Entwined

They lasted all of two days with their wands until they were confiscated by their parents. Narcissa’s cat was once again subjected to Draco and Desdemona’s experiments. On this occasion, Draco attempted to turn the cat from sleek black to yellow, but ended up setting it on fire instead. Desdemona’s subsequent attempts to put it out proved futile as she ended up bouncing the cat around the room rather than squirting water from her wand. Although they both got long lectures, Draco later said that his father saw nothing wrong with trying out a few spells on the feline.



Those last few weeks of summer dragged on as neither of them could wait to get to Hogwarts. One hot August day they sat by the side of the lake underneath the weeping willow, basking in the cool shade it provided with it’s green canopy above them. Draco rambled on about the school to her as she reclined against the wide trunk and ate an apple. “…and you know they have a whomping willow there! Nothing like this one. I can’t wait. You know, we’ll both be in Slytherin because we’re both purebloods. That means we’ll have all our classes together, which is good because you can help me with my homework that way.”



“You can do you own homework,” his counterpart stated, chucking the core of the apple into the lake for emphasis.



“Well, anyway, we’ll be partners in potions! With Professor Snape, he’s a friend of our family, he’ll like us. And we can go to Hogsmeade together some weekends. Not that you’re my girlfriend or anything.”



“Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Desdemona, sitting up along side Draco.



“No, I’d have told you if I did,” he said dully.



“Well have you ever kissed a girl?”



“No,” he replied.



“Not even Pansy when your families were on holiday together last month?” pried Desdemona farther.



“No!” he answered, getting annoyed. “Why do you want to know anyway?”



“Just curious,” she shrugged.



“Why? Who have you been snogging?” asked Draco after a moment of silence.



“No one.”



“Good, you shouldn’t be,” he said sternly. “Course, when I get to Hogwarts, I’m sure I’ll have loads of girlfriends.”



Desdemona scoffed, “Yeah, but you don’t even know how to kiss a girl.” Draco scowled and looked away. “Don’t be like that.” She sighed as he turned around further, dramatically emphasizing his point. She let him pout for a while and picked at the grass that was tickling her feet. “You could always practice kissing,” she said.



“With who? A house elf?” mocked Draco.



“I’ve never kissed anyone either.” Draco looked at her for a moment, examining her blank expression. “Draco….do you want to kiss me?”



He pondered this for a moment. “You won’t tell?” She shook her head. “Ok.”



The looked at each other and leaned in. As quickly as they their lips touched, they pulled away. “Did we do it right?” she asked.



“I think we have to close our eyes,” he said. He closed his and leaned in again and she did the same. This time, their lips pressed together, not long, but long enough for them to both consider it a proper kiss when they pulled away. Desdemona smiled. “If you tell anyone, I’ll jinx you,” added Malfoy.



They didn’t mention it again. The rest of the summer creeped along and finally it was time for them to leave for Hogwarts. The families traveled to Kings Cross together and saw the pair off on the Hogwarts Express. Inside, Desdemona shared a compartment with Draco and the other students destined for Slytherin, including Crabbe and Goyle, who Desdemona had encountered during more than a few social events throughout childhood and did not much care for. Draco and Desdemona were joined to the hip until the sorting ceremony in the Great Hall.



She was called before Draco, and took her seat on the stool as the sorting hat was placed upon her head. To her shock, she heard it speaking to her and wondered if this was normal… “Hm, a Slytherin hopeful…and a parselmouth. You’d do well there. But…you also have a keen intellect. But you are not what you seem…” and with that it shouted to the hall, “Ravenclaw!”



Desdemona stood, shocked and bewildered. She met Draco’s eyes, just as confused as hers, and boiling with anger beneath the surface if his furrowed eyebrows and intense look were any indication. She was unconsciously being guided to the Ravenclaw table where she was met with many cheers and pats on the back. But this wasn’t right. Clearly the sorting hat had made a drastic mistake. She belonged in Slytherin. Her whole family had always been in Slytherin. She could be smart and be in Slytherin too. This was impossible.



It was set in stone though. This is the house she would be living in for the next seven years. She contemplated this throughout the headmaster’s speech and the banquet. She was still unable to make any sense of the decision or of what the hat had meant by saying she wasn’t what she seemed. After dinner, she ran to meet Draco and the rest of the first year Slytherin’s heading to their dormitory in the dungeons. “Draco!” she called and he turned around uneasily, as if he did not want to stop to talk. “What happened? I thought we both-“



“Apparantly not,” he said shortly. “I have to go. I can’t be seen chatting to a Ravenclaw.” His voice held a familiar disdain that had never been directed at her before.



“But…”



“No.”



“Ravenclaws this way!” called a prefect leading a group of scared looking eleven olds up the steps. She frowned and went to join them.



Since Slytherin’s had most of their classes with Gryffindors and Ravenclaws often paired up with Hufflepuff, Desdemona did not get the opportunity to see Draco often, much less talk to him. Two weeks into term, Desdemona went to the library to research an essay on Devil’s Snare for her herbology essay. Wandering around the expansive Hogwarts library, she found a familiar blonde haired boy studying a book in a far off corner. She took this opportunity when he was not surrounded by usual hoard of Slytherin students that followed him around to approach him. Sneaking up behind him she playfully put her hand over his eyes. Draco ripped them away and wheeled around. “Get your hands off me!”



“Sorry…I just…”



“You were just poking your Ravenclaw nose into places it doesn’t belong,” he sneered. He slammed his book shut and started to storm off.



