I.
At eleven, Lucius Malfoy already knew how to make an entrance. The door to the common room slammed open with a crack and in strode Malfoy, hair as blue as a clear summer day and face as wrathful as a recently disturbed wasps nest. Evan looked up with interest from his place in front of the fire, where he was feeding strips of an essay into the fire.
"Yaxley," He snapped, "Loewe, Rosier. Come with me- this is war."
Rosier abandoned his casual destruction instantly and trailed after the Malfoy boy into their shared dorm. When the assorted heirs of some of the finest families in Wizarding Britain assembled, Lucius rose to his full height of four feet and seven inches and spread his arms wide.
"Today, while I was peacefully walking down the hall to our Charms class, the Prewett twins attacked me." He glanced around to make sure his words had the appropriate effect. Loewe looked shocked while Yaxley was furious. Rosier, however, had a wide smile spreading across his face. Lucius was old enough to be concerned by his companion's expression but young enough to assume it only meant good things. Turning to the other two boys, he continued.
"They attacked me and then ran off like the cowards they are." One small fist smacked into the other as Lucius assumed his look of righteous fury, "We must retaliate! We must take our revenge! We can not let those flea-bitten lions disparage the great house of Slytherin!"
"Yes!" The other boys cheered, their fire stirred by the rousing speech. Lucius smiled, pleased to be at the center of such excitement.
"What do we do now, Malfoy?" Loewe asked, looking frightened but determined. He had already shown his innate cowardly nature but had also proved to be susceptible to the strongest emotion in the room. Lucius graced him with a nod of approval.
"We crush them!" Yaxley crowed, "Like we crush anyone who thinks they can take a hit at Slytherin and live to tell the tale!"
Be more generous with your affections, his father told him, show your subordinates you care. Lucius placed a comradely hand on Yaxley's shoulder, nodding seriously. "We absolutely will. And restore the good name of Slytheri-"
Rosier interrupted by slamming a crudely drawn map of the castle on the bed between them. "The Gryffindors have Herbology on Tuesday mornings with the Hufflepuffs. If we intercept the Prewett twins between here and the Greenhouses," His finger tapped two locations and Lucius had to admit that the shapes did almost resemble the Herbology Greenhouses. Rosier tapped another area that had been circled in green ink.
"And lure them here, we can attack without anyone seeing us. I know Yaxley knows the tripping jinx and I've been practicing the cutting hex. If you or Lowe can practice either a silencing charm, no one will-"
"What is wrong with you?" Lucius broke out. Loewe was looking at the map in horrified fascination while Yaxley was considering it with the slow dawning of pleasure. Lucius felt the control of their small group slipping through his fingers.
"You said this was war," Rosier said, without any of the defensive anger Lucius had hoped to see.
"A prank war!" Lucious exclaimed, "We're not trying to kill them. Merlin, Rosier, are you insane?" He couldn't articulate what horrified him about the simple tone or the pre-meditated violence. But the sight of those small fingers tapping on the parchment filled him with a horror he didn't want to consider.
Loewe snickered, breaking the tension and re-establishing Lucius' role at the head of the pack. "Yeah, Rosier. What were you thinking?"
Rosier just stared at Malfoy for one long moment, then shrugged and rolled up his map. "Alright."
. . . . . . .
They decided on dung bombs. Loewe promised that his older cousin could send him a box from Hogsmeade. They practiced all the nastiest jinxes they could think of: itching hexes, tripping jinx, stinging charms.
By the next week, they were ready and hunkered down behind a pair of gargoyles in the hallway just outside the Charms corridor right before the Gryffindor's class let out. They each clutched a dung bomb in delirious glee at their cunning. The plan was simple. They would throw the bombs and, in the resulting confusion, cast as many jinxes into the smoke as possible before running away.
But, when the Prewett twins rounded the corridor they were not alone as Malfoy had predicted. Instead, they were accompanied by two other boys. Malfoy froze- knowing that they were sure to be discovered in just a few steps, knowing that he was not ready to take on such even odds, knowing the others were looking to him for leadership. He swallowed with a dry throat and then, amazingly Rosier stood and let the dung bomb fly with ferocious accuracy. It smacked against Gideon's nose and they all heard the wet crack as the nose broke before the bomb exploded into a malodorous haze.
