“Yeah, I know,” agreed Emma, throwing back one of her cousin’s t-shirts that had landed on her head in the search for sugar quills. “I mean, she’s been gone for just one day, and everyone’s acting like she’s died. Of course, knowing that Ophidias creep, that’s not all that unlikely.” She pulled a face.
“Well, at least once she gets it over with she won’t have to worry about it anymore. I mean”oh, here’s my sugar quills”she was stressing out about it all year. At least she’ll be done with it when she gets back,” Haley said sagely. She popped a sugar quill into her mouth and crunched away happily.
Emma shook her head. “You and Tyrone and your stupid sweets. Tyrone’s got those perfect teeth, and you’re stick-thin. How do you people do it?” She shot her cousin a mock glare. “Give me some of those.”
“No! Mine!” Haley hugged the quills to her chest and her cousin pulled out her wand.
She smirked. “I think you’re forgetting something here. Who’s of age and can legally blast you through that wall over there. Hmmm… oh, that’s right! I do believe it’s MOI!”
Haley’s expression was not dissimilar to that of an apologetic kitten that had just realized the consequences of using the prized Persian rug as a litter box. “Here,” she offered quickly. “Have a sugar quill.”
“Why, thank you! I thought you’d never ask.” Emma said, popping a quill into her mouth.
The two of them, like most teenage best friends in one another’s company, were loud and giggly and shrieky and most likely terrifying to anyone who did not know them. But when it came to sheer volume of noisiness, they could not hold a candle to a certain Giordan Ann Anderson, who was at the moment standing in the Potters’ driveway.
“JOOOOORRRRRDAAAAAAANNN!” she shrieked ear-piercingly as she marched toward her friend. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re on Christmas holiday the same time I am? You nutter”if I hadn’t seen you sitting out on your porch, I’d never have known you were back! Soooooo, how are you doing, Wizboy?”
Jordan managed to get a few words in edgewise. “Well, I’m fine. I--”
“So, terrific, you’re fine. If you’re fine, that means you’re not dead, I’m thinking. So why don’t you email me more? I mean, come on, it’s been weeks!”
Even when she wasn’t ranting so loudly, she was impossible to ignore. She was wearing one of her crazy outfits again, this one consisting of a splendid bright gold shirt covered in ruffles that fell to he knees, draped over a hot pink tank top and purple fishnet tights. Seeing as this was very unseasonable for winter, especially with snow on the ground, she wore a rainbow coloured scarf tied around her neck and shiny lime-green boots with an unnecessarily high heel given how tall she was. Her head was topped with what looked a lot like a pirate’s bandana, and her earrings were shaped like clocks.
Although Jordan had known her for over a year, he still couldn’t help but stare every time he saw her coming.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been writing as much,” apologized Jordan, “but I’ve been so busy with class and Quidditch and my project, and I’ve not been sleeping very well, so my mind’s a bit nonfunctional.”
“Oh yeah, that Inter-House Unity thingymajigger of yours!” Giorgi exclaimed, sitting down next to her friend on the icy front step. “How’s that coming, then?”
Jordan shrugged. “Well, I’m finding out quite a lot about genealogy, which is interesting, but Cecilia and I don’t get along particularly well, especially lately.” He shrugged. “She just refuses to accept the possibility of anything that she hasn’t observed herself with scientific, quantitative proof. She won’t take anything I say on faith, and honestly, it’s annoying.”
“And you’re saying you do accept things with no proof?” Giorgi blinked. “That’s news to me. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying, ‘Giorgi, there is no such thing as hobbits,’ ‘Giorgi, you can’t survive an elevator crash if you jump right before it hits the bottom,’ ‘Giorgi, Elvis isn’t alive…’”
Jordan had a suspicion he’s be getting a lot of the same reaction in the next few months. Maybe it would be smarter just to keep his mouth shut. “It’s nothing to get excited about,” he said dryly. “I can change my opinion on things, you know.”
