Belles Of Slytherin

Rissa was late to breakfast the next morning because she overslept. It wasn't something she planned; she just had the very sneaking suspicion that her bad day was brewing into a bad week. She practically had to run to the great hall for breakfast and barely had time to eat a marmalade smeared piece of toast before it was time to trudge off to the greenhouses for Herbology with the Ravenclaws. Draco had sent her a baleful glance when she had hurried off promising to talk to him later.

The next two hours were spent transplanting the delicate wispy fairy bane plants into larger pots. It wasn't difficult work, like transplanting mandrakes or pruning the venomous tentaculas. Considering that the seedlings were like baby fine hair at that stage and extremely fragile, Riss thought they had done a very good job and by the end of the class, she was dirt smudged and her nerves were taunt with stress. Between her and Cho Chang, her partner, they managed to only lose one seedling.

Rissa was washing her hands at the sink with Medea, who was muttering about her clumsy partner crushing half their seedlings, when she saw Snape breeze in to talk to Professor Sprout. Dreading the detention and another altercation with Snape before she had to, she quickly dried her hands and was headed to the door of the greenhouse when Snape concluded his talk with Sprout and called her name.

She paused for a moment before turning to face him with resolution stiffening her spine. Was it her imagination or did his rendition of Miss Covington sound colder and sharper than usual? "Yes, Professor?"

"You will have your detention this Sunday. Meet me at seven am sharp in my office." His voice was devoid of any emotion that might give her some clue as to what he had planned.

She nodded and clasped her hands in front of her. "Yes sir."

"And be prepared for a long day," He added as an afterthought, a small and decidedly cold smirk crossing his lips. He brushed past Medea and out of the greenhouse, a parcel of dried herbs under his arm.

Medea let out a soft whistle. "You know, I don't think I envy you, even though you do get to serve your detention with him."

Rissa sighed as she trudged back toward the castle, Medea at her side. "Can we not talk about that?"

Medea nodded, a wicked smile blooming on her face. "Okay, let's talk about why Draco looked antsy at breakfast this morning waiting for you.

Rissa groaned. There was the other subject she wanted to avoid, but she knew that was no use. If the blonde were deprived of her favorite professor as a topic of discussion, she'd move right on to something else guaranteed to bother her. "I will assume that it was the results of his reading he was after, unless old Mad Eye Moody showed up wanting to play bouncing ferret."

Medea chuckled and then looked at her friend sharply. "Just when did said reading take place, my dear?"

Rissa shrugged as she started up the castle steps. "Last night, in the common room."

"Ooh, midnight assignations. I'm surprised... Surprised that you couldn't do better than my little cousin, the ferret."

A sudden burst of irritation flared in Rissa. "Stop it, Dia. There's nothing wrong with Draco. He is a perfectly..." She'd almost said nice. That was hardly a word that she would use to describe Draco on even his best day. "You spend too much time insulting him to do much else. Maybe you've missed seeing something in him."

Medea crossed her arms and snorted as they stopped in the foyer. "So then how is he really? You should know now, after your midnight rendezvous."

What could she say to that? That she was discovering that he was just a boy, like everyone else? That she was intrigued that the Ice Prince put off that chilly exterior to hide some inner flaws? All of that was pure supposition on her part. All based on a divinations projects that she had started thinking that both phrenology and divinations were exactly the load of tosh that Draco had proclaimed them. "I don't know, Dia, but I'm just saying that maybe you don't see him for anything more than the ten year old that used to dip your braids in his ink bottle."

Medea smiled secretively. "So how do you see my darling, most esteemed cousin?"

Rissa winced. Medea always cut right to the heart of a matter and asked the difficult questions. Of course it would do no good to avoid it, as it would just lead her friend to hound her about it. Actually taking about Snape was beginning to sound much better. "He's sixteen. He's matured and changed, and he's just like everyone else, Dia."

Medea snorted and shook her head as she started off toward the Slytherin dungeons. "No he's not. He's a Malfoy, Riss. That is totally different."

~*~

Rissa and Medea spent the rest of the morning in Charms. Professor Flitwick was teaching them a pair of charms that would allow the charmed person to speak another language flawlessly without having any knowledge of it and another for letting them understand it. By the end of class, they had worked hard and could each do one or the other. Their homework would be to perfect both charms and then to combine them into a single spell to accomplish both at the same time.

Rissa kneaded her temples as they headed to the great hall for lunch. "That was the most grueling thing I've ever tried to learn. Curses are easier."

