The Slytherin Table 2024-2025

@Donald Robinson & @Colin McCoire

How dearly blissful it was to be surrounded by people who were considerably willing to show a certain degree of kindness and amicability. It was near impossible to claim that Saunders was familiar with the sensation. He was rather accustomed to being treated like a miniature to be neatly sculptured to perfection, and, for the boy, that was the replacement for what others used to call maternal affection; or like a trivial detail that happened to be around all the time by a 'neutral' coincidence, a Napier-ian substitute for fatherly love. The scenery was not dramatically different in his so-called friendship circles as well. All the boys and girls whom Saunders could regard as his pre-Hogwarts friends were entirely depended on the nauseating passage of time, and in his case, a few fleeting hours, if lucky. For all his friends had been crually forced to leave him as soon as their parents decided to end their visit to Napier Manor.

Saunders chuckled at Donald's, his newest friend's, comments about professors. He had not personally found the transfiguration professor scary, although he was having trouble making sense of the subject itself. Merlin's Beard, who the hell would ever want to turn a whistle into a clock? Everyone knew that any sane person, if he felt the need for such a purchase, should go to a watch shop. How ‘stylish’ could a watch transfigured from a whistle be, for Heaven's sake? His eyes lit up when he heard Donald's two cents on the DADA. "Now we're talking," Saunders mused. It was probably the most noble discipline at Hogwarts, at least if we chose to trust the credibility of Saunders' habit of labelling anything he fancied as noble.

Before he had time to answer Donald or to accept his suggestion for a seat, a third person entered their conversation. He was an eminently uplifting fellow snake, with whom it was not necessary to have the gift of prophecy to realise that he was older than them. Saunders had heard of Colin McCoire early on, obviously, as he was a well-respected broom racer. He smiled at the older snake's reference to Napiers bones. This reference had a homely odour. For whether or not John Napier, after whom this invention was named, was a distant relative of theirs had been a matter of dispute within the family for a considerable period of time, until it had been abandoned like books gathering dust on their shelves.

"I was just about to!" he replied Colin and seated himself gently next to Donald. "Well, we're not exactly a family famous for appreciating old Godric's house, are we?" Saunders said, trying to readjust from the rhythm of his sedate conversation with Donald to the different dynamic created by the new energy Colin had introduced. "This is the first time I've been warned about trying not to die," he said, pretending to look worrying in a theatrical way, "but how fitting that advice should come from someone who races on those hellish brooms? Right, Donald?"

After switching his eyes back and forth between Donald and Colin, "Ah, but of course you'll defend him... The famous Scottish bond..." he teased. Saunders detected traces of a Scottish accent in Donald's delivery, though not as obvious as Collin's. Londoners always found themselves confronted with such conspiracies woven by provincial networks.

italics: thoughts ‒ normal: narration ‒ #3c7980: speech

@Saunders Napier @Colin McCoire

While talking to Saunders, Donald could have sweared to see behind the boy a white flash walking by, but was far too focused talking to the Slytherin kin to think about who could that be.
Well, he discovered it right after. Nothing was comparable to the boisterous scottish voice of Colin, one of the few friends he made over the years; often visiting eachother mansions thanks to their closeness.

After a moment of shock he offers a teethy smile to Colin, "Oi Colin!" He wished to keep in check his accent, but how could he refrain it next to the older boy? "No, no Gryffindors in the Robinson yet. Can ye see me draped in red and gold? I can't." Chuckling a bit and feeling thankful to Colin, he shifts even more away the letter. Out of sight and out of mind.

Then he looks back again to Saunders, "Yes, I've seen him a few times." His voice suggesting that he saw Colin doing far worse than that, but that Donald himself was a bit scared of the heights gifted by those damned sticks during flight. At Saunters' teasing he tries again to get an old of his scottish eritage, "Y-Yeah, we know eachother from way back. Visited eachother house back and forth.", then to Colin "Say, do you want to sit with us? And is it really that dangerous Hogwarts? " Trying to talk to both of them without letting neither feel out of place. A bit of a difficult task, but thanks to his new found friend and his old, Donald was feeling less and less homesick, and the tasty chicken roast right before him on the table was starting to look delicious.

