A Gaunt Tale

The day Katalina's Hogwarts letter arrived was both the best and the worst day of her life. She had been quick to tear open the yellow parchment and read the note, a voice in her head cheering as she did so - she would be rid of her father in no time, finally free to befriend other witches and wizards her age who weren't purebloods that followed the "old ways." She had met Bellatrix Black once and decided instantly that she didn't like that girl. She was sure that Bellatrix didn't like her much either, so there was no problem there.

She read anxiously about how the Hogwarts Express would leave for the school at eleven o' clock on September 1, and she couldn't help smiling. It would only be another month. Katalina flinched slightly as her father snatched the letter out of her hands, and she stared down at the table she was seated at to avoid looking him in the eye. He read quickly over the letter before looking down at her.

"Where do you think you'll be sorted?" he asked her, striding around the table to stand at the chair across from hers.

"Slytherin." This was a lie. She was sure she wouldn't be sorted into the house of pureblood snobs. She heard her father scoff, and she was sure he knew as well.

"You would do best to be sorted into Slytherin," he said, sitting down at the table as well and sliding the letter halfway across it. She grabbed it quickly. "I told your brother this, even though there was no need for it, as he has accepted our family. You, however, need to be told this: If you're not put in Slytherin like the rest of our family..." He leaned across the table and continued in a whisper, "I'll have you taken out faster than you can say 'blood traitor.'"

Katalina looked up at this with wide eyes. "But don't I have to go and -"

"Homeschooling is an option. Your great aunt had the same problems as you - she wasn't sorted into Slytherin, and she was taken out to be trained at home. Unless the rules have changed - and I don't believe they have - then I will have you removed from Hogwarts if you're sorted into any other house. You'd best beg to transfer to Slytherin if you're not sorted in immediately, or you will be coming home."

She gulped, but decided not to say anything else. She knew that, despite his calm tones, he would be perfectly willing to hex the life out of her if she was sorted into Gryffindor. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw wouldn't be so bad. She might have been taken out of school, but he probably wouldn't react too badly. Gryffindors, however, were the enemies of all Slytherin. If she was, God forbid, sorted into Gryffindor, he might kill her. Maybe not, but he would make her wish he had chosen to kill her one way or another.

She would just fantasize later about being told she was adopted, and about being taken to her real family who thought the old ways were a load of garbage. There was unfortunately no denying that she was a member of that family. She was a Parselmouth herself, and she bore a slight resemblance to her father, but only around the eyes. She, her brother, and her father all had the same color blue eyes. It did surprise her that people as cold as them could have brightly colored turquoise eyes, as gray seemed a more fitting color for both of them. She wasn't conceited or self absorbed, but she knew she wasn't as heartless as they were.

She didn't watch as her father stood up from the table in their kitchen and walked away, but she knew he had a smug look of triumph on his face. She could tell that he knew he had gotten his point across to her. She almost flinched when she heard more footsteps coming into the kitchen, and she did flinch when she heard a scoff behind her and felt someone standing over her chair.

"I suppose Father gave you the same speech I got?"

"Yes," Katalina said quietly, choosing to stare at the table rather than look up at her brother.

"You're going to be put in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor with the rest of the brainless idiots," he said smugly, "and Father's going to drag you right out and teach you what you should be learning."

"Wh - what I should be learning?" Katalina halfway glanced back at Alfred. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing much different," he said slowly. "You'll probably be learning more Dark Arts than Hogwarts would teach, more about the history of Dark Magic, how to brew both potions and poisons. It'll be basically the same, just with a few new things. You'll probably learn all about our family history. Did he mention our aunt who ended up in Ravenclaw?"

Katalina nodded, supposing he was referring to the same great aunt her father had mentioned.

"That was Merope Gaunt, she was Morfin Gaunt's sister. Morfin Gaunt was Dad's father. Her father nearly beat her to death for being sorted into Ravenclaw rather than Slytherin, but I think our father is maybe a bit more lenient than our great-grandfather was. He might just use the Cruciatus Curse a few times. From what Father has said, she ran off with some Muggle shortly after she graduated and ended up selling some really important family heirloom to Borgin and Burke's, which we got back through some sort of bribery. That's just a little preview of the sorts of things you'll probably get to learn. You'll get to learn all sorts of things about the Dark Lord."

