ANANKE

Classes go okay. In Herbology, which they share with the Hufflepuffs, they spend the lesson repotting venomous plants. It's hard work, and it's not made any better by the fact it's the first class of the day and Ananke isn't fully awake yet. The greenhouses are sweltering as well, the air heavy and humid on her skin in a way she isn't used to. It's hard to breathe.

Despite it all, Ananke does well. Not as well as Neville Longbottom, who it turns out has some sort of instinctive understanding of plants and ends up with the highest grade in the year, but well. There are enough Dark objects in Grimmauld Place that Ananke knows how to handle dangerous things without much thought, and plants are pretty similar. Don't touch them with bare hands. No sudden movements. 

Charms is just before lunch. They spend most of the lesson taking a lot of notes and Professor Flitwick goes over them again and again and again to make sure they understand - because Charms is a dangerous subject. It is just as easy to make something explode as it is to make it float. People used to die in Charms. It was hundreds of years ago, far before Professor Flitwick's time, when there weren't all sorts of safety measures in place to prevent people from becoming grievously injured, but it still makes sense to be cautious.

History of Magic, after lunch, is easily the most boring class. Professor Binns, a ghost that was alive at the time of the goblin rebellions, spends the lesson lecturing in a dull, droning voice. Ananke spends most of the class drawing fire runes on the blank parchment in front of her and then striking lines through them. By the end of the hour, at least a third of the class is asleep.

Defence Against the Dark Arts is last, and she discovers Father was right when he said it would never be the subject for her. They don't do any defensive spellwork, so there is no opportunity for Ananke to be bad at it, but Professor Quirrell, a twitchy man in a turban which is distinctly not head-shaped, spends most of the lesson preaching about the sheer awfulness of the Dark Arts.

He never actually says what they are, just that they're unforgivable and terrible and only vile, cowardly men use them because Iwas traumatised by some vampires last year, trust me. Most of the Gryffindors in the room lap it up, though they are undoubtedly annoyed by Quirrell's stutter. Most of the Slytherins in the room exchange eye rolls. Draco meets Ananke's eyes and they exchange a commiserating look. Then he seems to remember she's wearing red-lined robes and looks away stubbornly.

Then Ananke's done for the day. It's weird, because she thinks school should be harder, but it's really not. They've got homework, but Ananke thinks she understands how to craft the essays assigned so far, and really, there's too much time in the day. Hermione Granger is already talking about exams and studying, Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown are content to gossip in the common room, Harry Potter spends most of his time being awed by magic, and Ron Weasley is winning a game of chess against Seamus Finnegan. Ananke isn't sure where to go.

At Grimmauld, Father was always happy to sit silently in the library with her and recommend books on obscure dark magic. Ananke has a copy of Magick Moste Evile in her trunk, but she thinks she should at least wait until everyone's more settled in before she finds an abandoned classroom to start reading it in.

Ananke ends up deep in the Hogwarts library, around the History of Magic section - because she's only been here a day and already she knows that the very thought of the subject is enough to bore people - so the stacks will surely be empty. She picks out a random tome, ancient and covered in a thick, tenacious layer of dust - Witches and The Spanish Inquisition - and begins to read.

Hermione stumbles in around an hour later. Her eyes go very wide when she notices Ananke. "Oh, hello. I didn't think anyone would be in this section."

"Neither did I," Ananke tells her.

Instead of taking the not-so-subtle hint, Hermione sits down on the chair across from her. "I know everyone says that History doesn't matter, but I think it's very important to understand the world around us. And I know Professor Binns must be very qualified and all, but he's not the most engaging of teachers, and I think it would be really interesting to do some supplemental reading. What are you reading?"

Wordlessly, Ananke shows her the cover.

Hermione smiles, showing off two rather large front teeth. "Can I borrow that when you're done?" she asks. "It would be really interesting to compare Wizarding Britain with other countries' magical governments." She pauses, and seems to take in for the first time Ananke's unwelcoming face. Hermione deflates.

Ananke finds she does not want to turn Hermione's mood sour. The other girl has a desire for knowledge Ananke can respect, even if she wishes Hermione was a little quieter about it. She exhales. "I used to live in America, when I was very young." 

