Thanks to ShadyBlazin for his OC, Marius Rosier!
The next day, when Finn wakes up, there's a boy sat on the edge of a bed — Finn realises it was empty last night, and presumably is owned by this boy — and there's two other boys, both of whom Finn saw at the feast. The three boys are chatting eagerly.
"Still can't believe—"
"Insane—"
"Wicked!"
"Always had a flair for dramatics." The new kid replies, smiling slightly.
"You flew here on a freaking Thunderbolt!"
Finn registers the name — The Thunderbolt was a new brand of broom, since the Firestorm brand, which was a follow-on series from the Firebolt — and sits up slowly.
"Huh?" He asks sleepily. The new boy looks over at him.
"'Morning." He chuckles. "McGonagall only stopped nagging me for coming here on a broom at about three in the morning."
Finn smiles dryly. "Good job talking your way out of being expelled."
"Thanks." The kid laughs in reply, and the other two meander off, sensing they're unwanted. "My name's Xavier."
"Odd name." Finn remarks. "I'm Finn — Finn Jones."
"Touché, then." Xavier smirks. "My last name's Phentermine. All my family have wacky names. My brother, Ascethe, he's in his second year now. He's a prat, though. Thoroughly kisses ass where he can and obeys the rules to a whole. Prefect in the making, I daresay."
Finn grins. "What time is it?" He asks, lazily checking his watch. He yelps a curse. "Breakfast started five minutes ago!"
Xavier bolts out of bed without another word. Finn calls after him. "Oi, you haven't gotten your robes on."
Even as he finishes pulling his own robes on, Xavier comes back in. "Hellfire, nearly forgot." He says irritably as he squirms into his robes. They bolt out of the door.
Finn, Xavier and Emily all enjoy their first week. Finn and Xavier excel in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Potions and Charms (Though Xavier suffers slightly worse marks in Transfiguration and Charms, and Emily isn't the best in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Finn is brilliant in them all.)
Xavier is snoring slightly, mouth agape, drooling on his parchment which he had been doodling aimlessly on. Finn sits beside him, smiling wryly. He himself was only keeping himself awake because... He didn't really know.
They were in History of Magic. Professor Binns, the teacher, was a ghost. Apparently he was around when Harry Potter went to school (Though, thinking about it, so were many other teachers). Finn kicks Xavier in the leg and the latter looks up.
"Git." He mutters. "I was having a wonderful dream. In it, I never had to do History of Magic again. It was proper realistic too."
Finn snorts. "Look, I'm bored, when class is over, we get a free period. I wanna talk about what we can do — Whether it's pissing Filch off, helping Peeves cause havoc or something else."
Argus Filch, the caretaker, had recently found his cat dead from old age. Mad with grief, he had taken to patrolling the corridors, handing out punishments for being loud, or smiling too much.
"Hmm... Albus Potter has an Invisibility Cloak."
"How do you know?" Finn frowns.
"Harry Potter did, and James Potter apparently lost it in Hogwarts. But I've seen the Malfoy kid and Potter vanishing underneath a cloak before, while spying on them."
"Why do you spy on them?" Finn asks curiously. Xavier shrugs.
"So, you game?" He asks, avoiding Finn's question.
"For what?"
"Stealing an Invisibility Cloak."
They spent the rest of class talking about it. Binns never notices if his class is babbling excitedly or all snoring on their desks, and everyone else was either asleep or gazing blankly into space, so it was excellent cover. They knew the risk was high — If the Potter and Malfoy double act saw them, they were finished. If Filch found them stealing from fellow students, they were finished — same with Professor McGonagall, or any teacher, for that matter. Hell, even if Alohomora didn't work on Albus Potter's trunk, they could potentially be finished. But the idea of an Invisibility Cloak was alluring to Xavier. Less so to Finn, but he still liked the idea. When they were finally able to leave History of Magic, their plan was perfect.
First step was to wait outside the Slytherin common room. Xavier knew where it was, though Finn didn't. They waited patiently. Then saw them. This was the next part of the plan. Finn and Xavier raised their wands, and in synchrony, muttered, "Stupefy!"
Twin jets of red light flash and Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy are blasted backwards.
"Wicked!" Finn snickers, bolting forward to grab the trunk.
"Alohomora!"
Nothing happened.
"Crap." Finn says after a pause. Xavier sighs and steps forward.
"Back up, Finn." He says. "Confringo!" The lock explodes and the case opens. Finn and Xavier root through it, but to their dismay, don't find the cloak. After a moment, they look up. Then they hear footsteps, one person, hurrying towards them from behind the corner. Finn's eyes widen and he runs to the wall. "Mudblood! Pure-blood! Uh... Salazar! No? Uh.. Crap.. Tom Riddle! Basilisk!"
At that, the wall slowly opens. He blinks.
