Title: Calli
Chapter: Of Convicts and Christmas
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Roses are red, Violets are purple, Draco is sweet, and so is maple surple.
Note to Baal, from the D/G list and archives: Calli doesn't wear dirty clothes, really-they're just patched from climbing up trees, through windows, and across roofs. And yes, Calli will eventually be taken to the cleaners. Physically, the summer after 5th year, mentally... Well, you'll just have to wait for that one. :)
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Christmas...
It was spreading through Hogwarts like an infectious disease. Couples snogged under sprigs of mistletoe, gifts were exchanged, and Professors awarded points every ten seconds. Snow as white as a Malfoy's hair gleamed outside the window, icicles as long as your arm dangled from low rooftops. Sweetness and wonder and love and caring prevailed.
It was Calli's least favorite time of year.
Leslie spent all her time patrolling the hallways and setting fire to suspicious bunches of mistletoe. Sometimes the second year would very accidentally lose control of the flame and the people currently underneath the aforementioned plant would be regrettably set on fire.
Sara had spent the first two months after Sorting bemoaning her sad fate. She was worried sick-Charlie Weasley, her father, would not be too upset about his daughter's house, but Uncle Ron was another matter. It was common knowledge among the Weasley family that Ron hated Slytherins, and now his own dear niece was one of them. Sara didn't even want to imagine Uncle Ron's reaction when he found out about her friendship with Calliope.
And so Christmas day found Sara unwrapping presents with nails bitten down to the cuticles. Leslie ran through the packed corridors, wand flaming a bright blue, torching any hanging greenery. Calliope sat on the roof, chin in hands, and thought.
The roof was one of Calli's favorite places. A generation ago Sara's twin uncles had used the roofs to sneak into the Astronomy Tower and torture Professor Sinistra. The Professors had apprehended the guilty pranksters and had sealed every balcony with a substance almost, but not quite, totally unlike glass.
Some mysterious Slytherin (no one knew who) had knocked a hole in this barrier (no one knew how) and created a very small passageway to the roof. (No one knew why, as the rest of the barriers were still intact. The unknown Slytherin could not use the roofs for the same purposes his predecessors did.)
Only a very thin, very small person could squirm their way through the hole. As Calli matched this description, and had Agoramania, (love of open spaces) she quite often used the roof as her escape place. This was one of those times when she just needed to get away from everyone and everything.
One reason Calli hated Christmas was that it was a family holiday. Calli didn't have any family-Pansy and Malcolm didn't count as they were both idiots and didn't care about her. Another reason was based on the fact that her father, her real father, was convicted Christmas Day. As she was an infant at the time, she couldn't remember much of it, but remnants of it still stirred in her thoughts.
The tattered remains of her slowly decaying robes swirled around her feet, stirring up the fine white powder of snow that dusted the rooftops of Hogwarts. In a sudden change of mood, the twelve-year-old stood up. The final, and most important, reason she hated Christmas was because it was her birthday.
She tilted her pale face up and attempted to out-stare the sky. "I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you, Christmas! I hate you, Pansy! I hate you, Malcolm! I hate all of you, all of you wretched little groveling idiots! You bow down before your Master and succumb to the slightest force! You don't know what true power is...
"I am Calliope Artemis Malfoy. I am my Father's child. I will be the most powerful Dark Witch ever!" she screamed to the sky, her thin face contorted in anger. Her voice softened, and she spoke gently. "You Death Eaters... You do not know what to do with the power you hold. Torturing Muggles for entertainment-you are truly warped. Dark Power can be used for much grander things, much greater things. You inbred galleonairs sacrifice the ultimate power for stupid racial prejudices. My father knew better, and I know better.
"The light will win in the end, Voldemort. And I shall laugh as you die." Her eyes burned with pure malice. She hated Voldemort, and she hated his ideas. He was stupid.
Calli did envy one thing that His-Royal-Evilness possessed, though. She envied his power.
For, to Calli, everything came down to power.
