[IC] Forsaken Children of War (Kirah and McHaggis)

[Kirah]

Kyle didn't understand what the older Slytherins were talking about. This had to be something dark though, something very dark. Not the stuff about what Alistair wanted Kyle to do. That wouldn't be, at least not yet. Whatever it was, it'd have a purpose though. Kyle didn't know yet, and a part of him was curious, and still needed to prove himself. Time to earn his bones he guessed, but hoped it wouldn't be that extreme.

"First thing tomorrow." Kyle was trying to keep an eye on his sister, she seemed... relaxed. He had never ever seen her looked so relaxed. There was some politicking in this conversation that he wasn't catching, and that might get him into some serious trouble. After they got away from Alistair, Kyle would have to ask Siobhan what she had picked up from the conversation. She knew her brother best. "With the Gryffindors." He added. That was Snape's class. What did it matter when he had Snape's class?

[McHaggis]

Siobhan watched carefully -- too carefully -- at what Kyle would probably think were the wrong things. Every now and then, Alistair would twist around ever so slightly to glance at Maggie. He wasn't looking for approval, didn't need it, but it was almost as if he was checking...

Ew, no! The younger MacFusty shook her head to clear it of the observations. That outcome would be bad for Alistair, she knew. Maggie wasn't someone she'd trust with her brother's life, and yet he seemed to trust it with her intimately.

"First thing tomorrow," Alistair repeated, more to himself than anyone else. He turned to address the others. "Here's the thing -- an' it might make me a bit unpopular -- but I don't like Snape. There's something off about him getting the Defense position now of all times, 'specially when our 'esteemed Headmaster' has a fatal curse on his damn hand."

The boy named Craig seemed poised to interrupt again, and Siobhan watched as her brother expertly shut him down with a icy glare. Whoa, what was that all about? When did he learn to do it? Why did he have the power to do it? "I know he's our head of house. I know the - Dark Lord - uses him as a spy. But I swear he's a double agent, and not one on our side. Don't you want to be the ones to turn in a traitor, if it turns out he is one?"

Alistair leaned over to quietly whisper to Siobhan and Kyle, flicking his wand in a circular pattern with a sharp jab in the middle. A girl with long blonde locks grimaced and tapped on her ear in a manner as if trying to empty it of water. Small frowns were evident on everyone else, save Maggie, who didn't seem perturbed by anything. "Damn it, Ali!" she said, though it sounded to them as if she were so very far away and whispering, barely audible. "Did ya have to use that stupid privacy ward?"

Siobhan wondered what the spell was and how she could get it for use in Potions with Slughorn.

"Here's the deal," Alistair started. "Yeah, I don't trust Snape, but he's well aware I'm a Death Eater so he's not going to do or say anything in a class of Slytherin upper years. I want you to look for anything strange -- anything at all -- and... find out why he was proper glaring at my sister when she came over to the Slytherin table, right?" His sister blinked in surprise. She hadn't noticed the ex-Potions professor's presence at breakfast, but Alistair clearly had. She supposed that was evidence enough that he was looking out for her.

Craig, obviously fed up judging from the sour expression on his face, shot a finite incantatem at the area around Alistair's head and her brother grinned wickedly. Sound returned to normal. "Run along now, children. I have a duel to start, and the spells are going to be too dangerous for your virgin minds."

Siobhan predicted that her brother would have been crazy enough to be in Gryffindor too. Suspicions that Craig was really a good friend of Alistair's and that they were merely putting on a show for the young'uns arose swiftly. She didn't miss Maggie's raised eyebrow, either.

[Kirah]

Kyle couldn't figure. He had noticed the Headmaster's hand, everyone had. It was his wand hand and no one knew had happened to it. He was trying to figure it out until they got out of ear shot of the group of older Slytherins.

"What the bloody hell did any of that mean?" Kyle asked more rhetorically than for an actual answer. "Revel Snape as a traitor? My father said he got out of Azkaban because of a vouch from Dumbledore." Kyle bit his lip. "Does that mean that Dumbledore really does have Snape in his pocket. I mean a get out of jail free card." The reference to the muggle game was because he had once played it when his mom was visiting one of her muggle tenets. "But they say that the Dark Lord trusts Snape just as much, and he's supposed to be able to read bloody minds." His heart was pounding. Years of cached pieces of overheard conversation started trying to piece together in Kyle's young mind.

He took a deep breath calming down a bit. "Hell's bells Siobhan what am I supposed to do?"

[McHaggis]

Siobhan rubbed her chin contemplatively before unhelpfully offering, "Go to his class?"

