Flynn wasn't one for group activities. Though he was vaguely aware of the existence of clubs in Hogwarts, he had never sought to learn more about them. Even if there was one that might have appealed to him, not that he thought there would be, he doubted that he would've wanted to spend any more time than necessary around the other students, given how much effort that he spent doing exactly the opposite of that.
But when Flynn heard the word of a duelling club starting in Hogwarts, he had been intrigued enough to consider attending a session or two, if only to figure out what the hell duelling even was exactly. He only had a few sessions with Flitwick since the beginning of the school year, and the mention of duelling popped up at least a few more times, though Flitwick always dismissed the subject quickly, not wanting to "gloat about the past."
Flynn hadn't pushed Flitwick for an explanation about what duelling was, but that hadn't stopped him from being curious. From the name itself, it wasn't difficult to assume that the sport was something akin to a one-on-one fight, like a lot of non-magical sports that Flynn was familiar with, but there was still a wide spectrum of what duelling could be.
When non-magical duelling could range from using fists, to fencing foils, to even pistols, Flynn couldn't really imagine how varied the concept of duelling could turn out to be once magic was introduced.
So when the opportunity to get first-hand experience was suddenly announced, Flynn decided that his curiosity was strong enough to take a look at the very least.
But now that he was surrounded by chattering students from all ages, excitedly theorising about what the duelling club would be like, Flynn was starting to regret his decision to come.
Resisting the urge to reach up and plug his ears against the tidal waves of noise crashing against him, he kept a tight grip on his wand in the pocket of his robes, and leaned backwards against the wall to give him at least one angle that he wouldn't have to be worried about being potentially attacked from.
Salvation came, a few minutes before the scheduled start time, when a loud clap echoed around the room, silencing the chatters immediately. Unfortunately, once Flynn was able to get a glimpse of who exactly was climbing on top of the long platform in the middle of the room, he realised that he had been conned.
"Gather round, gather round. Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!"
Flynn turned around and immediately started to push through the crowd, heading towards the door as Lockhart metaphorically jerked himself off in front of the student body. It was only when Flynn was about to pull the door open that he heard something that might've been worth listening to.
"Let me introduce my assistant Professor Snape," Lockhart said, causing Flynn to turn around cautiously, only half-believing the conman's words. To Flynn's surprise, he quickly recognized the cone of thick black robes that stood a few feet behind Lockhart and let his hand fall away from the door, if only to figure out what the Potions master was doing here.
"He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about duelling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin," Lockhart said, seemingly oblivious to the sharp promise of death that Snape was glaring into the back of his head.
Snape didn't say a word as he walked past Lockhart, towards the opposite end of the long platform that they stood on. Once he made it to the end of the platform, he turned to face Lockhart and the two bowed to each other and raised their wands in front of them.
"As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," Lockhart said, as the entire room listened attentively to his words for the first time since he'd come to Hogwarts. "On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course."
Flynn frowned, wanting for the first time for Lockhart to keep talking. While the barebones explanation was good enough to confirm that the sport of magical duelling involved flinging spells at your opponent, the details were severely lacking.
Regardless, Lockhart seemed to think that the few words of explanation was enough for his audience, and began to count down immediately.
"One, Two… Three!"
With a quick twirl of his wand, and a shout of, "Expelliarmus!" Snape shot out a bolt of red energy that hit Lockhart square in the chest. The spell seemed to be absorbed by the blonde professor's body, though instead of dissipating instantly, Flynn saw the flash of red flowing from the point of impact towards Lockhart's arm, forcing his arm to jerk back and his fingers to splay open as if they were being repelled by the wand in his hand.
Lockhart was sent flying backwards along with his wand, and Flynn heard a few cheers from the Slytherin part of the crowd, though he couldn't help but notice that nearly all of the older students wore at least a satisfied grin regardless of their house at the sight of the conman fumbling around for his wand.
Once he managed to retrieve his wand from a student who was standing at the far end of the room, where Snape's spell had sent it flying, Lockhart made a few excuses for why he had been beaten, before calling for the students in the room to divide themselves into pairs.
And it was at this moment that Flynn decided that he very much did not want to stay to see what might happen if several dozens of students were to start casting spells at each other in an enclosed room with no sense of organisation or discipline. Flynn gave a cursory glance towards Snape, the actual professor in the room, but didn't particularly enjoy what he saw.
On Snape's face was a petty grin that only seemed to widen as he watched Lockhart gathering pairs of students and placing them in positions where it would be easier for them to accidentally hit their neighbours than for them to actually aim at their designated partners. Flynn couldn't help but think of how Lockhart had introduced Snape as his "assistant" to the duelling club and he had to wonder whether Lockhart had taken all the claim to the "glory" of leading the club, without realising that he had also taken all the responsibility for it.
Even when it became obvious that Snape was only taking personal responsibility for the Slytherins, leaving each pair a wide berth and spacing them out so they took up more than half of the room despite making up about a quarter of its population, Flynn was about to leave the room until someone stepped in front of him.
