23. we slytherins take care of each other

· · ─────── · ❆ · ─────── · ·

"Draco Malfoy,"

The said blond curses a storm mentally. He wishes he had taken the risk and followed the stupid witch to see her punch the Headmaster. Even Snape's rather concerning obsessive nature with his cupboards didn't seem all that unappealing at the moment.

In comparison to Blaise's knowing gaze that is. He hated the observant arsehole.

"What?" He doesn't raise his voice more than a mumble even though his haughty façade demands him to do so.

It's late. Most have retired to their respective rooms with the exception of the fifth years. The quiet hour wraps them in a blanket of hushed conversations. Conversations that were dwindling at the confrontation.

"Are you ready to tell us now?"

"Tell you what Zabini?"

"Why you have been such a wanker these days?" Pansy answers instead, crossing her legs and fixing him with a steely stare. "How about we start there?"

"Would it kill you for you to be clear?"

"Would it kill you for you to be nice?"

"Why should I be?"

"Then why should I be?"

"Pansy," Millicent sighs.

Theo snatches the opportunity to question. He leans forward, utilising his short stature that he doesn't loathe as much since it allows him to read the blond's downcast face. "What's been up with you lately?"

Draco wills for his tense figure to relax. A harder task than it should be underneath their gazes. It would have been easier to do so if they didn't appear so certain. He'll have to feign ignorance for their sake at the least. "Wh—?"

Blaise doesn't allow that. "Why you are so intent on avoiding us? You haven't been yourself lately."

"The books too," Crabble mutters.

"You're reading a lot more too," Goyle adds.

Draco doesn't suppress his snort then. Their words serve as the stark reminder he needed. They are friends in nothing but name. How were they ever to know that he spent days and nights locked up his room, studying his notes?

That powers him to scoff and say, "Maybe I've grown more serious about my academics and have an ounce of concern for my future?"

The 'unlike you peasants' is unsaid but implied.

"Since when?" Astoria's question is faint. She isn't too close but also isn't too sure. She looks over to her sister but she's already gone.

"Since this summer of course," it's almost commendable of how he states with all the certainty and pride he does not possess. "I'll have to carry on the noble name and make my contributions to preserve its greatness."

"And that includes pushing your friends away?"

"I'll do what I've to do." He has been counting on Pansy being distracted with flirting with every living thing under the sun with a pulse but he hadn't foreseen her disappointment.

Honestly, Jackson has served as the perfect distraction. She was enamoured with her at first sight. Although he deems it questionable in some aspects, he gets it. She looks fine, attractive in a way that thought drives into your skull and imprints in your brain. She could be annoying though.

"Malfoy, you look like shit," Millicent declares, "it matches your shitty personality."

She leaves. And one by one all leave him. Blaise lingers.

In the wake of solitude, Draco could breathe again. That was close. It also made him appreciate himself for all the measures he had taken. It was a foolproof plan.

Pretend to be ignorant and when that doesn't work, claim to have grown serious about life. Pepper in some bullshit about family name incorporating an insult and poke at their deepest insecurities. And it's done.

None left to pry and get entangled in the mess. It has worked well since the summer. It will work.

Perfect.

It doesn't work.

· · ─────── · ❆ · ─────── · ·

The cloud envelops her all too soon. She could pretend ignorance for only so long. The disguise of an ordinary student, although of a wizarding school, was an ill fitting mask for the past she carried. A past that clings to her as crisscrossing lines on her skin, terrors that chase her in the night and letters delivered to her by eagles.

She loves her campers, truly she does. Hopeless, impossible wishes for a normal life were let go ages ago but she wouldn't mind living in something of its semblance. She drew definitions of normalcy from how familiar it is after all. Any day without waking up disoriented in the dark woods was welcome.

Guess she could find it in herself to forgive the gods for pushing her in another place she didn't want to be after all. Hogwarts had given her a schedule she could look forward to.
However stressful it may be, there was reassurance restored by the now familiar ebb and flow of the castle.

A feeling that made her miss the camps even more. The time could never get her to relax with the gods' warnings lingering in her head. The conditions under which she had to bow and for her parents to find silver linings in such an unexpected situation.

All she wants to do is go for swims in the ocean, teach her campers to not die, rile up some gods and binge Disney movies with her friends.

Instead, she is stuck in the cold but cozy dungeons, trudging through too long assignments and enormous tomes.

