"RED GAMING!"
The named Slytherin jumped about three inches out of his seat. For a Slytherin, he certainly seemed to like the color red. Red hair, red clothes (when he wasn't wearing his robes, anyway), a pair of red goggles, and even his gray eyes looked red in certain lighting. Several of his Slytherin mates had joked (it was a rather thinly concealed insult) that they wondered if he actually belonged in Gryffindor.
Until the fifth year Slytherin had caught wind of these rumors, courtesy of some of his non-Slytherin mates, upon which he set them straight.
This involved quite a few jinxes and the perpetrators winding up in the hospital wing. About twenty of said jinxes had been taught to him by the seventh-year Hufflepuff currently stalking towards the table.
Since the Sorting five years ago, Hogwarts had become totally accustomed to Hufflepuffs, Gryffindors, Slytherins, and Ravenclaws mingling together in the Great Hall.
Well, a certain five, anyway.
The angry-looking Hufflepuff green eyes were fixed right on the boy sitting at the Slytherin table. Chin-length black hair with the red streak made her already-pale face seem even paler than before as she came closer with deliberate, tapping footsteps.
A girl with dark brown hair and chocolate-brown eyes sitting at the Hufflepuff table glanced up at the shout, before turning her gaze down to the table in an attempt to hide the grin spreading across her face, eyes sparkling with amusement. At the Gryffindor table, a girl with short brown hair that was kept in a short braid was trying (and failing) to hide the broad grin spreading over her face, adjusting her glasses repeatedly as she tried to conceal this fact. Meanwhile, at the Ravenclaw table, a boy- no, a girl- no, never mind, he was a boy- with cropped brown hair with faint blue tips and glasses glanced up from where he was eating his breakfast. Upon seeing the small scene that the Hufflepuff girl was causing, a broad smirk came over his face.
Red stared at the tall Hufflepuff girl in mixed confusion and fear. He had no idea what he'd done to make her so angry.
Well, actually, he had some idea. Had she noticed the scarf he'd 'borrowed' from her room was missing? Or maybe she was mad at him about the prank he and Gommie had played on her the previous day...
The seventh-year Hufflepuff whipped out her 14-inch alder wood wand, and Red immediately fumbled for his own 15-inch dark holly wand for defense. Hufflepuff she might be, but when you got her TRULY angry, she was scarier than a Hungarian Horntail whose babies were in danger.
She pointed the wand at Red and gave the wand a flick.
BANG! Confetti and streamers shot out of the end of the wand, coating the red Slytherin in the stuff. He blinked some brightly colored paper out of his eyes, shook it out of his hair and looked up at the Hufflepuff. Instead of the angry expression she'd been wearing less than a full minute before, she now had a huge grin plastered over her face.
"Happy birthday."
Red stared at Ariza for another few seconds before she started to giggle, letting her wand dangle at her sides as she clamped her hand over her mouth, beginning to shake as her giggles grew more acute, before bursting into full-out laughter.
The dark-brown haired Hufflepuff, the Gryffindor with frosted-blue tips, and the Ravenclaw with short brown hair all burst out laughing as well. The dark-brown-haired one arrived at the table first, clapping Ariza on the back through her laughter. "Brilliant delivery, Ariza. Just brilliant. Did you see Red's face?"
Ariza's giggling was near-silent now, but she raised one finger and pointed it at the staring Red. "Holy Notch, you should've seen your face," she eked out, before dissolving back into giggles.
The Ravenclaw laughed. "Gommie, I think you broke her," he told the dark-brown haired Hufflepuff who was watching the other Hufflepuff nearly die of laughter.
"I break her every other week, she's fine, Toni."
The Gryffindor grinned at Red as she finally arrived, book tucked under her arm and grinning at the two Hufflepuffs next to her. "I haven't seen her laugh this hard since last year."
"Gamer, I think you mean last month."
"Oh yeah."
Ariza finally let out a little sigh, straightening back up. "Ahh, nothing starts out the day better than a good laugh. You ready for the Quidditch game today, Red?" she asked, adjusting the bag that was hanging at her waist.
"Oh yeah. We're gonna destroy you Hufflepuffs," and Red grinned cockily at the two Hufflepuffs as he dusted brightly colored confetti off of himself.
