Content warning: Unfair treatment by a teacher and unfair punishment as a result. Magic accident resulting in sensory distress. Use of a slur, briefly discussed context of slur including a link to real-world racism. So much classism it smells. Magical injuries, minor fighting.

Following the disaster that had been their first Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Professor Lockhart had refrained from any further attempts at practical lessons and instead ran his classes as sort of roleplay sessions retelling his greatest adventure stories, with a rotating cast of unwilling volunteers from the class as assistants. Rhiannon wasn’t entirely sure it counted as teaching, but he probably didn’t have Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head so, incompetent had to be a small win over deadly.

Outside of classes, Rhiannon found that the awkward scene with Colin Creevey indicated a wider problem. She hadn’t been confronted with it the year before given she was of a similar age to everyone else, there had been some whispers but not much more. Now there were almost fifty new students, most of whom were a year younger and somehow that small gap had an uncomfortable number of them fleeing from just the sight of her, accosting her between classes and in general deferring to her like she was some kind of child hero. That was what the wizarding world saw her as – Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and while most of the hero-worshipping students at least by now knew her real name and identity (more from collecting bits of information about her like rare trading cards rather than any particular support), it was unpleasant to be confronted with the very tangible reality of her reputation.

So the return of regular Quidditch practice came as a welcome reprieve. Rhiannon didn’t even mind when a bleary-eyed Katie Bell poked her head into the dormitory while Rhi was still pyjama-clad and curled up on the bed listening to Hermione’s book read itself quietly. “Quidditch practice, half ‘n hour,” the wiry brunette croaked, then stumbled back down the hallway leaving Rhiannon to get ready. Hermione groaned and sat up, and she headed for the bathroom along with Rhiannon. They took their time showering and dressed warmly afterwards, returning to the bedroom to find coats and boots.

“If it’s alright, I’ll come along,” said Hermione with a yawn, wiping the last water droplets from her cheek. “With how they’ve been this week and last, I wouldn’t be surprised if your first-year fan club turned up. I’ll get them to leave you alone, I know you need a break.” she added, a wry smile touching at her face. She knew how tiring Rhiannon found the performance that was dealing with her admirers.

Rhiannon groaned and pulled her boots on, tying the laces with a little more ferocity than the task merited. “Do-do-don’t let Malfoy hear you say fan club – or- or worse, Lockhart,” she warned. She had become one of Professor Lockhart’s favourite demonstration assistants and he loved to pull her aside after class and natter on about fame and how she should be conducting herself, pompously reminding not to get too confident in her status too early and more; and Draco Malfoy had delighted in taunting her about it whenever they met between classes. Rhiannon shuddered at the thought and fetched her pads and broomstick from under her bed, and immediately she was faced with a problem.

Carrying her Quidditch pads and broom, she didn’t have enough hands left for her cane and she sat back down on the bed with a grimace. Despite it being only the 15^th of September, the weather had been decidedly grim even since the end of summer and was growing only colder. Rhiannon didn’t feel the cold herself as such, but her joints were strained as a side effect of lycanthropy especially with only a week left as her second full moon loomed, and the steady decline in the weather had her feeling like a particularly wretched human barometer. Getting down from the common room tower on the seventh floor to the Quidditch pitch outside without her cane would be if not impossible, then certainly very foolish to attempt.

She dropped the Quidditch pads on her bed and stared at them, seriously considering leaving them behind. “Do you want me to carry something?” asked Hermione timidly. Rhiannon shook her head and almost growled at her friend – she didn’t need people to carry her things, if she let that start she’d be fending off a small army of first-years vying for the dubious honour of the task. She glared at the Quidditch pads for another moment, then unbundled them and buckled them to eachother to form a messy chain. With that now much more manageable she slung it over her left shoulder – the bad one, she tried to use her cane in her right hand where possible which meant despite being right-handed she tended to use her wand left-handed these days – and picked up her broomstick again. Now she had enough hands for her cane. With Rhiannon grumbling to Hermione about a desire to grow extra arms and whether it would be possible, the two of them set off out of the dormitory and down to the common room.

Downstairs, they were surprised to find Ron curled up with a blanket and a stack of textbooks in front of the common room fireplace, mostly asleep while the house came to life around him. He roused as the two girls clumped down the stairs and yawned, stretching widely as he did so. “Wha’s the time?” he asked sleepily, his words distorted by another yawn.