“But this is awesome!” squealed Giorgi, her eyes gleaming. “It means I’m rubbing off on you!” She jumped up and did a little dance, clicking her high-heeled boots together. “Yesss! I love being a bad influence! Now all you need is to stop talking like a prat!”
“I doubt that’s going to happen,” Jordan told her haughtily, though he was smiling. “I happen to like talking like a prat.” He decided it would probably be a good idea to switch the subject away from himself before he got into yet another difficult discussion. It was best to let Giorgi think that he was changing because of her. “So, how’s your school?”
Giorgi pretended to gag. “Oh, you know,” she said a bit too casually, “the usual. It’s just school, you know?”
Jordan looked closely at her, and his eyes seemed to intensify and darken slightly. “You still haven’t made any friends at your school,” he blurted out. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, and Giorgi seemed to realize this. She shifted uncomfortably.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “Which, I mean, I guess it’s okay. Everyone at my school is annoying anyway. Lots of kids don’t have any friends at school.”
But Jordan could tell that it wasn’t okay. Somehow, the vibes he was getting from her felt different… no, they didn’t feel different, it was another sense altogether, somewhere between seeing and tasting. In any case, the air around Giorgi seemed bitter and tainted with a wistful sadness. It was not unlike the way Jordan could sense the sickliness in the air just before Ted had passed out, or the strangely warm sensation in the air that he had noticed surrounding Emma and Tyrone the day after they’d been flying all night long.
Jordan, who’d never been good at understanding people’s illogical feelings, particularly his own, was now beginning to understand other people’s emotions. He wasn’t sure whether he liked this new development”it was one thing to use Legilimency to view thoughts and memories. Those he could at least comprehend. But feelings were so woolly and imprecise and difficult to interpret, and life was so much simpler if one tried to avoid them altogether.
“Are you okay?” asked Giorgi. “You seem kind of… well, you remind me of this pet bunny I used to have. He got kind of dopey and twitchy and his eyes were all glazed over. Then he died.”
Jordan snorted. “Well, thank you for that really lovely story, Giorgi. I feel much better now.”
“No, but seriously. Just then, you were all staring into space and dazed-looking like you just headed a football just a little too hard,” Giorgi told him, illustrating her point by actually smacking Jordan in the head with a balled fist, just hard enough to actually hurt.
Headed a football… Jordan didn’t know whether it was the word ‘football’ or the bonk on the head that triggered it, but a string of images flashed suddenly through his head. At least now he knew that these visions weren’t just insanity.
A field full of teenagers in purple and white jerseys and shorts, racing up and down the expanse of green so quickly that they blurred. A hulking boy in a white uniform squatting before a goal. A scoreboard showing a tie and thirty-nine seconds left to go. A ball sailing through the air. And then, a tall and skinny girl in purple bursting forth from the tangle of players, her cleats painted to look like zebra print and giraffe print respectively and her purple-dyed hair ruffling in the breeze.
The girl, diving beneath the ball and heading it triumphantly, sending it flying up into the cloudless blue sky and rocketing into the goal. The crowd erupting in victorious cheers and hoisting the purple-haired girl onto their shoulders, pumping their fists and shouting.
Jordan blinked. “You are sticking to football this year, aren’t you?” he asked as he snapped out of his brief trance.
“Er, yeah, I guess,” Giorgi replied. “I mean, it’s my favourite thing in the world, but I was thinking about maybe giving it up. I’m one of the only girls on the team, and most of the players aren’t all that nice. I don’t know if I will yet, though. Why?”
“Don’t quit,” Jordan told her seriously. “You’re going to win the finals for your school, and then you’ll be glad you stuck with it.”
Giorgi smiled. “Well, it’s really nice of you to say that. Really, really random, but still really nice.”
“You don’t understand,” Jordan told her. He sighed and closed his eyes, wishing that he knew how to perform Telemency. Sometimes, he realized, it was easier to understand things than express them. “I’m not just trying to say something encouraging to make you feel better. I’m telling you something that I… I know. I just have this… feeling…”
He realized once he’d said this that it made him sound like a complete lunatic. Perfect, just what he’d always wanted. Not.
