Here's someone who has a little more of an idea what to expect, from the school at large if not from the Sorting Hat in particular. 

At the moment the hat drops onto his head, Christopher is wondering if he'll be able to talk it into putting him in Gryffindor, or if he'll have to bribe it somehow. 

Well, you're not exactly helping your case with that sort of scheming, it comments. There's a house for people who'll do anything for the sake of their reputation, you know. And it's not Gryffindor. 

"Please," he whispers. "It—it doesn't have to be Gryffindor, just—anything, anywhere but Slytherin. I'll, my dad'll hate me, please."

Hmm, let's see. You're smart enough, but...no, there's no great love of learning there. You'd never fit into Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff, perhaps. Many witches and wizards have made great friendships there. But not you, I think. You're searching for a different kind of friendship. And you'll find it in...

"SLYTHERIN!"

Everyone's watching. This is his first impression on the entire school, including his new housemates. Because, apparently, he's a Slytherin now. The same house as the Dark Lord himself, the house that was home to so many Death Eaters. Maybe home to the next evil, the newest monster that's going to terrorise the wizarding world. 

Christopher doesn't think he can manage a smile, but he can keep his back straight and hold his head up as he walks over to the table full of people in green. The important thing, with monsters, is not to let them see you're afraid. 

People are talking around him. Someone addresses him — she says his name and everything — and he understands "Who are your" and then nothing else that comes after it. 

He looks at her blankly, and she waits for almost a full minute before she moves on to the next first year, and people mostly don't speak to him after that — he catches the word "name," and then the word "family," said by a boy at least twice his size who's looking at him sideways, but people don't try to speak to him as far as he can tell. 

He eats. (There's so much food, here — there might be less, after the first night, but even if there is less there will still be enough, he tries to remind himself, he doesn't need to keep careful track of how long it is until they get their next allotment.) 

He follows the other first-year Slytherin boys to their common room, where a girl and a boy who look like they're upper-years give a long speech that he understands very little of, and then to their dorm. That first night, he's not so nervous that he doesn't sleep. 

Yes, his father was Aimery Parsons. Yes, that Aimery Parsons. The Auror. 

He answers in monosyllables and pays just enough attention to the conversations going on around him to learn everyone's name and figure out how they're all related. It helps that bloodlines are seemingly all anyone wants to talk about at the feast. No surprise, nearly the whole table is full of purebloods with just enough half-bloods to make up the numbers. There's not a Muggleborn in sight—at least none that'll admit to it.

He vaguely notices when one of the other first-years point-blank refuses to answer a question about his family, just staring at the girl who asked until she gives up. Christopher's not sure if that's a really gutsy move or a really stupid one.

He memorises the password to the Slytherin common room and listens carefully to the talk the prefects give them and waits until he's pretty sure everyone else in his dorm is asleep to sneak out and sit staring through the window at the dark waters of the lake.

It's quiet, almost peaceful. He has space to think for the first time since the Sorting. 

Dad is going to be disappointed. There's nothing he can do to change that. Aimery was assuming his only son would follow him into Gryffindor, and he'd have been at least a little disappointed with anything else, even Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff would have been acceptable, barely, but Slytherin? Christopher will be lucky if he doesn't get a Howler in the post in the next few days. He'll send a letter first thing tomorrow morning; it'll be better if Dad hears it from him. Not much better, but still.

 An eel swims past, bulbous eyes swivelling dispassionately towards the small boy in the window and then away again. 

He doesn't feel evil. He's not sure how he'd tell if he was, but he doesn't think he's going to decide Muggleborns are inferior and go on a killing spree, or come home for the holidays and torture Grandpa. So being in Slytherin probably doesn't mean you're evil right from the start. Maybe it takes longer to work than that, and he'll think torturing Muggles is fine by Christmas, or the summer holidays, or by the time he graduates. 

Maybe it's not magic at all, just people. He knows a lot of the younger kids are just repeating things their parents say, or things they've heard from older students. Spending seven years living with evil people is probably enough to make anyone a little bit evil. 

He curls up a little tighter, shivering. It's cold in here, and being next to the window isn't helping. 

Okay. Things could be worse. He could be a Squib, which is just about the only thing that would disappoint his father more than being a Slytherin. And if the thing where Slytherins all turn Dark is just about what friends they have, and not about the Sorting Hat picking all the evil ones, then maybe if he makes enough friends from the other houses he'll be okay. If he's really careful and clever and puts a lot of work into it, he might even be able to stop some of the other Slytherins turning evil. 

