WHO: Reinald Vaisey + Melinda Bobbins (plus cameos from NPCs and Ambrose the Cat) WHEN: First through to sixth year, present day WHERE: Various SUMMARY: Vignettes! Five times they were at odds with each other, one time they weren’t. WARNINGS: None really
FIRST YEAR.
“Solid form, Mister Vaisey. Quite solid,” Madam Hooch was saying. “Just be aware of the nose of your broom dipping a bit. But Miss Bobbin! Splendid control of your own broom. Lovely compensation for how it veers to the left. I really wish the Board would replace the school brooms, since they can afford to… Anyway. Twenty points to Slytherin on behalf of Miss Bobbin! I daresay your house may want to rethink its team selection policy, hmm…”
A tiny dark haired girl clutched her threadbare school broom to her chest and beamed, shyly yet quietly pleased. She had a better one waiting for her back home—a Nimbus, in fact—but the praise from their flight instructor had been worth more than its 1,000 Galleon price tag.
The boy next to her scoffed openly, not bothering to hide his dismay at the compliment Madam Hooch had paid her, not when their teacher had been discussing his own form just moments ago. “Suck-up,” Reinald rolled his eyes as Madam Hooch made her way to the other end of their line.
Melinda’s chin came up and she eyed him coolly, even though he was a lot taller than her and her stomach was clenching tight. Her brother had warned her what the boys in this house could be like. She would not let him ruin this for her.
Reinald just glared back at her. “Shame you can’t try out for the team,” he said, tauntingly. Trying to get in that ribbing wherever he could. Melinda turned her back on him and hoisted her broom over her shoulder to return it to the storage shed. Ignore him and he would go away…
Although things never worked out like that.
SECOND YEAR.
She didn’t want to whimper about things like some first year, but Melinda was scared. They had been ushered into the Great Hall, bleary eyed and sleep deprived, and then the headmaster had waved his wand and whipped the tables back, sleeping bags popping out from the walls. The Slytherin prefects had quickly taken over, organising the younger children into year groups, but it still wasn’t far enough away to dim the noise of some of the older boys (she suspected Warrington and Flint) snoring.
Was it any wonder that she couldn’t sleep?
Melinda shifted about, trying to get comfortable within the unfamiliar sleeping bag. She didn’t think she had ever used one before. She hoped that the house elves had washed them from the last time students had slept over in the hall. “Sorry,” she whispered as she accidentally nudged someone next to her.
Reinald was jolted from dozing as he felt a foreign presence somewhere in his side. His eyes flickered open. Registered the stars in the ceiling above. The quiet murmurs of the teachers weaving in and out of the rows of students. “‘S okay,” he whispered back, and turned over on his side to see who it was. “Ugh. Melly. Go to sleep.”
“Don’t call me Melly,” she whispered back, but there was no heat in it. “How can you even sleep… with all that racket?” She could have only meant the snorers a dozen or so bodies away from them, who were very much giving it their all. “Although I suppose you’re used to it, being a boy.” Spoken with the same air of disgust that some others in their house reserved for the m-word.
“My mum says I could sleep through a hurricane,” he shrugged, even though Melinda couldn’t see. “Never woke up even when my brothers cried at night.” It was a useful skill, when half of your dorm mates could beat out an entire trumpet section.
“Well, at least we’re in the right place if Sirius Black comes for us,” she quipped drily. “Professor Snape could likely take him on his own, he was looking so cross earlier.” Although why did they have to move the rest of the school so close to Potter? With the Boy Who Lived’s family history and the way that Black had broken into Gryffindor, he was only ever looking for one person. They would have been safer back in the dungeons.
Reinald snickered quietly. “You mean all of the male bravado of the Slytherin Quidditch team wouldn’t be a match for him?”
“The first team are bullies,” she said softly. “And bullies only ever like uneven odds.” She had seen that herself throughout the halls, keeping her head down and trying to avoid the older years.
“It’s a dumb rule,” he said after a beat. Maybe Reinald and Melinda weren’t friends by any stretch of the word, but he’d rather have a capable girl on his team than a clumsy boy, and he was only a reserve, still.
“It is dumb,” agreed Melinda, silent for a moment at this rare concession. “Well, good night, Vaisey.” She turned on her side and wriggled closer to Valerie. At least, she hoped it was Valerie.
“Just try not to breathe on me.”
THIRD YEAR.