“You’re so weird today,” Giorgi told him after a moment’s uncomfortable pause. “And I know I shouldn’t be talking and all, but you’re just REALLY weird. Like, at first, I was thinking ‘cool, he’s actually lightening up a little,’ but then you’re all serious, even more serious than usual. And then you start acting like my bunny and then you’re being super random and saying things that don’t make any sense, but in this totally serious kind of way. I just don’t get it.”
That makes two of us, thought Jordan.
To him, the scariest thing about Giorgi’s speech was that it was all true… but that he’d barely even noticed anything about his behaviour that deviated from the norm. He was already getting comfortable with the… with the slight possibility that he might be a Seer, and he wasn’t even of age yet.
He couldn’t let that happen. He probably wasn’t even a Seer”there probably wasn’t even such a thing. He was letting his imagination run away with him, and now he was convincing himself that it was true. What a Haley-ish thing to do. How much longer would it be before he forgot completely what ‘normal’ was and couldn’t even tell whether or not he was behaving completely irrationally? And how much longer would the rather lame excuse that he was about to deliver once more hold up?
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I told you, I haven’t been sleeping. I must be getting delirious. If I start blabbering about things that don’t make any sense at all in my emails, just tell me that I have to go to bed, all right? I’m giving this responsibility to you because none of my other friends ever tell me plainly that I’m spouting nonsense.”
Giorgi looked at him closely, pursing her sparkly lips in thought. “You look a bit different, too,” she said thoughtfully, “and I don’t think it’s just because you’re sleepy. And it’s not like last year when you were, like, übershrimp at the beginning of the year and actually looked like a regular person by the end. It’s just something little that’s different.”
“I just got my hair cut three days ago,” Jordan suggested. “Is that it?”
Giorgi shook her head. “No, with crazy hair like yours, it doesn’t matter what you do to it.” She squinted. “No, I know what it is… it’s your eyes.”
This was puzzling. Weren’t eyes the most constant feature that there was? And hadn’t Jordan been taught that they couldn’t be transfigured or changed in any way by magic, not even by a Metamorphmagus? Even when Ted was in wolf form, his eyes were exactly the same. “What do you mean?”
“It’s kind of hard to describe,” Giorgi said slowly. “They look sort of… dark and all… hard-ish. Probably because you’re being so serious, but they definitely make you look different. You look older.”
Jordan let out a strange little laugh. “I feel older.”
Ted had never taken the Knight Bus before in all sixteen of his years, and he found it to be rather enjoyable, if stomach-wrenchingly jerky. And very, very purple indeed.
He hummed to himself as the bus lurched around a corner and plunged straight through what appeared to be a solid brick wall. It was extremely handy that he bus was equipped with personal barf bags for each passenger.
He’d missed getting to ride the Knight Bus with his other friends the one time they’d gone in fourth year, for the simple reason that he was the cause of their trip. The were visiting him in St. Mungo’s the morning after he was first bitten, and although they’d been a bit preoccupied by their worrying about their friend’s health to truly appreciate the novelty of the ride, Ted distinctly remembered Haley threatening to empty her barf bag over her brother’s head if he didn’t stop reciting every single fact he knew about werewolves.
But although the method of transportation was exciting, Ted was not merely riding the Knight Bus for fun. He was going to pay a visit to a friend of his.
That morning, he’d been thinking about Ivy, cooped up with the Malfoys. Although she’d only be away for a few days, it couldn’t be particularly pleasant, and he knew he’d wish to be able to talk to his friends had he been in her shoes. After all, Ivy had visited him in the hospital, so he figured it was only fair for him to visit her at Malfoy Manor.
He imagined himself ringing the doorbell and, when the door was pulled open, smiling sweetly at Mrs. Malfoy and saying, “Hi, is Ivy there? I’m Ted. You might’ve heard about me?” The expression of bewilderment on Mrs. Malfoy’s face alone would be enough to cheer Ivy up for the next several days.
