Draco Malfoy and the Disownment Project
Disclaimer: Now really. If I owned Harry Potter do you think I'd be writing this? I'd be off counting my millions, or better yet, writing my sixth book!
Draco Malfoy was angry.
Perhaps angry wasn't the right word.
Draco Malfoy was truculent.
Better.
He glared down at the letter he'd received from his father. Nine blithering pages long and all that it said was that as Draco was in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts, he needed to pay attention to his future. Lucius Malfoy therefore ordered his son to attend the Voldemort Youth meetings at Hogwarts.
Also known as the Slytherin Pride Club.
Honestly, Albus Dumbledore may be considered the greatest wizard of the age, but he had a definite tendency towards letting the forces of evil permeate his school.
Slytherin Pride Club, indeed.
A weekly gathering of cunning, ambitious purebloods? That's just asking for covert evil meetings and Machiavellian plans.
To say that Draco Malfoy loathed the Voldemort Youth would be an exorbitant understatement. There was not a word in the English language to describe his hatred of it. Someone must have squealed on him. He'd been skiving off for quite some time, and why not? He'd been attending those meetings for years and not one bit of good had come out of them. Voldemort was vastly overrated, besides.
How often could Draco sing the praises of one who was not even a pureblood himself without going totally and completely mad?
The man was defeated by a baby! Children regularly foiled his evil plans!
And then there was the matter of the Dark Mark. Come now. A huge mark across your forearm that clearly shows that you're a Death Eater? Wicked inconspicuous, that. Any person with half a brain cell would realize that all it would take would be a glance at the arm and they'd all be caught and thrown into Azkaban. Really, the man called himself a Slytherin? How about some adroitness?!
How much longer could Draco stomach the Voldemort Pledge?:
"I pledge allegiance to Lord Voldemort The most pureblooded wizard in the world. And to totalitarianism, for which he stands, All nations, under evil, Broken and shattered, With horror and homicide for all."
It was enough to make you sick.
Oh, horror and homicide were fine. They were two things that Draco quite liked. But Voldemort? A total pansy, to tell the truth. It was time for the famous Malfoy action. No longer would Draco Malfoy blindly follow the current popular Dark Lord. He was breaking away from it and making a name for himself.
Lord Draco sounded quite nice.
Master Draco sounded even better.
He thoroughly fancied becoming the next big thing in Evil Overlords.
But this required planning. Careful plotting and scheming would be essential to his breakthrough. If he were to one day be called He-Who-Must- Not-Be-Named, he'd have to make Voldemort look like Mother Theresa.
First things first. No Dark Lord ever had the support of his father. It was a long and glorious tradition. Look at Grindelwald and Voldemort! Both killed off their fathers! Now, Draco was not disapproving of murder. Murder was an excellent way of offing people. But it lacked subtlety and Draco needed subtlety.
No, the way to go was disownment.
His eyes were drawn to a ruckus at the Gryffindor table. Seamus Finnigan was being pounded into the floor by Theodore Nott. Draco was delighted. What an excellent way to be entertained at breakfast! It couldn't last, of course—Professor McGonagall, spoiler of fun as she was, ran over and pulled Nott away, taking fifty points from Slytherin as she went. Draco glanced toward the giant hourglasses that kept track of House points and saw that the Slytherins were now down to negative forty-two points. It must be a record.
Slytherins weren't bad folks, really. They were just incredibly misunderstood. You could even argue that they were a sweet bunch. Why, look, there were Pansy, Blaise, and Millicent giggling innocently over a scrap of paper hidden in the back of a textbook. Draco craned his neck to look. Oh. It was a list of ways to kidnap and torture Harry Potter. Still.
Something at the back of Draco's mind was ringing an alarm bell. He was overlooking something important. He bit his lip and glanced up at the ceiling, thinking hard. No less than ten Slytherin girls fell off their chairs in fits of rapture. He buried his head in his hands. Normally, fainting girls were excellent for the ego, but he had no time for them today. At least not at the moment. He had to concentrate! His future as an evil dictator was at stake!
He glanced back over at Seamus Finnigan, who was now nursing numerous injuries. Draco could almost hear an audible click as something fell into place. That was it! Infiltrate the Gryffindors!
It was brilliant. It accomplished at least two major things: he'd get to know his enemy while simultaneously infuriating his father. With brains like his, Draco Malfoy would have done well in Ravenclaw. He was a genius.
As he began masterminding his plan, his eyes caught sight of three of his least favorite people in the world: The Gryffindor Dream Team. Harry Potter, their ringleader, was currently reading the newspaper, running a hand sleepily through his hair. Draco sneered. Potter's baggy clothes and untidy hair made him seem like more of a tatterdemalion than a hero. Really, had the boy never heard of a brush? Had he ever learned the rules of proper grooming? And then there were his sidekicks: Ron Weasley whose grooming was just as bad, if not worse than Potter's, and Hermione Granger, who may have had the worst hair of the lot.
