Chapter Text
"Don't eat too much." Said the blond boy sitting next to Albus.
"What?" Albus Potter had been lost in thought, sat at the Slytherin table.
"Save some room for later."
"Why?" Albus asked, but got no reply.
Looking around the table he noticed that most of the Slytherins weren't eating much either, save for a few other first-years that obviously hadn't been told otherwise. Most of the people there were just talking.
The blond boy was now in deep conversation with a dark-haired first-year and not paying attention to Albus' questioning look. Despite not knowing what the blond meant by 'later', Albus decided to take his advice and only eat half the amount he usually would have eaten.
Deciding that he wasn't going to get an answer, he looked over at the Gryffindor table: his brother seemed to be in a eating contest with his friend from the train; Rose was tucking into what looked like her third plate of food; Victorie was chatting with Fred, Roxanne and Lucy while Molly was practicing spells with Dominique and some friends.
Albus rested his chin on his hand, watching his family having fun and messing around while he was sat on a different table, bored and alone. Had he made a mistake? Maybe he should have chosen to be in Gryffindor…
He didn't have much time to dwell on this before the tables cleared and the Headmistress stood up to address the whole school.
Albus tried to remember the full list of rules, but after the fourth one he decided to just copy them down from the sign on the caretaker's door the next day. Still, he did remember the main rules: no magic in the corridors, fighting is prohibited and 'under no circumstances are pupils to enter the forbidden forest unescorted.'
As students filed out of the Great Hall, the Prefects started to call for first-years to get them to follow the older students down to the Slytherin dungeons. The Slytherin Prefects were talking with some of the other years but Albus, along with the other first-years, couldn't hear any of the conversation.
Suddenly, one of the older pupils looked over to the new students and laughed.
"They look pretty tired, Finley. Maybe you should hold off till tomorrow?"
"Speak for yourself!" The blond boy, who had been stood near Albus, shouted back. "If these guys are too tired, they can miss the fun. I'm not missing out because of them!" The group of older students stopped to look back at him.
For the first time since they left the hall, the first-years got a good look at their Prefects, whose badges were gleaming in the torchlight. The boy had long, jet-black hair that was slicked back, and a goatee beard on his broad chin. The girl had very short blond hair with a small green bow clipped onto the side; she looked amused at the new boy's outburst.
"Spoken like a true Slytherin." She grinned. "A Malfoy, I believe?"
"So what if I am?"
"Touchy…"
"Stryker, I trust you remember your job?" The other Prefect snapped, now walking on towards the dungeons.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going." The girl mumbled, running ahead of the group and disappearing down the corridor.
"Leon left last year, so… Greg, you take over his job. Carrie, you help him." Two more Slytherins turned away from the group.
"Knuckles, Fists, you know what you're doing." Two boys saluted Finley before racing back the way they'd just came.
"About half an hour to get ready?"
All the older years nodded in agreement as they stopped near an indent in the wall.
The dark-haired Prefect said the password, 'Phineas Nigellus', and a section of the wall swung open obediently to reveal a narrow passageway to the common room. Round, green lights hung on the wall to guide the way.
The common room was a low-ceilinged dungeon-style room. It had dark grey walls and thin, silver, arched windows that revealed the dark waters of the lake outside, casting a eerie green glow into the room. A grand fireplace dominated the centre of one wall and burst into life as they entered, casting ominous shadows across the low-backed black and green leather sofas and chairs. The Prefect uttered an incantation that ignited all of the candles littered about the room on dark wooden tables and cupboards, lighting up eight wooden doors with intricate silver patterns on the frames.
Older students strode into the room after them; some headed towards the wooden doors - Albus suspected that these led to the dormitories - and some flopped down on the chairs and sofas to talk about whatever was happening tonight.
The tanned Prefect turned to look at the first-years. As he flicked his wand, the silver letters on the plaques (which Albus had failed to notice earlier) on top of all the doors jumped to the next plaque. The writing on the last tile faded and reappeared on the first, replacing the words 'Seventh Year' with 'First Year'.