A woman in the row across from Ted uttered a stifled scream and clutched the seat in front of her as the Knight Bus rounder another sharp curve, her face deathly pale. Clearly, she was as new to this as Ted himself was. The bus zig-zagged, and a shopping bag flew out of the woman’s hand and scattered its contents all along the bus aisle.
“Ohhh,” she moaned to herself, massaging her temples.
“Don’t worry, I’ll clean that up for you,” Ted offered, giving the woman a friendly smile. “It’s my first time, too. It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one who thinks it feels like whoever is driving this bus is doing it in his sleep.”
The woman returned the smile weakly and reached into her purse for some gold. “Thank you so much. How much would you like?”
“Oh, no, don’t give me any money,” Ted protested as he scrambled around on the floor rounding up spilled groceries.
“Well, at least take some of the food,” said the woman, obviously not accustomed to charity, particularly from teenagers. “You look hungry.”
Ted laughed. “I’m sixteen. My mum says it’s normal.” He dove under a seat to retrieve a runaway eggplant. “Really, I don’t need anything.”
“It’s just, you don’t usually see boys your age offering to give a hand to old ladies like me,” the woman told him. She glanced at him, scooting along comfortably on his hands and knees. “You sure can move fast on all fours like that,” she commented.
“Thanks,” Ted replied, getting to his feet and placing the last of the groceries in the bag. “I’m a werewolf, so I guess I get a lot of practice.” He glanced out of the window, seemingly oblivious to the woman’s jaw dropping and her eyes bulging out of her skull like peeled plums. “Oh, this is my stop!” He dusted off the knees of his jeans. “Happy New Year! Hold onto your groceries!”
And he strolled down the steps of the bus, unaware that he’d just changed an old woman’s perception of werewolves forever. It had become a bit of an unconscious hobby of his.
It was lucky, he thought, that Emma hadn’t come along with him. She’d never stop laughing at what a good-goody he was. Well, maybe he was a goody-goody, but he could think of worse things to be. It was just part of his essential Tedness.
He snapped out of his thoughts and stopped in his tracks when he saw how truly massive Malfoy Manor was. True, his family, as well as the Potters and the Weasleys, did live comfortably, but compared to Malfoy Manor, he might as well have lived in a birdhouse.
The building before him looked like it should be a museum, sculpted from white marble with enormous columns, a spectacular garden, and a huge expanse of perfectly-trimmed lawn stretching mind-bendingly wide. Ted couldn’t imagine Ivy actually staying there for a weekend, let alone for the first fourteen years of her life.
He walked up the front path to the door and rapped the brass doorknocker sharply. Dun da-da dun dun, DA-DA!”
The door flew open to reveal two dull-eyed house elves, their scrawny bodies draped with neat little togas that were suspiciously reminiscent of Giorgi’s shiny gold blouse.
Ted’s smile slipped somewhat. He should have guessed that Mrs. Malfoy wouldn’t be opening her own door. Maybe this way was even better”more of a chance to use the element of surprise to his advantage.
“Hi,” he greeted the house elves. “I’m Ted. I came to see Ivy?”
The house elves’ expressions did not change. “Who are your parents?” one of them asked in a voice strangely low and proper-sounding for an elf.
“Ummm… Remus and Dora Lupin,” Ted told them confusedly. “That is, well, Dora’s short for Nymphadora, but she hates that name, and Tonks Lupin is a really dumb name, so””
“You’re not welcome here,” the other said flatly, taking a firmer stance in front of the door.
Ted was taken aback, and his first instinct was to assume the elves were kidding. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not welcome here,” the elf repeated, evidently taught to memorize his lines, not to elaborate.
“I just want to see how Ivy’s doing,” he explained. “If you don’t want me to come inside your house, I can just wait out here and you can send her down to talk to me. I seriously don’t think she’d mind… but you can ask her if it’s okay with her first.”
The elves apparently had not anticipated him to react like this. They exchanged long, bewildered glances, then one finally said, dropping all pretenses of formality, “We isn’t supposed to be letting people who isn’t purebloods into the Manor. The Malfoys is not letting themselves be speaking with them.”
