A Different Sort of Legacy

A Different Sort of Legacy

by LoonyLoopyLuna

Chapter Two:

Floo Powder and Childhood Playmates sans One

Greengrass Manor, 24 August 1998

The whoosh of emerald green fire whipped Daphne's hair into Blaise's eyes, and they started to water as the need to cough gradually increased. The three of them had stuck their heads in the fireplace, ready to greet Nott the moment he saw them. On Daphne's other side Draco coughed out a mouthful of ash, cursing, and Daphne herself scanned the whirl of households that were flipping before their eyes like pages in a storybook, making sure not to miss the hearth of Theodore's private study.

After another minute, they all recognized the tall, black-curtained windows and high backed armchairs in Theodore's room, and Draco threw out a hand to stop the dizzying whoosh of the Floo Powder. Daphne crawled a little forward in order to peer around the darkened study; the candles were unlit, and the fire from the Floo threw an eerie green glow on everything. "Theodore?" she called, and then nearly jumped out of her skin as Blaise's head popped up beside her, calling, "Theo! Where are you, mate?"

"Probably sleeping, his bedroom's just next door," said Draco on her other side, brushing errant strands of her hair away from his face impatiently and surveying the dark study through his slate grey eyes. Feeling cramped between the two of them, Daphne crawled forward until she was completely in the room. Behind her, Blaise coughed on ash and Draco hissed, "What are you doing, Daph, you can't just go in without permission-"

"Theodore won't mind me." She stood up, brushing off her robe and patting her hair down. Looking down at the fireplace, the corners of her mouth turned up at the sight of Blaise looking slightly dumbfounded and Draco's impatient scowl. "I'll be right back," she told them, turning away from the fireplace. Ignoring Draco's heated whispers to come back into the fireplace, she scanned the rest of the room for Theodore's bedroom door. She had only Apparated into his bedroom before, so she could only assume the door in the corner led off into his sleeping quarters.

Softly knocking on the heavy, wooden door, Daphne waited for about ten seconds before realizing her knock was pathetic at best. She raised her hand to rap smartly at the door before it opened suddenly, revealing a sleep-mussed Theodore Nott, clad in his pajamas and robe. His small, dark eyes, narrowed in anticipation of seeing a house-elf, widened considerably when he saw her. "Daphne?"

"Hello, Theodore." She smiled up at him, and from behind the sofa came the voices of Draco and Blaise. "Good gods, why are you sleeping at this hour?"

She saw that he was surprised as he beheld Draco and Blaise in his fireplace. Taking a seat in the armchair, rubbing his forehead a little, he answered, "Bugger off, sods. I was bloody tired." He glanced at Daphne, who had taken a seat on the sofa beside him, and asked, "How long were you all calling me before you made her come get me?"

Draco scowled. "Only a few seconds. Daph just wanted the excuse to look around the place."

"Sod off, Draco," replied Daphne carelessly. Leaning forward, she asked, "How long have you been sleeping, Theodore?"

He stretched his long, limbs and ran a rakish hand through mousy brown hair that needed cutting. "Not too long. Just had a bit to drink."

"In the afternoon?" cut in Blaise. "This reeks of Goyle. You sure he isn't here, as well?"

Theodore scoffed. "Greg's worse off. There's no warning him, he drinks himself into a stupor everyday. He landed himself in St. Mungo's for a few days back in July. The Healers are saying his days are numbered if he doesn't put a cork in it."

Draco curled his fingers into a fist. Crabbe gone wasn't enough? What was Goyle trying to do? "What's his problem?" he seethed.

Theo shrugged glumly, dully keeping his brown-eyed gaze trained to the floor. "I suppose he's more upset about Crabbe than he lets on." Blaise watched him reach for his wand and light the candles on the mantelpiece above them. Soon the room was bathed in candlelight instead of Floo powder green.

"Is he at home now?" asked Draco. "We've come to ask you to get dinner with us."

"Isn't it a bit late for dinner?" said Theo unenthusiastically, after pocketing his wand.

"No, you've just lost track of the time, it's just past sunset," Daphne answered, looking out of a window. She saw him look down at his pajamas, trying to shrug off the last of his insobriety. Blaise cleared his throat and asked, "Theo, mate? Is Goyle in?"

A split second of comprehension later Theo answered, "Oh, yeah, he should be in."