Medea sank down at her customary spot at the Slytherin table with a sigh. Even the cool blonde looked a bit ragged around the edges. "We're going to be up all night working on these and putting them together again. Show me the speaking spell one more time?"

Rissa rested her forehead on the table with a soft thump. She was waiting for the smell of food to revive her enough to think about eating. "Not now."

Draco was waiting for them of course. "Where were you this morning?" He demanded, over a bite of beef casserole.

Rissa didn't even raise her head, though she did curl her fingers around the glass of pumpkin juice that Medea pushed over to her. "I overslept, Draco. Nothing more important than that."

He paused. "Right then. So tell me. I've been on pins and needles all day."

She raised her head and looked around. Medea was ignoring them and studiously filling her plate with salad and casserole. No one else seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention. Not that she was going to tell him anything sensitive. She'd already decided that she was going to keep his insecurities fault to herself for the time being. Could it be that more of that ethics of divinations book that she had found in her parents library had rubbed off on her than she had thought? Medea would be almost ashamed at her, wasting ammunition against someone like that.

How to couch the reading into something Draco would appreciate? She'd found out that being her usual blunt self when divulging her findings didn't always go over well. She smiled and sat back up, brushing her hair over her shoulders. "Well, Draco, it comes as no surprise that you are very strong willed, determined and have a very set ideal of things."

Draco watched her, nodding absently as he picked at his food. "Yes, and?"

Rissa smiled. "You are very... loyal to a code of values of your own and to the people you feel worthy, however few that may be."

"Very bloody few," he stated mildly.

"To be sure."

He blinked. "And? That's it?"

She shrugged. "What else do you want to know?"

He looked indecisive for a moment, a very rare look for him, before asking, "Do I go my own way? Do I succeed in my goals?

Tricky, she thought. "That would depend on if they are your goals or... someone else's."

He stared at her for a long moment, his lips compressed in a tight mutinous line. "I am not going to spend my life making someone else's goals my own."

Rissa raised her eyebrows and leaned away from his fierce glare. "Then I'd say you answered your own question." She'd obviously found another touchy spot. She was very curious as to just what goals he was having foisted on him, or someone wanted him to take up. It was none of her business, really.

~*~

Later that evening in the common room, Rissa and Medea were still working on the charms they had learned that morning. They had both had relative success getting the two halves to work and had at last written out what should be the answer to combining them.

"Now we need someone to work it on," Rissa sighed. "We've both been under the charms so much I think I'm starting to think in Latin."

Medea waved languidly. "Easy. Watch this. Draco, could you come here and give us a hand with our homework?"

Draco glanced over at them from where he was watching Crabbe and Goyle play exploding snap. "What?

Rissa caught on and nodded. "Please Draco. It's charms. We all know you get wonderful marks in charms."

She knew it. Draco was unable to resist the lure of showing off and looking good in front of his housemates. He quickly scrambled up and walked over to them. "So what is it you need?" He asked with a cocky grin, leaning on the table in front of them.

Medea whipped her wand out of her sleeve and pointed it right in his eyes as she charmed him.

For a moment he just looked at her confused and then spoke. "Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europe vincendarum. " (Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.)

Medea chuckled softly and tucked her wand back in her robe. "Yes, my dear... it's in the blood."

Draco looked amazed for a split second longer before turning to face the common room and striking a pose. "Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam." (I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.)

Rissa snorted and shook her head at the stony blank faces of the other Slytherins. "He doesn't and he won't."

Blaise Zabini looked at her oddly. "Won't what exactly?"

The other sixth years present quickly caught on to what was going on and began charming themselves to understand him.

Draco glared at Rissa imperiously. "Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules." (If I were you, I wouldn't walk in front of any catapults.)

Medea laughed. "Draco, what is this with the catapults? Do you have size issues or something? Wanting a bigger weapon than your wand?"

Their growing audience laughed with her.

Rissa muttered and glanced toward Snape's door. "Do you think we should shut him up?"

Medea shook her head. "No let him go on for a bit longer, this is just getting interesting."

Draco, under the warmth of attention from his housemates, scrambled up onto the table and stood up, his hands planted firmly on his hips. "Magister Mundi sum!" (I am the Master of the Universe!)

Medea blinked as the students who could understand him roared with laughter. Her eyes too, darted toward the door to Snape's office. "Draco, tone it down!"