“But I already know Ivy! I’ve known her for, like, five years,” Ted explained. “She doesn’t care that I’m a half-blood”really, she doesn’t. I’m not saying she has the best taste, but I know she won’t mind.”
“Mistress Malfoy knows,” the other house elf told him. “She is not liking that. She is wanting Miss Ivy to continue the pureblood line, so she is telling us to be making sure that no Mudbloods or half-bloods is wanting to talk to her. Especially boys.”
Ted gaped. This was by far the weirdest thing he’d heard in days, and he had heard Haley’s infamous “Christmas Mooseduck” song. He knew all about arranged marriages”after all, who hadn’t read at least one fairy tale about a beautiful princess forced to marry against her will? But he’d never heard of a modern teenager’s parents already preoccupying themselves with any future marriage prospects. Especially when the girl in question was still young enough to go to school. And Pansy wasn’t even Ivy’s legal guardian.
“But she’s almost seventeen!” he exclaimed. “She’s old enough to choose her own friends.”
It was then that another form joined that of the two house elves, a much taller and more formidable form belonging to a woman in opulent robes with a neat bob of black hair framing a square-jawed face.
“My daughter,” she said dispassionately, placing an emphasis on the word ‘daughter,’ “Is young enough to make foolish decisions. When she’s older, she’ll thank me for sparing her from consorting with scum like yourself.”
She looked the boy up and down, then sniffed haughtily, clearly not impressed. “And if she feels anything for you now, it’s only gratitude that someone, no matter how inadequate and below her station, notices her. She has a low opinion of herself. She’d allow any worthless layabout on the street take her in a heartbeat if he showed any interest. You’ll only be doing her a favour by never speaking to her again.”
“I’m going to see her every day at school, ma’am,” Ted told her, keeping his voice pleasant. “If she finds someone else she likes better, she can just tell me. I’d totally understand.”
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t already given up, but being told to leave just made him more set on staying, and being informed that Ivy would be happier without him only made him want to see her more. But people didn’t… talk… like Pansy did. Not to complete strangers. Not to kids. Not to anyone. Being called ‘scum’ by the woman who had given birth to his favourite person was positively surreal.
Pansy shook her head. “She can be so much more than what you’re limiting her to be,” she spat. “Cavorting around with her inferiors… she needs to have pride. You cannot give that to her. You can’t give her anything, not even a pure family line. How could you even think in your wildest dreams that a half-blooded part-human like yourself could even being to measure up to Ivy? She’s an heiress with centuries of pureblood duty to fulfill. You’re nothing but a sad, positively clueless little… freak who doesn’t know his own place.”
These words stung as though she had sliced him open and then bathed him in lemon juice, but Ted tried not to take it personally. She didn’t even know him, after all. And it wasn’t like he planned to…taint the bloodline anytime soon.
“Yeah, maybe,” he admitted simply. “But I’d really rather hear it from Ivy. I want to hear from her what she thinks.”
“She doesn’t know what to think!” exploded Pansy. “I have to think for her! She’s been corrupted by useless filth like yourself. Can’t you see that people… no, not even people, creatures like you are destroying her?”
And just then, for some inexplicable reason, something inside Ted snapped.
He felt his body tense and his mind surrender his delusional game of treating Mrs. Malfoy civilly. He was always the easygoing one, the mellow one, the nice one, but he was responding to Mrs. Malfoy’s territorial guarding of his own girlfriend and best friend in a way unlike ever before.
“No,” he said in a harsh, serious voice several notes deeper than usual. “That’s what you’re trying to do to her.”
There was so much that he wanted to say”that Ivy was her own person, that Pansy had no control over her, that he himself would never try to force her into having anything to do with him if she didn’t want to, that Ivy was perfect the way she was, but in his anger, words seemed useless and heavy, difficult to guide all the way to his mouth.
Instead, he merely glared, his eyes blazing as brightly as Emma’s usually did shortly before she shouted a string of foul names and hexed someone into oblivion. A sort of guttural snarl escaped the back of his throat, a menacing sort of purr that combined his mind’s longing to speak and his mouth’s unwillingness to do it.
