The Snakepit, Chapter 2
Once again, if you recognize them, they aren't mine; if you do, they are. Either way, I'm not making any money off this.
If you're wedded to the idea that Gryffindors are noble, then you'll be offended. But jokes aren't always funny. Especially practical ones. And we all know who the kings of practical jokes are...
Draco looked up in surprise as fat Martin Hythe stormed through the common room, headed for his dorm. Livesey was on his heels, and was positively seething with rage. It raised Draco's brows. Livesey was too bony in the face to have any pretensions to being handsome, and it didn't help that he was entirely white with rage, with red patches flaring angrily in his cheeks.
"What happened, Ro?" said Juliana Caus, another third year, from her seat by the fire.
"Gryffindor," Rowland Livesey said between clenched teeth. There was a subtle sussuration around the room as people put down books and turned to listen.
"Who in Gryffindor?" asked Owen Corfe, Livesey's cousin, a year older and somewhat more subdued. "I've not seen you this angry in years."
"Their oh-so-noble beaters, the Weasley twins," spat Livesey. "Their little "jokes".
A soft noise went through the room. Draco listened, frowning.
"They used Conspectus Res Cibus and Famis on him at the same time, and then added a pig's tail to his arse for good measure while he tried to eat his textbook," Livesey said, "and put a confusion charm on me when I was trying to help him. And you know how Kettleburn is...if you're human, he won't notice a damn thing you do. He did take the pig's tail off, I'll give him that much. I think one of his damned 'pets' sucked out his wits when he wasn't looking. And he didn't do a thing to the Weasleys."
Joscelin Ruyton, a dark and wiry sixth-year, unwound himself from where he'd been sitting with Lacerta Cadmon, "explaining" an assignment to her. "You know," he said lazily, crossing the room to poke idly at the fire, "those two are well overdue for some pruning."
"Were it mine to do, they'd be cut off at the root," snapped Livesey. His cousin put an arm around his shoulders and began talking softly to him. Draco heard the occasional word, and realized Livesey was being talked down. It worked....his face gradually resumed a normal color, while his cousin's got tighter and tenser.This was a rarity. Owen Corfe never got angry.
"Well, none of us wants to get expelled, of course," commented Ferrers from the sofa near the boys' dorm stairs. "But that doesn't make an appropriate response impossible by any means." His dark eyes were half-lidded, but he was hardly asleep. Alan Ferrers LIVED to bait Gryffindors. His best friend, Nicholas Steyney, already had a nasty grin on his face. They and the twins had a bitter and nasty rivalry going, and had from the moment they met two years before, on the Hogwarts Express on their way to Hogwarts for the first time. Both Ferrers and Steyney had had to go immediately to the hospital wing, and were Sorted when the hexes were off. They had never forgiven the twins. Then again, they'd had no cause to do so.
"What's going on?" said Edmund Bletchley as he came into the room, a possessive hand reaching back to assist Blanche Morpeth through the doorway. The tall fifth-year boy looked around, brows furrowing as he noticed the mood in the room, hand tightening uncertainly on the hand of the girl he was with.
"The Weasley twins hexed Hythe and Livesey in Magical Creatures," said Corfe. His blue eyes were glittering, and there was a feeling of growing tension in the room. If Corfe had gotten angry, someone was going to pay.
Bletchley said, "Run along, Blanche, dear, this is House business," and sat down, eyes as intent as when he was guarding the hoops.
"Oh, I'll sit in," she said, her steely voice at odds with her seemingly fragile blond beauty. "I have no love whatsoever for those two, myself. I had my meals disrupted by a dungbomb once too often last term."
Her boyfriend looked at her, and raised a brow. "Good," was all he said, but he and several others were reappraising her. Clearly there was iron in this particular flower.
"The bloody thing is," Ferrers said appraisingly, "this has to be done in the right circumstances. McGonagall and Vector will take points from us if we so much as look cross-eyed at a Gryf in their classes." There was a general noise of reluctant agreement.
"Binns won't notice," said Caus, thoughtfully twining a lock of walnut hair around one finger as she considered the problem.
"We'd have to stay awake long enough," laughed Steyney. There was scattered laughter, and some nodding heads.
"Snape, on the other hand," said Corfe thoughtfully....
"Takes a lot to get points taken in Potions, that's true," said Steyney. "But the problem is, they expect us to do things in Potions."