In the end, Hermione stays and asks about America. Ananke tells Hermione her mother was American, and that she lived there until her mother died. Hermione tells Ananke her parents are dentists ("Sort of like Healers for teeth, you know?") and that she likes reading.

"I would never have guessed," says Ananke, so emotionlessly that Hermione stares blankly. "I was joking," she adds.

"Oh," replies Hermione.

Then she feels they have gotten slightly off-topic and steers the conversation back to the Magical Congress of the United States of America. ("MACUSA for short.") Before curfew, Ananke gives the book in her hands to Hermione to check out of the library. The other girl will probably enjoy it more.

The next day begins with Transfiguration. Towards the end of the lesson, Professor McGonagall hands them a match and tells them to turn it into a needle.

Ananke soon discovers that she is really bad at Transfiguration. She swishes and jabs her wand at the match, muttering the incantation under her breath. The match remains a match.

Beside her, Hermione is busy correcting the way Ron is holding his wand. She's a little condescending about it, to be honest, but Ananke's mostly grateful the other girl isn't looking at her match.

Ananke turns over the wand in her hands, running a finger over one of the grooves. A relic from the Black family vault. It used to belong to the long-dead Phoebe Black, her great-great-something-aunt, but one day in Gringotts when she was seven, she picked it up and warmth flooded through her arm.

There is no technical age requirement to own a wand, so Father let her keep it. Ananke isn't sure, exactly, what it is made of, only that the wood is yew (good for dark magic) and the core is something probably illegal nowadays, and that she should never ever under any circumstance let an experienced wandmaker handle it.

She jabs the wand half-heartedly at the match again. Nothing happens.

McGonagall, coming around the classroom to check on their progress. "Miss Black," she says. "Do you need help?"

"No, Professor." She does, very obviously, but she also doesn't really want to talk to McGonagall any longer than necessary. The older witch tries to treat her like any other student, but Ananke can see something flash in her eyes every time she looks at her. It's a little funny how it's the Black in Gryffindor, the House of blood-traitors, that the professors are wary of, not the half-Black boy in Slytherin, House of blood purists.

Ananke twirls her wand and considers the match. No one but Hermione's managed to fully transform the match into a needle, but there are some really shiny matches around the room. Transfiguration, she decides, is all about intent. You had to really want the match to be a needle for it to work. Ananke has never wanted anything with any strength in her life. Maybe that's the problem.

The lesson ends with Professor McGonagall dumping a mountain of homework on them all. Hermione actually looks excited about it, which everyone agrees is mad.

Speaking of Hermione, the other girl seems to have latched on to Ananke, chattering about anything that strikes her fancy. She supposes it makes sense; the only other girls in the year are Parvati and Lavender, and they're just as crazy as Hermione, only in a totally different, non-compatible way. Wednesday morning, Lavender spends half an hour in the bathroom, and emerges wearing far more make-up than any eleven-year-old girl has a right to own.

When Hermione starts babbling now, Ananke sometimes replies in full sentences. She wonders if they are friends.

She excels in astronomy, of course. All Blacks have. She explains why to Hermione as they gaze into their telescopes. "Most Blacks are named after stars. My father is Regulus - he's over there, in the Leo constellation, see?"

For her father, the star Regulus is more than just his name. It is a part of his very being. Prince. Little king. She is a little sad, sometimes, that her name has no place in the sky.

"Ananke," she continues, "isn't a star. She's the goddess of necessity, inevitability and fate. From Greek mythology. She's very obscure, though."

Ananke is also the goddess of slavery, but she doesn't feel the need to inform Hermione of that. Not for the first time, she wonders why on earth her parents named her what they did.

Hermione thinks it all sounds fascinating - of course she does - and wonders what the meaning of her name is. They resolve to look it up in the library the next day.

One telescope over, Ron shakes his head. "Nutters, the both of you. Why would you willingly spend time slogging through etymology books and studying when you could be doing literally anything else?"

Hermione sniffs and opens her mouth, but Ananke cuts her off, because whatever Hermione says next will only aggravate Ron, and she doesn't feel like getting in the middle of a fight so late at night. "It's interesting. We'll look up your name too, if you like."

Ron side-eyes her, considering. Black hair, black eyes, black magic. "Okay."

They have Potions with the Slytherins about a week into the term. Just before class, Draco and his goons shove her into an abandoned classroom in the dungeons. Ananke lets them, because a) Draco doesn't have the stomach to squish a spider, and b) she can always rattle off a few curses if things get violent. They would even be on the curriculum.