It seemed to express what he wanted to say quite well, because Mrs. Malfoy stammered, “You need to learn to respect your betters. Leave our property immediately, or I’ll have you arrested.”
“Tell Ivy I said hello,” Ted spat, almost making his words sound like a threat. For someone who was usually so utterly unthreatening and unassuming, it was odd how intimidating he could be. Always unusually tall, he now seemed towering. “And make sure to tell her what you said about me, too. I’m sure she’d like to know,” he added, and marched off down the path.
He was shaking.
He couldn’t believe his own nerve. But then, he couldn’t believe Pansy’s nerve, trying to tell him that she was responsible for someone who was not even legally her child anymore, that she was acting in his best interest by warning him that he was far out of Ivy’s league. And although he was a half-blood and a werewolf to boot, never before had he been so explicitly told that he was inferior because of it.
Ted had never tried being angry at people before”that was more Emma’s domain”and he still found it less than useful, much more likely to cause an unhappy and irresolvable conflict. But he did have to admit one uncomfortable truth.
She’d deserved it. And he’d needed it.
“What is going on out there?” Ivy wondered as she turned a page in her book. “It sounds like people are arguing in the yard.”
Ophidias smirked as he passed by on his way toward his favourite black leather arm chair in the sitting room. “Looked like that stoner werewolf boyfriend of yours,” he muttered. “I guess he wanted to talk to you and he was stupid enough to tell off Mother. Nice one.”
“What?” Ivy jumped up and looked out the window to see a lanky, shaggy-haired person walking off down the path with a distinct stiffness to his frame. “She sent him away? He probably just came to talk to me!”
Ophidias raised his eyebrows. “Erm, yeah,” he said. “Mother’s not exactly eager to invite all of the dirty-blooded part-human riffraff in the world into our home.”
“Ted is not””
“I know, I know, we’ve all heard it,” Ophidias groaned, holding up his hands. “Tell it to Mother. Actually, don’t, seeing as she didn’t seem to want to listen to you the first time.” He settled back in his chair. “It did take serious guts standing up to her in Twilfitt and Tatting’s, though. I guess I can see why you’re a Gryffindork.”
Was there a compliment buried in there somewhere? Ivy shook her head.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said darkly. “I can’t just sit there and let her try and control my life. No one could let her do that.”
Ophidias’s face clouded over, his eyes bitter and resentful. He slumped over even further in his chair. “Really?” he said, staring directly at Ivy. “Because I could. I do.”
Ivy stared back at him, at his sad and drawn face, at his haunted eyes, at his shorn-off hair and weak posture, and suddenly, it dawned on her, something she’d never even begun to consider before.
“You don’t believe in what she says, either, do you?” she gasped, peering at him.
“You think?” Ophidias said darkly, his expression not changing. He let out a hollow laugh. “Well, you’re obviously smarter than Mother, long as it took you.”
“I… I don’t understand,” Ivy whispered, her eyes widening. “You’ve always agreed with her before. My first four years at Hogwarts, you--”
“I know exactly what I did,” Ophidias shot back. He seemed to have a hobby of cutting off her statements. “Maybe I never really thought about it before. I mean, my thing is following orders.”
His lip curled.
“‘Ophidias is so good at Potions, he always follows directions so perfectly,’” he mimicked in an odd little falsetto. “‘Oh, Ophidias is a model pureblood, continuing all the sordid little traditions.’”
Ivy was totally confused now. “What does this have to do with””
“Don’t ask questions,” Ophidias snapped. “Look, I’m not special at anything, I’m just good at doing what I’m told. I always did what Mother wanted, and when Father wanted me to be an Overseer, I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to make him happy.”
He’d gotten up from his chair by now and was pacing around the room, sharply tracing his steps over and over again. This was obviously something he did often.
“You remember how it was before Father went to Azkaban. You were his little golden child, his little angel. I was the one who wasn’t good at flying, who didn’t want to talk about money, who got bored at all of those dinner parties. You never had to worry about living up to any expectations because you were the first Malfoy girl in ages. I was supposed to fill Father’s shoes, and I couldn’t do it.”