A familiar older student sneered at him, tilting his head back so he could look down at him, despite being barely taller than Flynn.
"Fancy meeting you here, Lord Slytherin," Asshole #1 from the Dipshit squad said. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
Flynn glared at Asshole, fighting the instantly rising urge to punch the smug expression off his face.
Flynn spared a quick glance at the door, knowing that he could easily push past the boy and leave if he wanted, but as he weighed his options, Asshole chimed in to offer his own thoughts.
"Might I remind you that it's considered quite rude to ignore your betters," Asshole said. "And here I was, about to ask if you would grace me with the opportunity to be your sparring partner. Don't you worry about that noble little head of yours. I'll go easy on you. No need to be afraid. Not like you even have a pair of legs to hide your tail between, after all, Lord Slytherin."
Flynn's fist tightened around his wand, and a thrum of magical energy pulsed from his arm and circulated within his entire body.
Asshole smirked down at him, though his eyes seemed to wander to the side towards Dipshit and Asshole #2, who were watching the scene from a healthy distance away, with mirrored sneers on their faces. Asshole pretended not to acknowledge them while focusing the entirety of his attention on them, but when the smiles on his two friends' faces dropped, he didn't seem to understand why until a familiar black shadow fell over them.
"Does there seem to be a problem here, gentlemen?" Snape asked, with a glare that seemed to suggest that there was only one correct answer.
"Not at all, sir," Asshole said, his voice going half an octave higher almost immediately. "I was just suggesting to Fredericton here that we could partner up, seeing as there aren't that many other students left without partners."
Snape's glare didn't lessen in intensity as it bounced from Asshole to Flynn a few times before he spoke.
"It would be more reasonable for students to be matched up with peers from a similar year. Though I suppose it does seem that there aren't many lone students at this point, and I would hate to delay the… show any further," Snape said, scanning the crowded non-Slytherin half of the room with a sneer. "But the three year difference between you is not an insignificant one. I will only allow it if both of you agree to exercise restraint."
Though he said it to both of them, Snape's eyes lingered on Flynn's for a fraction of a second longer than what might've been necessary. Though Flynn wasn't entirely sure if he imagined it or not, the silent question still rang in his head.
"Sure," Flynn said, answering the question with an intense glower towards Asshole. "I'll duel."
Though Flynn didn't turn his head to look at him, he practically felt Snape's glare burning a hole into the top of his head. Flynn refused to acknowledge the second part of Snape's unasked question until the Professor walked away.
Asshole one's sneer returned as soon as Snape turned around, but Flynn didn't let his expression change in the slightest.
"You heard our dear Professor," Asshole said. "Go easy on me, Lord Slytherin."
"I didn't agree to shit," Flynn growled.
"Oh you didn't?" Asshole asked, with mock surprise. "Well, I suppose I should be scared."
Flynn didn't bother to agree with the obvious as he stepped backwards, taking the appropriate distance from Asshole. Unlike with the non-Slytherin half of the room, Snape had taken care to separate the students in even parallel rows so any duelling pairs wouldn't interfere with each other as long as they could shoot their spells in a straight line, and an additional benefit to that was that Flynn knew exactly how far back to step, by matching his neighbour.
When he looked to the side to make sure that he was in line with the other rows of students, he was surprised to see Draco staring at him from a few rows down, giving him a malicious jeer of a smile, practically bouncing up and down in excitement as across from him, Harry gave Flynn a worried look.
Flynn scowled at the both of them before turning his attention back to Asshole.
"Face your partners and bow!" Lockhart called out, from his spot on the platform.
Flynn barely bent forward, while Asshole bent down in an exaggerated and mocking bow.
"Wands at the ready!" Lockhart shouted. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponent. Only to disarm them!" Lockhart repeated, to which Flynn nodded. "We don't want any accidents."
Asshole gave him a grin at that, and for the first time in a long time, Flynn smiled back, stretching his mouth slightly too wide and showing off every single one of his slightly too sharp teeth. Asshole flinched at the sight, which made Flynn smile even wider, before returning his face to a more neutral glare.
"One. Two… Three!"
Asshole didn't have particularly quick reflexes, and before he could even open his mouth, Flynn already heard several voices shouting out in a growing cacophony of random hexes and charms, but to be fair to Asshole, it wasn't completely his fault. Whether it was out of nervousness, or a lack of shame, most of the other students had cheated and had started to cast their spells before Lockhart had finished counting down.
Out of the corners of his eyes, Flynn could see flashes of colour and light illuminating the room, as magic spells started to soar into the air, but none of them would compete with what he would produce.
Pointing his wand up in the air, instead of towards his opponent, Flynn finally let the swirling magic in his body coalesce in his wand, with a deafening shout that cut through every other voice in the room.
"LUMOS!"