No wonder those three were friends—people with bad hair must gravitate toward each other.
Not that Draco could talk. His hair was impeccable, naturally, but those friends of his, Crabbe and Goyle, were the poster children for why a good barber was essential.
Pawns, Draco amended. They are pawns, not friends.
Glaring once more at his archenemy and said archenemy's hangers-on, Draco felt a flutter of worry in his stomach. The Trio could be his downfall. Draco might have been able to break into the Gryffindor ranks by his charm and wit, but those three could ruin it all. Draco would need to rely on his secret weapon: his almost inhuman good looks. There were rumors about him being part Veela, but none of them were true. Say what you would about the Black Family—that they produced such monstrosities as Sirius, Andromeda, and Alphard or that they were (gasp) related to the Weasleys—but they were definitely a good-looking lot. The way into the Gryffindors was through a female, Draco knew. A hapless Gryffindor girl could put his plan into action.
Draco studied his reflection in his spoon. He gave it a winning smile and an impish wink. If it could have, it would've swooned.
"Why," came Blaise Zabini's voice, "are you hitting on your utensils, Draco?"
Draco's head snapped up. Blaise was smirking at him, a smirk oddly reminiscent of his own. He'd taught her well.
Draco glared at her, but his heart wasn't in it. He rather liked Blaise, really. The other Houses were a bit confused about her gender, but it was all quite simple: she was a girl except on leap years. And he thought the Ravenclaws were supposed to be smart. Know-it-all Granger didn't even have it figured out.
"I wasn't hitting on my spoon," grumbled Draco. "Though even inanimate objects must succumb to the Malfoy charm."
"Oh yes, I'm sure they do," said Blaise, rolling her eyes as she went back to her list.
Apparently Draco didn't have a monopoly on Slytherin sarcasm. He simply did not have time for Blaise and her irascibility at the moment, as he had more important things to think about. Like how in the world he was going to get into the Gryffindors' good books.
He tried to think of the best way to go about this business. Emboldened by the simpering girls now smiling at him and batting their eyelashes so hard you'd think a gale would start whipping through the Great Hall, Draco made eye contact with the first Gryffindor girl he saw. Lavender Brown fainted dead away into her porridge.
Draco smirked and headed toward his first class. This may be easier than he'd originally anticipated.
Though Draco was quite intelligent if he did say so himself, classes did not go well that day. His mind lacked the discipline to concentrate on much else but his Plan. He must have seemed glazed and faraway because Blaise finally snapped at him.
"Was there a Memory Charm gone awry or are you just mentally aberrant?" she yelled when they were back in the common room.
"Keep it up, Blaise," he said through gritted teeth, though a feeling of irrational and unwelcome pride was seeping through him. The girl was bantering almost as well as he did! "You're on a one-way track towards a quick Avada Kedavra."
Blaise laughed cruelly. "Oh, poor, sweet Draco. You really think that anyone here is afraid of you? We've all seen you in your cozy little dragon pajamas. That ruins any chance of intimidation you had, dear."
Malfoys didn't blush, Draco prided himself with that, though he was certain a rosy tint was creeping into his cheeks. He glanced at the mirror across the room to check. No one knew who had put it up, though Draco suspected Snape. For someone with such hideous hygiene, the man seemed to think quite a lot of himself. Draco could have sworn he heard the mirror sigh as he looked into it. A slight flush was actually quite a fetching look, he thought. Giving Blaise his best Snape glare, he stomped up to his dormitory. He heard her cackling madly back in the common room—no Slytherin was really afraid of Snape, either. That mirror thing could lose him credibility even faster than the Billowing Charm he'd placed on his robes to scare first years.
Draco yanked the door to his dormitory open and sunk into his bed after pulling the curtains shut. Think, he prodded his mind, think about the Gryffindors. Draco was immediately distracted by the fact that he was thinking willingly about his sworn enemies. In a way that didn't directly involve their torture. He hoped that this disownment plan didn't make him go soft.
You're forgetting the Plan, he scolded himself. Gryffindor girls... The girl had to be a Muggleborn, and he'd need someone close enough to Potter that he could try to (he shuddered involuntarily at the thought) at least turn their relationship into something resembling civility. The obvious choice was Hermione Granger—friends with Scarface and a mudblood to boot! But it wouldn't ever happen: if the slap on the face in third year meant anything, the girl hated him passionately. It would take far too much unnecessary work to get friendly with Granger. Same with that Weasley brat—Ginny, or something. The one who had very funnily opened the Chamber of Secrets back in Draco's second year. She may be pureblood, but she was dirt poor. Lucius Malfoy would have a heart attack at the very thought. But again, she was the sister of Potter's best friend, and still too close.
