Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Chapter 38: Strategic Sorting

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text
On platform nine and three-quarters, Chief Auror Sirius Black walked with his eleven year old daughter, pushing her trunk in front of him. On top of the trunk rested Alex's cat carrying container, with Amethyst, her jet-black cat, asleep inside. The air was full of awkward. Alexandra was entirely too calm. She'd been entirely too calm all morning — far too much like his cousins. Sirius hadn't been like this on his first day of school. No, he'd been practically bouncing off the walls. It had driven his father spare. He smiled. Ah, fond memories. He looked down at the head of long, black hair bobbing along beside him. "Exciting, isn't it?" he tried.

"Yes, Dad," came the dutiful response.

"Buck up, Alex! It's your first day of Hogwarts!"

Alexandra looked up at him. "I am looking forward to it, you know."

Sirius's shoulders slumped. "You could at least look a bit more like it."

"I am our house's heiress."

Sirius groaned. "Promise me you and Harry and Luna will at least try to have fun together. No spending all your time in the library, or anything like that."

Alex seemed to consider this. "Okay. I promise."

Sirius grinned and spread his arms. "Hug?"

Alex seemed to consider this too.

— DP & SW: NRiCaD —

Alexandra Black dragged her feather-light trunk up the corridor back the way she'd come on the platform. Her father had insisted on walking with her all the way to the end of the train where the Light children usually hung out before hugging her and sending her on her way.

She didn't have anything against hugging. She liked Luna's hugs, but her father's hugs didn't feel like Luna's. When her father hugged her, it was all tension and stiffness, like he was waiting for her to turn on him.

Alex passed by the Gray's compartment with barely a glance inside. She marched up the rest of the distance, all the way to the front of the train, to the very first compartment, and opened the door. It was empty. The others had to be running late. She parked her trunk under one of the benches, fished out a book from the pocket of her standard black Hogwarts robes, and had just gotten into a nice flow when the door slid open with a noticeable swish.

"So you are here." Draco Malfoy stood in the door way looking smug. "I hoped you'd know how to choose friends wisely, although..." his gaze roved over her clothes. "...Maybe your father just didn't tell you what sitting here means."

And so it begins, Alex thought. She looked up from her book and sneered. It was a good sneer. She'd been practising all summer. "Are you going to stand there posturing all day or are you going to sit down?"

Draco looked momentarily stunned before he narrowed his eyes. "This is my compartment, Black. You don't order me around in here."

"So you don't want to sit down?"

"I will sit when I decide I will." He threw her a look that suggested she was less than the shit on the bottom of his boot. "You don't have your daddy to protect you here, Black. I should have known better than to think you'd know how to behave around your—"

Alex's wand came out fast enough to cut Draco off in mid-sentence. "—My what, Heir Malfoy, of the mere Noble House of Malfoy?"

Draco glared at the wand pointed at his chest.

A bored sounding female voice from the corridor behind Malfoy said, "Well, this is all very interesting,"

Alex's eyes flicked to the back. A blond girl her age stood there, watching Alex's wand like a cat watches a mouse.