Rhiannon couldn’t help a little giggle – the image was so out of place, normally it was Ron who would rescue her from falling asleep studying. “S-s-s-e-ven, ish,” she replied. “Q-qu-quid-qu-Quidditch, practice. Did you get any sleep?” Rhiannon was honestly a little concerned. Academics wasn’t Ron’s forte and outside of Defence it had been made clear that this year was to be a lot more academically rigorous than the last. On top of that, no matter how much he applied himself he had been struggling in classes, his spells misfiring or their effects unstable, and after two weeks of that he was clearly a little strained.

Ron rubbed at his eyes and dragged his hair into some semblance of neatness. “Snape set me extra after I cocked up in class on Friday. Bastard wants a ten-page essay about chemical mechanics in potioneering by class time tomorrow, ‘with emphasis on how they are changed by the influence of magic’... he said I was treating it like a Muggle science class for kids, so I’m to tell him all about why it’s not,” he grumbled bitterly.

Rhiannon scowled and leaned heavily on her cane. “I’ll go ff-f-f-ind Dudley after practice, he loves that stuff. I-I’ll help too, but that’s still really unfair... W-a-w-want to come down to practice with me, or d’you need more sleep?” she suggested, then asked with a wry grin. “You know Oliver loves it when I bring friends to play fill-in.”

Ron groaned and stretched widely again. He pushed off the blanket and stood up, straightening the clothes he’d fallen asleep in and pulling on the coat that he had left hanging over the back of the couch. “Yeah, I’m good to go. If I went right back to that-” here he gestured at the books and paperwork with a scowl, “- I think my brain’d melt.” he finished, then smiled in a self-deprecating sort of way. Hermione shook her head, frowning. “We’ll help,” she offered. Ron shrugged and rubbed at his eyes, and the three of them chattered amongst themselves as they headed on out of the common room.

Ron shivered and pulled his coat closer around him as they reached the lower floors of the castle. “It’s freezing,” he grumbled, and pulled his wand out of his sleeve. “Hey, world! It’s September! Not January!” he yelled at the sky, spreading his arms wide and gesturing around at nothing in particular. His wand sparked and he winced. “Oops,” he muttered, almost as if he were apologising to the wand itself.

“Hang on, I know this one, Mum showed me over the holidays when Dad broke the oven,” he muttered to himself, chewing on the side of his lip as he thought. Then he brightened and adjusted his wand grip, frowning to himself as clearly he reviewed some spell in his head. “Calefacto!” he said decisively, then grinned and spread his hands wide as if expecting applause.

Applause there was not. While his spell undeniably worked, the air surrounding the three of them suddenly increased in temperature. The temperature itself was unpleasant in the extreme, a faint step below scalding but worse was the damp. Previously it had been a heavy, chill sort of damp that worked its way into the bones, clothes and lungs of everyone in it. Now it was sweltering, oppressive and choking, and Rhiannon fell to the ground coughing and whimpering as the temperature kept rising, hunched over on her hands and knees. She didn’t know the spell Ron had used – she could guess at its intended effect, but she was too disoriented to figure out the mechanics of it to undo it. Ron himself was distraught, he hadn’t collapsed like Rhi but instead staggered backwards trying to escape the field of effect only for it to expand and drag out with him, heat and pressure still increasing rapidly.

It was left to Hermione to save them. She had her head tilted sideways, one ear on her shoulder and the other covered by her left arm as she snatched for her wand with her right. “Finite incantatem,” she gasped breathlessly. Immediately the spell’s rapid increase slowed, then began to reverse itself rapidly, and Rhiannon coughed and wheezed as once again she breathed in freezing damp air. The crushing pressure eased and she fumbled weakly for her dropped cane and broomstick.

Shakily, Rhiannon stood and swayed on her feet. She coughed and hunched her shoulders, shivering in the sudden return to the heavy chill. Hermione’s expression darkened as she took that all in, and she rounded on Ron. “I’m assuming that wasn’t what that was meant to do?” she snapped acidly. Ron reddened and shook his head hurriedly. “No- no! I had it down perfect over the holidays,” he protested. “I’m really, really – really sorry, Rhi,” he said miserably. Rhiannon smiled weakly and scrubbed some of the dirt that had accumulated on her mittens from the fall off on the bottom of her jacket. “s’ f-f-f-ine,” she slurred, “I-i’ll come r-ight,”

Hermione wasn’t convinced. “You might’ve had it right over the holidays, but you’ve been having a bad week in classes – you should be more careful! Imagine if you’d crushed us like you did with that beetle in Charms on Tuesday,” she scolded him. Rhiannon shook her head and nudged Hermione with her cane. Enough, she mouthed, and Hermione went silent. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Ron shrugged uncomfortably. “You’re not exactly wrong but... thanks. I really am sorry, I should have thought more about it. I’m sorry.” he apologised again, hunching his shoulders uncomfortably as they made their way off across the Hogwarts grounds to the Quidditch pitch.

