At five minutes to three, Flins followed Harry and Ron through the side doors of the castle, heading toward the open grounds near the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
Hagrid’s wooden cabin sat right on the edge of the forest.
It was small and low, built of rough stone, with a crossbow and a pair of monstrously large galoshes resting by the front door.
Harry stepped forward and knocked.
Inside, Flins heard rustling sounds, mixed with deep barks and the dull clatter of something being knocked over.
Then the door swung open with a creak.
A massive bearded face appeared in the doorway.
Hagrid’s eyes lit up noticeably when he saw Harry and Ron.
But as his gaze shifted to Flins, he looked him up and down without thinking, his brow furrowing.
Harry spoke up right away:
“Hagrid, this is my friend Flins.
He’s helped me before.
And this is Ron, another good friend of mine.”
“Hullo, Ron.
Another Weasley, eh?
Yer brothers are a handful, all right.”
Hagrid’s voice was deep and rumbling.
He then turned to Flins, a clear hint of dislike in his tone: “He helped yeh, Harry…
but he’s a Slytherin.
Harry, I think yeh’d do better keepin’ away from him.”
Flins had already expected this.
During his first week, he had heard far too many insults directed at Gryffindor in the Slytherin common room.
It was only natural that the other side felt the same way.
“Oh…
don’t say that, Hagrid.”
Surprisingly, it was Ron who spoke up against him.
His face flushed red, but his voice was firm: “Flins couldn’t help where he was put.
He’s a good friend to Harry and me.”
Harry nodded along, his green eyes looking earnestly at Hagrid.
Hagrid looked at Harry, then at Ron, and finally took another look at Flins.
He stayed silent for two seconds before adding:
“All right then…
young Gryffindors, an’ this Slytherin…
want some rock cakes?”
Hagrid stepped aside to let them in.
The cabin had only one room.
Hams and pheasants hung from the ceiling, giving the place an untidy and rough look.
Still…
Flins noticed the furs and materials hanging around the walls, along with the faint, subtle ripples of magic he could sense from them.
Well, well, this truly is…
quite creative.
“Sure, Hagrid.”
Harry looked at the rock cake in Hagrid’s hand—which was two sizes larger than his own—and gave a nod.
Ron popped a rock cake into his mouth with curious eagerness.
Flins was handed one as well.
Without realizing it, he tapped its surface with a finger; the sharp, wooden knocking sound made him glance toward Ron’s teeth with genuine curiosity.
Seeing the pained expression Ron was trying hard to hold back, Flins quietly slipped the rock cake into his lamp.
Chatting with the giant was easy enough.
All Flins had to do was drop a casual word or two whenever Harry and Ron asked him about daily routines.
As the talk went on, however, they brought up Flins’s Head of House—Professor Snape.
Harry seemed completely convinced that the professor hated him.
Noticing Harry’s strange reaction, Flins made a mental note to ask about it when he had the chance.
He felt there had to be things here he didn’t know about.
The chat in the cabin carried on.
As the only Slytherin in the room, Flins did not speak much, spending most of his time listening.
They seemed to bring up the break-in at Gringotts.
Remembering the goblins he had met, Flins found the polite smile on his face getting a bit hard to keep up.
The first week of school should have ended peacefully right there.
Evidently, it did not.
When he pushed open the stone door to the Slytherin common room, the atmosphere was completely different from usual.
The hearth was still burning, but the usual scattered chatter was gone.
Almost all the first-year Slytherins were gathered in the seats by the fire.
Draco sat in the center, with Blaise and Theodore flanking him on either side.
Pansy, Daphne, and a few other girls sat on the opposite sofa, while Crabbe and Goyle sat on low stools near the edge like two reluctant statues.
Flins strolled over at an easy pace, wearing that same faint smile on his face.
Pansy Parkinson spoke up sharply:
“You’re one of our Slytherins, and yet you hang around that blood traitor, Potter, and that dimwitted gamekeeper?
You even went to the gamekeeper’s hut?!”
Flins’s gaze rested on her face for a second, then swept unhurriedly across every face in the room.
Draco was frowning; Blaise was twirling his quill; Theodore’s dark eyes were hidden behind his bangs, impossible to read; Daphne leaned lazily against the sofa back; and Crabbe and Goyle stared down at the floor in unspoken agreement.
He gave a slight nod, his voice carrying an even calm that made the question feel entirely unnecessary:
“Am I not allowed to?”
The room went dead silent for two seconds.
Daphne picked up the thread.
Her tone was still light and airy, but her words carried far more weight than Pansy’s:
“Flins, are you trying to bring shame to Slytherin?”
Flins noticed that as she spoke, the eyes of several older students in the corner shifted slightly toward them, watching the scene unfold.
His other two roommates remained silent the entire time, but Flins could tell their attention was mostly focused on Draco—or rather, on the Malfoy name.
Draco finally spoke.
His voice lacked its usual swagger, carrying a buried, restless irritation instead:
“I thought you had already made your choice under the Sorting Hat to stand with me.
But what you did today doesn’t look like that at all.”
He paused for a beat.
“Have you considered what your actions will do to your position in Slytherin?
Acting like this…
is hardly like a Slytherin.”
Flins looked at him.
In the firelight of the hearth, those bright yellow eyes looked like two quiet drops of amber.
“Oh, really?”
he said in a flat tone.
“From the very beginning, I was the one who chose Slytherin, not Slytherin that chose me.”
Blaise’s spinning quill stopped dead.
Theodore looked up from behind his bangs.
Draco’s expression froze for an instant, and even Daphne dropped her careless posture, looking over with measured scrutiny.
Every one of them clearly understood the weight behind those words.
Flins stood where he was, quietly meeting their stares.
He knew very well that after this sentence, his relationship with these young Slytherins could never stay in the realm of “friendly probing” again.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t believe that was a difficult sentence to understand.”