Title: Slytherins at Play
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco/Blaise/Theodore
Content Notes: AU (Harry in Slytherin), mentions of angst, established relationship, present tense, flashbacks to earlier timeline
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3900
Summary: AU. It's Harry's seventh year in Slytherin, his first year after the war, and his second year knowing Blaise, Theo, and Draco so…well.
Author's Notes: One of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics being posted between the Summer Solstice and the first of August. It will have a second part to be posted tomorrow. A request from iria4285 for Harry/Draco/Theo/Blaise, Harry was sorted to Slytherin and in seventh year he and his best friends have fun.

Slytherins at Play

"Tonight?"

Harry glances up with a smile when he feels Draco's hand on his shoulder. Draco is the one of them who touches him the most, as if he assumes Harry will vanish if he looks away for too long a period of time. Not that Harry minds, exactly. "Sure. But ten or later, okay? I have this beast of a Transfiguration essay to finish first."

Draco rolls his eyes. "Stop saying 'okay,' Potter, you sound Muggle. And if you managed Transfiguration last year with everything going on, then you can manage it in our NEWT year." He flops into a green chair across from Harry, part of the little circle that Harry and his friends arrange on a regular basis, and stares at him.

"It's all right, Draco, you can say 'Voldemort.'" Harry winks at him when he flinches and turns back to his essay. "And if you can't wait, go and bring yourself off until I'm ready."

Draco glares at him, then gets up and stalks towards the stairs that lead up to the seventh-year boys' bedroom. Harry manages to keep his jaw from falling open. Well, there's something he didn't know. Draco likes to grope and play, sure, but he normally can wait a few hours.

Harry raises his eyebrows and goes back to his essay. Then again, if he thinks about it, Draco has always been impatient.

"So, Potter, what made the Hat think you were good enough to get into Slytherin?"

Harry took a deep breath as he slid onto the bench. He hadn't wanted to sit next to Malfoy, but there doesn't seem to be a choice. Parkinson, the only other new Slytherin sorted between him and Malfoy, was sitting in a different place down the bench with the other girls, and sneering at him as pointedly as anyone else.

Harry clenched his hands under the table. He had to get past this, he had to stand up for himself, or being in Slytherin House for seven years would be more intolerable than he'd already thought it would be. His pleas hadn't convinced the Hat. It had said it could see too much ambition in him.

Maybe Harry could be a sort of Gryffindor even if he was in Slytherin. He leaned forwards, and Malfoy leaned towards him in what was probably unconscious imitation.

"Figure it out."

"What?"

Harry grinned at him and sat back, trying to ignore the way his heart bounded. "The Hat saw something in me. I already know why you're in Slytherin, because you've been bragging about it everywhere. But some people prefer to be subtle about things. See if you can figure out what brought me here."

That was getting him a lot more speculative looks than sneers. Harry turned to watch the rest of the Sorting, hoping that it wouldn't be so bad.

"Potter."

Harry glanced over at Malfoy as he applauded the Sorting of Blaise Zabini into Slytherin. "What?"

"I want to know now."

Harry almost bit back his smug grin, then decided there was no reason to and let it bloom across his face. He shrugged as the plates filled with food. "Like I said, you'll have to figure it out. Why should I explain it to you? I thought Slytherins were supposed to be cunning."

Malfoy alternated between being indignantly silent and whining for an explanation the rest of the meal. Harry found himself more amused than irritated, which he supposed was a good prediction for how he and Malfoy might get along in the future.

He was still upset that he hadn't got into Gryffindor with Ron, but he was going to hold his own here. Maybe the Hat had been right.

Harry puts down his essay when it's time to go to dinner, and catches Blaise's eye as he stands. Blaise smiles in an amused fashion—then again, it's rare that he doesn't—and puts down his own book. Ancient Runes, Harry sees. He wonders idly if he should have paid more attention in that class. Then again, it wasn't runes that let him defeat Voldemort, or maintain his place in the Slytherin House power structure, or keep his friendship with Ron, so it probably doesn't matter.

