AN: I wrote this as my Quidditch League round two entry. I had to write about Interhouse friendship :) I chose the most challenging pair SlytherinxHufflepuff! I really hope you like It. If you do, leave a review and let me know what you thought.
Word Count: 1,041
Prompts: Interhouse Friendship, Christmas, Immobulus, and Third Person Present (POV)
Theodore walks around the dark halls of the dungeons in the early morning. It's too quiet in the castle around this time of the year, because of Christmas break, everyone has left for home.
He doesn't care to spare his dignity. He holds his head high and strides through the doors to the Great Hall. Theo doesn't bother meeting the laughing faces of three other Ravenclaws. He sits down at the far end of the Slytherin table in his puppy pyjamas, and plops a gift down beside his plate of eggs benedict.
Opening it, he finds a box of every flavor beans.
Looking everywhere for a letter of some sort, he doesn't find a thing. Until he lifts the wrapping up and out tumbles a little, yellow note.
To Theodore,
I hope your studies are going great! Nice to see you're well.
From, Hufflepuff students
Theo didn't really care about Hufflepuff's. He didn't care about much of anything at all. Knowing that it's kind of strange to receive gifts from people he's never met, the beans were left uneaten. After enjoying his meal, he leaves for his common room.
Theo comes back to the great hall after a couple hours of studying and reading. He's tired of seeing words, and star charts. He doesn't want to have to pull his measuring tape out ever again. Call him an overachiever, but Theo always makes his essays two inches over the assigned measurement.
The afternoon is bustling with more students from this morning, but still not up to usual par. The opportunity is too much for Theo to bear, not one Gryffindor in sight.
He takes his gifted, and now spiked, Hufflepuff, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and levitates them to the table on the opposite side of the room. Theodore waits with uncharacteristic patience.
When the Gryffindors, half of them Weasleys, come in sprinkling snow off their quidditch gear and sit down for some lunch, Theodore can hear them gloating from across the room.
"I don't know what the Hufflepuff's are thinking, but we're going to smash our next game!" The girl Weasley practically shouts.
Her brother goes on to his best friend, Harry Potter, "Who's the guy that tried to knock Ravenclaw's chaser off his broom? He's the most violent Hufflepuff I've ever known."
The lumpy Gryffindor joins them, even though he's not on the team. "He's Zacharias Smith. Yesterday, he tripped me in the library, and Madame Pince gave me detention for being disruptive."
"That's tough luck for you, Neville, if I had been there I could of given him a Puking Pastille."
Theo snaps out of his short reverie, the lumpy boy, Neville, has picked up his box of beans. He eats some and passes them around to the others.
In a matter of minutes, Theodore hears music to his ears.
"I don't feel so well."
In the span of fifteen minutes every Gryffindor on the team, is green in the face and clutching at their stomachs. For a heart stopping moment, Theo freezes in fear. Harry Potter looks angrily at the students all around, and drops his glare on him. Harry does not decide to come over, instead he goes over to the Hufflepuff table and confronts a group of them.
"Smith, I know you spiked these beans," He says weakly. He supposes that Harry wishes he could sound fearsome, but he's too sick for that.
Theodore doesn't care that the guy is taking the heat for his mischievous prank. Not paying the altercation any more attention, Theo returns to his astronomy book.
Another fifteen minutes goes by and someone loudly taps on the backside of Theo's book.
"Excuse you, but I need a word."
"Yes?" Looking over the top of his book with a raised eyebrow, Theo replies in a bored manner.
The Hufflepuff before him opens his mouth rather wide with a righteous tone. "I think these belong to you," Zacharias Smith says handing over the Bertie Bott's Beans. "Why did you let Harry Potter chew me out like that!"
"Those are not mine." Theodore doesn't care about lying to people. He doesn't care for this Hufflepuff boy.
"Yes, they are. Don't try getting out of this! My friend Susan is the one who sent them. She thought that every hard working student deserved more recognition, and wanted to reward the top five students in every class."
Being caught lying is embarrassing, but not fessing up after you know you've been caught is even worse.
"I was bored, but I'm not now," Theo says in a brusque manner while putting down his book.
Zacharias Smith's eyes go wide. He may be a pretty mean Hufflepuff, but still he would never prank someone just for the hell of it. That is just the tip of the iceberg for how different Hufflepuffs and Slytherins are to each other.
He sits down on the opposite side of Theo at the Slytherin table. Theodore quickly glances around to check, and yes, people have noticed. Zacharias' friends are staring, and Draco Malfoy won't stop sneering in his direction. What a snob.
"You did that just because you were bored?" He didn't seem angry anymore that Theo's trick was blamed on him.
Thankful for the mercy, Theo nods slowly.
"I do a lot of things, and no one notices me. I don't like taking the credit."
Zacharias thinks for a second and his face lights up brighter than Dumbledore's deluminator.
"You were the one who cast immobulus on Mrs. Norris last Tuesday, weren't you?"
Theo nods with a small smile. He's getting the recognition he's always deserved.
A couple of minutes go by in silence. Seemingly they've run out things to talk about on the subject prior, but Zacharias still isn't budging.
He takes Theo's book with an incredulous look on his face. "You read Shakespeare too? I would never think for a second that a Slytherin could be caught dead reading Muggle books."
Theo looks him dead in the face and replies,"I don't care what people think of me."
After that day both Theodore and Zacharias formed an unlikely bond. A friendship, in the loosest sense of the word. All in all, they gained a new respect for each other.