The entire room was immediately bathed in an intense white light that emanated from his wand. Even though Flynn could somehow stare into the light without being blinded, the reflection of his light made the world seem blank, as his immediate surroundings were reduced to nothing more than contradictory silhouettes of white, the crevices in which shadows would normally hide being invaded by the light.
Spells flew wildly around the room or fizzled out entirely as the other students were blinded by the sudden light, or interrupted their own chants with their surprised screams, but Flynn paid them no attention as he glared at Asshole.
Asshole cried out in pain, covering his eyes with his free hand as he held his wand hand out threateningly, like a knife, though he seemed too preoccupied with his temporary blindness to be thinking of what spell he could cast with it.
With no such distractions of his own, Flynn lowered his wand, cutting off the flow of magic in it to pull away the light, before pushing his magic back into his wand once more.
Exercise restraint, said Snape. Only to disarm, said Lockhart.
Keeping those instructions in mind, Flynn took a moment to aim carefully at his target.
"FLIPENDO!"
Once again, Flynn's voice overpowered the screams and cries of the other voices in the room, but it still couldn't compare to the way that the visceral crunch of Asshole's bones echoed through the room in the sudden silence that it commanded. In its wake, the only sound that could be heard was a deafening scream as Asshole flailed on the ground, his violent movements only jerking around his mangled arm in a way that was certain to cause more pain than if he just kept it still.
Flynn watched Asshole flail, content to let him cause more damage to himself, before he turned around towards the quick footsteps that walked in his direction, barely audible amongst the screaming and the murmurs of every other student who had worn off the initial shock and were concerned about what was going on in their blindness.
Flynn braced himself against the tight expression of fury on Snape's face as the professor approached, gripping his wand tight in case he would need it.
Snape glowered down at Flynn with an expression that promised death, but barely slowed down long enough to whisper something that only Flynn would be able to hear amidst Asshole's screams.
"You call that restraint?" Snape hissed.
Flynn glared up at him.
"He's not dead," he responded.
The response seemed to only make Snape angrier.
"Foolish boy," Snape hissed out, practically spitting out the words, before walking to Asshole.
With a quick tap of his wand, Asshole immediately stopped screaming, though that seemed to be because Snape knocked him out rather than actually healing him. With a quick inspection of the damage, Snape frowned at what he saw, before conjuring a stretcher and levitating Asshole's unconscious body onto it.
Leaving the boy floating in the air, Snape walked over to Asshole #2 and Dipshit and tapped them lightly between the eyes with his wand. The two blinked wildly as sight returned to them, and though they struggled to understand what was going on, Snape didn't seem to care.
"Selwyn, Yaxley," he said. "It seems that Carrow has been injured by an unfortunate case of accidental magic. See to it that you escort him to Madame Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing at once."
The mention of their friend's name seemed to clue them in to what was going on, though when they actually looked towards the direction of the body, both of them clutched at their mouths at the sight of the mangled piece of flesh that hung off Asshole's shoulder. Snape frowned and tapped their backs with his wand again, and they took their hands off their mouths, seeming to fight off the worst effects of nausea with Snape's help.
"Go," Snape said, and though neither of the pair seemed to want to get any closer to the stretcher and its occupant, they didn't seem to think it was worth arguing against the clear order.
Taking out his wand, Asshole #2 muttered something under his breath that made the stretcher float forwards, and though the room was a little more organised than it had been initially, with the Slytherin half of the room being divided into neat rows with a healthy amount of room to navigate through, Asshole #2 had a bit of trouble navigating his way to the door.
It was only when they left and the door closed completely behind them, did Snape talk.
"While this incident was a mere case of accidental magic, I will still need to file a report," Snape said, walking down the row of the nearest students and tapping them each between the eyes, with the exception of Harry and Hermione who were the only non-Slytherin students nearby. Malfoy shook his head wildly as he struggled to figure out what had just happened, but though he looked up at Snape to silently ask, Snape ignored him.
"Professor Lockhart," Snape said. "I will unfortunately be forced to retire for today. If you need me, I will be in my office. I trust you are able to adjourn this meeting by yourself."
"Of course," Lockhart said, with a slightly strained smile about twenty feet away from where Snape was standing. "Though I don't suppose you could help me with my temporary blindness? It could be good practice for you to heal such a reflective pair of eyes such as mine. I've been told they are quite magical by too many beautiful ladies to count, after all. You could learn a thing or two."
"Unfortunately, I will have to decline," Snape said, whipping his cloak around and glancing back at Flynn. "I would like to get this over with as soon as possible, without a second of delay."
Lockhart's smile fell completely, possibly because he thought the rest of the room was blind enough that it didn't matter. Still his smile came back in full force a moment later.
"Ah, very well. I suppose there are more important things to deal with than a little temporary blindness anyways. In fact, I remember a time when I was stranded in a bubble of magical darkness within the Amazon forest, where no light, magical or otherwise, could shine through. Thankfully, I had the foresight to put myself in a situation like the one we find ourselves in now, where I purposefully allowed myself to be blinded in order to train my other much-neglected senses."
