Author's Note: Welcome to my extremely crazy SlytherFred head canon. As the summary explains, this is Fred's life at Hogwarts as a Slytherin. If you don't like the idea, then pass this story right along. If you're interested, then feel free to read ahead and leave me feedback about your thoughts.
Disclaimer: Odd and Plum are my characters; Jaycee owns herself; James, Rickie, Marky, and Penelope all belong to Jaycee (le-thar-gic over on tumblr and Cala-J on here). The rest belong to J.K. Rowling. But I think we already know that.
Fred wasn't ashamed or embarrassed when the Sorting Hat yelled out "SLYTHERIN" instead of "GRYFFINDOR" like it had for the rest of his family. In fact, he'd been quite proud. He'd seen nothing wrong with being a Slytherin, so long as you kept your head on straight and didn't fall into that cliché evil that was so expected of every Slytherin.
On the contrary, Fred, in his first year, had met quite a few Slytherins that one might never have placed in that house. One girl, a pureblood witch named Charize Oddpick, even had a twin sister who had been placed in Hufflepuff. Both were ambitious and energetic, yet the Sorting Hat figured Charize, commonly known as Charlie or Odd, would do whatever it took to reach her goals, while Plum, the twin in Hufflepuff, was patient and able to wait things out.
It wasn't until the Oddpick twins had been separated into Hufflepuff and Slytherin that students began to realize what a fine line there was between the houses. Add the fact that George Weasley was placed in Gryffindor while his twin was placed in Slytherin, and it only added to the confusion.
It is a well known fact that children enjoy having clearcut cliques in which to place their classmates, and it was disrupting to the student body when a Gryffindor and a Slytherin pulled pranks together, or when a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin occasionally hung out around the Quidditch pitch together.
This warped the status quo. But Fred Weasley didn't care much about that. He never had, and he most likely never would. Charlie Oddpick, on the other hand, was a bit of an impressionable girl and, had it not been for the close friendship she and Fred had developed, she would have morphed herself to fit perfectly into the stereotypical Slytherin mold.
It can also be said that Odd's crush on George Weasley kept her from heading too far down the path to cliché Slytherinism. As did Fred's interest in Angelina Johnson, a close friend and Quidditch teammate of George's, kept him from stepping too far into his former Slytherin peers' shoes.
It was in Odd and Fred's third year at Hogwarts that things began to change. For Harry Potter had come to Hogwarts.
Fred, upon entering the Great Hall, separated from his twin to sit with his fellow house mates. Sitting down with Odd, he received a pat on the back from one of his closest friends, James Delaney. Had it not been for James' wild, brunette hair—which he absolutely refused to cut—then he could have been mistaken for Fred and George's triplet. Like Fred, James came from a family consisting of a mother, father, and seven siblings. But after physical and familial appearances were removed, Fred and James were quite different.
Coming from a wealthy, pureblood family, James was accustomed to getting what he wanted, when he wanted, and at no expense to him. His marks in school were poor not because of a lack of intelligence, but of a lack of motivation or desire to put any effort forward. And as the list of people James could bully into doing schoolwork for him consisted of mostly first-years and a select few Hufflepuff second-years who found him rather dashing, James had very few people he could force to do his homework. When good marks were acquired by him, it was because of pure instinct, cunning, and plenty of half-hearted begging for answers from fellow Slytherins in his class.
Mr. Delaney's dream of his son joining the medical field, like every other Delaney in history, was squashed once James realized the amount of hard work necessary for such a profession. That, and pure lack of respect for his parents' wishes.
"Fredster," he greeted cheerily, clapping him once again on the shoulder before digging into his pocket for a muggle cigarette. Unlike the vast majority of Slytherins, James couldn't care less about muggles, nor could he care more. That is to say, if James found something in the muggle world useful to him, he quite enjoyed it. And if he found something in the muggle world that wasn't useful to him, he merely ignored it and went on his way.
This characteristic of James' quite irked Erika Abel, better known as Rickie Lexine, another of Fred's friends. Turning up her nose at the smoke James was trying to exhale without being reprimanded by anyone in an authoritative position. "That's disgusting," she muttered, pursing her plump lips and glancing James up and down.
James snorted, exaggeratedly looking over Rickie, mocking her. "Don't worry, Ickle Rickie, my lungs feel just fine," he retorted, taking another drag.
Rickie raised an eyebrow. "I'm talking about the way you so casually use muggle devices." She spoke the word 'muggle' like another person might say 'pustule' or any of a range of disgusting words.
"I don't remember you having a problem with that expensive muggle lingerie you were sporting this summer," James pointed out wickedly, wiggling his eyebrows and widening his eyes.
