Snake, Thy Name is Lion

“Mum! I’m back!” came the high-pitched voice that followed the sound of a slamming door.
“You’ve got two owls!” shouted the blond Mimosa Rafferty in a strangled voice while jabbing the air with her wand fervidly. The sink in front of the tall witch began to spout water that smelt strongly of nail polish remover all over vivid yellow robes.

A wiry figure entered the doorway, picked up the two envelopes off the table and strode out with a glance at her bumbling mother.

“Oh bloody boomerangs! That child will be the end of me! Struttin’ off like she owns the bloody world without a care to her own bloody ma standing here getting all covered in bloody nail polish remover!” grumbled Mimosa while trying to stop the torrent of foul smelling water.

Stomping footsteps could be heard above Mimosa’s head. The girl burst into her room. It was a flood of colours and sounds and belongings. Leaena flung herself on her single bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was very pretty; her dad had enchanted it for her. Swirls of colour shifted from blue to green to yellow to orange to red and through all the colours of her old Crayozard master box of coloured crayons.

Leaena sat up and looked across the room at the standing mirror. “Oh, Leaena Sen, dear. Do try to smile for once,” declared the mirror. The girl in the mirror was ten years and 11.5 months old, respectively. She had chin length strawberry blond hair and grey eyes. Her thin face simply scowled.

Everything about Leaena was rather pointy. Her nose, her chin, even her ears were a bit pointy. The points in her ears were not due to any elfin relation, they just were that way. Even Leaena’s personality was pointy. Actually, it was more on the side of sharp and nasty. She would have closely resembled a muggle version of an elf but for her sour expression.

Leaena turned away. She carefully split the first envelope. It was a warning from her half-brother, Vulcan, off in China studying ancient scrolls.

Leaena, he wrote in a spidery script, Stop being an arse. Mum says you’ve turned into the ice queen again. Quit it, or you’ll be hated in Hogwarts. Vulcan.

“Hrmph. Looks like Vulcan’s going to be recruited for the divination squad,” muttered Leaena while opening the next letter.

“Oh. Hogwarts. I thought so.” Leaena walked downstairs and shouted into the kitchen, which looked like several earthquakes and floods had managed to wreck havoc on the kitchen. She shouted the news to her mother, who was up to her elbows in what looked like dishtowels and rubber spatulas.

Wonder if I should help mum out, thought the girl, She seems pretty stressed and with all that mess to clean up… What am I thinking? …. I’ve got to get to Diagon Alley and get my stuff.

Leaena fully expected to be in Slytherin. Though her father was a Ravenclaw and her mother was a Hufflepuff, she was nothing like either of them. Her mother didn’t think well of Leaena, she made it no secret. Leaena was too insensitive and spiteful. Her father was always out and about, working on this or that for the Ministry, so he never really knew his daughter. Leaena had no real siblings, but Vulcan was as close as it got. Vulcan’s father divorced their mother when Vulcan was very young. He was raised half and half, but now since he graduated he had been off studying in foreign countries. Vulcan was a Ravenclaw, but he didn’t think she was too bad. But then again, he didn’t think she was too good either.

The ten-year-old raced up the stairs and into her room. She rooted around in her closet, dodging packs of playing cards that seemed to be intent to shuffle themselves on her head and various other chess pieces and enchanted action figures. Finally Leaena unearthed a safe. She pulled it out of the noisy, jumping pile and whispered the password. The safe popped open. Inside were piles of galleons, sickles, and knuts. She grabbed quite a lot of money and shoved it into her little rucksack, covered in wild Arabian stallions that whinnied silently and tossed their great manes. She shut the safe and buried it under her belongings again.

Downstairs again, she posted the sticky parchment note for her mother on the inside of the kitchen door and headed toward the den. The deep red room was full of cushions and chairs. The fireplace stood waiting with the mooing cow cookie jar full of floo powder. The fire was already roaring in the fireplace. Leaena paused for a moment, staring at the fire. An uneasy expression seemed to flit across her face, but it was gone too quickly to be sure.