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Ginny half-ran, half-walked to the third floor down. Her eyes scanned the cells until she found what she was looking for. A grayish bundle that appeared to have a white rug attached to it lay limply on the floor. She ran her wand across the bars, creating a rather unnerving rattling sound. The bundle unfolded itself and Draco Malfoy got up again.
"Ahh... Ms. Weasley. Back again? I suppose I'm just too sexy to turn down." He gave her something that might have resembled a smile on a normal human, but looked more like a grinning skeleton on his features.
She opened her eyes as wide as the eyelids would stretch. "Of course! Bundles of rags, long matted hair, and skin as pale as the milk I pour over my cereal every morning is so hot. I just can't resist you!" Her voice altered and returned to her more normal tone. "No, not really. I just wanted to talk to you. Why aren't you insane?"
He tilted his head and looked at her. "I honestly don't know. Why aren't you?"
"Because I haven't been in Azkaban for ten years-which you have!" She exploded. "Don't try your mind games on me, Draco Malfoy. Now answer me: Why aren't you insane?"
"I already told you; I honestly don't know. Perhaps I am insane, and just haven't realized it yet. Or this could always be based on my theory, 'Everyone is insane. They are just deluding themselves into thinking that they are not.' And the only truly sane people are the pitiful sobbing bundles-of-rags you see around you. That would mean that only the sane people live in the insane asylum. And if that isn't ironic, I don't know what is."
She stared at him. "You're babbling."
"I know. I must finally be going insane. I always said that a women was the only thing that could drive me crazy." He flipped a stray section of marginally less-matted hair out of his face.
Silence prevailed for a few minutes, before Draco broke it again. This time his voice was far more serious. "Will you do a favor for me, youngest Weasley? Will you see how my daughter's doing? I'm worried about her, you know. Parkinson-or Baddock now- is far worse than I am." And he lay back down on the floor, drawing the ragged gray blanket over his shoulders.
Even though she knew that he couldn't see her, she nodded.
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Calli slipped through the doorway to the Slytherin common room. She had just barely sat down again when the wall-door opened up and Sara came flying through, chestnut curls in disarray. Her eyes were wild.
"Calli, Calli! Uncle Ron just sent me a-a-a Howler! He-oh gods-he screamed at me in front of the entire school that I was a disgrace to the Weasley family. He said-he said, 'If it were up to me I'd disown you, you treacherous brat!' Oh gods, Calli! He hates me! Uncle Ron hates me! And-and-and his wife, Hermione-you know, the famous Hermione-she must hate me too! And she's my idol, Calli! She's my idol!
"And-and-and, Dad! I thought he would understand! He's always been even tempered! Oh, gods... His voice was there too, Calli! He was saying very quietly-his voice always go very quiet when he's truly upset, you know-he said, 'This is very disappointing, Sara. You know what Slytherins are like!' He said that, my Dad! My Dad! My wonderful, even-tempered dad! Oh gods, Calli! Oh gods!"
The young Miss Malfoy sighed. "It's alright, Sara. He's your father, and it's not as if you've murdered someone. You've just gotten into Slytherin, which isn't so bad. You haven't changed. Why the delayed reaction, anyway? We got sorted over three months ago."
"I didn't want them to know... But they kept pestering me, kept saying 'what house are you in, already?' and I had to answer them! And they won't forget, either-at least Uncle Ron won't! And Fred and George, not to mention Uncle Percy... They won't forgive me either." Sara wailed. Her words were periodically interrupted with a violent hiccough.
"It's all right, Sara, I understand..."
Calliope was abruptly cut off as Sara sent herself into another fit of half-hysterical sobs. "Noooooooooo! You don't understand! You don't know what it's like to be rejected by everyone... By everyone... Oh gods, Calli! I'm sorry-I didn't mean it!" Sara's last words were slightly muffled, since she had clapped her hands over her mouth.
The aforementioned Malfoy just gave Sara a wry smile. "Open mouth, insert foot. It's alright, Sara. I'm a social misfit, and I'm proud of it. Well... Sometimes." Calli pushed Sara onto the enormous black couch and conjured up a handkerchief.