Her personal space is invaded without notice. Pansy rests her head with a sigh on her shoulder, moving to hover close when she feels the demigod tense beneath her.

"Pansy,"

Said Slytherin's frown turns deeper at the acknowledgement. "That's no way to greet someone,"

Percy finally lifts her eyes from the parchment. She sighs at the absence of the other fifth years. If they have had been here, she would have escaped the Prefect's hold. "How do you do it then?"

The smile that grows on her face gives Pansy a radiant glow. "Well, a 'hello my darling' would suffice."

A huff is all the response she gets with the slightest of a smile. She liked her enough although how quickly the latter had taken a shine to her is something that still puzzles her. "Yeah, I'lI stick with 'hey'?"

"As long as I can see your iridescent eyes, anything will do," she says in the most magnanimous tone one can manage.

Percy laughs, a quiet chuckle that was better than nothing. She is well aware that such proclamations mean little, especially when the girl's large nose twitches at the open door to the unoccupied room belonging to Millicent.

"Where are the others?"

"Here and there," though her gesture is nonchalant, her sharp gaze suggest that she had planned to corner the demigod. "You tell me, how're you doing?"

"I'm fine," the answer is immediate, perfect enough with the addition of a careless shrug.

Pansy gives a steely stare, giving her the voice to amend her answer. "Do you take us to be idiots?" She asks instead when the exchange student stares right back.

"No," she grimaces, thinking back to last week when second years had taken up the challenge to bait merpeople with the shiniest trinkets. "Not always."

"Well we are not," she looks above, Percy's seated position giving her otherwise nonexistent advantage to appear threatening. She is indeed threatening with her blank expression that gives away absolutely nothing.

"Got it,"

"So we know that that camp of yours is not all sunshine as you make it out to be,"

"How?" Percy's suspicion is born of instinct. She has imparted basic details of the camp when the others had pressed for it without pause, as in for straight four days. Her self control is strong but she hadn't seen any issue with sharing that it was a summer camp and they had capture the flag games. She rethinks her decisions.

Pansy rolls her eyes, shifting back in the face of her distrust. "When you see someone frowning at a piece of parchment like it had spat on their grandmother's grave and danced above her, you start to think it might not be good news."

"I would be real glad if someone did that to my grandmother..." she thinks out loud. She must have been lost in her thoughts more often than she had thought.

"Me too," Pansy mutters. "Are you gonna tell me what's the matter?"

"Why do you care?" She shoots back instead.

To her credit, the Prefect doesn't appear to be taken back at all. "Because you're a Slytherin,"

"And?" She prompts, her eyebrows raising when no other explanation comes forth.

"And," she adapts a slow pace as if talking to a child, "we Slytherins take care of each other."

"You don't seem to try so much with Draco Malfoy," she was anything but blind. The fifth years' murmurs and the increasing time spent with said Potions partner had revealed that the boy's behavior had taken a drastic turn. A change that would destroy him, if his friends' worries were anything to go by.

Pansy's certainty wavers. The silent triumph at proving the American about her presumptions about her house dissolves for similarly subtle anger to take its place. "We did, we are," her lips twists at her own slip up. "Why do you ask? Will you prove to be as difficult as him?"

Percy simply shakes her head. She struggles to see her line of thought. She doesn't think she would be so much trouble, for their two subjects of concerns held different positions in the House. There is also the part where their paths don't meet and how their problems are vastly different.

It wouldn't be soon though.

"I don't know Pansy, you tell me?" She leans back against the wall, withholding a sigh. She arrests the witch with her gaze, knowing and tired.

To her credit, Pansy doesn't react to the careful indifferent. She leans back as well, crossing her arms. "You are trouble Percy,"

Percy's lips curl up then, "I know."

24. where evil lurks

· · ─────── · ❆ · ─────── · ·

"I didn't survive Hell for this,"

Pansy snorts. Millicent glares at her for almost spilling tea on her assignment in her amusement.

"It's not my fault you always choose to sit beside my armchair," the former defends herself, "on the floor of all places."

"You're right," Millicent agrees, "it was all my fault." Sarcastically, one might add.

"Alright alright, don't move." Pansy vanishes the tea in an attempt to placate her. She holds up her empty hands, "See? Now stay."

