*The following is a rewrite of the train spying scene from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, found towards the end of Chapter 7: The Slug Club, from Draceana(Malfoid)'s perspective* Draceana was too lost in her own thoughts to pay attention when the carriage door opened. It was only when Zabini tried to repeatedly slam the door close that she turned. “What’s wrong with this thing?” Her House mate made to slam it again, but was thrown to the side suddenly as the door whipped open. He fell into Goyle’s lap, but she paid no attention to the following ruckus. Instead, her attention was occupied by the streak of white that slipped into the room from the empty corridor. She thought it to be a hallucination at first, a trick of an overly stressed mind that had given way to paranoia, but with everything that she was… tasked to do, she couldn’t be too sure. Even after the flash disappeared, she traced the path it could have taken and settled her gaze at the carriage’s luggage rack. Nothing was there, nothing that her eyes could see, that is. The struggling and snarling between Goyle and Zabini grew too loud and chaotic to ignore, and she pulled out her wand and flicked a spark of magic at them. “Will you two sort yourselves out already?!” The force of her magic was the equivalent of a light slap that rolled across their faces. Their entanglement stopped for a moment, and in that breath Goyle shoved Zabini into his seat before straightening his clothes. The thrown boy grumbled to himself, but kept any further grievance to a glare aimed at an aloof Goyle. Crabbe sniggered and returned to his comic, the tussle a mild inconvenience to how engrossed he was in its pages. Dracreana rubbed her brow and closed her eyes, annoyance making her click her teeth, yet she was oddly grateful for the minor distraction. It was a few moments where she didn’t need to think about what she had to do, though those thoughts quickly returned. “You need a rest?” Pansy flattened her skirt and offered her lap. Draceana gave a flippant wave. “I’ll be fine.” Pansy raised an eyebrow and kept staring. Draceana sighed, but relented and lay her head on her friend’s lap. Pansy didn’t press for any details and just ran her hands through Draceana’s hair. She found solace in the feeling, and shared a smile with the girl before letting a few minutes pass in thankfully blank silence. One that she knew she couldn’t stay in forever. She played idly with her wand. “So, Zabini, what did Slughorn want?” “Just trying to make up to well-connected people.” The boy still held a glower towards Goyle. “Not that he managed to find many.” Draceana sighed. Why was it so hard for the people around her to elaborate? “Who else had he invited?” “McLaggen from Gryffindor.” “Understandable, his uncle’s big in the Ministry.” “-someone else called Belby, from Ravenclaw-” “Oh, him?” Pansy made a face. “He’s a prat.” “-and Longbottom, Potter, and that Weasley girl.” Draceana shot up, startling Pansy back. “Why?” She shook her head. “What’s Longbottom got to interest Slughorn? Zabini shrugged. She sank back into her seat, the other two names pressing against her mind. “Potter, precious Potter, obviously Slughorn wanted a look at ‘the Chosen One.’” the sneer in her voice was only half genuine, “But that Weasely girl! What’s so special about her?” Those last words held a venom that she didn’t bother to hide. She still remembered the hex that Ginny had thrown at her last year, all to save Harry… all so important Harry. What a joke. Pansy stared at her from the corner of her eye. “A lot of boys like her.” She smirked at Zabini. “Even you think she’s good-looking, don’t you Blaise, and we all know how hard you are to please!” “I wouldn’t touch a filthy little blood traitor like her whatever she looked like.” Zabini looked ready to spit on the floor. Pansy looked pleased and offered Draceana her lap again, which she accepted after feigning resistance for a moment. She tried to get lost in the feeling of fingers running through her hair again, but the mention of Harry’s name only made her wish different hands were on her instead. Her face felt warm at the thought, but she smothered that impulse. That was a dream now, one that could never come true. She distracted herself with conversation. “Well, I pity Slughorn’s taste. Maybe he’s going a bit senile. Shame, my father always said he was a good wizard in his day. My father used to be a bit of a favorite of his. Slughorn probably hasn’t heard I’m on the train, or -” “I wouldn’t bank on an invitation.” Zabini frowned. “He asked me about Nott’s father when I first arrived. They used to be old friends, apparently, but when he heard he’d been caught at the Ministry he didn’t look happy, and Nott didn’t get an invitation, did he? I don’t think Slughorn’s interested in Death Eaters.” Draceana ground her teeth. Why was she so angry? What did she care if she was part of some old fool’s club or not, if Harry was going to be even closer to Ginny now? She forced out a singular, humorless laugh. “Well, who cares what he’s interested in? What is he, when you come down to it? Just some stupid teacher.” She tried to act like she was yawning, but failed. “I mean, I might not even be at Hogwarts next year, what’s it matter to me if some fat old has-been