"Oh indeed?" Ariza's brow went up as Gommie pulled out her own ten-inch sycamore wand.
A few sparks shot out of the end, but Gommie ignored that as she twirled it between her fingers, matching Red's cocky grin. "Well, I think you'll find that we've got a couple tricks up our sleeves."
Toni grinned and clapped Ariza on the shoulder. "I don't doubt it. You Hufflepuffs really don't look like you're all that good at Quidditch, but since you two got on the team you've basically been kicking ass. Damn good Seeker and Keeper you two are."
"That's only because a) Flying has improved my hand-eye coordination by a billion times, and b) I've been drinking potions to try to help my eyesight. Snape gave me an Advanced Potions book and I found a very discreet recipe in there," Ariza said modestly.
"Speaking of that, can we discuss the phenomenon of Snape actually liking a student outside of his own House?" Gamer asked, arching her eyebrow at Ariza.
"I wouldn't say he likes me. More like he doesn't despise me," Ariza joked as the rest of the group stood up, dusting some last bits of confetti off of Red's shoulders, and headed out towards the grounds.
"And the Quaffle is passed off immediately to Gaming-" Red ignored the announcer and focused on dodging past the two Bludgers- ah, here they came again- and went swooping straight towards the three hoops, where Gommie was hovering on her own broom, which was a Nimbus 1700. A bit older than the Nimbus 2001 model that Red had, but still a nice broom nonetheless.
Ariza herself had a Nimbus 2000, but it wasn't like it really mattered; she had an uncanny ability to fool the other Seeker into thinking she'd seen the Snitch and leading them to nearly crash. Probably it was how innocent she looked- when you looked at this girl you got the uncomfortable feeling that she was actually, physically unable to lie.
Red feinted at the middle hoop and chucked the Quaffle at the left, but Gommie was already waiting there and smacked it out of the air.
Red grumbled a bit- unfortunately for the Slytherins, with Ariza and Gommie combined, Hufflepuff was getting the highest Quidditch win rate in half-a-century. Gommie herself had a frighteningly accurate ability for being able to tell what the person coming at her was about to do. Red was a fairly fast flier and pretty good at tricking most people, but Gommie was not most people.
Unfortunately for the Slytherins.
"And the Quaffle's picked up by Preece, who chucks it to Applebee- Pucey steals it and throws to Montague- then Flint- Cadwallader steals it- flies at the hoops- c'mon, Cadwallader- HE SCORES!"
Raucous cheers from the rest of the crowd, while the Slytherins booed. Red scowled a bit but ignored it. It was only one score, Slytherin would probably catch up.
About twenty minutes later, the brisk March wind was starting to penetrate Red's green-and-silver Quidditch robes, and Hufflepuff was pulling ahead. The score, as the jubilant Hufflepuff announcer was practically screaming into the megaphone (McGonagall was covering her ears with a wince, Red noticed) was 100 to 80.
Suddenly, Ariza went diving. Higgs didn't go after her; by now most Slytherins had gotten used to this trick and didn't follow her whenever she dove.
It was the Chaser- Marcus Flint- who spotted a flash of gold and swore loudly. "She's actually spotted it!" Whipping out his wand, he aimed it at her.
Red spun around in mid-air from where he'd been flying to catch the Quaffle. "Flint, don't you-" he began, literally coming to a screeching stop in midair.
BAM! Having taken his attention off the Quaffle, the big red ball slammed into his chest with unchecked force and nearly knocked Red off his broom altogether. As it was, he was barely able to catch ahold of the handle with his free hand.
Ariza glanced up at the sound of the hullabaloo, just as a well-placed Tickling Charm was shot at her. She scowled in the caster's direction and jerked upwards on her broom. Her Nimbus shot up, the spell barely missing her, but in the chaos of the moment the Snitch was lost from sight.
"All right there, Red?" Gommie yelled from across the field.
Red managed to climb back onto the broom. "Yeah. Still have enough energy to beat you 'Puffs!" he yelled back to her, shooting Flint an irritated look.
He might need to deal with that later.
