A Darker Form of Magic, book one: Dark Affinity

Chapter Six

Snape watched closely as the Slytherin students walked into breakfast that morning. The potions Professor always took special care to watch the students the morning after opening duels, to know what line had been drawn among the snakes. Something as simple as that did wonders with deciding who to place where in class, partner as prefects, and so forth. Or so the professor told himself.

It was always good to know where loyalties lie.

The NEWTs students came first, each of them dragging one another into the Great Hall with green written on their faces. By seventh year all of the alliances had already been made and the novelty of duels had long worn thin. Opening night was just an excuse to get drunk with their friends before they had to forgo the rest of the parties to study and cram.

Everyone else tricked in slowly after the NEWTs students, though the potions master was met with two irregularities.

In all of his years of being the Slytherin Head of House, the potions Professor had seen his fair share of injuries, almost always from a spell getting the better of another student's defense. There were always at least three or four of his snakes dragging their feet into the hall with some cut or bruise evident, but never just one.

Not until now.

Snape watched as Warrington walked in with a nasty gash across his throat and wondered just who could've gotten close enough to have the boy sporting that. He knew that the wound wasn't from a spell, no one would risk casting a cutting spell too strongly and it going wrong and killing another student in a way that couldn't so easily be passed as a splicing since students can't apparate within Hogwarts.

No, Snape knew, someone slit that boy's throat.

The Professor watched his students carefully to find out just who could have done it, but all of the other snakes were keeping a careful distance from the teen. Some of the older years were looking at the boy with disappointed gazes - whether because he lost or who he lost to, Snape didn't know - but Gemma Farley looked outright hostile as far as the man could tell. He'd only ever seen such a look on the girl in her first year when someone had tried to hurt her based on her blood status as a half - blood. The boy hadn't come out of it for the better.

It was the one time that the potions Professor had allowed for hostility to be publicly shown outside of the common room.

The second anomaly presented itself when the first years walked in.

The ten Slytherins walked into the Great Hall as a unit, not a single one of them missing from the group. Normally the lines were drawn between them during the first night as well. Slytherins naturally vied for the position of power, to have the most of it and align themselves to those who do when they aren't the strongest in the room. That meant that there was always a divide.

But not this time, Snape reminded himself as he watched the group take the large space that had been left at the center of the table, that all of the others had avoided as if on purpose.

And it had been.

Where the older Slytherin's gazes had been cold before, there was a degree of warmth that the professor could see in his snakes towards the first years. It was the kind that only one predator could hold for another: an acknowledgment of power. A show of respect.

The potions master studied the group wearily, looking for Huey who had earned such a thing. Green grass and Davis were sitting across from Parkinson and seemed to be gossiping of all things on the first day of term, as Zabini turned his back to the three girls to speak with Potter who sat beside him, and Nott on the other side of the scarred boy. Malfoy sat on Potter's other side, pressed just as closely to the boy as he'd been the night before as the blond spoke with Crab and Goyle - who sat next to one another, in front of him. Only Bulstrode seemed to be left out, but the gazes going to her were pitying at the most.