Desdemona surged with anger and without thinking drew her wand and pointed it at the boy. “Saeta retraxi,” she said and saw Draco’s sleeked back hair give a sharp tug. He wheeled around and glared at her. “Don’t walk away from me.”



“Listen, Slyterins don’t befriend Ravenclaws, ok?” he said. “That’s it.” And left for good.



And so their years at Hogwarts continued under these circumstances. She became just another student for Malfoy to ridicule and torture in the halls or during the odd class they shared together. He was not the only person disappointed by her house selection. Her parents, although they did not openly say it, frowned upon the house that she was put into. It was always a given she would be a Slytherin. It was how she was raised. There must be something wrong, if, even despite her pureblood status, she was placed into the wrong house.



Desdemona settled into her fate and her studies though. She excelled during those first three years. She made a group of friends in Ravenclaw, finding the people of this house welcoming and kind to her. It was nice to have other friends her age besides Draco who she had spent her entire childhood with. Her academics thrived likewise. She would have been top in the class in potions, had it not been for Hermione Granger. And, despite her house allegiance, Professor Snape seemed to like her. Or rather, did not insult her at every opportunity he found, which was equivalent to Snape liking a student. The only class she seemed to be falling behind in was Transfiguration and she concluded that this was simply not one of her gifts, much to the dismay of Professor McGonagall.



During the summer before their fourth year, Desdemona sat in her room, trying in vain to transfigure a flower from the garden into a butterfly. The only progress she had made was that the flower had sprouted legs and was now walking around on her floor. Her new snake, an albino python and an anonymous gift she had received for her birthday, slithered around in its cage and laughed at her. “Oh, shut up!” she told it. It almost seemed to shrug and headed off the shelter of the rocks in his cage. Before she had a chance to fix her mutant flower her mother entered her room.



“Please come downstairs. As you know, we have a dinner to attend at the Crabbe house tonight. The Malfoy family has also been invited and Narcissa has brought over Draco so you can keep each other company.



“Great,” snorted Desdemona. And on second thought, she probably shouldn’t have been so rash as to say this in front of her mother, who had been encouraging her to hang out with Draco more and more. Thankfully, the Malfoys had taken to traveling a lot during the summer months, bringing Draco along with them, so it was fairly easy to avoid having to socialize with the boy with whom she shared a mutual disgust.



“Desdemona, he is a close friend of this family. I don’t see why the two of you don’t get along anymore. You were always so close. Maybe you can work things out tonight. At least try.”



“Yes, mother,” she grumbled before chucking her flower out the window. To her surprise it took off flying. It was a step in the right direction at least. She followed her mother downstairs to the sitting room where Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy and her own parents were getting ready to leave through the floo network. Draco sat with his arms folded in resentment on one of the old love seats as they watched them leave one by one.



Once they were gone, there was an awkward silence between the two. “Why don’t you just go home. You don’t want to be here. I don’t want you here.”



“I’d love to. But they have the place all magically locked up so I can’t get back in,” he said. He fiddled with an antique, silver snuff box on the table next to him. When Desdemona turned her back, he slipped it into a pocket underneath his robes.



“Put it back, Draco. It’s not yours,” she said as she turned around.



He unhappily replaced it on the table with a frown. “Since when do you care? We used to nick things all the time when we were little.”



“That was different. We were friends. And it wasn’t my stuff that we were taking,” she noted.



The evening passed uncomfortably. They drank pumpkin juice and played wizard’s chess but it was with forced enthusiasm and more for their parents’ sakes than their own. She beat him a fair few times, but anytime she made a stupid move (wizard’s chess was not her strongest game) Draco seemed to take great joy in pointing out exactly what she had done wrong.



“I wish we had a muggle television or something,” sighed Desdemona. “I hear you can waste hours watching it.”



“Why would you want a stupid mudblood contraption?” asked Draco, appalled by the statement. “You want to be like them?”



“No, I didn’t say that. It’d just…forget it.”



With the growing years, Draco had been coming more and more anti-muggle, no doubt thanks to his father’s influence. “Once the Dark Lord returns, he’s going to make things like that obsolete. And I’m going to help him.”



“Draco!” she scolded. “Don’t say things like that.”



“But it’s true. He’s coming back. My father told me. I shouldn’t be telling people like you of course though.” Desdemona turned away from the argument that she would never be able to win. Instead she walked out of the room. “Hey! Where are you going? I’m your guest. You have to entertain me.”



“Entertain yourself,” she said coldly. “I’m going to feed my snake.” She heard Draco rise from his seat and begin to follow her, catching up as they began to climb the stairs together. “It’s really weird, it was delivered by someone from the store on my birthday, but with no indication of who sent it. He’s beautiful though! Wait till you see him! An albino python. Absolutely amazing!” raved Desdemona as they reached her room and she opened the door. “Want to see it eat a mouse?” she smiled and Draco nodded. She dropped the poor mouse, shivering with fear into the tank that housed the snake. They watched as the snake struck his dinner and curled around it, strangling the life from it before devouring its prey. “You know,” she began, “you’re the only person that knows I’m a parselmouth.”



“Did you think I sent it?” he asked, a little condescendingly. “You never send me birthday presents. Or Christmas for that matter. So you shouldn’t make assumptions like that.”



They were quiet as they watched the snake finish its meal and curl up contentedly in the corner. “He’s beautiful,” said Desdemona. “Thank you.”