Thankfully, Hermione’s wry prediction hadn’t come true, and she perched herself on a bench beside the pitch to read and watch idly, while Ron fetched a spare broom so he could fill in as spare. Oliver set them up running drills and Ron played in place of Keeper so Oliver could direct the team more efficiently. He still preferred to play personally wherever possible, but after his stint on the bench as a punishment the year before Oliver Wood seemed to have seen the value in training additional players including those for his own role.

“Alright team!” said Oliver, grinning and rubbing his hands together as he gathered the rest of the team back in for a break. They’d run drills for a good hour or so by now. He handed out water bottles from a crate beside the one that held the Quidditch balls, and the team took them gratefully. He kept on talking while they drank. “I’ll see about booking a friendly, but otherwise the season starts with the first on the sixth’ve October. We came in second last year, lost that last match to the Ravenclaws. We know that’s not on you, Rhi, we’re just glad t’ see you back. If anything it’s my fault. Got so excited about how good you were, I forgot to properly train anyone else to take over – ‘s on me. So we’re gonna start again, yeah? New year, head in a new game. Ange and Allie have work experience later in the year so we’re gonna be training some new Chasers through the year to fill in through there.” he explained. Rhi grinned, leaning on her broom. The cold couldn’t dampen Wood’s infectious enthusiasm, and she wiggled stiffly on the spot and hugged herself with her free arm, then flapped it about excitedly as it washed over her. Fred ruffled her hair and she just swatted him with her broom, she didn’t even flinch this time – it had become a private joke of theirs.

Oliver rubbed his hands together excited. “Ron, I like your reflexes and you’re fantastic at keeping on task and adapting, I’m really impressed. We’ll find you a game-worthy spare, I want you in the substitutes rotation – doesn’t take a lot of extra training to adapt from Keeper to Chaser and I really think you’ll be good at it.” he said, nodding to Ron who flushed and ducked his head to hide an embarrassed smile at Oliver’s praise. “The other teams have new players too. Hufflepuff’s Keeper finished up, and they swapped some players around. Easier to train new Chasers than a Keeper or Seeker, I suppose – so even though it’s mostly the same people, their playstyle’s gonna change. It’s why I got the jump on practice, heard about it yesterday and booked the pitch. We have to change things up to match, so don’t blab about things when we do change them yeah?” he carried on. He straightened up and stretched, then frowned as he looked over into the stands.

“Hey, anyone know who that is?” he asked. Rhiannon leaned out of the huddle so she could see what he meant, and she groaned before getting a hold of herself. It had been too early for her ‘fan club’ before, but now some of the more dedicated had wandered down to watch along with a handful of teachers and some older students. Colin Creevey sat in the front row of the lower stands with his camera, Ginny beside him alternating between chattering excitedly and writing in presumably a notebook on her lap. She supposed they’d met eachother in class and really wished they’d focus more on being friends than the whole hero-worship thing.

“I don’t like it. He could be a Slytherin spy – look, his friend’s a Slytherin,” Wood added, glancing suspiciously at the two first years. Rhiannon shook her head, Fred and George actually growled. “He’s in Gryffindor, she’s my sister, so lay off,” Ron shot back. The twins grumbled agreement and Wood looked a little shame-faced.

“Despite the issue being Ginny’s her own damn person, not some kinda evil drone now she got sorted into Slytherin,” Fred began, looking over at his sister again and gesturing sharply to Wood as he did so, “the Slytherins don’t actually need a spy.” he finished and nodded to something down the far end of the pitch.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I get it – wait, what makes you say that?” Wood snapped testily, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the second part of the comment. George snorted, and gestured away out of the huddle to where Fred had been looking. “Because they’re here themselves,” he said.

Several people dressed in green sports robes were striding onto the field, broomsticks in their hands. Compared to the Gryffindor team who wore a mixture of regular coats and school robes for warmth, they looked very organised. A little green army.

“I don’t believe it!” Wood hissed, outraged. “I booked the field for today! We’ll see about this.” He broke out of the huddle which disintegrated as the team watched him stride angrily across the pitch. A little belatedly the rest of the team followed him.

“Flint!” Wood bellowed, jabbing a finger into the Slytherin captain’s chest. “This is our practice time! We got up specially, you can clear off now – go practice over the Forest or whatever it is you do to haze your new players.” he finished, glaring at the other captain intently.

Marcus Flint was both taller and broader than the stocky, fairly short Gryffindor captain. He leered at Wood and the rest of the Gryffindor team, leaning on his broomstick as he leaned over them. “Plenty of room for us all, Wood.” he drawled.

