During her first Transfiguration class, McGonagall was a cat that became a woman, and Leo stared at Regulus accusingly. He stared back. McGonagall spent the beginning of the class on the transfiguration alphabet, and Leo already knew that like the back of her hand.
"It wasn't important," he finally said once McGonagall was handing out matches.
"You didn't tell me," she hissed. She picked up the match and glared at it as if that would set it on fire. A wandless Incendio was never one of the ones she'd tried to learn.
"You're good at transfiguration," Regulus said instead of addressing that. "You love transfiguration. This is a good class."
She switched to glaring at him instead. Could ghosts burn?
"Miss Malfoy, are you planning to participate with the rest of the class?"
She blinked and became aware that to everyone else she was glaring at McGonagall's desk, which was no longer a pig. She straightened. "I'm sorry, Professor." And then, "I didn't know you were an animagus. I've heard about the ability, but I've never gotten much chance to look into it. Are there any books you could rec—"
"You are aware that you have an assignment to complete, correct?"
"Oh." Leo looked back down at the match she was holding. An incantation and movement of her wand later, it was a needle. She resumed her question. "Are there any books you could recommend on the subject?"
McGonagall's jaw slackened, and then she drew her shoulders back. She regarded Leo quietly for a long moment. "I will consider providing a list given you show yourself able to pay proper attention and apply yourself," she finally said. "None of this distraction."
Leo smiled. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Draco had abandoned his match in favor of propping his elbow up on the table and his chin on his fist. He was staring over at her, and she could just tell he was writing a letter to Narcissa in his head. She set the needle down on her desk. "Of course, Professor McGonagall. I apologize for disrupting."
McGonagall hummed as she watched her. As she turned away, she said, "Do me a favor and turn that match back."
"What if I cut him open?" she mused. "Took whatever makes him him and used that in a potion. He destroyed Tom before; maybe it will destroy the locket. Eat it like acid."
Regulus shuddered, his form flickering. "No."
"I wouldn't want to kill him, of course," she mused. She was browsing the shelves of the classroom for a lack of anything else to do.
In the week since the term had started, Leo had fallen into a habit of spending her time early to classes wisely. Most of the professors had stopped asking questions about what she was doing or why she was there. Quirrell had once commented on how she didn't need to linger until he was there; that she could fraternize with the other students. She just nodded and didn't share that she wasn't particularly good at that. Never had been. Instead, she asked about dugbogs and tried to parse anything usable from his stuttering response.
She could practice the material before Charms, but it wasn't the same for Potions. She could guess that Snape would never let her get away with brewing in the room without supervision, so she instead busied herself with studying the ingredients and resources there that she hadn't had at home. She didn't have a potions lab at the manor, just a cauldron and a small cabinet of ingredients Narcissa deemed safe for her to experiment with.
"What is it called? Picking someone apart like that."
"Dissection."
"No. I don't want to kill him," she reminded him, staring at a jar of bat spleens.
Regulus was silent for a long moment. When she looked over at him, he was resting before her cauldron, frowning down at it. Finally, he said, "Vivisection."
"That might be right." There were a couple closed cabinets she hadn't looked at yet. She tapped the edge of the open shelf she'd been inspecting. "No. No, I can't do that."
"Can't do what?" a slow, drawling voice interrupted. "I do hope you're intelligent enough not to cause trouble in my class."
She turned towards the door, and Regulus was already hissing his familiar reminders that Snape was a Death Eater. "Professor Snape," she greeted with an incline of her head. "I'm not planning any trouble. I enjoy potions, so I was thinking over which ones might be achievable at my current level. Swelling solution is a Second Year potion, isn't it?"
His eyes were narrowed. Then he turned and swept to the front of the room instead of answering. Leo was left in a haze of Regulus's hissing, the smell of preserved potions ingredients, and her lack of sleep. She'd tried not to in hopes of limiting how much she disturbed the other girls in her dorm. She'd still managed to wake, wailing, in her two hours of sleep.
