Chapter Twelve - Confrontations of Authority

Sayo watched the door to the Gryffindor common room swing shut, watched Potter and Weasley place their arms around Granger without hesitation. They glanced back at her as the portrait closed and she only smiled back, softer than usual. She did feel bad for them. This wasn't fair. But then she had no reason to keep things fair when she had so much to do. When they had so much to do.

That Triwizard Tournament was no joke. That had been part of the reason she had been allowed to come, especially with Mahoutokoro's (Whoever named that school deserved to get shot) reputation of complicated spell craft work and deliberate survival training. Her uncle's father had said when the bombs dropped, Mahoutokoro's spells had been the one thing that kept the building -and the people inside of it- alive and healthy. They had managed to save some civilians as well, but not many.

Needless to say, nuclear energy was always a study or concern for the eighteen year olds running on bad coffee and fifty pounds of chocolate and pez dispensers and fries, going by Koh's vague half an education understanding. At least one person took the subject by storm a year.

So combine that (what little she actually had) with the capability to command and corral, and she and hers made an excellent bodyguard and trainer and surveyor. On paper, the Triwizard Tournament was meant to do two things: show off the of age wizarding population against the backdrop of the past war, and improve international magical relations.

All Sayo had heard when the pudgy man had told her that long diatribe was: politics. She hated politics. But if these politics would get her and hers any hope of bringing her family home someday, she'd swallow anything.

You are a dragon. Dragons don't grovel.

An ear twitched beneath her hat at the reminder, drooping a little. Sayo skipped a step and left her mother's wraith behind.

Whatever it took, she reminded herself. Whatever it took. Reaching the bottom stairwell, she heard a horrible grunt. She paused and took a sniff of the air. Pine and lemongrass. Possibly from the kitchen. Not her business. So she kept walking. She needed to see Abe before he decided to leave on his own and crash his way through dimensions or something. Digimon were often found doing that, having gotten stuck trying to go one way and failing miserably at it.

She hurried down the path into the grass. He did not move as she approached. He wasn't sleeping either. He merely exhaled. "What do you want, tamer girl?"

"Get you back to where you belong, I suppose." Sayo shrugged and sat beside him. "Now that you've proven you can go to heel like the rest of us."

"After you danced me like a showboat trophy you mean."

Sayo shrugged. She wouldn't deny it. "I'll do whatever i need to do. It's not like I planned this."

"Your name is infamous in the worlds."

"Is it?" She laughed. "Didn't know i was famous."

"Well, less of your given, more of your familial." He scoffed, the sound makin the grass flatten. "Talosians."

The word burnt. She wanted to bury it beneath her heel and just gut the thing already but she couldn't. Dictation demanded that she at the very least behave herself and not kill a sacred boar-

And it was sapient, her uncle would kill her for killing and eating a creature of sapience for some reason.

"I like it about as much as you do."

"Time-killer."

"I beg- what?" That threw her. That threw her all across the courtyard if words had the force for it.

He smirked. "Oh something the great survivalist didn't know. Interesting."

Sayo chewed on her lip. "Is this about the Chrono Core thing?" Her gut did not twitch nope not at all, her eyes did not prickle with tears.

"You didn't think you would just get away with it if you time-hopped, did you?" Abe snorted and sent some stray grass flying.

"... Honestly I kind of hoped I would."

A clenched fist. Meteors falling, children exploding, a stab through the head.

"It wasn't exactly an experience I wanted to repeat."

Abe laughed again and it was cold. "Too bad, little time-killer. You can't run away forever. Time will catch up to you."

"Long as it doesn't catch my sister I'll deal."

"Is that why you're letting her harm the youth here?"

"I dunno, the school seems to think it's fine when everyone else does it. Because they're poor, because they're muggles or whatever the gibberish is. Is it really so wrong because a random girl does it and not a rich boy with pretty hair?"

"You're asking me about humans when you are a human."

"I'm not a very good one, apparently." Sayo rose to her feet. "So, are you ready to go?"

"Someday you won't be able to run," warned Abe, but he braced himself anyway.

Sayo shrugged and raised her digivice. "You may be right. Gate, open."

She's not my responsibility here, she reminded herself as she sent him away. She's Mister Snape's, so I can't fix her every scraped knee.

What she could do was get back to work, to research, to finding what the chief had wanted her to. They didn't have that much longer until the Triwizard Tournament and she needed all of the time she could get.

So that was what Sayo did.

It was almost easier now. It sure hadn't been when her sister had been far out of reach.

Severus Snape was not a good teacher.

He was a brilliant, excellent, terrifying potioneer. He was a spellcrafter, had dabbled in alchemy, studied wards under Dumbledore in seventh year and was an incredible, self-trained Occulmens.

But he was not a good teacher.

He could write words on the board, he could lecture, he could explain, he could test. But the man could not teach. He didn't have the patience for the young and the mistaken, the foolish and the reckless. He was not in a subject he could afford to.