Flynn followed Snape out of the door, followed by the flock of Slytherin students that Snape had healed, leaving the rest of the students, including any Slytherin students that were unfortunate enough to not be within walking distance of Snape, to be stuck with Lockhart until their sight returned naturally.
The atmosphere amongst the Slytherins was tense, but brief, as every one of the students seemed to have the sense to part from the impromptu walking group as soon as they possibly could, leaving only Snape and Flynn to walk towards Snape's office.
When they entered the room, Snape said nothing as he sat down, folded his hands in front of him and glowered up at Flynn. Flynn said nothing as he glared back.
Eventually, it was Snape who spoke first.
"You told me once, that you were placed in Slytherin because you desire power," Snape asked, his voice much calmer than Flynn might've expected. "Is this how you plan to obtain it? Through violence and fear?"
"How the fuck is that relevant?" Flynn asked.
Snape glared at Flynn, but gave no other response.
Flynn glared back, and growled when Snape seemed to show no signs of understanding in his eyes.
"This isn't about power," Flynn said, hating how stupid he felt for having to spell out the obvious. "This is about paying people back what they're owed, with interest. 'Power' just meant I could afford not to kill him to get him back. A broken arm's a lot more tame than a shank in between the ribs."
"I would advise against casually threatening the life of another student in my presence, Mr. Fredericton," Snape snapped.
Flynn glared at Snape.
"If I didn't do it, I'd be long dead by now."
"Mr. Carrow may be a brute," Snape said, scowling more to himself than at Flynn, as if he hated to admit it. "But I hardly doubt he is capable of murder."
Flynn didn't respond, except to continue glaring at Snape for saying something so irrelevant.
Snape stared at him for a long moment, and while Flynn wouldn't exactly say that they softened, they lost a bit of the hard edge they had to them, while Flynn fought not to lose any in his own.
There was a long pause, as Flynn held Snape's glare, but with any tension in the atmosphere being held taut solely in Flynn's grip, his eyes started to strain uncomfortably.
When Snape sighed and looked down at the papers scattered around on his desk.
"I will overlook the casual threats on your schoolmate's life, seeing as you must be understandably stressed about your use of accidental magic," Snape said, as he took a quill out of his inkwell, and marked a few spots on a student's paper with several Xs before scrawling a large T on the corner.
Flynn waited for Snape to continue, but when he didn't Flynn turned around and started to walk out of the office.
"Mr. Fredericton," Snape called out before Flynn could reach the door.
Flynn turned around to see Snape still with his eyes down on his papers, marking them quickly, with Ts and Ps marking a majority of the papers.
"This world is a harsh one," Snape said. "There is no doubt of that."
Flynn waited for Snape to continue, but when almost half a minute passed without any sign of that, he turned around.
"Mr. Fredericton," Snape called out again.
"What?" Flynn snapped in annoyance.
Snape glanced up from his papers, clearly not amused by the show of attitude, but before Flynn could flip Snape off in response to the look he gave him, Snape looked back down.
"The world is a dark and tragic place," Snape said, grimacing as if what he would say next would physically hurt him. "But sometimes, there is light."
Flynn stared at Snape, his face twisting in annoyance at the vague message, before he scowled.
"Are you fucking done?" he asked.
"Five points from Slytherin for your language," Snape growled, keeping his eyes glued on the paper in front of him, with his nose almost pressing against the parchment. His quill nearly ripped the page as he tore a giant T onto it. "Get out of my office."
- - - - -
Flynn usually wasn't one to concern himself with Hogwarts's rumour mill, not able to care about who was dating who, or whether any of the Professors had secret children that they visited after hours, but he wasn't stubborn enough to ignore it now that the rumours seemed to be exclusively about him.
Keeping his ears open, he was able to determine that nobody really knew what had happened in the Duelling Club, since he had blinded all the witnesses involved. Though there were a few people that seemed to think that Snape had been telling the truth when he loudly announced that Asshole's punishment had been a cause of accidental magic, a large majority of the student body hadn't been convinced.
While most of the students seemed to agree that the Duelling Club incident had been intentional, the rumours started to diverge wildly on the "How" and "Why" of it.
Like with most rumours, the main goal of spreading and discussing them seemed to be more about having fun with wild theories rather than searching for the truth, and the method that Flynn had used to send Asshole to the hospital wing ranged from him turning into a snake and biting it off entirely, to the use of an early prototype of the Cruciatus Curse, whatever that was.
Despite him screaming the incantation to the Knockback jinx at a volume that he was certain that the entire room had heard it, he barely heard a single whisper of it, except in the Slytherin Second Year dorms, where he had walked in on Draco talking to Gregory and Vincent about it in low tones, though his mouth snapped shut immediately when he noticed Flynn.
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If he knew that this would be all it took to shut Draco up, he would've done it a long time ago.
