The way back to the Hogwarts express had been different than the one they came in. Horseless carriages pulled them on the way, and Hadrian didn't even bother to see with whom he would be sitting, other than they were Slytherins, like him. He paid them no heed and they paid him no heed.
When he boarded the Hogwarts Express he had abandoned those that were with him in the carriage and quickly tried finding an empty compartment for himself. Sadly, the search was bound to fail, as many others had boarded the train-cars before he even came close. On his way to search for one compartment where he could rest, he came across the compartment that contained his least favorite people, Gryffindors.
They had noticed him giving the compartment a glance and shouted out some uninspiring insult, containing the same old drivel with him being a 'slimy, slithery snake', though the cherry on top was how they stole the cup from underneath their slimy scales.
Deciding this would be one good chance to play with the idiots, he turned his face back towards them and entered their compartment, allowing a faint smile to show itself on his face, which utterly disturbed the group before him; which consisted of Longbottom, Weasley, Patil, Finnigan and the Brown girl.
Oh joy, his favorite people indeed.
"Hello there, Weasel, sharing stories already of how you stole the Cup? My, my, so much for your vaunted Gryffindor nobility, the mighty cats reduced to stealing from us serpents. Tut, tut, Mr. Longbottom, it seems that fame is everything for the Headmaster, you having been assigned so many points for such spectacular feats that they don't dare repeat it for us."
"No, no, us mere people must be grateful to bask in your presence, and what a roundish presence it is. Have you perchance eaten your pet toad, Mr. Longbottom, you seem to be gaining some of its color right now as we speak? No. Shame, it would have been a chivalrous end for one such as him, to be eaten by the Boy-Who-Lived. Imagine the fame he would live on in!"
"And you, Mr. Finnigan, guess the Irish penchant for stealing other people's luck really worked out in the end, hasn't it? Not to worry, Mr. Finnigan, all will be given their dues in the end, I know how you Gryffindors love your sense of fair play. After all, the same sense of fair play sparked here the lovable Miss Brown to open her mouth and let loose a torrent of utter lies, must have been where her clothes wound up on that chilly day in the Potions, wouldn't you agree with me, Miss Patil?"
"Ah, no need to flush on my behalf, Miss Patil, I must say that the color doesn't suit you. I would avoid eating spicy food if I were you, though gratefully I am spared of that experience, I imagine it does poorly for your complexion when you heat up so easily, but it's not like anyone will notice it will they? No, no, I digress. My sincere congratulations on your theft, oh brave Gryffindors!"
"Perhaps the old fool shall grace us with another surprise next year and just hand you the cup right at the start, why bother allowing a petty thing like hard earned points to play any part in deciding the worthy ones, hmm? Ah, I see by the skin of the Weasel that I might have overtaxed your minds with my words, my, even his hair is starting to pale in comparison to his flushing, perhaps he should let Miss Patil borrow some, Merlin knows he has a lot to spare. Till next years, noble cats."
What he left behind in that compartment was an assembly of shell-shocked, gob-smacked, utterly stunned into silence and stupor five Gryffindors. And outside of their compartment they heard an unusual sound, one they had never heard before; Hadrian Potter laughing.
As he was passing yet another compartment he sensed the door opening and felt himself being pulled in. Before even seeing who had pulled him in, his wand was out and the tip of it pointed right between the eyes. Familiar eyes. And once he had the second to realize whose eyes they were, he greeted them.
"Why, hello Miss! I dare say you look familiar, have we met before?"
The other two people in the compartment didn't bother hiding their grins, and the one he had just accosted merely stuck out her tongue at him.
"Would you mind removing your wand from my forehead, Potter? I'd rather enjoy not having to explain the dent in my skin."
"Certainly so, Davis," he resumed in his polite tone, the one that all of them were acquainted with, before pulling back the wand and depositing it in his pocket, "Is there a particular reason why you pulled me in here?"
"Yes, now be quiet and sit, you git!"
"A git? You wound me, Davis. You barely know me, give me a chance and I'll show you that the word 'git' is inadequate when describing me."
The auburn haired witch sat back on what was her spot and looked at him, nearly tilting her head to the side, "Since when have you been so talkative? You barely talked to anyone back at school, and here we are, ten minutes away from it, and you already verbally flayed the poor Gryffindors, and now you're back to jabbing at me, like you did the first time on the train."
"Ah, you heard that?"
"Kind of hard not to, you stood there in the passage way and your voice carried over, and despite the sweetness oozing from it, everyone clearly understood you meant to spank some sense of shame into those dunderheads."
"Dunderheads? Davis, you have been spending too much time around our Head of House. Although that would explain what he does all night long..."
