Midnight Watch

It wasn't so bad during the day. During the day we could pretend everything was normal. Everyone was pretending. We played the same roles over and over again, just as we had for four years, and if none from the other houses noticed the split in our ranks...well, that was to be expected, wasn't it? No one noticed. Potter didn't notice. No gratitude, no acknowledgement. Nothing. He probably didn't even know that my little faction existed.

Perfect Potter, Draco called him, spitting the words like a curse. And I agreed with him. I despised him and everything he stood for, and I agreed with him.

Draco didn't bother me, for all his bluster. At least there had been fear in his eyes when Dumbledore gave a nightmare's face to Cedric Diggory's killer. There was awe and glee too, and those things made me want to vomit. But there was still that fear, half-acknowledged, because a nightmare your family claims allegience to is still a nightmare. At least he was better than the others. Some of the older Slytherins had no fear at all. For them it was just the manic green light, and they were too blind to know what it meant.

Green can symbolize Slytherin, but it can also symbolize death. It was, after all, the last color Diggory ever saw.

It was the nights that were horrible, because then my little band was trapped in the Common Room. The others made light of it, but I knew that we were under siege. I was the face of the rebellion and I was the one who saw the bloodlust behind those calm, icy facades. My house is too smart to attack outright. We wait for darkness, for the guard's head to droop. Darkness conceals.

In the darkness, you can get away with murder. And that was where we lived and slept, because even darkness was better than going back.

I never knew exactly what kept us so calm. Terence probably had something to do with it. Or Adrian. They were jokers with ready smiles, anomalies in a house that prided itself on being above mundane things like good-natured humor. Before they did their best to keep their cheerful words to themselves. Now? What was the point in hiding anymore?

So they laughed. They poked fun. They even did a skit. I barely watched, but Blaise told me later that he almost died laughing. It was something about You-Know-Who having a tea party with Filch, but the particulars escaped me. I didn’t listen. Terence and Adrian dealt with death by laughing in its face, and I dealt by plotting. Slytherins plot. We scheme. Stereotypes exist for a reason.

It wasn’t so bad, the first few nights. We all knew what we had done, but none of us wanted to admit it. It’s easier to spit in a devil’s eye when the retribution, however painful and terrible, will be swift in coming. It was the waiting that got to us. Our deaths were certain, but the rest of our lives were murky. There were a dozen paths to each sudden end. None of us knew which one to follow.

We didn’t dare sleep in our dorms. Oh, no. Not there. Too many former friends with green lights in their eyes. Too many arms waiting to receive the Dark Mark. So we slept in the Common Room, on the sofas around the fireplace.

Funny. I spent countless hours in that room, and until that first night, I never noticed how much it looked like a dungeon.

It became a routine. Terence and Adrian would calm everyone for a few more hours. Eventually the others would drift off to sleep, huddled together around a cold fireplace, and I would remain sitting on a hard wooden chair. My wand would rest in my lap, my eyes fixed on the darkness. It was terrifying, but it was better than closing my eyes. Better than what hid in that darkness. You-Know-Who waited there. Voldemort waited there, and he had a hundred faces. They belonged to my classmates, the boys and girls I had called friends a week before.

One face was larger than all the others, and it belonged to my father.

No one thought my midnight watch was paranoia. Sometimes the sixth and seventh years would sneak down and peer at me from the shadows, like wolves circling a wounded lamb. And then, for a few precious moments, the fear would vanish and I would laugh. Did they believe I was helpless? Had Pansy really convinced everyone I was a sniveling, bleeding-heart Gryffindor clad in green and silver? Oh, no. I was a wolf too. I waited, expressionless, guardian and trap, betraying serpent and loyal shepherd guarding her flock. Let them come, and they would see that Slytherins, too, can die for things like loyalty and friendship.

They never attacked. I could see the green light in their eyes, and they could see the fire in mine. Back then they were too disorganized, caught up in a euphoria that hindered plotting and planning. If I was cursed as an idiot Gryffindor, then they were just as damned. At least I knew what my cause was. At least it was a cause worth fighting for. They didn’t have that.

They weren’t Slytherins. Slytherins live in the shadow of their Founder, and if they do not learn good from evil, they vanish into it. One of these days someone from another house will realize that, and pin it to the pages of some dry yet influential piece of scholarship, and what we have tried to explain for generations will be understood. Until that day comes, there is just the dungeon. No one thought to check on the prisoners in those last nights. If they had, they would have seen past solidarity and found us at each other's throats.

I didn’t sleep in those last hectic days before the end. I was too afraid and too stubborn. Others offered to relieve me, but I refused. Pride. Arrogance. The fire in my eyes fed me. I had begun this doomed revolution, and I was going to finish it.

Even if it meant keeping the midnight watch again and again, holding the wolves at bay.