On the outside it must have looked so glamourous, being asked to the Yule Ball by a Beauxbatons boy and wearing a pretty dress. But the reality was that with her own having graduated, Tomas had quickly become a sort of older brother to her, and delighted in having a Hogwarts friend who not only could speak French with the rest of his schoolmates, but his own native Portuguese. Still he had given her the proper date treatment, collecting her outside of Slytherin with a white rose and telling her that she looked pretty. “I want you to know how a boy should behave when you’re old enough to go to Hogsmeade with one,” he had explained.
“So not like Crabbe then?” she had suggested, and Tomas had made a face. The infamy of Draco’s friends had even spread to Beauxbatons.
“What about that one?” he said now, motioning towards a tall boy. “He looks to be only a year or so older than you.”
“No,” said Melinda with feeling, but Tomas was already waving Reinald over.
“Well, don’t we look cute,” Reinald smirked, answering the call from Tomas rather promptly. Of course, he had a cover story cooked up, just in case any of the other professors felt the need to question him -- Justin Finch-Fletchley, check the guest list, thanks -- “And a rose, wow, Bobbin.”
To the other boy, Reinald extended a hand. “Pleasure to meet you. Reinald Vaisey.”
“Tomas Botelho.” Tomas greeted him with a smile, returning his handshake. “And oh no. Melinda and I are only friends. Otherwise it would be-” he conferred in Portuguese with Melinda for a moment until he came up with the English word “-disgusting? Not because she is ugly,” he added quickly. “But because she is only Year Three. Anyway, she is looking for someone to dance with.”
No, thought Melinda. No no no no no. She met Reinald’s eyes, as if trying to impress upon him her thoughts.
Oh, he met them, and his grin just stretched even wider. Between Tomas’ illuminating takes on his relationship with Melinda and the very idea of asking her to dance...there was just too much to make fun of. So many things to choose from. “No one will dance with you?” Reinald asked, sounding concerned, though Melinda would know it wasn’t a sincere question.
“Plenty of people will dance with me,” she said through clenched teeth. “Tomas was just being friendly.” She was tempted to add that she hadn’t seen him with a partner just now, but manners, she reminded herself. While she loathed the idea, following through on Tomas’s intentions was likely the best way to get rid of Reinald, or at least keep him away from the Beauxbatons crowd and further opportunities to make fun of her.
“Shall we?” she asked, holding out her hand. She had painted her nails a lovely shade of pearl earlier, a novelty. They still looked like a stranger’s hands, far too elegant and sophisticated to be her own.
Reinald took her hand, his own a bit calloused and roughed up from years of playing. “I bet you’re really good at dancing,” he said, more as an insult than a compliment. “Soooo much better than I am, I’m sure.”
“I’m all right,” said Melinda moderately, not responding to the bait. “But it’s all about how you lead.” As they drew further into the group of students on the floor, she placed her free hand upon his shoulder, following the correct form. “You look to be having a nice time, regardless.”
“Having a great time,” Reinald agreed, only stepping on her toes accidentally a little bit on purpose. “The opening dance was dumb, though.” But hey, at least none of the professors stopped him from coming in. It helped that he was tall.
“Good Quidditch players don’t always make good dancers,” observed Melinda, both at Harry Potter’s earlier attempts to lead the celebrations and her present company—who at least had dry palms, she supposed. Reinald snorted, and spared a glance over where he’d last seen the victors, the Gryffindor in question still currently sucking as much as he did earlier. Cedric Diggory and Roger Davies had both looked nice though, Melinda thought, and Cedric always did everything as it should be done. She wondered who Reinald had came here with, since they as third years needed an invite, but didn’t want to give him more ammunition by asking.
“So, who’s your favourite to win this?” she asked eventually. “If it can’t be Cedric, I’d rather like Fleur Delacour.” She knew that Fleur wasn’t well liked among other girls, but the Beauxbaton champion had a continential swagger that rather reminded Melinda of some of her distant cousins across the channel.
“Krum,” he said simply. “Diggory’s a tool, Potter’s a lying shit, and Delacour...I’ll put her down for second, for now.” Reinald didn’t have a prejudice against girls, like so many of his team members seemed to, but his odds were on Krum given his performance at the World Cup. And he liked the dude. Seemed to have his act together...although he was at the ball with Granger, and that was weird, but. Quidditch star idolizing still won out.
Speaking of Krum, Melinda glanced over to the entrance, seeing that his date had just stormed out. And frowned. Probably one of Granger’s idiotic housemates. She was spared further contemplation by the singer of the band, who leaned over the dais to call out—
“And this is a slow one, ladies and gents! Boys, go ahead and clutch your dates even closer!”
Melinda groaned internally.