"Prat! Git! Idiot! Don't ever, ever say anything like that again! Ugh, I'm going to ask mother to Obliviate me when we get back home."
"Glad to be of service, Davis."
The verbal jabbing continued for some time, until they felt the train lurching out of the station and heading on its way back to London. Were there a point system in place, Tracey Davis would have been marked as the one with the lesser amount.
Zabini was most intrigued about how suddenly the boy, his own roommate, could change so suddenly into a completely different person. A person he had spent a whole school year with, sharing the same room, and yet barely knew him.
Were it not for his confrontations with Malfoy and other people outside of their House, Potter could have easily faded out of existence, he never tended to draw attention to himself, either in class or otherwise.
He tried not to look too hard at the boy sitting next to him now, but he did catch a few glances thrown his way in the reflection of the window.
Despite the fact that the only thing she shared with the boy was the common room and classes, Daphne Greengrass' observations of the boy in front of her were nearly nine months long now. Ever since she watched him push out the wretched Malfoy girl out from their compartment, he had been a point of interest for her.
His House placement only served to indulge her own hunger for more knowledge about him, and when she heard his last name being called out like that, seeing him step out to the Sorting Hat and being sorted into Slytherin... that only compounded the want to know more about him.
He had been... unremarkable in the start, aside from the mentioned incident in the train, his sorting and his brief chat with the House's ghost.
A Potter in Slytherin.
Oh how some of the other girls loved to gossip amongst themselves, and though their gossip never went beyond the common room, it was still present. Malfoys were, as she liked to point out so often, were above gosipping.
No, the little platinum blonde merely whispered her own observations of the boy, which turned into outright malice-filled words after the incident in the flying lesson. Daphne never participated in the gossip, while her roommate, Tracey, freely indulged herself in this.
It suited her anyway, since she had a permanent source into whatever found its way to the girls. They supplied the rumors, which weren't rumors at all, at how the Potter boy was hardening on the outside, lashing out at others who started picking on him when he ventured alone outside of the common room.
His lashing outs were subtle, as Slytherin as they could be, never getting caught in the act, never leaving a trace that he might have done something. Seeing those two Hufflepuffs in Herbology yelp out in pain as the puss was spat out onto their faces, made her want to smile instead of hiding behind her cold and aloof persona.
The repayment for the harsh words, and they were harsh, even Daphne saw them as such, that the two Gryffindors spoke were equally amusing, though she wished that Potter had slightly disfigured them in the process rather than just shaming. Ah well, if wishes were hippogriffs...
When they returned from the holidays, she was most curious how he would be, whether he would be changed in some way. The book did cost her a pretty good amount of galleons, but she felt it a worthwhile investment. And it paid off in dividends.
Watching, yet again, the Malfoy girl being humiliated before the whole common room, only gave rise to the laughter she contained within her chest during the whole year. Then there was nothing for a while, other than his usual jabs at the Gryffindors.
She thought that he might perhaps disappoint her expectations, but she was never more glad than that night to be proven wrong.
Something had happened. Something had shifted inside him and Greengrass almost felt like licking her lips at seeing Potter so upset about something. She wished to know what had made it so, what initiated the change. But it was sufficient, for the moment, to know that change did happen.
The next morning brought troubling news however.
She had guessed and conjectured why the boy never bothered being friendly with anyone but the ghost, but she never thought about the extent he might have endured to be shaped like that. If the words were true, and not flights of fancy or victims of exaggerations, as each retelling must fall victim to, he was thoroughly littered with scars, back and front.
It continued to stoke the flame of her curiosity, the hunger to know.
Her hunger was not a bad thing, and she was not the only person to have it. Even that muggleborn witch, the one that left the school in November, had it, though she never controlled the hunger, and allowed herself to be controlled by it and subsequently shunned by others because of it.
Then there was the feast. He was indifferent to it all, indifferent to their House's victory over the others. Until it was taken away from them. Even she felt the indignation at the act, when the Headmaster practically stole the cup from them and had thrown it instead to his pet cats.
In that one moment of indignation and anger rising in her, she had nearly missed out on the most wonderful sight of the year; his face. It was disfigured with a scowl, a flash of emotions which he kept in check constantly, not allowing himself to be exposed, no matter the cost. Daphne felt losing the cup almost worthy of that sight alone and internally grinned.
Oh she knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she had been playing one ever since she was aware enough there was a game going on all the time. You could call it life or something else, but it was a game.
Albeit, with high stakes.
Her life was already charted out by her parents, and the only thing she could do was play along, until she had garnered enough influence on her own to disrupt the game, by any means.
And right now, one of the more prominent means was sitting right across her, his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling with every breath.
Yes, it would be an interesting next year for one Hadrian Potter and Daphne Greengrass.