A/N: Alright. This is my first Harry/Draco fic. It's a request for a friend as I think it's her favorite pairing. I enjoy it too, especially the art. Anyhow, just so you're all aware, it takes place in the seventh year of Hogwarts. Book six never happened. Which means Dumbledore is still alive and Snape is still lurking in the dungeons and Draco is still at school being a prat. But he's such a cute prat. I haven't decided if Voldemort is defeated yet. So jsut for now he's a lurking shadow who may be dead and just traumatized everyone or he's alive and is... traumatizing everyone.

As always, I own nothing (that honor belongs to J.K. Rowling)and am making no profit what so ever. Nope, none. Not a cent. I'd like a few cents, but I suppose I should go and work at my real job except they don't pay that much. Alas.

So, without further ado...

It's a Wonderful Slytherin Life

Chapter 1

It was a cold winter's day at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizarding. It was the middle of the Christmas Hols, which meant that much of the student body and staff had taken the much needed break and traveled back home or on some exotic vacation. At school, however, the people who remained were cheered to see a light feathering of snow that covered the ground and the half frozen over lake where the giant squid resided. The squid, taking this change in temperature to mean hibernation was in order, was taking hard-earned snooze on the bottom of the lake (after all, it was a pain to be constantly hauling wayward children out of the lake) and dreamt of a white picket fence and two-point-five mini squids squirting around him. He also dreamt of a large and sleek female mate for him. He had lodged numerous complaints with the headmaster about getting him a companion but as far as he could tell nothing had been done about it. This, however, is not the story of the giant squids long politically driven battle to gain him a swimming companion (though if you really want to know he eventually won this, only to find out that the mate he had been given was infertile. His mate was also male and a cross-dresser. Sure, he had been ready to turn him back (it's not that he had anything wrong with gay-cross-dressing squid, oh no, there's nothing wrong with that.) but for one long cold night where they somehow found each other in a tentacle-crazy embrace.

"I wish I knew how to quit you!" was heard quite often from the lake, though since nobody understood squid-speak this was lost on the general populace) but rather the story of how one young boy had his life saved.

You see, on this particular night there was a flash of warm breath on the night air, and a head a shock-white hair drifting off towards the lake. Here, the heir of the illustrious Malfoy fortune was making his way on unsteady feet, twisting against his own body and a slight breeze. In another light it might have seemed like he was drunk and was performing a most hilarious dance but for the painful, sober desperation of it all.

This is how Draco Malfoy found himself, on his hands and knees, on the Eve of Christmas, looming over the edge of the half frozen lake and putting serious thought to dropping himself in and ending the Malfoy line for good.

And there, at the edge of all things, the boy leaned in. He welcomed with his bright, shining eyes and apple-blossomed cheeks the sweet release that whispered and promised him ephemeral wonders in their murky depths. However, like most of the half-thought out plans of this boys life, it failed miserably. A black-clothed arm snaked out and, grasping the sputtering boy by his collar, wrenched him upright and threw him to the ground. Draco heaved and raised hard eyes to his little appreciated savior, only to be met by the baleful glare of his head of house, Severus Snape.

"Sir?" said the youth with wide, grey eyes.

"You're in luck, Mr. Malfoy. I am not your dour professor. I am, in fact, your guardian angel," drawled the man, who, if indeed was not the professor, sounded a great deal like him.

"There's no such things as guardian angels," said Draco as he racked his mind through his Care of Magical Creatures class. Deciding that they hadn't ever discussed it nor ever read about them they must not exist. "And if you were, why would you look like Snape?" he raised an eyebrow.

"I decided to take a form that would command some respect out of you, as I realized that anyone else would have caused you to act like an insufferable prat and I would be forced to hex you into next Tuesday, thus denying me my chance for getting my wings," he raised a hand when Draco made to interrupt him. "I'll explain later. Now, why were you trying to drown yourself? I doubt you have the same fascination as muggles do for laps in freezing cold water."

"I was... I was..."

"What was that, Mr. Malfoy? I can't understand your mumbling."

"I was trying to kill myself!" cried Draco, rushing to his feet and giving his supposed guardian angel a glare that would cause many first years, even the Slytherins, to blanch. When Snape gave no expression, not even that of acknowledgment, Draco felt his eyes, unbidden, water and a tear trace its way down his face. He angrily brushed it away.

"And why did you believe this ridiculous course of action was your best, or, as the case may be, only choice:

"It's better than being alive!" he practically screeched. "Do you know how hard it is to wake up in the morning and have absolutely nothing to live for? To know that your entire life has been an absolute waste? And that everything you could possibly want is fleetingly out of your grasp? Do you?"

"Oh Boo. Hoo." said the professor-angel. Draco's jaw dropped at the lack of sympathy.

