Year by year, more students had come into Slytherin. Of course Scorpius had only his own brief experience to illustrate that, as just about everyone else had either forgotten how many came into the house in previous years or claimed to have forgotten to get him to stop asking. He thought the former more likely, both because he didn't want to think that his housemates saw him as nothing more than a pestering annoyance and because he didn't remember how many Slytherin first years there had been when he was sorted. They hadn't been a particularly tight-knit bunch, and a fair number of them had tried to find friends outside of Slytherin. He and Albus were the only two that had stuck together, and even though he shared most of his classes with his fellow Slytherin third years, he doubted he knew very much about any of them.
During his second year, he had paid some attention, but only a little. After all, neither he nor Albus knew any of the coming first years, and he suspected they would be the same as his own first years had been: eager to distance themselves from the idea of being Slytherins. He couldn't blame them, since even though his father had assured him that there was no shame in being a Slytherin, he still felt as though people were watching him cautiously.
"It's really not fair at all," he told Albus as they settled down to watch the sorting. The first years looked even smaller than they had the year before, though Scorpius supposed that could just be because of the two inches he'd grown over summer.
"What's not?" Albus looked as though he was barely listening and had become anxious for the sorting to start. Scorpius couldn't blame him; they had eaten plenty of sweets on the train, but those weren't nearly as filling as dinner would be, and already he could feel hunger starting to hollow out his stomach. He would keep talking, though, and hope his friend would start to listen.
"Everything about Slytherin," Scorpius said and Professor Zahradnik got to her feet to read aloud the names. "I mean, doesn't it just seem evil from the start? Even before you think of how many Death Eaters were in it in our parents' generation, and in their parents' generation. Even before you think of…" He knew he didn't have to, but he still shuddered a little with fear and revulsion before going on in a whisper, "Voldemort."
"Okay," Albus said. The Sorting Hat was set on its stool, and Professor Zahradnik unrolled a scroll of paper.
"It seems almost like it's been evil from the start," Scorpius went on, lowering his voice after a fourth year hissed at him to be quiet. "Salazar Slytherin!"
Professor Zahradnik cleared her throat and called out, "Anemi, Barbara!" A dark-haired girl stumbled up to the stool and was pronounced a Slytherin. As she ran over to the Slytherin table, she looked almost as though she was about to cry.
"He was a blood supremacist, and that may not have been entirely evil back in the day, it certainly is now, and the house still has that connotation, even after it's had half-bloods and possibly even a few Muggle-borns in it." Scorpius did his best to tune out Professor Zahradnik and the Sorting Hat, but he still caught a few names.
"Beck, James!"
"RAVENCLAW!"
"He argued with Godric Gryffindor, who's apparently the most heroic man possible. It'd be like arguing with… arguing with your father! Salazar Slytherin was more evil than Cornelius Fudge." Albus smirked at that, which gave Scorpius the encouragement to go on, even though one of the older students was glaring at him.
"Brown, Theodore!"
"SLYTHERIN!"
A shaking boy, who must have been almost twelve already, walked up to the table and sat down as Scorpius continued, "And then there's the Chamber of Secrets. It's a name that sounds evil from the start, because as everyone knows, good guys don't keep secrets unless it's to protect others, and even then, they might tell them what they want to know just because they don't like keeping secrets. Secrets are for evil."
"Davis, Dorothy!"
"SLYTHERIN!"
"And what did it have inside? A snake. A giant snake that can kill with a look and was meant to go specifically after Muggle-borns." Scorpius's throat felt a bit tight thinking about this, as he knew that his father could well have been involved with that and had wanted to be, but he shook away the thought. There was so much more he still had to say.
"Eccleston, James!"
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
"Our symbol's a snake, too. And snakes are just about the ultimate evil, aren't they? Is there any mythology where snakes are considered good. Well, all right, Australia has the Rainbow Serpent, and there's Quetzalcoatl, but here in Britain, snakes are basically the devil, at least from a Biblical point of view. Why else would people say that a saint drove them out of Ireland? Why else would there have been a serpent in the Garden of Eden?"
"Necchi, Fatima!"
"GRYFFINDOR!"
"So we've got a snake for our emblem, and the evilest founder. Is it any wonder that people think we're terrible? Is it any wonder that people are surprised when Professor Baumhauer, one of the kindest men I know, is our Head of House?" Albus looked slightly disturbed, but Scorpius knew he had to push on. He couldn't give up in trying to understand what was happening. "So why?"
Albus turned to him. "Are you asking me?"
"Your opinion, at least," Scorpius said. "I'd like to know if you have any thoughts about why this is."