"First year dorms. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. Seventh. Bathrooms. There are signs on top of the doors in case you forget." The Prefect explained, pointing at each of the doors in turn. "There are plaques on your rooms as well. Any questions?"
"What time's the fun starting?" The blond boy, Malfoy, seemed to be the most outspoken of the new year group, and everyone else looked grateful for his boldness.
"In about…" Finley checked his watch, "ten minutes." He looked around the group, towards the corridor. "I'll be back in a bit. If you've got any questions, I'm sure that any of the older students will help you!" He raised his voice so that the whole room could hear him at the end of his statement. There were mixed reactions to this. Some nodded and some retreated to their rooms, but the majority just groaned and complained to their friends.
Albus headed towards the bathroom to try to flatten his hair down. He'd never really cared about how stubborn and messy it was before, but now that he saw how many of his peers had their hair slicked back, it made him feel a bit stupid.
He was distracted by the unexpected appearance of the giant squid, gliding slowly past the windows. It was strange to see it so close up. Albus smiled. What else would he see out of the underwater windows this year?
Beyond the door to the bathroom there were two doors, one marked with the word 'Wizards' and the other with 'Witches'.
As he approached the 'Wizards' door he barely had time to notice the lack of a doorhandle before it opened to reveal the blond boy who'd spoken to him at the feast, Malfoy. He nodded his acknowledgement and held the door open for Albus, who nodded in return.
Hearing the door shut behind him, he started looking around for a mirror.
The room reminded him more of a leisure centre's swimming pool than a bathroom. The room was hexagonal, with an elaborate open archway leading off to a square room. Green flames from the torches set into the walls lit the whole area. There was a large pool in the middle of the main room - obviously the Slytherins all bathed together - and there were at least twenty different taps around the edge.
Cubicles lined one of the walls of the square room, with a row of sinks directly opposite. Every other sink had a mirror over it, with three full-length mirrors on the wall directly opposite the entrance.
Albus made his way towards one of the full-length mirrors. He observed that his plain black robes now had the Slytherin crest emblazoned on the breast. Smoothing out some of the creases, he then turned his attention back to his mess of black hair. It was sticking up at all sorts of odd angles.
He used water to try and smooth down the worst parts, but a stubborn section at the back refused to budge. Why did he have to have his father's damn hair? He pushed a few strands away from his emerald eyes and headed back to the common room, figuring that his hair was a lost cause.
The scene that greeted him when he arrived left him speechless.
Green and silver streamers were being flung around the room by some of the older students. Almost all of the Slytherins were back in the common room now, and many of them had changed out of their school robes. A long table had been covered in food and drinks - mostly alcoholic - and someone had conjured more, brighter, lights.
Some of the oldest students were tuning up their instruments; clearly there was going to be music soon.
"What…?" Albus stared in total surprise at his surroundings. His parents had both gone to Hogwarts, but they'd never mentioned anything like this happening on the first night!
"Slytherin 'welcome' party… Not like we need an excuse to party." Malfoy was grinning, leaning against a chair, drinking a glass of something that looked suspiciously like Firewhiskey. He had got changed into a dark green casual-dress robe, making his pale face seem to glow against the dark material.
"A welcome party?" Albus knew that he probably sounded really stupid, but he was still shocked that the 'darkest house in Hogwarts' was about to have a party when most of the castle was asleep.
"Yeah. Slytherin's held a party on the first day for years." The blond boy's grin slipped slightly, tilting his head to the side. "Don't Gryffindors?"
Albus shook his head quickly. How was it that no one knew what went on in Slytherin house?
"Sucks for them." Malfoy shrugged, handing Albus a glass identical to his own.
"Thanks but I… I don't drink. Sorry." Albus smiled, politely refusing the glass.
"You may have been sorted into Slytherin, Potter, but you're still a bloody Gryffindor." Albus hadn't noticed the dark girl until she spoke.
