A/N: Everything, except the stuff you don’t recognize, belongs to JK Rowling and her utter genius.
Weasley Vs. Malfoy
Medea’s pale hand shook in anticipation as she held the letter with the Hogwarts seal. This was the moment she’d been waiting for the entire holiday. Both of her parents had been Prefects while at Hogwarts and she was about to find out if she was going to carry on the tradition.
“Just open it, Medea,” Hermione laughed. “Whether you open or not won’t change what’s in it.”
“I know, I’m just nervous,” she admitted.
“You have absolutely nothing to worry about, love,” Draco assured her soothingly. “You haven’t broken any school rules, which is more than I can say for the two of us.”
Hermione laughed. “That’s true, but I broke them for better purposes than him,” she added in a whisper.
“Plus, you had better O.W.L.s than even your mother at your age.”
Hermione’s mouth fell open in shock. “I had a bias professor and you know it well.”
Draco tightened his hold on her and kissed her cheek. “My dear, that’s entirely not the point. The point is she has absolutely nothing to worry about.”
Medea had been so caught up her parent’s jovial banter that she’d almost forgotten the point herself. She looked down at the envelope and took a deep breath. It helped to know that even if she hadn’t been chosen as the Gryffindor Prefect her parents would still love her just as much as they always had. “Here it goes.”
She tore open the seal and to her great relief a scarlet badge floated down onto the table. She sighed, letting all her tension and anxiety go, and eventually laughed.
“Congratulations!” Hermione cheered and moved around the table to hug her daughter. “I always knew you would be one. If your father was a Prefect then the Head Mistress would have been mad not to make you one.”
Instead of pretending to be hurt, he nodded slowly in agreement. “I can’t deny it; even I thought the Head Master was mad when he made me a Prefect. But then, there weren’t any more qualified candidates in Slytherin.”
Hermione rolled her eyes, even though it was true. This day wasn’t about them.
Medea couldn’t stop smiling. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to go back to school.”
“I know it’s exciting but it really is a job,” Hermione reminded her. “I have no doubt that you’ll be wonderful though.”
“Thanks, mum.”
* * * *
“Mum, are you always going to cry when I leave?” Medea asked at the station before she got on the train to Hogwarts for her fifth year.
Hermione wiped away the solitary tear that had rolled its way down her cheek. “Yes. Are you ever going to cry when you leave?”
Medea shook her head. “Sorry, I just love school! Especially this year. But I promise I’ll write and tell you about the other Prefects as soon as I get there.”
Draco pulled his daughter into a long hug and kissed her head. “Just get on the train and have a good year,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about your mum, she’ll be busy enough with your brother. Good-bye, love.”
“Bye, dad.” Medea bent down and picked up her four-year-old brother Jarett. “Bye-bye, Jarett,” she said and kissed his pudgy cheek.
“Bye-bye, Dea,” he returned and gave her a very sloppy excuse for a kiss. “I miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” she laughed.
The whistle signaling the final boarding call sound and Medea ran to catch the train. But the first person she ran into in the narrow corridor was the one person who could ruin her perfect day: Patrick Potter. He looked down at her badge and gave her a malicious grin. “Hello, Malfoy. I must say I’m not surprised.”
Her nostril flared irritably. He could make her mad without even trying. “Don’t cross me, Potter,” she warned, but it was more of a plead. As much as she wanted to punish him for being a thorn in her side for the past four years, she didn’t want to take points away from her own house. But she would if she had to.
Thankfully, Hyatt stepped in front of him. “Come on, Patrick,” he said seriously. “Let’s get a compartment before they’re all full.”
His green eyes narrowed and the tension seemed to grow exponentially as they stared at each other. If there was one thing he truly couldn’t stand about Medea it was the fact that he could do nothing to make her back down. And now that she was a Prefect it would only get worse. “Fine,” he said, but before relinquished his stare he added; “Don’t get comfortable.”
“I never do when you’re around,” she assured him.
Hyatt looked at her apologetically and pushed his cousin down the corridor. With one last look, Medea turned and made her way to the Prefect car, but she didn’t plan to get comfortable.
When she entered the cabin she was glad to see a familiar face. One of her few friends, Glenn McFaley from Ravenclaw, was sitting quietly by the window like he usually did. “Hi, Glenn,” she greeted and sat next to him. “I figured you’d be here.”
“I don’t know why,” he said, smiling nervously. “Just because I behave doesn’t mean I can make others do the same.”
“The first years will learn by example then, if nothing else,” she said positively. The comfortable silence they normally shared ensued for a few moments before Medea stood and went back out into the corridor. Just as she had suspected, there was Patrick standing in the doorway of a compartment, terrorizing a group of first years. “Potter!” she yelled. “Leave them alone.”