Albus shrugged. "Do we have to go over this right now? I mean, the sorting's almost over, and we're going to have dinner soon, and I've been wanting that since we got into the carriage. Why is this so important to you?"
"Because I'm not evil!" The words came out louder than Scorpius had intended, and a few people turned to glare at him, but he paid them no mind. He needed them to be said, needed them to be heard by someone who wasn't a Malfoy. His mother would only try to reassure him, and his father would say that it wasn't a name that made him evil, but they didn't have to deal with having people whisper about their names and thinking they were terrible just because they were in Slytherin. "I'm not," he said, his voice lower, and this time Albus wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
"I know," Albus said. "I'm not evil either. I don't think any of the first years are evil, or any of the second years either. I don't think there's anyone evil in Slytherin, though there are some that I don't like."
Scorpius nodded. "Why, then? There has to be some reason."
"I think it's just because of the sorting," Albus said. "There are four things the hat looks for, right? Bravery, intelligence, hard work, and ambition. Of all those things, I guess ambition is the easiest to make evil. You have to actually have some ambition to take over the world."
Scorpius laughed a little and sat up. "You're right," he said. "I guess we just have to show that ambition can be good."
"Exactly," Albus said, "but not now." Professor Zahradnik must have given her speech while they were whispering, for she sat down and food appeared on the golden platters. Both Albus and Scorpius loaded their plates with everything they could reach, and Albus dug in at once. Scorpius's appetite had faded, but he still ate about half of what was on his plate before turning to Albus again.
"Do you think there are more Slytherins now than there were last year?" he asked.
"I don't know," Albus said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes covered in gravy. He swallowed and took a gulp of pumpkin juice before adding, "I don't think so."
"But there were a lot of first years who got sorted into Slytherin," Scorpius said. "I wasn't counting, but I did hear the Sorting Hat shouting 'SLYTHERIN' a lot. Maybe the house isn't so bad that people are asking to not be put in it."
"I wouldn't count on it," said one of their fellow third years, and after a moment, Scorpius remembered the girl's name as Lunete Pritchard, a Welsh girl who routinely colored her hair purple with various homemade potions. "Little Barbara Anemi's still crying."
They all looked down the table to where Barbara had sat down and saw her being comforted by another third year, Russell Jameson.
"The hat didn't sort that many people into Slytherin," Albus said once they had finished staring at the girl. "There are a lot more in the other houses. You just weren't listening when it shouted out the other names."
Scorpius's cheeks grew warm, and he knew it was true that he hadn't been listening. He had thought that meant he would miss hearing several different Slytherins, but apparently it also meant he had missed hearing just about every other house. As he looked across the Great Hall, he saw that the other three tables were packed with people cheerfully eating and laughing with their friends. While the Slytherin table was far from empty, compared to the other three, it was sparse and somber. "There have to have been more," he said, though he was no longer completely convinced that he was right. "Something's changing, I know it. Professor Zahradnik said that the hat's been acting oddly lately, and I'm going to find out."
"Good luck," Lunete muttered as she returned to her mincemeat pie. "Doing that plus eight classes sounds like something only Granger-Weasley down there would do." She flicked her head in the direction of the Gryffindor table, and Scorpius saw Rose sitting next to a bronze-skinned boy and laughing with him.
"Well, I can do it too," Scorpius said, "and I bet I can do it better than she can." He wouldn't mind getting her help on it, but now that it was a challenge, he suddenly wanted to do it all by himself.
"I can help," Albus said eagerly. "I'll probably have a lot of work to do for Care of Magical Creatures and Muggle Studies, but I'll help when I can." He took a large bite of carrot before adding, "What did you get into?"
"Divination and Arithmancy," Lunete said before Scorpius could answer. "Where did you learn to eat? I don't think I've met anyone else my age who doesn't bother chewing and swallowing before eating." She took another bite of pie, chewed, swallowed, and said, "See?"
"It's the first night back," Albus said. "No one cares about table manners. We're all too hungry."
Lunete rolled her eyes and returned to her meal.
"So," Albus said when Lunete's attention was off them. "What did you get into?"
"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes," Scorpius said. "I'll be spending a lot of time in the library already, so I might as well get some history done on reading. I doubt I'll learn much of anything interesting from Professor Binns's class."
"I heard a rumor that we'd get a new History of Magic professor," Albus said. "He's an old man, but he's a werewolf, and apparently he's completely blind." When everyone around him looked at him skeptically, he just shrugged and returned to his food. "I didn't believe it either," he muttered. "I just thought it'd be nice to have someone besides Binns."
