7 April 1992

Adrian didn't find it very difficult to extract himself from his bed in the morning – a side effect of not trusting his dorm mates – but he did find it difficult to do many other things. His part of the dorm was a mess, no matter what he did, and he could never find anything. However, this specific day followed a sudden bout of efficiency. His school uniforms were sorted, and all his books were in order according to birth date of author. Therefore, he was able to leave his dorm within minutes of waking up, and avoid having to interact with his dorm mates.

His childhood and early Hogwarts friendship with the boys in his dorm had been short lived. After just over a year of him trying to not think about how much he did not agree with them about various subjects (but mainly Quidditch) their 'friendship' had ended in tears. His tears.

Bizarrely, it had ended as the result of their first ever game of Quidditch in an official Slytherin team capacity. They had been playing Ravenclaw, and (Adrian had to admit) they had been doing fantastically. The score had been 160-90 to Slytherin, and their seeker had been far more consistent than Ravenclaw's. He had been having the time of his life. He had scored several times, and had avoided being hit by a bludger by a whisker. Even though he should have been terrified by the fact that he had been very close to having a broken nose, the experience had been exhilarating. In the moments after this near miss, he had been happier than he had ever been at Hogwarts before.

Then, in a moment, this feeling had changed dramatically.

He and Montague had joined the team together, and they had both been incredibly happy to have passed the try-outs. It had been gruelling, and most of the other attempters had been sixth years. They had been told after, however, that the main reason that they had been chosen over the others was that they had longer to be trained up. Adrian appreciated the honesty.

Adrian was always scrupulous in following the rules. He had only ever fowled once, and that had been completely by accident. He did not want to break the rules. Breaking the rules took all the fun out of it. The fun of Quidditch was partially in the difficulty of it, and cheating removed almost all of this. He had always thought of his friends as agreeing with him on this fact. No matter their disagreements, he had always honestly thought that they cared about Quidditch as much as he did.

After the match, he had confronted Adrian about what he had done.

"You cheated!" he had yelled. "Why on earth did you cheat?"

Montague had snickered. "Cheating's only bad if you get caught."

"But why did you do it?" Adrian had asked again. "One of the main reasons that Quidditch is good is consistently applied rules and regulations. If the rules and regulations are not followed, then it's not fun at all."

"Well that's where we differ," Montague had whispered confidingly. "I have the most fun when I cheat and get away with it. You're a Slytherin. This is just how it works."

"So, when you said that the try-outs were the most fun that you had had in ages…"

"I don't think I followed a single rule, but I was discrete in it and I completely got away with it. Isn't it just nice sometimes to get away with something?"

"No," Adrian had said shortly. "I don't think it is when it's something as important as Quidditch."

Then he had walked away, wiping his eyes furiously as soon as he knew that they couldn't see him. He had thought he had known them. They had all learned Quidditch together back in the day, but suddenly all those memories of such happiness in his childhood had been reframed. Had they been following the rules then?

From that day on, he had been cordial. He didn't see much point in being any more than that. They had all tried to talk to him.

"You can't expect us to follow your stupid rules," Warrington had told him. "You can't control other people's actions."

"They're not my rules," Adrian had said in response. "I honestly don't really care about what else you do, but when it comes to Quidditch, you have to follow the rules. That's how Quidditch works."

He hadn't exactly expected good consequences for his own actions. He had openly stated that he disagreed with the actions of another person in his dorm. Slytherins believed strongly in house unity, but only really in a way to exclude others. Usually, they grouped together to see if they could bother Gryffindors. They generally left the other houses alone. Adrian had heard other people in his house fail to recall the names of the other houses. He of course was aware of the fact they houses were Ravenclaw and Pufflehuff, but others in his house seemed to be willingly unaware of this fact. From essentially that day on, the entire house ignored him. They tolerated him for the purposes of Quidditch, as he was a fairly good chaser, but his presence was seldom acknowledged.

None of them had cried like he had. He wondered whether they knew how.

Everyone sat down and Professor Sprout felt the need to make an announcement. In the intervening week, she had received good news, and had been able to solve a problem.

"Alright everyone," she said, once they were ready to get started. "I have an announcement. After last week, when some of you talked about how muggle schools have a specific department to enable the school to support students, I got an idea to set up something similar here. I find it baffling that there hasn't been one up to this point."

Addie and Cho exchanged a grin.

"Oh, I am so glad that you decided to try and set something up," Addie said enthusiastically. "Maybe my aunt will be less worried about me embarrassing her when she has somewhere for me to send her letters."

"Wait. Your aunt…." Adrian said confusedly.

"Oh yes," Addie responded, nonchalantly. "I completely understand why she might be worried about me being embarrassing. It seems to be all I do."

