Belles Of Slytherin

The weeks leading up to the end of October and Halloween were busy for Rissa, but pleasantly so. She was deeply immersed in her studies and the phrenology project. Between classes and in most of her free time, she was reading students heads and starting to correlate her notes. Medea was taking great interest in helping and reading the findings, adding her own opinions where she could. One evening late in October they were both studying at a table in the Slytherin common room.

"You know," Medea commented as she sifted through several scrolls-worth of notes on Hufflepuff readings. "This is enough to make me even more glad that I'm not a Hufflepuff. These have got the be the most bland readings and predictions I've ever seen."

Rissa looked up from the notes on the few Gryffindors that she had convinced to let her read them, hard sells, every one. "Hm, that's what I thought. But you know... they were all fairly happy with what I found."

Medea snorted. "I think if you told me I was going to have a boring life and my greatest field of interest would be running a Herbology shop, I would nip out and jump off the Gryffindor tower."

"Oh, then let me tell you some things," Draco muttered from where he was sitting nearby, head buried in his Transfigurations textbook.

The blond girl sighed as she tossed him an annoyed look. "Are you still here? Shouldn't little boys like you be in bed?"

He slammed the book loudly, causing several other students to jump or look their way. He leaned forward and growled, "I am so tired of your never-ending insults."

Rissa sighed softly. She was starting to feel a bit bad about their constant teasing of him, mostly because he was sort of growing on her. That and he was starting to take it more personally. "Dia, just let it go."

Medea eyed her for a moment before muttering and going back to reading Rissa's notes, huffing softly. "Stupid little ferret."

Rissa barely acknowledged the smile that Draco gave her before looking back at the list of people she was to read the next day. "Oh, Dia. I'm doing Harry Potter tomorrow."

"WHAT?" Draco demanded, dropping his book.

Rissa looked at him in surprise. "Potter, head, read, tomorrow afternoon, before Quidditch practice."

"Why is he getting included in this project when you stubbornly refuse to let me in?" Draco asked, arms crossed over his chest.

"Actually, it was Professor Trelawney that suggested it," Medea replied. "She even got Potter to agree with it."

Rissa privately thought that Trelawney was hoping that at last someone beside herself would see the doom in his future. Not that it took any special talent to know that trouble followed the infamous boy that lived. His history spoke for itself. Some sort of doom and danger followed him like his own little private rain cloud. Rissa just didn't see it overtaking him and causing his demise. Some people just came out of whatever was thrown at them again all odds, she mused. He'd proved that enough times that it was in no doubt.

Draco gritted his teeth. "You all think that bloody... wanker is so damn important."

Rissa sighed and rested her head in her hands, rubbing her temples. "Actually, Draco, I wouldn't mind adding you at this point at all. What's one more?"

Draco smirked and sat up straighter in his chair. He suddenly looked inordinately pleased with himself. What significance did this head reading thing hold for him? "Well that's more like it. I'm sure I can show up Potter..."

Rissa looked up at him and rolled her eyes as she continued. "Only one problem though. I can't read a thing through all that hair you have shellacked to your scalp."

Medea snickered as Draco blinked rapidly, his mind groping for some sort of insult to hurl back at her, but evidentially coming up with a total blank. "What? Are you insulting my hair now?" He asked defensively. "Would you enjoy it if I strutted around with it going every which way like your beloved Potter?"

Rissa laughed. "Please, he looks like someone needs to curry him. I was being completely honest, and he's most certainly not my Potter." She paused. " Have you any idea how I have to feel your head to read it?"

"I just assumed..." He trailed off, looking a little uncertain.

Just as she thought, he hadn't been paying that much attention to anything she had been talking about for the past month. He was sometimes so confusing. He went on and on about wanting her to do it, but he still hadn't paid the slightest attention. Rissa gestured at Medea. "Dia, come here and let me use you for a demonstration for our esteemed Mr. Malfoy."

Dia came around the table, picking the pins out of her hair and shook it loose, sitting in the chair beside Rissa. "Do find something more exciting than my love of travel this time Riss," she added drolly.