Ivy thought back to the days before Draco Malfoy had been sent off to Azkaban, trying hard to dredge up her hazy memories. She’d been four at the time, but she remembered bedtime stories, learning to trot on her horse, walks through the garden, being pushed on the swing, going to the candy store, being tickled until she laughed herself silly, riding high above the world on a pair of strong shoulders, hearing that familiar phrase, ‘You’re getting big! Shooting up like a regular Ivy plant!’
And she remembered the way he used to scold Ophidias for falling off his toy broomstick, for crying, for dropping the Peverell crest china plate, for using the wrong fork, for not standing straight enough…
There was a Malfoy family tradition, and Draco had been as adamant for Ophidias to fulfill the role of a pureblooded boy as Pansy was for Ivy to fulfill the role of a pureblooded girl. She’d never thought of it that way before.
“But here’s the thing,” said Ophidias. “When I ended up in jail, I suddenly just sort of realized, I’d forgotten about the…orders that are way more important than some stupid family tradition. I mean, I’d broken the law.”
He closed his eyes, wincing.
“I mean, here I am, Prefect, model student, and I’m in jail. There were murderers in there, and these really evil people who did things too disgusting to even think about, and then there’s me… it’s like, which of these things is not like the other?”
He shook his head. “You have to stop and think”these things are against the law for a reason. It can’t be okay to try and get rid of all of the ‘inferiors.’”
Ivy wasn’t sure she felt entirely… comfortable with the idea of Ophidias being a Reformed Character. It was like Haley becoming a nun, or Jordan becoming a hippie. She’d always seen Ophidias as a spoiled, narrow-minded jerk and nothing more, but he must have been terrified out of his wits sitting there in prison at age seventeen and wondering how he could have possibly gone so wrong.
“Why don’t you just talk to… er… your mother?” she asked, unsure of what exactly to call Pansy.
“No,” said Ophidias. “I can’t. I’m too stupid. Or too scared. I mean, Father never liked me, and I don’t want Mother to hate me as well. At least, not right now.” He sat down again, looking at his hands. “Things were so much easier to handle when we were little and we used to go trick-or-treating with Mother and Father,” he sighed. “Do you remember?”
Ivy nodded. “They used to take us all around the neighbourhood, and we used to laugh and eat sweets and scare each other, and the house-elves always made the best costumes. And I only eve wanted to be a princess.”
Ophidias laughed, that same hollow laugh again. “You would only remember those parts,” he muttered. “But I guess you were too little to remember what was going on. Don’t you remember what they used to say?”
He slipped back into the same falsetto voice. “Oh, Muggles live in that house. You don’t want their sweets because they taste nasty. There are Mudbloods over there, watch out for them because they act like they’re wizards just like us, only inside they’re really just like Muggles. Ooh, see that scary mask that man’s wearing? He’s dressed up like a werewolf. They’re really scary because they look just like normal people, but when it’s a full moon, they turn into horrible monsters like that. But even when they look like normal people, they never stop being monsters.”
He snorted. “Don’t you even remember that? It’s always stuck with me. It’s so easy to take that kind of stuff when you’re little. But then you grow up and you sort of start to wonder why you ever bought it in the first place.”
He looked so crumpled and forlorn that Ivy felt the need to do something to comfort him, as awkward as she felt. She crossed over to him and took his clammy hand in her smaller, warm one.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Believe me. But… listen, you’ve got to let other people know you’ve changed your mind on these things, or people are never going to respect you. I had the same problem when I came to Hogwarts, only worse. I still get called ‘The Little Malfoy Girl’ all the time.”
“I know,” Ophidias replied, “but…I don’t know, it’s weird. I’ve got this reputation, and it’s so weird to try to change everything. I just need some space.” He cracked a smile, his first genuine smile so far that weekend.
“I never thought I’d be getting advice from you,” he said dryly.
Ivy smiled back. “Believe me, I never thought I’d be giving it.”