Millicent doesn't quite smile—Daphne swears up and down that the Bulstrode curse to never be able to smile has struck her too—but her ever present scowl does lose some of its severity.

Groans are heard at the loss of tea among the fifth years gathered. "You're an awful Prefect," Theo declares. "I propose abdication,"

"For the crime of robbing us of the most important thing that matters to a true English." Blaise holds his own cup of tea that had survived the Prefect's charm close to his heart. "Beheading's the only appropriate choice."

"You're Italian, Blaise,"

"Shut it Draco," he brandishes an arm towards his friend who simply rolls his eyes. "So when do we schedule the beheading?" His own dark eyes gleam, "I might conveniently have a lovely guillotine—"

"Oh, you don't seem excited at the prospect at all Zabini," Millicent grants him a bored look before returning to her parchment. "Who would be though? When your dear friend's head is chopped off,"

"I wouldn't truly mind,"

"It would be fun," Theo shrugs, accepting a newly conjured cup of tea, courtesy of Blaise.

Draco sees the moment fit to roll his eyes heavenward again. He turns to Percy whose comment had began all this, "You didn't survive Hell for this, I suppose?"

"No," her answer is quick, dry when she turns to the pile of parchment in front of her. "I think the fuck not. Why didn't anybody tell me we have to submit the too bloody long Divination essay tonight?"

The complaint ensues an argument. The group lounging in armchairs and on the floor point at each other. Crabbe and Goyle do not stir at the noise. Other students sob about their own assignments.

"She did not tell us!"

"She told us it was yesterday!"

"How does that make it any better?"

"That mad coot would have 'seen' I wouldn't submit anyways,"

"We wanted to see you push her off the window when she refuses to give you the credits for it," Theo sips his coffee, humming with great satisfaction.

Percy turns to glare at him, confusion morphing into annoyance. "I wouldn't have done that,"

"Maybe," the brunet sings, "maybe not."

Although she did have a reputation of bringing down wrath upon those that have the immense stupidity to treat her unfairly—that particular lesson with Snape had been memorable, to say the least—she wouldn't go as far as to kill a teacher. As long as they don't grow bat wings and try to kill her that is. "I wouldn't have—"

Pansy interrupts, throwing her hands in the air, "Does it have to be an argument everytime with you two?"

"He's the one that refuses to—"

"She insults me at every turn," he turns up his nose with a sniff.

"He called me a terrorist," she spreads her hands in front of her.

"You are one, for salazar's sake!"

"I'm not." Percy is sure to emphasise the word

"You guys just can't get along, can you?" Blaise remarks with his lingering amusement. "You should have started with handshakes Pans,"

"Sorrys first," Millicent corrects, "then handshakes and then hugs."

"This is ridiculous," Draco remarks.

"Yes!"

Pansy smirks then. A toothy grin that makes the others wary. "Yeah Blaise, they just can-Nott get along can they?"

"No, oh no, they can-Nott," the repetition of it causes the first chortle from Millicent (poor Daphne misses all such evidence of her claims being wrong). That sets off a chain of laughter.

"No, they lack compas—Son," a pointed look is thrown at Percy with barely suppressed laughter.

"Nope, I did not survive Hell for this."

· · ─────── · ❆ · ─────── · ·

Percy is in good spirits when she joins the Golden Trio in the library after lunch. Although she was invited to laze about in the grounds by her housemates, the habit of spending Saturday afternoons with the Gryffindors has stuck. 

There are expected greetings exchanged and the cramming begins the next instant. A test and an assignment on the same day is truly cruelty.

"So," Hermione tenses at Ron's tone, anticipating the conversation with the single word. She couldn't decide what she loathes more—her lost study session or at the subject. "Percy?"

The girl hums, consumed in her book. It was the one she favored for the multitude of moving pictures it contained.

"How's Slytherin house?"

Then, his tone gets her to frown. "It's good," she shrugs. "Better rooms than any school I've been to."

Harry pipes in, "The housemates?"

"They're good, great actually," she says with a smile.

"Good how?" Hermione joins in, knowing the matter wouldn't be dropped.

"They're good." She shakes her head.
"Guys, I'II let you know if anyone's handing out Dark Lord's pamphlets to me."

Ron mirrors her action. "Percy you don't understand! Slytherins are not what you think are. They're evil people!"

"Evil in what way?"

"They are deatheaters!"

