And The Green Grass Grows All Around

And The Green Grass Grows All Around

Elle, heir of Ravenclaw, ran her hand along the spines of the books in the library. It was so hard to choose... which would she rather read right now, Stranded: Hair Care on Desert Islands, or Early Morning Makeup Time? It didn't matter; she desperately needed both. She grabbed them, balancing them on her hip, and teetered over to the most deserted table, one right by the window. She didn't want the people she was supposed to be with before she'd snuck off know where she was.

Casting a nervous glance around, she cast a Silencing Charm in a radius around her.

"I GET KNOCKED DOWN, THEN I GET UP AGAIN, YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO- " She broke off quickly as the librarian went passed, and resumed her efforts more quietly with Spice Girls' hits.

She had belted every single song she had been obsessed with as a preteen when someone approached her and popped the bubble of silence. Elle looked up to see the girl she'd talked with in the Prefects' car on the train in September, My or something. Remembering the girl's obsessive studying, she scooped off her vanity books in a movement that looked like she was just making room and pulled out her Potions homework.

"Thanks," said My. "I like quieter tables. By the way, I think I've heard that song... are you Muggle-born?"

"Half, really," Elle said. "I'd rather have the Muggle world, anyway. Things are so archaic here. What I'm planning to do when I get my NEWTs is become a doctor and exploit my magic to help people-and make myself look brilliant." She grinned. "I was too lazy for Slytherin."

My looked startled. "Oh right, Slytherin... that's probably a close one for you, though, isn't it? I mean, you're in Ravenclaw now, but if you'd been in Slytherin then you would have been the target of-"

"Slytherins and Ravenclaws get along quite well," Elle interrupted her, narrowing her already-narrow eyes. "Who cares about houses, anyway? I don't like Quidditch, my house never wins the cup, and most my classes are mixed."

"Exactly!" said My. "Remember what the Sorting Hat said?"

Her vague answer did not include the fact that she had fallen asleep before the Sorting.

Elle snuck an appraising glance at My. After checking the marks listings, she already knew that My had higher marks, but she seemed to be in the library all the time, anyway. Elle didn't trust the intelligence of studious people... good marks just happened.

As My scratched out an essay with her quill, Elle got out her Sharpie and started writing out her Potions' essay outline. Since the Study Brigade was here anyway, she didn't want to invoke her scorn by not actually studying, but she wasn't about to start an entire essay. She peered over to My's work; was she doing Potions, too? Elle was sure they were in the same class this year for it.

Elle tried once more to remember her name, then gave up and pulled her brown hair out under the sun to see it glow bronze and copper.

They had just settled down to a pleasant silence when Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, dumb and dumber, had to come over.

"What do you want?" said Elle, rummaging through her bag. "You've already dried up my purple marker."

"It said it was indigo," protested Vincent.

"Draco won't believe us," said Gregory. "He said we have to show him."

"I don't believe you, myself, either," Elle muttered, but she grabbed a handful of her markers and followed them to where Draco Malfoy was sitting on his chair like a Maharajah. She wondered whether he carried that green cushion around with him; she itched to pull it out from under him.

He slipped off his seat. "So they do exist!" he said. Elle took the opportunity to throw his cushion out the window. "I expected you to be lying." Draco pulled the cap off one of the markers and sniffed it, making a face. "Give me a piece of parchment, I want to try." He took Elle's Potions' outline and scrawled the marker all over it. When he had dirtied its yellow tip, he licked it.

"What are you doing?" said Elle. "You don't lick those!"

Draco rolled his eyes and looked at her condescendingly. "That's how you clean quills, Kieu. And, really, what are doing sitting with that ugly Mudblood?"

"Don't change the subject... but what's 'er name, at all? I can't remember, and so I can't call 'er anything."

"Big loss," he said sarcastically. "Call her Mudblood. Oh, wait, not like you can say much. All right, her name's Granger."

"Christian?"

"Hermione Granger. She's an annoying bitch, if you ask me, which you just did. Stupid beaver, always tries to get the teachers to like her. Get a life, who cares if you can recite an entire textbook?"