"Right, well I'll go see him about dinner," said Draco, and pulled out of the flames. Behind him, Blaise heard the 'Pop' from his Disapparation.

Daphne had stood up and was walking back towards the fireplace. "Just Apparate to the study, that's where we are right now," she was saying, as Theo rubbed his forehead a little more and followed the swaying of her figure with an unsteady gaze. She kneeled in front of the hearth and began crawling in again beside Blaise, who thanked the gods he didn't have to watch her bum wriggle back and forth the way he did earlier. He had never coughed up that much ash in his life. Nodding to Theo, he pulled out of the Floo right after Daphne had crawled all the way through and straightened up beside her.

"Do you want to Floo Pansy with me?" she asked quietly, more subdued since Theodore had told them about Goyle. In her hands was the Floo pot, and her fingers were sifting through the glittering powder. She wasn't looking at him, preferring to watch the powder fall through her fingers.

Blaise eyed her shrewdly for a second and sighed. "Alright." He took the pot from her and tapped the underside of her chin with his knuckle, startling her. She looked up at him in bewilderment, and he smirked. "Stop worrying so much." He kneeled down in front of the hearth, feeling her glare on the back of his neck. Throwing in a pinchful of powder, he looked up at her coolly as the emerald green flames rushed into life again and said, "Coming?"

Suppressing a smile, Daphne felt grateful for the light treatment. Candid conversations and flirting was the way between them, and Daphne welcomed it at moments like these, when other people or events threatened to overwhelm them. Blaise knew how to push her buttons, even though she would never lose her temper and tell him off for it. Truth be told, there had always been tension between them, enough of it to stop her from being totally comfortable with him. But she would choose Blaise's company over Pansy's in most cases if she could help it, which was unfortunately not always the case. If she had just undergone the same situation in Theodore's room with Pansy, she would have been listening to her endless verbalizations of worry about Goyle, unable to get a word in edgewise.

She didn't exactly blame her friend; Pansy was just like that. She expressed herself better when she talked; smooth and subtle had never been her style, and Daphne appreciated each to her own. It was just that Pansy sometimes felt the need to imply that she was the only one who cared at all, which was definitely not the case.

Daphne had known Greg and Vincent since they were toddlers, since before going to Hogwarts was on their list of things to look forward to. They had all played wizard tag in the silent corridors of each others homes, fought like goblins over whose turn it was to be 'Wizard' ("Witch!" she would scream), the 'It' person who would catch the 'Muggles.' A bit twisted now, of course, when one saw the moral behind the game, but at four and five years old, morals were unheard of.

Though she had not been as close to Crabbe as Draco had been, she had been equally affected after hearing of his death from her shaken best friend. Goyle had the highest alcohol tolerance of them all, but if he had managed to get into St. Mungo's for drinking too much, he had fallen into a serious depression. It was saddening to think that their little group (sans Crabbe) stood to lose Goyle, as well. Daphne knew Blaise was a little shaken himself after learning of Goyle, but he kept quiet. It was a reason they got along with each other.

Kneeling beside him, she commanded, "Parkinson Manor," and the flames whooshed around them again, showing them through successive Floo fireplaces from Suffolk County to Manchester, where Pansy lived.

This time Blaise stopped the Floo himself when a brightly lit parlor room greeted their vision; the high, claw-footed furniture was arranged in an orderly circle around the fireplace on a square rug, and golden framed paintings of Parkinson family members adorned the walls, their eyes trained on them in interest. Daphne leaned forward and said, "Pansy, are you in here?"

A flutter of papers floated to the ground behind the long sofa directly in front of them, and Pansy's head appeared over the top of it, her mouth agape in disbelief. "Daphne! Blaise! It's really you, then? I'm not imagining anything?" She bounded over to them and threw herself on her knees in front of the fireplace. Blaise offered a weak smile.

"It's really us," said Daphne, smiling widely. "How've you been? You look starved thin..."

Pansy surveyed herself in the mirror hanging over the mantel, the original mirth in her paler face gone. "I haven't noticed, really," she said, looking back down at them, her gaze shuttling back and forth between Daphne and Blaise. He knew the question about Draco was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit her lip instead and curled her fingers in her robe. Smiling tremulously, she continued, "What brings you both here? You're welcome to come in if you like. I'm the only one here right now, Mum and Father are out."

"No, it's alright, dear, we came to get you, actually. Have dinner with us, we're all waiting back at my place."

