Slytherin Table

Slytherin Table

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The Slytherin table is situated on the far left of the room when entering the Great Hall, with Ravenclaw on the right.

And just like that, the summer was over. Rae didn’t mind, not really. School meant the return to normalcy, familiarity, and things she could control. Whether she studied, did her assignments, had any detentions, or spent hours practising her spellwork, they were things that would unfold on her own time, and they were all things that made sense.

Nearly none of her summer had been good, and the 15-year-old found that she was still…incredibly…angry.

At the world? At herself? At her friends who’d run off one night, lost somewhere she couldn't follow?

It was hard to say. All Rae knew was that every time she found her body beginning to quiet again, a new, low flame would begin smouldering. Her limbs would fill with an uncomfortable warmth that flowed and pooled in her chest. The feeling wasn’t the fuzzy, feel-good sort. It didn’t make her feel light or airy; it didn’t satisfy the fantasies that spanned universes of escape in her mind.

It was ick and rot and unfulfilled vengeance that she had been told she would have to let go. 'It never happened,' they insisted. Even more, they insisted she pretend the same. What was a girl to do but put one foot in front of the other and throw herself back into her school life like it was the last bit of oxygen in the room?

So much had changed, but the thestrals were the same. Some of the carriages still squeaked. Entering the entrance hall, the portraits were still as nosy, enquiring on the summers of those who walked by.

The Slytherin table was the same, too. It sat by the Ravenclaw table as it always did, the emerald and silver banners flowing gently above it. The faces were the same. Most of them had been there the term before. There were even some who’d returned after the chaos that saw them skipping the previous year. But there was no Rosie, and sitting with her eyes toward the Ravenclaw table, she was reminded that Cassian wasn’t there either.

It was becoming its own ironic trend. When she'd first started Hogwarts, she was only ever put on the Hogwarts Express kicking and screaming. For the last few years, she'd gotten on willingly – almost eagerly – desperate to leave behind the city and the problems that never failed to find her whenever she was there. For as long as she lived, she never wanted to see another estate, never wanted to board another ship and never wanted to see her 'family' ever again.

Rae slumped onto the table, as she'd taken to doing at such feasts. She was anything but the optimistic and welcoming Slytherin prefect some may have expected.

"Looks like we got rid of Roan. Who d'you reckon they'll send down to the snakepit to replace him?" she asked no one in particular as her dark eyes scanned the staff dais.

There were a few missing; none she mourned. New faces. No food. Never any food. Had to make sure they were good and starving first.

"Don't slump, love," he said in passing, almost daring to smack her lightly on top of her head as he claimed the seat beside her. Evan didn't dare, of course. Rae would literally turn him into a toad and then likely cook him in a pot. Though, he figured her could imagine far worst torture if she put her mind to it.

"Bad posture is a sign of ill means."

To make his point, Evan slouched in the seat beside her. One leg curled so that his foot settled on the edge of the table as he shrank in the seat. His smile was rotten, and it curled at those dimpled corners that fooled anyone who didn't know him. Crossing his arms, he stuck out his tongue at her teasingly. It was good to get off on the right note to start off a term, especially their fifth.

School was simply background to Evander Whistler. He was already destined to fail at anything he put his mind to. His mother had been said to speak her disappointment at his birth, and those words had become a part of his story like a scar. To be a Whistler was to know the future, and he was not about to tempt fate by doing anything more than playing his role.

As for what Rae was getting at, he could only shrug.

"Likely the biggest tosser they can find," he replied.

"It's Slytherin. If our Head of House doesn't have a giant stick up his arse, I believe we'd be failing our ancestry." Salazar Slytherin must have been the world's biggest prick. And all those who followed his colors, forevermore, would be cursed to live up to the worst of his vices. Evan was no different. While he wasn't ambitious, or greedy, or someone who could communicate with snakes, he had his own litany of issues.

"I'm just here for the food."

His gaze moved past his housemate to look towards the other tables. Evan didn't get along with many of his housemates. They were the proper sort, and he very much wasn't. He'd also likely caused their house a Cup or three from his antics and the general mass liked to hold it against him. His eyes scanned the large hall, seeing if there was something more interesting happening on one of the other tables.

"Don't slump, love."

Evander Whistler.

"Bad posture is a sign of ill means."

Rae straightened some, not because of any warning falling from the oh-so-wise lips of her friend, but to get a better look at the boy as he flopped into the seat next to her. "My saviour come to rescue me from mindless applause every time the hat picks out another asshole." The members of their house had never given her reason to celebrate. Not when they were winning the house cup, not when they went on about their ambitions and the 'legacy' of Salazar and certainly not when they turned their noses up at everyone else.

They would have to forgive her for not being enthused that even more of them were joining the fold.

"Likely the biggest tosser they can find. It's Slytherin. If our Head of House doesn't have a giant stick up his arse, I believe we'd be failing our ancestry."

She groaned loudly, unconcerned by any who may have been listening. "Why do I get the feeling you're right?" It certainly wouldn't have been anything new. The head of house they had in their first year couldn't have been any less interested in them if they offered him half the world's galleons. Rae thought perhaps things would've shifted when they hired Roan in the previous year, but the man was an absolute creep who'd warranted every act of avoidance she'd put out. Now the cards were blank again while they waited to learn their new fate.

"Aren't you meant to be some kind of psychic or something?" she teased. It wasn't all in jest. Doomed as the boy might have been at other branches of magic, he'd always been pretty solid with the crystal balls and tea leaves – more solid than her, anyway.

What was it? Whistlers knew the future?

Rae nodded toward the staff dais and gave his shoulder a light nudge with her own. "Go on then, Nostradamus, which one of them are we doomed to endure for the term and what're our chances of getting stuck with them for longer?"

When he was done, he could tell her her chances of having a decent meal before her stomach gave out. They could sort the first years on their own time; Rae was far too famished for this current hostage situation.

"Do you want to play a game?"