Being His Daughter

Cheering Charms

Gryffindor had won the House Cup, which everyone was basically excepting since Harry had used his Firebolt. Draco had obviously thought I would forgive him after the match out of pity because he had complained extra loudly to Crabbe and Goyle about how he needed some emotional support, and then looked over at me longingly, but even though not talking to him was pathetically taking a toll an my mental health, I wasn't going to give in that easily. Father had even got through my permanent Occlumency barrier to tell me I didn't need anyone, but every time my red eyes landed on Draco, I had trouble believing it.

"Sierra! Hey—Sierra!"

Hermione's yells from across the hall caused me to jump and spill my pumpkin juice all over the table. Airam yelped and pulled her plate away from the spill as Jalen simply looked at it, and then raised her head slowly to look at me with raised eyebrows. I sent them both a brief apologetic look, before I waved my wand over the spill and it vanished. I turned around in my seat at the Slytherin table to see the trio hurrying over to me, looking gloomy. 

"What is it?" I asked them. Hermione eyed Airam and Jalen cautiously, but they simply gave her similar small smiles and looked away, and she seemed to relax slightly. Harry thrust a letter into my face, taking me off guard, and I looked at it with my wide, red eyes. 

"It's from Hagrid," Harry informed me as I came to my senses and snatched the letter from his hands, scanning it. "Buckbeak's appeal is set for the sixth. Hey...your eyes—"

"They're red, I know," I mumbled, and then I looked up from reading the letter and ignored the trios perplexed expressions. "They're bringing the executioner with them?" I asked, wiggling the letter. "Why would they need him? They haven't even decided yet!"

"That's what I said," Ron interjected desperately. "It seems as if they've already decided, and we've spent too many hours in that dusty old library for them not to even hear what we've got to say!"

Hermione glared over at him—probably for calling her sacred place old and dusty—while I shook my head, a new found determination in me. "Not if I have a say in it. Who's this executioner?" My eyes glanced back to the letter briefly and I smirked with realization. "McNair, huh..."

___________________

I had written a letter to Lucius and McNair, since McNair was a follower of my father, and threatened that if they kept up with threatening the Committee in order to have Buckbeak slaughtered, they would have to deal with me. Though McNair had replied with hundreds of apologies and explanations on how it wasn't his fault, Lucius had simply kept up with the 'it nearly killed Draco' excuse.

Draco, despite being upset about not winning the House Cup, had seemed a bit more cheery knowing he was getting his way with Buckbeak's execution. Whenever I passed by him, I had heard him bragging to the four boys in our group about how he was sure 'the chicken' was going to be killed. I had stopped in my tracks and turned my head to glare at him, which automatically shut him up. I hadn't heard him say anything else about it, but the trio disagreed, saying he constantly gloated about it only when I wasn't around, which added to the fire of anger that was already festering in me. Sometimes I felt like marching straight up to him and demanding he say it in front of me just so I could smack him like Hermione...but I knew there was no way I would or even could do that... no matter how mad I was at him... God, how pathetic... 

With exams along with Buckbeak's appeal inching closer and closer, I was ready to go insane. To make it worse, Professor Flitwick didn't seem to catch onto how Draco and I weren't speaking, and had paired us up to perform Cheering Charms on each other for our Charms exam.