Memoirs of a Serpent's Son

[A/N: I got a number of wonderful reviews and thoughts on the last chapter with the first scene insertion and so I’m really happy you’ve enjoyed it! I’m mildly worried that you’ll think I’m mad after this chapter, but then again I really am mad. If you need an explanation for my reasoning there is an Author’s Note at the end. If you feel that no explanation is required (or you just don’t care lol) then feel free to skip it ^-^ Also…I think I ramble too much in my notes so I’ll try to cut that down.]

Memoirs of a Serpent’s Son

--Age 15—part 3

Fall term –continued

I know it’s been a while since my last entry… I just… I’ve been trying to avoid having to face that whole ordeal in words again. As it is, I’ve gone on as though it never happened. And who knows… maybe it was all just a dream…

But I still can’t get that taste off my lips…

It doesn’t matter anyway, Potter hasn’t reacted at all. I can’t stand it, whether it was a dream or not, it’s as though I’ve become even less of a wizard in his eyes. He treats me as though I’m completely non-existent sometimes. I can’t deal with that! I can’t! No one ignores me!!

Umbridge started implementing these “Educational Decrees” on the school, like she’s some high and mighty empress of the school. I don’t know. If you ask me, all her stupid moves are going to bring her to a sticky end in due time, but that’s not my problem. In the meantime, I figure I’ll just use her idiocy to my advantage.

The decree was that all groups and clubs of any sort must disband immediately (meaning student clubs or teams even) and request a formal permission to reform. This means that the house Quidditch teams (which were formed very soon after the creation of the game and have been ancient Hogwarts traditions for centuries now) were forced to break up and ask her permission to reform. Honestly, I don’t think ANYONE is that arrogant. Not even ME.

Well Slytherin didn’t have any problems at all reforming. It was practically instantaneous what with my father being good friends with the Minister and all. She practically suggested that we had been exempt from the decree to begin with, but whatever. Gryffindor didn’t have as much luck.

She’s been considering the decision for ages it seems and I’m almost certain that she’s going to try and refuse them. I don’t think McGonagall or Dumbledore will go for that, but it amuses me that she might try.

At least this way I get to tease Potter about it. I’ll take absolutely ANY opportunity to try and make him react… I mean being a complete jerk and getting him to hate me is better than having him disregard my existence entirely, isn’t it? It honestly tugs at my insides every day to think that I could have done what I did and STILL not get a bloody reaction from the git.

Outside of Potions I made some comments about Mr. Weasley. I know it seems like I’m concentrating more on insulting the Weasel than Potter, but this is how I explain it. See, Potter would do ANYTHING for his bloody friends. He protects them like they’re just extensions of himself and insulting them is likely a better way to get him to react because insulting him doesn’t seem to do anything… though I don’t know if I’ve ever tried to insult him directly, come to think of it…

Anyway, I said some things about the Weasel’s father and how they were probably just waiting for a reason to sack him from the Ministry. I also may have said that Potter would likely get thrown into St.-Mungo’s for his own insanity soon. Does that count as an insult? I mean he IS insane. I kiss him and he does NOTHING?

It doesn’t matter, mind you, Potter didn’t react to the comment. Not even WEASEL reacted properly. Have I just turned into a ghost and no one’s told me??

The strange this is that Longbottom looked as though he was going to erupt or something. His face was red and he was fighting tooth and nail against Potter and Weasel (who were holding him back). He looked like he was trying to get at me, but I couldn’t really understand why.

Perhaps he’s the newest member in Potter’s fanclub. I don’t know.

I gave a dry laugh at him and generally that was it.

Well no, that wasn’t it.

I’m here now and writing this aren’t I?

I…I can’t stop thinking about him…but what’s more is that I can’t stop seeing that indifferent expression he’s given me. Those unimpressed eyes burning holes through my soul every time I picture them. Every time he sees me, he doesn’t see me at all, he just looks right through me.

I will not have it. I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to get back at him. I’ll MAKE him see me if I have to get rid of the entire school before he does.