Make friends, don't turn evil, save the world. No pressure. Actually, that feels weirdly comforting under the circumstances. 

The next morning, his inkwell (he doesn't know why they use inkwells here, but maybe McGonagall had explained it when she took him to Diagon Alley and he just hadn't understood) is broken, and almost all of his clothes are ink-stained. 

He cleans up as well as he can, and checks his books to make sure none of the pages got splattered, and locks his trunk and takes the key with him when he goes down to breakfast. It's not like he would have been able to take notes anyway. 

His first class in each subject goes — about how you'd expect them to. Some of his teachers are better than others. Flitwick speaks very quickly and doesn't seem to notice how blank Sasha looks; McGonagall looks disapproving of the stains on his clothes, asks him questions he doesn't understand and definitely can't answer; Snape hovers and snaps at students but aims his disapproval at the Gryffindors on the other side of the room. He can mostly figure out herbology; Sprout gives practical demonstrations as well as verbal instructions, and doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't raise his hand to answer questions. 

He's the smallest person in the first-year Slytherin dormitory, and he knows when people hate him, knows on a level he couldn't verbalize even in Russian how to tell when the words you don't understand are aimed to hurt you.

After three days he stops sleeping in his dorm.

Nobody's attacked him yet, but mudblood, whatever it means, sounds uncomfortably like жид sounded when he was — not home, that wasn't home, this is home now — and he isn't willing to let his guard down, not that thoroughly. He stays awake and does homework in the common room at night, copies out words from his textbooks that he thinks are the ones the professor was using that day in the best handwriting he can manage, and sleeps in his free periods, curls up under staircases where he won't be in the way, or under tables in the library, or slumped over his desk in History of Magic, where nobody else is paying attention either and so it won't be conspicuous that he isn't. It's not anywhere near enough, but he'll take what he can get, and make up for it on weekends as much as he can. 

Christopher is planning to make friends with everyone in his year eventually, but the weird loner who never pays attention in class doesn't seem like the best place to start. Instead, he picks out the boys who are popular, but not the centre of attention, and gets to know them. Most of them turn out to be pretty normal kids who've been raised by traditionalist wizarding families and barely know anything about Muggles other than what their parents taught them. He doesn't try convincing anyone just yet, but he does nice things for them, like helping Adrian Pucey with his Transfiguration homework. He starts running errands for some of the older Slytherins, too. It can't hurt to be on the good side of the prefects. 

In the classes they share with other houses, he looks out for people who wouldn't mind being friends with a Slytherin. He's not expecting much from the Gryffindors, but Hufflepuffs are supposed to be friendly, and Ravenclaws are supposed to be smart. Maybe they'll be smart enough to figure out the thing about not all Slytherins being evil to start with.  

They share Charms with the Hufflepuffs, and Diggory doesn't seem to mind having Christopher next to him. 

Normal people work differently to Slytherins. Christopher knows this, even if he couldn't put the difference into words. The tricks that work to make friends with one aren't the same as for the other. 

He waits for a charm Diggory masters before he does, then: "Hey, would you mind showing me how you did that? I can't seem to get it." 

"Of course — here, you're moving your shoulder too much, the motion should be mostly in your wrist." He demonstrates. 

He copies the motion closely and gets the spell on his next try. "Thanks! I wouldn't have spotted that on my own." 

"No problem, glad I could help!" 

He does seem significantly friendlier to Christopher after that. 

Great! Christopher's plan to make non-Slytherin friends is off to a good start. 

On Fridays, the first-year Slytherins have Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Kennilworthy, who's brand new to the school and arrived at the same time they did. He's a tall man with a bristling moustache and shockingly orange hair which seems to stand up on its own. He has a tendency to go off on tangents about his adventurous youth every few minutes. He seems to have had an encounter with practically every entry in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. 

The students quickly discover that Kennilworthy likes to stride stork-like around the classroom as they take notes, bending down every few desks to peer at a student's handwriting before moving on. 

Kennilworthy is obviously engaging — if Sasha could understand more than two words out of any given sentence he's sure he'd be fascinated — and animated enough that it's not hard to look engaged.

He's already aware that his handwriting in this alphabet looks like a child's, that he writes too slowly, and that he has never used a quill in his life and isn't really sure how to start; he can barely read it himself. He's guessing wildly at what he should take notes about, but copying whatever's on the board is probably a good bet.