"Who says I won't be sorted into Slytherin?" Katalina said indignantly, but this only made her brother laugh.

"You? You're hardly a good enough witch to have been accepted into Hogwarts at all! I'm surprised Father's going to even let you try to go. They'll probably send you home for being a Squib or something before you can even be sorted."

"I've done magic before! I'm not a Squib! Stop saying that....

"How do they sort us?"

"I'm not telling you, you can just wait and find out like the Mudbloods. You probably are one anyway. Bet you were adopted."

"I'm a Parselmouth," she said pointedly. "Muggleborns can't be Parselmouths, that's a proven scientific fact."

"You were still probably adopted. Mum probably died because she found out you weren't a pureblood -"

"Don't talk about Mum!"

"Why? I think you should be grateful she isn't around. She'd only appreciate you if she were a blood traitor, and I don't think Father would have ever married one of those."

Katalina glared back down at the table. Alfred was right, but she wasn't about to admit to it. She had always held on to some sort of hope that maybe her mother had been alright, but maybe these things just skipped a generation. Maybe it was her Great Aunt Merope that had been alright and she had inherited it from her somewhere along the line.

"Well," he said, "even if you are sorted into Slytherin by some sort of horrible mistake, don't act like you know me. I'm not going to be seen around some sniveling little blood traitor that calls itself my kin."

"I wouldn't want to go near you anyway," Katalina mumbled so he couldn't hear, glaring as he walked off."

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A month later, with her words of her father and her brother still stinging her mind, she came with them to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. She bade a hasty goodbye to her father (who gave her that warning again) before hurrying onto the Hogwarts Express - or attempting to. She could barely lift her luggage onto the train. A Gryffindor prefect that was standing by helped her out and she rushed onto the steam engine train.

Katalina made a point of sitting in a compartment alone on the Hogwarts Express. She was as nervous as any of the other first years on their way to this magic school. She had no idea where Hogwarts even was, no what it was like. She did indeed like the idea of being away from home, however. She hoped there were some other students who might have shared her ideals rather than those of her father and brother. If there wasn't anyone there who did, she was going to be just as out of place.

Katalina glanced up as she heard the door to her compartment open, and she tried hard to act like a chameleon and blend in with the red bench seat she was sitting on, despite the fact that none of her clothing was red. Her hair was, but she doubted that did any good whatsoever. However, the girl who got in and put her luggage on the rack above her own seat didn't seem to notice. Katalina inwardly breathed a sigh of relief and continued to stare out the window.

It seemed like hours before the train finally finished crossing over the vast plains of green grass and into a forest. It was around that time when it started raining. A group of rather noisy boys had come to sit in this compartment since the train was so full, but Katalina had refrained from speaking to anyone thus far and hoped to do so for the rest of the ride. She didn't have many people skills, and from what her brother had told her, all that ever came out of her mouth when she opened it were unimportant idiocies. She didn't ever believe a word he said, but it had made her a bit nervous.

Rather than be bored to death by the patterns the raindrops were leaving down the outside of the window, Katalina decided to listen inconspicuously to the boy and girl talking. The girl was across from her and had been glowering sulkily out the window for a while. Katalina almost scoffed when the boy said he wanted to be in Slytherin, but refrained from doing so. One of the others in the compartment, however, spoke up.

"Slytherin?"

Katalina glanced over on the seat next to her. A boy wearing round glasses that had already changed out of his muggle clothing was looking at the boy with greasy black hair and a pale complexion. The one in glasses looked rather disbelieving.

"Who wants to be in Slytherin?" he said, a definite air of disdain in his voice. "I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" He looked at a boy across him, who took a moment to answer.

"My whole family have been in Slytherin," he said, though he didn't sound overly happy about it.

"Blimey," said the other, "and I thought you seemed alright!"

"Maybe I'll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you've got the choice?"