"Excuse me?" he narrowed his eyes. Nobody talked to Draco Malfoy that way. If he wanted sympathy, then, damnit, he got sympathy.

"Figures even a seventh-year dunderhead like you could not grasp two single syllables. Shall I reiterate? Boo. Hoo. Now, stop your whining and inform me what the problem is. The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can return."

"Return where?" asked Draco suspiciously.

"Where do you think angels come from, the girls loo?"

Draco shook his head. He was tempted to lay his heart out to this man, even if he did look like his head of house. However, he was pretty sure that Snape would never a) save his life and b) ask what the problem was. Draco considered that he might be hallucinating, but it seemed too real. The cold wind felt too harsh against his face. No, this was real. And something known as a "guardian angel" in the form of his snarky potions professor was offering his help. Draco felt so downtrodden, so despicably needy, that he just decided to have himself a quaint little pity party.

"It would have been better if I have never been born."

Had Draco been looking up he would have seen the eyes of the potions master/guardian angel sparkling. However, he didn't, and that all-too-human moment was lost on him.

"Oh really?" he lovingly caressed those words in his silky voice. "Who would it have been better for, Draco? You? Certainly. If you never existed you wouldn't have these problems. Or are you being, dare I say, altruistic? Is there someone you think would be better off if you had never popped into existence?"

"Yes," said the boy bitterly, though no amount of coaxing and threatening would get him to say who.

It had begun first year, actually. When that bespectacled prat had refused his magnanimous offer of friendship. From then on Draco decided to make the boys life hell, or at the very least constantly remind him in the most annoying way possible just what it meant to turn down a Malfoy. Then somewhere along the way he stopped hating him which only caused him to question if he hated him in the first place. He was jealous, sure. The git was constantly stealing away everything that should have been Draco's. Draco's house cup, Draco's Quidditch cup, Draco's glory, pride, and well, everything. But instead of feeling loathing for his envy he felt something akin to awe. But no, not real awe. Malfoys don't feel awe for anyone except, perhaps, when looking in a mirror. And yet, whenever he saw that face with its mop of hair and that scar that everyone recognized, he felt like it was something that belonged to him. His to hate, his to own, maybe even his to love.

No, no, that was ridiculous. Malfoys don't love. They feel affection, but they don't love. It's a weak emotion. No, he hated Potter. He didn't like Potters smiling face, and he didn't like his half-assed concentration in the potions classroom, and he didn't like his stern face and blazing eyes when he was angry, or the look of something utterly lost, like a humbled lion, when he was defeated and abandoned.

So why was it that his thoughts were constantly on the scar head, the hero. Why was it that he wanted to push him up against the corridor and show him that yes, he hated him, he hated him so damn much, and that he would always be there, hating his scar and his face and his body and his gryffindor courage. Draco wanted to show him that he would always be there, comforting in his hatred, like a constant pain reminding the hero that he was alive and he had something to fight for, something to live for.

Draco, however ignorant sometimes, was not naive. He knew his feelings would not be returned. In fact he wasn't even sure Potter went in for that sort of thing. And, even if he did, Draco had spent his years making damn sure that even if Potter might be attracted to him, Draco was off limits. Slytherins and Gryffindors, after all, were not meant to mate.

And it would be a cold day in hell before he ever told that to some freaky greasy-haired angel with a button fetish.

"Mister Malfoy," barked said angel, looking annoyed at having been ignored for so long. Draco shook his thoughts away and stared, obviously having forgotten the strange mans presence. "I've an idea. In the next three hours I will show you just what it would be like if you indeed had never existed. If at the end you still feel the need to end your life I won't stop you. Do we have a deal?"

Draco looked at the man's proffered hand and thought oh, what the hell. They shook on it.

"So, what do I call you, anyhow? If you're not Professor Snape, that is."

"You're sure as hell not calling me Clarence," the angel muttered under his breath.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing. Since I look like your professor you may address me as such. Or as sir. Understood? Excellent. Now, come here," he drew out his wand.

"Hey!" Draco narrowed his eyes. "Why do you have a wand if you're an angel?"

"It's easier for your simple mind to grasp if I do actions that you're already familiar with. Now look here, we've only three hours and I'm not about to waste them teaching you the finer points of how angels operate. You will be silent and pay attention, am I clear?"

Draco nodded his consent. Snape then tapped Draco on the head twice, muttered an incantation, and then placed his wand in the lake. Immediately it started shining silver and swirled.

"Come," beckoned Snape, who quite unexpectedly walked into the lake. A few seconds later, a much confused Draco followed.

A/N: Well that was exciting. I could probably use a beta. Anyone interested? Review if you are. Also, for everyone else, if you want to see chapter 2 then you'd best review. Yes, I also hate how that rhymed.