"Draco still upstairs having that wank you told him to take?" Blaise asks out of the corner of his mouth as they walk towards the Great Hall. Theodore falls in behind them like a shadow. He's vocal enough in the right environment, though, Harry thinks complacently.

Harry snorts. "Probably. I didn't know he'd take it as an order."

"You ought to have."

Harry nods. He supposes that's a fair accusation. They're friends, all of them, but—well, they all know who leads. Not rules, which is unusual enough for Slytherin House and probably as much difference as his friends are willing to tolerate.

Strange how you still don't really think of yourself as completely Slytherin, Harry thinks as he slides into his place at the bench. Blaise takes the seat on his left, and Theodore the one on his right, leaving the place directly across from him for Draco.

Then again, he isn't a pureblood, and there are still Slytherins who will throw that in his face. They just don't do it as often now that he's defeated Voldemort and proved that being pureblood means less than nothing.

"Harry!"

Ron is walking into the Great Hall with Neville and Dean. Harry waves to him and ignores the ache that fills him when he sees the space where Seamus should be. The battle at Hogwarts last year killed a lot of people, and Seamus was one of them, when a Blasting Curse that hit Fenrir Greyback and catapulted him over a balcony caught Seamus in the backlash.

"Why do you wave to Gryffindors?" mutters a Selwyn fourth-year who's sitting across from Parkinson. "It's disgusting."

"Not nearly as disgusting as your inbred face," Harry replies calmly, and ignores the laughter that follows and the way the fourth-year blushes. That's something else that's served him well in Slytherin: attacking first and letting the offense fall out where it may. If he can offer as good as he gets, then most Slytherins are going to listen to the person with the superior sense of humor.

"At least my mother wasn't a Mud—"

Selwyn stops speaking and sits there with his mouth stuck open. Then he wriggles his lips and tongue around, looking horrified. A second later he's clutching at his throat.

The laughter is general at the Slytherin table now, and Harry rolls his eyes. "You're not choking or suffocating, you fool," he tells Selwyn, who looks dramatic enough to faint. "You just can't close your mouth because you still intend on saying that word."

It takes another few seconds for Selwyn to get the message, but he finally shuts his mouth with a click and stares at Harry. "Why did that happen?"

"You honestly didn't realize that I spelled the table and the common room years ago to prevent anyone from speaking that word?" Harry shakes his head and reaches for another scoop of potatoes, ignoring Blaise's silent amusement. If Blaise has something to say about the way Harry eats, then he can do it aloud. "Maybe you never tried saying it before, I don't know, but you should have seen other people doing it."

"I thought you were doing something to them."

"Oh, I did."

"I mean, to them personally."

"Oh, I did." Harry glances up with a smile. No need for Selwyn to know that since he's become a seventh-year, he would find it beneath him to attack a fourth-year. The threat is as good as the reality, most of the time, with Slytherins. "You just assume that I would be foolish enough to do it in public."

Selwyn pales and decides it's a good idea to go back to his food. Harry snorts and fills his mouth with potatoes. They're delicious with melted butter. He watches with tolerance as Theodore adds enough spices to turn his own vegetables an entirely different color. Harry won't speak up about his friends' eating habits, either, unless they're about to take in an unsuspected poison or potion, or something of the kind.

"You took my advice to heart," Blaise says softly.

Harry grins at him. He used to say that all the time, but then, not that many people have tested Harry's enchantments on the table or in the common room for a while. "Yes, yes, take all the credit for it."

"I'm happy to," Blaise says, deepening his voice, and reaching out to slip his hand onto Harry's thigh beneath the table. Harry lets his eyes grow distant, remembering the evening that he actually made the decisions to perform the enchantments.

"If you want them to stop saying that word, you'll have to do something about it yourself."