likes me or not?” Pansy’s brow furrowed and her hands stopped. “What do you mean, you might not be at Hogwarts next year?” Draceana avoided her friend’s eyes. “Well, you never know. I have might have - er - moved on to bigger and better things.” The phrasing of that nearly made her laugh, but not from amusement. Crabbe and Goyle gawped at her, which was a surprise. Usually the two never looked like they were paying attention. Even Zabini had allowed curiosity to mar his normally haughty features. Pansy’s hands resumed stroking her hair, slowly. “Do you mean - Him?” A flash of red, slitted eyes bored into her from memory, but she let none of the fear that summoned show and shrugged. “Mother wants me to complete my education, but personally, I don’t see it as that important these days. I mean, think about it. . . . When the Dark Lord takes over, is he going to care how many O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s anyone’s got? Of course he isn’t. . . . It’ll be all about the kind of service he received, the level of devotion he was shown.” “And you think you’ll be able to do something for him?” Zabini crossed his arms and frowned. “Sixteen years old and not even fully qualified yet?” “I’ve just said, haven’t I? Maybe he doesn’t care if I’m qualified.” Her left arm started to itch, but she refrained from scratching it. “Maybe the job he wants me to do isn’t something that you need to be qualified for.” It just has to be something that you will be desperate enough to do. She ignored the concerned look on Pansy’s face, the continued slack jawed looks from Crabbe and Goyle, and stared outside the window. The tops of the castle ramparts made themselves known through the darkness outside. She pointed at them “I can see Hogwarts. We’d better get our robes on.” She stood up and sorted through her luggage, slipping her robes on. They very well may be the last time that she readied herself for the school year, and that made the cloth feel all the heavier. Madam Malkin’s usual flourishes were absent this year, all because she panicked and had grown flustered from Harry almost seeing her arm… how fitting. Goyle pulled his trunk down from the overhead compartment with a rough swing. It was almost in her peripheries, but she saw it bounce off of something. Another trick of an overwhelmed mind, she would have thought, but the near inaudible gasp that paired with it gave her pause. She stared up at the luggage rack, frowning, and saw it. Just barely, a gap had revealed itself for a split second, and she saw the familiar glasses beneath it. A large part of her burned with the urge to rip that blasted cloak off of him and scream, but she held it back. She’d been quite good at doing that, as of late. Draceana pulled a thick, new traveling cloak from her trunk - black, with hints of green - and fastened it around her neck. A gift from her mother, though she had told her that it was her father’s idea as well. She clutched onto it and locked her trunk tight as the train slowed to a jerky crawl. A final lurch signaled its complete stop, and right as it did, Goyle threw the door open and muscled his way through the emerging crowd of second years, punching them aside. Crabbe and Zabini followed after him. Pansy moved to the door and turned back to her, worry still clear on her face. Draceana flashed her a slight smile. “You go on. I just want to check something.” Her friend frowned and stared at her for a while, but eventually relented and left. Draceana shut the door to seal herself from the people that were filing past and let down its blinds so no eyes could peer inside. She bent over her trunk and opened it again, taking a few moments to feign like she was searching through it. “Petrificus Totalus!” Her wand thrust at where Harry hid in the rack. The sound of his locking limbs bounced through the compartment, and eventually, his cloak slipped off as he toppled out of the luggage rack and fell with an agonizing, floor-shaking crash. He wound up at Draceana’s feet, his Invisibility Cloak trapped under him and his whole body revealed. His legs were still curled in an absurd kneeling position, making the whole sight rather pitiful, but she could take no joy in such a view. Not anymore. “I thought so,” she paced around him, “I hear Goyle’s trunk hit you. And I thought I saw something white flash through the air after Zabini came back…” She stared down at his green eyes. Those eyes that she’d managed to find some solace in before, now filled with disdain in their frozen glare up at her. There were so many words that she wanted to say in that moment, so many things that she couldn’t say but stormed in her mind nonetheless, but only two kept ringing out with any sort of clarity. Help me. “You didn’t hear anything I care about, Potter.” Help me. “You have a knack for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, don’t you?” She tugged the Invisibility Cloak free from under him. Help me. She slipped the cloak over him, making sure that he was completely concealed, unseen. “I don’t reckon they’ll find you till the train’s back in London.” Help me. Draceana picked up her trunk and went to the door, stopping right before it. “See you around, Potter… if you know what’s good for you, you won’t come back.” Help m- She shut the door behind her.