Katalina turned her head back to the window, pressing her forehead against the window as she stared out it at the vast forests surrounding the train tracks. She continued listening as the boy in the round glasses said he wanted to be in Gryffindor, like his dad. The boy that wanted to be in Slytherin scoffed, which led to a small squabble, which led to him and the only other girl in the compartment leaving. Then they rounded on Katalina, who really had been looking forward to having a nice, quiet ride to Hogwarts. So much for that.

"Where're d'you think you're headed, then?"

Katalina glanced over at the boy in the glasses, and then glared back out the window. "Probably home if I don't get put in Slytherin," she said, unintentionally injecting as much loathing into the name of that house as was humanly possible. "I imagine my father'll drag me away if I'm put somewhere else."

The boy remained quiet for a moment. He regained his talkative nature quite quickly, however.

"What's your surname?"

That was the one and only question that Katalina had truly been dreading hearing. She dreaded answering it even more - after all, her entire family was dark, every last one, no exceptions. Anyone who knew who she was would think the same of her, then, obviously.

"Gaunt..." she said quietly after a moment of silence.

"Gaunt?" repeated the other boy. "As in Timothy Gaunt?"

"Yes..." she said. "That's my father."

"Really?" said the boy in the glasses. "They've been in Slytherin for ages. The rumors about that dark wizard that've been flying around say that -"

"They're his biggest supporters," Katalina said through gritted teeth. She really wished they would quit talking to her. "I've heard them plenty of times already."

"S - sorry," he said, hearing her tone. "So..." he said slowly. "Do you know anything about the rumors?"

"No," she lied. "Haven't really heard anything except what people have been saying about the families involved in it."

Katalina had heard plenty of the "dark wizard" this boy was referring to. There was no doubt he was talking about Voldemort. He had kept his identity under wraps for a long, long time. Actually, no one really knew who he was, not even his followers; they only knew that he referred to himself as Voldemort and had an extreme dislike for muggleborns and halfbloods. He was definitely real enough, however. Her father had apparently gone to school with him, and did know a little more about him than most others, but he didn't tell anyone more than that.

The three families who supported Voldemort, more commonly known as "The Dark Lord," most were the Malfoys, the Blacks, and the Gaunts. From what she had heard from her older brother, the youngest of the Malfoy family was in Hogwarts - in Slytherin, of course - and in his fifth year, a prefect. Narcissa Black was in her third year, with Katalina's brother, also in Slytherin.

Of the Gaunts, Alfred Timothy Gaunt was entering his third year. Because of this, she wasn't sure she even wanted to go to Hogwarts. Whether he was regarding her as family or not, he would definitely treat her like dirt no matter what house she was sorted into. She wasn't sure, though - if she went home, she would have to face her father every day of her life, and both her father and her brother durring the summer months. That made the decision a difficult one... although it wasn't her decision to make, anyway.

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Katalina waited until the last minute of the train ride to change into her Hogwarts uniform. She was dreading the sorting ceremony. She didn't care at that point in time how she was to be sorted. All she knew was that she didn't want to be sorted at all. Slytherin was the last thing she wanted, but at the same time, she wanted it more than anything. She hadn't waited eleven years to get away from her father just so she could be taken back home for being sorted in a house he considered to be wrong.

However, she didn't want to be in the same house as Lucius Malfoy or Narcissa Black or even her own brother. They repulsed her in a way that words could even begin to describe. Her father often spoke of how they had propper beliefs of their kind, how they knew what sort of witches and wizards they should associate with and which sort they shouldn't. Her own father made her sick with his constant preaching of the old ways. She never would have told him so to his face, but he really did aggravate her.

She felt her stomach turn in apprehension as she followed an extremely tall man, along with the rest of the first years, to a fleet of small boats fit to seat four people. She joined the girl that had been in the compartment with her earlier, along with the boy she had left with, and found out they were Lily Evans and Severus Snape, who both already seemed to loathe James Potter, who was the boy in the round glasses. They seemed nice enough, so she decided to keep close to them as they got off of the boats after a long ride and were ushered into the castle.

