~The Slytherin Renaissance~

By My Cat Frank

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters and universe belong to J. K. Rowling and her people. I am making no money from writing this, nor do I ever expect to.

Warnings: Some farce, and hints at slash. More will develop in later chapters. Also, some blatant Americanisms.

Summary: In some ways, this is a light-hearted coming-of-age story with all the joy and pain of a teen angst movie. But what will happen when our Slytherin heroes start thinking for themselves, and rethinking the world around them? This fic shows my optimistic hopes for the Fifth-year Slytherins.

Chapter 1: In the Beginning There Was Darkness

Well, it wasn't really darkness, like people may think of as a spiritual kind of darkness, but it might as well have been. The Slytherin dormitories were located below the ground level and had no windows. The cool insulation was fabulous during those hottest days in the middle of summer, but since this was when no students were at Hogwarts this perk was entirely lost upon the Slytherin student body. Every morning throughout the school year, students woke up in total darkness, unable to tell what time it was or even what month it was. It was like a neverending winter—as if the month of February refused to relinquish its hold over the entire Slytherin population of Hogwarts.

It was in this sort of environment that generation after generation of Slytherins had spent a large percentage of their impressionable youth, rising in darkness, accompanied with the cold sluggishness that one experiences on those dark winter mornings. Considering the psychological effects of sunlight deprivation on the human spirit, should it be any wonder that Slytherins had a notorious reputation for negative attitudes, bitterness, and a tendency towards the dark arts?

Keeping this thought in mind, we begin our story on a pleasant, sunny September morning. Our Slytherin friends woke up in their dark, cold dorm rooms and reluctantly rolled out of their beds, each grumbling quietly to themselves and tiredly preparing themselves for another average day. They stumbled groggy-eyed into the Great Hall for breakfast, unable to see the beautiful autumn sunlight streaming in through the enchanted ceiling above their heads, or even much further past their own noses. They ate their breakfasts silently, most of them thinking about their morning classes, some minor gossip, and the occasional bit of resentment towards everyone and everything else that was not Slytherin.

"Ugh. Those stupid house-elves overcooked the bacon again. It's a shame Dumbledore won't let anyone torture them until they get it right."

"Have you seen Cho Chang's tongue piercing? She says she's had enchanted so that no one over the age of thirty can see it."

"Really? Hmm, clever way of dodging authority. Bet she could get into a lot of trouble if a professor were to find out about it…"

"Yes, it might be something to hold over her head sometime. I'd expose her right now, except that would involve getting near her, and I don't want to risk getting any of her filthy mudblood germs…"

Draco Malfoy had developed a fine art out of participating in conversations when his attention was somewhere else. Every so often, he would look up from his breakfast and dart his eyes across the Great Hall, though he was careful not to look long enough to let anyone see where his gaze fell. He could see Potter sitting at the Gryffindor table, smiling and laughing at some unknown joke with his little Gryffindor friends. Draco scowled at this, and returned his attention to his eggs.

Pansy Parkinson watched Draco just enough so that he wouldn't catch on to her. It wasn't that she cared whether anyone else knew she watched him. As far as the rest of the school knew, she and Draco had been dating since last December. But for some reason, Draco seemed to get annoyed whenever she payed attention to him in public. She could tell he was distracted by something, and wondered why she wasn't enough of a distraction for him. She looked down at the tiny amount of food on her plate and pushed it away.

"Aren't you going to eat that?" Millicent Bulstrode asked her. Millicent was not afraid to let Pansy know she had been watching her. There was not much that ever seemed to inhibit Millicent, as far as Pansy was aware.

Pansy shook her head. "I'm not hungry anymore," she explained matter-of-factly. She pulled a compact mirror out of her bag and examined her makeup and hair, preening her already overly-styled appearance.

Millicent didn't say anything to this, but turned to Draco and frowned. She caught a glimpse of Crabbe watching them, but then he turned his head and looked away. She noticed Draco was busy staring at the Gryffindor table. Who did he think he was fooling?

Goyle, meanwhile, was staring off into space, completely unaware of everyone and everything. However, no one was really interested in watching Goyle's behavior, so he was free to drift into whichever la-la land he pleased. No one paid him much attention except possibly Crabbe, and Crabbe didn't care about the inner workings of Goyle's mind. In fact, many of you fanfiction readers probably aren't interested in what Goyle was thinking about on that September morning, so for now let's leave his thoughts a mystery and move on to Blaise Zabini, whose thoughts were much more interesting indeed.

Blaise Zabini picked at his breakfast disinterestedly, his gaze sweeping across the Great Hall. He let out a put-upon sigh, just loud enough not to be heard by his fellow housemates at the Slytherin dining table.