That remark began the first squabble of many that year that were bound to take place, and so Fred, after exchanging a glance with Odd, turned his attention to the other two people he spent most of his time at Hogwarts with: Katrina Marquess and Penelope Splittgerber. Katrina Marquess, known best as Marky by her peers, was the kind of person who took taking nothing serious to an emotionally dangerous level, viewing the world as a muggle-like film, made for her enjoyment. As she was doing now during the Rickie and James argument over which muggle products were a necessary evil, Marky often smirked and chuckled devilishly to herself when any melodramatic situation arose, forgetting that others had feelings as well, and would most likely not appreciate being laughed at. Her dark, dry humour was what drew Fred to her in the first place, and she rarely disappointed in that department.
The other girl, Penelope Splittgerber, was a Slytherin that possessed a very rare quality among Slytherins: compassion. Her eyes glowed brightly with ambition and the need to prove herself, but she was above some of the slimy techniques used by her green and silver clad peers. Taking great pride in her pureblood heritage, Penelope was still able to see the worth of half-bloods, and even muggle borns, a topic debated quite frequently with Rickie.
Fred snapped his fingers in front of Marky's face to get her attention and grinned. "How do you reckon Quidditch 's gonna go this year?" he questioned, glancing at Penelope who merely shrugged in reply. Penelope barely watched Quidditch games, let alone speculated the outcome of the season.
Marky, on the other hand, was the beater opposite Fred. Tearing her eyes from the still bickering James and Rickie, Marky gave a lopsided grin. "We're going to crush whoever gets in the way of the cup," she hypothesized, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
Odd let out an exaggerated sigh. "Now if only they'd let me play during a game," she grumbled, plopping her chin in the palm of one hand. Odd was the reserve seeker for the Slytherin team, and she couldn't determine whether she hated or admired Terrence Higgs.
Marky snickered, her lips spreading into a wicked smirk, as thought this was some sort of sappy scene, but Fred wrapped a warm arm around Odd's shoulders. "Hey, Higgs graduates this year. You'll be a shoe-in next year," he assured Odd, although she didn't seem to be cheered at all.
There was a sudden clang as the doors to the hall opened, a flood of first years tripping to the front of the room. James and Rickie quickly lowered their voices so only those within close proximity could hear.
Fred's eyes immediately attached onto the short boy trotting along beside his brother, Ron. Having met earlier, Fred was all too aware that Harry Potter was now joining the ranks of Hogwarts.
Despite Fred's loyalty to his family and his insistence that he was no more interested in the Dark Arts than any other normal student, he had a fascination with Dark Wizards and Witches that had graced the world. The kind of fascination that a non-magical person might have with psychopaths. And one of the greatest Dark Wizards of all time was, of course, Lord Voldemort, who had been brought down by this scrawny, jet-haired boy that was nervously tripping up the stairs towards the Sorting Hat.
He watched as his brothers all cheered when the boy was sorted into Gryffindor, the whole Slytherin table sitting erect and watching. Many of their parents had been Death Eaters in their younger years, and the fact that they were now attending school with the baby that had brought down the Dark Lord so many people had followed for so long was surreal.
Fred surmised that he was one of the only Slytherin students who did not have ties to any Death Eaters in his own family. Odd's mother had joined the Dark Lord's forces, losing her life in the process and leaving Odd and Plum with their father, Winkus. Winkus was a writer for the Daily Prophet and had seemingly passed his love of journalism down to Plum, who had created the Hogwarts Herald her first year at Hogwarts with the help of her friend Jaycee Wilder, a Ravenclaw.
Fred heard Rickie snort. "Gryffindor...how peachy," she cooed to no one in particular. Penelope was watching with wide eyes, and Marky had one eyebrow raised. Rickie and Marky both had parents who had either spent time in Azkaban or were still spending time in Azkaban due to their involvement with Voldemort, and although James' father had been able to worm his way out of any real Ministry cases, everyone knew that he had been a part of the Dark Lord's dealings.
When Fred's brother Ron stepped up to be sorted, he was not surprised that the hat shouted "GRYFFINDOR!" Fred wouldn't lie, it had been a bit of a shock when he himself had been placed in Slytherin, the first in the Weasley clan to ever deviate from the usual Gryffindor housing. But what would have shocked Fred more would be if Ron or Ginny, the only Weasleys left to be sorted, landed in Slytherin.
Fred wouldn't consider himself evil or maniacal by any means, but he did have a rather wicked streak that none of his siblings seemed to have developed over the years. He raised his hands, stood up, and clapped for Ron, much to the dislike of his surrounding peers, although Odd and Penelope half-heartedly joined in on the cheering. Odd had spent the past summer at the Weasley household, finding each Weasley to be charming and friendly, and felt it only right that she support Ron. And Penelope felt that as a friend of Fred's, she ought to support the things he supported, so long as they didn't completely go against anything she believed.
James rolled his eyes and grabbed Fred's robes at the elbow, tugging his friend back down into a sitting position on the long bench, and before Fred had a chance to even cuff James jokingly, the feast appeared before them, and both Fred and James were too distracted to even recall anything that had happened in the past few minutes.
Author's Note: Feedback is always appreciated :)