"What does she want?" Ron muttered.

Harry stopped walking, staring at the Slytherin that was standing a bit down the hallway like she was waiting for something. From the way she looked up at them and blinked twice before giving a polite smile, she was waiting for them.

"I don't know," Harry said, unsure of himself.

He didn't know what to think about Leonis Malfoy. He'd wondered, initially, if maybe she looked the way she did because she was a witch, but none of the other witches at Hogwarts or Diagon Alley looked half-dead the way she did. Ron and the twins didn't really have much information, but he had learned that there were rumors about her that ranged from her being a zombie to her being horribly cursed to her simply having a permanent cold.

After he'd truly and properly met Draco and his gang, and after he'd been thoroughly reminded of Dudley, he'd been nervous about her. But Neville seemed to like her well enough even after a couple times as partners in potions, and she was nothing but polite. And weird, but everything was a bit weird to Harry right now.

"Bonsoir, Harry," she greeted, stepping forward to stand in the middle of the hallway.

Ron shifted slightly in front of Harry. Harry hesitated, eying her. She looked a bit more like a zombie than she had on the train, and he thought for a moment that she was bruised before he realized the dark circles around her eyes weren't from being hit.

Ron seemed a bit more sure about her. Specifically that he didn't really want anything to do with her. She was a Slytherin, for one, and a Malfoy for the other. But Harry figured she hadn't done anything to him yet, and he knew well enough from Dudley that family didn't necessarily mean anything.

"Leo," he said. "You weren't at Flying class."

"No," she said simply. Then she moved right on past the implied question, saying, "I've heard about it, though. My brother can be a right git, can't he?"

Ron snorted. "You can say that again."

"My brother can be a right git, can't he?" she repeated without missing a beat. "I've heard about some other things, too. I can give you some helpful information in exchange for some of your own."

Harry frowned, and he wondered for a moment at the fact that she and Draco were twins but she hadn't been called as Draco's second. Was that what this was about? Was she upset she'd been left out? "About what?"

"Your duel. And then what McGonagall did for you."

All of Wood's warnings about keeping his place as seeker secret rose to the front of his mind. He glanced at Ron, who was squinting suspiciously at Leo. He shook his head. "I'm not supposed to talk about it."

Something in her eyes brightened, and she looked excited by his response.

"You could tell us anyway," Ron said hopefully.

She smiled, and Harry thought for a moment that she looked a bit like if someone had tried to paint a person without ever seeing one while they also only had blue and white paints.

"That's not how an exchange works," she said. She bowed her head to them both and stepped to the side to get out of their way. "Bonne soirée, Harry, Ronald."

They started down the hallway, and Harry heard Ron grumbling about the name. When he looked back at her, she was staring at a blank spot on the wall.

"It's quidditch," she said to no one as if she was saying the sky was blue. "I never ask you for much of anything."

"Does she know?" Harry hissed to Ron.

"I don't know," Ron said, wide-eyed. They rounded a corner, and Ron gasped out, "What's wrong with her? She's so, so—"

"Weird?"

"Creepy," Ron finished. He wiggled his fingers. "Do you think it's true, what Fred said? About if she touches someone—"

"I'm pretty sure more people than just Fred would be saying that if it was true, don't you think?"

"Yeah, probably." Ron looked back over his shoulder as if checking to see if she was following them. "We should probably tell Wood. Just in case, you know?"

Leo was a good on a broom.

She showed up after missing two classes and flew as if she'd been getting private lessons from Hooch for years. Even Ron was impressed, though he kept his awed comments quiet enough for only Harry to hear. To his surprise, the entire class got to watch as she taunted Draco when he got corrected on his grip and just smiled, clearly pleased, when his sarcastic response was just a bit too heated. Then she turned to Hermione and asked how much reading she'd done in Quidditch Through the Ages as she spun lazily on her hovering broom.

"She's showing off," Ron finally decided once they'd left the class. "She knows she's good, and she's showing off."

"Wood said he saw her talking to the Slytherin captain yesterday," Harry said. "Do you think they're putting her on the team?"

"Did you see that roll she did?" Ron asked, voice rising with excitement and dread alike. "They'd be daft not to! Merlin's balls, Fred and George have been complaining about Slytherin's winning streak. You better be as good as Wood thinks."

Harry thought about how he had Ron and Draco was always flanked by Crabbe and Goyle and the twins were inseparable and Leo had picked up a broom like it was a long lost friend. Flying felt amazing, but it was new for Harry. It definitely wasn't new for Leo. He hoped Wood was right, too.

One of the first things Ron had said about Leonis Malfoy was that there was something wrong with her. Harry didn't think that was exactly fair. After all, she'd been polite, and she was a little weird. But he was in a castle doing magic and so was everyone else, so saying she was the only weird one seemed rude.

But then again, they tended to catch her talking to walls more often than people.

"What is she doing?" Ron whispered.

Harry shook his head, wondering if they should just sneak past her. Leo was just outside the Great Hall, frowning as she argued with no one about a spell of some kind. Argued might be a strong word for that. It mostly consisted of her saying something occasionally—Professor Flitwick has been very helpful and I'm doing my best and Have you always been this unintelligent, or have I just been blissfully ignorant up until now?—surrounded by silence as she paced seemingly aimlessly and chewed on the hem of her sleeve.

Just as Harry and Ron had started to inch forward, hoping to get past her to breakfast, she spotted them. She turned to face them and blinked, seemingly completely unaware that her sleeve was still in her mouth. Then she smiled—she always did it closed and politely except for when she was on a broom, because then her grins were all teeth—dropped her arm, and said, "Bonjour, Harry, Ronald. Are you looking forward to Astronomy class? Professor Sinistra said tonight will be helpful for the constellations assignment."

Ron jumped at the opportunity to complain about assignments, saying, "I don't even know where to start with that. I mean, who has a favorite constellation?"

She blinked again. Not for the first time, Harry wondered why she spent so much time staring at where people weren't.

"Taking names from the stars is a tradition in my family," she said. "Leonis refers to any star in the Leo constellation."

"Is that your favorite, then?" Harry asked, ignoring Ron's grumbling about star names being pretentious.

"No. I do like it, though. Do you have a favorite?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. He was still quite unfamiliar with all of them.

"C'mon, Harry," Ron said, pulling on his sleeve and moving for the door. "We're gonna miss breakfast."

"Enjoy," Leo said by way of goodbye. "The tattie scones are particularly good this morning."

"You already ate?" Harry asked, confused. He and Ron were late, but they were barely late.

"Harry!" Ron complained again, dragging him closer to the Great Hall.

Leo turned her gaze away from them to stare at nothing again. "Well, there's no need to be rude."

And Harry got the odd feeling that she wasn't talking about Ron.