Once again, his mind drifted to thoughts that troubled him deeply, but there was no way he would ever bring himself to discuss them with the other Slytherins. He just knew that if they ever found out his secret, he would become the laughingstock of the entire house.

And what was this secret? Well, it had something to do with the Sorting Hat. Blaise allowed himself to stare off into space, pondering about the stupid hat that had sorted out all of the students at Hogwarts into the four different houses every year since the founding of the school itself. How did the Sorting Hat decide who should be sorted into which house, anyway? Was it really supposed to look into his soul and decide which house fit his personality the best? Could any one person really fit any house description completely?

He knew that the hat decided houses for some students faster than others. His own sorting had only taken a matter of seconds. Blaise looked around the Great Hall again. Each house seemed to have the same number of people: ten students per year per house, which made roughly five girls and five boys per year per house. It all seemed to work out so perfectly, especially so that there would be fairly the same number of students in each class, at each dining table, in each dorm room.

But could it really work out so perfectly? This was the matter that continued to nag at Blaise. What would happen if, for example, one year of students entered Hogwarts and 90% of them were sorted into Ravenclaw? That would just not do. It would throw all of the carefully balanced proportions out of whack.

No, there was more to the Sorting Hat than the school let on, Blaise decided. Each year, students took their turn under the hat. This was a process that had always been done in alphabetical order. His last name was Zabini—and of course, like with most everything else in life, the Zabinis were always the last to be sorted by the infamous Sorting Hat. So what were the odds that the Sorting Hat really put him in Slytherin because he was destined to be a Slytherin? By his logic, Blaise believed that he was put there because there was a space to fill in Slytherin House, and all the other houses were too full. Of the four houses, Slytherin was also last alphabetically, so maybe it was more likely to be filled with all the students who couldn't get sorted into the houses that fit their personalities better.

Perhaps he believed this to be true because not all Zabinis had been in Slytherin. Some wizarding families, like the Malfoys, had always been in Slytherin House. He knew this because Draco had only mentioned it about a thousand times their first year. Blaise rolled his eyes at the thought. Blaise's family history went back just as far as any of the other "pureblooded" wizarding families in Slytherin. Though quite a few had been in Slytherin, many of his relatives seemed to have been sorted into other houses completely randomly. Blaise had actually gone to the trouble of researching his family members and their respective houses in the Hogwarts archives when he was a second year. Of the Zabini family, there had been some in Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Hufflepuff. Was this because of differing personalities within his family lineage, or was it because they were all last to be sorted and so were sent to whichever house had room leftover for one more student?

The only exception to this logic was the Weasley family, which—he noted with some jealousy—had always traditionally been sorted into Gryffindor. He wished he had an explanation for what made them so special that they all seemed to have Gryffindor room reserved for them. Their last name began with a W, which was next to last in the alphabet to Zabini—at least, for their year. Blaise looked across the Great Hall at the Weasleys, sitting contentedly at the Gryffindor table and snarfing down their breakfast as they talked and laughed about whatever it was that Gryffindors cared about. What would have happened if Ron Weasley had been sorted into Slytherin? All the "true" Slytherins would have eaten him alive, Blaise thought maliciously. There was no way that Ron Weasley could ever be a Slytherin, because he had no clue how to play the part of the Slytherin. He wore his emotions on his sleeve, and Slytherins had to be reserved, secretive, and snooty.

Blaise, on the other hand, had quickly learned how to fit in with the other Slytherins. On the surface, he was the perfect example of the cunning, conniving little asshole that all the rest of the school thought Slytherins to be. Then again, all Zabinis had adapted to whatever house they had been sorted into. Blaise had a distinct impression that their family had developed this trait as a survival tactic, to make up for their last name beginning with the letter Z. How else could so many Zabinis have survived seven years in Slytherin, the Unpopular House of Misfits? At least, that's how he thought of his own house. He could never voice this opinion, though, because most students in Slytherin actually seemed to have some sense of house patriotism, and would never allow him to get away with saying something negative like that.

So Blaise sat alone, isolated in his own private belief that he had unfairly been sorted into the wrong house, never once considering the possibility that maybe his personality was truly Slytherin. He always wondered which house he would have been sorted into, if he had been given a choice. Actually, there was no choice: he knew for sure, as sure as anyone possibly could, which house best suited that deep, inner part of his soul that he could never reveal to anyone. It felt like he was trapped in the closet, really, because he had no one who would understand or sympathize with this feeling. You were sorted into Slytherin, weren't you? So you're a Slytherin. That's your life. That's who you were destined to be. So stop whining and act like the little Slytherin you're supposed to be. But could some stupid Sorting Hat really pidgeonhole anyone into one definitive personality, one simple group identity that defined who he was as an individual?

