The Dragon Hearted

2: Lessons

 Draco Malfoy rose with the sun. It was impossible to sleep past sunrise for some odd reason.

 He pulled the black school robes over his hair, shaking it out of his eyes. Over the summer it had grown into long bangs that fell into his eyes.

 Carrying his bag and an Arithmancy book, he stalked down into the Common Room. As Draco bent down to put the book into his school bag, his hair fell into his eyes yet again, clouding his vision in a nimbus of pale strands. “I really need to cut that off,” he muttered violently to himself.

 “Don’t.” The Verite girl was curled up in an chair with a scroll in her hands. Her school tie was loose, she didn’t seem comfortable in the Hogwarts uniform. “You look like a surfer boy without a tan right now, and that’s an image you want to hold on to.”

 Draco arched his eyebrows. “And do you think looking like a bum from the beach is wonderful?”

 She smiled. “Mmm hmm. And so does the entire female, teenage population of the world, I think. Excluding Lesbians, but you can’t really help that, now can you.”

 Draco stiffled a laugh. Verite’s sense of humor was certainly very interesting.

 “I can only assume that you know how to get to breakfast after you’ve completed four years here,” she said, and Draco noted a bit of shyness in her joking voice, she was the new girl and knew she didn’t fit in quite yet. “Can you show me the way?”

 “Sure.”

 Verite grabbed her bag and followed Draco out the door.

 Halfway down the the Great Hall, Verite broke Draco’s natural silence as she tied her hair back.

 “If you grew your hair long enough, you could pull it into one of those little pig-tails like people in the seventeen-hundreds wore.”

 “Oh, that’s ever so helpful,” he said sarcastically.

 She grinnned. “I know.”

 That was when Draco rolled his eyes in mock despair.

* * * * *

 “Potions first,” Blaise said sleepily, running her fingers through her raven-wing hair.

 Bay bit her lip. From her recollection of the Weasley twin’s conversation with her before, Snape was the meanest teacher in the school. According to her House members, he was the best. She’d have to figure the professor out for herself.

 “Potter persecution,” Alena snickered, brown eyes glittering.

 Gwen and Blaise giggled malaciously as well. Bay simply smiled and raised her eyebrows. Why exactly did Slytherins hate Gryffindors?

 “Oh, look, only fifteen minutes until class!” Gwen gasped, standing up. “I hadn’t noticed the Hall emptying!”

 Bay had noticed, but preferred to keep on chatting. “We should go then, shouldn’t we?”

 Alena nodded. “We’ll have trouble pairing up now, because with Bay we have twenty-one people.”

 “No, because one of the Gryffindor girls moved to Australia. Scared little Landers.”

 “Well,” said Bay reasonably as they started to leave, “If I had to choose between being killed by an evil wizard staying or being teased by you when I couldn’t hear it and going, I’d leave too.”

 “But you aren’t Landers,” Gwen said. “So why bother arguing that point?”

 Bay shrugged.

 The chamber outside the Great Hall had thick rugs, colorful portraits and tapestries, and suits of armor. As the group went deeper, Bay noticed, the carpets disappeared and more gloomy tapestries replaced their colorful counterparts. Bay shivered slightly at the cold and damp feeling of the air around her.

 She might have walked right passed the narrow door if Blaise hadn’t pulled her into it. “I’ll be your partner,” the dark-haired girl whispered. “Gwen and Alena will partner up, Viviane will probably work with Adrian, and Pansy the Pill can work with a Gryffindor.”

 “Fine with me,” Bay smiled.

 The two of them chose a seat behind Alena and Gwen and Blaise began assembling equipment. “Circe’s Cauldron,” Blaise whispered, “Any information on it?”

 “Well…the witch Circe had this stuff that turned people into animals…and what type of animals they turned into had something to do with what type of person they were…and there was something about a magic flower that was an antidote sort of a thing…and that’s really all I remember. Ask the teacher when he gets in here.”

 “Actually,” Gwen said, turning around, “That pretty much sums it up. The potion turns you into whatever type of animal you are at heart. And the antidote is the Messenger’s Trillium.”

 “Interesting. Now we’ll know what types of people are disgusting little rodents,” Bay said.

 “Oh, I expect Weasel-Weasley will be a rodent. Probably a weasel,” Draco smirked, and he took a seat in front of Alena and Gwen.

 “That’s real rich coming from the Amazing Bouncing Ferret.”

 In the narrow doorway were the Gryffindors. The black-haired boy Bay had seen the night before was frowning at Draco.

