"We don't keep all the old traditions, of course, but Hogwarts still keeps students separate from the muggle world. We're here to study magic, so there will be no internet, no cell phones, none of that. If you want to pass a message to your friends, you do it with magic here. You'll have time enough for muggle technology on breaks."
The housemaster's lecture at Slytherin was not terribly long. There was a list of rules which Reg was expected to know, and "certain standards of behavior and integrity" which he was expected to uphold, and he was to follow the lead of Quentin, who was to mentor him. The old traditions would have had him as a sort of servant to the older boy, but these days the mentorship program was largely an exercise in having a leadership role to list in one's resume.
"So if you've any questions, just ask Quentin. He'll show you your room, and the study hall and lounge, and help you check books from the library and such. If there's a true emergency, I'm on the first floor right above the entryway. And yes, that means I'll know if you try to sneak out late-night to the girls' dormitory, so don't even think about it."
With that, he swept off.
Quentin led Reg up to the little suite of rooms that was assigned to each group of boys. Quentin, as most senior and a prefect, had a single bedroom to himself. Reg was to share one with another first-year boy, and two second year students would have the other. Between the rooms was a common study area with some worn-looking desks and bookshelves.
Reg began to unpack his trunk, Quentin looking on. "All right. You have everything you need then."
Reg laughed. "Well, except internet."
"Can't have that. Once you learn to send messages by magic, you'll hardly miss it."
"Well. There's. You know. Other stuff."
Now it was Quentin's turn to laugh.
"Finish getting unpacked and I'll see you in the dining hall. Smythe has given us homework to complete even before the first class. But after dinner I'll show you how we do texting without phones."
After a filling but bland dinner with his new roommate, Gerry, they returned to the dormitory, the upperclassmen leading the way and the new boys awkward in black robes they still needed to grow into. The second-year students would arrive tomorrow, after a day of orientation and settling in for the new students.
Reg was finishing laying out his desk and getting books ready for the first day of classes when Quentin came in with a pair of small black books embossed with the house sigil on the front in silver.
"These books are for you two, and I want you to know how seriously we take these. Nobody but Slytherin gets them. You know that our house is the house of ambition and success. There are reasons for that: we stay in touch. We help each other out. We keep each other's secrets."
"These notebooks are the first secret of the house to be entrusted to you. If you want to reach another brother of your house, you use these. Just write him a note, and it'll appear in his booklet. Once he's read it, either of you can scratch it out, and it's gone. Entirely private, and entirely ours. We do not speak of these books to outsiders. Don't use them in class – the teachers know about them, but they won't put up with them being used in school, especially not for trading answers on the tests. The girls have them as well, of course, but you'll be barred from writing to them until your second year. If you want to talk to a girl this year, you'll need to summon the courage to talk to her in person."
Reg and Gerry looked at the ground, blushing. They'd seen some of the Slytherin girls across the dining hall during dinner and they seemed unapproachable and not at all interested in them.
The lights dimmed at nine and shut off entirely at nine-fifteen, controlled, Reg assumed, remotely. Even though it had been a long day, he was wakeful. Normally he'd have a wank before bed, but how could he do it with a roommate? He'd wondered before leaving for school how he'd manage it, but it wasn't as though he could ask his friends or his parents. He slowly, silently stroked himself through his pyjamas as he waited for Gerry to fall asleep, but although the other boy's breathing was even, Reg couldn't be sure if it was sleep. Or how sound the sleep might be. Perhaps Gerry would start snoring, which would be annoying but at least would give him confirmation and cover up any other noises.
Eventually he thought to himself, "I'm never going to get it done here... toilet it is." That was a few doors down the dimly illuminated hallway, and offered at least a little more privacy – shower curtains and stalls in a communal locker-room style arrangement. You could rub one out there without being spotted, and in a bathroom stall you'd have perfectly acceptable reasons to be up at any hour with your pants off.
He'd barely started rubbing himself, though, when the bathroom door softly creaked open and someone else came into the room. Several someones – there was a whispered conversation he couldn't quite hear. Then a voice he recognized said "I'll check the stalls," and Quentin's head peered over the divider.
"Having a wank, Reg?"
"Um..."
There was no point denying it. He was sitting on the toilet at midnight with his erect penis in his hands.