Harry stared up at Blaise where he stood in front of the fireplace, blocking Harry's furious contemplation of it. "I've dueled them and I've gone to Professor Snape. What else would you have me do?"

"Are you a wizard or not?" Blaise gave a dubious look at the huge stack of books sitting beside Harry's green chair, as if to say that he wouldn't account Harry a wizard until he read through them. "You're studying enough for that Tournament you didn't enter. Why not look for a spell that could make them stop?"

Harry blinked. Then he snatched the topmost book off the pile without a word, while Blaise chuckled and walked away.

It had taken Harry three weeks of reading, but he'd found something, all right. An intent ward cast over an area—like a piece of furniture or a single room—could prevent someone from saying the word "Mudblood," and it would keep functioning as long as they intended to speak it. Most people didn't bother with intent wards, apparently, because they could only really prevent a single action and so weren't good about stopping a duel or an attack. Someone could just circumvent them and use a different spell instead.

But Harry didn't want to prevent a duel or an attack. He wanted to stop people from saying that word.

And he did. The first time he watched Cassius Warrington nearly choke himself trying to figure out what was going on had ranked as the best day of his life up until that point. Even if Blaise had leaned over and said, "You took my advice to heart," for the first time of so many times Harry wouldn't have been able to keep track of them with the most advanced Arithmantic calculations.

People came after him, of course, but Harry refused to remove the intent wards no matter how much they cursed him or dueled him. And when they took it into the corridors where Professor Snape could see, then their Head of House had no choice but to step in.

The older Slytherins had looked right stupid complaining about a spell a fourth-year had performed, too. That had probably been the beginning of the respect and the leadership position Harry had taken in his house.

And if Blaise thought Harry owed it all to him, well, the price he eventually claimed was one that Harry was more than willing to pay.

"This evening?"

Theodore's voice is soft behind Harry, almost breathy, but there's no softness about the hand that touches his shoulder. Harry leans back against him and nods, but says, "I'll be by a bit later. I want to talk to Ron first."

"You always want to talk to him first," Theodore mutters, but this time the breathy voice has a hint of laughter in it. He steps back, salutes Harry with a hand sort of waved in the vicinity of his forehead, and then turns around and follows most of the other Slytherins back to their common room.

Harry shakes his head fondly after him and walks over to catch up with Ron. He's standing with his arm around Hermione's shoulders. It took years and Harry had to speak sharply to Ron more than once after he said something stupid, but Hermione finally agreed to be his girlfriend.

Frankly, it's more than Ron deserves after the way he stumbled around not inviting her to the Yule Ball.

Then again, Harry's not about to talk about people deserving certain things after the way he got what it never even occurred to him to look for.

"Mate!" Ron reaches out his free hand and claps Harry on the arm. "Making any more grand plans for your career after school?"

Harry shakes his head. "The Ministry keeps writing to offer me Auror training, but that's all they're offering me, and honestly, why would I be tempted by that? I already killed the Darkest wizard in the world at sixteen. Life as an Auror isn't going to be exciting enough for me."

"What about the Department of Mysteries?" Hermione asks instantly. "I know that you'll have to train in some other Department in the Ministry first, but if you did the Aurors and then transferred over…"

Harry smiles. "What, and use up all my political goodwill?"

"They couldn't keep you there, and if you did well enough in the Aurors, I know you would be a brilliant candidate for the Department of Mysteries!"

Harry nods and listens to her ramble on. He isn't sure yet what he wants to do with his life, other than enjoy himself. He thinks he has a right, with Voldemort just defeated not even a year ago, after all.

And he doesn't really want to go into a career where people would tell him to stop associating with his friends.

"Harry? Are you listening to me?"

"Of course, Hermione. You said that you think I need to do better at Ancient Runes if I'm going to be an Unspeakable."

