The Slytherins

20

*use of discriminative language*

"The heir of Slytherin coming this way!" Blaise shouted, his voice echoing thorough the hallway as he laughed viciously and licked his lips.

Cassie had half a mind to smack him, but once she saw the reaction to the announcement, her thoughts were discarded.

There had been two more attacks on students in the last week of term, and the whole school seemed to be in agreement that Cassie was the cause.

The chatter stopped suddenly whenever she was roaming the Castle, and all eyes were on her. People either loved her, hated her or wanted to be her. But she took this on with confidence. She didn't exactly bask in the spotlight; it wasn't her element unlike Pansy, but she paraded through the halls with as much strut she could muster, and she relished in the fact that she had her friends behind her. She often felt like they were her bodyguards, always sending daggers at people that so much as looked at her the wrong way.

It did frustrate her a little, because she knew she could look after herself, but it didn't stop Draco or Theo from having first fights with anyone dragging her name through the mud. Even Laurie had had an argument with another student over how they shouldn't mess with her.

Even so, Slytherin house was being punished for the attention. Cassie had to stun a Ravenclaw boy for punching a first year because his girlfriend had been attacked.

"You!" She bellowed with rage as she charged across the room. "Get your dirty hands of him!" She pulled out her wand. Blaise and Theo followed her and immediately pulled the Slytherin up and got him on his feet, responding to Cassie.

She recognised the first year; he was Edward Harper, a timid boy who was in the Gobstones club.

"You can talk!" The boy scoffed. "You have the dirtiest hands in the whole school!"

Cassie could feel as disgust and rage boiled inside her, and Theo's hand clenched from where he was standing. "Don't you-" Blaise began, voice raised but she stepped forward, blocking him.

"You'll see how dirty these hands are when they collide with your mouth," she hissed, an icy chill in her tone that could freeze anyone. "Remember you retard, you don't want to upset me. I could send you to join your girlfriend in the hospital wing in more than one way." She seethed. She could see the cogs turning inside his tiny brain as he eyed Cassie's wand, which was still gripped in her hand, and began to shuffle away, desperate to flee.

As late December fell, the muddy grounds were now covered in blankets of snow. The Slytherins had finally let loose of their mount of homework as all exams were completed, leaving them to do nothing but build snowmen, go ice skating and have snowball fights in the grounds.

Cassie, Draco and Mattheo said goodbye to the others on the last day of term as they left on the hogwarts express.

Cassie's mother was away on business again, and so were Draco's parents too which they found oddly suspicious.

They sat down in the empty common room, where they were completing some of the transfiguration project they had Ben set over the holidays.

"Hey, have the others gone already?" Cassie turned form where she was sitting to find Theo climbing down the stairs from his dormitory, and as she looked closer she thought she saw a puffiness to his eyes.

"Hey Theo! I didn't know you were staying!" Mattheo exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and hugging him boyishly.

"Yeah, er... mum's gotten ill again so she's been transferred to St.Mungos. It's nothing serious, they don't think. So I'm staying here." He said shrugging it off.