Not even regarding him with the decency to look him in the eye as he left Archer hurried off after Arianna but as there figures grew into distant silhouettes no joy or comfort took residence in Matthew's soul. No he would not find comfort from their passing only the overwhelming release of pain as tears began to congregate in pools around his eyes before streaming down his face drowning the parchment in a wave of uncontrollable sadness.
There was something in the way that both of them used his last name that made him inconsolably angry. The boy's surnamed marked him as muggle and for them to use it made the bitter taste of anger fill his mouth but even that could not combat with the devastating lashes of hurt. Perhaps he was a fool for thinking someone named Archer Theodore Duncan was capable of understanding him but here he was sat akin to a state of shock unable to process how someone their age could even possess such hate. What drove a person to be so utterly callous?
So there he sat until the end of class, desperate not to show his pain to those around him lest any one of the numerable Slytherins remaining in the classroom discover him and share the revelation. No he would be resolved to remain alone as he always had been. Continued foolishness on his part, why should magic school be any different than its muggle counterpart. He would always be the outsider, never meant to belong anywhere with anyone. The agonising spiral of thought tore at his heart until there was nothing left but bare shreds and still it tore further to his very core until all that remained was an empty kind of hollow.
That class would be cemented in his mind for a long time as his worst memory of Hogwarts. Far more than the mocks of being called a mudblood or the jests of students when he didn't know the answer to something so evidently common magically. For this was the day he looked real intolerance in the face, demanded an answer from it and in it's retreat found the one he was so wishing wasn't the case. The very fact that ignorance was not born from their lack of education but instead merely a thinly veiled cover to mask their truth, their hate. Matthew would never be more than the dirt they perceived in his blood.
The tear stained cheeks of the boy learned something that day though. Whatever colour he bled he would always be worth more than them for his hate was not chosen but created by them and so be it. Hate he would. Spite was a powerful emotion and left to fester could make a danger out of anyone. Not able to fully recognise it in his present state, something changed in him that day, the softness that he was so blessed with was corrupted and henceforth the very notion of purebloods, of Archer and Arianna and of muggleborn intolerance sent an instant chill through him that warped him into something he couldn't recognise.
Feeling powerless was no uncommon feeling to the young boy who had already suffered a great deal so finishing his assessment he turned to his professor his face steeled of all emotion and submitted his work, concluded to an impeccable standard. Their thought's couldn't cloud the truth, he was an excellent student and he would be a brilliant wizard with or without their acceptance.