“Diagon Alley!” shouted Leaena. She ducked out of the fireplace easily and set off to the middle of the road. She stood in the middle of a whirl of bustling shops and fascinating witches and wizards. She set off alone toward Madame Malkins to get her school robes. Measured and fitted, Leaena set off down the road again, stopping at the broom shop.

Pity I can’t fly. Some of those look really nice. *Pause.* Also a pity that I couldn’t care less about it, she amended fiercely.

She ducked inside the shop to have a look around. The brooms shone glossily under the lights, their twigs perfectly in place, except the ones in the corner marked Used Brooms. Leaena walked idly around the store. A tall girl with brown hair and grey eyes approached her.

“Hi! Are you a first year? I’m in third. I’m Allison McKay, who are you? Are you muggle born or pureblood or what? I’m half and half. What house do you think you’ll be in? I think I’m in Gryffindor. I think that sounds by far the best! Sorry, did I offend you? Sorry if I did! Do you like to fly? I do, I play Quidditch with my sister at home. Do you have any siblings? I’ve just got my sister, May, she’s twelve and in Ravenclaw. Why are you being so quiet?” said the girl, friendly and fast.

“You were talking so fast no one could ever get a word in otherwise,” answered Leaena, unconsciously cold.

“No need to be so mean about it. I don’t think you’re a very welcoming person,” said Allison McKay, sounding put out.

Leaena flinched slightly. “My mother told me not to talk to strangers,” she retorted.

“You’re not nice at all, are you? I bet you’ll be a SLYTHERIN!” exclaimed Allison, turning pink with dislike.

“Is that the worst insult you can think of? I’d advise using a thesaurus. Try fiend, wicked, and idiot to begin,” said Leaena.

Allison flounced off to her friends who whispered intensely with their backs turned. Leaena sighed. It seemed that she was incapable of making a good impression. Leaena walked quickly out of the store and into another to buy her books. She got in line after a brown haired sixth or seventh year whose armload of books was a great deal larger than the usual amount needed. Her companions, two boys, one redheaded and the other black haired, joked around while balancing their piles, significantly shorter than the girl’s.

“Do you really need those books, Hermione? Or are they just light reading?” asked the redhead sarcastically.

“I think they’re paper weights. Right Hermione?” said the black haired one.

“For really, really big papers,” put in the redhead.

“Shush, the two of you,” said Hermione. The black haired boy turned around to face Hermione and so showing Leaena his face. And, more importantly, his scar. Harry Potter! Leaena almost dropped her books. A tap on her shoulder broke her gape. She whirled around. A blond boy flanked by a crowd of rather nasty looking people gazed at her.

“What?” she said.

“I’m Draco Malfoy, kid. We saw you in the broom shop, putting down that Hufflebrat. What’s your name?”

“Leaena Rafferty,” replied Leaena.

“Rafferty, Rafferty… Ah, yes. Any relation to the International Relations’ Grayson Rafferty?”

“My father.”

“Yes. We think you’re Slytherin material, firstie. Care to come shopping with us? We’re going to Knockturn Alley. Not a problem for you, is it?”

“What’s the catch?”

Draco Malfoy chuckled. “This one’s Slytherin to the bone, my friends. No catch, Rafferty,” he drawled with a smirk.

Before Leaena got to answer, the trio in front of her whirled around. “Recruiting, Malfoy?” asked the redhead sarcastically.

“This one’s already on board, Weasley.”

“Training a replacement already to lead your little clique while you’re serving Azkaban? Or is that going to be another thug?”

“She’s far too short, Ron. Everyone knows you have to be very, very large to defend the ferret,” said Harry.

Leaena stared at the four very angry students. Fear, an unwelcome guest, boiled at the bottom of her stomach, making her feel queasy. The world swam in front of her eyes. Leaena’s eyes flicked from person to person. She squeezed her eyes shut. I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I am not afraid, she repeated cyclically. I am not afraid.

