Aiden Crabbe

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This was always the biggest downside of a new school: learning your way around when all your classmates already knew without thinking about it and so forgot that you might not have a clue how to get from ancient runes to divination. Adding onto the fact that they were both electives and so everybody was heading in different directions and not necessarily in the same class next made it even more difficult. He couldn’t just follow somebody and hope for the best. Instead, he was left to hope he could remember which way he had gone the week before when everybody was still taking pity on him. Divination was up, at any rate, so it couldn’t be too difficult. At least, that was what he thought until he found the staircase he had gone up didn’t lead where he thought it had before and the door that he hoped would take him through to the right side of the school turned out to be a wall just pretending to be a door. “Fucking stupid school,” he muttered under his breath, because while all magical buildings had their quirks, Hogwarts really took the biscuit in that respect. In frustration, he hit the wall.

“Hey, Black!” he called, as the team started back to the changing rooms. It didn’t make much sense as a name to shout out when nearly half the team were Blacks but at least a week of sharing a dorm meant that he felt he could call Regulus by his first name by now and the other two both held the coveted position so it didn’t matter which responded. Sirius was closer, however, so it was him that Aiden focused his eyes on. Aiden waited until the rest of the team were out of earshot because he wasn’t stupid enough to throw his weight around when he was still the newcomer but once they were, he swung his broom over his shoulder with a cocky grin and asked, “What would it take to get you to swap positions with me next practice? Sometimes a guy just needs to whack a few bludgers.”

Aiden didn’t know if it was that Hogwarts weren’t very good at subtle conversations or whether it was he who was lacking in that area. It was very possibly the second, as he had never really had to do it before. Subtlety just wasn’t in his nature. But where at Icarus, he had been introduced to drugs by older students early enough to not have to learn how to do this, at Hogwarts, trying to work out who could get him the goods wasn’t straight forward. He’d tried to feel it out from others his age but none of them either seemed willing to talk when they didn’t trust him yet or they didn’t know. It was clear he had to avoid the prefects but beyond that, he wasn’t sure where else to start. “Hey, man,” he said, when he saw one of the seventh years sat alone in the common room. “Aiden Crabbe,” he introduced himself. “Maybe you can help me. I’ve been trying to find out how Hogwarts students enjoy their downtime.”

There hadn’t been a Beater position going free but Aiden still knew he had out-performed the competition at try-outs. He was a natural-born flyer, and it didn’t matter if he had a bat in his hand or a Quaffle. His aim was still impeccable. If he was capable of thinking self-critically, he would know that his teamwork skills needed a great deal of work and his proclivity for aggression was what had always made him more suited towards being a Beater over a Chaser at his old school, where he was able to channel said aggression without crossing the line into fouling other players. But Aiden had never been very good at seeing his own flaws and with the most goals of all the others going for that free Chaser spot, he had already considered the position rightly his. It was still nice to see it there in black and white on the common room noticeboard. “Captain,” he greeted Lucius. “I won’t let you down.”

It hadn’t even been a week and Aiden was already done. Three schools and could Hogwarts really be the worst of them? His dad had always raved about his time as a Slytherin, and had wanted Aiden to go here from the off-set. It was only his mother’s choices that had sent him elsewhere. He never had been very good at paying attention to classes but the one time he tried to sit down in the common room to do his homework, some weird magic compelling him to write drivel about somebody he didn’t know nor care about took hold of him. Worse, were the others around him who were more intrigued than annoyed at this turn of events. “How the fuck should I know?” he grumbled. “The goblin’s gazette? Is that a less or more intrusive gossip rag?”