But then, no students liked him. Even those in his house at best, were wary. Respectful, emboldened, determined.

And when the House had decided there was an outsider, well, there it was. And there was no reason to hide it. Not that people truly noticed often enough.

The trouble with the younger Tsukino girl was that she was being noticed. She was being made special. She was proud where Slytherins were confident and assured. And years of bullying and abandonment and fringe living made Severus Snape despise pride in all its forms.

Especially from those who could hide among the bigger and better.

Tsukino Yuki sat in the wooden chair on the other side of his desk. She didn't move. She barely seemed to be breathing. Her eyes moved about the room, unseeing of shapes and likely most color. Magic never lasted in the dungeons.

"You think loudly," he informed her.

"I can't read loudly so it's the best i can do sir," she said in her usual flat voice. "Don't you have Potter to treat terribly, rather than call me here? I'm sure the others in the common room weren't done with me." She bore the smell of spells and hexes and sweat.

"Potter," he hissed the name before he could quite control his level of vritrol. "Is not attacking his housemates with their service cane and fists over petty, childish outbursts."

"I'm eleven," Tsukino pointed out. "Raised by actual people and not what most of your house calls parents. Sir." The last word came clearly as an afterthought.

Snape did not bother to look at her. He could hear her thoughts, loudly pulsing and vibrating with offense imagined and real. "Do you want to make an enemy of me?"

"Earth is my enemy." She still barely moved. "Your people killed my possible siblings, you nearly killed my sister, I never got to meet my big brother because of all of you." She flapped a hand. "Not you specifically, but Earth's laws did. Sent us away, except unlike wizards the planet is off limits."

"And you believe that sorrow gives you free reign to harm others," he drawled, thinking of pathetic, petty, monstrous Sirius Black and that was when it clicked, that was when it all came together in a sickening sense of understanding. It was like Potter and Black come again with no minders and no one but him had noticed.

"I don't really care if it does or not," Tsukino admitted. "I don't care about very much. Just sis. Just her and dad and uncle. But sis is the only one here. Because of me."

Snape did not pause in his grading as he spoke. Then, voice dry, he offered to her. "And is what you're doing helping her?"

Snape watched over his hair as Tsukino paused, head bowing towards her hands. "Probably not," she finally said, breath hitching like an actual child and not… whatever this girl actually was, actually had to be. "But they-"

"They are not you," Snape finally put the paper aside, not atrocious but likely copied from overachieving Granger. "You are to control yourself and no others. Malfoy and Nott were foolish, yes, and they forgot, for a moment, of the value all Slytherins put on family. But you also forgot that Slytherin is meant to be yours. You do your sister no favors attacking your fellows."

He watched her hunch in her chair, folding over and shrinking steadily smaller as he spoke. He'd lost his guilt a long time ago. It did nothing to him.

"More detention then," she finally said in a voice full of bravado, Gryffindor bravado. It was really quite disgusting.

"Indeed," Severus agreed, and went on to another paper, leaving them both alone and nearly still.

But that wouldn't be all, of course not. But it would be enough of a start. A little humiliation would work wonders. If only Dumbledore had the guts to do it sooner.

The second week of lessons began with everyone still talking about the giant boar, and what was to come.

The Slytherins had fallen strangely quiet. Well, to Astoria it wasn't strange. After all, their resident troublemaker (not Draco, apparently he wasn't intended to fall into line, just to fall if her sister's words were anything to go by) had finally fallen into line.

Mostly.

Yuki didn't use the slang, didn't sneer at other houses, didn't mock or whisper. She still spoke crassly and didn't spend time in the common room. But she was very firmly meeting no one with a lifted head, as if seeing the magic through their skin and therefore the rest of them. She ignored any taunts and jibes. And she listened to the older years with intent.

Whatever had happened over the weekend in Snape's office, and the moments after, it had made an effect.

She sat next to Astoria every day for every meal but always left first. She never spoke about genetics again, nor brought up the curse she'd claimed to have seen on Astoria herself. Zabini tried to engage her in conversation, but it was quick and clipped and decidedly uncomfortable.

And slowly, all of the fighting had turned to quiet whispers, low mockery.

Then their next class with Professor Tsukino arrived.

"Wands in the box," she said again. She took roll softly, quickly. It really didn't look like the same woman who had supposedly broken a window and beat down a giant boar. "You'll get to use your wands next class."

Astoria slid to the floor like before, prepared for the squishiness of the grass and the coolness of the room. She rather liked the professor's classroom, and even, when she wasn't performing stupid, reckless things on students, the professor herself. She was perfectly polite and interested in them. She didn't know enough to be offended by their reputations directly and in fact seemed more interest in anything else.