The four rivals traded verbal onslaughts and insults for quite a while, but Leaena didn’t hear them. Her focus was on that treacherous knot of fear that was expanding threateningly. Leaena then did what she always had done. She ran. She shoved her books on a table and ran out of the store into the street outside. She ran from the anger of three who had hated her because someone else accepted her, from the anger of the cold boy with silver hair who had a cruel smile, from the threat of fear lingering in her stomach. She couldn’t run from the fear. She could never run from the fear.

Leaena ran into the first store she saw, regardless of the name. She stopped short and her breath came in great gasps that she tried to stifle. Still breathing heavily, she stood straighter and looked around. She was in a dusty, crowded room, but instead of being crowded by people, she was crowded by hundreds upon hundreds of long, thin boxes. There was not a human to be seen. The air was dense and heavy with dust.

“Miss Rafferty.” A quiet voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in a while came from a shadow a person that had appeared in the back of the shop. “You have come for your wand, I think.”

Leaena nodded silently. The shadow came in to focus. He was a tall, skinny man, silvery and chilling.

“Leaena Rafferty. Let’s see… try this one. Heartwood and unicorn hair. No? Maple and phoenix feather. No again. Birch and dragon’s heartstring. Ah yes. Excellent, that would be fifteen galleons.”

Having paid the man and bought her wand, she set out again, careful to avoid anyone from the bookshop or from the broom store. Leaena bought the rest of her supplies and ducked into a used bookstore to buy her schoolbooks. She didn’t want to meet Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, or Draco Malfoy again.

Leaena went home. Avoiding her mother’s questions, she threw herself on her bed, staring at the ceiling. And, like that, she drifted off to sleep.

The next few days consisted of nothing for Leaena. She hid in her room, trying to deny the fear of the students she had met in the bookstore and broom shop. Soon September came. She packed her trunk, her stomach tumbling and rolling in her stomach. Gonna be fine. Fine. Fine. Will be okay. Okay. Okay. She thought to herself as she methodically folded her robes.

“Leaena! Come on, time to go!” called her mother.

Mimosa stomped upstairs, waving her wand at Leaena’s trunk and directing it downstairs. Leaena sat on the bed cross-legged and watched this. “Leaena! Hurry up! Lets go!”

The two of them went into the borrowed car. Mimosa grumbled as she read a piece of parchment with directions. “Lets see… Okay, I’ve got it… No wait…” came the mumbling of Leaena’s mother as they inched slowly toward King’s Cross. Mimosa dropped Leaena off, not stopping to take her in. “The traffic,” she protested, but Leaena knew why. “Bye Ena. Owl me once you get there.” Leaena nodded silently. She loaded her trunk onto a trolley and pushed it along to station 9. Allison McKay with a tall man with black hair and a girl with blond hair who must be her little sister, May McKay, disappeared through the wall. Leaena backed away for a minute. She then walked through into station 9 ¾.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes the steaming red train filled her line of vision, rimmed by laughing and talking families. Owls squawked in their cages while cats meowed at mice and rats and parents kissed their children goodbye. Within this vortex of sound and happiness, Leaena stood in front of the entrance, her trolley in front of her, with no one to say goodbye to or to tell her where she should go or what she should do. Her face didn’t change. It was perfectly expressionless, her grey eyes scanning the crowd.

She stood there silently for a few moments, biting her bottom lip and trying to decide what to do, feeling very reticent indeed. She walked hesitantly toward the giant train toting her trunk behind her. She winced as she tried to get her trunk up onto the train, feeling herself turning pink as she stumbled and lugged the black and silver trunk onto the compartment. It was empty. All the compartments were, she could see as she gazed through the open doors. Leaena sat down in the corner, her back up against the v-shaped bend in the wall. Her pale hands lay in her lap, tangling them with themselves and untangling them in turn. She scanned the compartment nervously, flinching whenever she heard a footstep.