Pansy swallowed, and Blaise knew she couldn't hold it in any longer. "All of us?" Draco, too?

"Yes, now come on," urged Daphne. Pansy didn't need telling twice. She was on her feet once again, bounding over to the cloak stand in the corner. Dragging a royal purple cloak around her shoulders, she pulled her hair out from underneath the hood and combed her fingers haphazardly through the glossy, shoulder-length brunette tresses.

Blaise rolled his eyes and pulled back from the Parkinsons' fireplace. Sitting back on his haunches, he looked anywhere but at Daphne, who was still kneeling, and before a minute had passed she and Pansy were in the room with him, brushing off their robes. Pansy looked around eagerly, as if expecting to see others there, but hid her disappointment when she saw it was just the three of them. Instead, she turned to Blaise, who was watching Daphne apply a dusting charm to her clothes with his hands stuck in his pockets.

"How are you, Blaise?" she asked, unfastening her cloak and draping it over the arm of the suede loveseat.

He began to answer before three Apparition pops sounded between them both, making Pansy jump and causing him to blink in surprise. Theo had Apparated about two feet from Blaise. "So what're we doing for dinner?" was the first thing out of his mouth. "A few moments after you two left I realized I hadn't had a decent meal since lunch yesterday."

"Draco!" The blond wizard had Apparated right next to Pansy. She stood up and threw her arms around him.

"Aww Pans, no need to get blubbery," Draco said jokingly, hesitantly returning her fierce hug. She pulled back with slightly watering eyes and asked, "I've been so worried, I didn't know anything except what I heard from Mum and the Prophet. How are your parents? How are you?"

"About as peachy as can be expected, I suppose," said Draco guardedly, Daphne noticed. She walked over to the coat wardrobe in the corner, intending to grab her own cloak, when Theodore appeared at her side, holding her elbow slightly but meaningfully.

To answer the gesture, she said softly, "I've been ignoring her all summer. She's been worried sick, Theo." He relinquished the hold on her arm and cast a slightly disgruntled look back to the slightly hysterical girl.

Behind Draco, Gregory Goyle snapped himself out of disorientation and grunted, "So what are we here for? Intervention of sorts?"

"You sod," said Draco, turning from Pansy and grabbing the front of his slightly inebriated friend's robe. Pansy gasped a little and made to hold him back, but he easily brushed her off. "Don't you dare land yourself in St. Mungo's again or else we'll kill you ourselves, mate, you get that? I can't believe you'd do something so stupid. If you're gone too, that's it, your family's done-"

"What bloody family?" grunted Goyle furiously, knocking Draco's fisted hand away. "Those Wizengamot prats are gonna give Dad the death order, all of you wait and see. Mum's been gone since the first war, and now Vince, too. All I fucking have now is money, so what the bloody hell else am I gonna use it for?"

"Forget about the money, Greg," interjected Blaise, his usually cool gaze now focused with the undercurrent of his father's volatile nature. "We're all here now, and we're going back to school, and we're going to finish it together. Don't turn into a bloody mess. Vincent wouldn't have that."

Greg laughed humorlessly, swaying on his feet. Theo left Daphne's side and effortlessly guided the larger lad to the suede loveseat in front of the fire. Daphne watched them both from the corner, their profiles highlighted against the orange glow that permeated the whole study. Tomorrow, the fates of their fathers would be decided. She swallowed the lump in her throat and walked closer to her friends. Pansy had conjured a tumbler of pumpkin juice and had given it to Greg, smoothing his overgrown curls out of the way. The latter looked disgruntled at the mothering he was being subjected to, but said nothing. Daphne cast a silent Imperturbable Charm at the doorway of the room, realizing that the house-elves would no doubt try to bring in supper. Blaise leaned against the side of the armchair perpendicularly placed to the loveseat, his arms crossed and expression carefully controlled once again. Draco had fallen back into his old seat, directly beside Blaise's back, and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

Daphne realized it was a scene worthy of older days, when they all sat together in the common room or in the Room of Requirement brooding collectively, doing homework together, or reaffirming their power within Slytherin House as the most Death-Eater-affiliated bunch of students there were. They were all like this now because Greg needed them, but Daphne had the feeling that she was not the only one who thought that they all needed this. It was the first time in over a year that they had all been together like this. If the circumstances had not been so grim, she would have smiled in relief.