"Bonjour, Harry," she greeted as he and Ron sat at the table next to hers.
Harry stared at her for a moment before saying, "Hi, Leonis."
"Excited for potions?"
He gave her a smile, glancing about the room franticly. "Nervous," he confessed.
"Brown, Lavender," Snape snapped out as he began roll call. When Snape paid special attention to Harry's name, Regulus kept hissing about every Crucio and Avada Kedavra he'd ever seen Snape use. As Snape launched into his introduction for the class, Leo picked up her quill and prepared to take notes.
"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Draught of Living Death, Leo concluded immediately. She knew that. She also knew Harry probably couldn't. Hermione Granger's hand was in the air.
"I don't know, sir."
"Tut, tut. Fame clearly isn't everything. Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
The stomach of a goat, she knew. "The potions storeroom," she told Regulus.
"Malfoy," Snape said sharply. "Do not make a habit of interrupting the class for your own amusement."
Out of her peripheral vision, she could see Draco jump at the angry use of their family name. She stared up at Snape. "My apologies, Professor Snape."
"He killed the Muggles first," Regulus hissed. "The parents. In front of their wizard child. He got praised for it."
"Don't let it happen again." Snape's gaze flicked back to Harry. "What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
There wasn't one. Hermione Granger was standing, now, and Leo supposed she could know from having already studied their books. Leo knew but not from the books. He was a werewolf, Regulus had told her once. And she'd had enough people tell her parents that they weren't sure if she was Being or Beast to feel like maybe she understood.
"I don't know," Harry said. "I think Hermione does, though. Why don't you try her?"
A few people laughed, and Leo caught Regulus's gaze. "He's funny," she told him.
Snape didn't seem to agree. "Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. And then he started on an angry explanation of the answers to the questions he'd asked. "Well? Why aren't you copying that down?"
Everyone around her started scrambling to take notes, and Snape took a point from Gryffindor. Leo didn't move, quill still in hand. Snape narrowed his eyes at her but didn't comment, sweeping away to the board. He started in on the lesson, writing the directions without saying anything.
"Malfoy," Snape said, stopping again before the table she was at. "This is a partner activity. "
She blinked around at her empty table. Then she stood, cauldron in hand, and looked around at the other students. She chose one who also didn't have a partner, setting her cauldron down and sitting across from him. "I suppose that means we'll be working together," she said. "Have you made a Cure for Boils before, Neville?"
He shook his head, shifting in his seat. "No. Have you?"
"I have," she said, taking stock of the ingredients they had. "Powder these," —she measured six snake fangs into his mortar— "while I slice the pungous onion. Make sure you get the fang powder fine. Messing this potion up can make it volatile. And instead of curing them, it would cause boils."
Neville's eyes widened. The pestle in his hand started to tremble.
"I've done this potion before. I know what I'm doing. Powder the snake fangs."
It was almost two weeks into term when she snuck out of the dormitories after curfew. Regulus was coherent enough to look out ahead for her, warning her to duck into hiding whenever he caught sight of a prefect on patrol. Her heart was pounding, but it wasn't from fear of being caught. She'd grown up following Regulus's directions to sneak about the Manor—and out of it. No, that wasn't what had her scared.
The Whomping Willow's branches were sweeping wildly in the cool night air. Her knees were shaking, and she was reminded the fear wasn't a new thing. The imminent danger of being beaten to death by a tree, however . . . .
Her Wingardium Leviosa was steady, and her hands were sore. But neither her hands nor the stick she was levitating shook, and she hit the knot solidly.
The thrashing limbs swayed to a stop.
"Go," Regulus hissed. "Now. Go!"
She scrambled down into the tunnel. Her lungs were tight, refusing to work properly. She heard creaking as the tree came back to life.