He looked at her in wide-eyed surprise and backed away. “Malfoy,” he seethed.
She walked up to him, closed the door to the first years’ compartment, and looked him straight in the eye. “Every wrong move you make, I’ll be there,” she admonished. “Consider quitting now.”
“I never quit,” he told her, bringing himself to his full height so he towered over her.
She shrugged, “It is your choice, but consider yourself warned.”
He smiled sarcastically. “Cheers, then.” He turned from her and pushed Hyatt down the corridor in front of him.
“How does she always know?” Hyatt practically yelled when the boys rejoined Phaedra and Odile in their cabin. “We hadn’t even done anything yet!”
“What do you mean?” Phaedra asked.
“We’d just opened the door when she came out and stopped us, like she knew what we were up to,” Patrick clarified more calmly.
“Don’t give her that much credit,” Odile said. “Could it not have been mere coincidence?”
Hyatt shook his head. “That’s the thing, she just went right back to her cabin.”
After a few moments of thoughtful silence, Phaedra got a Machiavellian grin on her pink lips. “I wonder,” she whispered to herself in her soft, high voice.
All three looked over at her. “What?” they asked in unison.
“If we have…unique powers, we’re supposed to tell the Head Mistress, right?”
“Yes, of course, so we can get the proper help and training,” Hyatt said. “What’s your point?”
Odile rolled her eyes and hit him upside the head. “Honestly. You’re thinking she’s a Legilimens, aren’t you?”
“Precisely, and if she is she hasn’t told anyone…”
Odile’s eye narrowed in glee. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to catch the staunch rule keeper breaking a rule herself?”
Patrick sat up. “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he said with obvious concern.
“Have you gone soft, Potter?” Phaedra teased.
He grabbed the liquorice wand out of her hand. “I was never that callous to begin with,” he said quietly and glared at her. “You guys can scheme all you want, but I’ll have no part in it.”
Hyatt turned away so he could rummage up the courage to say; “Me neither, sorry ladies.”
“And you call yourself a Weasley.” Odile shook her head in disgust. “Patrick,” she breathed in a mesmerizing voice, utilizing her Veela ancestry. “Malfoy has been a pain in our sides since we were first years. Wouldn’t you like to catch her in some dodgy scheme?”
“Dile, it doesn’t matter if the school finds out, if she truly is a Legilimens she can use her power whether the school is aware or not,” Patrick pointed out. Besides, he’d never been out to get her like Odile. Malfoy was always the one in the right and she always had been.
* * * *
Medea had made it a habit to surreptitiously study her roommates before she turned in and tonight the effort was actually prolific. The smallest grin split her lips as she went upstairs to set her trap. She pulled her bed curtains closed and cleaned up around her living space like she always did before she turned in. Only, she didn’t turn in. She grabbed a book and returned to the Common room for her stake out.
She’d been reading for hours, nearly falling asleep, when the clock struck twelve. They weren’t there yet, and she was beginning to wonder if they’d changed their minds without her knowing. But her fears were unfounded. She soon heard the shuffling of footsteps coming down the stairs and the echo of mischievous giggles.
“Evening ladies,” Hyatt said when he met his cousins.
Medea smiled and stood up to face the perpetrators . “Evening Weasleys,” she said and the whole group jumped.
“Merde!”
“Phaedra!” Patrick chastised.
“Going somewhere?” she asked in feigned ignorance.
“Not anymore,” Patrick said quietly and pulled Hyatt back up the stairs to their dorm. “Goodnight, girls.” Before he was out of sight he made eye contact with Medea and thought the same sentiment for her.
“Garce,” Odile mumbled before she left.
But Medea didn’t hear her. She fell back onto the couch and aimlessly searched the dark room. He hadn’t said that, he most definitely hadn’t said that; he’d thought it. And he’d thought it like he knew she would hear anyway. “He knows.”
* * * *
The next weekend was a Hogsmeade weekend and Medea went directly to her mother’s store. She purposely avoided the comic wall of the store and went to the back room to find Hermione. “Hi, mum, can I talk to you?”
“Oh, hello, love,” she said with a quick smile. “Care to help? This day is always crazy and your father is getting your brother new robes. He grew out of his others already.”
It was clear that her mother was busy and distracted, but she really needed the mother right now, not the storeowner. “I’ll help, but I must talk to you first.”
“What is it?” she asked distractedly and opened another box with her wand.
“Mum, stop thinking about your books for a few moments! Pay attention to me!” Medea said in aggravation.
This made Hermione look at her daughter. “I am paying attention to you.”
“No, you’re not. You’re thinking about your new shipment of books, and your full book shop, and if dad will get the proper robes for Jarret; a size too big so he’ll have room to grow.”