"Look, I won't go telling tales. But you have to do me a favor. Our club's got a meeting. You wait here and keep a lookout. If someone comes in, flush the toilet. When it's all clear, wash your hands at the sink on the far left side. If it's NOT all clear, just leave without washing your hands. OK?"
"OK."
"We'll be about a half hour. Keep a good lookout and maybe we'll take you with us next time. I think you'll like it."
A few more whispers – how many boys had heard this little conversation? – and then there was a low grating noise like stone moving. The whispers faded to nothing and the stone noise repeated and then nothing. Reg opened the stall door and looked around – the boys had gone.
What kind of secret club was this? He wasn't sure but Quentin had told him that helping each other out and keeping each other's secrets was a key part of Slytherin's success. He knew what he had to do.
And besides, he hadn't come yet. He went back to the stall to finish himself off and wait for the older boys. The interruption made it difficult to get back to the rhythm of it, but soon enough his teenage hormones had his cock throbbing in his hands as he rubbed his slick foreskin back and forth over the head. In just a few minutes he was breathing hard, and he was just about to come when the door opened again.
He fumbled for the flush lever immediately.
Assured steps echoed through the room.
"Who's in here?"
The house master.
"It's... it's only me, sir. Reg."
"Why are you up so late?"
"Uh, well... I was..."
"Don't lie to me."
"I was having a wank sir."
This evidently was not the sort of honesty the older man had expected, because his reply seemed taken totally off guard.
"Er. Well then. Not the best time for it. But perfectly natural. Have you seen anybody else about?"
"No sir."
"All right then. Wash up and get back to bed. We don't want you boys staying up all night."
"Yes sir."
The housemaster left, and Reg stepped out of the stall to go wash his hands at the far tap. He took extra time doing it, but the older boys didn't reappear quite yet.
After this interruption he really had lost his desire to touch himself, so he just waited for the other boys to return from their mysterious mission. It was getting late and he was bound to be exhausted tomorrow. He couldn't see where they'd gone, but guessed it must have been a secret door. These old magical buildings had to have secret doors, after all. Sure enough, the back of one of the shower stalls slid open with that same deep note and the boys slipped out, smiling and whispering.
Quentin had a smile for Reg. "Good work. This weekend we'll see about you joining our next meeting of the Club. Don't tell a soul. Now get back to bed."
The week passed in a blur: Syllabi, books, classes potions, homework, making eyes at girls across the classroom, new and different varieties of bland boarding-school food, passing notes during study hall using that clever Slytherin notebook.
It was during Friday study hall that he got the note from Quentin: Come to the toilet at midnight.
At the appointed hour, he was there. Nobody else was. He wondered if they'd been having him on, then perhaps thought this too was a test. He washed his hands at the far tap, just as he had the last time, then went into the shower stall he'd seen open before. It was completely sealed, as though it had never opened. He tapped against it. Nothing.
It felt like he had been waiting for ages, but it was only five minutes past midnight when Quentin and the other boys arrived. The tallest of the group, a dark-haired boy with a hint of stubble sprouting on his upper lip, put his finger to his lips and walked up to the back of the shower stall. Pressing his palm against the tile he whispered something sibilant, and the wall simply slid out of the way.
Single file, with Reg and Quentin at the back, they entered a dim, narrow hallway. When the wall closed behind them, the hallway was totally black. Quentin had his hands in front of him and couldn't see a single thing. He heard the older boys walk ahead of him, and followed. It was hard to tell how far they walked, but it wasn't long before a door opened ahead of them and they emerged into a little clubby lounge. It smelled grown-up, with obscure spices with a hint of bleach and beer like the sort of pub Reg's parents didn't frequent. In a corner there was a small cooler, and arrayed about the fireplace were a few benches and chairs. On the walls, Reg quickly noticed, were several of those living paintings that seemed to be everywhere at Hogwarts.
These paintings, though, didn't seem to be in the same style as the portraits of former headmasters and famous figures in the wizarding world. The largest, over the fireplace, held a busty woman clad only in sheer white gauze. Elsewhere in the room, a small landscape painting showed a group of men and women sleeping in a pile, evidently having just finished an orgy, while another woman in a very skimpy undergarments put on lipstick and looked at herself smolderingly in the mirror, as though she were about to go on some sort of hot date.
