A Gaunt Tale

Much like her first train ride, Katalina was more or less enjoying staring out the window at the vast plains surrounding the tracks the Hogwarts Express travelled upon. Unlike her first year, however, she had a compartment to herself. Lily hadn't come back from prefect duty and started questioning her yet, and James and Sirius apparently had yet to finish hexing Sirius's brother, as James hadn't come back to bother her since he left thirty minutes ago. A few Slytherins had stopped outside the compartment to shoot her dirty looks - Narcissa and Bellatrix Black among them - but, to her relief, none had entered.

It seemed her luck was about to run short, however, as she heard voices coming from up the halls of the train.

"... the little rat," she heard one saying irately, and she recognized this as Sirius's voice. "I think I'll suspend him in the hall for a few hours by his ankle when I find him."

"He's got to be here somewhere," said James.

"Rats can find lots of places to hide in. I'll find him once we're at Hogwarts, then I'll be able to take care of him."

"Take care of who, exactly?"

There was a momentary pause, and then Sirius spoke calmly. "Nice to see you managed to crawl out of your coffin long enough to come back to Hogwarts, Gaunt."

"I'd have expected no more than this," Katalina heard her brother say, apparently ignoring Sirius's comment. "Not even a quarter of the way to Hogwarts and you two're already looking to cause trouble. Gryffindor doesn't have any points for me to deduct at the moment, so I'd suggest you behave. I'll give you a warning, any more talk of hexing anyone and it'll be detention, Black."

"What's HB stand for?" said Sirius, apparently noticing Alfred's Head Boy badge. "Heinous Bastard? Horrendously Bitchy would probably work for you, too, you do seem to enjoy handing out detentions a bit too much."

"I've warned you already, Black."

"Then give me a detention and see what happens, why don't you?" Sirius challenged.

"I'm not in the mood to deal with any nonsense right now," said Alfred through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I see," said Sirius in a voice of much understanding. "You're on your time of the month, aren't you?"

Katalina moved over on the seat in her compartment and looked out the window that led into the hallway. A small crowd was beginning to gather around the scene, and Sirius had his hand on his wand, which was stuck halfway out of his pocket. Judging by how perturbed he had been with his brother, he was probably looking for anyone to hex just to vent off frustration, and Alfred was making the perfect target at that moment.

"That's it. Detention, Monday nigh- hey!"

Katalina couldn't help but laugh to herself a little as Alfred was hoisted into the air as though an invisible giant had grabbed him by the ankle and started dangling him upside down. His own wand fell out of his pocket, as did a small satchel of money (from which she had stolen a few sickles during the summer to afford the fares of the Knight Bus). Many people in the crowd of spectators roared with laughter, though most of the Slytherins looked rather irritated and annoyed, some even angry.

"Put me down!"

"Put me down!" Sirius mimed. He laughed. "You sound like a girl. A first year girl, at that."

"Dammit, Black, if you don't put me down now -"

"You'll run crying to your mum?"

Katalina flinched slightly, knowing that was sure to set him off. "My mum's dead, you stupid bastard, now -"

"Dead, eh? That's what happens when you join the dark side. I'm doing this to teach you a valuable lesson."

"Oh, and what might that be?"

"It's not always a good thing to be at a higher level than everyone else."

"Just let me down."

"Then get rid of my detention. I have much more important things to do at eight o'clock on Monday nights than spend an hour cleaning trophies."

"Fine. No detention. Now put me down."

"Hmm..." Sirius hummed, using the tip of his wand to scratch his chin as though deep in thought. "Let me think about it. I might have a few more terms I'd like you to agree to."

He leaned back against the wall behind him, staring at the ceiling. Katalina noticed from her compartment that there seemed to be some sort of commotion towards the middle of the crowd on one side - a moment later, Lily was at the front, scowling. James spotted her before Sirius, who was still mock-contemplating.

"Evans, through with prefect duty?"

"What is going on here?" she asked as Sirius was looking over.

"Oh, we were just hanging out with Gaunt here and having a little chat," Sirius said calmly. He looked at Alfred, who now had his arms crossed and was shooting Sirius a glare that could have turned Medusa to stone. "Isn't that right, Al?"

"You're going to regret putting me up here the moment you let me down," he said icily.

Katalina stood up and opened the door to her compartment. She walked out and began making her way through the crowd, only half understanding her own train of thought. If her brother was going to half-way look out for her, then she should return the favor, as it seemed no one else was about to do anything - especially not Sirius.

Katalina had never read about this particular charm before, but it looked like nothing more than a Levitating Charm directed at the ankle - that was simple enough. She made her way to the front of the crowd and stopped, debating silently with herself as she gripped the handle of her own wand. He didn't deserve to be helped, but even she didn't want people talking trash about her mother... even if what Sirius had said was probably completely true.