Draco sneered down at her. "Vescere bracis meis." (Eat my shorts.)

"Nice, Draco... nice," Medea sighed as she rolled her eyes.

"Utinam coniurati te in foro interficiant!" (May conspirators assassinate you in the mall!) Draco grinned unrepentantly at her as the students snickered around her.

"What is going on in here?" The smooth and disgusted voice of Professor Snape demanded from behind them.

Draco jumped down off the table dusting his hands on his robes. "Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur." (Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.)

Snape crossed his arms and looked unamused. "Yes, now desist that prattle. You've caused enough of a disturbance for one evening."

Draco looked up at Snape for a moment and smiled coldly, a Malfoy smile at it's best. "Bene, cum Latine nescias, nolo manus meas in te maculare." (Well, if you don't understand plain Latin, I'm not going to dirty my hands on you.)

Snape glared at him down his nose. "Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem." (In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.)

Draco blinked several times in surprise before countering. "Voldemort si imperium, ad remum dareris." (If Voldemort were in power, you'd be chained to an oar.)

Snape's eyes narrowed until nothing was visible but a dark glitter. "Who is responsible for Mr. Malfoy's sudden linguistics capabilities?"

Several students' eyes darted to Medea and Rissa. Snape rounded to glare at them.

Medea cleared her throat. "We were just doing our charms homework. He sort of got away from us."

"Got away, Miss Malfoy?" Snape arched a brow. "He's hardly a renegade bludger, though he is about as charming."

Rissa cast a glance at Draco, who had wisely fallen silent. She was at ground zero of another disastrous situation with Professor Snape and this time it was his fault.

Medea raised her chin slightly. "But he does speak and understand perfect Latin. The charm worked."

Snape nodded and cleared his throat, the chilly anger seeping out of him to some degree. "Agreed. But his insubordinance will cost Slytherin fifteen points."

There was a round of groans. More lost points. It nearly a third of the way through the school year and Slytherin was barely scraping by to stay out of last place in the house cup race. Black looks were being shot their direction.

"But," Snape added. " Seven points apiece to Miss Malfoy and Miss Covington for their exacting dedication to their homework."

Rissa relaxed and let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. One point. They had only lost one point when you tallied that up. "Thank you Professor."

"And next time do choose a test subject with more discretion." Snape cast a final glance at Draco. "Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, Malfoy." (It is a wise man who speaks little, Malfoy.)

Draco stared at him for a moment, his jaw set. "Mihi ignosce. Cum homine de cane debeo congredi." (Excuse me. I've got to see a man about a dog.)

Snape smirked at him coldly, before sweeping back into his office. "Qualis pater talis filius." (Like father, like son.)

Draco paled, his usually pallid complexion going ashen, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Medea sighed softly and waved her wand at him, breaking the charm. "And just what were you expecting, ferret? When you throw a lit match at a dragon, you get back more fire than you ever wanted."

Draco glared at her for a moment, some of the color returning to his face before he shoved one of the still gathered students out of his way and stomped out of the common room. Rissa stood, her eyes following him with the intent to go after him. Medea grabbed her arm. "Just let him go Riss. He needs to get himself together and sort out his priorities."

Rissa glanced back at her for a moment before pulling her arm free and hurrying in the direction Draco had disappeared. As the door separating the Slytherin common room from the rest of the castle closed behind her, she listened hard for any sound telling her which direction he had gone. After a moment of silence, she headed deeper into the dungeons looking for him.

At last she turned back and headed up to the rest of the castle. She at last found him, sitting in a deep window seat, one leg hugged to his chest, the other stretched out in front of him. The moonlight streaming through the heavy leaded glass of the window bleached all the color out of him, leaving his hair, his eyes and skin all the same silver. Rissa sat down on the opposite side of the seat, her hip barely resting against his booted foot.

The silence stretched on between them, Rissa not knowing what to say and Draco seemingly comfortable with the silence. Then, he broke it. "I hate him."

Rissa was startled. She didn't know what she had expected, but that wasn't it. "Snape?"

"My father," came his soft reply.

She felt decidedly uncomfortable. Though she and her parents had so many things hanging between them, she'd never seriously been tempted to say that she hated them. She knew Draco however, was deadly serious. "Why?" It was a stupid question and prying, but he had started it, and she felt that he wouldn't have brought it up if he hadn't needed to talk about it.