“Gross.” Reinald didn’t bother keeping it internal, and he waved over Tomas. “Have fun, I’m gonna go do literally anything else.” Melinda rolled her eyes, met Tomas’s questioning look with a shrug. Boys.
FOURTH YEAR.
“Think we could burn some of those confiscated Quibbler copies?” Reinald wondered absently as he lounged on one of the couches, catching a glimpse of a familiar figure coming down the stairs, her miniature mountain lion sized cat trailing at her heels. “It’s cold tonight.” He said so in a derisive enough of a voice that even the Inquisitorial Squad couldn’t find anything wrong with the mention of the aforementioned banned publication. Didn’t insult Umbridge. Had a hint of degrading Potter. Reinald knew how to please an audience.
“It is cold.” Melinda carried down a jar of tea, the glass charmed to still warm her hands but not to burn, and—predictably—a textbook tucked beneath another arm. Reinald was taking up rather more of that couch than was strictly necessary so she settled into its far corner, putting down her tea and the book in front of her. Ambrose was circling the perimeter of the room, tail twitching every now and then. “Unless Umbridge wants to collect them, I don’t see why not. Waste not and all that.”
Reinald paused. “Except I don’t know where any of them are, but…you might, Future Prefect Bobbin.” His head turned to stare her down at the other end of the couch. Which was very rude, considering he was clearly sitting here and had been doing so without bothering anyone. Reinald pointed to an armchair. “What’s wrong with that one, anyway?”
“The IS confiscated them. It’s nothing to do with the prefecture.” She reached for her book. “And that’s Montague’s chair. If you want to defend my honour when he comes downstairs and sees me in it, by all means.”
Ambrose wandered back, giving her knee a gentle boop with his overlarge head. But instead of sliding into the space between them (if it fits, he sits), he turned his attention to Reinald, sniffed at him cautiously, then gave an inquisitive mew.
Traitor.
“Mmm,” he replied, noncommittally, his attention now focused on the curious fellow eyeing him up. Also, he was pretty sure Melinda could find some copies if she even bothered to look. “Hello, there.” Reinald patted his stomach for the cat to come over.
Melinda’s head rose from her book to this development. “Don’t do it, Ambrose,” she warned. “Look at how his last cat turned out.” But Ambrose had eased himself onto the couch, where he was sandwiched between them and turning his head to face Reinald, who held out his hand for him to sniff.
Ambrose purred.
Reinald just shot her a glare from over top of Ambrose’s head. When Ambrose continued towards him, he chanced a hand to scratch him behind the ears. “Don’t listen to her, Gerald is the devil. But you’re a good boy, I know you are,” he told the cat softly, like it was a conspiratorial secret Melinda wasn’t privy to. With a smirk, Reinald went on to announce, “We’re best friends now.”
“Congratulations. Now you have one.” Melinda went back to her book, resolving to leave Ambrose the Turncoat Cat to his own devices. “He’s part Kneazle, you know. So perhaps as well as a friend, you may even have some deeply buried redeeming qualities.”
“I have plenty of those,” Reinald retorted, and continued to gently stroke his fur. Ambrose continued to purr and rolled onto his back, presenting his belly like the slattern he was, Melinda thought. “Redeeming qualities and friends, but thank you for your concern.”
“If you say so,” Melinda replied, pulling her book up higher.
FIFTH YEAR.
They had laughed when she came out in the oversized team jumper (the trousers and boots were far too big, so she had worn her own), her prefect’s badge glinting just below her left shoulder and her hair secured with a silk bow. What they didn’t know was that the bow had belonged to her mother, who had been wearing it to her first job interview as a cursebreaker and then later when she had met Melinda’s father. It was a lucky bow, and it gave her daughter a sense of strength as she straddled her Nimbus from the top of the stand, then took to the skies.
A moment later, the boys were no longer laughing.
“Not bad, Bobbin,” Urquhart had allowed after she had dismounted, punctuating the sentence with a brief nod of approval. “Not bad at all. You’re no Malfoy, but at least you’ll show up for practice.”
Reinald gave a sarcastic clap as Melinda moved past him as tryouts ended for the day. “Still compensating for how your broom turns to the left?” He raised an eyebrow, leaning his weight against his own.
“My Nimbus works just fine, thank you.” She ran a cursory gloved hand over its straw end, checking that it didn’t need to be trimmed. “And still going on about that, are you?”
“It’s good advice,” he replied. “Are you not going to take the advice of our sage flying instructor?”
“It’s not applicable in this case since this is an entirely different broom,” she said. “And mine does not have a tendency to do that. If I needed to compensate for it veering one way or the other, I would.” She eyed him levelly. “So what is your point?”
