Seeing Red

Ten Months, Forever

    "Callie, please, stop dragging that along the ground! And shut that damn owl up!" Lucius demanded. The scraping noise her trunk was making, paired with the continuous screeching of a small pygmy owl, made for quite a loud entourage.

    Juggling her enormous trunk and the owl cage, Callie found it impossible to elevate her luggage so that the racket would cease to irritate her father. Instead, she drove it into the paved walkway in front of Kings Cross station so that the grating only became louder.

    Glaring at his daughter, Lucius said, "You know, I can take you out of that school faster than you can say 'Avada Kedavra'."

    Flinching at the mention of the Unforgivable Curse, Callie spoke before her mind processed the words and associated them with consequences. "I'm sure it would look perfectly normal for the daughter of one of Hogwarts prime supporters to be taken out of school for no reason," she said sarcastically. "However, I'm sure you could pay enough people to look the other way, right?"

    Stunned at her daughter's sudden audacity, Narcissa snapped, "Calliopoea Malfoy, keep that foul mouth shut! I want not a word out of you until after you've boarded the train."

    Callie grunted, knowing full well that the nanosecond she stepped onto the Hogwarts Express, she'd be without parents for ten full months. "No complaints here," she said, shutting up promptly.

    Her owl, on the other hand, must have misunderstood Lucius' kind request to seal the lips and throw away the key. The shrieking increased in volume, much to the chagrin of the entire Malfoy clan.

    "Please, Grover, be quiet!" Callie hissed, forgetting her orders to remain silent as well. "Just for a few minutes. Do it for me, please, Grover?"

    "Callie! Are you deaf or are you just dumb? Did you simply select not to tune out your mother, who specifically said not to talk? You just opened your ungrateful mouth, did you not?"

    "I was telling Grover to--"

    "Look at me, Calliopoea. Does it look like I care what you were telling that horrible owl of yours?" Lucius' face was one of pure and complete vexation.

    "What kind of name is Grover anyway?" Draco asked with disgust. His owl, Coltin, would never act so out of place where Muggles crawl through every corner and open slice of space.

    "A stupid one," Lucius said, acting especially nasty towards his daughter today. In his mind, it was impossible to induce ten months worth of torture in a relatively short time, but he would try his best.

    "It is not!" she retorted.

    Lucius opened his eyes preternaturally wide, and made a grab for his wand. Muggles, scmuggles, his daughter had disobeyed him for the last time.

    "Lucius!" Narcissa said with a start, realizing what he was about to do. "Ten months without her, Lucius," she tried to persuade him to put his wand back into its holster.

    "Ten months, forever. Ten months, forever," he debated his options, enjoying the terror-stricken look on his daughter's face.

    Seeing that her husband was serious in his own personal argument, she knit her pale brows. Watching Lucius murder his own daughter had not been part of the game plan when they set out to the station, and Narcissa took on a one-man petition against it.

    "A compromise seems to be in order, yes?" she said, doubting she'd ever stood up to her husband, and internally shivering and shaking in her ivory skin.

    "A...compromise? I see no reason for their to be any negotiations in this matter, Narcissa," Lucius said as he whipped out his hornbeam wand. 16 inches, dragon heartstring encased in the rich colored wood.

    "Father! Not here!" Draco seemed to be the only one who cared about, or for that matter, even noticed the muggle passersby staring at the seemingly normal family of four. Owls and large trunks they could tolerate. Talk of a non-existent Platform 9¾? They'd turn the other way. But wielding a wand? Not even the most oblivious Muggles could ignore that. And, looking around at them, it was obvious they were planning on staying for the festivities.

    "What's wrong, Draco? Are you afraid to see your beloved sister blown to pieces?"

    "No, its just that the people that have stopped to watch us might find it a bit unnerving."

    "We'll just tell them its part of a magic show, and that she'll reappear at dusk. They'll believe anything they hear," Lucius said, grinning like the soon-to-be-felon he was.

    "Please, don't do this!" Narcissa intervened once again, quivering from the anticipation of an unforgivable curse thrown her way.

    "Are you going soft on me? You want to save this worthless piece of riffraff?"

    "It's not the time or place, Lucius. I don't care how many connections you have in the Ministry, butchering Calliopoea won't be waved off like...everything else has," she said, careful not to say exactly what that other stuff was in earshot of her children.

    "Would you testify against me, Narcissa? Draco? Would you?"

    "How about," his wife proposed, knowing that once Lucius pulled the 'you're coming down with me' card, it had gone far enough. "How about you leave her be? Let her alone, as long as she doesn't speak a single word from here to the train."

    Callie nodded emphatically, afraid to open her mouth even let out the nervous hiccups that had begun churning inside of her.

    "However, if you utter so much as a whisper, I will take action, and I can't be held responsible for what happens, is that clear?" Lucius said, hoping that she'd open her mouth and tell him that yes, in fact, it was clear. However, her stupidity must have malfunctioned temporarily, and she knew to keep quiet.

    They marched on with a reasonably quieter pace. When Grover started squawking again, Lucius shut him up with a few forceful bangs on the wire cage. The wimpy little owl was scared into a state of near shock, and that was that.

*************

    Several minutes later, the Malfoys had crossed through the seemingly impenetrable brick wall between platforms nine and ten. Draco soon caught up with his cronies, Crabbe and Goyle, and within seconds Callie was standing alone with her parents in an awkward silence.

