Chapter 1
“There’s bravery here, to be sure. But ambition as well. Perhaps too much. Oh, and not an overabundance of humility either, I see. Looks like you’ll be SLYTHERIN!!”
This final word booms out across the Great Hall, over the heads of flinching first-years still standing and shuffling anxiously, awaiting their turn to wear the ragged hat that’s removed from Root’s head as she hops down from the stool, and makes her way to the long dining table that seats her new Housemates. She squeezes in between a fifth or sixth year girl who hasn’t looked up from her food since the Sorting began, and a first-year boy who had been Sorted a few minutes before her. He glances nervously toward her, and she gives him a level look that she thinks appears comfortable and confident, which apparently it does because he seems reassured as he turns his attention back to the ongoing Sorting. So does Root, although she’s mostly looking at the hat. She’s a bit annoyed at how it talked about her. Someone should steal it. Or set it on fire.
Maybe both.
For the rest of the ceremony, she only takes note of people who are Sorted to her House. If others mattered, they would have been where she was. Slytherin is her House, therefore it is the best House. She would think this no matter which House she had been Sorted into, a fact she is vaguely aware of, but which does not bother her in the slightest.
While the rest of Slytherin turn their full attentions to the feast arrayed before them, Root looks up and down the long table, surveying her House. She’s never been much good at making friends before, but since she is simultaneously brilliant, funny, and possessed of a winning personality, the failure must have been with the people she had previously been surrounded with. Her fellow Slytherins are surely cut from a finer cloth. She also marks some of those in her mental survey as potential girlfriends, including a few clearly several years ahead of her, because she’s never shied away from ambition.
Satisfied, she at last takes in the food before her, and finds it similarly satisfactory.
***
Buildings have personalities. The home Root had grown up in was indifferent; vaulted ceilings and steel-framed windows set into brick walls, wide hallways and foyers decorated lavishly with rugs and vases and paintings so immaculately placed that the rooms looked like paintings themselves. But it was a cold feeling, like persisting eternally in an undisturbed state was its strongest desire, and any interlopers were not entirely welcome. Like someone who always kept their back to you, the house made its feelings known.
Hogwarts is vast and sprawling and there are lots of empty, open places, but it always feels playful. Like there’s a friend hiding around the next corner. Root’s checked a lot of corners and hasn’t found any friends yet, but the feeling persists so it’s hard to complain too much.
Currently she’s somewhere near the top of a spindly tower, tucked into a little alcove with a large window looking down onto the Quidditch grounds where one of the teams is currently practicing. She’d been in her Charms class, but it wasn’t very interesting, so she’d snuck out, figuring she would just learn from the book on her own later. She’d vaguely wandered back towards the Slytherin common room, but hadn’t felt any real desire to return and had instead gone exploring. She found a strange, inward opening door on a wall that was inclined 30 degrees forward, followed a long passage until it reached several locked doors. She’d broken into all of them and then went through the one that had been the most difficult, assuming that the most interesting stuff would be behind it. Then she’d come to an increasingly tight spiral staircase which she ascended and came finally to her alcove.
She did manage to remove her Charms book from her bag, but it sits forlornly and unread beside her while she watches the team below. She’s never had much interest in the sport, but it looks fun from here.
***
Root’s hair blows crazily around her face as a player on a broomstick whizzes by just a few yards away from her. She’s in the stands on the Quidditch field, as close as she can get without being down on the field itself, which she had tried and was unfortunately caught. She’s obligingly dressed in green and silver; though her Housemates have proven to be something of a disappointment as far as friendship goes, with most interactions beginning and ending with bafflement on the part of either or both of the involved parties, she still feels a sense of loyalty to her House. They’re up by 40 points right now. Root’s attention is on the Slytherin Seeker, who’s begun darting and weaving purposefully as though he’s caught sight of something, although Root can’t spy the tiny golden Snitch herself. One of the Gryffindor Beaters angles towards him, and steers her broomstick momentarily with only her knees as she slams a passing Bludger with a huge two-handed swing of her bat. Slytherin’s Seeker rolls to avoid it as it whizzes past, righting himself quickly to maintain his chase, failing to notice that the Gryffindor Beater had not changed course until she barrels directly into him, nearly knocking both of them from their brooms.
A huge gasp, followed by mostly boos rises up from the Slytherins arrayed around Root in the stands. She forgets about the rest of the players for the remainder of the game and fixes fascinated eyes on the lone Beater. When the game ends (Root doesn’t notice who won) and the players return to the ground, she sees that the Beater’s face is streaked with dried blood, but she waves off the approaching nurse and makes her way off the field herself.
Root, having little experience with any personal relationships and no experience at all with being in love outside of several long-running daydreams, nonetheless decides in that instant that she is in love with this violent, bloody Gryffindor.