"Really..?" He mutters, then hurries in. Xavier follows. The doorway closes behind them — a second later, they hear a yell at finding two apparently unconscious bodies. Finn and Xavier head into the boy's dorms to explore beneath the beds of Scorpius and Albus. Under Scorpius' bed, Finn finds nothing. Xavier calls to Finn, "Got it!" from underneath the bed of Albus Potter. Finn scurries over. It had been hidden behind a loose brick that slotted in perfectly. Xavier studies the silvery cloak with awe, then freezes as Potter and Malfoy start to come in.
Reacting swiftly, Xavier throws the Cloak over himself and Finn just as the other two come in. They're talking — the words make no sense, static to Finn's panicked ears. Albus dives under his bed and gives a shout. Then Finn jabs Xavier on the arm and jerks his head. They run, straight out of the dorm, straight for the wall, which opens again to let them out. They run past a Slytherin first-year with silver eyes and black, strangely spiky hair, but they don't stop running until they get into Gryffindor tower, then, panting, they start giggling, unable to stop.
"That was bloody brilliant!" Xavier says. "If you hadn't guessed the password..."
"Yeah... But they heard my name."
"How?"
"You said 'Back up, Finn.'."
"Hell."
"Indeed. ...If you take it, hide it somewhere.. We can wait a while before we retrieve it. We'll have to spend a bit of time away from each other so they don't associate us together and decide you were in on it."
Xavier thinks. "It's a good plan." He decides, but sounds reluctant.
"So what don't you like about it?"
"There's no other Finns here. You'd be held solely responsible."
"Hold on..." Finn mutters, raising his wand and murmuring an incantation. "...Nobody's been here in the last hour. Say you were playing chess with me as an alibi. With any luck they'll think they heard wrong."
Xavier frowns doubtfully. "Both of them?"
"Got any better ideas?"
"Fair point. Alright.. Any ideas where to hide the Cloak?"
Finn thinks. "No." He admits.
"Good job I have one." Xavier sighs.
There was a secret passageway, leading from the statue of a hump-backed witch straight into Honeydukes sweet shop's cellar. It had caved in a few years back, but the rubble, Xavier and Finn found, was perfect for hiding the cloak. They were just squeezing out of the statue when they heard Filch's rasping breathing as he stormed down the corridor. They bolt, and only just miss being found.
"That was close..." Finn mutters. Xavier nods.
"We should leave it there for the holidays. Maybe get it in our second year — Malfoy and Potter will have graduated by then."
"That's safest." Finn agrees.
Over the next week, Finn notices the silver-eyed boy spending a lot of time talking to David. They had seemingly become good friends with each other. Finn was glad — He still felt guilty about having to abandon David as a friend.
Thoughts of David and the boy escape him as he realises there's cracking noises ominously emanating from his bag.
He remembers putting the box, with the egg, into it.
Quickly, he makes his excuses — "I feel a bit ill, I'll see you later.." — and bolts, entering the first bathroom he finds, despite it being a girl's — it'd be guaranteed more privacy than the common room.
He shrugs the bag off and pulls out the box, which he has to drop because it's so hot. Suddenly, a voice, from behind him—
"This is a girl's bathroom, you know."
He turns his head so fast he thought he'd snap his neck. There's a ghost floating there, a pale girl who looked thoroughly miserable. He had heard the stories of who she was and knew she was Moaning Myrtle.
"Over the last few decades, more boys have been coming in here... Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Albus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy, and now... You."
He was pretty sure this was practically cheerful for her. "Uh.. Yeah. You must be Myrtle."
"How do you know?" She demands, firing up, suddenly aggressive with tears in her eyes. "Have people been talking about me behind my back? Gossiping? Of course they have, don't lie! Who would care for the feelings of a ghost? Who cares about miserable, moping, Moaning Myrtle?"
With a shriek, she plunges into a toilet. After several stunned seconds of silence, Finn looks back down at the box.
The cracking sounds have stopped. Smoke billows from a hole that was burned through the supposedly unburnable box. A dragon is forming out of the smoke, tiny but floating. Not that it had a choice — As smoke, it couldn't exactly land on the ground. It snakes around his wrist, somehow managing to touch him — immediately, he decides this species would be named Smokesnare. And he names the individual Zero, after a character in a book he once read.
When he got back to Gryffindor tower, Xavier and Emily were sitting in the common room.
"Where the hell were you?" Snaps Xavier. Then he blinks in surprise. "And what's that?"
Zero was flitting around Finn's head happily. Occasionally, he — Finn didn't know Zero's gender at first and had spent half an hour perfecting a spell to tell the gender of an animal — spat a burst of fire, narrowly missing lighting Finn's hair.
"I'll tell you now." Finn says, sitting down. "I have a lot to talk about."
When Finn was finished, Xavier stares in disbelief.
"Let me get this straight — You brought an illegal dragon hybrid egg into the school, the egg breaching the Ban on Experimental Breeding, and have carried it everywhere with you for the last two weeks?"
"Yes." Finn says evenly.
Emily looks on the verge of exasperated tears.
Xavier thinks for a moment, then says, "Wicked."