*******

Quidditch Match –Gryffindor vs. Slytherin

I’ve been busy lately. Very busy. Busy trying to make Potter’s life hell for inevitably having done the same to me.

I’ve had the whole Slytherin team work together to do it. Not that I told them this was just about Potter. They just thought we were trying to sabotage the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which, essentially, we were.

I’ve made it so that Gryffindor could almost never book the pitch to practice. We’ve been taking all the good days and times far ahead of time and as Umbridge is the one who assigns these things, we’ve had no problem at all.

To make matters worse for them, the team has been trying to inconspicuously hex the Gryffindor players in the halls, in hopes that they would be unable to play us. That didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would, mind you. They had begun traveling in packs to assure themselves that they were difficult targets.

By the time the game had rolled around their team was sadly still whole and generally unharmed. So I took a different approach.

I wrote the most wonderfully wicked song for Weasel’s first game. I must confess, this is some of my better work.

It’s a cheerful little ditty called “Weasley is Our King”. It’s a happy little chorus about how Weasel make the Slytherins sing because of his utter uselessness at being a Keeper.

I gave it to Pansy and she laughed, immediately suggesting she orchestrate a choir of Slytherins to chant it during the match. The whole team was in on it as well. They liked the idea of a kind of ‘war-chant’. So off we went with the lyrics in mind and Gryffindors to defeat.

I couldn’t wait to see the look on Potter’s face when he heard that song. It would be so delicious to think that we were singing this in front of the entire school and adequately distracting his precious boyfriend to make them lose.

Maybe I am as evil as they say I am…

In any case, we got down to the pitch, got dressed and walked out onto the grass to wait for the whistle to begin the match. I was smirking darkly at Potter, but he never gives me anything in return. Perhaps I should just resign myself to the fact that he’ll never treat me the way I want him to.

The whistle and we were in the air. The crowd was roaring and the wind was blowing strong but you could still hear the loud chants that suddenly erupted from the Slytherin stands. Pansy was leading the group in the motions as the words scrolled before her to indicate the lyrics.

I couldn’t concentrate long on that, mind you, I still had a game to play.

The chasers zoomed back and forth passing the Quaffle to one another and then right past Weasel as they scored again and again. It looked so easy. His face was turning red and he looked as though he was scared out of his wits.

I laughed and started to sing along with the stands. The other players were singing too. The Gryffindors couldn’t even tell what was going on.

Potter’s face contorted strangely as he tried to understand the lyrics that were being screamed from the stands at his best mate and I just laughed and sang along with them, as though I didn’t have anything better to do.

He finally looked at me. He finally looked right at me as the words made it through his thick skull and he glared. If looks could kill, well I’d be dead and gone by now. It was hardly a reaction at all, mind you, because he’s given me looks like that before.

He shook his head and got back to the game.

Then came the chase. I saw the snitch and bolted for it, but so did he. I know his Firebolt is faster than my Nimbus any day, but that didn’t mean I was going to give up.

I pushed forwards, urging my broom to go faster than it actually can. We were neck and neck, both of our arms reaching out before us to try and grasp the tiny golden ball. His hand was in front of mine and I unconsciously started to scratch at the back of his hand, in attempt to force it away. But then I remembered those horrible cuts on the back of his hand and the blood…

And I flinched and hesitated and in that second he caught the snitch and won the game.

Then he landed and smiled and laughed as though it had been so easy.

How DARE he! The ONLY reason that he won was because I let the fact that I actually CARE ABOUT HIM stop me from hurting him enough to win instead!!

I snapped. I’ll admit that I totally lost control in that moment. I let a very dark part of myself take over and I don’t really care. All I could think about was wiping that arrogant smirk off his face and forcing him to give me what I deserved.

I landed and started rambling horribly insulting things. I asked him if he liked my lyrics. I told him that I couldn’t fit in everything I wanted to because there was nothing that rhymed well with “he was born in a dustbin” or something like that. Other ruthless things like that. I told him a lot of terrible things. I insulted the Weasleys worse than I have every done before. Potter wasn’t reacting to me though. Only the Weasel-twins were. King Weasel had already gone off to change.