Colin had the slim volume of the Heroes of Asgard open before him on the table. Liam had given him it. The same passage kept going through his head, the one in the chapter on Fenrir. He wondered. Could this ordinary muggle book actually be hiding a magical secret? He and Liam had been on about it all day! He practically had to kick Liam in the shins to get him to give the book up for an hour, and Liam actually did give him a swift kick in his bum when he finally wrested it away from his twin!

He looked up from his plate of sausages and cheese every now and then, just to scan the Ravenclaw table and see if Liam's glare had lessened any.

Colin smirked.

Liam's glare was as infuriated as ever!

Colin's eyes scanned the Slytherin table. No one seemed likely to be interested in magical secrets discovered in muggle books. Something queer caught his eye. A strange flash of something shiny! From the vicinity of the shiny object, a grunt of disdain erupted. "Ugh!" The shiny thing disappeared into a pocket, but not before Colin recognised what it was!

He straightened up on the heavy wooden bench! Then he noticed it! The danger noodle sitting across the table and a few feet down from him, eating chicken and gravy, was wearing one of those muggle ear shouting things on her head! Mousy she appeared. Wee. But it was the muggle things she carried with her that intrigued Colin!

"Oi! Lass! Is that a hand box you've put in yer pocket!? Let's see it then! I know all about them, from Muggle Studies! Eel Lecture Icky! And Bat Trees! That's muggle magic that is. You actually have one here at Hogwarts? Not just the hand box, but the ear shouters too! I can see the stringy bits, lass!"

Colin leaned over the table to get a better look.

"Why do ye have it here? I'm surprised it didn't explode when ye got in the castle! BOOOOM!!!! Eel lecture icky doesn't get along with actual magic you know!"

@Nova Skelton

The girl was talking nonsense. Colin's face screwed up in confusion. Why would she even bring so many Muggle things to Hogwarts? Didn't they tell people that stuff doesn't work here?

"Yeah! That's what I said! A Lecture Icky!" She pointed at her ears. "Head Pho News. That's a weird name! I've often wondered why Muggles come up with such weird names for things." Colin shook his head. Another girl sat down then. Her hair was pale like his. Colin smiled at her. "I mean. Even after two years of Muggle Studies --- it still doesn't make sense! Like. Music Plays. Why can't they just call it an enchanted phonograph?"

Colin shook his head like a dog. Really helped to clear the mind of all this muggle malarkey! Colin smirked. AngelFyre was clearly rubbing off on him! Colin's keen eye caught Silver Locks leaning over the table. Ear Shouter Girl had what looked like a brief moment of panic when he said her muggle magic things could explode. Colin shrugged. Silver Locks seemed happy with her apple juice.

"Dunno mate," Colin said. "I don't think it's easy to charm muggle things. Muggle magic just doesn't get along with ordinary magic!" He turned towards the silver haired girl. She looked cute, all into her apple juice. "What do you think, Silver Locks? Have you ever seen such a thing as these ear shouters?" Colin pondered Ear Shouter Girl's question about cameras. He'd never had nor even seen a camera before. Not up close anyway.

"Dunno about cameras either. They're totally sus if you ask me. I saw a muggle camera a couple years ago! A mate of mine is Muggleborn and she has a hand box and she showed me how it works! There's like, wee people inside! And then she stuck it between us and when she showed it again, I was one of the wee people inside!"

Colin shuddered.

"I don't trust this lecture icky stuff. Twas really weird, me seeing me inside the hand box! I tried to talk to me, but I wouldn't answer! Twas like being trapped! I reckon it's like Muggle moving pictures. She took me to watch a Star Wars Trek show. I tried warning the people inside the moving pictures! I shouted 'It's a trap! Get out of there!' But they just ignored me!"

Colin shook his head.

"There's just something totally weird about muggle magic."

As the conversation shifted towards Colin's book, the girl introduced herself as Nora. Colin gave her his name as well. "Oh, you're into mythology as well!" he exclaimed. "That's really cool!" Colin brushed a few pages back. There was no sense in dropping too many hints what he was after in this particular book! "Me, I'm more interested in Irish and British mythology, but Nordic is cool too! Have you ever read the Tain? That's Irish, and it's grand!"

He turned against towards Silver Locks. "So. What's yer name, lass?"

@Nova Skelton | @Lyssandra Amaranth Navarus