"Followers of You-Know-Who," Hermione clarified, hissing at Harry to lower his voice.

Percy ruminates over it. She adopts an indifferent look. "Them or their parents?"

"Well, their parents mostly-"

"Them, their parents, both. All."

"Harry is convinced Malfoy is a deatheater," the bushy haired witch attempts to be sympathetic to her best friend that she was convinced was delusional. "But, a lot of the deatheaters have been proved to have been in the Slytherin house."

"Malfoy?" she tilts her head at the name.
The image of his still figure beneath the stained glass depicting hydrangeas come to her mind. His unnatural silence that was rumored to have replaced the posh obnoxious attitude that managed to bleed through in the raise of his eyebrow and the tilt of his lips. "Wait," she parrots Hermione's words, "a lot? Not all?"

She hesitates to answer, "No, there are accounts of deatheaters from other houses too." The pages of her book crinkle beneath her twitchy fingers.

"But most of them are Slytherins."

"Percy, you do know Malfoy right?" Harry asks over his best friend's firm statement.
"Your Potions partner?"

"Yeah, I know," she shakes out her arm, frowning, "we don't really talk much."

"He hasn't said anything?" Harry leans forward, his hand playing atop of the table.

"We do talk about Potions," she is alarmed at his reaction.

"And he was evil, wasn't he?" Ron thumps the table in a show of supposed triumph.

The girls share a look of exasperated confusion. The lack of logic was almost commendable.

'"I mean he's kinda an asshole," she continues over their shared delight displayed through their fist bumps in the air, "but I think he's just passionate about potions and he doesn't seem like the sorta asshole that massacres people, you know?"

"That's because he's good at hiding it!"

"That's a bit far fetching Harry-"

Percy interrupts Hermione, "Then, how do you know?"

He pushes his glasses looking towards Ron who also appears curious. "I mean—I don't know! I just do!"

"Now I can't help you, mate," the redhead was wrong to hope a different, a much more reasonable answer.

"Actually, now I see," Percy thinks out loud, "maybe the reason so many Slytherins end up as deatheaters is because you told them so. Like, in the end, they were nothing more than kids and they become what you say."

"And their family members being deatheaters had nothing to do with it?" Harry argues back.

She throws her hands in the air. "Ok man yes but what do you do?" She further emphasizes her questions with the raise of her eyebrows. "Sure all your uncles and aunts being deatheaters could have been an influence and maybe they wanted to be better people or not, whatever. But you guys treat eleven year olds like shit just because they have a green patch on their robe!"

No retorts follow her exclamation.

"You boo at fucking kids, imagine how that feels like--to be a kid, all pumped up to go to a magical school only to be sorted into a supposedly evil house and two-thirds of the school boos at you on your first fucking day." Ron starts to disagree but she wasn't done.

"No no no, there are assholes in the house sure, but not everyone deserves that sort of treatment. Did you know we have support groups especially against specific houses and teachers? We're warned to not go alone ever. Why? Because there's a real chance you might get hexed. All along, you told me they were the bullies but the longer time I spend here, I'm not so sure that's the truth."

The Golden Trio allow silence consume their table.

"I'm not saying that you guys are the only reason for the thing with the deatheaters," Percy sighs, "it's just those kids deserve better. All of them. Hufflepuffs are some of the nicest people of course but I saw a 'puff fistfight a wild raccoon because it tried to steal a plant,"
She pauses reliving the scene in her mind.
She shudders.

"That was fucking terrifying. And Ravenclaws are wise yes, but they are hardly stuck up. One guy once cried to me about how cute it was to see the cave paintings made by kids in the ancient times because it was just so cute and depicts common interests of children and how it shows they were people too."

Her inability to share his strong sentiments echoes in her pause.

"I just think you give these houses you're sorted into too much mind. They're just based off on the most dominant personality traits, aren't they?" She casts a questioning look towards Hermione to confirm the fact she had learned from a book. The witch gives a hesitant nod. "Yeah, that's not in any way the deciding factor. It doesn't define the person and I think it's high time you learned it."

With her work flow interrupted and the topic casting a foul air over her mood, Percy decides to leave.

"Percy—" They try to reason but find themselves out of those.

"I see why you've a war going on for so long now," she leaves them with her newfound revelation, her lips pursing in disappointment. "The evil's not outside, it's right here."