Never be the same (Lucy)

The Slytherin Commons had a lot of old portraits of former Slytherins glaring down from the walls. They were actually pretty neat, because if you sat underneath them while you were doing homework, they'd angrily correct anything you got wrong. People assumed all Slytherins were amoral and that they all cheated, but sometimes cunning came in a different form.

Selwyn was seated there right now, in fact. He was working on some homework from History of Magic, tracing his family tree. The homework for first years was often dull things like this, at least Selwyn found it so.

Other children grew up with stories of wizards with luminous wands and witches with dazzling beauty and so did Selwyn in a way. It just so happened that most of the wizards and witches in his bedtime stories had been real people, his ancestors.

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the portraits hung silent above his head as he arduously traced his family's lives across several pieces of parchment, his prickly handwriting contrasting starkly to the fine lines linking everyone together.

With nothing else to do after having finished her homework, Lucy grew impatient in her Dormitory. Most of her friends were already outside having fun; Lucy, however, was stuck inside with a headache. At last, she decided to go to the Common Room to see if there was anything posted on the bulletin board for her.

She held her school sweater tightly around her hands, feeling the headache even more now that she was out of the comfort of her bed. As usual, the only note for her was from Professor Clark and that one dated back to her first year at Hogwarts. With a slight groan, she turned around only to catch a quick glance of many of the portraits hovering around a boy who seemed much younger than her.

Upon closer inspection, she identified a family tree. "First year?" Lucy spoke out as she walked towards him and the portraits. "I can't believe they still make you do a family tree." she shook her head, clearly not fond of the assignment.

Selwyn smudged ink across his parchment as his work was interrupted by a voice. He recognised the Malfoy girl when he looked up, who wouldn't recognise that family?

"Why change a winning formula?"

It was more of a remark than a question.

"Besides, it's easy enough for the likes of us. D' you know muggleborns often don't know anything about their ancestry at all? They're the ones you should be feeling sorry for."

For a moment Lucy considered apologizing for interrupting, though the look on the boy's face as he looked up made her change her mind.

The way he said us bothered her. It was the fact that he didn't have to ask for her name, but that he knew it with a simple glance. This sort of recognition barely happened nowadays with the large muggle-born and half-blood population.

"I can only feel sorry for the ones who take too much pride in blood. They're narrow-minded and stubborn." She commented, though she suddenly felt the urge to add, "Though of course, I suppose coming from me these words don't have much meaning."

Again, just like in her first year, Lucy felt the cloud of her family name hovering over her head like a neon sign pointing it out everyone around her.

Selwyn Thorfinn: Awkwardeer.  It should be his title or something, for every conversation he'd managed to engage anyone in so far this year had been brimming full of awkward.

"We-ell," he said, as though weighing each word he was about to say, "I think it depends what you think pride in blood means.  Pride in where you came from isn't the same as a born to rule attitude and thinking you're incapable of making mistakes."

"Besides, in my experience, the people who think they're born to rule usually have very little idea of what ruling entails," he added.

The boy surprised her. At first, she had thought of him as the witty, sarcastic type. Though now she took pride in his slight hesitation of words.

"And where does your blood line fall?" She asked, suddenly realizing she had no idea what the boy's name was. "Because to me, you look like the born-to-rule type. No offense." It was actually a compliment. The young boy had an aura that made her believe he could take over the world if he wanted to.

"I'm Lucy Malfoy by the way." She offered a small smile.

Selwyn stopped himself from saying "yes, I know," because he knew how it felt for everyone in the vicinity to know who you were on sight. In fact, Hogwarts was quite the relief for him in that respect.

Instead he offered his hand for her to shake, if she was inclined.

"Selwyn Thorfinn."

"You can see my bloodline for yourself," he pointed to a place near the bottom of the tree. "This is my Grandfather, my mother's father. He was muggleborn, so I am a halfblood in the simplest sense of the word."

He then moved his finger across the page.

"But you see here? That is my Grandmére, and she is a veela. So I'm quarter veela as well, and a lot of people consider that a different kind of halfbreed."

He moved his finger again, this time to one of the other parchments.