It was the lady in the painting over the fireplace who spoke first. "Aiden, Quentin, it looks like you've brought us a new guest!" She winked at him, then pinched her nipples to make them stand out more.
Reg had seen plenty of porn on the internet, but he had precious little experience with real live women. He looked at the floor.
"Reg, this is Marie, the guiding spirit of our club," said Quentin. "She's our hostess and also our guide to the sorts of things a young man should know, but doesn't learn in a classroom. Marie, this is my new protege, Reg. He's a good sort."
Marie appraised Reg skeptically, then looked over to Aiden. "What do you think of him, Aiden? Quentin of course wants to vouch for his boy, but you've no interest one way or the other. Is he trustworthy?"
"He's proven himself clever facing the housemaster. I trust him."
"Then let us begin!"
One of the other boys opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of what looked like butterbeer. Once he started pouring drinks, though, it became evident it had an entirely different color and smell. Another opened a small box on the mantel, and the obscure spice smell became stronger as he filled several pipes and passed them about. The older boys puffed at their pipes like statesmen as Marie looked on approvingly. "Make sure the new boy has a drink and a smoke. Not too much now!"
Aiden offered Reg a puff on his pipe, and Reg sputtered at the smoke in his lungs. It didn't smell like the pipe from his granddad, or even like weed he knew some boys from his muggle school would smoke in the woods after football practice. It didn't smell like anything he'd ever smelled before.
He was grateful for Quentin's offer of a drink, a half-filled cup of some kind of punch. It was like the sip of champagne he'd been given at New Year's this year, when he'd finally been allowed to stay up until midnight with the adults, but somehow different. It didn't fizz like champagne, but there must have been magic in it, for it tingled in some other way he couldn't quite identify.
As the drinks and pipes passed about the room, the conversation among the boys turned here and there – quidditch, muggle football, which teachers were fair, which girls were pretty, which might be easy, which spells were best for cologne and to clear up spots. And then, as though scheduled, the boys fell silent and Marie began to speak.
"Reginald, you're new, so you won't know how this club truly works, but the other boys do. I survive here, despite the persecution of your priggish housemaster Smythe" - she said this with real disdain – because you boys feed me. You bring me tribute, and I teach you the fun things your parents and teachers don't want you to know."
"What kind of tribute?" Reg said, head spinning from a combination of drink, smoke, and arousal at Marie's uncannily fascinating breasts.
"It's not bad. I'll show you mine if you show me yours, you know."
She leered at him. Reg was scared but couldn't deny the tent in his trousers. She clearly noticed it, staring at his crotch as she held the gauze over her nipples, lowering it almost the the edge of the areola. "Go on."
He looked over at Quentin and Aiden, the other boys arrayed behind them. They nodded.
He unbuckled his belt, lowering his trousers to halfway down his thighs.
Marie cooed. "That's what I like to see. Show me everything. You think I'm here to be looked at because I'm in a painting – but I'm also looking at you! And I want to see young men who want me!"
Reg kicked off his shoes and let his trousers fall to his ankles, stepping out of them.
"Everything," Marie said, letting the gauze drop from her shoulders and cupping her breasts toward him invitingly. "Come closer and let me see you. I want you bare before me."
He shucked the rest of his clothes as rapidly as he could, stepping entirely nude before the painting, his erection throbbing, the other boys behind him totally forgotten.
"Touch yourself" she commanded, reaching a hand below the frame, evidently between her own legs. "Show me how you do it. I need to see it."
Mesmerized, he did as he was told, stroking his long-denied cock slowly at first, and then rapidly. Vaguely, he was aware that the people in the other paintings in the room were also watching him expectantly, that the other boys were staring. The room took on the feel of a cult ceremony.
"All of you," Marie whispered.
There was a sound of zippers as the rest of the club opened their flies. Marie leaned back on her couch and lifted her legs, holding them against what could only be the frame on her side of the picture. He could see everything. Oh god. Two fingers of her left hand deep in her pussy and her right hand working her clit.
Marie moaned: "Show me how you want me. Show me your come. Come for me."
They did. Semen spattered the hearth and the rug behind it.
"OH!" Marie was clearly enjoying this as well. "FUCK." The lights flickered. The semen sank into the stone and carpet, smelling of chlorine and spices and the sort of pub Reg's parents didn't frequent.