    "Well, I see no need to remain here, dawdling like a pair of lummoxes," Lucius said, eager to rid himself of the little girl standing in front of him. "Tell your brother to have a nice term. And try to remember, would you?"

    Callie nodded silently, still not ready to risk opening her mouth.

    "These goin' on the train?" A scruffy young man approached the happy family and pointed to the trunk and owl cage.

    Callie nodded a "yes" once again.

    "Whatsa matta? You can' talk?"

    "Yes, she can talk. Calliopoea, please answer the gentleman," Lucius said.

    "Yes, please. Thank you."

    After he walked away, toting her baggage behind him. Pulling out their wands, Lucius and Narcissa were about to disapparate before he opened his mouth one more time.

    "Remember, you're representing the Malfoy name. Several generations of Malfoys have passed through Slytherin with top marks and prestige. Thank goodness we have Draco, otherwise our string of success would have ended there. I know it won't be easy, but try to trick everyone into thinking you have a bit of common sense and intellegence."

    Callie grunted, and in the nanosecond it took for her to blink both her eyes, they were gone. She hastily stepped into the nearest train car, and was faced with a tight square box filled to the very tiniest nook.

    She moved from car to car, and met the same predicament in each one. However, when she reached the final car, she found that only three students occupied the seats. She knocked on the sliding door, and they all looked up.

    "Do you mind? This is the only car there is room left to breathe in," she said, being uncharacteristically forward.

    "Um, ok," a young boy with brown hair voiced.

    "You're a first year," the only other female in the car stated rather than questioned. looking at the newest entrant and trying to figure out why she looked so familiar.

    "How'd you know?"

    "I know everyone, and I've never seen you before," the girl said matter-of-factly. "My name Hermione Granger. You are..."

    "Callie."

    "You don't have a last name?" the final occupant in the room finally spoke up with a voice laced with peanut butter. With flashing red hair and a broad smile. He was chomping away on a sandwich, and a dab of it was smeared on the left side of his lower lip.

    "Do I have to answer that question?" she asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. The rest of her family might be proud of the recognition the name Malfoy received, but she certainly wasn't.

    "What's that supposed to mean?" the redhead asked, genuinely confused with the cryptic response. "I'm Ron Weasley, by the way. That's Harry Potter, sitting over there with the gigantic scar on his head."

    "Nice to meet you all. What year are you in?" she asked.

    "Did you hear me? I said that was Harry Potter sitting over there. Big scar. Don't you know who he is?" Ron said, amazed that she had shown no change in expression at the news.

    "Thank you for the reminder, and yes, I know who Harry Potter is. I'm not a Muggle, and I haven't been living under a rock."

    "We're fifth years," Harry chimed in, embarrassed at the conversation that was unfolding. "Care for a Pumpkin Pastie?"

*************

    Several hours later, the four witches and wizards had changed into their robes, and were talking amiably and enjoying a ruthless game of Exploding Snap. Laying in a haphazard pile nearby, a plethora of plastic sweet wrappers colored the otherwise muted flooring. Deeply absorbed in the cards, no one noticed the air suddenly fill with a sense of arrogance.

    "Ah, Potter, what a nice surprise," Draco said as he helped himself to one of the remaining Chocolate Frogs. He turned the packaging around to see which Wizard Card he'd gotten. "Dumbledore, what a sap."

    "Shut up, Malfoy, and get out of our car," Hermione said. She'd had her fill of Draco for the year, and it had only been a minute.

    "No, I think I'll stay here for awhile. Nothing like a train ride to catch up with old friends, right Weasley?"

    "Exactly, which is why you should go find a train car that actually wants to be graced by your presence," Ron retorted.

    "That's going to be pretty hard. Who'd want to?" Harry asked, smiling.

    "Well, I heard that St. Mungo's has got a bunch of amnesiacs on a train a few miles off. Maybe you can convince them to worship you," Ron said.

    "We certainly won't," Callie said, and for the first time Draco was forced to acknowledge her presence.

    "I see you've met my sister then, have you?"

    Almost as if Draco had suddenly become a marionette master, Ron, Harry and Hermione simultaneously dropped their jaws. Looking at Callie, then at Draco, and then shifting their gaze once again to Callie, they sat in stunned silence.

    "Never mentioned you had a sister, Malfoy," Harry said, breaking the interminable lull.

    "Mentioning her would have meant she deserved recognition. No, my sister is a good-for-nothing lowlife who has spent the first eleven years of her life disgracing her name at every possible opportunity," Draco spat out, hatred an obvious addition to his tone of voice.

    "Disgracing your name? Lets play a little word association, shall we? Ron, what is the first word that comes to your head when you think of the name Malfoy?" Hermione said.

    "Manipulative," he suggested.

    "Domineering," Harry added.

    "Psychotic, loathsome, wretched and conceited come to mind as well," Hermione said, rattling the words off her tongue.

    "Watch it, mudblood, I know spells and charms that would make your hair curl. That is, more than it already has. Hmm, is that even possible?"

    At that point, one of the conductors poked her head into the car. "Time to go, dearies," she said in that 'caring grandma' tone of voice.

    With more glares flashed then a room filled with Death Eaters and Dumbledore groupies, the five students exited the train car and scattered in different directions to seek their belongings.