Draco let the silence thicken again. Just when Rissa began to wonder if that was his way of ending the conversation, he spoke again, his eyes still trained out of the window, as if focusing on some distant scene that she couldn't see. "Do you know what phrase appears on the Malfoy family crest?"

She didn't. She had seen it a few times on things of Medea's but it had never sank in. "What is it?"

"NE conjugare nobiscum."

The charm still working, Rissa repeated him softly in English. "Don't fuck with us." What did that have to do with his father though? Why did he hate him?

Draco nodded and turned to look at her, a trick of the light casting his eyes in darkness, but leaving his profile highlighted. "You know the junior death eater jokes that Dia makes?"

Rissa nodded. They were nothing more than jokes, or so she thought. It was just Dia poking at him because she knew about his father. It was hardly common knowledge that Lucius Malfoy was an accused death eater, but Medea knew. She'd told Rissa all about it in one of their long midnight talks about their families and all the things that no one knew about them.

Draco made a graceful half salute at her. "There you go. My career all nice and picked out for me... if I should prove myself competent."

Rissa didn't know what to say. It was hardly beyond her imagination to imagine him as one. Draco, black robes billowing around him, dark mark on his arm and hood over his face, terrorizing anyone not pureblood. A tiny shiver worked down her spine. Somehow, in the same breath it was frightening and yet, very thrilling in a cold dark way. "But?"

Draco sighed, his voice getting tight with strain and suppressed emotion. "But I don't like being forced into anything. I don't like having it tossed in my face that I can't even live up to the legend of Harry Potter. That he can whip me at Quiddich and that my father is ashamed of me for it."

Rissa chewed on her lip, fighting the urge to touch him in comfort. She folded her hands tightly in her lap to keep them from straying to his. "So tell him that you want to do your own thing. That you can't just blindly follow his orders for the rest of your life."

"I can't, Riss," he exclaimed, thumping a fist on the dusty cushion. "If I do, he'll disown me and disgrace the family. If you aren't with him, you are against him."

"Don't fuck with us," she murmured again, the phrase taking on a slightly new meaning.

"Exactly," he sighed softly, resting his head back against the stone wall behind him.

Riss reached out, lightly touching her fingers to the back of his hand where it lay still clenched on the cushion. Why fight it, she thought. Suddenly with a burst of comprehension, his reading made more sense, his question about goals answered.

His hand stiffened, feeling like stone under his touch, then slowly, it softened and he turned his hand over, his long cool fingers threading through hers a bit awkwardly. They sat, silent and facing each other over their clasped hands for a while, neither willing to break the spell. At length, Draco smiled a bit. "By any chance are there any Veelas in your bloodline?"

Rissa blinked as once again he had surprised her with a question seemingly out of nowhere. "No, actually there aren't any. Not for twenty generations."

His mouth twisted wryly. "So much for that excuse."

Rissa blushed slightly under his scrutiny and whispered, "You wanted an excuse?"

He shook his head and tightened his fingers on hers almost painfully. "No... it's just that..." He shook his head more slowly and gave a rueful chuckle. "Maybe I did. Malfoys are supposed to be cool and commanding at all times. Even when... dealing with attraction."

Rissa was suddenly acutely aware that they were sitting out exposed in the hall of the school, alone, where they weren't supposed to be. She was also hyperaware of Draco's fingers brushing along the back of her hand and of the weight of his pale silver blue eyes on her. She swallowed quickly, daring not to even breathe for fear of breaking whatever it was that was forming between them with a pop and a puff of smoke turning Draco back into the ferret.

"Would you..." Draco began earnestly. "Would you like to go to the Halloween Masquerade with me?"

Rissa let out the breath she had been holding, blaming the dizzy feeling filling her on her lack of air. The Halloween masquerade, the costume ball that was held every year for fifth years and up on the night of Halloween after the usual festivities were over and the younger students went off to bed. It was one of the great social highlights of the upperclassmen's year. Her eyes rounded and she nodded quickly. "I... yes!"

Draco broke out in a rare wide smile as he sat up straight. "Good. I can't think of anyone else I'd rather take!" After another brief squeeze of her hand, he let go. As he stood up and composed himself back into his usual cool self she simply watched. "We'll discuss the details later then."

She nodded. "Certainly, Draco."

He nodded and with a soft goodnight, he briskly went back down the stairs to the dungeons. Rissa curled up in the window seat, feeling even less like going to bed than she had before and stared out into the night. Draco was a confusing mess, that was for sure, but she knew one thing. She did find it a very attractive, appealing mess.