He shrinks back, just a little bit, only as much as he can't suppress, when Kennilworthy bends down at his desk. 

Just as he has with every other student, the professor gives a dismissive "Hmph!" and straightens up again. 

By the end of the class, he's clearly running over time and has to shout their homework assignment as half the class is already out of the door. 

Sasha steals as much time as he can to tuck himself away in a corner and sleep and it's not enough, his reaction times are getting slower and his handwriting and reading comprehension are getting even worse, but — but he doesn't understand the word that a Ravenclaw girl says when she's looking right at him but he knows that dismissive tone, he keeps hearing the word Mudblood tossed around and he doesn't know what a Mudblood even is but he knows that sneer. He tries sleeping in his dorm again and he can't, the part of his mind that he can't turn off is too sure that he's not safe here. 

He spends a slightly ridiculous amount of time in the library. Madam Pince is sharp but as long as he's quiet and doesn't damage the books she likes him well enough, even if he does spend that time sleeping under tables and not studying. Nobody bothers him here. He doesn't write down which places are safe, but he keeps a careful mental list and the library goes on it. 

He turns in his homework. It's abysmal, Sasha knows it is, but it's done and that's more than some of his classmates can say. He's vaguely aware that Snape is his head of house, and he's supposed to go to him if he's having problems, but the look on Snape's face whenever Sasha's in his classroom makes the chances of Sasha ever actually doing that almost zero. By Tuesday his eyes ache, faintly, when he tries to focus them; he watches what other students are doing and copies them rather than trying to read the instructions on the board. 

By Friday in Defense class, he's tired enough that no amount of effort from him or animation from Kennilworthy can keep him looking focused. 

What about a professor leaning over his desk and asking why he's stopped taking notes? 

"...Michaels? No, Michaelov? Something like that, isn't it?" 

"Mikhailov." He wants to sound like he cares. He just sounds exhausted. He's still holding a quill, but he can't seem to get his fingers to move the way he wants them to; what he has written today is completely illegible even to him. 

"Mikhailov. Mikhailov, why haven't you written anything down for the last fifteen minutes?" Kennilworthy demands. His voice rises in pitch. "This is important information, young man!" 

He understands his name, and "why" and "you" and "last" and "is", and nothing else in that sentence. He doesn't stop his hands from shaking. Partially because he's too tired and partially because he just. Doesn't want to.

"I —" 

He doesn't know how to finish that sentence. Doesn't know the English words, doesn't know what he'd say if he did. 

"Well?" Kennilworthy waits another few seconds for a response which is not forthcoming. "Right then!" He abruptly straightens from his bent position. "You can explain it to me in detention."

Giving Sasha a crisp nod, he moves on with the rest of the lesson as though the matter is settled. 

Okay. He's picked up the word detention, by now. That could have gone worse. It means he'll lose sleep tonight but it could have gone worse, at least Kennilworthy isn't paying attention to him anymore, even if some of the other students are looking at him. He does his best to ignore them, tries to take notes, mostly fails on both counts. 

He's at the classroom door that evening. 

"Ah, Mikhailov. Here for your detention, I see. Excellent!"

Kennilworthy beckons Sasha into his office. "Do take a seat, young man," he continues, gesturing to a chair. 

Gesturing at a chair is kind of impossible to misinterpret. He sits, looks up at Kennilworthy rather than down at the desk. 

Kennilworthy takes a seat himself, across from Sasha. "Now, I wanted to talk to you about—"

There's a knock at the door. He glares at it, then sighs. "Yes? Who is it?" 

The interruption turns out to be a Ravenclaw girl, who stammers something about Peeves that has Kennilworthy leaping up to follow her. He doubles back after a moment, grabs a DADA textbook, and flips it to a page covering the material they discussed in class that morning.

"I shan't be long," he tells Sasha. "You copy this down—here's paper and ink. Just got to go deal with this; back in a tick." And then he's out of the door. 

Okay. 

Okay. There's only so many things that an open textbook and a paper and an inkwell can be for. He can copy, he writes slowly but he can look at a word on a page and write it down even if he doesn't know what it means. The hour ticks by.

