Title: Reading Without Glasses: Goyle Style

Challenge/Prompt: The "What a Word!" Challenge/Rectrix: The quill feathers of a bird's tail.

Rating: G/K

Word Count: 570

Characters/Pairings: Gregory Goyle, Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Madam Pince.

Summary: Gregory spends a day in the library, out of sheer boredom.


"Brilliant," Greg thought, flipping to the next page in The Wizarding World's Many Words, one of the many dictionaries in the library.

Suddenly, there was the familiar scraping of a chair against the library floor. Glancing up, he made note of Draco's appearance.

"Hey, Greg," Draco greeted, dropping his messenger bag on the floor, before taking a seat.

"Hi," he replied, shortly. Nodding his head, he read another word:

rec·trix

/ˈrekˌtriks/

Noun

One of the tail feathers of a bird controlling direction during flight; used for quills.

"Wait," Draco said. Greg looked up, stoically. "Where are your glasses?"

"Glasses?"

"Never mind," Draco shook his head, and grumbled, "I remember you having them in second year..."


"Draco," Greg said. The blond aristocrat looked up from his Potions essay.

"Yes?" he calmly answered, scribbling down a few more words on his parchment.

"Did you know," Greg flipped to the next page in the dictionary. "That quill feathers are the feathers birds use for steering in-flight? They are called rectrix."

Draco dipped his quill pen back in the inkwell, and said, "Gregory."

"Yes?"

"Did you know that that was the most intelligent sentence you've ever uttered to me, this year, that didn't involve food?"

"No, it's not," Gregory denied, flipping another page.

"Really?" Draco asked, writing several words on his parchment. "This morning, you woke me up by saying, 'Rise, shine! Breakfast, now!'"

"Because I can't function without food in the mornings, Dray!"

"In Potions today, after zoning out for about an hour, you sat up and asked me, 'What do now?'"

Wrinkling his forehead, Greg asked, incredulously, "I did?"

"You did."

Greg simply shrugged and said, "I just wanted to let you know what your quill pen feathers were called, either way."

"What were they again?" Draco asked.

"Rectrix."

"Ah," he nodded. "Brilliant."


Another chair scraped asked the flooring, and Goyle grinned when he recognized Vincent settling next to Draco. "Hello!"

"Hi, Draco. Hi, Greg." the teen grunted, taking out a chocolate frog.

"Vinny," Draco admonished, snatching the chocolate out of the brunet's hand. "You know how Madam Pince gets when she sees chocolate prints all over her books."

Greg shuddered along with Vincent, unwillingly recalling her tantrum. The punishment she gave them was to never be spoken about, ever again.

Greg looked back down at his beloved dictionary, before raising his head, "Vinny, did you know that quill feathers are the feathers birds use for steering in-flight?"

"Really," he quirked an eyebrow, shaking his head. "What are they called?"

"Rectrix."

"And you've been in the library, ever since classes were adjourned, looking up words in the dictionary, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Nice," Vincent smirked, chuckling. "Really that bored?"

"It doesn't take much to write a few feeble essays. The great thing about pretending to be stupid... professors don't expect much from you in the way of homework, or class work."

The blond aristocrat seated right across from Gregory covered his mouth with his hand, stifling his fit of giggles.

"Find that funny, do you?"

"Of course I do," Draco gasped, cheeks turning red. "You're smarter than me, the both of you!"

Across the room, Madam Pince stood up and shushed them, making the teens cower in fear. Never to be spoken about, again. They immediately stopped talking for the remainder of their time within the library.


Author's Notes:

I dunno how this came to be. I was brain storming with my friend Sofia, then suddenly I've written 117 words on Facebook. xD

I would be pretty pissed off, too, if someone left chocolate prints all over my books. But Madam, you have magic. I do not.