"Greg, you've gotta stay off the drink for a while, mate," said Theo quietly.

Everyone started talking at once.

"Please, Gregory, please don't do this to yourself," pleaded a tearful Pansy.

"You're not usually this stupid, alright?" said Draco roughly. "Stop being a git and pull yourself together."

"You don't have to go stone dry, but no more drinking yourself to sleep," added Theo, gazing steadfastly into the fire.

Blaise said nothing, only looked over at his friend who was now weeping silently between Theo and Pansy. The brunette was also crying, and trying her best not to wipe her tears on her sleeve. He eyed Daphne as the blonde-haired witch, standing behind the sofa, extended a hand and placed it reassuringly on Greg's shoulder. Still choking on his tears, Greg reached up with a thick, clumsy hand and clasped her own, telling them all, "Alright."

Pansy smiled through her own tears and hugged his right arm, while Draco gruffly said, "Good," and Theodore nodded in satisfaction. Daphne gripped Greg's hand as tightly as he held hers and leant forward, hugging him around the neck from behind. "Greg, you git," she said lightly, pulling away and squeezing his hand a final time. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Blaise looking at her, and she turned her head to look at him, too. His steady gaze was unreadable, as it usually was, but she was used to the looks they exchanged with each other. Right now he probably meant to convey the same thoughts she had been thinking earlier. She smiled slightly at him and broke eye contact.

Now seemed like the time for a mood lightener. "Are we staying in for dinner? I'd rather we went to a good pub, myself," she said brightly, tousling Greg's hair and tossing a tissue to a blotchy-faced Pansy. The awkward tension that had undoubtedly followed Greg's tears immediately lifted, and soon enough everyone who had been sitting got up. "Leaky Cauldron shouldn't be crowded tonight," Theo noted, and Gregory nodded in agreement.