 The barest hint of coloring rose in Draco’s pale face. “Oh,” he sneered, “And I expect you’re going to turn into some brave and mighty Gryffindor lion, Potter?”

 It was hard for Bay to keep a straight face. The two of them were even less competent at insults than her little sister. Each was leaving openings for the other to insult him.

 “Better than a slimy, dirty, Slytherin snake.”

 “Actually,” Bay told him, smiling, “Snakes aren’t slimy at all, and are practically the neatest creatures alive. There is absolutely nothing wrong with snakes. By the way, have you brushed your hair recently? It looks like you’ve had a few animals less tidy than snakes sleeping in it.”

 Harry Potter blinked. “Actually, I brushed it this morning.”

 But Bay knew it was a poor comeback, and Blaise nudged her with a wink as the Gryffindors sat down.

 Professor Snape came in then, and Bay wondered how long it had been since he had last washed his hair.

 “Today,” he told the class, “We will be making a potion known as Circe’s Cauldron. It reveals a person’s true animal form at heart. Make sure to add the essence of mikal after the potion come to a boil.”

 Getting the fire started with some ebony flames from her wand, Bay started to chop up the Venus Fly-trap pads. What sort of an animal would she be…? Not a snake, not a lion, and certainly not a ferret.

 “Hey,” she whispered to Blaise, “What was Harry Potter talking about? That thing about the Amazing Ferret?”

 Blaise rolled her eyes. “Last year, Draco and Potter got in one of their little fights. Potter turned away and Draco was going to jinx him, but the crackpot Dark Arts Professor saw him and turned him into a ferret. It’s been one of their main insults for a while, actually.”

 “Okay…” Bay said, letting her skepticism show.

 “It’s true. Ask Potter himself.”

 Bay shrugged. “I’ll belive you.”

 “You should.”

 The potion, currently bubbling in a saffron color, turned lime green with the addition of the fly-trap pads. “Finished dicing the unicorn hairs?”

 “Yes,” Blaise sighed, and she dumped the small pile into the potion. Now it was a swirling purple color…not something Bay would be interested in drinking.

 “Isn’t it supposed to be white?” Bay asked cautiously.

 “Drat! We forgot the ground unicorn horn!”

 Carefully, Bay measured out half a teaspoon of the brilliant silver dust, dumping it carefully into the cauldron. The mixture swirled a moment more before finally turning the desired white. “It looks like milk.”

 “I guess,” Blaise said, closing her eyes and standing up. “Let’s go wash up.”

 The icy water numbed Bay’s hands, and she hurried back to the little fire around the cauldron, grinning as she warmed her hands in the crackling flames. Blaise leaned back in her seat and looked like she was trying to sleep, which was rather hard with the bubbling, clanging, and thudding of knives going on around the room.

 Presently, all the noises stopped and the rest of the class sat back like Blaise.

 “Now,” Professor Snape said, “You test your potions. If you’ve brewed it correctly, you will transform into an animal. If not, you may end up with the head of a mongoose and the legs of an ostrich. I wish you,” he continued with a malacious smile at the Gryffindors, “The best of luck.”

 Blaise grabbed a ladle, and Bay picked up the stirring spoon. “On the count of three?” Bay whispered.

 “One, two, three.”

 Neither of them drank.

 “Okay, just go,” Bay said, and she drank.

 There was one word to describe it: she was stretching. Her ears felt like they were being pulled out, her legs shrunk and her arms did too. Her torso lengthened, and so did her nails. There was a peculiar prickling feeling as well…

 Then came the noise. It felt like she could hear everything, and smell everything. But something was wrong with her eyes and she wasn’t seeing the colors, although she saw distinct shades of color.

 Next to her was a black bird, either a crow or a raven, but most likely the latter. It was staring at her. ‘Blaise?’ She thought.

 ‘Who else?’

 ‘Who’s talking? Why am I hearing things?’ A tawny owl with puffed feathers was talking in some way.

 ‘What am I?’ Asked a little brown mouse next to the owl.

 “I do believe,” said the professor, “That right now your Anipathy will be kicking in. Anipathy is a talent that allows transformed wizards and witches to communicate with other similarly changed people.” Professor Snape then changed one of the walls into a mirror. “I’m giving you time to figure out what you are, while I go pick up the antidote from Professor Sprout.” And he walked out of the room.

 Much lower than she had been a minute ago, Bay walked over to the mirror, something swishing behind her. A black shadow stared back at her, tail flicking and grey eyes studying their new body. A panther.

 The raven hopped onto her head, just as the rest of the herd of animals came over. ‘I’m a raven and I still don’t know why I’m like a writing desk,’ Blaise laughed.

