Seto didn’t know what came over them. Their knuckles were white and their fingernails felt as though they dug into their palm. They’d never hit anyone so hard before.
They thought about scrambling to help the Ravenclaw boy up, but something deep inside kept them from doing just that. It wanted to claw out of their body and maul the boy even more. They felt a twitch just above their upper lip and immediately suppressed it. Not now.
They shouldn’t have let what the boy said get to them. Perhaps he didn’t even mean it. Perhaps he was simply being curious. You know how those Ravenclaws are.
“So she’s, like, evil then?”
It all happened so quickly. Teeth grit tightly and fingers instantly curled into a hardened ball. A single swing and their knuckles made contact with the unsuspecting boy’s nose. They felt something crunch between the impact; whether it was their own fingers or the victim’s face, Seto was too enraged to pay any pain any sort of attention.
Evil. How dare he.
They hadn’t a clue how people found out about their mother. As far as public record showed, their foster father was a potioneer. There was no mention of their biological mother. The rumor, however, came about that she was a nure-onna, a snake demoness.
A reptilian yokai. One that crushes trees with her tail. One that lures and consumes humans. And one that drains humans of their blood.
Evil.
But to Seto, she wasn’t.
A nure-onna found them abandoned in the woods. Instead of feasting on the baby, she took them into her care. She fed them, clothed them, and gave them shelter just as the harshest winter had arrived. When they were old enough to walk, she even introduced them to magic. Most importantly, she loved them like a real mother would.
A small group of farmers from a nearby village came looking for what had been slaughtering their livestock. They stumbled upon a felled tree with a garden of red spider lilies beneath the cave of roots. Curious, the men wandered inside, saw the yokai with a human baby, and proceeded to attack.
Trapped in her own home now engulfed in flames, the nure-onna could only grasp the child and charm them to sleep with a lullaby.
The baby woke in the home of a local medicine man thereafter.
They never saw the nure-onna again.
Evil.
Seto released their numbing fist, repeating that word as it replaced the noise of the ensuing mayhem. Other Ravenclaws rushed to the fallen boy’s aid. The entirety of the courtyard stopped and stared at them, murmuring among themselves. The definite figure of Professor McGonagall came into view, shock and displeasure molding on her face.
“Seto. My office. Now,” the professor’s stern voice said.
