...
December's arrival brought about a change of weather to the castle, one Rodrick found himself enjoying. The land surrounding Hogwarts had taken on an icy outlook, reducing the temperature drastically. A fact most of the students seemed to be bothered by, he'd found himself enjoying it.
It reminded him of London.
He'd woken up from a dreamless sleep into a noisy dorm; With the others filled with a tad, read far, more enthusiasm and excitement than usual. Why this was the case, however, he would never understand.
Blaise had told him it was due to the Quidditch season starting, yet he still couldn't understand the fuss.
The game itself made about as much sense as one of Binn's history lessons.
Sure, he got the whole fuss about the sport been fun, provided one enjoyed the sort of thing. But the rules themselves, at least the ones for the castle specifically, didn't make any sense to him.
First of all, the fact the scoring system itself was abysmal.
The chasers of each team, arguably the ones who did most of the work, very rarely got the reward deserved for it. Every ball they successfully threw through the unbelievable, difficult targets, whilst dodging bludgers left and right, as well as having to outmaneuver the resident keeper- the one whose job quite literally amounted to making their attempts even harder, were worth ten measly points.
Meanwhile, the beaters had one simple job when compared to them; block as many hits meant for the others as they could, without any kind of punishment in terms of points for failure, as well as harass the enemy team. And really, it didn't take a genius to see the kind of effect that would probably result from conditioning someone to, quite frankly, hurt their fellow students in the name of fun.
Had that been all that there was to the game, it... Aside from the guaranteed lawsuits and whatnot that were bound to come up- provided there was a time-constraint would've made for an admittedly fair game. Given all of the participants were in fact students of similar abilities.
Yet, unfortunately, that wasn't the case, given the existence of the seeker. The one whose sole job essentially amounted to avoiding the rest of the game, whilst attempting to make the efforts of the others practically worthless given the sheer number of points awarded for catching the golden snitch. Whose existence essentially controlled the very flow of the game- Given it didn't end until one caught the snitch. Which, by the way, only the seeker could do.
Now he wasn't the most sportive of people, but even he knew that putting so much on the shoulders of a single player wasn't the best thing to make a student go through.
That and the fact it more or less made the position itself almost political in how much importance and reverence was given to it.
In essence, the game was more or less a match between two people, with the others amounting to extras in a muggle movie. And just like any extra, no one really cared all that much about them, when compared to the keeper, let alone the seeker.
Sure, if the chasers scored enough points, they could technically ignore the entire concept of the snitch, but as mentioned above, with the teams more or less having similar levels of talent; that been that of a student, it essentially made the game about the seekers themselves.
Unless, you know, the keeper had a perfect match, the chasers scored every shot they threw, and the opposing seeker failed to capture the snitch in time.
Which, once again, was grounds for creating a negative atmosphere for the losing team. Which would, overall, no doubt affect the teams' academic performances, as well as the rest of their house's morale.
And that was only made worse when taking the already existing house rivalries into account.
Not that the houses were in the best of terms, to begin with.
And that wasn't even taking in the fact that the teams didn't even start on an equal footing given every player had the option of bringing in their own brooms.
The games boiled down to an insane amount of luck, most of the team's efforts going ignored in favor of one player, followed by the whole 'wealth equals advantage' ideology.
It really didn't paint a good picture.
Despite that, practically everyone was in love with it.
It was frankly insane.
...
He made his way down into the common room alone; Blaise had already disappeared, no doubt to join in on the excitement of the coming game with everyone else. Rodrick, in turn, settled himself down onto one of the empty sofas.
He was currently reading through his Herbology book, his weakest subject, mostly due to a lack of practice. And while he found the subject itself utterly dull to learn about it, he still saw it's importance, particularly for a Slytherin given it linked quite well with Potions.
He had wanted to speak with his professor about the subject but hadn't seemed able to find him recently, or find any time with him in any case.
The professor had been more agitated than usual recently.
Probably due to Harry Potter.
"Rodrick!" called out a female voice, Turning his attention away from the book, he looked up meeting two green eyes greeting him with a smile.
"Morning Daphne,"
The girl took a seat on the opposite sofa, while Rodrick made to look around; searching for Tracey who was nowhere in sight.
He questioned Daphne but only received a frown in return.
"She's been too focused on Quidditch recently," huffed the girl.
Rodrick sighed before mentioning Blaise being the same.
The two quickly settled into a small silence before Daphne made her way over to his side of the sofa, taking a seat by him. Her head practically inches away from his shoulder, somewhat too close for his liking, reading the book in his hands.
"I can get you a copy if you want?" Rodrick stammered quickly.
Daphne raised an eyebrow before nodding slowly as she moved away.
Rodrick could've sworn he saw a frown on her face.
Noticing that, he quickly changed his mind and brought the book closer to her.
She shook her head the slightest, a smile on her face as she rolled her eyes, and promptly made to get her own.
'If grandfather sees me like this he will either laugh himself to death or finally die out of embarrassment,'
...
On his way back from the library, he'd bumped into Harry Potter; The boy eyed him cautiously before Rodrick shrugged and made to move past him, uncomfortable at the stare he'd received.
Before he could leave, however, the other promptly spoke up.
"Have you seen Hermione?"
He raised a single eyebrow at the question. "Why?"