 ‘Let’s figure out who’s who,’ Bay shouted to the entire group. ‘Line up, then step out and tell us who you are as a human being.’

 ‘No thanks,’ said a white bird hovering above her. It looked a bit like a snowy owl, only more hawkish and slimmer. The barrings were jet black, like splatters of ink. ‘I’m not interested in lining up for roll call. Besides, I intend to have a bit of fun first.’ The white bird swooped down and landed on the rack of a stag.

 ‘Enjoy this?’ the stag said, ‘Get off me, Malfoy.’

 ‘Now how did you know it was me, Potter?’

 ‘I could ask you the same question,’ and the stag began to shake its head vigorously, trying to get Draco off.

 Some of the animals were sending out peals of laughter. Bay glanced at them. They must all be Slytherins. There was a laughing tortoise, a poodle, an otter, a stoat, a fox, a hare, a lemur, and a slimy yellow blob that could have been a slug besides her, Blaise, and Draco.

 ‘Buzz off, Malfoy,’ a reddish-gold retriever snarled.

 ‘That red really gives you away, Weasley. Does the little doggie want his bone?’

 The dog growled. ‘Shut up, Malfoy.’

 ‘Oh, and are you going to make me?’

 ‘Malfoy, get off!’ Harry told the bird clinging to his antlers.

 ‘Again, there is absolutely no way you can get me to move when I don’t want too.’

 ‘Maybe you should have been a mule, Malfoy,’ Harry said, exasperated. ‘ You sure are being ass stupid.’

 ‘Oh! Potter made a smart comeback! Where are all the fireballs and comets for Doomsday?’

 Bay had been watching with an amused grin. But now she saw Ron Weasley, the red Golden Retreiver, tensing. He was going to jump at Draco—

 Hurdling over the fox and the otter, Bay slammed into Ron in midair, knocking him to the ground. And now the Anipathy channels, which had been silent for Draco, Harry, and Ron’s exchange, were noisy with animals shouting to each other. Bay had one paw on Ron’s chest, and she screamed to him over the hubub, ‘You idiot, you could have hurt both of them!’

 ‘Bay?’ Ron gasped.

 ‘Yes me. If you missed you would have broken Harry’s antlers. Be more careful.’ Then she pressed slightly harder into his fur and stalked away.

 Blaise and the owl were now viciously beating each other with their wings and shrieking. The mouse was running from the stoat, and a gazelle was stabbing at the otter. Bay slipped into a corner, not willing to join the fray unless she had to.

 Someone landed on her back. ‘It looks like I started quite a pandimonium,’ Draco laughed.

 ‘If anyone gets hurt, will you take the blame so readily?’

 ‘No. But I’m doing the same thing you are—staying out of the fight for now.’

 ‘Whatever.’

 ‘Sit back and enjoy it, Verite.’

 ‘How did you know who I was?’

 ‘You accent. Stands out even here.’

 And it was then that the professor returned, carrying a basket of small white and gold flowers. “Potter!” he shouted.

 ‘And besides,’ Draco added, ‘Potter and Weasley will get blamed anyway.’

 Professor Snape began to shoot out freezing hexes into the melee. When everyone else was immoble, Bay and Draco walked quietly out of the corner, two silent shadows.

 “Now,” Professor Snape said in a deadly voice, “I will touch each of you with the Messenger’s Trillium, and you will resume your normal forms. Everyone except those two,” and he gestured at Draco and Bay, “Will receive detentions.”

 The professor touched Draco with the flower, and Draco touched Bay with it. She was pulled again in the opposite directions she had been pulled in before. When she was in her normal form again, Bay touched Blaise with it and quickly packed up.

 Once out the door she began to run, trying to catch up to Draco who was halfway down the hall. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

 He smirked. “Just to annoy them.”

 Bay shrugged. “That’s a fine reason for starting, but you went a little far, don’t you think?”

 “Not really.”

 Sighing, Bay stopped walking at Draco’s fast pace and waited for Blaise. She still hadn’t found out who was what animal.

* * * * *

 “I’m telling you, Defense Against the Dark Arts is horribly boring,” Gwen said.

 “It wasn’t at my old school.”

 “Well it is here,” Viviane told her, looking up from her textbook, “Because we get a new teacher every year.”

 Bay rolled her eyes. “Sure you do. I suppose they all drop down dead?”

 “The first one did,” Alena said. “The second one got hit with a Memory Charm—turned out good for us too, he was an egotistical git—and left after that happened. Third was a werewolf, but I’ll admit he knew about Dark Creatures. He was probably best friends with some of them. Last year the teacher wasn’t who the Headmaster had hired, and the imposter got his soul sucked out by the Dementors.”