By now the rest of the Gryffindor team had caught up to Oliver and they stood shoulder to shoulder facing the Slytherin team. They seemed just as imposing as they had the year before. Where the Gryffindor team were a mixed bunch in terms of gender and stature, the Slytherin team had only two girls; and Ainsley Hux and Adrianne Pucey were just as intimidating as the rest of the team.

“But I booked the field!” Wood yelled back, positively spitting with rage. “I booked it for us today! You want to share, go to Hooch and negotiate booking a friendly, piss off!”

“Ah,” said Flint with a self-satisfied smirk. “But I’ve got a signed note special from Professor Snape. ‘I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permission to practice today on the Quidditch field owing to the need to train their new seeker.’” he finished, still smirking as he read out from the slip of paper in his hand.

“Oh, you replaced Terrence? That’s ambitious,” Wood replied, reluctantly impressed and distracted from his anger. “Who you pick?”

From behind the imposing row of tall Slytherin Quidditch players came a seventh much-smaller figure, one that Rhiannon recognised instantly. His thin shoulders were set firmly though they shook a little, and his smirk began as a sharp and fragile thing before it took on a similar self-satisfied quality to Flint’s. Draco Malfoy.

“Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s kid?” said Fred with intense dislike.

“Funny you should mention Draco’s father,” said Flint, and most of the Slytherin team smiled still more nastily. Rhiannon caught a few rolled eyes amongst the smiles, though the air about them was still overall very smug. “Let me show you the generous gifts he’s made to the Slytherin team.” Flint added.

All seven Slytherin players held out their broomsticks. Seven highly polished, brand-new handles and seven sets of fine gold lettering spelling the words Nimbus Two Thousand and One against the ebony-varnished wood gleaming under the Gryffindors’ noses in the mid-morning sun.

“Very latest model. Only came out last month,” said Flint tauntingly, flicking an invisible speck of dust from the end of his own. “I believe the it outstrips the old Two Thousand series by a considerable amount. As for the old Cleansweeps” – he smiled nastily at Fred and George who both clutched Cleansweep Fives – “sweeps the board with ‘em.” he finished.

None of the Gryffindor team could think of anything to say for a moment. Malfoy smirked nastily and flipped his upside down to lean on it, affecting a careless sort of air.

“Oh look,” said Flint, his attention caught by something new, “A field invasion.”

Rhiannon realised Hermione had left her seat on the bench and was striding hurriedly towards the two teams. “You? You’re the new Seeker?” Hermione asked, a little breathless as she reached them and scowled at Malfoy.

“Oh yes. Everyone’s just been admiring the brooms my father’s bought the team.” Malfoy drawled, gesturing with a hand to the one he leaned on. “Good, aren’t they? We even bought extras for the reserves.” he continued smoothly. “Who knows, the Gryffindor could raise some gold and get new brooms too – you’ll want to keep up somehow. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives, I bet a museum would snap them up.”

The Slytherin team howled with laughter, and Hermione trembled furiously. “For the record, those have been out since this time last year in the rest of Europe – import restrictions,” she shot back. “And at least no-one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way on! They got in on pure talent.” she finished, shivering and flapping one hand at her side angrily.

The smug look shared by Malfoy and most of the other Slytherins flickered, and Malfoy’s lazy grin died to be replaced with an ugly sneer. “No-one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood,” he spat.

Immediately Rhiannon knew that Malfoy had crossed a line. She’d only heard the word once before, and just as then she remembered vicious comments about her own skin colour and implications about her cleanliness that she’d heard from primary school bullies. She dropped her broom and grabbed for her wand with her left hand ready to defend her friend, but she wasn’t alone. There was an instant uproar at the blond boy’s words. Flint had to shove Malfoy back into the safety of the Slytherin team as Fred and George lunged for him. “How dare you!” shrieked Alicia, and all at once wands were out and Rhiannon shivered at the sudden palpable tension in the air.

Ron was the first to break the impasse. He shoved past his brothers, grabbing in his robes for his wand as he moved and furiously pointed it at Malfoy around the side of one of the Slytherins that he hid behind. “You’ll pay for that!” he yelled. “You want to say shit like that? Oh, you- eat slugs, then!”

A loud crack echoed around the stadium, and green light shot from the end of Ron’s outstretched black-grained wand. Malfoy doubled over retching, Ron himself reeled backwards looking a little green. That broke the standoff, and the Slytherin team were incensed.

“Volatilis lutum!” bellowed one of the Slytherin Beaters, a broad-shouldered fourth-year boy named Graham Montague. Ron staggered back as he was slammed with the hex, and other incantations overlapped eachother as others attacked eachother.