The tunnel was long and small, and she was already dreading the shower she knew she would need to take from all the dirt she was crawling over. Showers were usually not a problem. But when she was already strung out and anxious from two weeks of little sleep and the stress of following Regulus's directions? The shower would feel like drowning.
The Shrieking Shack was worse than Regulus had described. That wasn't shocking, really. He'd never actually used the tunnel; he just knew about it. Beyond that, he'd only ever seen the Shack from the outside during Hogsmeade weekends. He'd described it as rough and dangerous. Now, standing in the middle of a room of broken wood and clawed furniture, she thought that was an understatement.
"You're not here to sightsee," Regulus reminded her.
Leo took a breath and drew her wand from the pocket of her robes. Here, there would be no questions about the bangs and explosions as she attempted to learn Flipendo.
When she sat down at dinner, ears still ringing from a failed attempt at the imperturbable charm that had screamed when she'd cast it, Draco turned in place and abandoned his conversation with Blaise. He didn't say anything, staring at her as he tapped a spoon against his bowl. She got her own soup but settled for nibbling on the spoon as she met his gaze. Her lips twitched. "I'm working on it."
"Good. But a banshee is better than nothing."
She snorted.
Draco fetched a pack of mini-jelly slugs from within his robes and dropped it into her bowl. When she wrinkled her nose and stared down at her ruined soup, he said, "Oh, relax. You weren't going to eat that anyway. And those are better for your teeth than that spoon."
She held up the spoon to examine it. She hadn't done much, really. She could maybe see the slightest damage from her biting, and she hardly imagined it getting better treatment from actually being used properly. She tucked it between two fingers and tore open the sweets package. Then she plucked out a jelly slug and popped it in her mouth. "I won't be at Flying class," she announced around the treat.
"What?" Draco asked, voice going high. His eyes widened. "Why? What did you do?"
"Professor Flitwick doesn't have much time available, and I'd rather learn the spell than review my flying fundamentals. We both know I'm better than you'll ever be, anyway."
"You've always been awful at lying," he said without heat. "You won't be able to fly."
"It's just a few classes. I'll be there eventually, won't I?"
"Better be," he muttered. "Zabini, did you already finish that Defence essay?"
She found it while searching the cabinets before Potions. Tucked away into the back of the shelf behind parchment and ink and empty vials, it sat with a broken spine and a yellowed cover: a copy of Advanced Potion-Making with so many notes inside that it reminded her of her own books. She stared at it for a long time before tucking it away in her bag and sitting in front of her cauldron, ready for class. Snape snarled his way through the lesson, taking every possible opportunity to strip points from Gryffindor or criticize his students' less than expert skills.
That night, she fell asleep to find herself sitting at the shore of Black Lake. It was warm, and she could feel the solid ground under her. She wasn't alone, and she vaguely realized that she— No, Regulus. Regulus was sitting with his fellow Slytherins in a conversation that seemed to mostly revolve around complaining about the homework Slughorn had assigned. Barty was ripping up handfuls of grass as he spoke, and most of it was getting sprinkled onto Evan's head. He moved at one point to throw it at her—Regulus—instead, and she felt her body move and speak separate from her. Like it always did. She never liked it.
"Put that on me and live to regret it," Regulus warned flatly.
Barty just stuck his tongue out at him and pulled up a full handful of dirt this time.
Regulus was already on his feet, but she could taste the smile on his lips. "You're awful," he said. "Dreadful. Shockingly appalling."
Evan was laughing. Barty had already lazed back on the ground, all long limbs and unkempt hair. It was warm outside, and Regulus didn't want the term to end. He wanted to stay there. He didn't want to go home. He didn't want to be under the same roof as his parents.
Leo didn't wake up screaming. Instead, she woke up sweating and shaking, her ears still stinging from the way Walburga's sharp voice had wrapped around a curse. Regulus hovered above her, within the walls created by the drawn curtains of her four poster. And despite his gasped directions for her to occlude, for her to focus, she couldn't breathe.