"Well," continued Professor Sprout, as she tried to process that, "this means that there will be an official address for any of your parents and guardians to correspond with, as well as an official title for me to use when communicating with them in turn. This means that I will be able to communicate with them about anything they need to be aware of."

"That sounds very sensible," Neville said appreciatively.

"I don't know how well my parents would react to being contacted about anything like that…" Adrian mused. "They like to say that things like that are muggle nonsense."

"Hopefully we will be able to figure out things like maybe communicating through your head of house, but for the moment, I don't quite know what to do about that."

"I suppose that's a good idea," Adrian admitted. "Now, what's the subject this week?"

"Well, by the end of the list I was selecting subjects at random, so I'm sorry if this is not quite what you expected. This week's subject is food."

"I do like food," Adrian admitted. "I don't think this will be particularly difficult to talk about."

"Oh, I do hope so," Professor Sprout said, wringing her hands and worrying about challenging them all too much.

"Well, as we have talked about before," Adrian began, "I am not a big fan of spicy food. That's why I like Hogwarts food quite a bit. It's all fairly basic, and nobody could ever accuse it of being spicy." Everyone nodded in agreement. Neville for his part, had the grace to try and not look like this was a point of disappointment for him. "Now, I'm not very picky about food. I used to be more so, though. It was only recently that I realised that broccoli isn't the most disgusting thing ever. That title goes to brussels sprouts."

"Yuck," Cho said passionately. "They taste like death."

"Agreed," said Addie and Neville simultaneously.

"Oh, but with a full Christmas dinner," defended Professor Sprout, "I am of the opinion that there is nothing better."

"I did enjoy the Christmas dinner this year," admitted Neville. "My gran never lets me eat as much as I like, so I enjoyed it."

"I'd actually never had Christmas dinner before coming to Hogwarts," Adrian said. "My parents claim that it's Dumbledore trying to inflict muggle Christian nonsense on our world. None of us are Christians but we only celebrate the feast days that were appropriated."

"That has always been slightly strange to me," said Cho. "My dad was a Christian, so we always celebrated it when I was little, even after he died, but I don't understand why we celebrate it here."

"We didn't when I attended," Professor Sprout mused. "I have no idea what changed. Now, Adrian, what else do you like?"

"I have always had a soft spot for blackberries. My grandmother and I used to go flying together into the woods near where I grew up, and we would pick as many blackberries as we could carry on our way home, and we would take them down to the kitchens and bake a pie. Our cook, Mrs Wright would let us have free reign of the kitchens and we would always eat so many that our mouths would turn purple."

"That's a lovely memory," said Professor Sprout, softly. "I remember your grandmother and she was a very lovely woman."

"Thank you," Adrian said thickly.

Adrian left the meeting feeling very…heard. He hadn't talked about his grandmother since she had died. His grandfather had forbidden it, which Adrian supposed he understood considering that he had loved her so much. Even talking about happy times they had had together seemed to make him feel sad.

The entire group left together and walked down the hall together as well.

"Anything much planned for later this afternoon?" Cho asked him, coming to walk beside him. "We were thinking about going down to the lake. It's starting to be less frosty and we might be able to see the Giant Squid."

"Erm, ok," Adrian agreed, and they all went down to the lake via the fastest route.

Cho selected a convenient fallen log, and they all sat and watched for the Giant Squid.

"I swear that Pamela is the most dramatic Squid that I've ever heard of," Adelaide suddenly said. "Apparently she used to ward off invaders, but nowadays she just does stunts because she knows that people are watching."

"Wait-" Adrian said.

"You can't be serious-" continued Neville.

"The Giant Squid's name is…Pamela?" Cho finished.

"Yes…" Adelaide said, as though it were obvious. "There's a book in the library on it. I flicked through it when I went to see if there was a book on ground sloths."

"Ground sloths?"

"Yes, there used to be ground sloths. Now they are all extinct and there are only tree sloths, which I suppose were able to survive because they were in trees."

"So you have an interest in animals now?" Adrian asked curiously. "I thought that history was your main thing."

"Oh, it is," Adelaide admitted, "but I find it interesting to learn about animals that aren't around anymore. Pamela and Hortense are fascinating to read about."

"Hortense?"

"Pamela's mate."

"Wait, there used to be two giant squid?" Cho asked confusedly. "How haven't I heard about this before?"

"Apparently the Giant Squid used to be native to these waters, but eventually the magical variety became extinct. For ages, the lake was empty, but it's an eco-system, and squid are an important part of it. Therefore, they decided 300 years ago to try and introduce two squid. They thought they were a male and a female: Horace and Pamela, but it was discovered after they failed to reproduce that Horace was in fact Hortense."

"And what happened?" Neville asked curiously. "Did they do a swap?"