***
Most of Root’s classes proceed well, on the occasions she decides to attend them. Her Gryffindor is a second year, so they don’t share any classes, which required a number of weeks of research to learn her schedule and thereby to conduct further reconnaissance. So far, Root has learned:
- Her name is Sameen Shaw
- She often does not attend her classes
- She is good at disappearing when being followed
This is not a great wealth of information by any stretch of her exceptional imagination, but she remains confident that her methods will yield dividends soon. She hasn’t mastered the trick of turning herself invisible (several attempts have only landed her in the hospital wing), but she has learned a neat enchantment to dampen the sound of her feet on the floors of the castle, which will surely prove very useful.
She’s currently following Sameen down a corridor, or she was, since once she jerks out of her self-congratulatory reverie she realizes that the girl has disappeared again.
She definitely didn’t hear Root’s feet, though.
***
Root’s sitting on the roof of a section of the castle, right outside her alcove she’d discovered. Winter is approaching and the wind is biting, so she huddles closer into the nest of blankets she’d created on a nearly flat area of the roof. The holidays are in just a week, so she’ll be headed home soon. She’s not looking forward to it.
An idea occurs to her, though. Students aren’t allowed to join a Quidditch team until they’re at least in their second year. But that’s fine, it’ll take her at least until then to get enough practice anyway. Her parents’ house has a few unused broomsticks stored in closets that she can liberate. The holidays suddenly seem more appealing.
“Why aren’t you following me?”
Root turns in surprise to see her dark-haired dream girl (she has tried this phrase out several times in her diary and decided it was pretty bad, but kept using it anyway) standing behind her. “Do you want me to?”
Sameen shrugs. “Just noticed you weren’t.”
It’s true that Root has been slacking on her primary mission lately. Classwork has started to pile up, and with her impending departure from Hogwarts, she just hasn’t felt inspired lately. “Blanket?” Root offers, liberating one from her pile and holding it out.
“No thanks.” Sameen walks away across the roof, not back towards the alcove Root has been using. She must have another route.
***
After returning from the holidays, and in the last few weeks leading up to the end of the school year, Slytherin and Gryffindor are nearly neck-and-neck in the race for the House Cup. Root has taken to causing Gryffindors to commit small infractions while they’re within view of a professor. In her Potions class, while pretending to be paying attention to the lesson, she had prepared a fun little potion that briefly caused a person to lose all sense of inhibition. She then, by dint of some minor (but still impressive) legerdemain had slipped it into a flask of water belonging to a Gryffindor in her Charms class. She barely managed to pay attention in class at all, watching for the Gryffindor begin his performance. Abruptly he stood up, declared the professor a complete idiot, and began to dance on the top of his desk, before collapsing in confusion a few seconds later.
Gryffindor falls behind Slytherin.
At dinner in the Great Hall the next day, a minor explosion occurs at the Slytherin table some way down from Root. She looks up in surprise, since explosions she hasn’t planned are fairly rare occurrences. The source appears to be a group of fourth and fifth years who have a habit of pushing the rules, and several professors descend on them almost immediately and begin utilizing the haranguement skills that had earned them the job in the first place. The students mostly just look surprised to Root, who has a great deal of experience in recognizing innocence after many hours in front of a mirror practicing concealing her own lack thereof. She turns around and looks across the Hall to the Gryffindor table. Sameen is looking straight at her, and holds her gaze for several moments before turning back to her food.
The escalation is predictable and unavoidable by any means either girl is aware of. A group of Gryffindors find themselves in the possession of several items stolen from the headmaster’s office, baffled as to how they had ended up in their bags. A portion of the Quidditch field is set ablaze when only the Slytherin students are within its proximity. Heirlooms of one House, kept in their common room, suddenly disappear and reappear in the opposing House’s quarters. The hospital wing begins to fill with the detritus of this psychological war.
At some point their ever more dramatic acts of wanton destruction cease attempting to implicate the opposing House at all; the contenders match their gambits against each other directly in increasingly complex schemes that serve only to impress the opponent. One morning, the entire Great Hall floor is covered in ice. An entire staircase within the castle is simply not there. Corridors are flooded, stone walls bear marks of char, half the student body takes to casting full body protection spells when wandering in Hogwarts, now the domain of the unnamed ghouls who have converted it into a battle zone.
Inevitably, their ambition outstrips their ability to evade capture, and, found amidst an ongoing engagement (Root, several cleverly folded pieces of paper forming simulacra soldiers, animated through magic, whirling around her while the rest of the horde charges down a corridor, met by a stream of fire emitted from Sameen’s outstretched wand), they are hauled somewhat painfully before a panel of professors who try to determine how to punish them.
Sameen glares sullenly the entire time, as if this was Root’s fault and she hadn’t been enjoying herself just as much as Root. Eventually, their judges decide on a very long period of detention. There’s no sense in beginning so close to the end of the term, just a few days away, and they are told that for the entire following year, several hours of each school night will be spent in this way. Together, so they can learn to get along with each other.
This is the best thing that has ever happened to Root.