeks turned red in embarrassment. "It's a muggle thing."

A muggle thing?Ron couldn't imagine why muggles would make a machine to give themselves nightmares.

"You've gotten a lot of points," Tracy said. "I mean, you're one of the best students in our class, so far."

Ron felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. He wasn't a good student, he was just almost cheating. Salazar was giving him lessons that none of the other students got. He knew that if they had, he would probably be near the bottom instead. Still, he nodded politely.

"My brother Percy has been tutoring me," he said. It was almost a lie, but not entirely. "He let me borrow some of his notes from when he was in our year, and I've looked through them."

"Ravenclaw," Daphne said through a small breath. "Was that why you were a hat stall?"

Ron shifted from one foot to the other. "No, I was going to be a Gryffindor."

"You need to learn to be a better liar," Daphne scolded him again. "It was something else, Hufflepuff? Maybe. Or the hat was just at a loss for what it saw inside your head."

"The next dark lord," Tracy said half-jokingly.

Ron laughed a little nervously. "I just want to be a great wizard. I'm too lazy to be a Ravenclaw."

"Everyone wants to be great. The only people who don't, are either already great or are too stupid to know what greatness is." Daphne told him. "She was joking, we know you aren't the next dark lord."

"You could try to be," Tracy suggested. "But you probably wouldn't get very far."

"Anyway, we wanted to speak with you, Weasley, because I need help." Daphne cleared her throat. "I need a potion's partner who knows what they're doing. I don't know if you noticed but Tracy and I haven't been doing a very good job." Ron had not noticed. "While you and Nott have been near the top of the class, we haven't been. It seems clear to me that you're at least partially responsible for the success, and so I'd like you to be my potions partner instead of Nott's. My mother is a Potioner, it's her hobby, and she wants me to get at least an 'E'. If you help me, we will give you something that you need: an alliance. You'll need more allies if you plan on getting into any more trouble with Malfoy."

Thoughts swirled through Ron's head. "I almost fought him just before I came down here," he admitted.

"So you need more support. Malfoy has Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson, and Bulstrode. You have Zabini. Potter can't help you in our common room. And we both know that Nott and you aren't friends, at least, not yet."

Ron bit his lip and nodded slowly. If he were going to commit to the struggle that Theo started, he would need more support. Even if that support was just two more Slytherin first years, neither of which he knew much about.

"What exactly does an alliance mean?" Ron asked cautiously. "Just potions help?"

Daphne's eyes narrowed again. "You think that we're trying to trick you?"

"No!" Ron blurted. "I mean, I just want to know what you get, is all."

"Protection," she said simply. "It might seem strange to… someone not familiar with our way of doing things, but Slytherin has a very complicated history of forming such alliances. Crabbe and Goyle were already Malfoy's friends before he arrived here, and Tracy was mine. Everyone else was free to choose their allies, and you, Weasley, got lucky that Zabini decided to stick with you. Malfoy gets Parkinson with just a smile, and Bulstrode goes along with her. I'm at a disadvantage just as you are."

Merlin! Another power struggle!? Ugh.

Tracy nodded in agreement. "It's not just about homework, it's also about survival. Loyalty is just as important here as it is in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, we just like to show it differently. If Malfoy outnumbers us, he'll be able to do pretty much anything he pleases."

"What about Professor Snape?" Ron asked. "He stopped me from fighting with Malfoy."

Tracy snorted and Daphne gave her a cold look.

"Professor Snape knows what's happening, it happens every year," Daphne explained. "The truth is, he was a Slytherin once too and he knows how the game works. Only, when he was here, the largest faction were the followers of you-know-who. That's not the case anymore, so there's a lot up in the air about who comes to power next."

Ron swallowed a deep breath of comes next?He felt uncomfortable with the implication that Malfoy could somehow be the same as you-know-who. "To power?"

Daphne rolled her eyes and sighed with a hint of impatience. "Try to pay attention to the house, Weasley. Right now, everyone's divided into three distinct groups. In the middle, there's you, Blaise, and a handful of older students who haven't picked a side yet. Then there's the group leaning toward Malfoy—reformists, the ones from the old pure-blood families who think they deserve more power, the kind that quietly supported you-know-who. Most of the older students fall in with them." She paused for a second and frowned. "Finally, the other group— traditionalists, pure-bloods with even older ideas about how things should work. The king of people that have ideas regarding the Statute of Secrecy and keeping things... under control."

Ron just stared forward, his mind muddled with all the revelations. In truth, he hadn't spent much time talking to any older students besides Percy so he had no idea what was happening inside Slytherin house. Ron realised that Blaise probably knew about what was going on but had chosen to stay in the middle anyway. He had warned Ron against messing with Malfoy and was probably trying to keep himself away from something horrible. Yet, Ron frowned, staying away didn't seem to work. He had tried his best to avoid Malfoy, he hadn't even stepped in like Harry did when Malfoy took Neville's remembrall. He felt a sudden rush of guilt, if he had been unconvinced about doing something before, he knew now that he had too.

"Alright," he nodded. "I'll be your potions partner."

Daphne smiled smugly.