Salazar's Angel

V

After Dumbledore regains control of his students and finishes his speech on how everyone should be so welcoming to Dahlia, he summons up a chair and places it next to her.

"Dahlia, have a seat. Let us see what the hat has to say." Dumbledore gestures to the chair.

"Gee, I wonder how this one is gonna play out," Draco yells out, hands cupped around his mouth. This elicits a bout of laughter from the Slytherin table. She knows they still think she is a fraud...some sort of a political pawn.

Dahlia raises her middle finger on her right hand in his direction. While no one here knows what this means, it still gives her a small ounce of satisfaction when a fleeting look of confusion dances across his face.

Dumbledore once again gestures to the chair and Dahlia takes a seat. She feels a pressure on the top of her head and knows the hat has been placed. It feels connected to her somehow, like it knows what she's thinking.

The hat makes a disgruntled noise. And then another. "OH MY! Dumbledore you old git I thought you were toying with us all...but you're right! And where else but to put Salazar's Angel but in...SLYTHERIN!"

There is a roar of applause and cheering from the Slytherin table. Dahlia assumes they must have finally accepted the truth of her ancestry since it came straight from the mouth of the hat...what a world. She feels Dumbledore remove the hat from her head.

"Go join your house," Dumbledore whispers in her ear.

She stands, adjusts her skirt, and heads down the steps. She veers left, and walks halfway down the length of the Slytherin table to where an empty seat is available next to a girl with pale skin and raven hair. Draco sits across the table, a few seats down.

"I'm Pansy...Pansy Parkinson." The girl extends her hand for Dahlia to shake, so she does.

Dahlia looks up after releasing Pansy's hand and sees a look of horror on Draco's face. It is like all the color, or what little there was to begin with, has completely washed out. Dahlia cocks an eyebrow at him and he affixes her with a frigid stare.

Pansy notices this exchange and remarks under her breath, "Don't mind him...he's never pleasant unless you're in bed with him...and sometimes not even then."

Dahlia has to stifle her laughter as the Great Hall is now completely silent again. She watches as all the first years take their turns under the hat. She can feel Draco's icy gaze piercing the back of her head the entire time but she does not turn around. Something tells her if she wants to have a safe, normal experience here that he is someone to avoid.

Finally, the last of the first years gets sorted and Dumbledore wraps up the evening with another slightly long winded speech before dismissing everyone to their respective dormitories. Dahlia stands, making casual conversation with Pansy as she follows her out of the Great Hall.

As the two absorb into a larger mass of Slytherins all heading in the same direction, Dahlia finally begins to feel more comfortable. All of the people she is surrounded by, literally at the moment, have something in common with her. It's the feeling of belonging to something bigger than yourself. A feeling she hasn't been comfortable with in quite some time...

Suddenly, Dahlia feels a cold grip clasp onto her wrist and she is yanked out of the mass of green and black moving as one.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Dahlia asks as Draco tugs her off, down a darker side hallway. "Let me go!"

She yanks and pulls, trying to free herself from his iron clad hold to no avail. He continues to drag her farther and farther down the cool, dark hallway. She can no longer see the light from the main hallway, nor hear the clamor of the procession to the dorms.

Dahlia digs her heels into the cobblestone floor where they quickly find purchase. Though she wouldn't put it past him to yank her arm right out of its socket, mercifully he stops walking. Draco glances quickly over her shoulder in the direction they came, and then shoves her hard against the side wall.

Dahlia gasps to get her breath back from having it knocked out of her. "Draco, if you don't tell me what in the fresh fuck kind of stunt you are pulling I swear I will scream so loud Salazar himself will hear it and come back just to beat your ass."

In one swift movement, Draco reaches down and grabs her left arm. He wrenches it upward and then shoves her sleeve up past her elbow.

They are both silent for a moment, in shock. "I knew it. I saw it when you were shaking Pansy's hand you absolute blithering moron! How could you be so careless and stupid?" He spits out, still staring at the black mark marring the inside of her forearm. His eyes send icy daggers in two precise pinpricks right over the inky darkness. Black as it may be, she always feels heat radiating from her arm and his cold gaze doesn't feel unpleasant...

Dahlia yanks her arm back, and pulls her sleeve down. Then, in one quick movement, she slaps him across the face. While her hand, and presumably his cheek, is still stinging she takes the opportunity to shove him back equally as hard towards the opposite wall.

His head bounces off the wall yet his eyes barely break from their glare. Dahlia reaches down and snatches up his arm, wrenching up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal a matching mark.

"Now we're even." Dahlia cocks an eyebrow, dropping his arm.

His hand quickly finds purchase at her throat, and suddenly she is the one with her back to the stone wall...again. He is not cutting off her air supply entirely, just enough to keep her in one place and make her sufficiently uncomfortable.

"Oh we are far from even. I don't think anyone has any misconstrued ideas about me and my family...but they might be surprised to find out that Salazar's Angel isn't an angel after all." His nose is centimeters from hers and his voice is a low growl.

In one swift motion Dahlia hikes her knee up and squarely against Draco. His grasp immediately drops from her neck and she side steps out from between him and the wall.

"Bite me Malfoy," She says and then shoves him hard enough that he's the one with his back last against the wall.