Hermione nods hard enough to make her hair fall around her eyes. At times like this she recalls the little girl who Harry helped Ron and Theodore rescue from a troll in their first year. "And you should be an Unspeakable. When we were there at the end of fifth year, remember all those artifacts they had in the room next to the Time-Turners?"

Harry interrupts before she can launch into another full flight, because he does want to spend time with Blaise and Draco and Theodore tonight. "And will the Unspeakables permit me to apply, when I was the one who ended up smashing a lot of those rooms?" It was a desperate fight to bring down Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry did succeed well enough that Voldemort was forced into wraith form for the next six months, but the Department of Mysteries lost whole rooms of precious objects over it.

"Oh, dear." Hermione has obviously not considered this possibility, but then she brightens with the possibility of a righteous campaign. "I could write a letter for you, Harry! One that says you were just trying to defeat your prophesied enemy, and—"

Harry catches Ron's eye, and Ron mouths, "Mental," although with such pride and happiness in his eyes that Harry knows how little he means it. "I do have to go, Hermione," he says, his awareness of his friends tugging him back towards the common room even though he isn't physically there. "Slytherin party tonight."'

"There's an awful lot of those lately," Hermione says, in the suspicious tone she uses when people do something other than study for their NEWTS.

Harry shrugs. "Yeah, but can you blame us? A whole lot of people stopped living under a dark cloud at the end of last year."

Hermione's face softens, which means it's up to Ron to take up the thread. "Yeah, but you can party with us in Gryffindor Tower, mate! There's hardly anyone who would try to kick you out now."

Harry chuckles. "No offense, but I like Slytherin parties better."

"Why, though?"

Ron looks ready to defend the honor of his House, but Harry knows how to interrupt both him and Hermione. "Because we send the younger students to bed around ten, and then the fun starts."

Hermione turns bright red and says, "We need to go get ready for the party tonight, too!" Then she drags Ron away.

Harry turns towards the Slytherin common room, shaking his head. He cherishes Ron and Hermione, but he also hopes at least one of them takes the initiative soon, or they might end up not shagging until they've been dating for ten years.

Theodore is waiting for him at the top of the stairs down to the dungeons. Harry stares at him as he walks past. "Worried that I'd get lost?"

"Worried that you might need rescuing from Gryffindors determined to curse you, maybe." Theodore falls easily in step behind him as they make their way down to the dungeons.

Harry rolls his eyes, but he also smiles where Theodore can't see. Theodore is good at rescuing him, he has to admit.

"Don't you think that if Potter was the Heir of Slytherin, he would have better sense than to announce himself that way by using Parseltongue in front of a dueling club?"

Harry looked up with a blink. He'd been walking alone from Potions, as usual, because he had some acquaintances in Slytherin but not that many friends, and everyone seemed to believe that walking with him away from Potions would draw Snape's wrath. And so of course a trio of older Gryffindors, including that git Cormac McLaggen, had taken the chance to corner him and tell him what they were going to do to him for Petrifying people.

Now Theodore Nott was leaning against the wall like a shadow and staring at all of them. Harry hadn't even heard him arrive.

"The Heir of Slytherin has to be someone quiet and private," Theodore continued, straightening up and staring at the Gryffindors with an expression that crossed boredom and annoyance. "Not someone whose every movement around the school is tracked the way Potter's has been. If he was opening the Chamber of Secrets, we would know."

"He could just be subtle!" McLaggen was recovering the fastest, and he sneered at Theodore. "You don't know—"

"Potter? Subtle? The one who chased Draco Malfoy all over the place on his broom first year and said that he wasn't that kind of Slytherin when Weasley asked him why?"

McLaggen flushed. Harry thought it was probably more because Harry was Slytherin's Seeker now and was beating Gryffindor all the time than because he was embarrassed, but maybe it was both. "You'd lie for him! You're a snake like he is!"

Theodore just watched him with an expression of polite disdain that Harry immediately wanted to copy. He did seem to wear his emotions too openly most of the time, at least if you asked the other Slytherins.