"Hooch doesn't let us get away with a damned thing in play," said Bletchley bitterly. "Derrick and I both feel they'd look better after they've taken a bludger to the face once or twice."
There was a sullen mumble of agreement.
"Where did they learn those charms, anyway?" asked Alicia Roby, another third year. She was a quiet, studious girl, who some thought might have done well in Ravenclaw too. She had her finger in her Charms text, and said, "I've looked through this while you were talking, and those spells aren't in there. There's some vaguely like them, but only vaguely. They surely aren't THAT good with Charms, are they?"
"Geniuses? No," said Ruyton. "Just little swotty gits that got hold of an advanced charms text. I checked the back of mine, and the Conspectus res sospitus charm, which they changed slightly, and the Famis charm are in here."
"They've older brothers," said Corfe thoughtfully.
"The one's a fifth year prefect," said Bletchley. "And a thorough prat at that. Will take points as soon as look at you. The others are out...Something to do with dragons, and I think I heard about one working for Gringotts."
"He's a cursebreaker," said sixth-year Primula Keaton from an armchair where she was repainting her long nails a liquid black, ornamented with the Slytherin snake. She was frowning at her nails, as if unsatisfied with the charm. "My older brother worked with him...I remember his complaints over the holidays."
"Plenty of books lying around to borrow over the summer," said Steyney thoughtfully, but with venom in his tone.
"Plenty to borrow around here, aren't there, Joscelin?" said Bletchley thoughtfully.
Joscelin gave a slow and thoroughly nasty smile. "Quite a few." He looked around at the rather crowded room, and said, "Bletchley, Ferrers, Steyney, Corfe, Livesey...my dorm. Plotting is best accomplished in private."
As the conspirators went upstairs, little Giles Russell said, "What did Hythe do to them to make them do that?"
"He existed," said Blanche Morpeth, bitterly. "That's the way it always is. We're Slytherins, and so everyone assumes whatever gets done to us is something we deserve."
"You learn," said Alicia Roby, quietly. "You don't go places without two or three other people. You don't sit with your back to doors. You don't trust people behind you unless they're another Slytherin. And you never trust a Gryffindor. Ever. You can't." Behind her words was the same pain and mistrust that had colored Blanche's words.
"It doesn't hurt at all to be quick on the draw, either," said Juliana Caus. "You practice your hexes and your Shielding Charms and counters, study them as much as you can, and keep your wand in your hand in the corridors."
"But the teachers...." said Russell, in bewilderment.
"Snape looks out for us," said Brice Penrith, who had come in half-way through the conversation. The tall fourth-year shoved his blond hair out of his eyes, and sat down on an unoccupied chair. "And, to be fair, Vector and Hooch don't let anyone disrupt anything, and they hit the Gryffindors as hard as us. But otherwise....it's weighted in their favor. Dumbledore was in Gryffindor House, remember."
"You have to rely on yourself and your House," said Blanche with brutal simplicity. "Fair? No, of course not. But who said life ever was?"
"We have the consolation of knowing our bloodline is true," said Penrith, taking out his Transfiguration essay and quill. "And in knowing that we snakes survive where lions die."
And with that, the conversation died down, and Draco turned back to his own work.
Dinner that night was painful. The Gryffindors made oinking sounds when Hythe came in, and if it hadn't been for his cousin's hand on his arm, Livesey would have been serving detention for assault. But as Draco ate, talking to the other first years, he realized that it wasn't just Gryffindor oinking. The hall suddenly felt very large, and the food went to ashes in his mouth.
They began to leave the hall, and pretty first-year Vinca Morpeth shrieked as she fell. A smirking Ravenclaw said, "Watch where you walk, snake," as he strolled off. Vinca was limping as they went back to their common room. "He did it on purpose," she whispered to Pansy Parkinson, who had an arm around her shoulder. "He stepped hard on my foot. What did I ever do to him?"
Draco overheard, and watched as Melissande deftly used healing spells on Vinca's broken foot, and her older sister, Blanche, comforted the sobbing first-year.
And he thought about the classes he had with Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and decided to practice the unobtrusive dropping of things into containers as he passed by. Good for potions class.
It was quite unfair, after all, to expect them not to retaliate. Even peaceful snakes bite when trodden upon.
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