She tucked her hair behind her ears, looking back over at the corner of the castle walls that now separated them from Alistair and his gang. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. "He really doesn't like Snape... but I'm 90% sure that it was all to show off for your sister... " Siobhan felt nonplussed about the whole situation; her brother never was a good leader, at least in the few times she remembered them playing with other children on the mainland. He always made things so complicated until he got them all wrapped up in a tangled web of rules and orders. "Alistair's giving you some responsibility so he can get in good with her. Though I'd say he genuinely wants to know why he doesn't like me."

"Besides," she continued. "Didn't you ever play spy games as a kid? They were so fun. Just treat it a bit like that."

[Kirah]

Kyle nodded, then said "Why in the world does your brother want to get in good with Maggie? He already has the Dark Mark. He wrote to her the day he got it. Maggie doesn't have it yet, says she'll get it after she graduates. Wouldn't it make more sense for her to be trying to be in his good graces? If she pretended to like you that'd be one way right? But instead she's doing that 'I don't care what you do' thing she does when things are going according to some weird plan she has." Kyle mulled that over with Siobhan until the dinner bell rang.

"Meet you in the library after dinner?" He asked as they climbed the front steps of the castle.

[McHaggis]

Siobhan rolled her eyes, muttering, "Boys." She tapped her nose -- for once, it appeared she knew something that Kyle didn't -- and grinned. "I'll tell you some other time."

The night was getting colder, betraying the fact that it was September; the wind had already picked up by the time they got to the stairs and hurried inside. Siobhan nodded, wondering whether there were any interesting spells she could learn from library books rather than teachers, but she couldn't wait to get there. Dinner at the Gryffindor table would not be fun, she predicted.

As they split up, Siobhan took a seat right at the end where all the other first years seemed to gather, greeting Yvette with a quiet hello. The muggleborn girl was her only friend inside her house, though she seemed better suited to Hufflepuff. The brunette was too timid. She wondered if Kyle would dislike her on principle, if only because of her impure blood.

[Kirah]

Kyle took his own seat with Sam and the other first year Slytherins. He was still trying to figure out what Siobhan had meant about Maggie and Alistair. He tapped his nose, was it a code? Sam watched Kyle, then snickered.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked around a bite of dinner.
"Thinking, I mean I was trying to figure something out. I think I'll just have till later though."
"What were you trying to figure out?"
"I don't know. It's like when you hold a Rememberbal and you have no idea what it is that you forgot." Sam frowned.
"You're weird man." Sam told Kyle before turning back to his meal. Kyle sighed and set to thinking on what he could do to get Snape to reveal his true motivations. Everyone said Dumbledore trusted him, and Dumbledore didn't lay his trust in anyone. Then again neither does the Dark Lord. Both opposite sides of a war trusted the same man perfectly. Kyle's father had said that Snape often brought correct information about the activities of the Order. How was he, a first year, supposed to prove something the Dark Lord believed to be true as false. Snape could easily always say whatever it was that Kyle had caught him doing was because he was at Hogwarts and had an image to maintain here.

Maybe he could catch Snape reacting in an unusual fashion. Everyone said he favored his own house. Maybe he could pick a fight with someone he'd have to side with over himself. But again all that mess with him being a double agent made for a great cover.

Kyle sighed, finished his meal and made his way to the Library. Surely Siobhan would have an idea. She was sneaky, even if she hadn't gotten into Slytherin. Kyle was in Slytherin because he had to prove himself. Would asking Siobhan for ideas be not proving himself?

Kyle didn't know enough about the ex-potions professor, but he figured he had to have some buttons that he could press. He knew Snape hated Harry Potter, that was no secret. But Harry was in the same year as Maggie and a Gryffindor to boot. Kyle took up a free table and pulled out his Transfiguration notes. He worked on the essay while trying to figure out what to do to get Snape to break character.

[McHaggis]

Siobhan had almost finished her dinner when Yvette asked her about dragons with all the fascination that an eleven year old could possess: "Dragons exist? How? Why?" In response, she had let out a startled laugh and smiled.

"Of course they do," she replied, trying oh so hard not to sound condescending -- how had Yvette been exposed to the magical world for so long now and not read a thing about dragons? "Here, look at this." She reached under her shirt and pulled out a rope necklace with a small bone on the end, shaped suspiciously like a fang. It immediately erased Yvette's sceptical expression. "It's from a hatchling, maybe two weeks old. They picked it out of my ear when he bit me."

Surprisingly, Yvette didn't pale rapidly or look in any way, shape or form scared of dragons. Instead, her brown eyes burned with curiosity. Maybe she was destined to be a Gryffindor after all. "And your family takes care of them?"

"Mhm--" Siobhan had been about to reply when Trisha rudely cut her off.

