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In this less than perfect autumn, the winners were undoubtedly the Gryffindors. The Lions had won the Quidditch game against Slytherin and took as a result a good option on the Cup, but they had also obtained an alibi for their famed Seeker Neville Longbottom. When Creevey and Frazer were attacked, the Boy-Who-Lived was in the infirmary and unconscious, courtesy of the fraud Gilderoy Lockhart who had vanished all the bones of his left arm. The others members of the Golden Trio were under the eyes of the whole Gryffindor House during the party in their tower. Longbottom, Black and Weasley, unless they had the skill to be at two different places at the same time, were not responsible for this aggression. Why would they have attacked two of their minions willing to take their word as gold by the way?
As the Gryffindors were under the radar of suspicion in the short-term, the Ravens, the Badgers and the Lions were progressively rallying to the opinion of influential teenagers like the Weasley Twins, Lee Jordan and by a strange coincidence, Neville Longbottom. In their opinion, the pure-blood bigots were accomplices of the Heir of Slytherin; or at the very least tolerated him and hid him in their ranks. The attack on two Muggle-born first-years was pure revenge for Slytherin having lost the Quidditch match, a sign House Slytherin would stop at nothing to punish any who dared opposing them in public. The Gryffindor theories were frankly full of holes and played on a lot of prejudices. But it was working. Slytherin had never been a House which had a Light reputation in the last months or years, and now they had just been handed an ultimatum in good and due form.
Alexandra was sure it had been a hard and difficult decision. First choice, letting a band of idiots and blood-purists like Draco Malfoy fall in the hands of the mob led by the infamous Weasley terrors and the renowned Golden Trio. Five students, who by a strange coincidence, held an astonishing record of attacking, vilipending, pranking and insulting everything the Slytherins valued, believed and worked for. Boys who had made no secret the contempt they felt for the traditions and the culture the Snakes were ready to defend. Second choice, make common front and force the Gryffindors to come to them, an attack against a member of Slytherin House being an attack against all the inhabitants of the dungeons. What a terrible dilemma. If the members of Slytherin House had hesitated for more than thirty seconds, Alexandra would have been deeply astonished.
"Do you think the Heir will strike again during the next Quidditch match at the end of the month?" Asked Hermione as they left their meeting room and went in the direction of the library to give back the borrowed books they had taken earlier in the morning.
"Maybe." Said pensively Morag. "It depends on the safety measures the teachers will have put in place, I suppose."
"I have not seen any of them placing spells or wards to do that!" Said worriedly Nigel.
"Like Morag said," joked Alexandra. "Depends on the-"
MEEEEOOOOOWWWWW!
A big ginger cat raced out a corridor on the group's right and jumped in Hermione's arms.
"I wonder why you chose to buy this cat for Hermione." Said Morag with a faint smile at the corner of her lips. "It certainly was not for his obedience to orders."
"Hey, I told him to stay in the dormitories of the girls!" Exclaimed Hermione.
"I'm sure you did." Replied Morag. The unsaid sentence of the red-haired Ravenclaw was left in the open: Crookshanks did everything he wanted with his mistress.
Maybe the cats are the true masters of this world...thought with amusement the witch who had offered said 'present'. The smile didn't last as the appearance of the out-of-bounds half-Kneazle was revealed.
"Look at Crookshanks fur." Said Alexandra. The enormous gingerer half-Kneazle had several dark traces on his pelage, and was now purring in relief in the arms of his mistress.
"These are..."
"Marks of spell fire. Yes." Said Alexandra in a sinister tone. "Looks like someone-" she pronounced the last word with a good dose of fury, "-thought it was funny to attack a cat."
"But how did they do it? It is impossible for boys to come in the girls dorms!"
"A girl was involved?" For a boy belonging not renowned for his wits, Nigel sometimes had a gift to jump to the most likely option.
Loud shouts and screams in the distance interrupted what promised to be an interesting debate on the morals of the girls belonging to Gryffindor House.
"What are you going to do?" Asked Morag in a concerned voice, watching Alexandra draw her wand from her holster and give her school robes to Nigel.
"What I should have done from the start." The Potter Heiress replied. "The Lions have been left to their own devices and let free to do everything they want in Hogwarts by the Professors, and now the punishments of Snape aren't enough to stop them."
"You know they are going to be a lot of them, right?" Asked Nigel clearly concerned.
"Yes." Alexandra winced. "But they will always outnumber us, unless you think we can convince all Ravenclaw House to follow us?" Morag grimaced, but didn't answer drawing her wand in turn. It was not worth it. Alexandra's reputation might not be anywhere near the abyss it was in first-year, it was still a fairly dark one. The chances of any sizeable number of house mates following her were close to non-existent. Morag however chose to give her school bag to Nigel and followed her. Then with a silent goodbye to the two other members of their group, Morag and Alexandra rushed in the corridor Crookshanks had come from.