 “And that,” Blaise informed her, “Is a brief history of our Defense teachers.”

 Bay couldn’t say anything.

 “This teacher’s the one we were supposed to have last year. He agreed to come.”

 “His name is Mad-Eye Moody…he was a great Auror,” Viviane sneered, “But now he’s a senile old crackpot.”

 “And we have his class next!” Bay said cheerfully.

 “Ummm, yeah.”

* * * * *

 There were no chairs in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

 Draco sat down at the back of the room, where he would be if there were desks. Some of his Housemates remained standing, and some sat down like he did. Verite perched on the windowsill.

 Closing his eyes, Draco waited for the teacher to come in.

 “Stand up!”

 Quickly, Draco jumped to his feet. The rest of the sitting students stood up swiftly as well. Verite smashed her head on a wooden bar and moaned loudly as she straightened.

 “I didn’t move the desks so you could lie down and sleep!” the old professor barked. He looked exactly as Draco remembered him, although he had a little less hair. The whirling eye that gave him his nickname roved around the room. “You are going to get into shape for training in this class! And that means you’re going to stand up! Any questions?”

 Draco raised his hand. He had asked this question of the imposter-teacher Crouch last year, but hadn’t gotten an answer.

 “You, back there, what is it?”

 “Can you see through people’s clothes with your eye?”

 There were scattered giggles around the room. Although Zabini simply rolled her eyes, Verite was covering her mouth and doubled up with laughter behind the professor’s back.

 “If I wanted to,” Moody said grimly, “Yes, I could.” This brought on a fresh wave of snickers. “But I have it set only to see through Cloaking Charms and Devices. Now! Last year you learned some pretty good jinxes and counter-jinxes…and you covered the Imperius Curse as well, I’m told. This year we’ll get into the Patronus Charm, as well as a whole new set of hexes and curses. Since none of you did too well on the Imperius Curse last year, we’ll cover that again as well.”

 There was a well merited set of groans at this announcement.

 “Why are you moaning?” Moody asked. “If there’s a job to be done, you have to do it!”

 Behind Moody’s back, Verite was smacking her head into her fist.

 That pretty much summed up the feelings in the class, Draco thought. We’ll all get to waltz around like ballerinas without knowing it.

 Verite raised her hand. “If you were using the Imperius Curse on someone, do they snap out of it if you use the Crutaticus Curse on them? I mean, it has to hurt like hell, and that would snap you out of anything, wouldn’t it?”

 Moody turned around, his wooden leg clanking on the floor. “American, are you? From New York as well to judge by that accent of yours.”

 “Um, yes.”

 “Then your teacher would be a certain Llydin Holmes. Holmes routinely teaches all of his students practically every aspect of the Unforgivables. You already know the answer, so stop wasting time.”

 Verite bit her lip. “I forgot,” she offered hopefully.

 Draco cracked a wry smile.

 Moody sighed. “The answer is no, the Imperius Curse retains its hold on a victim until it is broken by will power or taken off.”

 “Thanks,” Verite said.

 Draco spotted Zabini rolling her eyes at Verite. What an idiot that girl was being. Wasting time, Draco supposed.

 “The rest of you!” Moody shouted. “Line up! We’re doing some demonstrations!”

* * * * *

 “Bay!” Blaise shouted.

 “What?”

 “You finished your assignment already?”

 “I write fast, Blaise.”

 Blaise frowned. “Let me read.”

 Digging into her bag, Bay pulled out a scroll of parchment.

 “Very…melodramatic.”

 “What? The story on Salem witch burnings? You’d write like that too if you saw what they did to those poor Muggle ladies. Besides, the story was fun to write.”

 “Binns won’t like it. Too creative for his tastes.”

 “Well that sucks for him then, doesn’t it,” Bay said, rolling her eyes. “I’m going to the library.”

 “I thought you didn’t know your way around.”

 Bay smiled. “I always know my way to the nearest library.”

 Blaise shrugged.

 So far, quite a few of the teachers had been horribly extreme. McGonagall, the Transfiguration teacher, was horribly strict. For Bay, who liked to talk in class and argue with the teacher, this was an absolute nightmare. Professor Snape was biased toward the Gryffindors to the point of obsession with pulling the wool over his eyes and making every accident seem like Harry Potter’s fault. That “Mad-Eye” Moody man was just plain scary. His class seemed like a boot camp.

