[timestamp: September 1st, 2017.]
"Don’t you know it’s rude to hide under other people’s seats?"
When Esmerelda returned from her trip to the bathroom (and to peek into her brother and the cool fifth years’ compartment), there was a dark blob huddled under her seat. Her mum had told her about boggarts before which meant that dark blobs under train seats were bad news - obviously - so naturally, she kicked it and was genuinely surprised to see that it was a boy instead.
A shaggy nest of dark hair emerged, followed by black school regulation robes a tad too big for the boy wearing them. The expression on his thin face was so forlorn – even under the furious glare that must be for the kick, oops – that her indignation immediately gave way to curiosity and she almost didn’t recognize him for a second. “Well come out then, won’t you?” she demanded cheerfully. “I’m sorry for kicking you, thought you might be something dangerous or a boggart or something. You can sit on top of a seat instead of under it though; there’s plenty of room here.”
The awkward shuffle as the boy got out, however, and the way he refused to really meet her gaze triggered a memory from just a few months ago and she let out a tiny squeal before she could help herself. “Oh, you’re Pansy’s boy, aren’t you? The one with the awful sisters who doesn’t really like my cousin Scorpius?” she said, talking a mile a minute now that she was excited and barely waiting for the Parkinson boy’s nod before continuing. “Oh, it’s okay, I’m not really quite fond of him either, to tell you the truth. I like his Mum well enough, of course; she’s my Aunt Astoria and she brought me the nicest sweets last time she went on holiday. But Scorpius, ugh, he’s such a bloody brat.” She punctuated her description of her cousin with an eye-roll clearly highlighting her distaste, ironically completely missing the fact that she was no less of one herself as she spoke with the smug self-assurance of a miniature queen who owned at least half the world.
Esme might have been exaggerating a little, because Scorpius wasn’t that bad; just a little bit of a berk. That was no reason to spend all afternoon talking about him, however, and certainly not when she had the chance to make a proper friend before she even got to Hogwarts. In her eyes, bribery was also a perfectly acceptable form of gaining approval so as she asked him curiously why he had been hiding under her seat, she also dug around inside her engraved trunk to find the charmed box hidden somewhere in the neatly folded and organized robes.
The boy’s explanation appalled her. Now that they were on the train and technically able to use magic, his sisters had been trying to dangle him upside down by the foot somewhere near he ceiling of the train and taking him around the train like that. His sisters. Esme herself had only one sibling, but even when her brother was a complete toerag, he never tried to intentionally scare or hurt her. Siblings were mostly just to tease and embarrass you, weren’t they?
“That is disgusting and not at all what sisters are supposed to be like,” she declared, nodding emphatically. “What’s your name, love?”
“Sebastian Xavier Parkinson.”
Ugh. The name even sounded like her mum’s stuffy, awful friends who wore too much perfume and had dress robes of garishly embellished fabrics. She made the decision for the boy, not even bothering to ask him or to care about how forceful and obnoxious she might be coming across as. “We can call you Bastian, right? Sebastian’s a stupid, old man name and Seb is what the icky kinds of mums call their sons. Speaking of icky, are you very fond of your sisters? Because I did the best thing the other day. You know how your mum had that party last Christmas, right? Well, a bunch of kids were playing Hide and Seek and you might have been a part of it, but I don’t know. Anyway, I wandered off looking for a good hiding place, right, and then next thing I knew, I was in your sisters’ room. And right there, on the mantel, there was this big box of sweets. Now I don’t know if your sisters are old enough to go yet, but my brother Adam was in Hogsmeade right before Christmas hols and he gave me this giant box from the Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes shop there for Christmas. So of course I put some Puking Pastilles and Canary Creams in there. Next thing I know, your mother is over at our house the next day, yelling at mum about oh, Daphne, just look what your horrible little child did to my poor girl, blah blah blah. But you won’t believe what my mum did, basically. I was listening outside the door, right, and she went all nice but not nice nice, more like the creepy sort of nice voice she uses when she’s very annoyed with someone. So then she was all, “Don’t you worry, Pansy, I’ll take care of it right away,” and then she called me in and when I went, she bloody winked at me and guess what? Handed me this awesome box of chocolate cauldrons with caramel fillings and told me that’s the sort of sweets I should be gifting others, not joke ones. That’s it! Your mum’s face, hah.”
Perhaps a little too belatedly, she realized that perhaps sort-of bitching about the boy’s family might not have been the fastest way to his heart. The hesitant laughter in his expression made it mostly okay, though, so she thought it was mostly safe when she offered the box she had dug out earlier and said, “Speaking of, I still have a load of them left and you look frightfully thin. Would you like some?”
Later that evening, as she stood grouped with the other terrified first years in the Great Hall, watching a mouldy old hat sort her peers into their houses, a wave of apprehension took over her. She knew that no house was bad, per se, and they all had their virtues but if she got stuck with twats, she was ripping the hat up, no questions asked.
By the time she was called up, the hat had sorted a pretty brunette and a tall, skinny boy sorted into Ravenclaw, a couple of shy-looking girls into Hufflepuff, a pair of blonde girls who would undoubtedly be complete swots and her cousin Scorpius into Slytherin and had no Gryffindors at all. That would probably change pretty soon if the congregation of kids who were obviously Weasley’s – the small army and handful of redheads gave them away – had anything to do with it. Personally, Esmerelda knew her parents would approve most of Slytherin and, if not that, nothing except Ravenclaw would work as a possible alternate choice. Roommate choices considered, on the other hand, she would have rather swam with the Giant Squid than to room with either the shy ones, the swots or the pretty slags.
The hat still ultimately chose to put her in the hellhole of blonde princesses (including Scorpius). The boy came after her and got sorted into Slytherin too, as did the cute and confused-looking little Potter boy so she figured it would be okay. They came from a world of money, power and glory (and maybe even sex, though she couldn’t speak from experience, being eleven and all) and had been sorted into the house that was supposed to rightfully belong to people like them. Not just the dark witches and wizards, but the ones who had the values Salazar Slytherin stood for: cunning, resourcefulness, and ambition. Nobody ‘dark’ got where they wanted without ambition, after all. But above all, Slytherin meant they always saved their own skin and that of those closest to them; loyalty almost as key as it was in Hufflepuff. And Esmerelda had a good feeling that the boy was going to become one of them. Which was why she held out a hand for a high five when he joined her at the table.
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