"Good job on the win," Ariza said cheerfully once the game was over. Higgs had managed to catch the Snitch a moment before Ariza could, though that may partially have been due to the fact that she'd gotten hit right in the back with a bludger and nearly got knocked straight off her broom right before she could snag it.
"It was a close one," Gommie agreed as Toni and Gamer came up to them. (Indeed it was, the final score was 190 to 170- Hufflepuff had doubled their efforts after Flint shot that jinx at Ariza.)
"Shows that we Slytherins are superior to all of you lot, especially in Quidditch," Red said loftily, looking down at the group condescendingly.
It was a bit difficult to manage since Ariza was taller than he was, but he managed it.
Toni smirked a bit at this, adjusting his glasses. "Hey, do you guys wanna hang out? We don't really have anything for the rest of today."
"We can hang out in the Hufflepuff common room, if you'd like. I don't think the Hufflepuffs would mind." Ariza paused, before amending, "Well, as long as we don't tell you the password to the common room. They're fairly open to most of you guys."
"You've never invited us to your common room before," Gamer noted, raising her eyebrow. "Said we'd bother you with your studying. And possibly disturb the other Hufflepuffs."
Ariza grinned in response. "And so you would've, but I'm leaving at the end of this year in three or four months, so why does it matter now?" she said airily, eyes sparkling with amusement.
The others all laughed at that. Red cracked a grin. "Sure, we can hang out in the Puff's common room. Just let me grab some stuff from the Slytherin room," and he trotted off in the direction of the dungeons. "Meet you in front of the library?" he yelled over his shoulder.
Toni shrugged at that. "That sounds good!" he called back, the rest of the group trooping towards the library, Gommie and Ariza already beginning to debate on the best spell for use in combat.
(This was an ongoing debate that had started two years ago; Ariza repeatedly said that Bombarda was the best spell, but Gommie argued that rapid use of Avis and then Oppugno charm was much more effective, because, of course, who expects a bunch of birds to attack you?)
Red had come back from his trip to the Slytherin common room with a few cold bottles of butterbeer (presumably that was what he'd gone to go 'fetch', although he'd taken a bit longer than was really necessary to get some bottles of cold butterbeer), and they were passing in front of the infirmary to get to the Hufflepuff common room (which Gommie and Ariza were leading the way to).
Gamer glanced inside the room at the sound of the hullabaloo to see Marcus Flint gesticulating frantically at his head, where-
She slowed to a stop in surprise, an unwilling snort emitting from her throat. The Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team's hair had twisted together and begun to sprout a very lovely pair of antlers.
Red glanced over to see what Gamer was staring at, Gommie and Ariza poking their heads through the door to see what the were looking at and Toni grinning at the sight of the Slytherin Quidditch team's captain.
"Oh, would you look at that," the red-haired Slytherin said coolly, "it seems as though some irresponsible person used an Anteoculatia spell and hit Marcus by 'accident'."
Gommie raised her eyebrow at Red, a smile playing over her mouth. "You can tell all that by just looking at him, hm?" she asked, calmly.
Red turned to meet Gommie's eyes, a perfectly serious look on his face. "We Slytherins are gifted with uncanny powers of perception," he said calmly.
"Well, good to see that jinx came to good use," Ariza said lightly. "Not that I taught it to anyone who would use it so irresponsibly, of course."
"Of course," Red agreed calmly.
And they continued on to the Hufflepuff common room.
A/N: I had some plan to describe the Hufflepuff common room and have some fun in there involving Patronuses and some playful dueling, but then this thing got over 2000 words and I really needed to work on HCM, so I decided to cut it off here after Slytherin wins a Quidditch game.
This takes place BEFORE Harry Potter, by the way. Gamer, sorry if I gave you the wrong house xD I was just going for inter-house unity when I was writing this.
This is also late. I'm so sorry Red; school and life got in the way. (Super embarrassed) Happy late birthday! I hope you like what I have of it.
If you guys would like to see a second part, I might add that in, but this is just mostly a birthday gift for Red, so if he'd like a second part I'll definitely finish it for him.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RED! You're kind of a dork sometimes, but then again so am I, so who cares, right? x3 Let me know if you'd like me to finish this, and I'll work on it later on. You're awesome!
x.X. A.L. X.x