Black Blood

02 - Good Intentions

"Good evening, Granger," the girl named Cass demurely greeted, eyeing the book the bushy-haired muggleborn sat reading with a hint of exasperation.

Glancing up at her, Granger's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, indicating that it was not a good time to bother her despite it being the only time Cass knew she could be caught alone without her two male companions.

"Oh, I do apologize if I'm interrupting your study, it's just...I wanted to speak to you on behalf of my cousin," Cass politely said, adopting a sweet smile, as she felt a tad bad about the interruption, but amused, nonetheless, by Granger's reaction.

"What do you want, Black?" she asked, not quite rude with the way she'd worded her query, but infinitely so with her sharp undertone.

"I already answered that," Cass quietly returned, never losing her sweet smile as she took a small nip at the muggleborn, who was proving to be a little less smart than the pureblood had previously thought.

Granger's eyes narrowed a little more, and Cass suddenly became aware of her own hypocritical slip, feeling that she'd embarrassed herself a smidge by inappropriately talking instead of appropriately thinking.

"My apologies, Granger. That was rather rude of me, but I truly do wish to speak to you on behalf of my cousin," Cass stated, allowing the sweetness from her smile to slip, and for only sincerity to seemingly remain.

"Why do you talk like that?" the muggleborn quietly questioned, her brow raising ever so slightly in confusion, which, in turn, caused Cass' to raise in similar perplexion.

"Like...what?" she queried, baffled by the muggleborn's strange question.

"Like...uh...nothing, never mind. What do you...and your cousin want with me?" Granger asked, changing the subject back to familiar territory, which Cass was silently thankful for.

"We don't want-" Cass began, only to stop herself short, knowing she was on the verge of saying something, again, when it should only instead be thought. "I wanted to apologize on Draco's behalf. He shouldn't have called you a mudblood."

Cass watched, slightly in mirth, as Granger involuntarily flinched at the use of the word 'mudblood', as though it were some sort of swear or slur given the context with which she'd used it, and as though the pureblood would've ever allowed such a thing to cross her perfectly-shaped lips had it been.

"No, he shouldn't have," the girl quietly agreed, tearing up slightly and glancing down at her open book, her eyes unfocused on the words within.

"No, indeed, he shouldn't have," Cass continued, looking down at the girl in pity, feeling that her cousin deserved a slap for his thoughtless insult. "Not even the mangiest mongrel deserves to be kicked for no reason."

Before Cass could comprehend what was happening, Granger suddenly glanced back up at her with a very sharp look upon her noticeably asymmetrical features.

"What did you just call me?!" she hissed, baring her teeth for a reason Cass couldn't quite understand and filling the girl with undefined alarm.

"I...I beg your pardon?" she queried, unsure what Granger was referring to. "I...did not call you anything, to my knowledge."

"You called me a mangy mongrel!" Granger spat, which caused Cass to be filled with a measure of relief, as she finally understood what the muggleborn's problem had been.

"You misunderstood, Granger," she replied, adopting her sweet smile once more with a shake of her head. "I didn't call you a mangy mongrel. I used an analogy, which is-"

"I know what an analogy is, Black!" the muggleborn snapped through gritted teeth, sharpening her glare ever so slightly more and cutting the pureblooded girl off, which was quite the rude thing to do. "You likened me to one, which may as well have been your way of calling me one!"

"I did not call you any such thing, Granger," Cass coolly replied, sweetening her smile a tad bit more, readying herself to walk away so as to save herself the embarrassment of another hypocritical slip.

"But you thought it!" the bushy-haired girl accused, attempting to draw Cass back into the spat, which, admittedly, was working quite admirably.

"You have no idea what I thought, Granger," she indifferently replied, raising her chin a little and sending the muggleborn a faux-amused look. "We haven't spoken once before now, and you don't know me well enough to mind my thoughts. Perhaps, Granger, you should learn from one of your books-"

'Be silent!' Cass silently told herself, stopping the insult short so as not to further embarrass herself, but it was already far too late.

"Learn what?! Learn what, exactly, Black?!" the girl spat, raising her voice to a degree that Cass had never heard from the muggleborn, which was especially surprising considering the 'sacred place' the two were in. "Learn to mind my tongue?! Learn to be a good little mudblood and mind my manners in the presence of a pureblood?!"

Cass could feel her cheeks simmer, and while she wouldn't have said so in such a derogatory way, the muggleborn girl hadn't been too far from the truth.

"You don't know me, Granger," the girl quietly returned, yet she didn't feel quite so confident in her statement; not nearly as much as she should've, anyway.

"What's wrong, Black?" the girl sarcastically asked, showing a sneer that her cousin would've been proud to call his own. "Am I a little too close to home?"

"Have a good evening, Granger," Cass murmured, showing the muggleborn, once more, a sweet smile that was utterly devoid of warmth, then she turned on her heel and made her way past an irate-looking Madam Pince, who was headed towards Granger's hermitified corner.

'With any luck, she'll be thrown from the library,' Cass spitefully thought to herself, never once glancing back at the loathsome muggleborn.