Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

(For the 'Times' challenge by sick-atxxheart. HPFC forum on fanfiction. net)

Snippets from Slytherin
By Silver Sailor Ganymede

I. Laughed

Blaise Zabini was laughing again. He was just sitting by the fire in the common room, laughing as though he had been possessed by a banshee. Draco found the sound more than a little disturbing, not least because it was so very undignified. Slytherins were supposed to be calm and collected, not ridiculously hysterical.

"Is there something the matter, Zabini?" Draco asked. Blaise simply looked up at him and grinned. Grinned. Slytherins were not supposed to laugh like idiots, and they most certainly were not supposed to grin. Evidently there was something extremely wrong with Zabini. Draco was beginning to think the boy should have been sorted into Gryffindor, not Slytherin.

"It's this," Blaise replied, holding up a comic book. The style of the drawings was rather odd, but most strangely of all nothing was moving.

"Your comic book is obviously broken," said Draco, "the pictures aren't moving."

Blaise frowned and Draco suddenly got the impression that he had said something rather stupid. "Of course they're not moving. It's a muggle comic book."

A muggle comic book. Draco glared at Blaise in disgust then quickly averted his gaze as though he had seen his friend reading something obscene. First he laughed, then he grinned, and then he told everyone, rather loudly, that he was reading muggle comic books. There was something very, very wrong indeed with Blaise Zabini.