Elle shrugged, secretly agreeing with him.

"She's a sixth-year Gryff, so we're stuck with her but I wish they'd just give up and pass her on," said Draco with a sneer, and Elle derived some satisfaction from the fact that she herself had been passed on. "Hangs out with Potter and Weasley."

Elle smirked and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "So that's why you've... taken an interest."

"He wishes! Get away from me and take your dirty Muggle trash away from me, fat cow!" Draco hated being baited about being in love with anyone outside his circle, which was precisely why Elle had done it.

Elle gave up and left, seething about the remark about her weight, but she promised loudly to see him at the Prefects' meeting.

"Thanks, I'm not talking to you now. Halfblood heifer! Moo!" yelled Draco, slamming into his seat. He leapt up like it was a hot coal as he noticed the loss of his cushion and fell to the ground, searching for it.

Elle ducked between shelves, conjuring up a mirror. Her face was too round, she decided, but before she could get any further, she heard footsteps.

"Oh, there you are," said Hermione. "I was wondering where you'd gotten off to... I wanted to ask you something, actually."

"Go ahead, Hermione." Elle felt like she was on solid ground now that she knew the other girl's name.

"Well, I started up a group called S. P. E. W., and I was wondering if you wanted to join. It stands for 'Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare'. We're protesting the treatment of house-elves anywhere, and to join is two Sickles, but that's only for badges."

Elle hesitated. SPEW? "Are you sure it's not SPoEW, or SftPoEW? I know, what about SoPro-ElWel?" While she thought house-elves were the perfect solution for domestic help, she didn't want to insult Hermione.

Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed, but she did pull out a SPEW badge and tap it. The letters changed easily to SoPro-ElWel, and she laughed in delight.

"Well, there's my contribution," said Elle with relief, hoping this meant she wouldn't be stuck with SPEW now. SoPro made her think of manure and nitrates, though hopefully it didn't occur to Hermione. "I... try to budget the money I have, anyway."

"Oh..." There was an awkward silence. "I know that problem, I mean, there's a friend of mine-"

"We like to save up for big trips," amended Elle, cutting her off. She smiled. "My parents' hometowns are my favourite places in the world, but they're continents apart."

She noticed belatedly that, with the mention of her friend, Hermione had seemed much more interested in the conversation. Too bad she had stopped it so early.

"So what were you saying bout your friend?" she asked, trying to bring back Hermione's earlier joie-de-vivre.

It worked. "Right! Well, he's Ron Weasley, although sometimes I think that he's impossible." They laughed. "Anyway, he's one of my best friends, along with Harry, and we're always together, it seems. Well..." Hermione looked despondent again. She shrugged. "Except for the library."

"Whenever I want to go to the library, I always have to 'abandon' my friends, they're so unadventurous," Elle said. "Never do anything they plan to, least not with me."

"Yeah, but... I don't know, I mean I'm a girl and they aren't, you know how that can be. It drives me mad, though, that they refuse to take their lessons seriously!"

"Oh, I know how that is. Can't stand when people do that."

Hermione nodded vigorously. "I try to get them to come with me, but they never will. I'm glad I saw you again. At least you distracted Malfoy, right?"

"Must be the rudest person I've ever met. We fight outrageously when 'e lets me get a word in." Elle thought of it more as flirting, since she had long come to the conclusion that male-female teenage relationships were always like that... but then again, Hermione was the one with boys as her closest friends.

Hermione turned her head away to do up her hair and gasped. "It's snowing out!"

"Wow!" Elle breathed, running for the window. "Oh, it is, and in early October, too. I never imagined-that's it, I'm going out." Elle bounded in a clumsy little rhythm towards her things, scooped them up and shoved them together. She paused before reaching the door. "Uh-do you want to come? It'll be so much fun."

Looking towards her books, Hermione shook her head, and Elle was out like a shot.

As she was scrambling towards the entrance hall, she ran into someone with a soccer build, who nearly knocked her over.

"Watch where you're going!" growled Montague, currently her favourite person at Hogwarts. She looked up at him and smiled, glad that he had started up a conversation.