I just kept going. Potter and the rest of the team were holding back the twins. I couldn’t be bothered to notice though. I just kept talking. Then I went too far. I knew it was too far then, and I’m even more painfully aware of how wrong it was now, but I needed to do it. I needed to get something out of him. I needed him to hit me, or yell at me, or hex me, or something. Just to show me that he knows I do exist and that he’s not completely immune. Just to show me how he feels about me, in some way, shape or form.

I insulted his mother…

I’m not an idiot and I’m not totally insensitive, but that was the worst thing I could think to say and I said it. Then it happened in a flash and everything came crashing down.

Potter just let go of the twin he was holding back and then they were BOTH on me. Potter’s fist connected with my jaw hard. It was harder than anything I’ve ever felt before. He punched me and pinned me and beat me without stopping for as long as he could, hitting every part of me that he could reach. The Weasel twin was doing the same, I think.

I don’t remember. My eyes were black for parts of it and all I remember was pain. It was worse pain than I had ever felt, and I’m not lying. Crucio isn’t that bad. Not as bad as being pummeled into the ground by the person you really care about…

But I needed it.

I don’t remember if I screamed, maybe I did. I may have struggled to fight back. I may not have. It’s really unclear in my head. Maybe because he hit me so hard. All I remember after that was having them pulled off of me and being picked up by one of my teammates or something. Then I was in the hospital wing getting tended to by Pomfrey.

I let her do whatever she needed and didn’t say a word. My lips were cut and blood was staining them in different places, as though I’d had some to drink. My cheek was swollen and I had a black eye. Some of my ribs were broken too, from the force of the impact.

I let her heal me and do what she could, but I didn’t listen to what she was saying. I was just thinking about how my words finally got to him. How he finally showed me how he felt. How he finally touched me, beat me and broke me the way I needed him to do from the beginning.

My face healed nicely. It didn’t take long. She fixed my black eye and swollen cheek in an instant but the ribs and bruises on my chest would be harder to deal with than that. They always were. She gave me some potions to deal with the bruising and healed the fractures, then sent me off to my dormitory.

I left, the potions in hand, thinking only of Potter and wondering if he would ever feel anything for me after that.

At least now I know he knows I’m alive.

*****

I found out that Potter was kicked off the team because of me. Well because of what he did to me. Umbridge claimed that she issued him (and the twin-Weasels) a LIFELONG BAN for it.

LIFELONG BAN.

Can you believe that??

Who is she to think that she can issue ANY kind of ban –lifelong or not –to ANYONE for ANYTHING?

I laughed about it and mocked him with the Slytherins but something kept bothering me.

The picture of him at the end of third year, when he won the Quidditch Cup and had that carefree and purely happy smile on his face, kept showing up in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking that I would be the one that stripped him of that joy for the rest of his life… that I would be responsible for getting the youngest seeker in a century banned from his favourite game and his only release.

The team was proud of me. They thought I’d done wonderfully and ‘taken one for the team’ with the beating they dished out. I laughed and told them that it’s their turn next time to get mobbed by crazed Gryffindors and they roared, saying that only I was strong enough to deal with that kind of beating. Or maybe it was that I was pig-headed enough…

Ever since Potter has refused to look at me. I don’t know if it’s because he’s disappointed in himself for having given in to my derisive comments, or if it’s because he hates me so much that just looking at me would cause him to beat me again.

Interesting thing is that, after that whole thing, I’ve found that it’s even harder for me to stop staring at him now.

I’m a little frightened that my perfect façade is crumbling before my very eyes. Pansy doesn’t seem to notice anything, mind you. Blaise and Theo haven’t said anything either. I don’t trust Crabbe and Goyle to notice because, well, they don’t notice anything that’s not potentially food.

But I still notice. And I know that if it’s true, my father will notice as well. I can’t have that…

I need to get over him and fast. I need to be even more vile towards him.