Unlike the speculation on the method that he used, which was more regarded as a fun discussion on hypotheticals since nobody had actually seen Asshole's injuries besides Flynn, Snape, Dipshit and Asshole #2, and thus there were no clues on what it could be (besides the knockback jinx, of course), the discussion on why Flynn had done it was a more seriously debated topic.
Feuds within Slytherin were incredibly rare, at least on such a public scale as this one, but they weren't unheard of. Though it was true that Slytherin tended to come off as a united front of rich assholes who seemed willing to at least tolerate each other for the sake of hating everyone else, putting so many rich assholes together was bound to cause friction at some point.
Though the Slytherins self-proclaimed themselves to be at the top of the social ladder, lording above the rest of the school with the stench of old money, that didn't mean that every Slytherin was equal in their stench. While most years tended to have a clear cut winner of who stank the most, like with Malfoy for Flynn's year and Dipshit for his, sometimes there were two great stinkers who fought for dominance, mostly by trading whiny comments as they passed each other in the halls, but occasionally through full-blown fights.
At first, a large majority of the school seemed to think that this incident was just a familiar incident of feuding clans, as the Frederictons and the Carrows butted heads behind the scenes in the larger political world outside of Hogwarts as well as within it, but that rumour only lasted for a few hours before it was shot down and buried in the dirt.
Not only did the rumour mongers seem to realise that they had never heard of a Fredericton clan before, but when the Muggleborn students chimed in to offer the possibility that Flintstone Fredericton, of Muggle "Teevee" fame, was possibly a Muggleborn student as well, the debate mostly switched to whether the Sorting Hat would actually be insane enough to place a Muggleborn into the den of snakes.
The blood status of Flintstone Fredericton, aka Lord Slytherin, as several students in the Duelling Club seemed to overhear Draco Malfoy calling him, became the most hotly debated topic in the school for about twenty four hours, until the next day when yet another Muggleborn student was found petrified in the halls of Hogwarts, accompanied by the frozen ghost of Gryffindor's house, Nearly Headless Nick.
The rumours shifted away from Flynn quickly after that, and though there was some lingering noise that focused on the possibility of him being the heir of Slytherin, with the nickname that Malfoy had given him, the recent revelation that he was also probably a Muggleborn heavily muddied that idea.
While the rumour might've gained traction regardless, if it had been about a month earlier, the fact was that this was the second petrification with a student victim. Last month, when the Gryffindor first year had been attacked, just after the first quidditch game of the year, the students had treated the event with a cautious air, but were still willing to poke the subject at least a little.
While Colin Creevey's petrification had been unfortunate, he had only been one victim, and while the cure would take some time to make, the fact that there was a cure at all made it easier to treat the attack lightly.
With a second human victim, and with not even the dead being safe from whatever was petrifying people around the school, it was getting harder to write the Chamber of Secrets off as a simple prank, and the petrifications as a fluke.
For the next week, the air around the castle had been tense. Younger students walked around in large groups, and the halls were practically empty. Outside of mealtimes and the few minutes between each class, where every student hurried to their next classroom, eager to place themselves under the watchful eyes of their teachers, every student in the castle seemed to hole themselves up in the privacy and the safety of their respective dorms.
With the castle being so empty, Hogwarts should've been a paradise for Flynn, if it weren't for the two girls that had practically glued themselves to his side.
As a Muggleborn herself, Sally had become a nervous wreck, even more quiet than she had been before. According to a whispering Lily and the dark bags under her eyes, Sally had been having nightmares every day since their fellow Hufflepuff had been petrified.
With Lily having similarly growing bags under her own eyes, Flynn asked if she had been having nightmares too, but she shook her head. Standing on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, she told Flynn that she had offered to share a bed with Sally until the nightmares stopped, and that Sally's tossing and turning kept her up at night.
Thankfully, despite standing less than a foot away from her, Sally didn't seem to hear what Lily had said, though it only made sense given how the girl seemed too focused on trying not to fall over to be paying attention to her surroundings.
Though he wanted nothing more than to wander off into the abandoned sections of Hogwarts, Flynn took one look at the way that Lily's and Sally's hands were practically glued to the cuffs of his robes and sighed.
"Let's go to Hagrid's," Flynn said. "I need to start practising my cooking."
"You're going to cook in Hagrid's hut?" Lily asked, sounding more surprised by the suggestion than Flynn might've expected. "Why?"
"Where else would I practise?" Flynn grunted.
"Why not the kitchens?" Lily asked.
"I don't know where the kitchens are," Flynn responded simply.
With a funny look, Lily told Flynn where the kitchens were. Right beside the entrance to the Hufflepuff dorms. It was apparently an open secret, at least to the Hufflepuffs, and Lily refused to be blamed for keeping it a secret since Flynn never asked in the first place.
Flynn glared at Lily regardless, but didn't put too much heat into it. Lily could barely match his stare, as her eyes struggled to focus on him, and despite the fact that he knew that Hagrid's hut had more than enough equipment for his purposes, he decided that the kitchens would be an acceptable alternative. If Sally or Lily collapsed on the way there, he didn't want to be responsible for carrying them the rest of the way.