"Got nothing to say?" McLaggen asked finally, when a minute had passed and everyone had just been silent.

But he sounded wary. Somehow, Theodore had knocked him off-balance by being quiet and nothing else. Harry had to learn that.

"There's nothing that needs to be said," Theodore said. "You don't really believe that Potter is the Heir of Slytherin yourselves. You just want someone to blame because you're frightened and can't admit it to the rest of your House."

Harry smiled a little. He thought Theodore was right, even though he would never have guessed that himself.

But there was something he could guess. There were advantages to having two Gryffindor friends.

"I think something else is going on here, Nott," he said, addressing Theodore by his last name in front of the others the way Theodore was doing him. It was an odd kind of courtesy, but most Slytherins practiced it, and Harry didn't want to upset his House. "The old resentment."

"Which one?" Theodore sighed. "It's so hard to keep track of what Gryffindors resent Slytherins for, we're so much better than they are in every way."

"Wait one minute, you little—" McLaggen began.

"The old resentment that I didn't Sort into Gryffindor," Harry said, and took a step forwards, his focus on McLaggen. "I remember this one." He gestured at McLaggen. "He was upset the night of the Opening Feast last year, and said something about me being a traitor to my parents because I hadn't become a Gryffindor like they did."

Theodore shifted his stance. One thing most Slytherins had learned was that you didn't insult Harry Potter's parents if you didn't want all the carved snakes on your headboard to come to life and cover you at night, hissing angrily into your ears.

"You are." McLaggen folded his arms and smirked as if he thought he was taking control of the conversation back somehow.

Harry snorted. "You know that families don't follow Sorting patterns all the time. You ought to know it, McLaggen, when you're the first person in your family in centuries not to Sort into Ravenclaw."

McLaggen turned bright red. "Who told you that?"

"It's all over the place for people who want to know," Harry said. "Sort of the way you think information about me is." He shook his head. "You're resentful of me because you think people might start thinking about family Sorting patterns when they look at me, and that means they'll realize you didn't Sort into Ravenclaw because you aren't smart enough for it."

The other two Gryffindors just looked baffled, but McLaggen snarled and drew his wand.

"I wouldn't do that," Harry said softly.

"Why? Got some second-year spell that you think can scare me?"

Harry smiled. "No." And then the Gryffindors finally seemed to hear the click of boots on the floor, but they turned around too late, especially since they'd drawn their wands when McLaggen did.

"What is the meaning of this? Spells in the corridors?" Filch looked delighted. Since Mrs. Norris had been Petrified, it didn't matter who he caught, they were always getting the ultimate punishment. And both Harry and Theodore had their hands well away from their wands, while McLaggen and the rest were obviously armed.

"Mr. Filch! We were just—"

"Don't tell me what you were just," Filch hissed, stalking nearer. "You were getting ready to Petrify more people! The way you Petrified my poor Mrs. Norris, eh?"

"No, Mr. Filch! Potter is the Heir of Slytherin! He did it!" one of the other Gryffindors whose name Harry didn't know babbled, pointing towards Harry and Theodore.

Filch sneered. "The boy who was nowhere near my darling when she was hurt? While you were?"

While Filch ranted at the Gryffindors, Harry and Theodore slipped away. It was only bad luck that the Gryffindors had halted next to Mrs. Norris when she was found hanging on the wall after the Halloween Feast, but Harry wasn't above making bad luck work for him.

"Remind me to learn how to look as disdainful as you do," he told Theodore when they were almost back to the common room.

"It didn't look as though you needed help, Potter."

Harry shrugged and spoke the password for the door, Purus. "Thanks anyway."

Theodore grunted, and that would have been the end of it, except that the next day he told Harry to call him Theodore in public. A Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff might have thought it entirely unrelated.

But Harry wasn't a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, and that was about the time he finally began to accept it.