"I'm sure he'll be more Slytherin by the end of the year, Zabini." Malfoy smirked, handing her the cup that the shorter boy had just rejected. To Albus's surprise, the girl downed the whole drink in one swallow before passing the empty glass back to the grinning blond boy.
"…That was lady-like."
"Come on Scorpio, you should know me by now!" She winked, guiding him over to a group of older Slytherins, "Stryker wants to talk to…"
But their conversation was drowned out as the two boys Albus vaguely recalled as Knuckles and Fists came running into the middle of the room, shouting excitedly and carrying two huge boxes between them, and Albus couldn't hear any more. He was distracted by the scene unfolding before him, as it seemed like some sort of raid had been carried out. Surely they hadn't gone to the kitchens for yet more supplies!
Knuckles and Fists couldn't have looked more different. Knuckles was a thin, muscular boy with straight, pure-white hair that brushed his shoulders, contrasting with his smoky grey dress robes… Whereas Fists was short and squat, and had greasy brown curls that hung round his neck, barely touching his deep red robes.
"Me and Fists managed to get enough pranks to last us, oh…"
"…About a term, Knux?"
"Maybe less if we play our cards right."
Both boys were grinning wildly, giving each other high fives and pushing their long hair out of their faces as they rummaged through the boxes, showing their friends what they'd got.
"Got these sent over from home," Fists grinned, gesturing to a heap of plastic-wrapped objects.
"These are some of our own. Hid them here last summer." Knuckles proudly displayed enough dusty joke items to fill the average Poltergeist's armoury for a decade. "Untested, so be careful!" He added, wagging a cautionary finger at some over-eager second-years who were edging closer to the haul. They gulped and backed away, anxious to leave this to the experts after all.
"And these. We stole these from Filch's office - " Fists smirked, flicking back his greasy, brown hair, and Knuckles carried on his sentence.
"Not sure what some of them are, but they should be fun - " The two boys burst into near-identical wolflike grins, finishing in unison:
"Filch labeled them dangerous!"
Albus sat down in an armchair as far from the centre of the room as he could get while still having a view of the boxes. Most of the items in the boxes, he wasn't surprised to find, were from 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'.
He'd always been told how much trouble his uncle got into with his twin brother. Though Albus had hardly ever seen Uncle George actually pull any pranks, he knew that he had to have been a troublemaker to come up with half of the 'Wheezes' in his shop. Had Fred and George been like Knuckles and Fists during their time at Hogwarts?
Before long the room was in chaos. The band had started playing, small fireworks were whizzing round the room, couples were snogging and a few students had started a duel in the corridor to the dungeons. Malfoy and Zabini were dancing on a table in the middle of the room with some older students, the blond boy having found an abandoned tie and knotted it around his head. 'What was his first name again? Something to do with a scorpion', thought Albus.
Albus stayed in a corner for most of the night, watching the party with a plate of food and a small bottle of Butterbeer, trying to avoid being dragged into the 'fun'. The room was packed with Slytherin students of all ages and he was reluctant to make a break for the dormitories in case he got caught in the crowd and got stuck… or worse, knocked over and trampled on. It was probably best to just wait it out until the revellers decided to go to bed, Albus decided.
The small table next to him was now almost completely covered with alcohol; older students kept giving him glasses, seemingly in the hope of getting him drunk. It was strange, they didn't seem to be treating the other first-years the same way - but then again, thought Albus, the others had accepted enough drinks to make them utterly hyperactive, if not tipsy.
That was one good thing about Butterbeer: it had an almost non-existent alcohol content… which was probably how the Slytherin party organizers had got their hands on so much of it, compared to only four bottles of Firewhiskey. Of course, that was plenty: Firewhiskey was practically lethal to the uninitiated. Apart from Malfoy and Zabini, none of the first-years had even attempted drinking the stuff, sticking to Butterbeer and the occasional shot of some unfamiliar neon-blue liquid instead.
Albus settled further down into the squashy leather armchair, watching the party with a sleepy yawn. It looked like life in Slytherin house was going to be full of surprises…