Sasha finishes copying the page after around forty-five minutes, then sets the quill down and stretches out his fingers. He probably shouldn't try to sleep here, getting in the habit of sleeping in desks whenever he's done with notes is a bad idea, but it's not like there's anything else to do and he's so tired — he presses his fingernails into his hands, forces himself to stay awake. Kennilworthy already thinks he doesn't care, he doesn't want to make that worse. He pulls out a Charms textbook and looks for words that Flitwick put on the board that afternoon, copies out sentences that probably have nothing to do with each other but are better than turning in nothing. 

He'll still be doing that by the time Kennilworthy gets back. 

Kennilworthy is gone for nearly the entire time. He comes back dripping wet and with singed sleeves, muttering to himself about how much he hates poltergeists. 

He inspects Sasha's copied page and seems to be satisfied with it, then glances at the clock and notices how late it is. "Good lord, look at the time. Well, I'd better let you go; it's almost lights out." 

"Time" and "lights out" is enough to tell him what that meant. He nods at Kennilworthy and smiles and collects his things and goes. 

He could probably just sleep out here somewhere, there must be tucked-away places where he wouldn't be seen, it wouldn't be impossible — but it's not a good idea. He goes back to his common room, intending to keep working on homework like he usually does at night, and instead curls up in one of the chairs that's not so close to the fireplace that other people will want it but not so far away that he'll freeze, and sleeps through the night. 

He's woken up in the morning when someone tips his chair over, sending him sprawling onto the ground. 

Lesson learned. He won't try doing that again. 

It's been two weeks. Christopher has befriended—or at least had friendly conversations with—three of the other four boys in his dorm, and two of the Slytherin girls. He's still cultivating a friendship with Cedric, but one compared to five isn't enough. He needs more non-Slytherin friends. 

Accordingly, he starts paying more attention to the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors they share classes with, aiming to have at least one friend from each house by the end of the week. He still talks to his housemates enough to avoid offending them, but he's distracted by his new goal and paying less attention than he might have been. 

The Ravenclaws are friendly enough — their help in class tends more theoretical than Cedric's did, which would be helpful if they had Transfiguration together but is somewhat less so in Herbology — but trying to get a Gryffindor to talk civilly to a Slytherin during Potions is like pulling teeth. 

Of course it is.

He'll work on it. 

He's not actually desperate enough to try spending the night in the halls. Yet. It's almost certainly a matter of time.

Weekends are great for catching up on lost sleep — it's still warm enough that most people go outside in their free time, which leaves the castle empty enough that he can stay in corners or unused classrooms and have nobody bother him, and there's no need to be anywhere in particular — which makes it easier to avoid his housemates during the day.

He still sees them at mealtimes and in the evenings. He's started hearing the word Mudblood more often, now, still in that same tone of voice, still with that same sneer; it's coming from the older students, not the people in his own year. He pretends not to hear, pretends not to notice, pretends not to care. It's not like he's not already aware that they could hurt him if they wanted to, he doesn't need it demonstrated. 

It's not just the Slytherins, either: a Gryffindor girl tries to trip him; a boy shoves him forward while he's walking down a staircase. Sasha sticks to staircases that don't get used as often, sticks to strange roundabout routes to wherever he needs to go. That week it's a miracle he gets to all of his classes on time — Professor McGonagall frowns disapprovingly and asks him a question he doesn't catch more than two words of, but she moves on to the next student when he just looks blank. 

Christopher might notice some of this and be concerned, but this week he's not paying much more attention to his housemates than is necessary to maintain the friendships he's trying to build. By now it's common knowledge in their dorm that Mikhailov is Muggleborn, but it's still easy to write him off as a loner who doesn't care about classes. 

At the end of the week, Christopher has befriended a couple of Ravenclaw girls and thinks one or two of the Gryffindors might be getting as far as 'not actively hostile'. It helps that he's not that good at Potions, so he doesn't give Snape many opportunities for blatant favouritism.

Blatant favoritism might be the only reason he's scraping by — that, and being able to watch and copy what other students are doing. 

It's not impossible to keep up, in most of his classes. He has plenty of time to do homework at night, he can get some of the practical work done by watching his classmates. It isn't that it's just not doable — he could manage, if he could concentrate, if his hands didn't shake so much, if his eyes would focus and stay focused. If he didn't occasionally notice himself staring blankly forward with no memory of the last five, ten, fifteen minutes. (He pinches himself alert every thirty seconds in Defense, in Potions. One detention is enough, and there's already been one explosion this year.) 

...did the weird loner just pinch himself?