There was a few minutes silence as Sara dabbed her streaming eyes and got control of herself. The brunette's head regained its vertical position, and her mouth set itself in a determined expression. "I don't care. I'm a Slytherin-I can't help that. The Sorting Hat decides what house you go best in, and I'm a Slytherin. Uncle Ron can eat my hairbrush, for all I care."
Calli cocked an eyebrow at her. "Oh? Your hairbrush?"
"It's worse than my shorts, believe me. Shorts are only made of cloth and stink a bit. Hairbrushes are plastic and full of barbs and packed with matted hair."
Sara smiled-naturally, this time-and Calli joined her. One friendship made out of a Howler and a Hairbrush.
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"Owwwwwwwwwww! Youch! Help! Water! Oh! Oh! HOT!" May Walker yelped. Her boyfriend, Will Matson, cast a water-spewing spell and drenched his hysterical girlfriend. The formally aflame May collapsed on the floor in a heap, shrieking. "You-you Slytherin! I'll... I'll... I'll have you expelled! I'm going to be horribly scarred and I could have died! You'll be expelled and you'll never find a job in the Wizarding World ever, ever, ever!"
"Oh dear," Leslie smirked, "you don't seem to have realized that while your clothes are indeed rather charred, your skin is perfectly fine. That spell only destroys vegetation. Your robes are made of cotton, so they got burnt. You shouldn't have been indulging in that frankly disgusting act of snogging in the middle of the hallway, anyway."
"You slimy little second-year! I'm going to Professor McGonagall with this! You'll get detention! Ooh!" May wailed, frantically trying to repair the wounded robes.
"I doubt it. I am under strict orders from Headmaster Snape to destroy all mistletoe and... disperse whoever might be standing underneath them." It was so nice having a former Slytherin as Headmaster, Leslie reflected.
"And I doubt he meant to go so far as to catch a student's robes on fire," Will cut in. He was quite handsome in a large, muscle-bound, broad-shouldered sort of way-if you liked that sort of thing, which Leslie didn't.
"Oh, that? That was an accident. After all, I'm just a second year and can't control my fire spell very well."
"Control, my ar...!" May was cut off as Will clamped his hand over her mouth. He smiled at Leslie.
"Well, I don't see any reason we should take it to the professors, then, sweet. If you don't report us, then we won't report you." He motioned to the quill and parchment the pyromaniac had stuffed under one arm.
Leslie sighed. "Please don't patronize or flirt with me, Mr. Matson. I will report you, and whether or not you choose to do the same for me is your business-though I doubt I'll get so much as five points taken off."
May bit her boyfriend's fingers hard and Will jerked them off her mouth with a yell. "Flirt with you? Flirt with you?" she yelped, offended. "A diseased Doxie wouldn't flirt with you! Look at you! You look like some sort of overgrown eagle, you little..."
"Silencio," Leslie commanded, and May's jaw shut with a snap. The enraged fifth-year tried desperately to pry it apart again. May's description had actually been fairly accurate. Leslie did have rather birdlike features. She had a large, thin nose, strong chin, and deep-set gray-brown eyes that looked almost gold at times.
Mrs. Nott had tried to subject Leslie to the dreaded 'Pixie Haircut' but it looked anything but cute on the daughter. It only made her seem more aggressive than before. Leslie was the kind of girl who would wear steel-toed boots dancing, carried a set of brass knuckles in her book bag, and believed she could crush walnuts with her lips if she tried hard enough. 'Impossible' was not in Leslie's vocabulary.
Leslie was famous for her glares. Out-staring Leslie would be about as impossible as out-staring a falcon. So it was under this glare that May and Will cowered and shut up. (Well, Will shut up. May was in a sense pre-shut up.)
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Sara had fallen asleep about an hour ago and was currently stretched out across a dark green couch. Leslie was up to her elbows in ink in the far corner, vainly attempting to sketch the sunset. Calli was curled up on an enormous black leather armchair, looking particularly tiny against the monstrosity she sat on.
