Fleamont's discovery of friendship and attraction
How did he end up here? After a very starting sexual discovery involving Sydney McKinnon after a quidditch match, Monty had expected to go to his grave with the information he had just learned about himself. He had only lasted about three hours before he spilled his guts to Luella Lupin, one of his best friends, and she had dragged him back to her dorm in Slytherin. Now, here he was, telling Alphard and Walburga Black and Euphemia Blaithwaite about his newfound attraction to blokes. How did he end up here? And how have they not hexed him into the ground by now?
The five of them were sitting in a circle on the floor of the fifth-year Slytherin girl's dorm. He was sat between Ella and Al, with Walburga next to Ella and Effie next to Al. He had finished his confession, and somehow, they were all offering words of comfort and solidarity instead of cursing him. Monty absentmindedly noted how Al’s knee was still firmly pressed against his own. He had been sure that he would have moved it in disgust after he had told them.
The warm feeling he got from their unexpected support was momentarily overshadowed by his suspicion. He was sure that Ella would never lead him into a trap, but what if she was wrong about them? He was only really friends with them on a surface level, as they were the only Slytherins who didn’t seem to be openly blood supremacists, however, he wasn’t as close to them as he was to Ella.
“What’s wrong, Fleamont.” Walburga asked. She was scarily perceptive.
“I just…I’m a bit confused is all. I thought you’d all be-”
“Furious?”
“Disgusted?”
“Violent?” came the chorus of responses.
“Do you want to know why Slytherins seem to be the most hateful towards homosexuals? I mean, everyone is, but why Slytherins seem to be the nastiest?” Alphard asked. A small smirk on his face.
Effie snorted out a laugh at the confused look on Monty’s face. She leaned closer to him, and in a conspiratory tone, whispered, “it's because we’re all homosexuals.” and leaned back with a satisfied smirk as his face quickly went from confusion to pure shock as he looked around the room.
Effie and Al’s raucous laughter abruptly died down as Walburga cleared her throat. “The nastiness comes from the knowledge that no matter what we do, we will still be forced into a loveless marriage and used to breed the next generation of miserable children for the pureblood cause. Then, as we get older, and we notice our children begin to exhibit the same behaviors that we did, we will try to crush them before they can take root. That is the neverending cycle that we will all inevitably fall prey to.”
Silence gripped the room as Monty watched the Slytherins, his friends, take in her words. He could see in their eyes that they all believed it, deep in their souls. No matter what Effie and Al said, they too believed that their lives were destined to end the same way their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had.
“Unless..” came a voice next to him. He had nearly forgotten Ella was there, she had been so silent the entire conversation. “Unless…we don’t. Just because that’s what your parents tell you will happen, doesn’t mean it has to be a reality.”
Walburga scoffed. “No offense Ella, but you don’t come from a Slytherin family. You don’t know what it's like.”
Ella furrowed her brows “No, I don’t. But I’ve shared a dorm with you and Effie since I was eleven. I’ve heard the stories and I’ve walked you both through several breakdowns and from my perspective that mindset is precisely what will keep you in the same place as the rest of your families. I mean, what's stopping you from just walking away?”
Effie and Al looked thoughtful, but Walburga looked doubtful. “You don’t know what our families are capable of…”
“Don’t start that Willa, I may not have experienced any of it firsthand, but don’t pretend that I don’t know. How many times have you ranted to me about your family's ways, or have I patched you up after coming back from your house for the holidays? Don’t act like I’m entirely oblivious to what goes on. I know, and I stand by what I said.”
Walburga looked furious, but under that fury, Monty swore he could see sadness. He knew she would never cry, especially not in front of everyone, but she looked close enough to it that Effie and Al both grabbed his arms and pulled him out of the room before the two girls could get any deeper into their fight.
The two Slytherins both released breaths that they seemed to have been holding as they shut the door to their dorm and let go of his arms.
Effie threw Monty’s invisibility cloak over him, which he hadn't even noticed she grabbed on the way out, and began walking down the stairs, speaking to Al without turning back. “I can’t listen to the same argument again.” She looked at Monty now (she always seemed to know where he was, even with the cloak, it drove him crazy) as she explained that they had this argument all the time. “I’m just waiting for them to realize that what they are really arguing about is their mutual future”
Monty furrowed his brows in confusion. “What do you mean, mutual future?”
Al laughed as he fell into step with Effie. “The two of them have been pining after each other for years. My sister is stubbornly refusing to succumb so she chooses to argue with her instead, even though we all know what she would rather be doing. Ella’s words will get to her eventually though, they’ve gotten to us.” he said, gesturing to himself and Effie.
Monty‘s expression lit up for a moment as he gazed at Al from behind the cloak. “So, you think you can walk away? You can get out?”
Effie snorted out another laugh. “Of course, the plan is already in motion. By the end of this year, our parents won’t even take us back if we tried.”
The group fell into momentary silence as they passed through the common room, Al and Effie’s masks of indifference slipping back into place as they passed their housemates. Monty was both impressed and a little horrified at how easily the two of them could turn off their emotions and become perfectly stone-faced. Al opened the door and paused long enough for Monty to scramble out before gracefully stepping out into the hallway himself.
Monty carefully put his invisibility cloak back into his bag and started trailing behind Al as Effie shut the door to the common room behind them. Al smirked and patted him on the cheek when Monty looked at him in confusion again.
“If you have questions, Monty, all you need to do is ask,” he said, in that infuriatingly unbothered tone that made him seem cooler than Monty. Monty put his hand to his cheek where Al’s hand had just been and glared at him, his pride preventing him from asking anything despite his cheeks now glowing a soft shade of red. Al’s smirk just grew as he shrugged at him and kept walking, not giving in to his glare. He seemed to be one of the only people that didn’t find Monty even a little intimidating. It was annoying.
Effie, on the other hand, seemed like she couldn’t contain herself from answering his unasked question. She was also effortlessly cool, like most Slytherins seemed to be, however when she was excited about something that all went out the window.
“We charmed the toilets to have a full conversation with the person trying to use them.”
Al tried to muffle his laughter and Monty’s eyebrows shot up. “That was you two?!”
“Yup.” Effie replied, pride shining in her eyes. “We also turned the floor in every classroom into quicksand last week, and the week before we made every book in the Ravenclaw common room sing its contents when opened.”
“Backwards” Al added.
“Yes, backward.” Effie agreed. “Ella said Lyall was livid. Then, the week before that, we-”
“-changed every Gryffindor uniform to a different house?” Monty guessed.
The two Slytherins burst into laughter, Al clutching her shoulder as tears of mirth streamed from her eyes.
“Mcgonalgall-you know Mcgonagall, don’t you Monty? The Gryffindor prefect? Of course you do, anyways, she caught us and she looked me right in the eyes and told me she hoped I would never have children for the sake of Hogwart's future. Isn’t that funny?” Effie said between giggles.
Monty watched as the two dissolved into even more laughter. This was a side of them he had never really seen before. He liked it.