Christopher pays slightly more attention to Mikhailov for the rest of Potions and manages to catch him doing it again by the end of the lesson. It's not worrying, exactly, but it's a piece of a puzzle he can't immediately fit with what he knows, so he's thinking about it while walking to their next class. 

Mikhailov hasn't been sleeping in the dorms. Hasn't been spending his nights there since the first day, in fact. Maybe he's not getting enough sleep; that would explain the pinching, and why he's been paying even less attention in class.

That...probably isn't Christopher's problem, and he can't think of a good way to solve it right now anyway. He doesn't know Mikhailov well enough to talk to him about his problems yet, and besides, this is Slytherin. He can't just offer to help without wanting anything in return, or he'll look like he's trying to trick the other kid into owing him a favour. It might be worth it for something more serious if he had an easy solution, but this isn't and he doesn't.

He'll be mentally poking at it for the next few days, though, like a loose tooth. 

If he's paying attention, he'll be able to catch Sasha pressing his thumbnails into the pads of his fingers and biting down on his lower lip in other classes — he's trying to keep to things that are hard to notice, but he can only bite his tongue so hard and so many times before he causes actual damage. Astronomy is cold enough that he doesn't have to do anything to keep himself awake, and he doesn't bother to try in History of Magic where half of the class is nodding off anyway but his eyes fall closed more quickly than any of his classmates'. 

He's getting the hang of the moving staircases; the ones he prefers to use, on tucked-away routes that get less traffic, move more often, but it's a small price to pay to not have to worry as much about being pushed down them. It's not like he never falls, sometimes he's distracted and tired enough that he trips over his own feet, but there are fewer bruises than he'd have expected if you'd asked him two weeks ago, and almost all of them are on his legs and torso where they're barely any effort at all to hide. He hasn't slept in the common room again, has tried curling up under his bed during free periods but decided it was easier to just stay under a library table. 

Most of the other Slytherin first years barely pay attention to him anymore, and although the curly haired blonde (Parsons, right?) has been watching him for the last couple of days when he wasn't doing that before, Parsons isn't trying to approach him or ask him for anything, hasn't tried to hurt him yet. There's plenty of food here, so much of it that he's stopped worrying about what happens if someday there isn't. He turns in his homework and doesn't worry about what his teachers will think of the quality anymore. It's getting easier not to worry, or maybe he's just too tired to worry about anything he doesn't have to. Either way it's easier to deal with, now. 

He wanted to make friends with the loner anyway. He can do that even without trying to jump in and solve all this kid's problems straight away, right? 

The problem is, having gone this long without interacting with Mikhailov, it's hard to find a way to start without looking suspicious. Christopher spends a few days waiting for a natural opportunity to talk to him, without success. 

He has a nightmare one night and wakes up shaking and sweating. He sits up, still breathing hard, and looks around the darkened room for something, anything to distract him from the all-too-vivid image of himself as a new Dark Lord, facing down his own father at wand-point. 

He's already slipped back into the dorm, gotten dressed, and collected his books for the next day, and is sitting on his bed. 

When Parsons sits up, obviously frightened of something, Sasha sits up straighter, moves just enough to make it obvious that he's awake. 

Another person: the best possible distraction. Moving slowly so he doesn't wake anyone else, Christopher gets out of bed and wraps himself in a blanket before going over to Mikhailov. 

"You're awake early," he comments softly. 

"I....am always." Each word sounds hesitant. 

Shrug. "I never noticed before." He pauses, considers.

Eh, it can't hurt. "Wanna talk about it?" 

He catches noticed and want to talk and the rising pitch at the end, which is enough.  

"I do homework. Most nights." 

"Oh." That...doesn't fit with any of the puzzle pieces he has so far. He was right; this is a great distraction. 

"...why?" 

"I…" 

It isn't like Parsons hasn't heard the others. 

"I cannot sleep here." 

Yeah, he thought so. Why not is reasonably obvious—Mikhailov's worried about bullies, and not without good reason. Slytherin doesn't exactly have a reputation of being safe for Muggle-born students, let alone welcoming. 

"Where do you sleep?" Christopher asks, instead, since that's one he can't guess. 

He catches "where do," which is all he really needs to. 

He is not, in fact, stupid, whatever it might seem like to his teachers. He doesn't answer that question. 