"Sorry, but it's snowing outside, and I really wanted to go and see."

He looked as if he didn't believe her, but he swaggered towards the nearest window to check anyway. He swore.

"Isn't it great? Let's go out," Elle said invitingly.

Montague shook his head, and she sighed.

"Will you be practicing Quidditch tonight, then?" Elle resolved to watch them.

"We'll have to see," he replied, looking out the window. "I mean, it's no problem for the Slytherin team, we can play anywhere-" perhaps Montague was a little arrogant, but she didn't care- "it'd be easy, really. But we wouldn't be playing in those conditions, so what's the point?"

"You should come out and see the Quidditch field now, that might help." Jerking her head forward, Elle tried to get him to follow her.

Montague waved his hand. "No, I'll be calling a team meeting."

"Oh..." Elle's face fell. "Well, good luck, anyway. I'll be cheering for you next week."

"Yeah?" Montague gave her an appraising look. " 's good; I'm glad. Nice to see someone supporting the Slytherin team around here. You'll be at the game then, right?"

"Definitely," she exclaimed. "Wouldn't miss it. The Slytherin team is amazing. I don't know much about Quidditch, but you all make it look easy." By the sound of her, she'd better be taking it easy. Montague would realize how much she was putting herself out for him soon, otherwise, and she hated to let anyone know her secrets.

"I'll tell the others you said that." He patted her on the shoulder. "See you at the game."

He strode off, and she was left alone with the amazing knowledge that he had touched her. She spun around the hallway and skipped outside. Did he know her name? She wasn't sure. But she had made her mark!

Outside, she ran around, invigorated by the cold, and she was surprised to see that she was the only one there. It nearly stopped her for a minute-there were probably people watching her from the castle and comparing her to an elephant ballerina-but then, she moved further towards the lake and started singing.

By the time she came back in, it was supper and she was wet and red and ready to eat.

_____

"Draco!" Elle screeched in her phlegmy banshee voice. "Draco Malfoy! Where have you gone with my markers?" She stomped over to the statue guarding the Slytherin common room. "You come out now or I blow up your entire house, don't think I can't!"

Someone peeked out to look at her and, taking her threat as real, shoved him out. His momentum sent her towards the wall.

"Bad enough you have to steal my stationary supplies, now you bang into me?" Elle crossed her arms. "I want my magic markers back, Draco. It takes forever to send for them, you know. I'll give you some for Christmas, but just give me those back now."

"Give them back? Hah!" He ran his hands through his hair. "Got a comb?- you'll never get them back! I've already licked the tips."

He ran back in, and she would have left it for later until she caught the mention of her name in the Slytherin Common Room. Stooping to listen, she heard:

"Can you believe the nerve of that girl?"

"Apparently, she's really good, but I don't see it. In class, perhaps, but the rest of the time, seems like she's hanging around here."

"Around our boys."

"Mm, really annoying. Not like she has a chance anyway. And, coming here to blow up our common room? The cheek of her!"

Elle gave up her cause, promising to be subtler about it in the future, and shuffled up to the Owlery to collect feathers for quills. The Grey Lady smiled vaguely at her going past.

To opening the door to the Owlery was to remember her cousins' chicken coop... and to do that was to gag at the smell. Elle had never had an owl-Professor Flitwick was trying to force ravens and eagles upon her-and now she didn't want on.

Eying the owls nervously, she poked her wand at the ground. "Ploume!"

The feathers whirled up from the ground and, at her wand's direction, into a neat pile on the ground.

"Wicked!" exclaimed someone whom she couldn't see for the feathers. He walked around, and she gawked at him, amazed. With her own dull brown eyes, eyes of any other colour mesmerized her. And his eyes were-what could she compare them to? She thought back to her mother's need for a family ring: peridot. He looked familiar.

"I sort of made it up," she said. "From the French song... you know, Alouette, gentillealouette, alouette, je teploumerais."

He raised an eyebrow at the song. "I haven't heard many songs."