Draco waves his vassals - Crabbe and the other one - away. He folds his arms over his hundred-galleon robes.

"I've decided that it doesn't matter that you're a Gryffindor," he pronounces, like he's forgiving her for committing some major transgression. "We're still family, and Mother says family always sticks together."

Ananke eyes him. She wonders if this is going to turn into a conversation about feelings. She thinks she will flee the room if it does. "Of course."

Luckily, it doesn't. "Besides, you're not nearly as annoying as Potter." He spits the name like Harry's thrown up on his shoes before - or something. Ananke is honestly taken aback.

What's wrong with Harry? is what she wants to ask. She thinks she can guess. Perhaps Harry has rebuffed him yet again. Perhaps his father has filled his head with poison. Perhaps Draco's simply jealous of the attention Harry is receiving. Whatever the case, Ananke is sure she could talk him around, if she tried, but the thing is she simply doesn't have the energy.

She remembers thinking that she is good at changing people's minds. And she is. She can be. She could be. If she could muster the energy to try.

They exit the room and together walk to where students are lining up outside the Potions classroom. The Slytherins watch them. Ananke thinks Draco, with his brashness and complete lack of subtlety, is more suited for Gryffindor than Slytherin. Maybe he'll grow into the whole cunning thing.

They file into the room and take seats. There is a clear divide between the Gryffindors and Slytherins, as if already battle lines are being drawn. Split down the middle. Ananke sits by the edge of that line, because while she is a Gryffindor, she doesn't really know the people in her House like she does the Slytherins. Pansy Parkinson once spent a garden party crying in her arms. She has had a conversation with Daphne Greengrass about blood wards.

She ends up next to Theo Nott, a quiet sort of boy. Ananke thinks they'll get on well. Snape enters and slams the door shut. Several people jump.

He begins with a lecture. It's the usual stuff - "subtle art of potion-making" and all that. The same sort of thing he's told her a thousand times.

Potions are neither light or dark magic. Technically, making them does not require magic at all. It is the ingredients that are magical. Squibs can make Potions. Muggles could too. In fact, Muggles would probably be better at it than a lot of mages; potion-making is like cooking, something which Muggles, who do not own house-elves, have to do a lot of.

Snape finishes his lecture with a flat note to his voice that she knows means he's insulted someone. Hermione is practically vibrating on the edge of her seat, looking desperate to prove herself. Don't waste your time, Ananke wants to say.

She tunes back into the lesson as Snape barks, "Potter!"

Harry gives a little start, green eyes owlish as ever. "Yes, sir?"

Then Snape grills him ruthlessly on the properties of several magical plants. Harry doesn't know the answer to any of them. Neither do half the class. Hermione knows, and she raises her hand up high. Snape ignores her, acid flying from his tongue. Ananke knows, and she does nothing.

By the end of it, Ananke sort of wants to pat Harry on the shoulder, but at the same time - what were you expecting?

She knows Snape, not as well as Draco - he's Snape's godson, after all - but she does know him; he and her father were friends in school and he comes to Grimmauld Place for tea sometimes. She knows why he hates anyone bearing the name Potter.

Harry looks confused and slightly angry. Maybe he doesn't know. That makes sense; Ananke can't imagine anyone was in a hurry to tell him about his Professor's crush on his mum and feud with his dad.

Soon, Snape puts them all into pairs and tells them to brew a Boil-Cure Potion. He flicks his wand and instructions appear on the blackboard in gleaming white chalk. She and Theo Nott, one of the only inter-house pairs, work in a mutual sort of silence, speaking only to tell each other to pass the occasional ingredient. It's nice. Relaxing.

Most others find it less relaxing. Hermione's potion with Dean Thomas is near-perfect, but Ron's and Harry's looks like toxic sludge. Pansy's with Crabbe is emitting sparks.

When Snape pauses to show off how Draco has brewed his horned slugs, Harry clenches his jaw so hard he almost chips a tooth. Ananke rolls her eyes at the both of them: Harry with his scowl and Draco with his smug smile.