The trouble, Draco found, was locating a girl who was a friend of Potter's, but not an extremely close one. Parvati Patil would be Draco's ideal selection—she was something to look at, anyway—but she wasn't a Muggleborn and she was wealthy. Besides the Gryffindor factor, Lucius might even approve of her. Draco struggled to come up with the perfect candidate when he remembered breakfast that morning. That was it! Lavender Brown would be his way in! She was a mudblood and a Gryffindor. That, at least, was enough to be disinherited. It could possibly even include Lucius dying of shock. Either way, Draco was set. But then, as they often do, the doubting thoughts swept upon him.
One thing stood out very clearly. Draco's plan could leave him ostracized from the Slytherins. Instead of being the Slytherin Prince, he'd be the Slytherin Pariah! He needed a man on the inside to help him. Someone to assure the Slytherins that Draco wasn't going all righteous on them. He needed someone especially shrewd and cunning. Someone who had the rest of the Slytherins sitting in their hand. He needed...
"Blaise, I need to talk to you."
Draco found himself groveling at Blaise's chair. This was not right. Malfoys didn't grovel. Right then. Draco stood up tall, back straight, and ordered Blaise to accompany him to the statue of Salazar Slytherin that took up an obscene amount of space in the common room. Blaise probably wouldn't have followed his command if she wasn't in such a ridiculously happy mood. Something about timeturners, potions, and a very unlucky Hufflepuff. Draco didn't want details.
"Blaise Zabini, you are the first to hear the spectacular, ingenious plan of Draco Lucius Malfoy."
"And he's so humble, too," said Blaise, rolling her eyes. She was going to seriously hurt herself if she kept it up.
Draco told her about his crafty plan, expecting her to be overcome by his excellence.
"Draco Malfoy, you are even more of an idiot than I could have imagined."
OK, that was not what he had predicted.
"Why?" said Draco. "Why don't you think it's wonderful?" He wasn't whining. Malfoys didn't whine.
"One," said Blaise, ticking her fingers as she went, "it will require a lot of luck. You are a Slytherin, you should realize when something's impossible. Two, you'll be right under Harry Potter's nose. He'll kill you in a second in the name of all that is light and holy. Three, you have to assume that Lavender Brown even likes you."
Draco laughed. "She's a girl. Of course she likes me. Mere eye contact and the girl collapsed headfirst into her breakfast. Just think about it, Blaise. If we succeed, we will be right in the middle of the Gryffindors. We can wreak havoc! We can cause mayhem! We can use our Slytherin ambition to rise to the very top! We can make the name of Gryffindor dirt!"
Blaise considered him carefully, biting her lip.
"All right, I'll help."
"Blaise, I could kiss you!"
"Please don't."
"So when I become an Evil Overlord does that mean that you'll be one of my loyal subjects who do my bidding?"
Blaise snorted. "Of course not."
"Then why are you helping?"
She sighed. "I'm just following the basic rule of Slytherin."
Draco's brow furrowed. "You mean 'When in doubt, send evil killing snakes upon your contemporaries'?"
"No!" said Blaise, exasperated. "Help your fellow Slytherins because everyone else is against you!"
Draco sighed bitterly. "They all think we're depraved, amoral prats."
"I know!" said Blaise, throwing an impatient hand in the air. "A House for flourishing evil. OK, so we do things like cozy up to Umbridge to get some power. So we cheat at Quidditch. That doesn't make us bad people!"
"Well, the basilisk thing might..."
"I thought you wanted to be a Dark Lord!"
"I do!"
"So stop thinking like a Gryffindor!"
Draco gasped, a hand over his heart. "You wound me, Blaise Zabini! You really do."
"I thought for a minute that Harry Potter had sneaked into the Slytherin dorms under Polyjuice Potion."
Draco cringed. "First you call me a Gryffindor, and then you call me Harry Potter. And then you insinuate that Potter would be intelligent enough to get into the Slytherin common room disguised with Polyjuice! You are a shame to the name of Slytherin!"
Blaise tapped her foot impatiently. "Stop fussing Draco, it's unbecoming. Let's not forget that you will, in fact, have to start thinking like a Gryffindor if you're ever going to fool them."
He grimaced. "Perhaps this isn't such a good idea."
Blaise looked at him, eyebrows raised. "Now you're talking like a Hufflepuff."
"You've gone too far, woman!" yelled Draco. "Why don't you call me Neville Longbottom and be done with it! Let's get to work on deceiving the Gryffindors."
