Hidden Wings - Part I

Hogwarts Express

In the morning of the day when the students would arrive, Professor McGonagall took Mioha to the Hogwarts Express. She had to keep up the pretense that she had been at the orphanage all this time.

"Thank you, Professor", Mioha smiled shyly as she grabbed her trunk, her trusted friend Esma sitting on her shoulder.

The Head of Gryffindor nodded silently, finding it a little odd to see her student without the silver wings.

"I shall see you at the feast, and I will let you know about our next lesson", Professor McGonagall said, the corner of her lips twitching amusedly when Mioha's face lit up.

"Alright", the teenager replied excitedly and rolled off with her trunk, talking to the blackbird on her shoulder which replied with a chirp.

Professor McGonagall shook her head disbelievingly and turned to get back to the Apparation point.

Had anyone told her that she would be training a Silverwing in a human form, she would have sent them to St. Mungo's immediately.
Yet here she was, and a student who had seemed like a normal child in the first two years of Hogwarts was now a powerful teenager who had survived the annihilation of her kind.

What will happen?, Professor McGonagall thought as she walked rapidly past several muggles, ignoring their stares at her robes.
She and all the other members had been impressed by Ms. Mioha's performance, excluding Severus. In a few years, maybe less, they would be no match for Ms. Mioha.

What worried the witch was how Albus intended to use the young Slytherin for the war. Yes, Professor McGonagall felt an attraction to the older wizard, but she was not blind. Albus' greatest strength next to his power was his cunningness, calculating carefully what had to happen and who had to be involved to prevent a second Wizarding War.
Professor McGonagall understood that everything Albus did was for the greater good. But what if the price an individual had to pay was too high?

And with that thought, she apparated away.

Mioha was sitting peacefully in an empty compartment, enjoying a good book about dragons. Esma had decided to take a little nap beside her on the seat, and all was quiet since Mioha was one of the first to arrive on the Hogwarts Express.
The screen door slid to the side with a squeak and Mioha looked up.

His face was as pale as ever, grey eyes staring arrogantly into hers.

Mioha waited for Draco to say something, and the first thing he uttered was: "How was your holiday, mudblood?"

Sighing inwardly, she returned to her book and replied casually: "Fine. And yours?"

Entering the compartment completely, Draco sat down opposite her, putting his feet up next to Esma, who flinched and woke.

"I was at the Quidditch World Cup with my father", the blond teenager smirked, "I assume you couldn't afford a ticket to go there."

Mioha kept reading her book, feigning indifference.
Actually, she was not pretending. She really didn't care.

"Too bad, you missed the best part", she heard Draco continue loftily and knew that he was referring to the Death Eaters.
"Why?", she asked calmly, turning over a page of her book and read the next chapter: When dragons are hurt and how to heal them.

"Because you and all of the other mudbloods would have learned your lesson."

Mioha's eyes stilled, resting on a spot on the page of her book without seeing the words.
She wanted to burst out with an answer, tell him what for a knucklehead he was, but that was what he expected her to do.
He wanted her to react, that was his slytherin way to provoke a Gryffindor.
But she was not a Gryffindor.
She was a Slytherin.