Yet another week passes. Zero shows signs of large intelligence and the ability to obey commands, as well as magical power — A Slytherin tried to hex Finn as he was walking past and Zero flew into the hex's path, sending it flying back with interest. This power gave Finn some ideas. He was thinking about it in the common room, then decidedly headed to the Owlery.
Once there, he writes out a quickly-scribbled letter, encloses about two dozen Galleons and had just sent it with his owl when Xavier taps him on the shoulder. Finn jumps and Zero spits fire at Xavier — Zero was now a foot and a half long, but hadn't grown for several days, which seemed to indicate his growth had already stopped, as he was growing every day at first. (He was also about two to four inches thick at an estimate — Finn hadn't measured him.) Xavier ducks under the jet of fire.
"What're you buying?" He asks interestedly.
"Wand cores."
"Why?"
"None of your business." He chuckles. "I'll show you if my idea works."
The next day, Xavier drags Finn to the noticeboard.
"Look!" He says to a bemused, half-asleep (Xavier had woken him up) Finn, waving his wand around under Finn's nose at the board. "They're setting up a duelling club!"
The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Mortis Nightshade, was hosting the duelling club, which would take place...
"Two days! It's in two days!" Xavier exclaimed.
Finn grins. "We'd better practice some stuff. I've mastered Expelliarmus, Protego, Rictusempra, Petrificus Totalus, Stupefy—"
"Please," Begs Xavier, "I can't even do a Shield Charm properly under pressure."
The day before the club's debut, Finn got an owl. Xavier barely saw him come down from Gryffindor tower for the rest of the day.
Then it was time.
Emily, Xavier and Finn head into the large, unused room that had been prepared for the club.
There were five long podiums stretching at least fifteen feet long. The entire school was crammed to one side, and Professor Nightshade stood at the far end.
"Quieten down." He calls out, and the chatter that had been all around died immediately.
"I will choose five pairs a time. Each pair will choose a platform to practice on at my command, and only at my command."
"Xavier Phentermine and Emily Blake."
"Finn Jones and Marius Rosier."
"Alfie Nadi and Nate Hudson."
"Rena Hyle and Schi Tyk."
"What sort of name is Schi Tyk?" Mutters somebody in the crowd of students,
"And Hailey Marksband and Jenny Jazi."
One by one, people mounted the podiums. Finn realises, to his horror, he was paired with the Slytherin who had found Malfoy and Potter Stupefied, and revived them. The boy with the black spiky hair, and silver eyes. Since they only ran past him under the Cloak, however, he doesn't recognise Finn.
"Now," Says Nightshade, "I want you all to practice disarming. Expelliarmus is the incantation. Decide who practices first."
Marius wanders forward. "You wanna practice on me? I've done a lot of disarming."
"So have I. Let's just watch everyone."
Marius nods, and they watch until Nightshade calls out, "Now, duel for real. First, you take your wand, and you bow to your opponent." Finn withdraws his wand, and bows. Marius mirrors the motion. "You can use any hex, jinx or charm you see fit." Nightshade continues. "One... Two... Three."
Bangs filled the room. Finn is only aware of Marius and does all he can to beat him.
"Stupefy—"
Marius swipes his wand and the spell is repelled.
"Rictusempra!"
Finn raises his wand and repels it with a Shield charm, before sending a Blinding Jinx — of his own invention — at Marius.
"Protego! Caecia!"
Marius stumbles around blindly, looking like he can see but having immensely dilated pupils. Soon he manages to counter it, and he aims his wand at Finn but—
"Incarcerous!"
Rope spews from Finn's wand and binds Rosier's legs tightly. He drops, rolls onto his back.
"Relashio!" He cries, and scrambles to his feet just in time for—
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Rosier drops, the curse impossible to lift. Finn walks over, mutters the counter-curse and helps Rosier to his feet.
"Nice duelling."
"You too." Marius smiles. "I must admit, I did my best to win there. You're a good dueller." And he walks off.
Finn hops off his podium. They were second last to finish. He watches Xavier and Emily. Spells fly and collide and whirl as they dance brutally around each other, each trying desperately to win. Finn was impressed — Emily was usually not too good at spells of defence, but suddenly a Shield Charm throws Xavier off-balance and Emily flicks her wand, sending Xavier flying backwards. Finn and several others, Marius Rosier among them, applaud, deeply impressed by both parties' efforts.
Finn watched the rest of the duels interestedly, but none were as spectacular as Emily and Xavier.
Everybody is talking excitedly in Gryffindor tower, mostly about Xavier and Emily, but Finn hears occasional notes of his duel, too.
Eventually, everybody, tired of talking and commending the three friends, trickles into their dorms. Soon, only Emily, Xavier and Finn are left. The former heads into the female dorms. The latter two head into the male dorms.
Five minutes after lying down, Finn was fast asleep.
Hope y'all enjoyed this! Yes, I said Albus and Scorpius wouldn't do much in this story, that still holds true. This story's heroes are Emily, Xavier and Finn. Our enemies are assorted and will pop up over time — this needs plot twists to stay exciting — but for now, I'm logging off. Adios, amigos!