…he realizes after a couple of seconds that this could, if Parsons was inclined to see it that way, look like a challenge, and if it comes down to any kind of actual conflict then he'll lose. 

He lowers his eyes, keeps his hands open and where Parsons can see them, lets himself curl slightly inwards and lets some of the fear show on his face. You could hurt me, I know you could hurt me, so you don't have to actually hurt me. 

He sees the fear and winces, realising his mistake almost immediately. As far as this kid's concerned, he's no less of a threat than the others. 

"Sorry, it's fine, you don't have to answer that." 

He keeps his head ducked but looks up at Parsons' face. He doesn't look angry. Sasha still keeps the posture he has, not-a-challenge-not-a-threat. 

Subject change, subject change...oh!

"What d'you think of Hogwarts so far, anyway?" Christopher asks. He quickly checks the others are still asleep, then fake-casually adds, "Not much like Muggle school, is it?" Tone sympathising, saying I know that feeling, not mocking. 

Think and Hogwarts and anyway and not much and school is not enough to tell him what that question meant. 

"I..." 

That's fine, Christopher can ramble for a little bit until he gets the idea. "I mean, it's really cool that we get to learn magic now, but I kinda miss English class, you know? And Music. Music was the best." 

Qualifier it's really something magic something something English something something music music was the best. 

He looks at Parsons, totally blank. 

That...that's not an 'I don't know what to say' blank face, that's an 'I have no idea what you just said' blank face. 

"...did you understand any of that?" 

He catches understand and that. He wishes that didn't probably mean what it probably means. 

"...no," he says, reluctant. 

"Okay." Gently, like Sasha might break if he says the wrong thing, he asks, "Why not?"

Well.  

"I arrived in Britain seven months ago and none of you know how to teach your language. I've been placed in an entirely new world twice in the last year and I am trying to learn but it is so much harder than any of you think it is, and if I could trust that I was safe then maybe I could focus on learning the language and then it would be fine, but I can't, not here and not anywhere, and it's hard enough to try and keep up as it is," he says, in perfect, fluid, unhalting Russian. 

Christopher flops backwards to lie on the bed and facepalms.

"You're from another country," he says, slightly muffled through his hands. "And no-one bothered to make sure you spoke English before sending you to a Scottish boarding school." 

...this explains a lot. Like, a LOT. In fact, it possibly explains almost everything weird about Mikhailov. At the moment he's struggling to see that as a victory. 

"I speak some English." 

"Not enough to have a conversation," Christopher points out. "...not enough for classes?" 

"I......can take notes. When I try." His homework is borderline incoherent because he's literally just copying sentences from the book that have words he recognizes, but he doesn't know how he'd phrase that in English. 

"Is writing easier than talking?" Maybe they should switch to writing back and forth, especially since it's quieter and less likely to wake up the other boys. 

"No. I can.... copy, in writing." He's pretty sure that's what that word means but he's not nearly as sure as he'd like to be. 

Nod. 

Argh. This is a hard problem and Christopher is really not qualified to solve it on his own. 

Oh, that's a thought. "Do any of the teachers know?" 

He shakes his head. 

(At least, if they know, they've never given any sign of it. He's not sure whether it's more likely that they haven't noticed or that they don't care.) 

Alright. That's a place to start.

"I think we should talk to Professor Snape," he says, trying to sound more confident than he feels. "He's our head of House; he's supposed to help with things like this." 

(He catches Snape, help. He's seen Snape's face in classes, has seen the way his lip curls at anyone but the best-performing Slytherins, has heard the sneer in his voice when he answers questions.)  

"If you think so." 

"If we ask a different teacher, they'll tell us to go to Snape," he tries to explain, speaking a little slower than normal and choosing words as carefully as he can when he doesn't actually know the limits he's working with. "Maybe he won't help, but we should try him first." 

He nods. 

"Shall we both go talk to him after breakfast?" They could go earlier, Snape isn't hard to find in the mornings, but he'll be grouchy and snappish and even less likely to be helpful. This isn't an emergency, it can wait a few hours. 

After breakfast is clear enough. He nods again. 

And so after breakfast they go to Snape's office. Technically this isn't Christopher's problem but he thinks he's less scared of Snape and will probably be better at explaining the thing.

Also, he's not sure Mikhailov would actually go on his own, given that he hasn't done this at any point in the last month. 

"Parsons. Mikhailov. To what do I owe the pleasure?" His tone suggests that pleasure is the farthest thing from his mind. 