"That's such a load of dragon dung," she said. "They're all on reserves." Siobhan's eyebrow twitched. Just because her roommate was a pureblood didn't mean she wasn't hexable. Then again, she didn't know any that wouldn't backfire if she tried to cast it.

Instead, she rolled her eyes and stood up, grabbing her bag. Might as well leave now. "We own the reserve. Have done for centuries." With that - and a brief goodbye to Yvette who still looked shell-shocked by the news of such a fantastical creature actually existing - the youngest MacFusty skipped off in the direction she hoped the library was in.

Siobhan was in luck, pushing in through the double doors and dropping her bag off at a table in the back of the room surrounded by musty old bookshelves. A rope attached to a sign that read 'restricted section' was within arm's reach of her, and she wondered if an alarm would go off if she wandered into it. She'd have to test that at some point -- maybe even find a copy of that book Maggie McCarthy was reading.

[Kirah]

Kyle put the quill down and rubbed at his eyes. He wasn't quite sure how to fix this essay. Doing the magic was one thing, but writing an essay about it was painful.

He saw Siobhan disappear behind some shelves, book bag in tow. He figured she didn't see him, so he'd go to her. Kyle gathered up his stuff and found the table that Siobhan had put her stuff at. "Hey," he said quietly, not wanting to incur the wraith of Madam Prince the librarian. "I had an idea, while working on the transfiguration essay." He sat down at the table. "And it wasn't about transfiguration." He grinned and waited for Siobhan to sit down next to him.

"It's about class tomorrow." He paused. "I think I know how to catch him in a catch 22." He lowered his voice glancing around for listeners. "He's got to encourage students to be friends across houses, because the hat said so himself, right? Well he wouldn't want that if he were truly working for you-know-who. That's the whole point right? Divide within and conquer without, or however it goes. So anyway, my idea is, everyone knows you and I are friends. At least anyone who has eyes and pays attention to first years, which the professors do. We stage a fight, between you and I. We have some falling out, we can make up later or something, but for this to work we have to do it after class." Kyle looked proud of himself, even if he had no idea what some of the finer details of his plan should be, nor did he realize how much his life story was a weird mirror of Snape's own childhood.

[Kirah]

Stupid double post, sorry

[McHaggis]

Siobhan grinned back at Kyle somewhat sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. "Guess I walked right by you," she said as she sat down on the hellishly uncomfortable bench. Why oh why couldn't they have the squishy cushions and soft couches of Gryffindor Tower?

As Kyle explained his plan to her, she rubbed her chin. He'd put a lot of thought into it -- more than she had -- and while she didn't have a clue what a 'Catch 22' was, she managed to understand the jist of it. "Hmm... so we're staging a fight? Sounds fun!" After a moment's hesitation, she continued, "I can cry on command. Useful with so many brothers and sisters."

She pulled out a bit of parchment and a long, slightly crushed quill. "What could we argue about? It needs to be realistic... hmm..." Siobhan tugged on the end of her hair before exclaiming (as quietly as she could), "I've got it! You can call me a blood traitor!"

Siobhan hoped almost prayed that it would never get back to Alistair that Kyle had said that or any other slur against her after the Defense class tomorrow. Her older brother was just a bit overprotective.

[Kirah]

"That's really good. We might have a hard time making up again after that." Kyle paused. He had heard the term before, his parents used it when they were talking about pure blood families that weren't sympathetic to the cause. "You're not though right?" He asked, his library voice even more hushed. "I mean, I thought you sided with your brother." Kyle decided he'd side with Siobhan. He'd follow her to the end of the world. So what if she was what his parents would consider a blood traitor, he liked her. She was funny and nice.

[McHaggis]

"My family's always been neutral, 'cos we're only on the side of the dragons. When we were taught Clan MacFusty history, even Grindelwald didn't bother us," Siobhan said. She wasn't sure whether her father or mother would stand by that decision in these obviously tumultuous times. When they argued with Alistair -- before he left in a big kerfuffle -- it hadn't been about what side he was on; rather, it was only about bringing danger to the clan's livelihood (and its members). With a shrug, she continued, "We're allowed to do what we want."

Siobhan knew Kyle was on the same side as her brother and Maggie, mostly because of his family connections that even Slughorn seemed wary of. She didn't want to say, 'No, I don't see myself being evil,' for fear of scaring him off with her goody-two-shoes ways, even if she wasn't. She rubbed her chin again in thought.

"I'll stay on whatever side Alistair's on, since he always looks out for me," she decided. "What about you?"

[Kirah]

Kyle didn't come from a very trustworthy family. Promises were made to be broken. He had learned that very early on. The only person who had ever kept their promise in his life, other than a couple from his mother, was Siobhan. He didn't know how to explain this to her, not with anything other than the words: "I'm on your side." It was loyalty never seen before in his family. As the words left his mouth he wondered if he could keep it like he had kept staying friends with her. At least she was on Alistair's side, who was working with Maggie, that for now was enough that he didn't fear saying it.