Rissa cracked her knuckles and slowly threaded her finger through the blonde's hair running her fingers over her scalp and down the nape of her neck. Medea had been her very first subject when she had felt ready to experiment with reading, and she was still fair game whenever Rissa needed her. "You still take great pride in annoying others."

Draco snorted and looked unconvinced. "I've never touched her and I can tell you that. That doesn't take any great genius to discover."

Rissa nodded absently, ignoring him as she continued. She ran her fingers over the familiar contours of her friends scalp and mentally ran through all the knowledge she'd been gathering from every book and source she could find on the subject. "Oh... here's something..."

Draco snickered, as he looked on in amusement. "She's destined to never find a man that can tolerate her?"

"As much as that would amuse you, ferret," Medea laughed. "I will find a tall dark haired man that will love me more than anything."

Draco stared at her stonily, the disbelief radiating from him. "That's on your head too?"

"Crystal ball," Rissa muttered. "It's one of my predictions." She'd not been able to come up with much on him however. She'd only seen him from behind with barely a glimpse of detail. Dark hair, tall, thin and wearing dark robes. The rest had been merely impressions.

"Trelawney barely gave her a passing grade on it too." Medea sighed. "Evidentially just him having a brooding nature and a brush with death isn't dark enough for the professor to find deserving of high marks."

"Well wouldn't that just be perfect?" Draco snickered. "Though it could be worse. She could have predicted you'd fall in love with a Weasley."

Medea gasped and looked at him in horror, pulling away from Rissa's hands. "You take that back this minute! Don't even joke about such horrendous things!"

Rissa cleared her throat. "Excuse me, you two, but I really did find something interesting here."

Both the Malfoys looked at her curiously. "What then?"

Rissa tilted her head and crossed her arms over her stomach. Something that she had read about but hadn't had much of a chance to follow up on yet was proving itself out right on her best friend's head. "Well I'd say that the value of your secretiveness and scheming has gone up at least a point or two in the past few weeks, Dia."

"Can that change? How can you head change?" Draco looked at her skeptically.

Rissa plopped back into her chair going into her lecture mode. "Say you were in Quidditch practice and you got hit in the head with a bludger, what would happen?"

Medea leaned back with a half smile and wrapped her hair back up into its usual French twist. "Nothing much, everyone would lose even more money on his games than usual. Possibly he'd start grunting back and forth with Crabbe and Goyle more."

Draco however looked thoughtful and shrugged. "I'd get a bloody big knot on my head."

Rissa smiled. "Yes, and it would affect your reading."

"So my fate and personality can be affected by getting clobbered by a bludger?" He looked unconvinced as he arched one pale brow at her.

"Yes and no," Rissa sighed, trying to explain as best she could. Phrenology didn't have many cut and dried theories behind it for all that it was supposedly a 'scientific' subject. "But say you got hit in the top of the head... say right in the thirteenth faculty... benevolence.... And it got a right big knot on it."

Draco smiled wickedly. "I'd be even more nasty than I usually am? I would pound whoever was responsible?"

Rissa shook her head. "Wrong. For once, you'd know you would be a kind and benevolent person. You would say that no one was at fault that it was just a silly mistake."

Draco let the smile melt off his lips, as if the very idea of him doing something less than nasty and cunning pained him. "But wouldn't that be because I was addled in the head?"

Actually, that would be her reaction if Draco ever took that attitude about something, but this was theoretical, so she wouldn't say so. "But get hit anywhere else and you would be just as likely to blame the beaters, the bludger or a million other reasons." Rissa gestured broadly. "Such is how it works."

"Sounds like a load of tosh," Draco said. "And just how is this supposed to tell the future?"

"With the proper interpretation and circumstances, you can read a possible future. At the very least, you can give a fairly accurate idea of how a person will react to things that will be thrown at them."

Draco nodded. "So it's just like the rest of that Divinations garbage. Fancy guesses and window dressing?"