A cloud of acrid green smoke fills the dungeon. Turns out Neville has managed to actually melt Seamus's cauldron. Ananke would almost be impressed if the spilled potion isn't currently burning holes through her shoes. Within moments, the entire class is standing on their stools. Neville, who is drenched in potion, lets out a pained whimper as angry red boils erupt over his skin.

"Pass the ground unicorn horn," Ananke mutters to Theo as Snape berates Neville. Maybe it's a little callous to think of the potion when Neville is in unspeakable pain, but really, it's not like she'll be helping. All she can do is stare, which is a bit rude, and the inattention will ruin their potion. 

Theo passes the bowl. She adds it to the potion and begins to stir. Seamus takes Neville to the Hospital Wing.

At the end of the lesson, Ananke hands in a vial of Boil-Cure Potion at Snape's desk. He takes it. He sneers.

It stings only a little, because though he's never looked at her with so much hatred in his gaze, she finds she doesn't really care.

Ananke expected this. She knows Snape is not one to let go of grudges, even a decade-old one. A Black in red robes. She gives a mental shrug. She will not lose any sleep over his hatred.

(Plus, while Snape and Father are friends, they aren't exactly close. They were both Death Eaters, back during the war, and though Father had defected pretty definitively, then disappeared to America for six years, it is never clear exactly which side Snape will take when the Dark Lord returns, so Ananke's not too torn up over his opinion of her.

She just hopes it won't affect her grade.)

During the afternoon, when Harry and Ron have gone on some adventure or something and Hermione is holed up in the library, she writes to her father. Mostly about Draco's apparent animosity towards Harry Potter (he was raised by Muggles, did you know?). It takes more effort than it should to put a quill to parchment and move it; she's become progressively more tired throughout the day, and now she feels like there is a boulder pressing down on her chest, movements sluggish.

After heading up to the owlery, starts her Transfiguration essay, but after spending about fifteen minutes just staring at the parchment and absently tracing rune shapes onto the desk with her finger, she decides to give up.

---

Flying is boring. Despite her father being Slytherin's star seeker from third year to seventh, Ananke has never been very interested in it.

Then suddenly, it's not. Neville takes off into the sky before Madam Hooch blows her whistle. He falls and has to be taken to the Hospital Wing yet again ("Poor boy," she mutters to Hermione.), Draco is a prat and steals a Remembrall - where did that come from again? - and like on the train, things are moving too fast. Draco takes off on his broom. Harry goes after him.

Draco's good at flying, which is not a surprise. Harry's really good, which is, seeing as how he's been - you know, raised by Muggles. She briefly wonders if he's lying about that. She discounts the possibility. Harry spends far too many hours being amazed by moving chess pieces for that to be the case, and besides, what reason would he have to lie?

Harry gets sent to McGonagall, which Draco is smug about when he's done being shocked by Harry's skill. The rest of the lesson is somewhat anticlimactic. All anyone can talk about is did you see that dive? and also Malfoy, what a git.

At dinner, Harry tells Ron that he's been put on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which is just blatant favouritism. Then he tells Ron it's meant to be a secret in what he must think is a subtle way, except it's really not. By the end of the meal, all of Gryffindor knows. Ananke bets that by the end of the next day, the whole school will know.

Then Draco comes over to challenge Harry to a duel, and Harry actually accepts. She decides to stop paying attention to other people's idiocies and finish eating dessert.

(It's fine, she tells herself. Totally fine. Draco can't really hurt Harry without using dark magic, which he isn't stupid enough to do. Probably.

It's fine.)

That Saturday, after the duel, Ananke is woken by Hermione, who is furious with the boys. Something about dogs and trapdoors.

When Hermione has calmed down a little and gone to the library, Ananke stuffs Magick Moste Evile into her bag and goes down to the dungeons in search of an abandoned classroom to practise dark magic in.

She goes past the Slytherin common room, deeper and deeper underground, and tries a random door. It opens into a circular stone room that, judging by the bloodstains on the walls, was long ago used for blood rituals.

She sets her bag on the floor and kneels down, marvelling at what a terrible idea this is. If a Slytherin comes in, she knows they will not hesitate to blackmail her within an inch of her life. But Father did always say that Slytherins rarely ventured past the common room in fear of getting lost, so she thinks it should be alright. Then she wonders if she should be more afraid of getting lost.

(Nah, she decides.)