"Come on, firs' years!" the tall man was saying to the few who were straying off. Katalina was starting to wonder if maybe he was a giant, or at least part giant. "This way! Come on!"

They followed him to a halt as the doors opened. Katalina, Lily, and Severus all craned their necks to see over the crowd in front of them. An old witch in green robes with her hair in a tight, neat black bun stood at the door. Katalina decided immediately that should she stay here, she wouldn't even think about crossing this witch, as she didn't look particularly tolerant. After the tall man introduced her as Professor McGonagall, they followed her down a hallway and into an empty classroom, and they stopped inside. She shut the door behind her and turned to face the crowd.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," she said. "You will all be sorted into your houses very soon. The Sorting Ceremony is very important - while you are here, your house will be like your family. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in the same dormitory as those in your year in the same house, and spend free time in the house common room.

"The four houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Your triumphs at Hogwarts will earn you points for your house. Rule-breaking will lose house points. These points will be counted at the end of the year, and the house with the most points is awarded with the house cup. I hope each of you will be a good addition to the house you are sorted into.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in front of the rest of the students in a few short moments. I shall return when we are ready for you," she concluded, her hand on the doorknob. "Please wait here quietly."

Katalina's stomach churned even more as excited whispers broke out when McGonagall left. Lily looked almost as nervous, though Severus didn't quite as much.

"What do they do to sort us, exactly?" she asked Katalina quietly.

"I don't know, my brother wouldn't tell me."

"D'you know what they do?" Lily asked Severus.

"My mother said something about a hat," he said.

"Th... that's all?" Lily asked, sounding surprised, but still relieved. "Oh, good. I was worried we were going to have to do actual magic. I've practiced some, but I didn't know if it was enough or not. Have either of you practiced anything?"

"Only a bit," Severus said.

"My dad made me learn a few things," said Katalina, looking around the empty classroom. "Not much though, since I didn't have a wand until a few weeks ago."

"What sort of things?" Lily asked curiously.

Katalina was thankful that McGonagall came back before she had the chance to answer. She didn't feel like telling anyone she had been forced to learn about dark magic before she even entered school. McGonagall guided them away to the Great Hall, where there were four tables of students. She saw her brother at one and assumed it to be the Slytherin table. Her suspicions were confirmed when she spotted Lucius Malfoy, a prefect with platinum blond hair.

They all stopped at the Great Hall, where a hat sat upon a stool up near the teacher's table. McGonagall stood next to the hat. They stood through a song sung by the hat, but Katalina was too busy trying to hold down the sweets she had eaten on the train to listen to it. She almost hoped it would sort her into Slytherin just for being a Gaunt, but there was really no telling. She didn't want to go home.

The first Slytherin to be sorted was Bellatrix Black. Katalina gave a slight grimace when that name was called, having come into contact with this girl before. The hat shouted Slytherin after having barely touched her hair and, looking rather smug, she hurried over to sit at the Slytherin table next to a girl that Katalina assumed was her sister, Narcissa Black. The next to be sorted was Sirius Black, one of the boys that had been in the same compartment as her and James Potter. He was sorted into Gryffindor.

A few more names later was Lily, who was also sorted into Gryffindor. Shortly after was Katalina. Katalina walked slowly up to the hat, wondering what would happen. She picked it up and put it on her head as she sat upon the wooden stool in front of the Great Hall. She couldn't see the faces looking up at her, as the hat covered her eyes. She heard a voice in her ear, and she assumed it had to be the hat.

"Gaunt, eh? Doesn't seem like the lot of them.... Witty, yes, definitely, but not prejudiced. No, definitely not..."

Put me in Slytherin, please, I need to stay here... she thought.

"Slytherin?" Her heart jumped when she comprehended that the hat could read her mind. "No, definitely not Slytherin, you don't belong there. I'd say... GRYFFINDOR!"

She flinched slightly, though the Gryffindor table seemed to be cheering and clapping. She took the hat off of her head and walked slowly over to the table Lily had joined. She sat between Sirius Black and Lily, as Lily had been glaring at Sirius upon accidently sitting down next to him.

