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Rumours around the castle had always suggested that the Slytherin dormitory would be cold, dark and damp due to its location under the lake. It’s full of snakes, it has to suit them, sneered some older girls. It’s in the dungeons because that’s where they belong, insisted a group of seventh year boys. Nearly the whole school seemed to agree that the other three dormitories would be warm and welcoming, but that nobody in their right mind would want to step foot into the snake pit unless they were a serpent themselves.
Now she was here, Summer realised that none of those other students ever had set foot down here. If they had, they would’ve known they were talking rubbish. Or perhaps they knew, and just didn’t care. Slytherin had always been the odd house out, after all, and it would be a shame to let the truth ruin decades of rumours and gossip.
Summer sat by a large window which looked out into the depths of the Black Lake, huddled under an emerald blanket which had been draped around her shoulders by a fifth-year Slytherin girl. Summer had been too shy and too caught up in the reputation to say thank you, but the girl had offered her a reassuring smile nonetheless before moving off to see if she could help anyone else.
The older students had taken up positions near the entrance to the common room, some right by the door and some a little further in, almost like a second line of defence. Summer had watched them warily for almost a full hour when she’d first got here, convinced the Slytherins had herded her and the other younger students into the common room to use them as bait or something just as sinister. Eventually, she’d realised that they only wanted to help, that they were risking their lives to do so.
She remembered being in the Room of Requirement, in a slowly shuffling line towards a tunnel that had been opened up in the wall. She’d heard someone that it led to Hogsmeade, that they would be Apparated to safety from there. Madame Pomfrey and the caretaker, Filch, had already taken some students out, and the prefects were organising kids into more groups. Summer watched as more and more students disappeared, telling herself not to be scared, that she would see her parents soon. There was only one more group ahead of hers when the castle seemed to shake on its very foundations and a cloud of thick, dirty dust bloomed from the tunnel. Some of the kids had screamed, they’d all backed away from the hole, wide eyes on the dark tunnel entrance as they heard scuffling inside it. A Hufflepuff prefect had emerged, dirty and bleeding, to announce that the way was blocked. The Hog’s Head had been breached and now You-Know-Who’s troops had started attacking the school.
There was nowhere to go.
As the Head Boys and Girls tried to restore order, it was the Slytherins who had taken charge. They’d announced that their common room would be the safest place to hide, that nobody would think to go looking there anyway. A Gryffindor prefect had spat a scathing remark, but the Slytherins hadn’t waited for permission. Four of their students had moved to the entrance to the Room of Requirement to check that the coast was clear, and then the underage kids were surrounded, herded from the room and down through the castle to the dungeons. Summer had tried to keep her gaze locked on the people in front of her, but she couldn’t block out the sounds of battle. People fell from above as they ran down the stairs, bodies were strewn across the floor, and she didn’t think she would make it all the way down to the dungeons. But the Slytherins closed ranks around them, casting shield charms and ensuring that the entire group stayed together, and before long they’d reached the dungeons. A prefect at the front of the group gave the password and the entire group was ushered inside.
Summer wasn’t even sure how many people knew they were down here. The teachers might still think that all the underage students had got out in the evacuation, might not even know that the Hog’s Head had been attacked.
The sounds of the battle seemed to be getting closer, and Summer couldn’t block them out, no matter how hard she tried. Some of the Slytherins had cast silencing spells around some of the students so that they could sleep, and some of the kids were huddled together in groups, playing silly games to try and keep their minds off of what was happening around them. Summer gazed out into the black lake, trying to convince herself that the black shapes that drifted down past her every now and then weren’t bodies.
When the Slytherins moved, swapping posts and jobs, Summer noticed how scared some of them looked. A boy who’d just taken up a position by the door winced every time he heard an explosion, a girl was pacing close to where a group of Hufflepuff first-years slept, casting glances at them every now and then to make sure they hadn’t awoken.
Slytherins were evil. Everyone knew that. But Summer was beginning to realise that nobody really knew them at all.