A moment later, Sirius had been hoisted into the air and dropped his own wand. Katalina picked it up, keeping her own wand pointed at Sirius.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" he said, more in surprise than anything, as Katalina flicked his wand at Alfred, and he fell back to the ground.

Katalina thought of how to respond for a moment and then settled with, "I'm not entirely sure, but - Hey!" she interjected as both her wand and Sirius's were swiped out of her hands. She looked at her brother as he let down Sirius, handed back her wand, and tossed Sirius's wand back to him, then pointed his own wand at Sirius. Katalina moved around the edge of the wall to where Lily was now standing off to the side, trying to ignore James.

"Are you as confused as I am?" she asked Lily quietly, who nodded.

"I'm not sure what to do. I know there are teachers aboard the train because of You-Know-Who, but I don't know where they are or anything, so I can't exactly get them, and prefects aren't allowed to give detentions and deduct house points ourselves."

"With as much as you badmouth your family, I'm surprised you're helping that one," James said to Katalina, looking back and forth from Alfred to Sirius as the pointed their wands at each other.

Sirius was the both the first and the last to make any action; he hit Alfred with a full-body bind hex, glared at him as he fell over stiff as a board, and then walked out of the middle of the scene swiftly. The crowd started slowly subsiding, and Lily was forced to rush off to prefect duty, as James took off after his further infuriated friend.

Katalina shook her head as she looked down at her brother. She took her wand out of her pocket and gave it a flick as she muttered the counter curse, and her brother sat up on the floor, looking grim. He grabbed his wand from next to him, where he had dropped it upon being frozen, and then shot her a glare.

"What makes you think I needed your help?"

She almost gaped at him in regards of the question, but stopped herself. "Y - you mean other than the fact that you were lying motionless on the floor and all your little Slytherin friends had left you? I'm just attempting to be nice. Forgive me for trying."

He rolled his eyes. "You can't possibly think I'm going to fall for that. Do you think I'll be helping you out this year if you save my arse occasionally or something?"

"No," she snapped, "I just figured since you were partially nice to me, I'd be partially nice to you. I figured you'd bring it up later as some sort of debt that I owed you if I didn't do something right away. I didn't have to help you, I just felt like it. I'll be sure to refrain from being kind to you in the future."

"I don't need help from any filthy blood traitors, anyway," he said, standing. "And you have detention Monday at eight."

"What, for helping you??" she asked loudly, starting to get a bit angry. "I'm sorry if I've done something to hurt whatever dignity you may have, but I hardly think that merits a detention!"

"You hexed another student," he said. "That does merit a detention by Hogwarts rules. I'm only doing my job." He tapped his Head Boy badge. "Now, I'm off duty as of three minutes ago, so I'll see you at school." He turned and walked off quickly.

"I'll hex your face off if I see you at school!" she called after him. "That'll be the last time I help you with anything! You really are a bitch, you know that?"

"K- Kat-?"

"What??" she said, turning to face the speaker behind her. "Oh." It was Lily. "Sorry. Just a bit peeved."

"Wh... where was your compartment again?" she asked carefully.

"Er... this way. Sorry," she said again as they started walking. "My brother just sort of gave me detention for helping him down out of the air."

"Wh- why would he do that? You weren't doing anything wrong."

"His excuse was that I 'hexed another student.'" Katalina opened the door to her empty train compartment and walked in. "I think he's just being cranky."

Lily shut the door behind her and sat down on the bench seat across from Katalina. "Hexing another student is against the rules, but he didn't have to give you a detention. That is a tad bit on the cruel side, you did save him from hanging there half the day."

"He just doesn't want me helping him out in front of his fellow Slytherins," said Katalina with a wry smile as she turned her head to look out the window. "They're probably going to bother him about it now

"Didn't you have questions you wanted to ask me?" asked Katalina, eager to get off of the subject of her brother's inexplicable mood swings.

"Oh!" said Lily, remembering. "Right! First, how did you manage to get back in?"

Katalina spent quite a bit of time telling Lily about her escape from her father's grasp, what sort of things he had forced her to learn, how she was getting into Hogwarts and how she had no earthly idea why her father had approved that she come back, as well as what Death Eaters were and how there were a few amongst the Hogwarts student body.

"There are?" Lily whispered, her eyes wide. "Like who?"

Katalina looked at the door to her compartment and listened for a moment - the halls were silent enough...

"You can't let anyone know that you know this," said Katalina quietly. "I imagine a few people in other houses might know, but very few. Bellatrix and Narcissa Black, to name two. Lucius Malfoy was one before he left school. I believe my brother either is one or is going to become one in the near future, and there's an assortment of other Slytherins that are who I don't know by name."

"Not Severus, though?" asked Lily.

"Definitely not, I'd have remembered that if I had heard it," Katalina assured her.

"He does hang around them a lot. The general Death Eater type crowd. Not your brother so much, more the ones our age. I know Avery and Mulciber support You-Know-Who, but I didn't know about the Death Eaters. I imagine they are, too.