"Well, just wanted to make a quill." She scrutinized one of the feathers. "Any idea of what to do?"

He picked up a feather and looked mystified. Staring at his eyes, she wondered...

"Hold on, you're in Potions too, aren't you?" asked Elle. "I saw someone in the library today-Hermione, you know her?-and she mentioned it. I thought you looked familiar."

"Right, the Ravenclaw additions."

"I like that!" She laughed, and wondered about the sound her laugh as she did, listening to it, thinking of Mary Poppins: some like to laugh, some only blast; others, they twitters like birds-then, there's the kind what can't make up their minds. "So I'm sorry I haven't noticed you. What's your name?"

He cringed, and she realized for the first time that he wasn't very big, perhaps only her size. "I don't like being noticed very often, so don't worry... I'm Harry Potter."

Harry Potter. She was still gawking at the peridot eyes-he had defeated Voldemort before, many times, and trouble followed him everywhere.

"Elle Kieu. So you have an owl?" she asked, but had to close her eyes from the embarrassment of saying it. Of course he had an owl. "Who are you writing?"

"My... well, remember Professor Lupin? I liked him. Defence is my best subject."

"I spose it would be-" and again, she made him awkward, there came another wince-"Wish I knew what subject I was good at, but they keep on shoving into another branch of magic as soon as I finish the first, and I'm going nuts over it. Can barely list off everything I've done, don't even know the name of anything anymore."

Now it was his turn to stare at her. "Do you take special lessons then?"

Elle hesitated. Should she even tell him? He had told her about himself, so would it be fair for her to tell him about herself; they were starting to call him the heir of Gryffindor, which offset the heir of Ravenclaw thing nicely. Professor Flitwick had told her to approach the topic with caution.

"Mostly with Professor Snape," said Elle carefully.

Harry's face soured. "Me, too, last year, until he kicked me out. Ugh, poor thing. He doesn't seem to mind you in class, though, so you must get off lucky with him."

"Does anyone get off lucky with him?" Elle picked up a feather and absently started stripping it.

"Good point." Harry laughed. "I hate being in his class, though, hate his mis-"

Elle broke off her contact with his eyes. "But-"

"Can you believe what that lousy b-"

"Wait-"

"No, I really want to say this, I'm so furious with him, I could just-"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?" came a voice behind. Elle had been staring in horror at Professor Snape during Harry's tirade. "Don't finish that."

Harry gasped, darting an accusing look at Elle. She hunched her shoulders together; she had tried.

"I suggest you leave now, Potter, before you cause any more trouble," Professor Snape said. "And you, K- Elle, stay here. We have further business between us. To my office, Koo, now," he said to Elle, who did not protest over the mispronunciation as she would with anyone else.

Once she got her breath back in his office, he began one of the speeches she was so resigned to. She stared at a fetus floating in a jar on the ledge of the narrow window; light shone green through its preservatives. It made Snape look jaundiced.

"You were in the Owlery," he said.

Elle nodded.

"You don't have an owl," he said.

She held up one of the feathers she had retrieved, glad to have evidence of why she was there. Of course, with any other teacher, she wouldn't have needed it.

"The Owlery is an unnecessary distraction from your studies, K-Elle. A boy like Potter is even more so."

"Sir! If you do not let me Owl my parents," said Elle, her voice rising again into banshee phlegm, "I will go to Dia-no, I will go to Knockturn Alley to get to Muggle London, and I will find myself a computer and e-mail my parents." Or, right, she could write a letter, or phone, that would be a lot easier. Why hadn't she said that? Like Professor Snape knew what a computer was. "Or why don't I just call up the Hogwarts Quill for myself?"

Professor Snape raised a long finger that looked arthritic, like her mother's; was he that old? "The second you are out of Hogwarts on an unauthorized excursion, Elle, you are expelled, heir or not. Knockturn Alley, indeed. And to call up the Hogwarts Quill is a tremendous breach of your duty. Don't abuse your powers here."

