Author: AudioAesthetic
Summary: Theodore Nott gen. Because the Devil never tells his side of the story.
Rating: T
Author's Notes: I suppose this is what became of my story In the Facets of Their Scales. If you liked that, you'll like this. I think it's better, personally.
Chapter One
The first time Theodore Nott met Draco Malfoy, he was thoroughly unimpressed. Malfoy would probably never forgive him for it.
He wasn't exactly late when he got to the train, but he also wasn't early, which, it turned out, was a mistake. The train was packed full of students who had just been let loose from their cabin-fevered summer vacations. They were letting spells and curses fly across the train, getting loud, raucous games of Exploding Snap started, and one boy even tried to shove a gigantic tarantula under Theodore's face.
"Get away from me!" Theodore pushed passed him, utterly scandalized. He hoped Hogwarts wouldn't prove to be infested with giant arachnids, or boys who kept them for their own sick amusement.
There were a few compartments that were empty or close to empty, and Theodore, remembering his father's pleas that he try and make friends, naturally chose one that was completely barren. He wanted to read his textbooks the rest of the ride there. He would find it excruciatingly amusing when he beat all the Ravenclaws in their exams. He wondered if some of them would cry.
No such luck, however. Just as he cracked open his copy of Standard Book of Spells, Grade I, a girl appeared in the doorway of the compartment. She had short, dark hair, and a face like a dog, and her wand was out and at the ready.
"Help me with this trunk, please," she said once she spotted him.
Theodore was rather taken aback. "What? Why?"
"Because it's heavy and I'm going to sit here." The girl blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and stuck a hand on her hip. "I'm Pansy Parkinson, I'm going to be in Slytherin, and I'm also going to sit here. Now help me. ... Please."
Theodore, still unconvinced, looked at her dubiously. She heaved a frustrated sigh. "Help me, or I'll hex you."
That rang true. Together they hoisted her trunk onto the rack and she sat down, looking rather pleased with herself. He eyed her up and down and decided that she would be okay. She was wearing witch's robes that weren't the school uniform and she'd said she was going to be in Slytherin. That probably meant she was a Pureblood. Plus, the name Parkinson sounded rather familiar. Despite the fact that she was distinctly unattractive and rather bossy, Theodore thought her name would sound good on a letter to Father. He would approve.
"I'm going to be in Slytherin, too," he said, to make conversation.
"I know," she replied, "or else you would have told me to sod off. I've been doing it up and down the corridor for the last half hour."
She eyed him scrutinously. "You look like a Nott. You must be Theodore. Would you like to play a game of Snap for frog cards?"
Theodore had never gambled a day in his life, but it seemed the blank look on his face made him rather good at it. Pretty soon, Pansy was down to half the number of cards she'd had originally. She tried to get them back with pleas, threats, and semi-flirtatious eyelash palpitations that just made Theodore laugh. Pansy looked outraged, and then began to laugh too, and Theodore was feeling pretty good about this whole "making friends" thing.
"Can you believe!" said a voice from the corridor as the compartment door swung open forcefully. A pinched, blonde boy with a harem of two gorilla-like creatures hanging about his shoulders stalked into the compartment unannounced. "Not shaking my hand! The nerve of him! Does he have any idea who my father is?"
"Er... probably not," said one of the juggernauts - Theodore almost laughed. He'd never seen a mountain with a bowlcut before. "He's Harry Potter. He's been living with Muggles."
The pinched boy gave him a withering look. "I know that. I was being facetious. Don't correct me when I'm being facetious, Crabbe, it's irritating."
Theodore had jumped in surprised at their entrance and was staring with a mix of shock and outrage at the three of them, but Pansy looked up rather blandly. "Don't screech, Draco," she said, almost fondly. "It's unbecoming."
"You would screech too if you had been through what I just have," the boy (Theodore assumed he must be Draco Malfoy) huffed as he through himself in the seat beside Pansy. "My family name, offended! My honor, attacked! My hand, unshaken and scorned! To be in my position, you would screech and bellow and blanche and do all sorts of unbecoming things. Judge not lest ye be judged, Pansy."
"Draco, you judge people constantly," Pansy pointed out.
"That's different," he said with a casual flip of his hand. "I'm faultless. Other people are defective. It's okay to judge defective things."
Pansy rolled her eyes. "Would you like to be dealt in?"
Malfoy did a double take upon seeing Theodore across the apartment, as if he could not have been bothered to notice another person before. By way of introduction, Malfoy said, "You are a very grey child."
Theodore did not quite know what to say to that, so he just scowled his most defensive scowl and waited. Theodore was rather proud of his scowl. Malfoy seemed unphased.
"You must be a Nott. My father says you all never leave your mansion. Have you ever thought of the benefits of sunlight? You might get scurvy."
"I think that's a deficiency of Vitamin D," Theodore said before he could stop himself. Malfoy looked as though someone had just announced that hippogriffs were taking over the Ministry.
"A deficiency of what now?" Quickly, he diverted his attention to looking flippant. "Nevermind. It doesn't matter. The derivation of your unhealthy pallour is your own problem. Take it up with Madame Pomfrey, I shall no longer be pestered by it. Deal me in, but I'm playing with candy. My card collection is in the bottom of my trunk and if I try to get it now, I'll drown in new robes and spellbooks and never be seen again on this or any other plane."
He turned quickly to the two boys behind him. "You'll have to find that toad the girl was talking about and step on it later. Right now, we're playing Snap."
The two boys took this without complaint. Both Greg and Vince could hold their own in the game, but Malfoy was absolute rubbish at keeping a poker-face. Pansy laughed contemptuously at every victorious flourish, gasp, or declaration that he would "never play this God-forsaken game again as long as he lived" that gave away his hand. At the end of the train ride, however, it was Theodore who had nearly all of the candy bought on the trolley.
He had assumed, from Pansy's bossy manner, that she would be the leader of their little group, but as it turned out, even Pansy herself joined the first years who gathered around Draco Malfoy, trying to look as though they weren't amused by his impression of the over-sized groundskeeper and the way he scoffed indiscriminately at the Gryffindor batch of first years.
"He's making a fool of himself," said coldly relaxed Blaise Zabini. Theodore and Pansy nodded their agreement, but Theodore couldn't help but snicker as Malfoy marched about the room ordering the "firs' years" to "be men, fergit the boats, an' just swim to the castle."
Draco Malfoy was shameless, embarassing, and vain - but he had a highly caffeinated sort of energy that made you want to watch his every move, just to see what it was, and this blisteringly misguided confidence that made you believe that he deserved all the attention he was getting.
Theodore like Blaise's quiet coolness and Pansy's sassiness better, but being a Slytherin would definitely be interesting.