Slytherin

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry sits high, overlooking a lake in an isolated part of the countryside.

At night, the lake looks black in the moonlight, like blood does, and the windows open like eyes with candlelight behind them. From the outside, you can circle the castle and find the windows of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, but you will not see Slytherin. They are reached through the dungeons.

You will find the lights out in the entrance hall at this hour, but it is still not quite late enough for students to be restricted to their rooms. The library will be open for about twenty minutes more still, and some teachers have not left their classrooms. However, the students should no longer be outside on the grounds, so the rather small pale boy with his brown hair pulled back into an equally small ponytail at the back of his neck is looking nervous as he holds one of the great doors open just slightly.

He fidgets as the cold night air seeps into the hall in breezing waves from the blackness outside and whispers, "Hurry up, Bellatrix!"

"We're fine, Avery," the tall girl with thick (but not untidy) black hair almost like dyed steel wool says as she slips past him. She holds a struggling bird with a silencing charm placed on it in her sharply jointed hands. Gratefully, the boy shuts the door behind her.

They move to the nearest flight of stairs and go down. If you ever want to get to Slytherin, don't go up any stairs-you'll be going the wrong direction.

They don't make a sound as they slip through the stone dungeon's hallways, hardly noticeable as they pass. The dark girl whispers a word to an empty stone wall.

In the Slytherin Common Room, a fire is blazing. There is another small fire in a corner of the room with a cauldron over it. The firelight makes the greasy black hair and the pasty skin of the boy over the cauldron shine. Another boy leans against the wall, his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him. He stares with deep, dark eyes over the shoulder of his friend at the boiling substance. His black-brown hair is cropped just above his ears. He smiles in a way that would make most people uncomfortable at the girl. She grins back sarcastically.

"About time," the boy with black-brown hair teases. "Was that bird hard to wrestle down, baby?"

"No," Bellatrix glares at him, but not because she is offended. She knows that she can retort to any of the stupid insults he throws at her, if she wants. "Avery wet himself, and it took us another ten minutes to get rid of the evidence."

"I did not!" Avery complains snobbishly.

A boy with red-brown hair and strangely disturbing eyes cackles from where he's sitting by the fireplace.

"Whatever you're thinking, Rosier, we don't want to hear it," Bellatrix says. Rosier keeps his thoughts to himself.

The greasy boy hold out a skeletal hand to Bellatrix. She hands him the struggling bird.

"How did you get a pass to the forbidden section of the library from her, anyway?" Avery asks the greasy boy as he sits down. Bellatrix prefers to stand. She leans against the wall beside him.

"I told her that I needed it for some more in-depth research. I just promised not to make any illegal potions or cause any mischief with it."

The boy with black-brown hair snorts in laughter. That makes the greasy one smirk.

"You lied to our Head of House?" Avery looks awed. "She can tell you're lying!"

"She can tell," the greasy boy corrects him, "when you're lying, Avery, not when I'm lying."

"Severus Snape is the best liar in this fucking school," the boy with black-brown hair says.

"Oh, get over it, Rodulphus," Bellatrix drawls. "You only said that so you could swear. You're mommy would never let you say that bad word at home."

"Call me Lestrange," he demands.

"Call me Black," she whined back at him.

A girl with white-blonde hair and bony features haughtily enters, carrying a book from the library. Bellatrix smiles and says, "Hello, Narcissa. My little sister in first year, still up at 8:30?" She tuts mockingly.

"Bugger off, Bellatrix," the young girl tries to make a comeback. She sits down by the cauldron as if she's naturally part of the group. "Are you going to kill that?" she asks Snape, eyeing the bird in his hand. It looks calm now.

"No," he says with sharp sarcasm as he squeezes something slimy into the potion. Swifly, he whips the bird through the air by the head and its neck cracks. Narcissa jumps. She looks shaken.

"Never seen a bird die before?" Rosier asks from the fireplace. He seems to be slightly elated.

"You're sick," Narcissa tells Snape.

He cuts the bird's head off with a scalple.

"Disgusting!" Narcissa says loudly, distressed. He rolls his eyes. "Poor white trash!"

He squeezes the bird's body over her head and blood runs down into her hair. She screeches and runs up to the girls' dormitory crying. Rosier watches her all the way up the stairs, his eyes reflecting firelight. Avery laughs nervously.

"Who's that potion for?" Avery asks.

"No one," Snape says bitterly. "I'd give it to every fucking Gryffindor in the school if anyone else had the half a brain necessary to make it. As it is, I'm the only person who would even be suspected unless the potion's teacher was accused."

"And she knows you checked out that book, anyway," Bellatrix finishes. "Otherwise you could make it, you know. If you could make a potion that was subtle enough. They wouldn't even know it was a potion that did the damage."

"Yeah."

"Too bad," Lestrange sighs. "Why didn't you bring one of those books you have at home? Then you could make some nasty potion. Bellatrix could seduce her cousin and give it to him when he wasn't thinking."

Bellatrix stares at him. She leans over Avery to get close to his face. He pretends he isn't scared.

"You're a perverted sadist, Rodulphus."

Avery is shaking in his shoes.

"Where's Wilkes?" He is trying to change the subject.

"Making out with someone," Snape assumes aloud.

"Don't you talk about me when I'm not there!" a voice calls from the dormitories.

"Don't listen from the top of the stairs!" Snape retorts.

Lucius Malfoy enters. He's a seventh year and tall, with his blonde hair in a ponytail.

The others shut up when he comes in.

"Still doing homework?" he mocks them.

"Homework?" Snape holds up a bloody hand. "For what class?"

Lucius laughs softly. He likes that. Lazily, he sits down by the fire.

"I don't see why you'd make a potion you can't even use on-" Avery starts.

"Because I want to, that's why," Snape snaps.

"Your fiance, is distressed," Bellatrix smirks at Lucius.

"What a bloody shame," he dismisses it. "I think yours is staring at you."

Bellatrix whirls on Lestrange. "I'm going to bed," she states, burning holes in him with her eyes.

"I think she likes you, Lestrange," Snape says quietly when she's gone.

"I know," he grins.