Dragging the two girls to the Hufflepuff dorms, Flynn didn't see the supposed entrance to the kitchens until Lily pointed out the large still-life painting of a bowl of fruit that was hung at the far end of a storage room.
Tickling a pear until it giggled and turned into a doorknob technically wasn't the worst thing that Flynn had experienced in his life, but it was somehow the most uncomfortable thing that he'd had to do. With a shiver, he tried to suppress the memory before grabbing the pear and pulling the door open.
Immediately a wave of heat and smells hit him with full force, and he couldn't stop himself from taking a deep inhale through his nose to take in the overpowering scent of freshly baked bread, accented with the blended scent of various meats being cooked, presumably for the upcoming dinner in a few hours.
But regardless of how comforting the heat and the smell of food was, it wasn't enough for Flynn to ignore the army of bug-eyed creatures that stared up at him from their stations around the various ovens and stoves scattered around the large room.
"Master Just Flynn?" one of them called out.
Flynn glared at the one that spoke, and though he thought he might recognize the house-elf as Opie, the one that he had met in first year, he didn't think it was him.
"Master Just Flynn?" Lily parroted, with a grin.
Flynn glared at her, and glared down at the house-elf that had spoken, but when neither of them reacted in the way that he wanted, he quickly decided to ignore them instead.
"I want to practise my cooking," Flynn said. "Lend me a stove."
The entire kitchen seemed to erupt in murmurs at Flynn's request, and almost a minute without a clear response, Flynn turned around, ready to head to Hagrid's hut instead.
"Wait, Master Just Flynn," one of the house-elves said, a different one, also not Opie. "Master Just Flynn can has a stove if Master Just Flynn wishes. But we do not know why. Is Master Just Flynn unhappy with the food we make?"
Flynn glared at the speaker, and though the house elf's eyes immediately started to glisten with the threat of tears, he couldn't help but think it had nothing to do with his glare. Glancing around the room, he couldn't help but notice that nearly all of the house elves that formed the slowly growing crowd around him looked the same way, their eyes shining with moisture.
"Are you fucking deaf?" Flynn asked. "I said I wanted to practise my cooking. It has nothing to do with your food."
"Then Master Just Flynn is happy with our food?" another house elf asked.
Flynn glared at the one that spoke, but turned away, unable to match the small creature's watery stare for some reason. Unfortunately, that placed Lily directly in his line of sight, and he scowled at her automatically when he saw the amused grin on her face.
"Your food's fine," Flynn grumbled.
When every single house elf in the crowd around him let out a squeaky roar, Flynn's first instinct was to shove his hands in his pocket to grab his wand. With Lily still holding onto his sleeve, she let out a surprised yelp as she was dragged down and she fell against his shoulder before giving him an annoyed glare.
Thankfully, the house elves didn't use the moment of distraction to attack him, but instead seemed to be more interested in hugging each other, jumping up and down as they cried happy tears, cheering, laughing, and some even breaking out into song, with each of the singing house elves choosing entirely different songs from one another.
Flynn glared at the house elves, completely unamused but somehow finding that the cacophony of noise didn't bother him as much as he might've assumed. Though it was more chaotic than what he was used to, he couldn't help but wonder exactly when he had become so used to listening to the annoying chatter of tiny creatures.
He glanced down at Lily, who still had her hands attached to his sleeve deep in his pocket, and she didn't seem interested in changing that anytime soon.
"What?" she asked.
Flynn didn't respond except to take his hand out of his pocket and shake Lily off of his sleeve. After a moment of thought, he did the same to Sally, who barely seemed to realise that she was hanging onto him in the first place.
Ignoring Lily's mock pout, Flynn scanned the room for any empty stoves, but though he saw a few skillets where the contents had started to smoke angrily while its previous occupant was too busy celebrating to tend to the food, there wasn't a single space that he could see that was free.
But while he scanned the kitchens once more, his eyes narrowed at the sight of a single elf at the end of the room, standing with its arms splayed out comically and its back against the wall, like it had been thrown against it.
Though a small part of him was curious about what the wall elf was doing, with how the rest of the elves only seemed to be celebrating harder as more time passed, he could hardly think that what the wall elf was doing was weird in comparison. As he watched several of the elves disappearing into the cupboards and crawling out with mugs filled to the brim with what looked suspiciously like beer, his eyes narrowed as black smoke started to rise from some of the unattended skillets.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Stop fucking around! Your food's about to burn."
Immediately, the elves stopped what they were doing, glanced at their food and decided to both panic and thank Flynn for "liking their food enough to not want it to burn" in the same breath before they returned to their work stations with no sign that anything was out of the ordinary, aside from the fact that a majority of them were humming as they worked, and had a bit of a skip to their step as they moved from place to place.
Flynn didn't have to wait long before one of the stoves was freed up, and a shy house elf beckoned Flynn to come over.