[McHaggis]

Siobhan allowed herself a blinding smile, the buzz of happiness settling in her stomach. "Alright. Awesome," she said. Kyle reminded her a bit of Alistair. Just a little bit, when it came to loyalty; she'd had few experiences with anything of the sort. No matter what, she swore to herself, she'd be with Kyle 'til the end.

"So!" she exclaimed cheerily. "About this fight of ours... got any other ideas for it? Or are we just going to wing it? I've picked up some great insults in my time." She sniffed imperiously in a perfect mocking of an older, snooty Slytherin, modelled on her brother.

[Kirah]

Kyle returned her bright smile. He couldn't help it. He was impressed with her imitation of a snooty Slytherin. He had seen that look on several of the girls in his year. "I do a bit better on winging it. But we should have a basic outline of what we're going to say. I mean obviously I'll call you a blood traitor. I can say something about being Gryffindor. I've got a few insults saved up from Maggie."

Kyle chewed on his lip a little while he thought. "If you weren't pure blood there'd be some really good insults I could throw at you. I've heard a million in dad's shop." Kyle thought as he did so he twisted his feather quill around. "Hm to make the fight believable and one that won't seem weird if we're suddenly friends again afterward. I mean blood traitor is a harsh thing, but we can figure out the make-up later."

[McHaggis]

Siobhan hummed under her breath, smoothing out her piece of parchment. "Okay... so..." She dipped her quill in ink. "What about Yvette?"

She took a moment to consider it before elaborating. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to use her only remaining friend in Gryffindor as a pawn but... as long as the girl knew about it? "She's a... friend, and she's a muggleborn. Could say something about that."

Siobhan stared up at the ceiling, throwing her head back. "Ugh. Planning is the worst. Doing is where it's at." Her eyes swivelled around their sockets, peering at the librarian -- Madam Pince? -- and frowning. When was curfew for first years again? She didn't want the lady waltzing over and overhearing their devilish plots.

[Kirah]

"That could work." He nodded. Then he agreed completely with planning being the worst. He was just about to say something when Madam Pince did just as Siobhan had feared she would and walked over to the pair of first years.

"First year curfew is at 7, you should both hurry back to your dorms." She gave them a suspicious look as they packed up their bags and headed for the exit.

"See ya tomorrow Siobhan." He gave her a grin that showed all his excitement at the coming up fight. How weird it was to be excited to be having a row with your best friend? He mused that over for a second.

[McHaggis]

Siobhan skipped up the stairs and raced along the corridors. Sure, it would be much easier for Kyle to get to his common room -- he didn't have to run up the bloody stairs. Her book bag thumped horribly against her side as she dove in through the common room portrait after gasping out the password to The Fat Lady. Barely in time (or rather, a few minutes late, but who was counting?).

Given that the other Gryffindor girls were sitting in the common room, including Yvette who smiled as Siobhan passed, she went up to the dorm considering what tomorrow would bring. Still... it was only seven...

She could read over the Cure For Boils potion, or attempt it, or she could try her hand at a little practical magic. Legs crossed in a basket and sitting on her bed, she pulled a matchstick out from behind her ear and readied her wand. If she couldn't turn a damn matchstick into a silver needle, how would she ever be able to help Kyle out if he needed it?

[Kirah]

Kyle raced down to the common room. That was a terrible curfew, he decided, after the third wrong turn. Stupid hallways changed. Finally he found the section of wall that was the secret passage into the common room. He was considerably late and hoped Snape wasn't inside.

Kyle was lucky. He sighed relieved and went to his dorm room. Years of being surprised by his sister had given Kyle considerable reflexes. This was a good thing because as he opened the drapes to his bed, which he distinctly remembered having left open, Protego had already left his lips as what could only be described as a small explosion knocked him back. Kyle's spell was weak, but he had used it before. The explosion didn't seem to leave any mark of having happened. In fact if he hadn't been sitting on the ground he would have been certain he imagined it. That and Sam, sitting on his own bed, had slightly singed hair.

"What was that?" He asked coughing slightly.

"A trap from my sister." Kyle stood up and dusted himself off.

"You can do the shield charm?" Sam seemed impressed. Kyle was confused.

"Yeah," Kyle frowned. "When your sister lays magical traps around the house you learn quick how to protect against them. Keeps me on my toes she says." Kyle shrugged and climbed into his bed. Quiet honestly, Kyle had thought that had been tame. He wondered what message this was supposed to impart on him. He pulled his bag up onto the bed and started working on the essay again.