Leaena didn’t notice as footsteps came into her compartment, she was too busy convincing herself that she wasn’t afraid of them.

“Rafferty. Nowhere to run now.”

It was Draco Malfoy from the bookstore, flanked by two hulking boys. Leaena slowly met his eyes, shrinking back slightly as she met his amused and unflinching gaze.

“You never did answer my question, Rafferty.”

Leaena didn’t change expression, but her mind was flurrying. What to say? What to do? Leaena feigned a nonchalant expression and shrugged. “Alright, Malfoy. I’ll try it.”

Draco Malfoy smirked. “Okay, kid. Follow me. No Slytherin sits alone on this ride, too many idiots walking around.” He whirled around and walked out. When discovering Leaena wasn’t following, he turned to glare at her. “Come on, Rafferty!” Leaena followed hesitantly.

They entered a compartment filled with smirking boys and self-satisfied girls, all making cracks about ‘those idiot Huff ‘n Puffs’, ‘those smart alecky Ravenbeaks’ and ‘that git Potter’, and ‘bloody Gryffs’.

Draco Malfoy stood silently in the compartment until it quieted. “This is Leaena Rafferty. She’s that firstie who told off the Hufflebrat in the broom shop. She’ll be joining us.”

He motioned for her to sit down, and he walked over to where his cronies were sitting. Leaena looked around; trepidation replacing what was left of her breakfast. She gingerly sat at the end of an isle seat next to a girl a bit older than her.

“Leaena Rafferty?” Leaena nodded. “I’m Janus Acheron. My family is worth millions of galleons. How much is yours worth?” bragged Janus.

Leaena felt uncomfortable and shrugged. Janus stuck her petite well-bred nose in the air, ignoring the first year. Leaena spent the rest of the journey in uncomfortable silence.

The train stopped and the older students chatted their way toward their waiting carriages, while the other first years followed the big and burly Hagrid toward some boats. Leaena got in a boat with Janus Acheron and two other Slytherin bound students.

She followed the others, trailing behind slightly, as they ascended the stairs and walked in. Leaena didn’t listen while the tall Professor with a stern expression and equally stern bun informed them about the school and the houses. She was concentrating on the floor. The stones seemed to fit perfectly, without any space between them. She could see that the surface had been worn smooth with the thousands of feet of children and adults over the years. Suddenly she jerked. Janus Acheron had poked her. Everyone was going in. Leaena quailed at the thousands of eyes on the procession of small students clad in black. She wasn’t listening during the sorting, nor at the hat’s song. She stared instead at her shoes, which were black and shiny, and at the floor, which wasn’t quite as smooth as it was in the hallway.

“Rafferty, Leaena!” the harsh voice broke through the haze of consciousness that Leaena was wandering through. She walked in trepidation toward the hat. She put it on her head and sat down, squeezing her eyes shut.

Leaena, Leaena…. Now this one is interesting. Already on it with those Slytherins, hmm? Well, you certainly have the disposition for it. But what is this? My, my, Leaena, do try to calm down. Lets see. A complicated child, you are. Also quite a loner. You do have an interesting future ahead of you. I see quite an unhealthy dose of fear, and you are not a very sympathetic child. Hmmm….

Slytherin, Slytherin! Thought Leaena.

Slytherin? Perhaps…. But I think not. No. Definitely not. Better be GRYFFINDOR!!!

A/N

And here we embark on our journey through Hogwarts and through Leaena Rafferty’s slightly deranged mind. Thanks to: Isis for Beta-ing, Mummy and Daddy dearest for stopping their rants (at least toning it down a bit) so that I could hear myself think, You-Know-Who-You-Are for You-know-why, and to all the other cool people that helped out with everything (even you, Rissa). Oh yeah, and thanks to school, because it didn’t give me too much homework! Next in Snakes and Lions: The beginning of two hundred and seventy nine enemies and Leaena’s first day with them.