Daphne went back to the wardrobe in the corner and successfully retrieved her cloak. "See you there, then," she said, turning in her spot as she did so and Disapparating a split second later. In the next thirty seconds, all six of them were standing in the Apparition Point of the old pub, and proceeded to have their dinner.

~~~~

Her mind stirred awake a few seconds before she opened her eyes slowly, squinting at the sunlight that fell across the rumpled sheets of her large, four-poster bed. Looking up at the ceiling, Daphne sighed sleepily and began to doze. If only the house-elves had not opened those blasted curtains...

"Wake up, Daph," an insistent, very familiar voice said. Her eyes snapped open again to see Draco standing beside her bed, clad in his wrinkled undershirt and boxers and sporting a blonde mop of hair completely gone to shit. She rolled away from him and threatened, "If you're the one who opened those bloody curtains I'll hex you into next week."

A lazy yawn was all she got in response, and she sat up in her bed, frustrated. Draco blinked at her, his gray eyes slightly unfocused. "I slept in one of the guest rooms last night, and no, I'm not daft enough to interrupt your cavewoman sleeping habits. The silly house-elves must have done it, probably your mum's idea of a corking joke," he said sarcastically.

"It can't possibly be later than seven o'clock right now, I'm going back to sleep," Daphne grumbled, hiking her bedclothes back over her tank-top clad shoulders and diving into the feathery softness of her mattress. She and Draco had gotten in long after midnight. The whole gang had had dinner at the Leaky Cauldron, drawing curious stares from the old bartender who probably recognized in them the faces of their parents. Afterwards it was to Bristol, and into Theodore's home, that they Flooed. Lounging around in the same study that Blaise, Draco, and Daphne had peeked into earlier, they had all passed around a new bottle of Ogden's Best Firewhiskey and tossed around comments about the upcoming year at Hogwarts. Pansy had tried her best to curl up to Draco, who was having none of that, while Blaise sat closest to the fire, staring broodingly into the embers. Daphne and Pansy had driven the conversation forward, wondering aloud how many of their classmates would be returning, and if Draco and Pansy were still the 7^th year prefects.

The firewhiskey had managed to get the six of them drowsy, and Draco had fended off many covert offers from Pansy to sleep at her house that night. Instead, he followed Daphne to her home, where they both clutched at each other's arms to navigate successfully through the pitch black corridors. After reaching the top of the stairs, Draco seemed to know the house better than Daphne, because he let go of her arm and felt along the stone wall until he found the familiar door of the bedroom he always slept in when he was there. After two years of frequent sleepovers, Irene had insisted that he make it his own. Daphne had stumbled to her own bedroom, which was next to his, and could not remember how exactly she had managed to change into her pajamas and slip into bed.

Daphne felt the sheets behind her being lifted and Draco sliding in beside her, sighing in exhaustion. Agitated and still sleepy, she kicked him and mumbled for him to go away, but all she received was a kick in return and a muttered, "Sod off." Draco lay on his back, pulled the sheets up to his chest, and threw his elbow over his eyes. He swallowed hard as the day's events swam to the forefront of his mind. Today his parents' attorney would call for witnesses for their defense. He wondered if his parents had agreed to call Harry Potter in front of the stand, and if Potter would ever agree to do such a thing. Draco had testified yesterday about the ordeal that the Dark Lord had put his family through during sixth year. It was, as he heard later, the biggest postwar trial that had happened thus far, because it had been about Albus Dumbledore's murder.

Thinking about the old man today, even after over a year since his death, filled him with horrible guilt. Draco kicked the bedclothes off his figure, earning a whine from Daphne. She turned to face him, rubbing the sleepies out of her eyes. "Okay, talk," she yawned, still put out by being awoken so early.

Draco removed the elbow from over his eyes and cast her an almost-surprised look. "Not a lot to say," he admitted, looking back up at the canopy of the immense bed. He lay on one end; she lay on the other, looking at him curiously.

Pansy would kill him for sharing a bed with Daphne, even though there had never been anything sexual between the two of them. Draco considered his bond with Daphne as something akin to the bond of siblings. They were as good as family, in his book. He may have been best mates with Blaise, but Daphne was ultimately the one who saw him at his worst, several times now. She was the only one he trusted with everything.

"I was just thinking about yesterday's trial," he said, still looking vacantly upwards. Daphne kept silent. She had not gone to the trial, specifically at Draco's request, but she had been hoping to hear about it last night.

"No one except Mum could testify about the Unbreakable Vow, and the Wizengamot didn't take her seriously," he continued quietly. "Mum started crying when the Minister wanted information on Aunt Bella's role in the Vow. I could barely look at her, I was about to break down myself."

"Draco," said Daphne, not taking her eyes off his profile. "What's going to happen to your parents? They won't be...you know..."

"Given the Kiss?" he asked for her. He looked over at her, and Daphne noticed the tear that dripped out of the corner of his left eye. "Dad, maybe. I dunno. Mum, no. If Aunt Bella were still alive, they'd have given it to her without question. I don't think Theo's or Goyle's dads will get it, either. Just Dad, maybe." He cleared his throat to rid himself of the lump there.

"Are Galen and Adrian still abroad?" he asked, shifting the conversation to her brother and his friend. "Once these trials are over it'll probably be safer for them to come back quietly."

Daphne rolled onto her back and considered the question. She hadn't heard from Galen since his hurried departure from England following Dumbledore's death. He and Adrian Pucey, his best friend, had been part of the Dark Lord's newest Death Eater recruits. She had only found out later from her hysterical mother that they were both part of the surprise attack on Hogwarts that night. Daphne had no way of knowing where they were, whether they intended to come back, or if they were even alive.

