November 27th, 2005: First Year

"Taking a leaf out of your sister's book and torturing small innocent creatures now?"

Zuko pulled the reed out of his mouth. "What?"

"That noise!" Toph jabbed her finger into his face. "Sounds like you're killing something cute and furry."

He scowled at her, which she remained blithely oblivious to. "It's a clarinet."

"What did the clari-whatsit ever do to you?"

He sniffed irritably at her, brought it back up to his mouth and started to play again.

"That's it!" As soon as the first notes sounded, a book slammed down on one of the tables near the fireplace, and the seventh year boy who had done it was marching over, his face like a thunderstorm. "If I hear one more sound out of you, Lestrange, I'll put you in a full body bind and dump you outside the Slytherin common room."

Before Zuko could stop himself, he snarled, "Oh yeah? You and what army?"

"Do you actually like getting your butt kicked?" Toph asked, sounding impressed by the sheer depth of his stupidity.

That seemed to bring the seventh year out of whatever state of shock Zuko's words had induced. He jabbed his wand in Zuko's face, and he must have cast nonverbally, because Zuko toppled down onto the sofa, his body seizing up. The clarinet hit the wooden knob on the end of the sofa arm, letting out an ominous crack. "Just for that I'm going to hang a sign around your neck that says 'free to a good home.'"

"Point me," came the muttered incantation, just before a small form barreled into the back of the seventh year's legs, sending him stumbling. He caught himself against the wall with one arm, raising his wand with the other and pointing it at Toph.

"All right, that's enough." A seventh year girl with a prefect badge pinned to her robe shoved her arm between Toph and the other seventh year. "Reparo." With a wave of her wand, Zuko's clarinet mended itself, and with another wave, she released Zuko, who slumped bonelessly against the sofa. She pointed her wand back at Zuko and Toph. "You two, clear out."

They didn't wait to hear what she was going to say to the other seventh year. Zuko grabbed his clarinet, its case, his sheet music, and his notebook quill and ink, and bundled them up under one arm before tearing out of there with Toph on his heels.

"Come on, let's go to the cave behind the mirror," Toph said, once she had caught her breath. "Don't know why you didn't just go there in the first place."

"The clarinet's too loud."

"Yeah no kidding." She elbowed him gently. "Which is why you shouldn't have been playing it in the common room."

He sighed, pride still smarting. "No I mean I was worried about somebody hearing, following it to the cave."

"I'll teach you the silencing charm that goes with my read aloud charm." She rolled her eyes. "You could have just asked, you know."

"Sorry," he said, wondering if that's what normal people who understood this kind of thing did, ask their friends for help.

"So what were you playing, anyway?" she asked, because apparently that was something normal people did, ask what their friends were playing when they thought it sounded like dying animals.

"It's for Purim." He tried to shrug, but he had too much stuff under his arm to move it without losing his grip. "The Jewish holiday?"

"Never heard of it."

"Of course you haven't," he muttered.

"Hey, you haven't heard of most of the holidays my family celebrates either," she pointed out, trying to sound nonchalant.

He hmmed, since he didn't really want to get into what the orphanage was like all decorated for everyone's holidays, and Song cooking lucky New Year dumplings for everyone. "It's the feast of Ester, and she and her uncle saved the Jews of Persia when the Persian king's vizier wanted to kill all of them, so for Purim, we put on a play about it, and I can't be in it this year, because I'm at Hogwarts, but I've been helping out with the songs for a couple of years now, and they're letting me do them this year. Only they have to be really good, because..." He stopped. He didn't want to sound weird.

"Because it's your first time?" Toph didn't sound like she thought he was weird.

"Yeah." And because they were letting him write them as a favor. He didn't want them to be disappointed. "I want to get them done by the winter holiday, so I can take them in myself, and so they have lots of time to practice. And anyway, I just write the lyrics. We always use a band or a musical or something, and use those songs for the music. This time we're using Mulan, you know, like the Disney movie?"

"The what?"

"You know, Mulan, its-"

"I know who Mulan is!" she cut him off. "What the heck is a 'Disney movie?'"

"Oh," Zuko grinned. "Oh wow, you don't know what you've been missing."