Lucius was suddenly on his feet, flinging first the bomb and then stinging hex after stinging hex into the smoke with utter abandon. The other Slytherins joined in with a roar and soon the hallway was filled with the bright bolts of spells and the war cries of first years.
When the dust cleared and Lucius lowered his shaky wand, he realized to his shame that the target he'd been firing at in the confusion was actually the statue on the other side of the hall rather than an opponent. He glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed and then saw Rosier standing over the four prone bodies of the Gryffindors with an annoyed look on his face. His cheeks were peppered with welts from the shining hexes but the four boys on the ground looked worse.
He toed Fabian's head and then glanced over at Lucius, "This is dumb." He announced and could say no more as a swarm of prefects descended upon them.
II.
At fourteen, Lucius Malfoy had learned that surprise was the best ingredient for agreement. An advertisement was slammed on the table between the three boys with Malfoy's hand splayed across the animation of a wizard wielding a wand as a rapier. Two of the boys jumped. Evan ignored the dramatic gesture.
"Yaxley," He said, "Loewe, Rosier- listen. We are going to learn how to fight!"
Rosier looked up from his stolen notes with interest, going so far as to put the papers to the side and lean forward to study the parchment. Lucius preened under the attention.
"Today, Professor Flitwick, the new Charms Professor? He announced that he was going to begin a dueling club at Hogwarts. Apparently, he was a professional dueler in the continent before Dumbledore snagged him," Lucius said with grudging admiration. He was loath to admit that any generation before him was worthy of notice, but Dumbledore, in particular, galled him.
"What's the point?" Yaxley asked. The dark-featured boy was beginning to cotton onto the fact that after graduating he was expected to do nothing more strenuous than marrying a pureblood witch of an excellent pedigree and sire as many children as he could. With his life goal so defined, all other interests were beginning to fade.
"The point?" Lucius asked, "The point, Yaxley, is that dueling is an integral part of every young wizard's education. It is the pinnacle of martial development, a shining tradition passed down throughout generations. Wizards through history have engaged in this deadly art of magic to determine the best and the brightest."
At the end of his performance, Loewe was convinced, Yaxley was annoyed and Rosier was studying the paper intently.
"We'll be able to fight people?" He asked, tracing the promise of a school-wide tournament at the end of the initial training period, "Really fight?
"Of course," Lucius said flippantly, "It's dueling."
. . . . . .
They didn't learn how to fight during their first class or their second. Instead, they learned the history of the sport, learned the rules, learned how to bow before an opponent and how to yeild. Lucius had worried that Rosier would try to quit, but the boy had patiently shown up to each class with the material painstakingly memorized and practiced until he was almost as fluid as the seventh years.
When they finally were able to take the stage themselves with orders to limit themselves to shields and bludgeoning spells, Lucius found himself sweating after winning about against the little Alice Fawley. But when he saw that Loewe barely held his own against a Hufflepuff and Yaxley dueled Gideon Prewett to a tie, he felt he had shown himself well. After all, this was the first time any of them had raised a wand against another wizard outside of simple pranks and classwork.
It was natural to feel nervous, Lucius justified. After all, look at Rosier. He was the most enthusiastic about this club and even his hands were shaking as he stepped up onto the platform.
. . . . . . . .
"And that is Branson down. Branson down- the match goes to Rosier. Again."
Perhaps it had been a mistake, Professor Flitwick mused, to allow a student announcer for the dueling matches. There was a tendency towards flippancy rather than neutrality and to garner resentment for certain students. He watched as most of the students gathered around the fallen Gryffindor, helping him up and commiserating with his loss. No one gathered around Rosier when he glanced around for another competitor and then, with a shrug, hopped off the elevated stage.