 That justified Bay’s visit to the library. When bothered by something, go to the library. When bored, go to the library. When you need more ideas for reports, go to the library. When you want to forget about very disturbing teachers, go straight to the library and don’t come out until someone makes you.

 The castle was very large. To get to meals and classes, Bay stayed as close as she could to Blaise, Gwen, Alina, and Viviane. What she would do when she had Arithmancy tomorrow morning, a class none of those girls took with her, she’d probably get hopelessly lost.

 The library was enormous. In one corner, Bay could see a few rows with a silver cord hanging across the entrace to the row. That, Gwen had explained, was the Restricted Section. The majority of the books were large volumes arranged by a method similar to the Muggle Dewey Decimal System. In the very back, which Viviane had pointed out just as they were leaving the library, contained Muggle fantasies, used mainly by the Muggle Studies class when comparing the truth of wizarding histories to the Muggle view point.

 Bay loved Muggle stories. She had started reading them to laugh at how untruthful they were about events that wizards knew the real story behind. But eventually…she had just started to read them for the heck of it. And she enjoyed it. There was a power behind those stories. The twisting plots of Orson Scott Card, Brian Jaques, David Eddings, and even Marion Zimmer Bradley (who wrote stories that had almost no historical accuracy to the tales of Merlin, King Arthur, Morgan le Fay and Gwenhwyfar/Guenivere but made up for it with the breathtaking romances of her novels) captivated her and left her begging for more…although the sequels to Ender’s Game had been rather strange what with all the “piggies” and the telepathic computer lady.

 No matter what Viviane thought, she was going to read.

 She walked up and down the aisle, waiting for a title to pop out at her. She walked and walked…

 Le Morte d’Arthur.

 The name was familiar…she dug through her brain for the connection…ah! King Arthur novel.

 She pulled it down off the shelf.

 For a moment, she considered going back to the Slytherin common room with her prize…And then decided against that idea. She’d read here in the library.

 There were clusters of chairs in the library, all Bay had to do was find one.

 The first cluster had a group of chatting younger children. In Bay’s experience, talking little kids did not make good background noise for reading. Then there was a cluster of older boys, hunched over large refrence books and looking tired. Against the left wall there was a small fire and another island of chairs with only one brown-haired girl who looked to be about Bay’s age.

 “Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, tossing herself into a chair.

 The girl looked up, a startled expression on her face. “No, not at all.”

 “Thanks,” Bay said, and opened her book. The face and thick hair were familiar…drat her bad memory.

 It was a good thing she was wide awake. Every paragraph of the book was dull, and would have probably put her to sleep if she hadn’t had so much tea earlier. The mid-afternoon break here would take some getting used to, and so would the lack of soft-drinks. She hadn’t known how much tea would keep her awake, so she had drank quite a bit.

 She had clawed her way to page twenty when the girl in the chair next to her spoke again.

 “Amazing, you’re actually reading that.”

 “Hmmm?” Bay asked.

 “You’re reading Malory’s book. I remember that monster of a literary work.”

 Bay laughed. “It is kind of boring isn’t it?”

 “That,” the girl said. “Is beyond boring.”

 “Then why did you read it?”

 The girl sighed. “I read everything, according to my friend.”

 “So do I,” Bay said. “A kindred spirit.”

 “You aren’t what I expected.”

 “You were expecting something from me?”

 “You’re a Slytherin.”

 Bay frowned, and cocked her head. “So?”

 “Most Slytherins despise anything relating to Muggles, and most Slytherins also don’t have civil conversations with Gryffindors.”

 “I’m an oddball then.”

 The girl sighed. “Let me rephrase that. All Slytherins have nothing to do with Muggles and loathe all Gryffindors that have ever walked the face of the earth.”

 Bay smiled. “Well now you’ve met one that does. I don’t remember catching your name at all, though. Excuse me if I really did hear it but just forgot.”

 “I’m Hermione Granger.”

 “Bay Verite. Is  this really such an awful book?”

 “Just keep going,” Hermione assured her.

 “I’m assuming you read a lot of Muggle literature.”

 “That’s right.”

 “Have you ever read Redwall?”

 Hermione closed her eyes and smiled. “Yes,” she said, with dreamy expression on her face. “I loved that book.”

 “All right!” Bay said. “Not only can you reassure me that I picked a good book out, but now I can tell you have good taste.”

 Hermione laughed. “You really aren’t like the rest of them.”

 “Nope,” Bay said. “I’m one of a kind.”

 A deep bell sound split the air. “Dinner!” Hermione gasped, and flung her book onto the table. “I guess I’ll see you later, Bay.”

 “Right,” Bay said, and picked up the book that had made her a new friend.