There’s no other way…

It’s not like he’d give me a chance, anyway, even if I asked for it.

*****

Umbridge came to Care of Magical Creatures today. She’s been sitting in on classes with all the teachers on different days. Says it’s for teacher evaluations or something, to make sure that they are all up to Ministry standards.

I take that to mean that as long as they’re mute, dumb and deaf they’re A.O.K. with the Ministry.

Anyway, Hagrid is back, somehow. I don’t know where he’s been or what. Not that I care, but I would have preferred to keep Grubbly-Plank. At least with her we could learn something and didn’t spend the class staring at an empty stall.

Yes, that’s right. We spent the class staring at NOTHING.

He claims he brought us Thestrals. He said that he’d trained them to pull the carriages for the students at the beginning and end of term. They’re invisible, anyway, so there could have been nothing there and we would never have really known the difference.

Well, they’re invisible to NORMAL people.

Potter could see them. Longbottom could too, actually. There’s a telling sign that something’s safe; only Potter and Longbottom can see them. Perfect, so as soon as I can see them too, I’ll know I’ve gone properly mental and not just partially.

Umbridge didn’t seem too impressed with the whole idea. She went on the whole way through treated Hagrid as though he was a bloody moron. She talked to him in more of a degrading way than she talked to the students and she treats us like toddlers!

I imagine it has something to do with the fact that he’s half-giant. She doesn’t think much of half-breeds. Werewolves, half-giants, anything like that she thinks is inferior and therefore unintelligent.

Now, I’ve been raised to think along similar lines. Half-bloods and mudbloods aren’t equal to pure-blooded wizards, Father says. But that DOESN’T mean that I automatically think that they’re bloody idiots. I don’t like Granger and I’ll openly call her a mudblood, but I know damn well she’s not an imbecile. Blood affects status and power, not brains.

But still, I couldn’t help but laugh. I spent most of the class clutching a stitch in my side, trying not to burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. It was comical, you can’t deny that, no matter how much you hate her. She’s hilariously entertaining to watch. Especially when you know she’s just digging herself an early grave. Pansy laughed along with me and answered Umbridge’s questions as she asked them.

The stupid fool asked the questions so loudly and clearly that Hagrid could obviously hear them. Pansy told her that Hagrid was hard to understand sometimes because his words just sound like grunts. It wasn’t true, but the fact that Umbridge was acting as though he wasn’t even present made the whole thing amusing.

Potter was probably itching to say something or hex her…or me. I know he cannot have enjoyed any of that, but he clearly thought better of acting out and held his tongue and he wand.

I gave him a little smirk by the end of class. Then something occurred to me.

Potter ALWAYS reacts to Umbridge. All I have to do is take a leaf from her book to get a rise out of him.

I don’t know if he realizes it but he just GIVES away his own weaknesses in his reactions. He makes it incredibly easy…

I just hope he’s not that stupid when it comes down to saving his own life.

-----IIIII-----

A/N: So this is my explanation: it occurred to me that the part in the fifth book where Draco goes on a rant after the Quidditch match and insults the Weasleys so terribly and then Harry’s mother seemed a little uncalled for. I mean, sure he’d just lost the match, but he’d lost so many before and always to Harry, this one wasn’t particularly special, it wasn’t like when he lost the Quidditch Cup… so why did Draco behave so terribly? There had to be a trigger for that. That’s why I placed the kiss scene just before this. There were many nights where Harry would come back from Umbridge’s office that weren’t documented (which made it easy to insert) and then Harry’s indifference to the whole thing would surely make Draco angry. He would need to get back at him, to get Harry to show him some kind of emotion. So that’s the way it made sense to me. I hope you agree or at least enjoyed it! This book kind of goes up and down with Draco’s emotions, as you may have already noticed. It does the same thing for Harry (though mainly he’s just quick to anger) and I think that’s rather suiting for being fifteen (mood swings and irrational behaviour, sexual experimentation lalala jks)

Please, please tell me what you think! Reviews are looooove!