Flynn nodded at the house elves who brought a clean set of pots, pans, and a large assortment of utensils, most of which Flynn had no idea how to use, before he took a single pan and a spatula out of what was offered to him.
Setting the pan down on the hot stovetop, Flynn ignored the curious stares of Lily, Sally, and a handful of elves as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of the bacon he had taken from that morning's breakfast.
After the house elves stopped threatening to lay themselves over the fire if Flynn didn't take their fresh ingredients, Flynn decided that if he was willing to take the free food from Hogwarts after it was cooked, there shouldn't be much of a difference for him to use fresh ingredients from the kitchens, even if the latter did feel a little more like he was stealing from the house elves for some reason. Besides Lily was probably right when she said that he probably wouldn't learn much by re-heating food that had already been cooked before, even if he hated how much she was laughing as she said it.
Flynn scowled at her, and shooed her away, unable to concentrate on his cooking while she was there.
Though Flynn wasn't completely unfamiliar with the kitchen, with how often Jones made him "pull his weight" to earn his dinners at the gym, he had only been given charge of things that were adjacent to cooking, like peeling onions and potatoes, or doing the dishes after the fact.
Now that he was actually standing in front of the stove, staring down at the fat strips of bacon he had sizzling in the pan, he had to wonder how and why anyone enjoyed cooking in the first place.
Flynn had learned a long time ago, just how low people could sink in terms of what they were willing to put in their mouths when they had an empty stomach to fill, but he had learned that lesson in tandem with the fact that eating the wrong thing could either kill you or bring you to a point where dying would feel like a mercy.
Flynn had no idea why he had chosen to cook meat when he knew just how dangerous it could be. While he didn't have to worry about the possibility that it was too old for consumption, with how fresh the ingredients were, he knew that undercooked meat could be a death sentence as well, and he couldn't help but regret the fact that he hadn't just ignored his gut instinct to reheat the cooked bacon in the first place.
As Flynn stared down at the pan, he noticed himself getting more and more agitated. Though he didn't want to let his eyes leave the meat for a second, his fingers twitched, desperately craving something to do with the anxious energy that was building up inside of him. At a certain point, he started to realise that he would have to give them something to do soon, unless he wanted them to explode.
Keeping his eyes on the pan, he muttered a set of ingredients towards the house elves that were standing nearby, repeating them from his vague memory of the one time that Tom had made pancakes one weekend morning.
When the elves delivered Flynn his pancake ingredients, he groped blindly at them until he gave up and took his eyes off the bacon strips to mix them together, only half-realising halfway through that he had no idea how much of each ingredient he should be putting in the mixing bowl, but deciding it was too late to change anything.
Whisking the ingredients quickly and furiously, to keep himself from leaving the bacon alone for too long, he ended up spraying unmixed flour and batter everywhere before he figured it was enough mixing and poured it into the pan.
Flynn flinched and scowled when he realised that he had somehow forgotten that the pan was already occupied, but before he could do anything about it, the lumpy pancake batter had already coated the sizzling bacon entirely.
Flynn clenched his fist in annoyance at himself for fucking up something so simple, but before he could decide on whether he wanted to mark it off as a failed attempt and quit trying to cook forever, he felt something soft crashing against his back.
Flynn looked down as he felt Lily pushing her head past his arm. For a second, he was tempted to push her back, in embarrassment of his fuck-up, but she spoke before he could make a decision.
"Bacon pancakes," she commented. "I didn't know you were cultured, Flynn."
Flynn scowled at Lily.
""Don't patronise me," he said. "That's not a thing."
"It isn't?" Lily asked. "Then what's that?"
"A fuck up," Flynn answered.
Lily looked up at Flynn, and gave him a soft smile.
"It's a thing," Lily said easily, as she reached up to grab the spatula that he had in his hands.
Flynn was surprised when he realised how tight he was gripping the cooking utensil, and though he had no inclination to let Lily take it from him in the first place, she didn't seem to care. Quickly giving up on prying the spatula from his grip, she placed both her hands over his. Though they were small enough that she could barely cover his hand with both of her own, Flynn was surprised enough by the gesture that he didn't resist as she piloted his hand to slowly flip the battered bacon strips over on the pan.
"My mom doesn't like cooking bacon too much, because of the smell, but she doesn't mind it as much if she coats it in pancake batter first," Lily said.
Too confused by the situation to form a proper sentence, Flynn nodded despite the fact that the bacon still smelled exactly the same, regardless of how much he had drowned it in pancake batter.
"I like my mom's cooking," Lily continued. "Honestly, the food at Hogwarts is better than what she makes, but sometimes I miss it."
Lily looked up to smile at Flynn, but quickly turned her attention back to the pan, silently watching the food cook. Flynn stared at the back of her head, not moving until she did, finally taking her hands off of his to grab the pan and tilt the contents onto a nearby plate.