So here was Blaise Zabini, sitting at the breakfast table and once again gazing at the different house tables in the Great Hall, wondering what life might have had in store for him if Fate had not thrust him into the Slytherin dungeons.

What he really wanted to be was a Hufflepuff.

The Hufflepuffs were always so pleasant! Hufflepuffs never said cruel things behind other people's backs, Blaise believed. Hufflepuffs treated everyone nicely. Hufflepuffs carried themselves around Hogwarts spreading sunshine and daisy-like dispositions and avoided hurting other people's feelings. Sure, their team rarely ever did well at Quidditch, and they lacked the killer instinct that was required for surving encounters with the Slytherins, but to Blaise, that just made them seem all the nicer and more endearing.

Blaise gazed longingly at the Hufflepuff table, wishing he could join them in their sweet, candy-like breakfast conversations, talking about light and fluffy subjects without all the dark sneering and insolence that often characterized Slytherin breakfasts. But of course, the Hufflepuffs would never accept a sinister Slytherin like himself at their table, and his housemates would never forgive him for trying.

He sighed and resolutely gathered his books for class, reminding himself that he only had to endure three more years with the Slytherins. Maybe, someday, after all the nonsense of school politics and bigotry was over and he was an ex-Slytherin, he could become friends with some ex-Hufflepuffs.

His attention was drawn to Malfoy, who was making a beeline over to the Gryffindor table followed by Crabbe and Goyle. By this time most of the Gryffindors had already left for class. Malfoy stopped at an empty section of the table and picked up a small, thin, square-shaped object. He stood an examined the object for a minute, Crabbe and Goyle peering over his shoulders stupidly, then turned back to the Slytherin table. He headed straight to where Blaise was standing and watching him.

"Zabini!" Draco called to him. Blaise met him halfway, inwardly groaning at whatever mischief Malfoy was planning. He did not let this show on his stony facial expression, however. Draco pulled him out of the Great Hall and into an empty hallway, sending Crabbe and Goyle ahead to class.

Draco held up the object for Blaise to see. "Potter left this behind," he explained. "Some muggle thing, best I can tell. Since you're taking muggle studies, I thought you might recognize what it is."

Blaise recognized it as a CD, and took it from Draco's grasp, opening the jewel case. Carefully, he pulled the disc up from the case and cast a spell that he had learned in class.

Draco watched with wide eyes as the CD levitated itself in the air between them and began to spin. Music soon filled the hall.

"Finite Incantatem," Blaise muttered quickly, not wishing for anyone else to hear the music. The disc stopped spinning and lowered itself quietly back into the case. He handed the CD back to Draco.

Draco grinned wickedly. "Interesting," he breathed, sliding the CD into his book bag, "very interesting. Thanks, Zabini," he added, then turned to go to his morning class. "This should make for a fun project."

Blaise watched him head off to class and sighed. Yes, it was definitely going to be a long year, he decided. He looked up the hallway. Malfoy had already rejoined his goons and was droning on about how long it would take before the Dark Lord took over Hogwarts and finished off Potter and all the stupid mudbloods and muggle-lovers. Yes, it would be a very long year.

MCF: Ok, so this chapter didn't have much dialog or Draco/Harry interaction yet. I promise there will be more in the future! This prologue is mostly just to explore Slytherin sentimentality in general. Things should get more interesting as the plot thickens…

Harry Potter and the Malicious Play:

At the end of each chapter, I'm going to have a little section devoted to Harry Potter humor. I'm naming it after the "Malicious Play" segments in Fushigi Yuugi manga, for anyone familiar with that series. For those that aren't, it's worth checking out! Ok, end of plug.

From the Daily Prophet classifieds section:

***DADA Teacher Opening***

Do you have any experience with the Dark Arts? Do you enjoy working with adolescents? Why not try a career in education! The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is currently seeking a new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor. Benefits include full room & board, competitive salary, full 401K. Pets ok. Successful applicants will possess knowledge about the Dark Arts and a positive attitude toward children. Preference will be given to applicants not in the employment of Lord Voldemort. Send resume and letter of application to Hogwarts, c/o Albus Dumbledore.

~~Journalist Wanted~~

The Daily Prophet is seeking a journalist to cover hard-hitting current events. Must be willing to go any length to uncover what the readers want to know. Ruthlessness and yellow journalism tactics a plus. Send resume and salary requirements by owl to Daily Prophet Hiring Dept.

Looking for a Few Good Wizards

The L. V. Corporation is looking for a few good wizards of pure blood to engage in a competitive new enterprise. Excellent benefits. Muggle-born wizards need not apply. Owl letter of application along with family history to L. Malfoy, L. V. Corp. Recruiting Office.

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