Episode 3.2
The evening air was cool as Bentley made his way towards the library. As unenthused as he might be about the pairs assignment Professor Babbling had set his ancient runes class, it did serve as a convenient excuse to absent himself from the Slytherin common room.
In previous years, Bentley had always found the common room a place of relative peace. There was something almost soothing about returning to the Slytherin dungeons at the end of the day, as it was cool and dark save for the greenish glass lamps that hung from the ceiling and the light from fireplace that cast flickering shadows over the roughly-hewn stone walls. It was familiar to him, and comforting. He supposed it reminded him a bit of Lorwood Park.
But not anymore.
His ancestral home, he had to admit, was somewhat austere of late what with the lack of furnishings, and certainly could never compete with Hogwarts in terms of bustling activity. It was much quieter at home. But he was always at ease there. He knew that he belonged. This year, the common room, which should have functioned as a sort of substitute away from home, instead evoked a subtle and yet pervading feeling of unwelcome that he somewhat vainly hoped he was imagining.
As they had moved up in the school, the Slytherins in his year group had become more of a presence. Every evening after dinner they would all congregate in front of the fireplace, and while he was included in this, Bentley had no illusions about the nature of Slytherin House. His prescence, due in part to the lingering prestige associated with old Pureblood surnames, was countered by the certain measure of delight they all seemed to take in making snide remarks about Gringotts vaults and empty houses.
Bentley sometimes found himself wishing that things were different, that life in Slytherin was easier, that his family was wealthy again, that Van Doort didn’t exist, or if he did, that he wasn’t nearly as obnoxious. And while he was wishing for things, right now he wished that he didn’t have to do a stupid pairs assignment with Hortensia Green.
He saw her as soon as he entered the library. Her height, unusually tall for a girl, was evident even when seated, and her curly hair was looking even more flyaway than usual as the individual strands were caught in the glow from the floating candles that lit the library. She was tapping her foot against the leg of the desk as she waited, fussing with a stack of textbooks. Bentley rubbed his temple tiredly, wincing in anticipation of a headache. It wasn’t as though Hortensia Green was particularly frustrating to work with - in fact in all his dealings with her, he supposed he only knew her well enough to be able to describe her as punctual, with, perhaps, a tendency towards silliness. She didn’t contribute often in class, although her marks were fairly high, something which Bentley appreciated as they were invariably paired together for assignments. She came from a middling Pureblood family that was known for having an air of being slightly self-aggrandising, with a kind of unmerited snobbery that Bentley found contemptible. But while Hortensia’s cousin Zara Withers had recently been the subject of gossip among Bentley’s friends -Meredith Smith could be heard telling anyone who would pause long enough to be considered an audience that Zara had taken up with a muggle over the summer - it seemed that Hortensia Green was thus far uninteresting enough to avoid attracting that sort of attention.
She looked up as he reached her desk, and gave him a brief, nervous-looking smile.
“Oh! Um, hello,” she said in a slightly jittery voice, sitting up a bit straighter in her chair. “Um, I’ve got the instructions here, I don’t know how you want to -”
Bentley raised his eyebrows at her and, thankfully, she fell silent. “Let’s just get started, shall we?” he said briskly as he took his seat beside her, resigning himself to the fact that life wasn’t fair.