"And this, over here, this is my father's family. You can see they've held the Barony of Glencoe for many generations. So technically I was born to rule, but, ah... let's just say actual ruling isn't what most people imagine. It's mostly sorting out problems that people are too stupid or stubborn to sort out for themselves. And a lot of walking around in the mud."

He looked over at her smiled.

Lucy shook his hand and smiled. "Pleased to meet you." Once again, she had judged too quickly.

She leaned closer as she took a seat to have a better view of his family tree. For some reason, she automatically assumed every Slytherin was a pureblood, another mistake on her part.

"Veela." Lucy repeated. "My brother is friends with a veela girl." To her surprise, there were now two known veela students.

Lucy smiled. "So I was right. You are born to rule." She looked over once more, wondering how a family like his would ever result in a half-blood. "I suppose you'll grow up to be the owner of your father's land. Am I right? That kind of thing usually goes to the oldest son, and you don't seem to have any siblings." She glanced at the parchment again. "Are you excited about that?"

Selwyn chuckled.

"Yes, but only through luck of birth," he said. "And besides, most of the things I'd be ruling over are mountains and woods."

"It's not very exciting. I think the exciting part of life happens before you have to be responsible."

"Better than nothing." Lucy replied.

At that, she let out a laugh. "You're right." She had never truly paid attention to how much fun she was having because she never really needed it. She definitely had friends, though recently most of them were either related to her, or Slytherins. But she tried her best to keep her grades up and even took as much classes as her time allowed.

"Have you been having fun here?"" She asked him, wanting to know how first years felt about school. It most likely wasn't different from how she felt back then.

Selwyn let out a half snort, half laugh.

"Hard to tell.  Mostly I've been getting into arguments with people," he replied.  "There's this one girl in Ravenclaw who I think is going around and telling everyone in the other houses how evil I am."

"It's a bit funny, actually."

"No one in Ravenclaw would do such a thing." Lucy replied then quickly changed her mind. "Well, there is one person in that house who would definitely do something like it. " She thought of Sydney immediately and how she had hated, really hated, Lucy ever since they met. Of course, Lucy had given her enough reasons to feel that way.

"Who have you met so far? Only Ravenclaws?" she asked him curiously, tilting her head to the side, her headache now almost completely gone.

"A couple of Ravenclaws, at least one Hufflepuff. Haven't seen her around lately though, which is weird because she was a bit of a perfectionist," Selwyn replied.

"There are some other people who I don't really know. Gryffindors don't really come near me. Are people at this school really that prejudiced?"

"Hufflepuffs are nice." Lucy stated the obvious. "I tend to stay with my family most of the time, but I know a few people." She pulled out a hair tie from her jean's pocket and tied her hair into a bun. "Most are okay with whatever house, though some do have old beliefs when it comes to friendships. My cousin, for example, has eliminated all kinds of relations to both, half-bloods and muggle-borns." She rolled her eyes.

"That's interesting," he replied.

Selwyn didn't know what else to say.  This whole conversation was starting to lag.

"So what year are you in?  I bet you could teach me some wicked spells, right?"

"5th." She imformed him. "It's not as great as it looks, though some classes do get more exciting."

Lucy smiled. "I bet I would. Which one would you like to learn?"

"Merlin, I hope so. Our classes are so boring," Selwyn said.

"You know the disarming charm, right?"

Lucy frowned, only slightly offended, "Of course I do." She had learned that spell when she was younger, much younger. "What do you have in mind?"

"Well, they've barely been teaching us anything of use in Defence," Selwyn told her. "Last lesson, the professor actually tried to pass off the wand lighting charm as a defensive spell."

"I was just thinking, maybe you'd help a literally defenceless first year out."

"It is part of the curriculum." Lucy shrugged, "I'm sure he wanted to give you a better lesson, but he had to get the basics done first."

Lucy raised an eyebrow, "Well, you certainly don't look like a defenseless first year."

Selwyn frowned, perplexed.

"Is that a compliment," he asked, "or are you trying to say no?"

Lucy replied with a kinder smile, "That's a compliment."

Soon, she realized she had to get to bed early as she would be leaving the next day for Cheshire early in the morning. "Selwyn, it was a pleasure to meet you. I've got to go, so I'll talk to you later sometime." She stood up and looked to the dormitories, she hated going to sleep so early.