"Yes," she answered. "Mum and Dad have been distracting themselves with stupid things so they don't go crazy waiting for some sort of contact from Galen. He must be keeping up with what's going on over here, but he hasn't tried to get in touch yet. I'm scared that he'll never come back, actually. It would be so much easier for him and Adrian to start over in the continent, to cut off ties here. But I don't want them to...I want to see them again."

Galen, her older brother three years her senior, was a subject not to be mentioned in front of Irene and Ambrose Greengrass. He was their firstborn, the heir to the primary bulk of the family fortune, and he was missing. His decision to join the Death Eaters with Adrian Pucey had earned cautious approval from the family. Daphne, who was no stranger to the politics surrounding their circle of Death Eater families, saw this as Galen's solution to keeping them safe from the Dark Lord's wrath. Their deaths had been faked in the wake of Dumbledore's death to demonstrate the sacrifice they made to the Dark Lord's cause. No one knew except for her own family and the Malfoys, whom Ambrose kept afloat during the past year with secret funds that Gringotts knew nothing about.

"Remember when Pansy couldn't take her eyes off Galen that summer after first year?" Draco mused, effectively ending the serious tone their conversation had taken. "She always had the schoolgirl crush on him."

"Yeah, makes me wonder how she set her hopes on you," Daphne jabbed back with a small smile. Draco grimaced.

"You're so lucky I don't take your insults seriously, Daph."

"If Pansy had her way, you'd be in bed with her right now, not with me. Don't you realize that if she Flooed me right now, she'd see you and burst into tears?"

"Are you trying to convince me to get back together with her?" said Draco, and wondered to himself why he kept thinking about Pansy's reaction to his current location.

"You do like her, Draco, and she adores you. She'd do a lot for you, and Merlin knows you need someone who can comfort you in ways that I absolutely refuse to do," said Daphne matter-of-factly, stretching her limbs.

"Not those images, not right now," groaned Draco. He kicked the sheets further away from him. "I dunno if I can handle Pansy. But she's always been there, she's always willing to do more for me. Bit annoying really, she comes off like a needy puppy. But she's carried a flag for me since third year. I'd be a real prat to write her off now, after making her think I was dead."

"A sodding prat," Daphne agreed. She looked for the grandfather clock in the corner; it read 8:30, later than she had guessed. Mum would wonder why she wasn't in the breakfast room with her. "We should get up. The trial's starting at noon, right? Come on," she said, sitting up again and swinging her legs to the soft wool rug right beside the bed. Draco cleared his throat once again and got up, too.

Half an hour later, Irene surprisingly greeted Draco, who followed Daphne to the abundant breakfast meal laid out by the house-elves.

"Oh dear, if I had known you were going to spend last night here I would have told the elves to air out the sheets extra well," she fussed, inadvertently making Draco's seat the center of her attention as she placed dish after dish of hot, mouthwatering food at his disposal. Daphne noticed, and rolled her eyes with a sigh.

"Mum," she said exasperatingly. Irene ignored her, and Draco accepted the mothering with an innocent smile.

"Your sister owled me this morning, saying she wouldn't be back before school began," Irene said, buttering a French baguette for Draco. "She and her friend, I can never place the poor girl's name, but those two are with her family, and just yesterday they set off for the lakes! Of course, you can imagine how excited they must be. But Merlin, I just don't remember her friend's name..."

"She told me about it yesterday," supplied Daphne, after taking a sip of her pumpkin juice. "She's with the Monaghan's right now, her friend Maura." She wasn't sure how much Asteria had told Mother; for one thing, Daphne was sure Maura's parents were not with them. Instead, the current 5^th years had taken advantage of the fact that someone's summer home was currently unoccupied. Underage as they all were, there was still bound to be some mischief in this last vacation of theirs before Hogwarts began again.

It was rather depressing to think about repeating a whole year of school. If Daphne didn't know that every school-age wizard and witch in Britain was going through the same thing, she would have been ashamed of herself.

"Yes, Monaghan," agreed Irene, eating her own breakfast. "A lovely girl, from what I remember. Wasn't that when Asteria invited them all to Christmas dinner a few years ago?"

"I think so," said Daphne with a nod, utterly bored by this conversation. She was still thinking of Galen. Across from her, she watched in slight disgust as Draco quietly fit an entire sausage in his mouth, unnoticed by her mother, who had now started talking about the trial that was to start later.

"Your father will be testifying for Lucius's defense," she was saying, a sad faraway look in her eyes as she thought of her own childhood friend. Draco looked down at his plate in silence, while Daphne looked up at her mother in surprise. She bit her lip and kept her surprise to herself when she saw how distraught Irene actually was, on the one hand worrying about Lucius's sentence and on the other, worried about the suspicion that would be cast on her own husband by the bloodthirsty Wizengamot. With some very determined Unspeakables and a lot of manpower, there was a chance that the Greengrass family's monetary ties to the Death Eaters would be uncovered, and her father would be next in line for trial.

It was a sore subject to think about, all of these trials. With shifting balances and the backlash from the suppressed minorities of the wizarding world, pureblood families like Daphne's, who had not hidden their views on the importance of their own kind, were now the scapegoats of the new Ministry, looked down upon by the very people who would not have been worth their notice only a year ago. It was a peculiar position for her and her friends to be in, used as they were to all the comforts of their pureblood status and old money lifestyles.

It was akin to feeling like a fish out of water, and Daphne was sure that Draco, Blaise, Pansy, Theodore, and Greg were feeling it just as keenly as she was.