"Sev'll probably be in Slytherin like he wanted," Lily said. "Where were you hoping to go?"

"Slytherin," she said quietly. "I really didn't want to, but I... my dad told me he'd pull me out to be homeschooled if I was sorted anywhere - ow!"

She rubbed the back of her head when she felt something hit it. She looked behind her and saw the culprit - a balled up piece of parchment. She picked it up and unfolded it, and immediately recognized the handwriting to be her brother's. There were only five words written upon it:

Dad's going to kill you.

"... said he'd pull me out if I was sorted anywhere other than Slytherin..." she finished with a sigh, staring at the paper. She looked behind her at the Slytherin table, where her brother was looking quite smug. She glared at him for a moment before turning back around.

"What's that?"

"My brother..." she grumbled, crumbling the paper back up and putting it in a pocket in her robes. "Not important."

"Your brother's here too?"

"Yeah, Slytherin. He'd be home if he were in any other house." She bit the side of her fist, staring up at the front of the Great Hall for a moment, then she looked back at Lily. "My dad's going to kill me."

"I don't think he'd actually kill you," Lily said comfortingly. "I mean, he's your dad, after all, right?"

"My dad is the root of all evil," she said, shaking her head. "You have no idea what he's like."

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After a week at the school, Katalina started to become confident that maybe her father would let her be, let her stay at Hogwarts as a Gryffindor. However, on one weekend when she was sitting outside on the grounds with Lily and Severus, the three of them attempting to look up things for the Potions essay they had been assigned, her hopes were shattered. She flinched as she felt someone poke her sharply in the shoulder, at which she looked up.

"What do you want?" she asked her brother. "I thought you didn't know me?" Despite her bored tone, she was absolutely horrified at the look on his face.

"Oh, I know you," he said happily. "You're my sister who's going to be leaving tomorrow."

At once, her heart stopped for a moment, her stomach turned to lead, and breathing became a very hard task. She blinked at him, silently praying he was lying.

"Y- you're - you're not - you're lying," she managed to stammer, shutting her Potions book and standing up. He handed her a piece of parchment.

"McGonagall told me. She didn't look very happy about it. You're supposed to go see the headmaster, it should all be there. Hope you have a nice first year."

He walked back towards the castle. Katalina sat back down on the grass near the lake with Lily and Severus, unfolding the parchment and reading:

Miss Gaunt,

Headmaster Dumbledore requires that you come to his office at once. Please see me in my office immediately and I will take you there.

Professor McGonagall

Katalina looked up, her mouth hanging open a little. Lily and Severus stared back apprehensively. At lack of words, she swallowed and handed Lily the letter. Severus also read it over her shoulder.

"B- but that could mean anything, couldn't it?" Lily asked. "It might be about something else entirely!"

Katalina shook her head, taking the letter back and putting it in her pocket. "I'll let you know..." she said, picking up her Potions book. She stood. Lily stood up as well, and so did Severus.

"I'm coming with you," she said.

"McGonagall probably won't let you -"

"Then we'll follow you to her office, if it is true you might get rushed off too fast to tell us anything so we should go with you."

Katalina looked between the two of them. Even though it had only been a week, they had been good friends so far. Keeping them in the dark would have been wrong. Slowly, she nodded.

"You can follow me there, but don't try to sneak around McGonagall if she tells you not to follow her to Dumbledore's office."

"Of course not," Lily said, shaking her head, "that would loose house points for Gryffindor, I wouldn't do that!"

"All right... come on, then."

They hurried to the castle doors. Katalina stopped once inside and looked from Lily to Severus, who stopped in front of her.

"Why -?" began Lily.

"If I'm being sent home," Katalina said quietly, looking around the entrance hall, "then I will come back. I don't know when, it might not be next year, but I'll come back before our seventh year."

"How're you planning to talk your father into it?" Severus asked. "My mum knows him because of Voldemort, says he's really stubborn."

"V- Voldemort?" Lily said, looking between them. "He's real? I heard people saying there were rumors."