Hermione stood up and slowly cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”
“I just know,” Medea said quietly.
“Are you””
Medea looked at her mother. “Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking.”
Hermione walked toward her daughter with a sense of awe. “You can read minds,” she whispered.
“Yes,”
“Why didn’t you tell me, or your father, or someone?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” she admitted. “I was afraid of how people would deal with it. I’m not good at making friends anyway, but this would have made it worse.”
“Unfortunately your father and I weren’t very good at making friends either. So why are you telling me now?”
“I think someone knows,” she revealed.
Hermione immediately became the concerned mother. “How? And who?”
“Patrick Potter.”
“Potter?” her mother asked with wide, nervous eyes. “Patrick Potter knows you’re a Legilimens?”
“I think so. See, I normally read him and the Weasley’s before I turn in to see what they’re up to, and the other night I stopped them from sneaking out. Well, when Patrick went up the stairs he looked at me and thought good night, and he thought it like he knew I could read it.”
Hermione kissed Medea’s forehead and pulled her into a warm hug. “It looks like you really need to tell Professor McGonagall. It’s for your own good, so you can get the proper training.”
“Fine.” Medea nodded. “Okay, I will help on the floor until I have to go back.”
“Thank you.” Hermione cupped her daughter’s face. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, mum.”
* * * *
Medea nervously twisted her hands when she walked back into the school. She knew she had to tell the Head Mistress, and she knew that there was no time like the present.
“Miss Malfoy,” a familiar voice said behind her.
She turned to see Professor McGonagall walking toward her. “Yes, Professor?” she asked, amazed at the fortuitous timing.
“Come to my office, please, I want to talk to you.”
“Okay,” Medea said and followed her, but her mind was racing. What could she possibly want to talk to her about? Medea hadn’t even told her the secret yet.
“I had an interesting conversation with Odile and Phaedra Weasley today,” Professor McGonagall said when she sat behind her desk in her office.
“Oh,” Medea said, trying to hide her anxiety.
“They claimed that you had been cheating off of them by reading their minds.”
“What?” Medea yelled before she could stop her self. “That’s preposterous! Me cheat off of them! Those”two!”
“Miss Malfoy,” McGonagall said purposefully. “I can’t help but notice that you didn’t deny the mind reading part of their claim.”
“No, Professor.”
“I assure you that I didn’t believe for an instant that you would copy off of them,” she told her. “But the mind reading accusation made me think. You are an excellent Prefect, and I have a theory as to””
“I’ll put your theory to rest,” Medea told her guiltily. “I had a talk with my mother today in Hogsmeade and she advised me to tell you. I can read minds, I’ve known since third year but I was afraid to tell anyone.”
The Head Mistress folded her hands on her desk. “The reason we ask our students to inform us of any unique powers is so that we may give them the proper training. We have your best interest in mind.”
“I know,“ Medea admitted. “That’s what my mother said. I was afraid that everyone would act weird around me if they knew I could read their mind.”
“No one has to know, Miss Malfoy, telling your peers is up to you. But with training you can control your Legilimency so you have the choice to read someone’s mind.”
Medea sighed. “That would be wonderful! I’m so tired seeing things I really don’t want to see!” she said with a distressed look.
McGonagall couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m sure. Well, I’ve actually got an instructor in mind for you. She was the last Legilimens I’ve met before you. I’ll ask her and hopefully you can start lessons next week.”
“So I’m not in trouble?” Medea asked, biting her lip anxiously.
McGonagall shook her head. “No, I’m an animagus; I understand that it’s not easy to tell your Professor that something unusual is happening to you.”
“Thank you. And I really was going to tell you. “
“I know, you’re dismissed, Miss Malfoy.”
* * * *
When Medea walked into the Common room of the Gryffindor tower, the first thing she encountered was the Weasley cousins sitting in their corner laughing. But it stopped when she entered. As Medea walked near them, she felt a surprising surge of resentment toward the girls and decided to do something merely out of spite, something she tried hard to avoid. “Hey girls,” she said condescendingly. “Just because the Head Mistress knows I can read your minds, doesn’t mean she can stop me from reading your minds. Just think about that when you get the urge to tell someone.”
“Oh, that girl!” Odile seethed when she had walked away.
Patrick shook his head. “I warned you, Dile. You don’t mess with Malfoy,” he said with the slightest hint of a chuckle. “What did you tell McGonagall anyway?”
“We told her we thought Malfoy was cheating off us by reading our minds,” Phaedra admitted quietly.
Hyatt tried to hold in his laughter, but the effort was futile. “Wow, you two are even more thick than I thought.”
Patrick just rolled his green eyes. “Wow.”
sorry this was submitted out of order, but I just couldn't ignore the requests for more. -Nicole