Work Text:
Marcus Flint knew he wasn’t an academic wonder like that swot Granger. He also knew that, while he wasn’t on top of his classes, he wasn’t stupid either. Yes, he should’ve applied himself more than he had - after all, he was one of very few students in Hogwarts’ history to ever repeat his leaving year - but he had simply prioritised having fun.
Fun. Well, it had been fun for the first few years until He came back and ruined most of it. Truth be told, Marcus didn’t even disagree with the Dark Lord as such. Muggleborns were as odd as two left feet with the way they ogled everything and got excited about the silliest things. They were nothing more than mere curiosities. Marcus often wondered how they’d even got their magic if they didn’t have any in the family.
Really, they shouldn’t even be let into Hogwarts.
What Marcus Flint was good at though, was potions. And, unfortunately for him, he was stuck at school for the eighth winter holiday in a row, meaning he had to occupy himself somehow. Flying only got him so far in weather so cold it would freeze the balls of a brass monkey.
Christmas had come and gone and it just wasn’t the same with most of his housemates gone and the other houses being so uptight and swotty, he didn’t even try to mingle. January 2nd couldn’t come fast enough, bringing with it all the students that went home.
To add insult to injury, that fool Dumbledore had decided that those remaining should celebrate New Year’s Eve together, with a late feast, followed by some muggle superstition nonsense he apparently picked up in Germany. Lead would be melted on a spoon over a candle and would then be poured into a bowl of water. The lead would cool and the resulting shape would be taken out of the water and held between a candle and a bare wall. Apparently, the shape the shadow will throw will tell the fortune of the year ahead.
Trelawney was all over that shit like a rash.
Of course, the batty old professor insisted that muggles couldn’t really tell the future but that only those with magic and a working inner eye could truly use molybdomancy.
Use them, they would this year. Marcus grinned to himself as he stoppered the little vial after finally, carefully, filling it with his latest brew he had concocted in his empty dorm room. He made sure it had no leaks and let it glide into a pocket in his robes before making his way down to the celebratory dinner.
The dinner was as boring as predicted. He observed but didn’t speak. It was disgusting, really, how common that blood-traitor Weasley boy was when he shovelled food into his mouth like a savage. The boy wonder Potter at least seemed to know how to use cutlery. The Mudblood looked like a trained monkey and, he was unsurprised to see, she still had a stick up her arse that reached all the way to her head because she still sat impossibly straight.
What he was surprised to see though, was that she wasn’t sitting with her two boyfriends. Trouble in paradise. Interesting. Maybe that would add to the evening’s entertainment he had planned.
When, at last, the formal dinner was over, the idiotic Headmaster actually pulled his wand out to rearrange the tables and somehow summoned board games onto each one. In the name of inter-house-unity. Fuck that, Marcus thought and simply refused to get involved. As predicted, nobody cared to have him in the games anyway.
It did give him the opportunity to go around and browse, though - as well as surreptitiously adding a few drops of clear potion into three of the five water bowls ready for the lead pouring later.
At about an hour to midnight, Dumbledore stood and invited everyone to predict their future, the board games being vanished and students instructed to collect the prepared kits. Marcus almost grinned at what was to come. He just about caught himself.
As the students excitedly melted their little lumps of lead over various candles and dropped their metal into the water, Marcus took his time with his own. Not that he wanted to participate in the first place but mainly because he wasn’t sure anymore which bowls of water he had added the potion to. It was better to remain cautious but an outright refusal would surely put the blame on him. He would rather avoid yet another detention.
One by one, the students peered into their water bowls and pulled their shapes out to inspect them. A Hufflepuff girl squealed in delight at what she decided was a Squirrel and scrambled to read on her parchment what that might mean. At another table, a Ravenclaw boy who couldn’t have been older than a first year shouted out loud that he’d gotten a broomstick and hoped that would indeed come true for him in 1994.
Next to Marcus, a Slytherin girl suddenly shrieked and threw her shape to the ground, pointing at it with utter panic in her eyes. She shrieked again about a dragon and fire and for everyone to save themselves.
Ah, Marcus thought, he needed to be careful himself. The modified water was right in front of him.
By the time the midnight countdown began, Marcus had to admit that he’d had fun and that some traditions could be entertaining if one only added a little spice - or in this case, hallucinogenic potion.
A total of five students had to be taken to the hospital wing for some Draught of Peace but not before they’d highly entertained the rest of them by freaking out about their futures. Best of all, one of them was Boy Wonder who had inhaled such a load, he was nearly incomprehensible in his panic. Marcus smirked.
Happy New Year, indeed.