He tries to keep his eyes from darting around — it's not like he doesn't already know where the exit is — and winds up looking down at his hands. 

Yeah, looks like Christopher is going to be the one doing the talking. He's not surprised.

"Professor, Mikhailov isn't a native English speaker. He needs a language tutor, and—"

"Are you volunteering, Mr Parsons? How noble of you." 

Somehow, Snape manages to make the word 'noble' sound like an insult. 

"No, Professor, I was hoping—"

"I teach Potions, Mr Parsons, not foreign languages. Was that all?" His tone suggests that it had better be. 

Not exactly the response Christopher was hoping for. 

"Do you know anyone who does teach foreign languages, sir?" 

"No. Now get out of my office, I have a class to prepare for and you two," he sneers, "are going to be late for your own." 

No, they're not.

"Yes, sir. Sorry." 

Well. That could have gone better.

Once they're out of the room, he asks Mikhailov, "How much of that did you get?" 

"That he said no." Sasha hadn't expected anything different, hadn't really even let himself hope, but he's having a hard time keeping his face clear. (It isn't like he didn't already know what Snape thought of him.) 

Christopher nods. "Like we knew he would. But now we can ask other teachers, and tell them Snape said no." 

He thought of something while they were in there, what was it, oh right—"What language do you speak? I never asked." 

"Russian," very softly. 

Nod.

Just as quietly, "I'm going to ask all our teachers whether they speak Russian, and not tell them why unless they say yes. Okay?"

He nods. 

He doesn't expect that any of them will, or that any of them will be willing to help. But it's — nice, that Parsons is trying. 

And now they really should get to class. 

Christopher is happier now that he has a plan. In every lesson they have that day, he tries to find a moment when he can casually ask the teacher an unrelated question without seeming too suspicious. None of them will admit to knowing more than a couple of words in Russian. Over the next few days, he goes through every professor they have classes with, except for Snape and Binns. (He doesn't think either of those would be productive conversations.)

He pays more attention to Mikhailov than before, trying to think of other ways he can help. He still doesn't have a solution to the tiredness thing.

Having some kind of plan is — better than not. He's still bone-deep tired; he makes as much of an effort to concentrate as he can. He's a little wobbly when he walks for reasons that have nothing to do with the ever-present people trying to trip him or push him down staircases. His handwriting is nigh-unreadable. 

He's gotten very, very good at hiding bruises and lack of balance. It's fine. 

Christopher doesn't have enough social clout yet, even within their house, for disapproving glares to be very effective. So he doesn't glare disapprovingly at people who push or trip Mikhailov, even though it would make him feel better. 

This is probably why he's a Slytherin. His dad would have stood up for Mikhailov openly, confronted the bullies and told them to stop. 

He's gradually coming to terms with the fact that he's not his dad. 

Yeah. It'd be nice to get them to stop, but he's not holding it against Parsons that he can't; there's no shortage of people who want to pick on the small stupid Slytherin mudblood. 

He sleeps in the library whenever he can, curls up under a table. It's been a good move historically — nobody really wants to make a scene where Madam Pince will hear — but being on the ground leaves him vulnerable to ""accidents,"" as he learns one day when he wakes up to searing pain in his hand and a Gryffindor second-year walking away from him. 

He — does his best, in class that day. 

He's started sitting next to Mikhailov in one class every day. (He never sits with the same people twice in a row, so this isn't at all notable.) Today, it's Transfiguration, where he notices that Mikhailov isn't taking any notes, and hasn't been since this morning.

"You okay?" he whispers when McGonagall is distracted correcting another student's...creative...failure to transfigure his beetle into a button. 

"I'm fine." It hurts to hold a wand. He can mostly tell what they're supposed to be doing from watching the other students, though, so it's fine. 

Christopher is dubious, but short of poking Mikhailov to see if he flinches, there's not much he can do. 

In Charms, they're not sitting next to each other but he still keeps an eye out for any signs that something's...more wrong than usual. It's a theory-based lesson. Flitwick wants them all taking notes. 

Oh no. 

...He writes as best as he can. His handwriting is somehow even worse than usual; his fingers are jerky. He tries to keep himself from wincing. 

...yeah, there's something wrong. He can't say anything in the middle of class, though. 

It itches, almost painfully, to sit there and take notes on Cheering Charms while knowing for a fact that Mikhailov is hurting. 