“THAT IS ENOUGH!” a voice thundered, deafening and painfully high-pitched. Rhiannon staggered back and dropped both her cane and wand to cover her ears, startled and pained. The two teams were broken apart by a wordless spell, and Professor Flitwick shoved his way in between them both. “I come to watch a perfectly decent Quidditch practice, and this is what I see? Thirty points from Slytherin for use of a slur! Twenty from Gryffindor for attacking another student, it would be fifty if I hadn’t seen perfectly well that it was provoked!” he shouted at them, his voice now returned to a normal volume. Both teams fell quiet and grumbled quietly amongst themselves save for those who nursed spell-injuries.

Ron was worst among these. It seemed the hex cast on him had taken his own snot and animated it into vicious batlike creatures that now beat him to the ground, shrieking horribly as they did so.

“Finite incantatem,” said Flitwitck irritably, and immediately the bats were returned to their regular form as slime. “More to the point, scourgify,” he snapped, and with an unpleasant sucking sound the slime was cleaned from Ron and the ground around him as if by an invisible vacuum.

“Ten points from Slytherin for whoever cast that Bat-Bogey Hex, you know perfectly well it’s dangerous, and another fifteen each from Slytherin and Gryffindor for the others I saw.” Flitwick said finally. He looked over them all with an expression of extreme disappointment. Malfoy was now doubled over on his hands and knees, miserably retching up slugs. “Weasley, what did you cast on him?” Flitwick asked irritably.

Ron flushed. “Didn’t really cast anything I just – kinda, told him to eat slugs. And I guess now he is.” he mumbled. Flitwick sighed and took off his spectacles to rub at his eyes. “Fantastic, instinctive casting. There’s at least four different mechanics you could have enacted that with, I can’t undo it without figuring out exactly what you did so... Miss Pucey, Master Warrington, you take him on up to the hospital wing, tell Poppy I’ll be there shortly.” he ordered, flapping his wand at the two Chasers when they didn’t spring to action fast enough. Hurriedly they took one of Malfoy’s arms each and half-dragged him from the field, griping as he vomited more slime and slugs onto the ground between them.

“Consider this over. Slytherins, you can’t practice with half your team missing, and I’ll be having a word to Severus – he can’t overrule the order like that, we don’t stand for special treatment here. So you all go find something else to do. Gryffindors, back to practice – I don’t want to see you back in the castle for a good hour, gives you time to calm down. If I have to break up any more Gryffindor/Slytherin duelling, there will be more points lost and detentions handed out – am I clear?” Flitwick continued, glaring at the remaining Slytherins and the Gryffindor team until they nodded their assent.

Sullenly, the remaining Slytherins filed off the field, and with another glare from Flitwick the Gryffindor team returned to practice. The fun had gone out of it and the team sulked their way through drills much to Oliver’s frustration. He finally took to the Amplifying Charm and yelled at them to snap out of it, and from there they did manage to shake off the worst of the lingering fury.

Rhiannon and Ron were both exhausted when they finished, while Hermione by now was stretched out on her back on the bench with a book over her face. As such she didn’t notice them approaching, and she sat up hurriedly knocking the book to the ground when Rhiannon spoke.

“W-e-ew-we’re done, now. D’you need a break, or can we go find D-d-d-Dudley and get on Ron’s extra work after we’ve dumped our gear?” Rhiannon asked, slurring her words a little. Hermione yawned and stretched, then fetched her fallen book and stood. “I’m good, we can do our regular homework at the same time.” she replied, and they fell in step on their way back to the castle.

Ron hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “You okay, Hermione? That was a right filthy thing for him to call you,” he asked her, scowling at the memory. Hermione shrugged. “I’ve heard worse,” she replied. “Or does it mean something different?”

Ron slapped himself in the forehead with his palm. “Of course – you’d not know. In fairness, Malfoy probably did say it partly because you’re Black. But it’s more about your blood than your skin. You’ve heard the Sorting Hat mention it a couple times – the blood purity thing. Because your parents aren’t magical, they’re saying your blood is dirty as like, a metaphor for your parentage or something, saying you’re not a real wizard because you weren’t born t’ the right people. It’s this really horrible thing that’s been around for... far, easily since Slytherin and his lot, and people just hung on to it.” he explained. Rhiannon scowled, and leaned against Hermione’s shoulder briefly, and Hermione sighed.

“Honestly that’s... pretty predictable,” said Hermione tiredly. She hugged Rhiannon around the waist. “Guess I’ll just have to beat them in every class until they learn better.” she added, smiling wryly. They shared a weary laugh together and shelved the matter, and headed off back to the castle to deal with their homework.