Medea watched Rissa with interest, anxious to see her reaction to that. She'd been watching and working with Rissa for some time now. It was obvious that she had started this project with just that idea in mind, but her opinions had been changing as she had gotten deeper into it.

Rissa shook her head. "No, there is some hard fact and basis in this. How much, and just what's science and how much is pure magic and speculation, I couldn't say."

Medea smiled a bit as she stood up and stretched. "Well, kiddies, we've got a potions test in the morning and I've got to get my rest. Coming Riss?"

Rissa sighed and looked at her watch. "Yeah, I should. Let me get all this mess picked up and I'll be up in a second." She started gathering her papers back up and slipping them into her bag.

Draco watched Medea disappear down the corridor leading to the girls' dorm and then jumped to his feet to catch Rissa's arm as she went to follow. Rissa looked down at his hand on her arm as he cleared his throat. "Riss," he said softly, his hand falling away from her. "I am serious. I would like you to do that whole reading thing on me, no matter what it sounded like."

She regarded him for a moment and asked him the question that had been on her mind. "Why do you care? Is it just so you can stay up with Potter?" The history of them trying to stay one up on the other was no great secret. Draco had practically bought his way into being Slytherin seeker because Potter had been a natural. He might not actively plot against him, though she had her doubts, but he did keep quite an eye on him.

Draco sighed and smoothed a hand over his hair. "I know you and Medea like to think that Potter gets to me. It's... more complicated to that, but no. That's not the real reason that I want you to do it."

Rissa could see a change in his demeanor. It was slight, but she was hooked. "So what is it Draco? Why is the Ice Prince getting so put out by a Divinations project when he's so contemptuous of the whole thing?"

He hesitated for a moment and then sighed softly, looking around to make sure no one was in earshot. "Because, Riss, maybe I want you to take me seriously and I'm trying to take you seriously in exchange."

She was faintly surprised. Take Draco seriously? Didn't she? Actually she had to admit that she probably never had. Part of that was the attitude that Medea took with him and he returned, but part of it was her own fault. She thought of Draco as the annoying little ferret, and even though she had been casually noticing that he no longer quite fit that role, she had let the attitude perpetuate itself. "You're right," she said slowly. "It's the least I can do." Though he wasn't actually taking her very seriously, she didn't think, she'd give him the benefit of a doubt.

He nodded and smiled slowly. It was a genuine smile and actually, a pretty nice one at that. "If you wouldn't mind maybe you could meet me here in the common room late tomorrow night? Say at about midnight and you can have your wicked way with all the lumps and bumps my head has to offer?"

After hours to meet a boy in the common room? She thought it just might be worth it to see what in the world Draco Malfoy was up to. She was starting to see more of Draco than she thought there was. How could she turn down seeing a bit more?

~*~

The next day turned out to be a long and grueling one. The potions test was a written test covering most of what they had learned that year. Rissa was also sure that some of the harder questions were things that they had never studied, and one of them had been positively DADA material. Then there had been an ugly argument with the Gryffindor Quidditch team when she had delayed Potter from joining them. Angelina Johnson had gotten just a little violent because Rissa had not recognized that the world revolved around Quidditch

After trudging back to the castle and to the Slytherin common rooms, Snape had called her to his office to discuss Graham Pritchard's burned hand and smoking hair. Professor Snape stood behind his desk with his arms crossed, glaring at her. "What, might I ask, have you done to that monstrosity in the common room?"

Rissa blinked, for a moment not connecting it to Henry, the phrenology bust. Then it made sense. "I... you mean the vindico spell?"

"Indeed, Miss Covington, I do." He leaned forward, his palms flat on his desk. "Do you realize the severity of this?"

Rissa chewed on her lip and thought for a moment. It was serious, but then how many times had she not spelled it and had to scrub off mustaches, had to unglue a cigarette from his mouth, and what did one do with a hat with the flashing words Have you hugged your Death Eater today? Spelling it was the only thing that kept some of her darling housemates off it. "Do you realize how many times he would have had to touch it and get shocked before he got that... crisp?"