"We all think that," a fifth year said. "That doesn't mean it'll happen. Binns has the best job protection: he can't ever die and be forced out."
As always, Scorpius felt stuffed after dinner, but as always, he found room for some dessert. He ate a little more than he might have normally, to be polite to the house-elves, and as the dishes cleared themselves away and the fifth year who had been complaining about Binns revealed herself to be a Prefect and called the first years to her, Scorpius was very glad he didn't have to go up any stairs. If he had been sorted into Ravenclaw – which was infinitely more likely than Gryffindor – he would have probably tried to find an abandoned classroom to sleep in rather than dragging himself up to the tower.
The common room was exactly the same as it had always been, but looking around it now sent shivers up Scorpius's spine. Over the past two years he had come to see this place as something of a second home (since it was far less comfortable to sleep in the library), but now, he tried looking at it with the eyes of someone who had never seen it before, and only one word came to mind.
Evil.
It was close to the water, and underground, even deeper than the Hufflepuff common room, and all the lights seemed cold and eerie. It was the sort of place he wouldn't want to wake up after sleepwalking or from the middle of a bad dream. It had become comforting, but that was only because he had gotten used to it. As a stranger, he would have been terrified.
His sleepiness from the food was gone, and he grabbed Albus's arm. "What's the matter?" Albus mumbled.
"Look around," Scorpius whispered, pulling Albus away from the rest of the group. No one seemed to notice that they had left, but Scorpius supposed it hardly mattered. "What do you see?"
"It's the common room," Albus said with a yawn. "It doesn't look any different from how it did last year. What's wrong with you, Scorpius?"
"I don't know." Scorpius let go of his friend's arm, and with another yawn, Albus headed to their dormitory. Once everyone had filed into their own dormitories, Scorpius sank onto a nearby couch and rested his head on the arm. He was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. His mind was too busy racing, and he was almost afraid that if he closed his eyes he would lose all the thoughts he had been trying to put in order.
The couch beneath him was green, and he wondered if green was an evil color. It was associated with snakes and envy, and there was something sinister about green light and greenish complexions, but it was also the color of life and growth, both of which were normally considered good. Then there was silver. It was the coldest of all the metallic colors used at Hogwarts, and something about the combination of green and silver seemed distant, possibly even other. It was like Slytherin was meant to hold itself above the other houses.
He sighed, and his eyes slid closed. Though he still wanted to think things over, he wasn't sure how much he could accomplish without studying, and he was much too tired to go to the library right now. He didn't even know if it would be open so late on the first night back. It would have to be open the next day, though, and he knew he would wind up visiting it, as he knew nothing about runes aside from what he had read in the textbook over summer while trying not to spend too much time with his family.
He wasn't sure what it was that made him want to avoid his parents. He knew he hadn't disappointed them, and he knew they were proud of him and loved him, but he was worried about something. Maybe it was just how cold their home could be, as cold as green and silver.
Scorpius woke to a hand shaking his shoulder and a common room that was slightly lighter than it had been the previous night. "What's going on?" he mumbled, sitting up and finding that he was still on the couch.
"You've got twenty minutes to get to Transfiguration," Albus said. "I grabbed some clothes for you, and everyone else is already out, so you can change in here if you want. You'd better make it quick, though. I don't want a lecture about how we should know better than to be late."
Scorpius sat up and began changing into the clothes Albus had brought him, sticking the ones from the day before under the couch. They would likely still be there when he returned – no one bothered looking under the couch for anything – so he could move them after class. "Is there anything still in the Great Hall?" he asked, haste making him alert, though he still felt a bit fuzzy.
"I grabbed some food, too," Albus said, and he pulled two scones out of his bag. "Sorry I couldn't grab more, but I wasn't sure how to carry bacon or jam."
"It's fine," Scorpius said, and stuffed one of the scones in his mouth. It could have used some jam, or at least something to drink alongside it, but he would have to manage with a dry throat. "Thanks," he said, and a few crumbs flicked from his mouth.
"And I got your books." Albus thrust a bag at him, and Scorpius slung it over his shoulder. "Come on. You can finish eating on the way."
"Why are you being so nice to me?" Scorpius asked as they ran out of the common room and sprinted up the stairs toward their Transfiguration class.
"We're friends," Albus said. "It's what friends do. You'd help me out the same way, right?"
"Of course," Scorpius said at once. He finished off his first scone and at once tore into the second. He didn't want to be caught eating on the first day of class, and he certainly didn't want to get a detention on his first day.
"And I'll help you study that history thing, too," Albus said. "Sorry I was so annoyed with you the other night."
"It's no problem," Scorpius said, and he sped up.