Ananke cracks open the book randomly. She knows there's a copy of it in the Hogwarts library, in the Restricted Section, but it's something like the twenty-seventh edition and therefore so heavily censored it's useless in teaching dark magic. The book in her hands is a first edition. There are four in the Black library at Grimmauld Place. Three now, technically.

The page the book falls open to is about ritual sacrifice, and Ananke is instantly greeted with detailed instructions on how to carve out a man's heart so that it stays intact. No thank you.

This is the sort of reason why dark magic's become synonymous with evil, Ananke thinks. People tend to think it's about causing harm or feeling hatred, but it's really not. Dark magic is all about permanence. Leaving a mark. It's one of the things that it will do every time without fail. It left a mark on Ananke. Her skin used to be brown. Now it's ghost white.

Dark magic can also leave marks in the earth, too. If enough of it is regularly cast over a piece of land for a long enough time, it begins to seep into the ground itself. Grimmauld is one of those places, saturated with dark magic. So was their old house in America.

Hogwarts is very noticeably not. In fact, it seems the very opposite has happened; the air is saturated with light magic, which should be impossible, but somehow that's exactly what it feels like. It's why Ananke's currently crouching on the filthy dungeon floor instead of being literally anywhere else - the dungeons around the Slytherin common room are the place Slytherins practise dark magic. The air reeks of it. If Ananke were to cast dark magic anywhere else in school, it would flare up like a beacon to any dark-detectors, but here she is safe. Mostly.

Magick Moste Evile opens to a section on fire spells, which gives Ananke an acute sense of nostalgia. Mother loved fire spells. They just agreed with her, and she could do most of them wordlessly and wandlessly. For Mother, fire was endlessly fascinating. She liked to watch the way the flames crackled in the fireplace. (Even at five years old, Ananke had known her mother wasn't - all there, you know?) It was all she lived and breathed, sometimes. Eventually, inevitably, the fire in her soul burned so bright it killed her, leaving Ananke with nothing of her but a burn-shaped scar on her heart.

Ananke turns the page to a spread on blood magic. More specifically, about using blood magic to change your appearance, which sounds useful.

(She shudders to think of what Lavender and Parvati would do if they heard dark magic could do this.)

There's a whole section dedicated to the topic, so Ananke flips through until she finds something feasible and hopefully reversible. The section on colour looks promising, and hopefully no-one will notice if one of her fingernails turns green for a bit if she can't change it back.

She begins to read the passage. It's slow work, because the book is practically falling apart, only in one piece by the virtue of a preservation charm or seven, and the actual content is in Old English. There's no spell for turning body parts green, which she supposes makes sense, but there is one for black, which she supposes would be less noticeable.

She grabs her wand and practises the movement a couple of times. It's pretty simple, all things considered, just a squiggly movement, a slice up and a jab. The incantation is something Greek that reminds her of ancient relics in crumbling temples.

She draws a needle from her bag - she knew it was a good idea to bring one - and pricks her finger. Abruptly, she is reminded of a Muggle fairy-tale where a princess is put in an enchanted sleep after pricking her finger on a cursed needle. The Averys like to gripe about it, claiming the Muggle author had stolen the idea from an old family legend. Father says the Averys are idiots.

Ananke takes a steadying breath. It's only nine in the morning and she's about to do some highly illegal blood magic right under Albus Dumbledore's nose. She readies her wand.

With her other finger, she smears the blood over the fingernail of her left pinkie - because if something goes wrong that's the finger she'll miss least - waves her wand and says the incantation.

For a moment nothing happens. Ananke wonders if she's picked something too difficult, but she's always had a knack for dark magic the way Neville has a knack with plants, and this shouldn't be any different - when the blood sort of starts to sink into her fingernail, dyeing it black.

It's only a small bit of magic, but that doesn't make it any less exciting. A kind of glee rises in her that she only feels when she casts dark spells, and there's energy in her bones, because that was way easier than it had any right to be. For Merlin's sake, human transfiguration was a NEWT-level subject and she's just done something similar, only permanent.

She thinks it's probably a bad idea to leave her nail like that, though, and grabs her wand again. She practises the incantation and wand movement to turneth backeth thy skin a few times, pricks her finger again, and it works.

She does it a few more times, just to get the hang of it, before she decides she should probably stop draining her blood.

All in all, not a terrible waste of a morning.