The room was still and quiet, everyone examining it and each other. By now they'd all heard what had happened in the courtyard and the fourth-year classroom. It was all neatly repaired, no real harm. But there were now whispers and questions and… rumors. She was a dragon. She wasn't human, she was immortal, she was Dumbledore's secret mistress child, she and Snape were partners for the Dark Lord, she was Hogwarts itself. So many.

"So," the professor began as the door finally swung shut. "I was intending to do a more one-on-one lesson, but Abe the boar got in the way. So, we're going to do something different. I'm going to ask you a question, and no matter the answer, someone else will get to ask me a question. And so on. Sound good?"

Silence.

The teacher made a face, lips tugging high up into a grin. "I asked my question, it's your turn now."

A few rippled snickers. Then, Darren Paisley, a little Ravenclaw, raised his hand. "Why did that monster try to attack our school?"

Professor Tsukino didn't even blink. "I don't know. My best guess was that he just ended up here at the wrong place at the wrong time. That can happen because of the dimensional barriers. They've been steadily weakening throughout this year because non-magical technology is growing rapidly. What is the purpose of the House Cup?"

"Minor glory?" offered Tansy Wilkenson, already too tall for twelve and fussing with her Gryffindor tie and not sure how to take that entire paragraph. "So we have practice being like, I dunno, willing to work hard for our team?"

The professor nodded. Then one of Astoria's friends asked, very quietly. "Why does your sister like to fight people?"

They all watched her expression, watched it flicker through multiple things at the same time. But In the end, the professor merely straightened up and replied with, "The Digital World, which for the sake of this question, you can assume we resided in when not in school-" she held out her hand. "Answering this one first. The digital world, which for the sake of argument, she and I grew up in outside of education, was and is still relatively lawless. The few human settlements that exist spend most of their time fighting to survive and all of that happy nonsense. My sister was… enslaved, used, by a particularly nasty creature, that wasn't a native resident of the Digital World. We only freed her a few months prior, but she's not coping well. My higher ups said it may be better for her to learn to control her… magical energy, mana I think you all call it, in a place where there is less of it in the general air. Unfortunately, well, I'm all she's got as a reason to behave herself." The teacher snorted. "I'm a terrible reason to go against the habits she's formed. That said, Professor Dumbledore sees this as an opportunity for her and us and you. But she's struggling. She is aiming to lash out less, but she's prickly and people unfortunately," Her eyes flicked to Astoria and away. "Like to provoke weakness out of who they perceive as easy targets. So, don't be an easy target, and don't provoke bears. Important life lessons."

Professor Tsukino paused for breath, then prompted. "Most hated professor or class and why?"

Two hands shot up and William Parkinson scoffed and said, "Binns. Dead and useless and never says an interesting tidbit of history that's not a wizard interpretation of goblin wars and most people fail their OWLs if they listen to him and still do if they don't, but he tied himself to the school and won't buzz off."

"Snape," argued, not a Gryffindor, to Astoria's surprise, but a Ravenclaw girl whose name she didn't know. "Even McGonagall is fair, but he never taught us safety in first year when we started class, only boasted about how important the subject is and berated people who worked across the aisle." She glared at the Slytherin next to her, who had opened his mouth. "My friend got detention for asking for help this morning. On a tough potion when she couldn't see the board! He's an unfair teacher and his dungeons have runes older than us on them. I got hives on my hands because I was allergic to lizard scales, but he said I ruined my potion!"

There were low murmurs of agreement. Astoria had to pause. She hadn't heard that before, ever. Last year had been Black on the loose of course, and dementors and everything but that hadn't happened before.

A few students looked mutinous.

"Anyone else," Professor Tsukino asked, and one person looked around and said, cautiously.

"Trelawney. " A few voices rose and they shook their head. "Naw, she's not a fraud, but you can't teach the Sight. You can't. It can be coaxed out but to everyone else, her room is headache inducing. That's a class we should be tested in, not given for an easy O."

"Hagrid," said another, a boy in a Slytherin tie, Daniel, she thought it was. "He's got super interesting stuff, but they don't regulate the class well. Morons get their arms cut up because they don't know that being 'better'-" Heavy air quotes inserted. "Doesn't matter to people that don't have gold in their hands. I don't want that class getting canceled because of dumb students."

Astoria didn't quite mean to but she laughed at that. And she was sure people heard it. To cover her slip, she turned to their teacher. "Why was this class approved and required?"

Professor Tsukino regarded her, and then all of them. "The basic reason was that your magic was discovered during the year before last to be channeling mainly to your wand arms and it was weakening your ability to cast, and you have limited physical education which also could weaken the ability to cast. They found it while waking people up from petrification, but no one was willing to come to the school and teach a subject many families weren't fond of. The Digital Monsters aspect was a compromise so they could get someone they could study the phenomenon with someone in the age group. Honestly my uncle would have been better for the position." She clapped her hands. "Is that sensible?"

She met a lot of nodding faces, a little less caution in their frowns. "All righty. Who is your best teacher and why?"

And so it went on.