After thanking the house elf that offered her a knife and fork, she cut a piece of the bacon pancake and shoved it in her mouth. Her smile immediately strained, and she silently cut another piece of the pancake and held it out to Flynn.
After a short moment, Flynn was able to finally gather his wits enough to take the offered fork from her hand and shove it into his mouth. Immediately his face twisted as he took a bite, and the disharmonious mixture of crispy bacon, runny pancake, and a clump of flour that hadn't properly been mixed into the batter clashed on his tongue.
"It's fucking shit," Flynn said.
Lily smiled, and swallowed the remainder of her bite.
"You'll do better next time," she offered.
Flynn tried to scowl at her, but found that his mouth wouldn't listen to him. Deciding it had something to do with the flour between his teeth, Flynn decided to spare Lily and give her a simple nod instead.
Lily smiled up at him in response.
Though Flynn didn't want to make another attempt at cooking so soon after his first fuck up, especially with how inexplicably hot his face felt, possibly a result of him undercooking the bacon, Sally had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor in a nest of pillows and blankets that the house elves had bundled her into.
With how peaceful she looked, and how little sleep she'd been getting in the past week, Lily elected to let Sally sleep for as long as she wanted, as long as it wouldn't be a bother to the house elves.
With the house elves eagerly granting their permission, Flynn and Lily stayed behind in the kitchens, as Lily wandered off to talk to the elf that was still standing with its arms splayed out against the wall at the far end of the kitchen, while Flynn walked around the kitchen, peering over the shoulders of the house elves in hopes of learning something new.
After a long while, Lily reported back to Flynn with her findings that the house elf that was voluntarily pressing himself against the wall was none other than Opie, who was dutifully obeying Flynn's last order as best as he could manage. It took Flynn a moment to remember that he had told Opie not to follow him the last time they had talked, and once he realised that Opie was pressing himself against the wall in an attempt to stay as far away from Flynn as physically possible, without disobeying the laws of physics, Flynn walked over and gave an exasperated order to Opie to not be so stupid.
After clarifying that he wasn't suggesting that Opie should enroll himself into higher education, Flynn clearly stated that Opie didn't need to avoid Flynn so intensely, and that he didn't need to press himself against any walls.
Once Opie accepted the new set of orders, he thanked Flynn for eating more eggs at breakfast time before returning to his cooking station and thanked the house elf that took over to make sure that his abandoned food didn't start a fire.
Dinnertime started soon after that, and with Sally still dead asleep in her nest, Lily and Flynn ate their food in the kitchen, sitting side by side on the floor on cushions provided by the elves.
Lily leaned against him after she finished eating, and in a few minutes she had started to snore quietly against his shoulder. Not wanting to wake her needlessly, Flynn stayed as still as he possibly could, idly watching the house elves as they ran around, cooking food, and using their magic to teleport it to the Great Hall, waving their fingers around like conductors, no doubt controlling the plates with some sort of magical sense despite not being able to see them.
At some point, Flynn realised that Sally was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, staring idly as she ate from a plate resting in her lap, while Ms. Garfield ate what looked like a small spider on her knee.
Flynn scowled at Sally out of instinct, not understanding how she had suddenly appeared in front of him without him noticing, until he realised that there was a thin green blanket draped over his chest. He stared at it, unable to fathom how it had gotten there until he realised that he must've fallen asleep at some point.
He frowned, unable to understand how that was even possible. He was a light sleeper, and in the Slytherin dorms, he would often wake up at least once a night whenever one of his roommates would wake up to go to the washroom, jolting awake instantly at the slightest sound and grabbing his wand tight until they crawled back into bed and the potential threat had passed.
It made no sense that he could let his guard down so easily, surrounded by noise and bustle, until he wondered if he had somehow poisoned himself into a deep sleep with his undercooked bacon. Scowling at the realisation that his culinary journey would be a long one, he made to get up and leave, now that Sally was awake, until he realised that there was still a blonde puddle of a girl draped over his lap.
If Sally cared at all about the predicament he was in, she showed no indication that she was willing to help him out of it, as she slowly ate her dinner without any sort of rush. When she ate the last of it, she finally acknowledged Flynn's predicament with a shrug and stating simply that Lily was a heavy sleeper. Nothing would wake her.
Flynn scowled at her for her uselessness, but she paid it no mind as she crawled back into her nest, and promptly fell back asleep.
Flynn glared at the two girls, but when he got no response other than quiet snores, he grumbled to himself and decided to just wait until they woke up. Until then he would stay awake.
Watching the house elves as they worked around them, cleaning the kitchen and mostly ignoring Flynn except to offer him a glass of warm milk, which he declined, Flynn kept his eyes narrowed as he glared at them, daring them to try anything.
Refusing to let the warmth of the kitchen and comfortable weight of Lily across his lap lull him into a false sense of security, his eyes narrowed into a sharper and sharper glare, until he was glaring so intensely that he practically had his eyes closed.
But not actually. Just practically, of course.