Snape glared at her in shock standing up straight, his voice going icy. "That is not the issue here! Students... faculty for that matter, are not allowed to use that class of spells to protect anything that is non-lethal!"

Rissa let out a long slow breath. Damn, she had been sure that the spell wouldn't cause a big deal. Then again she had never stopped to think someone would stand there and try hard enough to get smoked. "I'm sorry, sir. I honestly never thought..."

"That much is obvious, Miss Covington." He let out a long sigh and regarded her silently till she was practically squirming under his glare. "Because Mr. Prichard was only mildly burned and I treated it with a chilling potion, I will handle this in-house, but if you should ever do something like this again, you will be brought up in front of the headmaster."

She looked at her feet, and could feel that horrible cold numbness seeping into her cheeks and lips. "Yes, sir. I am very sorry sir."

"Be that as it may, I am deducting twenty points from Slytherin and you will have detention this weekend... for me."

She winced and bit back a groan. As if costing Slytherin that many points wasn't bad enough, everyone knew about Snape's detentions. They could be truly nasty. They could range from disemboweling rodents, to one time she had heard of a Gryffindor that had been required to test the second year's poison antidotes for effectiveness... the hard way.

Snape watched her reaction and smiled coldly. "Yes, I think I've made my point quite clear. Now, I suggest you get that thing out of my common room and cease using inappropriate spells."

After that, Rissa had barely been able to eat a bite of dinner. Word has spread like wild fire about the points too. She'd gotten dark look from nearly everyone at the Slytherin table, and a few cheers and snide comments from the Gryffindors had hardly helped her mood, or that of her dinner companions. She glared darkly at Graham who sat eating his dinner with a bandaged hand and avoided her gaze studiously. What had the stupid prat been thinking?

Medea nudged her shoulder gently and muttered under her breath. "It's not the end of the world you know. People have lost points before. They will again."

But Rissa knew that it was more than that bothering her. It had been Professor Snape's disdain, and his disappointment. She fancied herself something of a teachers pet, and to be so completely reprimanded and punished by him for something that was actually against the rules just stung. More than likely I was just her pride that was injured, because she had thought she would get away with it. Rissa sighed. "It's not just that, Dia. It's really just having Professor Snape so mad I think."

Medea sighed, unable to come up with any answer for that.

As Rissa was leaving the table, Draco caught her eye. "We still a go for tonight?"

Rissa mulled it over. If something happened and she got caught, Snape would likely go through the roof. He would do exactly as he'd said and she'd be in Dumbledore's office. If she was being realistic, it wasn't worth it, not after the day she had just had. But looking at Draco, she couldn't say any of it. "Sure," she smiled. "I'll be there if you are."

Rissa retreated to her room early, unable to put up with the noise and atmosphere in the common room. It fit into her plans well too. She could study and lay low until everyone was asleep and Snape had made his rounds of the common room and then sneak back down at the appropriate time. The wait however was killing her.

At least, after checking her watch for what seemed like the hundredth time, midnight was quickly approaching and she scooped up her quill and scroll for notes and crept out of her room and up the stairs to the common room. She found it empty and slipped into one of the big green velvet chairs by the fireplace and waited for Draco to show up. She spent the next few minutes holding her breath and jumping every time the fire crackled. At last she heard the door of the boys dorm creak as it eased open.

Draco tiptoed across the room to her, his bathrobe tied tightly around him. His hair, what she could see if it in the dim light, looked freshly washed and tousled. It was longer on top than she would have thought, falling haphazardly down into his eyes. He muttered softly under his breath as he brushed it back out of them. "All right, I'm here. I thought that those stupid gits would never get to sleep."

Rissa nodded to the to stool that matched the chair. "Have a seat and we can get started then."

Draco crossed his arms. "Why do I get the stool?"

"Because it would be...." Rissa stopped to sigh and jump up out of the chair. "Fine you can have it, let's just do this before Snape catches us and I get thrown out of this school on my bum. My phrenology project won't mean a bloody thing then."