Katalina nodded, her head stooping to look at her feet. "And my dad's his number one supporter. He's been around for quite a while now, he's only just let people that aren't on his side start to know that he exists."

"I... is he powerful?" asked Lily nervously as they began walking again.

"From what I've heard, he is," said Severus. "He's openly said that he believes himself to be more powerful than Dumbledore."

"More powerful than Dumbledore?" Lily repeated incredulously. "That's mad, Dumbledore's supposed to be one of the greatest sorcerers to have ever lived, according to our History of Magic textbook."

"Voldemort's extremely pompous," said Katalina quietly as Bellatrix and Narcissa Black passed them on their way outside - if either of them heard her say that, she would have been on the floor, there was no doubt in that. "He's under the impression that he's the most powerful sorcerer to have ever walked the earth, and so he thinks he's better than Dumbledore."

They hurried on to Professor McGonagall's office, and she looked somewhere between frustrated and very tired when they got there. She looked at the three of them, particularly at Lily and Severus.

"I do apologize," she said, "but I need to speak with Miss Gaunt in private, if you don't mind."

Lily looked most disappointed. "Yes, professor..." she said quietly, turning to walk out of the office along with Severus.

As the door shut behind them, Professor McGonagall sat behind her desk and motioned for Katalina to sit in the chair across from it. She did as instructed and stared at her knees, waiting for McGonagall to say the words she was absolutely dreading to hear.

"Miss Gaunt," she began, "it is to my understanding that your family has been sorted into Slytherin for generations, is that true?"

"Yes, ma'am," Katalina said, not bothering to look up. She was just waiting for it to come. She heard a sigh.

"That is what your father told us.... He seems to believe you... aren't ready to come to Hogwarts yet, for whatever reasons.'" Katalina was happy to hear skepticism in McGonagall's words at this, but not entirely sure she was happy to hear the words themselves. "If Hogwarts had any say in it, you would be staying, but your own father has more of one than we do. He... he has written to us asking that you be removed from Hogwarts to be homeschooled."

Katalina nodded gravely - there was no point in protesting it. "The letter said I had to speak with Professor Dumbledore?"

"Yes," said McGonagall, standing. "He will give you more details pertaining to... to the situation."

Katalina stood and followed Professor McGonagall, wondering what else need be explained. She already knew the details - her father wanted her in Slytherin, and she ended up in Gryffindor. In a family like the Gaunts, that was utter blasphemy.

She did her best to memorize as much of the hallways as she could in her last minutes here, on her way to Dumbledore's office. She had never imagined Hogwarts would be so amazing, since she avoided asking her brother questions about anything as often as possible.

After a few flights of stairs and a walk down a corridor on the second floor, Professor McGonagall stopped in front of a statue of a gargoyle.

"Ice Mice."

The statue of the gargoyle leapt aside. Katalina tilted her head slightly, contemplating both the rotating spiral staircase in the opening of the wall and the headmaster's strange choice of passwords. She stepped onto the stairway with Professor McGonagall. The gargoyle moved back into place behind them as the stairs took them up, much like an escalator in a Muggle shopping mall - she had always found those rather fascinating. It stopped in front of a door, behind which Katalina could hear not one, but two voices. Her heart sank - one belonged to her father.

"... just don't think she is ready to work with other witches and wizards her age yet, Dumbledore," she heard him saying as they approached the door. "Much the same was the situation with my aunt, Merope Gaunt. I've heard her parents withdrew her for the same reason."

"Not so much," said a second voice calmly; Katalina assumed this was Dumbledore. "Marvolo Gaunt withdrew Merope from Hogwarts because he was infuriated she wasn't sorted into Slytherin, I remember it quite well as I was working here at the time as a Transfiguration teacher. I suppose you didn't know about this?"

"That was the situation?" he asked curiously. He could be a good actor when he needed to be.... "My, I never knew, my father told me his sister just had problems working around other students. I'm merely worried that my daughter may have that very problem, I wouldn't ever take her from as fine a school as Hogwarts just because she was sorted into the 'wrong' house."

