2.3 Viridis
The only reason Scorpius was currently accompanying a gaggle of tiny first years down to the dungeons was because Apollo and Nera had to, and he was going that way anyway of course. Besides, accompanying was in itself a loosely applied term. Madeleine Vaisey and Jason Urquhart led the way, with Montague a hulking presence in the midst of the newly sorted Slytherins. Scorpius and his fellow sixth years were bring up the rear, quite far behind them all. Nera explained they were supposed to make sure there weren't any stragglers, but so far none were stupid enough to get left behind. Every now and then, Madeleine looked over her shoulder at them and slowed their walking pace as Urquhart lectured the children on what it really meant to be a Slytherin. Supposedly at least. Scorp wasn't entirely sure Urquhart knew.

"She got pretty over the summer." Apollo commented, with a glance at Madeleine and then a pointed one at Scorpius, just in case Scorp hadn't noticed the looking and hadn't figured which 'she' his friend was referring to.

"Vaisey is such a joke." Nera commented, complete with eye roll. "She's so transparent. Did she keep hassling you on the train, Scorpius?"

Scorp trailed one hand against the cold stone walls as they descended the main staircase into the dungeons and grinned at Nera's sudden dislike. She got a touch protective of him sometimes and selectively seemed to want to give her stamp of approval over girls who looked Scorp's way before he was allowed to look back. But she'd been laughing about it earlier, so she was changing her tune a bit. Maybe it was because Apollo was commenting on the girl's appearance? Nera could be a bit of a feminist at times and wasn't generally approving when people focused on shallow things like looks, but she was being downright moody by her standards. He thought it might have something to do with the time of the month and knew better than to voice that suspicion around any female, let alone a Zabini one.

"For a while. It wasn't so bad." Scorpius wasn't currently seeing anyone else and a date was a surefire way to figure out if you might potentially get along with a person but he wasn't sure he wanted to take Madeleine out yet, even if he could.

"But you can relax, Nera. I don't think she's my type so you don't have to put up with her more than you do with the whole prefect bit."

"What does a girl have to do to impress you?" Apollo asked Scorpius. "Apparently rattling off your Quidditch stats and fluffing her hair at you isn't enough."

Nera just kept walking.

"I don't even know how she made prefect."

Scorpius shrugged again and Apollo laughed quietly, and Scorp didn't miss the little sideways look that his friend shot at Nera, though he wasn't sure what it meant.

"You're too picky, man. Do you know how many girls you could have? You're a Quidditch captain. Keep your galleons: status is currency!"

"I'm not that picky. You're just impressed by any pretty girl that can walk and talk."

"She doesn't have to talk."

Nera gave Apollo a distinctly unimpressed and borderline murderous glare at that and stalked ahead, muttering something about 'sexist prats' under her breath.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Apollo added in a quieter voice. "But Vaisey isn't your type, Scorpius, you're right about that."

"She isn't your type either."

"No." Apollo agreed, looking pleased with himself. Scorpius rather thought that Apollo was going to elaborate on that, when suddenly the castle's resident poltergeist sped past, cackling and singing a nonsense song about upending cauldrons over people's heads and said cauldrons permanently gluing themselves in place. Nonsense the song may have been but it wasn't outside the realm of possibilities. Right now thought, the risk was water balloons.

"Watch out!" Scorpius called out a warning and Nera half turned as if she were about to berate him for something, but instead she saw the water balloons and ducked. The newly sorted Slytherins were all wizardborn, most had heard of Peeves and those that hadn't were distrustful enough that they all scrambled madly to get out of the way. It was everyone for themselves in Slytherin house. There were squeals and curses. Montague was having none of it though and whipped his wand out, a pulsating blue and green light shot out of the tip and hit the Poltergeist who shrieked and turned tail, disappearing through the ceiling, presumably in search of easier prey. Probably Hufflepuffs, Scorpius suspected. The magic impressed the firsties more than the poltergeist had, and they chattered excitedly about that for the rest of the walk to the common room.

The password was 'Viridis', which was a nice, fitting way to begin the year, when everything was supposed to be a fresh, new start. Green should be easy enough for the first years to remember; even if they forgot which blank stretch of wall hid the Slytherin Common room, they should at least know the password for when they found it again.

Within the common room it was about as boisterous as it ever got. There were louder conversations than usual, but most of the students were simply sitting around chatting and it was sheer numbers that accounted for the noise rather than any other sort of carry on. While the fifth year prefects got the new Slytherins settled, everyone else ignored them entirely and spent their time catching up with friends they hadn't seen over the summer. Scorp picked out some of his yearmates, gathered in one of the most cushy spots in front of the fire. Liam was carrying on a fairly enthusiastic political discussion with Takeshi while Selina Evercreech and Ruby Winickus were sitting nearby whispering to one another. He went over and smooshed in between the two girls, his arms around their shoulders, making himself comfortable and earning another Nera glare from across the room. Best to ignore whatever was getting her all worked up for now. He had catching up to do.

"So how was everyone's summer?"