Draco blinked in surprise before sitting down on the stool and motioning for her to lower her voice. "I'm sorry." He sighed again as he tugged at the belt of his bathrobe. "I guess I just argue out of habit."

Rissa scooted forward to the edge of the chair with a shrug. "We all have our little faults." She cracked her knuckles and took a deep breath before slipping her fingers through his hair, orienting her fingers along the back centerline of his head. Somehow instead of her mind registering any of the things she was supposed to, she was caught up in the feel of his hair. Silkier than I thought it would be, she thought. She tried to put it out of her mind and concentrate on business, which was harder than she thought with Draco's blue eyes on her. She pulled back and stared back at him. "Stop it and turn around. I can't do this with you staring at me."

He watched her a moment longer before spinning around on the stool without uttering a word. She took another breath and focused before getting back to it. She started with region one and slowly worked her way through, pausing to take notes, firmly refusing to notice the silky golden hair clinging to her fingers or the lovely herbal vanilla scent of it.

As she reached the fourteenth faculty she chuckled slightly very low development in Veneration. Yes, somehow she had expected that. Fifteen, the faculty of Firmness was very high. Well one thing she could say about Draco was he was very stubborn and when he got his teeth into something he didn't give it up. As she went on to Self-esteem and Love of Approbation though she was slightly puzzled. She would have expected the value of them to both be very high too, but his self-esteem was relatively low though his love of approbation was high. Draco, needing the love and appreciation of others because he lacked it in himself? She couldn't fathom it.

She quickly scribbled herself a few notes, chewing on her lip in concentration. She'd been hoping for a very solid reading with no anomalies and here she had one. She shook her head and worked her way through the rest of the reading, her fingers sliding over his hairline and down around his eyebrows and orbital bones, reading the higher numbered faculties quickly, jotting down the required observations in a hurry, her hands going back to his face.

Her fingers lingered lightly over his fluttering closed eyelids, reading the faculties for Language. There was something oddly intimate about touching someone's closed eyes. There were trust issues in letting someone put their thumbs over your eyes. In fact, that had been the one thing that most of her subjects had commented on, like she had done the whole thing just to get a chance to put out an eye. But Draco remained still under her touch, not commenting or moving at all. She half wished she could still see his face and try to read his reaction. She lingered a moment, her fingertips tracing down the bridge of his nose, carefully gauging the development of his individuality and tilted her head. That turned out to be tricky to discern. He was very strong, yet there was a hint of weakness, as if it was faltering in some ways.

She jotted her notes, deciding that her earlier decision that there was much more to Draco than there appeared had been quite correct. There were hidden faults where she would have never guessed and a great obviously untapped potential or two also. "Okay. I think I'm done."

"You think?" He asked. "Are you sure you don't need a urine sample and my dental records?"

No matter his depth, she decided, he was still an annoying ferret on the surface. "I am done."

He ran his fingers through his hair impatiently as he turned back to look at her. "So what did you find?"

Over all, she'd had a very accurate feel of his personality and interests, a few things here and there hadn't fit, but she was positive that he wouldn't want to hear about his slight insecurities and wish to conform to... to what, she wondered. She held her breath and froze as she heard a sound from the direction of Professor Snape's quarters. "I'm tired Draco, and I don't want to get caught. Can't we talk about this later?" She whispered softly after the scraping noise had ceased.

He nodded as he stood up silently. "Yeah, but you better believe I won't forget to ask."

She had never thought he would, not with all the tenacity and stubbornness he had on that head of his. "Breakfast," She whispered. "See you then."

Draco smiled a curious little smile. "Goodnight, Riss."

She nodded and grabbed her notes and quill and hurried to her room, glancing back once to see Draco merely standing there watching her. When she was safely curled up in her bed, Issy nestled down in her hair, she looked over the notes from Draco's reading and tried to put everything she knew about him into perspective with what she had read. Draco was an enigma in ways she would have never guessed.