She seethed momentarily for a moment, before wondering why. After all:

"I never wanted to come to Hogwarts anyway!" Oh no, she would have to temper her temper... but she was just getting started, it seemed a pity to cap it now. "Know what? I got a letter from Vinland, and I got a letter from Singapura, and from Sayfol Merdeka, and I wanted to go to them so badly, but no! Hogwarts took me away from all of them, and I hate it, get that, will you? It's a nasty old castle and you cleave us up anyway... who was even stupid enough to bring me to Voldemort's home country?"

Once she had said it, she sank back down in her chair, her mouth agape. She hadn't even meant to say, you know, for You-Know-Who, but she had been feeling reckless. It had been a calculated risk, as it would be with her-she had thought do I dare?-but a two-second decision needed more of a calculator than rage.

If Professor Snape had not gripped his arm so tightly, he looked like he would have smacked her, hard. His ferocious glare, made worse by his foreboding eyebrows, combined with her own miserable hate of Hogwarts did her in. Her face felt so hot, she had to take off her robes, and her throat started pushing itself up her mouth.

She started to cry.

It ended up being the one thing Professor Snape could not deal with. Through her blurred eyes, she saw the expression of contempt and panic on his face. He turned on his heel to the door, and Elle wished he would leave, but then he stopped and stood behind her and laid one hand on her back like her uncle did.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw," he snapped, handing her a large handkerchief. "No, fifteen."

She sniffed.

When she had calmed down and he looked as if he wasn't asphyxiating himself, he said, "Let us forget that ever happened." He cleared his throat and pulled out a piece of parchment. "Now, did any of the Animagi tests give you an idea of what you will transform into? Dreams? Optominvisibility? Audimagic?"

"Dragon, so there's not much point in continuing. I almost expected it, though, born in the year of the Dragon."

Professor Snape looked disappointed. "Rowena Ravenclaw was an eagle."

"I know that, sir. And I need that potion to remember. The only one I can remember was about my friend dying, and she thought it was funny-and don't say this time that we'll have to wait and see! I managed to displace my sight and hearing, though, but not very far."

Pulling out a piece of parchment, Professor Snape wrote down what she had just said but did not comment on any of it. "We are exempting you from your NEWTs so that Dumbledore can train you privately for your responsibilities, along with-" Snape's mouth twisted-"Harry Potter. Yes, him, the one that you encountered downstairs."

"Is 'e going to be there? Huh. So sir, guess what, you'll never 'ave to deal with either of us again."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, if only. Dumbledore's not a disciplinarian, and someone's going to have to do it. I disapprove of special treatment for students, as you know."

"Sir, by the way-" Elle was still in her reckless mood-"why is it important to you that I, what was it, retain my 'eritage, act potently and 'ave many children? After all, you're not a Ravenclaw."

His reaction was not one she had expected. His eyes did flash, granted, but the oily tone was something new. "Do you know, Kee, who the heir of Slytherin was?"

"No, sir, Professor Binns wouldn't let me get past the last century." Just because he had died after that...

"The heir of Slytherin is the one whose name you spoke earlier. And now that his lineage is stopped up forever, could you imagine the reaction of some people-"

Elle thought about genealogy and family and her father's voice came to her: No, didn't want to adopt. Horrible-I wanted to have children of my own...

"Wouldn't they be worried? There are some things that you need us for, right?" She realized her inclusion of her name with-she wasn't going to say it again-and shuddered. "It'd be a real loss to Hogwarts to lose its unity."

Professor Snape shook his head. "They weren't worried," he sneered. "The papers said THE END OF THE EVIL. They were glad to be rid of Slytherin, they'd wanted it to be gone ever since Salazar himself left. Wizards do that, turn against you." He stood up. "And now what are we? What have Slytherins become? That is my problem; we haven't."

Elle bit her lip, staring at the green-and-silver crest on his robes.

"That's why," he said, sounding weary. "I don't want another one to die out. I want you to stay here and outlive everyone and prove yourself."

"Sir, are you using me?" she said.

He scoffed. "Think that if you will. Now go, study, please, or I will give you detention and make you."

As she left, stumbling over her feet to do so, she thought she heard him taking off points from Ravenclaw.