"Well," Adelaide continued, "they tried to, and introduced a male squid. The male squid really gave it his all, but Pamela wasn't interested, so they got rid of him. Apparently, Pamela and Hortense were perfectly happy with each other, and didn't really care that they couldn't have children together."

"What happened to Hortense?" asked Adrian with a sinking feeling in his chest.

"Well apparently," Adelaide said, with dejection, "a stranger visited the castle in 1965, and shortly after, Hortense became ill and died." Adrian was upset to be correct. "Apparently, someone had cursed them both so that one would die if the other attempted any – ahem – 'homosexual activity', and Hortense died soon after."

Adrian found this extremely upsetting and proclaimed the perpetrator to be 'the lowest of the low'. "I just don't understand how their story could end so unfairly," he complained.

"I suppose there was probably someone who decided suddenly that it was a 'problem' and decided to do something about it."

"But why then?" Cho asked. "Why kill one of these beautiful creatures just because you're an intolerant monster?

Adrian hoped that they would maintain this energy when he told them all something one day. He really did.

They all left at the same time, and walked together for some time before moving on to their next classes. Adrian found himself falling into step beside Adelaide.

"Hello Adelaide," he said.

"Hello Adrian," she responded. After a moment, she continued. "You can call me Addie if you would like. Everyone else does."

"Addie doesn't really suit you, I will of course call you by it if you would like, but I'm sure that you will find one that suits you better."

"Fine," Adelaide said.

What? Adrian hadn't expected her to accept his perception of the unsuitability of her name so quickly. He had been rude, and he knew that if his parents had been present, he would have been made to apologise before being sent to stand in a corner. He had expected anger at his rudeness. He tried not to show his confusion, but she clearly felt the need to explain.

"I don't really feel that it suits me either," she admitted uncertainly. "Aunt Petunia started calling me it when I was younger, after she realised that she couldn't really call me 'girl', but now it just makes me feel as though I'm a toddler. I don't even know if my parents had a nickname for me. I assume they did – people don't typically give their children 18th century names anymore."

Adrian didn't know how to respond to this. He had never considered what it would be like to not have parents. He could not even imagine how it must have been for her growing up.

"This is where I must leave you all," he announced when they came to the library. "I have finished my homework early, so will be reading a rather fascinating book about the ethics of Quidditch."

They all waved him goodbye, before Adrian went into the library.

He wasn't really one to spend time in the library. It was always too loud and distracting for him to get any work done in if he was there by himself. Luckily, with the study group being part of his routine, he was able to manage his time when in the library more effectively, but today, he did not plan on studying. He did not plan on reading the book on Quidditch right away, either. It hadn't been a lie as he was going to get to the book as soon as he was ready, but he had his eye on a different bookshelf.

Since spending time in the library, he had noticed what could be a solution to his problem of not having music lessons. He had been approaching the problem as though he needed someone else to help him with it, but presumably someone would have had this problem before. People lived rurally and could not afford music lessons, but somehow managed to learn musical instruments regardless. It had suddenly come to him that of course people used books to learn how to play musical instruments. It stood to reason that if one could learn about transfiguration and charms and defence in part through books, then the same could be done with playing the saxophone.

He walked along the bookshelves looking for any hint of something that could help him to learn. He really didn't know what he was looking before – a sad side effect of only reading books on Quidditch was that when he had to read anything else, he didn't know where to start – and there wasn't exactly a list of books. He could of course ask Madam Pince about any potential books that she might know of. He logically knew that that was a way that he could quite easily find books. Adelaide's unwilling acquaintance Hermione Granger had been able to find books on pretty much anything she could possibly want to. Even after almost three years at Hogwarts, he didn't know the first thing about finding information, and it was embarrassing. He wasn't going to ask. He was going to see if he could brute force this issue until it worked out. Many things worked like this, especially Quidditch, and although it rarely served him well, it succeeded more often that it logically should as a solution.

As methodically as he could, he made his way along the shelves looking in any and every book that looked to be even slightly useful. Magic Music, The Art of Music, Saxophone for Astronomers and 1001 Tips to Understanding Chamber Music all yielded similar results. Nothing useful, and more questions than he knew what to do with. After an hour of searching in the seemingly endless assortment of books, he found himself no worse than he had started off, but no better either. It had been an entirely anticipated disaster. He did not know why he had expected so much of himself. He was a disaster of a person and moderately incompetent.

With his self esteem in shatters, he left the music section, and went back to the Quidditch section to get the book he had planned on getting in the first place. He had been overly optimistic as usual and had once again paid the price.


Hopefully you all enjoyed that one. I have got a bit written this week in between all the coursework I have been doing. I've also written another story that you might like if you liked this one (Thrice, I posted it here).