The Snake Pit
chapter 1
A.N.: If you recognize them, I don't own them. If you don't, I do. I don't get any money for it either way.
" Atherston, Crabbe, Goyle, Malfoy, Nott, in here. Go in and get settled, and then I'll take you around. Ten minutes, gentlemen. Meet me in the common room here. Russell, Thiess, Zabini, you're up three steps to the left. Same thing."
There was a pause before one of them....Malfoy, he remembered, a skinny boy all pale skin and attitude....obeyed. It was a pause that said as loudly as if he'd spoken, "I'm just doing this because I choose to and you only think you run this place." It was backed up by the saunter as he walked into his dorm. Phidias Beauvais, the seventh-year prefect who had led them down here, raised a brow.
There was one in every class. He'd been one once. Get that boy to recognize your authority, and you would have absolutely no trouble with everyone else the rest of the year. He knew Melissande was doing the same thing on the other side of the dungeons with the girls, and smiled at the thought. They made a good pair.
He turned his attention back to assessing the boys. Goyle and Crabbe looked thick. They probably were. If he caught them up to anything, he needed to look for someone behind them doing the thinking. Atherston looked scared. That was a good beginning. Russell was looking around, wide-eyed and silent. Again, also good. But this Malfoy was acting as though he'd lived in dungeons all his life, as if this were a poor imitation of home, with bad service.
Actually, thought Beauvais, this one's Lucius Malfoy's son. He had troubled to learn the people who mattered in and around the school, and the governors definitely were on that list. And he'd seen Lucius Malfoy before, too...his mother's mother had been a Malfoy, and he'd watched the man's cool controlled power and enormous wealth in action as he'd grown up. He smiled, unconsciously stroking his left forearm in memory. He and Lucius were bound by more than blood ties. But governor or no governor, there were some things that were a fact of life in Slytherin. One of them was that you treated your elders with respect. Malfoy needed to have that...explained to him.
Melissande came down, smiling. "No trouble with this bunch. And you?"
"One. I'll talk to him in a little while, if you don't mind leading the tour for a bit."
"Of course not. You do give such excellent motivational speeches, my dear," she said, and dipped her lashes at him, teasingly. Merlin, but she was gorgeous. He sent her a look back that said, Be prepared to back that up tonight, and watched her smile in acknowledgement of the challenge. Indeed.
"My room, after last rounds," he said, and she nodded. She twirled a curl of her black hair that hung down over one shoulder, dark eyes narrowed and a half smile on her lips, and he shifted a little in his seat. Vixen. I'll have her on her knees tonight.
The girls came down in a bunch, desultory chatter breaking out here and there. Where were the boys? Ah, they were assembling. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...and eight. Malfoy last, of course. An anticipatory smile crossed his face, and disappeared like a cloud over the sun, as he said, "Mr. Malfoy, may I have a word?"
Malfoy waved the rest to go on (as if he were the prefect here!)and turned to him, crossing his arms.
Melissande smirked briefly and took the lead, leaving them alone in the common room. Her voice drifted back to them as she began explaining the layout of Hogwarts to the new Slytherins. "There are some classes which all students take..."
Malfoy shifted his weight, and raised one eyebrow at him. Inwardly, Beauvais smiled. And then he moved.
The force that slammed Draco Malfoy against the stone wall had been nicely calculated to only scare the thin eleven year old, not actually hurt him. By the flaring of his eyes, it had succeeded. His cheeks flushed with indignation, and he drew breath.
"You dare to lay hands on me?! My father will...."
His assailant leaned over him. "Your father will do nothing. He's a good and true product of Slytherin house. And he won't object to me teaching you a few simple truths." The older boy's voice was acid, and even more stinging for its softness. "If you got sorted in here, you want to succeed. You want to succeed more than anything. Am I right?"
The smaller boy nodded, eyes still wide.
In WORDS, Malfoy, " his captor hissed.
"Yes...sir," Draco said, forcing the honorific out between clenched teeth.
"Good. You may not be as weak as you appeared. " Anger flared in Draco's eyes, but he was silent. The other boy went on. "So. Do. We. All. Now, the Gryffindors believe that those who dare, succeed. The Ravenclaws, that those who know succeed. The Hufflepuffs, that those who work succeed. But we in Slytherin know that the ones who succeed are those who will do anything to achieve it. Anything. If you get in my way, I will do whatever I need to do to remove the obstacle from my path. You don't want to know the lengths that I will go to." He met Draco's grey eyes with implacable black eyes, until Draco shuddered once in his grasp and looked away, conceding the contest.
"I don't have time to be nice. And I don't want to ever be in the position to have to talk to you like this again. Consider this a hint. Respect your elders, boy, and you'll live to be one. Am I understood?"
"Perfectly, sir, " Draco whispered.
"You may go," he said, and watched as the pale boy shot from under his hands. But, much to his amazement, he slowed down to a walk within a few steps, his shoulders twitched once...and he was another first year on his way out of the dungeons. Nothing remarkable, nothing for anyone to notice.
Phidias Beauvais raised an eyebrow. Perhaps the child had depths in him....that was control, after all. He'd made first years wet themselves with terror before with that little speech. Then again, he thought, the brat IS Lucius Malfoy's son. And if anyone can teach poise and control, it's Cousin Lucius. He strolled down the corridor after his new Slytherins, robes rustling in perfect order, silver prefect badge gleaming, and the smile that quirked one corner of his mouth was almost imperceptible.
When the lights went out, the dungeons were black as a cave. In deference to this undeniable fact, and the disorientation it caused, there was a single torch that flickered sullenly towards the entrance to the dorm, where the lavatories were. It relieved the darkness just enough that one could, with experience, manage to not fall over every single trunk on the way to take a piss at night. It was not light enough to penetrate to the far bed, where Draco Malfoy sat.
The dorm was filled with the soft snores of his fellow first year Slytherins; Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Liam Atherston, and Thomas Nott...five beds per room, another first year dorm three steps up and to the left, and the other years in other rooms, branching like leaves off a vine off this main staircase on the boys' side. At least you couldn't hear fat Hythe, the third year who'd eaten twice as much as anyone else at the sorting feast, through the thick stone walls. And it was not damp, although it felt like it should be. Neither was it cold, although Malfoy had cast a warming charm on his bed to dispel the deep chill he felt. This was all the privacy he was going to get to think, and he was going to take advantage of it.
He had thought that it would get easier at school. He was beginning to think that might be wrong.
Consider this a hint. Ha. The hint of the century. If that's a hint, I don't want to see him being plain spoken. At least, he said to himself, he didn't hex me or curse me.
He shoved away the thought that Beauvais would probably have considered that juvenile, and returned his thoughts to the more important business of surviving his stay.
So....I keep my head down, I watch what I say and do, and I grab every advantage I see. He smiled, and he would have been surprised at how much he looked like his father in that moment. Not so different from home. I can play this game. And, I can wait. I have time. By seventh year, I can manage to be Head Boy, I can be the one making the rules in the Snake Pit. I can be ever so properly respectful to the older students and the professors. Malfoys are serpents, and we wait our time to strike.
And somehow this warmed what the charm and thick blankets could not, and he found himself sliding down the soft incline of sleep.
back home
back to series home
back to Snakepit home
on to the next chapter