It had been an insultingly short match, Flitwick allowed. They had barely finished their bows before Rosier had cast the first spell which had blasted the older boy off the platform and into defeat. Not very sportsmanlike, but not technically against the rules. Still, it was hardly in the spirit of the Dueling Ethics and offered little by way of training or education. Mind made up, Flitwick beckoned the Slytherin over.
"Rosier, tell me, what do you think is the purpose of this training?" He asked.
Rosier's response was prompt and just on the edge of condescending, "To fight."
"Perhaps, but not quite. Yes, we are teaching you to spar- but to simply consider this competition no better than a common brawl, would be to miss out on the true beauty of the art! Dueling allows you to express the eloquence of your soul in the intricate dance of parry and attacks and defenses!" Professor Flitwick said.
"I thought the point was to win," Rosier said flatly.
Then, because Professor Flitwick was a very good teacher, he allowed that this was true. "But perhaps you might think of the duels as a training exercise," He squeaked, "Give yourself limitations that you might find in the real world. A hurt arm for instance or an uncertain terrain."
The auburn-haired boy seemed to mull this over in his mind for a moment and then nodded. "Alright. What's the penalty for next week."
"A two-second delay between spells," Flitwick responded promptly. "Imagine that you had already been fighting for twenty minutes and it took effort for the next spell to fully charge."
That, he hoped, should give the other students a fighting chance.
. . . . . . .
There were times when Lucius wished he had the skill to strangle his dorm mate and shake some sense into him. Hearing that Evan had, at the very last minute, forfeited his final fight for the position of Dueling Champion of Hogwarts was one of those times. It had seemed inevitable at the time. Rosier had faced few, real challengers outside of his house. This final tournament was the moment when he could have shined, could have attracted international notice, especially since he had promised Malfoy he'd do away with his silly, self-imposed rules.
"Yes, yes, yes, I know you think it's dumb," Malfoy interrupted before Rosier could utter his favorite catchphrase, "But Evan, think about all the places you could have gone. The famous dueling halls of Prague, the famous battle arenas of Byzantine- you could have made an international name for yourself! Been invited to the palaces of kings and the dinners of prime ministers."
And you could have taken me with you, Lucius thought sourly for, despite their deep-seated ideological differences, he still considered Rosier a friend. Also, no one else in their group was likely to end up in a position of furthering Lucius's political ambitions. Not when Loewe was having to do remedial Charms work and Yaxley had already started drinking himself into an early grave.
But Evan's only response was a jaw creaking yawn and to push himself up off the couch where he had been restlessly sprawled. "If I wanted to have stuffy overpriced dinners, I'd go visit my old man more often."
"But-" Malfoy started, knowing that it was impossible, knowing that protesting would only cause the contrarian, infuriating boy to dig his heels in further, "You let Gideon Prewett win. Prewett! You know they are our greatest enemies!"
All the amusement vanished from Rosier's face in an instant. "Nimune's sake, Malfoy. Grow the hell up. Enemies? Fighting? War! You wouldn't know a real war if it hexed the nose off your face."
He spun on his heel and started towards the common room door. Malfoy was on his feet too- furious at the boy, furious at his casual dismissal of everything exciting in their lives, conscious that every eye in the common room was on their fight. "Where do you think you are going, Evan?"
"Somewhere that doesn't reek of irrelevant adolescence." There was something wild in the boy's eyes and Malfoy found that whatever clever retort he'd been preparing had died on his suddenly dry tongue. Luckily, Loews hadn't seen the same look.
"Oh, I don't know," Loewes sniggered over the essay he was finishing. "The Ravenclaw dorms reek of something adolescence." Lucius let out a small huff, grateful for Loewe's tactless taunts, gleeful to watch Evan freeze in his rage.
With those reflexes that had almost won him the school title, Rosier reached over and bounced- there was no other word for it- Lowes head off the edge of the table. The boy's nose broke with a wet pop and blood stained his parchment.
With everyone's attention directed to the screaming sixth year, it was probable that only Lucius heard Rosier's last mutter before ambling out of the dorm.
"You are all so dumb."
A/N: Set in the Maurader Era, based on an RP from another site.