Harry potter's frown made itself more pronounced.
"She hasn't been to the common room all day,"
"Oh? I wonder why." He stated, not intending the words as sarcastically as the other seemed to take it.
"Is she in the library?"
"I am surprised you know the castle has one,"
"..." Harry Potter's frown refused to budge, even as he refused to rise to the bait. "She needs to come to the common room, Professor McGonagall called for all of the Gryffindor's in our year."
"And here I thought you were worried about her,"
Harry Potter, to his surprise, chose not to reply. Instead electing to sigh and walk past him.
"Oi Potter," he called out, earning the frowning boy's attention.
Maybe he ought to change his nickname to the Boy-Who-Frowned?
"What?"
"She's in the Great Hall."
"I checked-"
"Ravenclaw's table." Trying to find a group she could publically be friends with, went unsaid.
Not that he himself had a problem with the idea. If the girl was brave enough to show up at the Slytherin table, he was more than willing to acknowledge her as a friend; even if she probably wouldn't believe it.
He certainly wouldn't if he was in her shoes.
Harry Potter blinked in response, a questioning look to his face before he settled for nodding his head the slightest as he turned around and made to walk back the way he came.
"No, thank you?" He almost couldn't help himself, his words stopping the other on his tracks as he turned his gaze back towards him. "Not that I am sur-"
"Thank you," Harry Potter remarked easily as he continued on his way, a surprised Rodrick in his wake.
...
The next morning was the long-awaited game between Slytherin and Gryffindor.
Rodrick, of course, immediately made plans to avoid the whole spectacle.
Instead, he made his way into the great hall to have his breakfast; only to immediately notice some of his friends arguing at the table trying to decide where they would be watching the game from, with Daphne trying to act as the buffer between Blaise and Tracey.
Neither of them, however, seemed to take her seriously.
They turned their heads towards him when they saw him arrive and proceeded to bombard him with questions.
When he mentioned his plans to avoid the entire thing, Tracey's mouth hit the floor, Blaise's frown was quite humourous. While Daphne was filled with amusement.
He told them his plans for studying and asked whether they wanted to join. Blaise and Tracey quickly shut down the thought, as predicted. Daphne on the other hand was hesitant before she agreed to join him later.
The look of betrayal on Tracey's face was positively dangerous.
After stressing the importance of keeping up their studies, however, she seemed a bit less likely to murder him in his sleep.
Just a bit.
He briefly considered sleeping under a Disillusionment Charm.
He spent the rest of that morning talking to Blaise about homework much to the boy's displeasure, though he hadn't even started half of it, so he couldn't very well complain.
The hours passed by quickly, with Rodrick finding himself spending most of the afternoon in the library trying to learn history, only to eventually start contemplating whether a muggle school would've been the better option. Not that his grandfather would agree of course, but he doubted the man would've been able to really do anything about it...
Right?
Either way when he'd first heard about the history lesson he'd been excited. He had admittedly wanted to learn about dark wizards and their stories.
One may even say it came from a family-oriented interest.
It wasn't exactly a cheerful subject but by the gods was it interesting.
The different methods various wizards and witches used to try and achieve their plans were broad in range.
The way they failed, even broader.
It ranged from stupid to genius to priceless, sometimes in that order, with Voldemort been an excellent example of the latter.
Honestly.
Imagine coming to the conclusion that the best way to get rid of a baby was the Killing Curse, only for said baby to not only survive it, but outright end your career as a dark lord.
As far as endings go, that was admittedly top of the list of utterly random failures.
He couldn't imagine been both, a genuine threat to an entire country, yet evidently having a fatal weakness to newborn babies.
Unfortunately, however, his current assignment was about one goblin war or the other. Frankly, he was having trouble trying to find the bloody year it occurred in.
He'd spent almost an hour whisking through several books trying to find the goblin name Binns had mentioned before it dawned on him that Binns might have made a mistake himself.
He had done that often enough according to some of the older students.
Promptly giving up the arduous task, Rodrick made his way over towards the shelf of books to return the latest in line of useless packs of parchment only for the librarian to ask him what he'd been looking for.
When he mentioned said goblin name, she looked displeased, perhaps assuming she was being made fun of.
In response, he feigned finding what he was looking for before making his way back to his seat and opening up another textbook.
He would later find his friends in their common room looking defeated; With Daphne helpfully explaining the loss Slytherin received.
The depressing spell surrounding the two Quidditch fanatics he called friends admittedly lasted longer than he'd expected, though when it ended, they were all quickly piled into a conversation by the other first years discussing their plans for Christmas.
Having none, besides exploring the castle for most of it, Rodrick kept quiet on the matter. Idly listening as each of them complained about one thing or another regarding the families they were forced to visit for the coming holidays.
Well, barring Tracey at any rate.
Evidently, the girl was going to end up spending Christmas in the castle as well, her parents away on some kind of trip?
He really hadn't been paying too much attention.
Until they'd mentioned the holiday by name, he'd honestly thought they were still talking about the horrendous loss Harry potter had thrown at them by catching the Golden Snitch within the first five minutes of the game. Once again only prooving his point regarding the nonsensical magical sport.
Still, that aside, he idly wondered what the redhead was going to be like without Daphne around, given he'd practically never seen her without the other.
...
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