He's not flinching. He's not flinching, he isn't. His face isn't as still as he would like it to be but he is not flinching. 

He can't read his own notes. He is literally copying what he sees on the blackboard and he can't read his own notes. Not in the usual sense that he can't actually read this language, in the sense that looking at his own handwriting he cannot tell the letters apart from each other. 

Flitwick doesn't seem like he notices anything is wrong. 

As soon as class ends, he catches up with Mikhailov and walks next to him until they're out of earshot of the other students. 

"It's your hand, isn't it? I could see it hurting when you had to write." 

Hand. Write. 

Now he flinches. (People aren't supposed to be able to tell when he's hurt.) 

...it's Parsons. Parsons hasn't done anything but help. He forces himself to relax, then nods. 

Christopher deliberately moves half a step to the side as they walk, putting a little more space between them so he seems less threatening. 

"You should go to the hospital wing," he says, barely loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise in the corridors. "Do you know where that is, do you want me to show you?" 

...this isn't (not home not home) there. People are rich here. Their hospitals won't be like — 

"Please?" 

"Okay. It's this way."

On his dad's advice, Christopher has memorised how to get to the hospital wing from any of his classes. He stays on Mikhailov's right so no-one can bump into him on that side and hurt his hand worse. 

That's good of him. Sasha's very very quiet; he keeps his hand as still as he can. 

The hospital wing isn't empty of other students when they get there. It very rarely is. 

He gets the matron's attention and tries to pretend he hasn't noticed a Slytherin girl from their year watching curiously from one of the beds as he explains what he knows about the injury. 

He's very good at pretending he hasn't noticed things, by now. 

Parsons doesn't know what happened; he doesn't know how to explain in English. He keeps his right hand as still as he can and pretends to be following the explanation. 

Madam Pomfrey grabs Sasha's hand and inspects it closely, prodding it for breaks. She tuts, then waves her wand at it while muttering "Episkey!" several times in succession. The bones snap back into place one at a time, with an almost painful hot-and-cold sensation. 

"How many bones did he break?" Christopher wonders out loud.

"You can be quiet while I'm working or you can leave. Episkey!" 

He squeezes his eyes closed and doesn't flinch doesn't move bites his lip and keeps perfectly still. 

After another round of prodding, Madam Pomfrey pronounces him healed and tells them to get out and go back to class. 

"Is your hand alright now?" 

He nods. 

"...thank you." 

They're out in the hallway now, and there's no-one around, so he can smile and say, "You're welcome. Thank you for letting me help."

It feels good to have accomplished something, anything, even if it's nowhere near enough. 

...a cautious, tentative smile. 

Smiles all around! But now they should stop smiling and start walking or they'll be late to their next class. 

In his head, Christopher moves Aleksander Mikhailov into the mental box marked 'friends'. He's the only Slytherin in there so far; the rest are either filed under 'allies' or 'pretend you don't think they're evil'. This feels like another small victory, as does the smile.

A day or two later, in one of their free periods, Christopher goes to the library. He's a little disappointed it took him this long to think of checking whether they had any books in Russian.

Madam Pince, when asked, isn't optimistic, but she bustles off to look for some anyway. He waits. 

The Hogwarts library is mostly English; some Latin, some French, but not much else. The only Russian books on the shelves are a two-part treatise on potionmaking, 800 pages in total and written more than a hundred years ago, and half of a volume on wandmaking (the other half is, inexplicably, in French.) 

If Christopher looks around while he's waiting, he might be able to see Sasha curled up under a table. 

...huh. So that's where he sleeps. Or at least one of the places. 

Christopher casually leans on a table near Mikhailov and watches out for anyone getting too close. 

A Gryffindor boy (the same one who broke Mikhailov's hand the first time, not that Christopher would know that) who looks like maybe a third or fourth year approaches, not particularly purposeful about it. 

There's a decent chance he'll be scared off just by a Slytherin trying to talk to him. Well, not scared, not of a lone first-year, but something close to it. Gryffindors. 

"Hi." 

"Hi." He doesn't look scared; if he looks anything, it's contemptuous. 

That's fine, 'scared' isn't the goal. He goes into making-friends mode; either the other kid will back off so he doesn't get associated with a Slytherin, or he'll finally have a Gryffindor friend. 

"I'm Christopher Parsons," he says, plastering a smile on his face and acting like there's nothing at all strange about what he's doing. "What's your name?"