New Subject
The sound of metal on metal and the wind screeching as the fast train shoots through the air fills the ears of the many passengers on the express. There's a soft rumble from the engine, and if you look out of the window, you’ll see the familiar view of the meadows, with the dark blue lakes and tall green trees. The sky is blue, the weather still hot from the, just now, bypassed summer and the excitement is rising between the students across all ages, who’ve gotten on the train to return to their studies.
Somewhere in a closed compartment sits four boys, each laughing and smiling, happy to be back at school, not for the studying of course, but to be back together. They’ve been friends since they started at Hogwarts, each finding each other through their one thing in common. The Slytherin house.
The four boys are dressed in their robes, each wearing green around their neck to symbol their part in the house of the serpent. One of the boys is bleach blonde, his hair almost completely white, just like his skin. Another one is the exact opposite of him. His skin is brown and his hair short and black. The third is a brunette, his hair messy and his eyes the same color as the chocolate frogs, served on the train. The final boy is blonde, his hair sits like a mop on his head, swooped to the side in an attempt to hide away his forehead. His eyes are blue like the ocean, and he smiles widely as he talks to his friends.
“It feels good to be back, don’t ya think?” the blonde one says, leaning back in his seat, arms crossed across his chest.
“Sure is Theo,” the other blonde replies, eyes fixated on the window beside them before he eventually turns to look at his friends. “I missed you lads,” the brunette, Lorenzo, says with a smile, “except for Blaise’s snoring.”
“Fuck you Enzo,” Blaise shoots back, making the blonde boy beside him laugh.
“Shut up Malfoy,” Blaise turns to Draco, one eyebrow raised, “don’t think you should be laughing, when you snore as well.”
“I do not.” Draco crosses his arms, making eye contact with Theo who’s trying to hold back a laugh.
Lorenzo shakes his head and turns to look at the scene on the other side of the glass.
At Hogwarts, the students all gather for the sorting ceremony in The Great Hall. The four boys sit down at their assigned table, chatting and catching up with friends from their house. A group of girls sit down next to them, each smiling and waving at the four boys.
Enzo’s eyes meet Blaise’s, who seems to be smirking at one of the girls.
As they sit there and chat, Theo feels eyes on him. He looks up, eyes meeting the infamous Harry Potter, watching from the Gryffindor table. “Look,” Theo pats Enzo’s shoulder, “Potter’s watching.”
“Don’t mind him.” Draco says from across the table. He’s overheard the conversation. “He’s just a prick, you know that.”
Theo shrugs. Their conversation gets interrupted by Headmaster Dumbledore, who’s hosting a speech. “Welcome to Hogwarts,” he starts, “the start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but first, we must do our sorting.”
Dumbledore pauses, his eyes moving to the large doors in the back of the hall. “But before we begin, I would like to introduce you all to our new student.” The doors open, and in walks a dark-haired boy. He’s dressed in an open robe, on top of white dress shirt that seemingly has a few buttons undone. His hands are in his pockets and his eyes are firmly planted on Dumbledore.
“Who is that? ” someone asks further down the table. Theo’s jaw is dropped on the floor, Draco’s eyes are wide open, Enzo can’t take his eyes off the scene and Blaise is too distracted by the girl from earlier to notice what is going on.
“This is Mattheo,” Dumbledore says after a moment of silence. His eyes glide across the whispering students, all having something to say about the school’s newest subject. “He will be joining our 5th year students.” Dumbledore tries to grab their attention, but fails. Mattheo stays silent as he seats himself on the wooden chair on the stage. The Sorting Hat gets placed on his head by Professor McGonagall, and the whole hall goes impossibly quiet. Even The Sorting Hat seems at a loss for words for a while, until eventually a loud, ‘Slytherin!’, sounds through the hall.
There’s a moment of silence. Lorenzo looks at his friends, making eye contact with them one by one. Then he claps. Draco looks profoundly confused as he stares at his friend. Theo then joins followed by Draco and Blaise, and soon the whole hall is clapping and cheering for the new student. Mattheo rises from his seat, then walks off the stage and makes his way to the Slytherin table.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Draco hisses under his breath, leaning over the table to reach Enzo so that he could hear him without drawing attention.
“It’s called being nice,” Enzo whispers back, “how would you like it if that was you?”
At the same time, Mattheo heads down the middle of the hall, eyes on the exit. Most people, if not everyone, is staring at him as he opens the doors and slides his body through the small gap.
“Who is this boy?” Theo asks, looking at his friends as if they could possibly answer his question. “I have never seen him before,” Blaise says with a shrug.
“He looks familiar, don’t you think?” Draco says quietly, inching closer to his friends across the table. His friends don’t seem to agree, instead they look at Draco in hopes of an explanation to what he just said. Draco looks around, scanning to see if anyone might be listening to the conversation. “He looks like you know who , when he was younger,” he whispers, gaining a soft gasp from his friends.
“Wait, how do you know what he looked like?” Theo asks, leaning back from the intensity of their conversation across the table.
Enzo, Draco and Blaise each look at Theo, eyebrows raised and displeased looks on their faces. “What?” Theo asks, clearly not understanding what is going on.
Once the large doors to The Great Hall are shut, Mattheo breathes out. This must’ve been the first full breath he’s caught since arriving at the school. For hours he’s settled with half inhales, cutting like daggers at his dry throat. He arrived this morning, way before any of the other students. Dumbledore mentioned something about safety, but Mattheo would have preferred to ride the train with everyone else.
He rushes down the halls, looking left and right, trying to memorize his way back to the Slytherin dungeons. He’s been there once, led there by the current head of house, Philip Crooks, but trying to find his way there by himself, seemed way harder than he had initially thought it to be.
He eventually found it, made his way inside and found his dorm room. He had seen his dorm earlier that day, but all of the other beds had been empty, and now they were not.
Trunks were spread out on each bed, some opened, others not. Clothes laid cluttered throughout the room and by the back wall stood cages with owls.
Mattheo had yet to meet his dorm-mates, and he dreaded it dearly.
He lets out a sigh as he slowly wanders to one of the windows in the back. He climbs up, finding himself a comfortable seat with an extraordinarily pleasant view. The night sky is lit up with stars, and the moon’s bright light fills the dark lake beneath with life.
Mattheo presses his hand to his heart, feeling how it beats faster than ever before. He’s been afraid before, many times actually, but none of those times made him feel as uneasy as he did right now. It’s not that he didn’t want to come to Hogwarts, because he did. Anything to get away from his house. His father. His life before. But having to constantly put up a parade in order for no one to truly figure out who he was, that was going to be exhausting. His eyes are firmly on the glass window as he tries to slow down his mind. Oh how he hated feeling so little and helpless.