"So you haven't got any idea at all as to why your father wrote that letter to Dumbledore saying he wouldn't try pulling you out?"

"I don't even know what was in the letter," said Katalina, shaking her head. "According to Al, though, he's been writing to Dumbledore since before I left home, so I think it's about more than just me leaving. And Al caught him working on his will recently."

"How old is he?"

"Thirty-seven. Pretty normal age to start things like that, but not for my dad. He's one of Voldemort's followers." The name caused Lily to shudder a little - whether Muggleborn or pureblood or anything in between, that name made almost everyone shudder. Katalina was used to it being tossed around her house of a daily basis, so the name didn't bother her half as much as the entity behind it. "And on top of that, he's one of the ones that has the attitude that he's practically invincible. I don't blame him, he is powerful, that's why he's Voldemort's right-hand."

"He is?" Lily shook her head. "That would explain why he wanted you out of school for being put in Gryffindor."

Katalina nodded. "Plus I'm a Gaunt. Deepest disgrace for any of our family to land in Gryffindor. Something's got him worried, though. He detests Dumbledore as much as any other Death Eater, and he's generally not afraid of anything. I've got no idea what this could be about, except that it's to do with Voldemort obviously."

As they continued to discuss her father's strange behaviors, Katalina decided it would be best not to mention her strange dreams. She wasn't sure why she didn't want to, but something told her that she probably shouldn't.

--

Within a half an hour, Severus managed to find them and join them, and Katalina spent another half hour explaining her great escape yet again. She was glad she hadn't made many friends in her first week of school, as the story was starting to get a bit old to her already. Within minutes after their conversation had switched over to the topic of classes that year, a few more joined their compartment rather abruptly.

They heard footsteps as they were wondering what the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would be like (apparently, there was a new one every year since they always quit after a year for whatever reason), and the footsteps seemed to be nearing their compartment. It was only a moment later that James and Sirius, accompanied by a boy with dark blond hair wearing a prefect badge, arrived at their door. They started to walk past, but James stopped upon spotting Lily (Katalina was beginning to wonder if he had some sort of radar that alerted him when she was nearby), which stopped Sirius and the blond prefect as well since James had just walked into the compartment without so much as alerting them. They shrugged and followed him.

Sirius looked as though he regretted doing so upon spotting Katalina, as he immediately took to glaring. James had managed (much to Lily's dismay) to push Severus out of the way and sit down next to Lily. Katalina pushed herself as close the window as she could and decided to stare directly out it than to look at the person glaring at her, who had been forced to sit next to her due to a lack of empty areas to sit.

After five minutes of James trying to convince Lily to go out with him, in which she had threatened to hex him, kicked him, and elbowed him in the arm rather hard (all of which Katalina suspected was a common occurrence), he finally took notice to the fact that there were other people sitting in the compartment - particularly Severus.

"Oh, hello, Snivellus," he said, "didn't see you there, I guess bats are good at hiding."

"I honestly don't see how you missed him," Sirius added in. "All that grease sort of makes him reflective."

"Would you shut up?" Katalina snapped at them, looking over from the window finally. "That's completely childish."

"At least we're not hoisting him up by his ankle in the middle of the halls," said Sirius bitterly.

"Bet you have before."

"They have," Lily assured her. "They do that to a lot of people."

"Then I think I did you a favor," she shot at Sirius. "Now you know why being dangled by your ankle in the middle of a crowd isn't so pleasant."

"I just don't understand why anyone would want to help that prat."

"Oh, bloody hell, I wasn't helping him! Someone has to enforce the law of Karma. Someone needed to put you in your place, I think."

"Whatever."

"I'm going to hex you if you use that word again."

"Whatever."

They glared at each other for a moment longer before Katalina just decided to avoid further conflict by turning her attention back to the window and allowing him to think he had won the argument. He should have expected someone to hex him if he kept it up, anyway, she didn't see why he had chosen to act childishly about it and start hating her. She didn't care either way. In fact, it could have turned out to be a benefit: if one of James's friends hated her, perhaps James himself would start leaving her alone and not bothering her so much.

Katalina did know one thing: she had just met her first real enemy outside of her family, and she wasn't going to put up with him as she had with them if he decided to bother her at any point in time.

"I don't think they're going to get along," James said to Lily, looking between Sirius and Katalina.

"Would you go away already, Potter?" Lily snapped at him.

"Fine, fine," he said, standing up. "I'll leave you be for now."

"Good," mumbled Sirius, standing up and pushing past James to leave the compartment as quickly as he possibly could. James and the other boy followed him, and James shut the compartment door behind him this time. Lily looked at Katalina cautiously.

"Are you-?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Just determining the best hex to use on him if he attempts to use the ankle-hoisting thing on me."

"It's a bit weird," said Lily thoughtfully. "They're all completely immature, but I know Sirius generally doesn't choose to go against someone without any reason."

"My family's reason enough for him to go against me. But I'm not putting up with it."