Mudblood

Enemies of the Heir, Beware

Don't forget to vote and comment if you enjoy the chapter! :)

The news of the message on the wall spread like wildfire through the school, especially since Mrs. Norris turned out to be petrified instead of dead. This was mildly alarming because almost anyone could kill a cat with enough motivation, but petrifying one took some serious skills in the dark arts. Everyone was passing along theories about who the heir of Slytherin could be, everyone except the Slytherins mind you. The Slytherin students were generally under the impression that if the chamber was real that at least one among their number would have heard about it from their families. It was sound logic, Lyssa thought, it would make sense that Slytherin's heir would be someone from a long line of Slytherins. Though she still couldn't shake the feeling that this was more than a very sick and twisted prank.

Everywhere she went Lyssa heard whispers about the chamber and the heir. Some people thought it was Harry because he had been found with the writing. Anyone who knew Harry knew this was an absurd theory, mind you. Lyssa couldn't think of anybody in the whole school who was less like a Slytherin. This fact, however, meant that anyone with enough brain cells to string together a basic sentence had turned their sights to Slytherin.

This week was the only one Lyssa had ever experienced where she was happy to be the only muggle-born Slytherin. Her blood status effectively eliminated her from contention in the mystery of Slytherin's heir. And while other people were naming their picks for who they thought the heir could be Lyssa knew better than to try to guess. A year with the Slytherins had shown her that almost anyone of them could be the culprit and she had learned enough about how to survive the pureblood elitists to know that to let her guard down around any of them would be foolish.

Lyssa had only two respites from her paranoia during the first week of November, the last-minute quidditch practices Flint had insisted on, and watching Harry make a fool of himself acting out numerous characters from Lockhart's books during defence against the dark arts lessons. Other than that Lyssa had her head on a swivel and her ears primed for any bit of information that could help her.

On Saturday morning, however, Lyssa had to put all those nasty feelings away. Today was the first quidditch match of the season and she'd rather be petrified than be the reason Slytherin loses to Gryffindor. Not that they would, she thought, just hypothetically.

Milicent sat with Lyssa while she ate her breakfast and chatted about how excited she was to see Lyssa 'kick some Gryffindor ass'. Eventually, Flint rounded up his players and they made their way to the locker room.

The players changed into their jerseys. Flint gave them an encouraging speech. Well, speech was the wrong word, it was three sentences max, and then just as they had the year before, the Slytherin team entered the pitch to face Gryffindor on a chilly November morning.

While they waited for Madame Hooch and the Gryffindors Lyssa contemplated every way the game could play out. They had faster brooms, that was a fact, so it was likely Gryffindor's strategy would be to catch the snitch as soon as possible before Slytherin could gain a lead big enough to render the snitch pointless. Everyone on her team had their orders and they had been practicing countless ways to fulfill them for months. The chasers had to be quick, score as many goals as fast as possible and widen the divide to over one hundred and fifty. The beaters had two main targets, Harry and the Gryffindor chasers, if they could keep the chasers from scoring perfect, and if they could keep Harry from catching the snitch even better. Malfoy was set to shadow Harry. Harry was no doubt a better seeker so all Malfoy had to do was let him find the snitch for him and the Nimbus Two Thousand and One would do the rest. Susanna also had to guard the goalposts, but, that was more her job description than a strategy.