“Just welcoming you to the team,” Reinald said innocently, straightening up, and then flashing her a grin that might have been flirtatious if it was towards anyone else besides Melinda. She raised her eyebrows—I think not.
“Well, thank you,” she added. “Consider me welcomed.”
“You’re welcome,” he nodded. “Keep flying like you just did and maybe we’ll actually reclaim our title.” Melinda doubted it. She had seen Chang and Potter in action and knew that she didn’t have a show of matching them. Still she nodded, taking the praise in the spirit that it was intended.
At least she would show up for practice.
PRESENT DAY.
“See, you’re getting the hang of it,” Reinald smiled warmly at his new first-year buddy, and offered a high five before the younger boy had to excuse himself to bed. Instead of following his lead, Reinald sprawled further into his armchair and reached for his book, the page he’d left off at marked by his wand as a placeholder. It might be late, but he did need to get his own work done, after all.
Stifling a yawn, Melinda was making her own way down to the common room. It was late and she still had several scrolls left of Transfiguration homework to finish, but that was no reason to rob the rest of her dorm of their sleep. October in the Scottish Highlands had a nasty nip in the air and she was already wearing her new dressing gown, a plush plaid one that she had ordered from the Twilfit & Tattings catalogue when her original got to the point where her mother had decided to donate it to the Society for Distressed Witches (nothing other than the best would do for the Bobbins, after all).
He didn’t even glance up at first, recognizing the footsteps, but as Melinda came closer and the hem of her dressing gown came into sight, Reinald sat up immediately. Looked down at him. And then back up at her. “What. Are. You. Wearing.”
“Yule Ball robes,” Melinda deadpanned, though some of Reinald’s horror registered on her own face. “What—do you have the copyright to this dressing gown or something? All the other ones were either in house colours or pink.”
“We’re matching,” he informed her, scowling, and then looked down at his dressing gown again. “Great. Now I have to burn this.”
“And what? Catch a cold right before tryouts? Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. Sitting down in an armchair opposite him, she started arranging her Transfiguration work on the low table at its side. “Besides, it’s a very nice dressing gown. If you’re going to get rid of it, at least donate it to charity.”
Reinald made a face. “Maybe I have another one.”
“So wear that one then?” Melinda’s tone was more perplexed than anything else. “I don’t see what the problem is. It’s just a dressing gown. Imagine if you were a girl and had shown up to the Yule Ball in the same robes as someone else. Merlin.”
“Anyway,” she added. “If it bothers you that much, I have a list of colour changing charms somewhere.” She opened her textbook and placed it in her lap, pencil ready to mark salient passages and dark hair falling over her shoulders.
“You’re no fun,” he replied petulantly, and went back to his book, slumping back into his chair, though it did little to mask his obvious height. After a few moments of silence had gone by, other than the occasional turning of a page, Reinald grumbled something that might have been a question if Melinda heard him correctly: “How’s your first week back been, then?”
I’m sorry? was on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to restrain herself in time. “Fine, thank you,” she responded, still with her eyes on her Transfiguration text. A moment’s pause. “I think it’s going to be a very interesting year. How was yours?”
Reinald turned another page, and jotted a note down on the margin of his book. “Eventful. You’ll find out soon enough, but turns out I’m going to be quidditch captain.”
“Really?” Melinda’s head jerked back up, stunned. A slow smile spread across her face. “That’s great. Congratulations. You deserve it.” At least now Genesis wouldn’t be kicked off the first team in regards to what she had (or didn’t) between her legs, and Reinald would make a fair captain.
“Thank you,” a matching, genuine smile pulled at his lips. No hostility or irritation. “Definitely a bright spot of my year already.” Reinald’s words, true to his Slytherin nature, contained another layer of meaning that he supposed Melinda would catch onto. It hadn’t gone unnoticed over the years that she refrained from using slurs or even participating in conversations that involved belittling others for their heritage. “As you said. I’m sure it will be a very interesting year.” Melinda nodded, picking up on the subtext correctly.
“Thank you for helping Quentin earlier,” she added, referring to the boy she had seen scampering off to the boys’ dorm. A pause. “I have a feeling that this group of first years will need more support from the rest of us than usual.” A layer of meaning of her own, and that was as much as she dared imply.
Reinald shifted in his chair, avoiding Melinda’s gaze. “You saw that.” It wasn’t a question. An incline of his head, however, told her that he understood exactly what she wasn’t saying. And might even be tacitly agreeing to aid her in her quest. For a moment she met his eyes, then returned to her work, her hair once again obscuring her face.