"Auburn... Where's the blasted auburn? Alexander whatever-the-hell-your-middle-name-is Thomas, did you steal the auburn again?" Leslie bellowed across the room.
"I don't have a middle name, and here's your blasted auburn already." The dark-haired boy snapped his arm back and let the bottle of auburn fly through the air. Leslie managed to catch it just before it hit the ground.
"Idiot! That could have broken!" She snapped, and set the precious bottle of auburn back onto the table.
"It's not mine, and I'm sure there are other bottles." He shrugged, disinterested.
Leslie had what was probably the shortest temper of any girl in Hogwarts, Slytherin or otherwise. "You're right, it wasn't yours. It was mine!" And she attempted to hit him over the head with Sara's copy of Hogwarts, A History. Alex leaped to the side, narrowly avoiding the colossal book.
Leslie's foot swung out and she flung the book away from her. (It dented the floor where it landed.) She pounced on Alex, wrapping her arms around his neck in a headlock. "Say uncle!" She yowled.
He tried to kick at her, but he had been pinned to the floor. "You're not an uncle." He told her, and kicked her shoulder.
"Say cousin then."
"You're not my cousin, either."
"Err... Friend?"
"No. How about 'Former friend, future enemy'?"
"Then what am I now?" Leslie asked, and dug her toenails into his leg. She had toenails that could kill.
Alex yelped and squirmed frantically. "A nuisance!" He barked, and shoved.
She just grinned at him. "Close enough." Leslie said, and stood up.
Alex had just barely managed to struggle to his feet when a miniscule owl flew through the window at top speed, nearly braining him.
Sara, who had woken up during the wrestling matched, grinned. "Pig!"
Calli glanced up from where she had been tracing patterns on the black leather. She blinked sleepily and tried to focus her eyes on the blurred object. "Pigs don't fly." She stated, nearly coherent.
As if cued by the sound of her voice, the miniature owl wheeled and flew straight at her. Calli squeaked and ducked just in time-the owl smashed into the leather backing of the chair with an audible smack. Feathers drifted down to coat Calli's hair. The young Malfoy stood up and removed the hyperactive creature from the leather, smoothing its feathers a bit.
"Not a pig-Pig! Pigwidgion, actually. He used to be Uncle Ron's owl when he was a kid, but Uncle donated Pig to Aunt Ginny." Sara explained, and wrenched a mangled letter off of a tiny talon. She stared at it for a moment, and then handed it to Calliope. "It's addressed to you."
Calli offered the young Weasley a grin, and began to open the letter. Calli's grin looked almost feline: her top canine teeth were overlarge and overlapped the two surrounding teeth. It had a rather unnerving effect.
The seal gave way and a rather smudged letter tumbled out. Calli unfolded it.
Dear Ms. Calliope Malfoy,
My name is Virginia Weasley. I suppose you are wondering why I am writing you, or perhaps you are in the process of ripping this letter to shreds. If you are doing the latter, please stop as I have something very important to tell you.
Due to a long-lasting hatred of my brother Percy, who also happens to be Minister of Magic, I have been forced to go on Azkaban Health Checks. While on my last Check, I encountered your father, Draco Malfoy. He was completely coherent and talked with me for a bit-which, for a prisoner of ten years, is quite extraordinary.
Curious, I visited him again yesterday. (Christmas Eve) We talked for a bit more and he requested something of me: to check up on his daughter. So that's what I'm doing: checking up on you. I will be visiting your father again in another three weeks, so if you would like me to tell you anything for him, I would be happy too.
Regards,
Cordially,
Your friend,
Sincerely,
Ginny Weasley
Calli stared at the letter for a few seconds. She then ripped it into shreds and threw the pieces into the fire. Lips pressed into a thin line, the tiny blond stormed up to her room and slammed the door behind her.
Three pairs of eyes watched her.
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Draco and Ginny belong to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Warner Bros and various other corporations. They are being used here without permission and/or affiliation with the above. None of the authors listed here make any profit from these stories.