Professor McGonagall knocked on the door as they approached it, her lips thin. She obviously trusted Timothy Gaunt about as far as she could have thrown him. Katalina couldn't blame her at all for this. She opened the door when a voice from inside told her it was fine to do so, and Katalina followed her into the office.

If it weren't for the situation in play at the moment, Katalina would have taken a moment to look around at the place. It was rather interesting, really. It was definitely in one of the towers of the castle, as the room itself was somewhat circular. There were strange little silver instruments strewn about different tables, and portraits of old headmasters on the wall, all snoring - though, Katalina noticed, they would occasionally open their eyes to see what was happening, then quickly shut them and continue snoring. Situated on a perch next to the desk in the room was a large, red bird, about the size of an eagle or a hawk, with long tail feathers. It looked like the descriptions she had heard of phoenixes, so she assumed it was one.

Katalina took a seat in a chair next to her father in the office and did her best not to look him in the eye. She guessed the man sitting behind the desk in the office was Dumbledore. He looked old, even ancient, with long white hair and a white beard past his belt. His nose appeared to have been broken once or twice, with as long and crooked as it was. He didn't look overly angry about the situation as McGonagall did, but he gave off the impression of being able to hide such things rather well.

"Miss Gaunt," he said, "I am very regretful to inform you that you will not be able to remain at Hogwarts."

Katalina nodded, choosing to look at the phoenix next to the desk rather than at any of the other people in the room.

"I'm terribly sorry, dear," she heard her father saying. She felt like hexing him. "I'm just not sure you're ready to cooperate with other students."

"She has done fine so far." Katalina tried to suppress a grin at Professor McGonagall's words. "If anything, she's more advanced than most other first years. Any teacher here will attest to it."

"Oh, no doubt she's good with magic itself," Timothy said calmly. "I taught her a bit myself before she entered school so she would know what to expect. As I said, I'm merely afraid she will have problems getting along with other students."

"Why?" Katalina managed to keep herself from recoiling at her own words as she looked at her father. "Because I was sorted into a house you don't think a Gaunt should be in?"

She knew she would regret this later. He wouldn't do anything with McGonagall and Dumbledore standing by, but he would later. A flash of something like infuriation came across his face for a moment, but he managed to keep calm.

"You know that isn't the case, Ka -"

"Then why did you tell me that you'd pull me out of Hogwarts if I wasn't sorted into Slytherin when I got my letter? Al said you told him that your granddad did the same thing to our great aunt, except she was put in Ravenclaw. You're just upset because things didn't go the way you wanted them to and I got sorted into Gryffindor!"

Now the flicker of anger stayed burning upon his face as he glared at Katalina. His eyes were narrowed and when he spoke, it was barely in more than a hiss.

"What have I told you about back talking me?"

"I'm not back talking you, I'm telling the truth!"

"They don't need to know anything about the 'truth,'" he shot back at her. She realized quite suddenly that his voice seemed like a hiss for the simple reason that it was one.

"They do need to know the truth, and there's no point speaking in Parseltongue, I'll just translate everything you say."

She crossed her arms and glared at him indignantly. He stared back, his eyes cold as ice. Katalina wasn't sure where her sudden nerve was coming from, but she was sure her father would beat whatever was left of it out of her later. Something kept her going, though, and she absolutely detested whatever it was.

"Even if you pull me out, I'm going to come back," said Katalina, pointing at him. "I might not be able to for a few more years, but I will."

He turned from Katalina to look back at Dumbledore. "When will I be taking her home?"

"As soon as she has packed her things," said Dumbledore.

Professor McGonagall escorted Katalina out of the office and up to the seventh floor, where the Gryffindor common room was located, explaining on the way that they would be leaving by Portkey. She had only traveled by Portkey once before and hadn't enjoyed it at all, but she wasn't much in the mood to protest anything else. She was still leaving Hogwarts and was probably going to be in quite a bit of trouble with her father when she arrived home. She was going to be forced to learn about the Dark Arts and the old ways.

As she packed, all she could think of was whether or not there was some way to get out of it. The only conclusion she could come to was to sneak back to Hogwarts - she just wasn't sure how that was going to work.