Draco slipped through the corridors as quickly as he could without making it obvious that he was hurrying. He usually didn't need to half-jog on the way back to the dungeons from dinner, but he was alone. Alone was not good.
No matter how powerful one was, most Gryffindors assumed that companionless Slytherins were asking for trouble and took it upon themselves to give it to them. He flicked his wand from its holster into his palm in case he met some of these supposed do-gooders. It wasn't but a moment later that he heard voices rounding the corner, loudly blathering on about how unfair Snape was. Looking around, he found a cramped but familiar compartment behind a nearby tapestry that he may or may not have used for meetups with Pansy.
"I mean, how was I supposed to know that Oxford blue isn't the same colour as azure? They look close enough!"
"Don't feel bad. Just the other day, the great bat took off points when I put in dandelion seeds instead of sunflower seeds, though they're basically the same."
He snorted internally and thought, First years are smarter than these dimwits. They probably don't even know that aconite and monkshood are the same thing. The voices got closer and closer until it sounded like the two students, fifth years most likely, were almost directly in front of Draco's alcove.
"Do you think that McGonagall will buy it if I tell her that I have cramps tonight and that's why my essay's half a scroll short?"
"Definitely not. You're better off not turning it in."
"Bollocks, that means I'll be up 'til two again."
There was a lull in their conversation and Draco sighed loudly, forgetting to be silent in his frustration. How long were they going to be here? All he wanted was to get back to his dorm, so he could snog Pansy and finish the Charms essay due tomorrow - in that order.
He tuned back into his surroundings just in time to hear one of them say, "Hey, did you hear something?"
As quickly as he could, he retreated further into the nook, almost tripping on something that felt like a small, round rock. He threw out his hands to prevent his body from hitting the ground and, after doing so, two muffled thuds resonated out much louder than he would have preferred. He winced and held his breath, all the while praying to Salazar that for some unknown reason they hadn't heard.
"No, but I definitely heard that. Let's go back to the common room. This corridor is giving me the willies."
The two wandered off and Draco finally exhaled. Thank Merlin the idiots are gone, he thought. Leaning down, he plucked the bothersome object from the floor near his feet and held it up for an examination.
"Lumos."
It was cheap and simple ring that changed colours the more he held it, alternating between purple and orange. He cast a few preliminary charms but found nothing immediately out of place and pocketed it. It's certainly interesting, but I need to get back to the dungeons sooner rather than later if I want to complete my to do list. Smirking, he checked that the corridor was empty and set off toward the common room. For the night, he forgot all about the unusual ring that was slowly turning to a mix of orange and yellow in his right trouser pocket.
"Shite! Shite, shite, shite!"
Draco bolted out of bed, flinging his scattered school supplies and Charms textbook onto the floor. They lay there until Draco finished casting freshening charms on the previous day's clothes he had fallen asleep in - "Good enough for a Monday morning." - and meticulously styling his white blond hair - "Perfect." Then, they were gathered and thrown haphazardly into a posh, monogrammed book bag that swung back and forth on Draco's shoulder.
He rushed to breakfast as swiftly as his Malfoy pride would let him. Entering the Great Hall, he sat down at the Slytherin table right before the spread of food vanished. A combination of hunger and disappointment settled heavily in his stomach as he looked up and down the table for someone, anyone, with whom he was friends. Eventually, he caught sight of Crabbe and Goyle stuffing the last of their breakfast into their mouths and made his way over to them. Hopefully they hid a muffin or two in their robes that I can have on the way to McGonagall's class, he thought before saying aloud, "Where have you two been? I've been looking all over. At this rate we may be late to Transfiguration and you know what Father says about punctuality."
"Sorry, Draco," Crabbe mumbled.
"W-Won't happen again," Goyle stuttered.
Draco sneered, "See to it that it doesn't."
He gracefully turned around and started strutting out of the Hall, not bothering to check that Crabbe and Goyle were following; he knew they were, simply because it was expected of them. The hallway was crammed with people, furthering his bad mood. There was very little chance that he would get to eat anything with the traffic he was having to bully his way through.
Then, just as he was turning a corner, someone walked straight into him, causing him to stumble backward and almost fall on his arse. Thankfully, Crabbe and Goyle had stuck close behind him and were able to catch him quickly. The other person wasn't so lucky. She was lying on the floor and starting to get up when Draco recognised her.
He smiled cruelly and leaned down toward her. "Don't bother standing up, mudblood. The ground is exactly where you belong."
Her head snapped up to look at him. Shock painted her features for a moment until fury took over and she scowled fiercely.
"Shut it, Malfoy," she said.
Instead of additional retaliation, she turned away to gather her bag and a few pieces of parchment that had fallen out of her bag when she bumped into him.
Not one to be ignored, he prepared to nag her about her lack of companions. He shoved his hands in his pockets and puffed his chest at the same time he opened his mouth.
"Wea-"
He stopped short. He had forgotten all about the ring - currently a mix of red and orange with a hint of pink - in his pocket. This was neither the time nor the place to be thinking about it, however, so he quickly regained his confident mask and demeanour. Draco gestured to Crabbe and Goyle to follow him and sauntered toward Granger as if he hadn't been about to start a sentence two seconds before. If she thought that his actions were odd, she didn't show it. Instead, she continued to pay him no attention as she stood up. What the hell? Why is she so unaffected?
"Watch your step, Granger. You never know who's around the corner just waiting to hex a mudblood."
With that, he pushed her out of the way and proceeded down the hall toward Transfiguration. He had more important things to do. His mind whirled with questions that he hadn't let himself entertain a minute before, the incident with Granger temporarily gone from his mind. To whom did the ring belong? Did he need to run more tests on it? After all, he had only cast a few charms before rushing off to meet Pansy last night. What if the ring was cursed? What if he got a disease from it? Would he die? What if he was carrying a cursed ring that was slowly infecting him with a terminal disease that had no cure and he died before he became Head of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy?
He took a few subtle deep breaths to calm himself and rolled his eyes internally. Sometimes his dramatics were completely unnecessary; even he could admit that. Draco resolved to experiment with the ring after Transfiguration, when he had a free period and could hole himself up in an empty classroom. Carrying the ring around for another hour probably wouldn't hurt him much more than spending the whole night with it in his pocket had.
Finally, after distractedly weaving through crowds of half-lost first years and gossiping fourth years, he strode into the Transfiguration classroom with Crabbe and Goyle trailing closely behind him. He took a seat on the Slytherin side of the classroom and huffed inwardly at his bad luck. His desk was close enough to the Gryffindors for him to be able to hear the incessant nagging of Granger, who had just walked in behind him, the moaning and groaning of Weasel, and Potty's feeble attempts at peacekeeping. Whoever said, "good things come in threes" must not have had the displeasure of knowing the so-called "Golden Trio".
Today, Granger was the Most Annoying of the group, but usually it was a toss-up for whomever earned the title. Having nothing else to do while he waited for class to begin, Draco decided to eavesdrop.
"-was looking for it again. I swear, if I don't find it, I don't know what I'll do! I was using their gift for a special project for them. What'll I tell them? That I lost my birthday present? It is incredibly important to me!"
"'Mione, relax. You probably just dropped it in the corridors or something. We can look for it next free period. It's not like someone actually would want a little Muggle trinket, anyways," Weasel said, most likely trying to sound sympathetic.
On the outside, his mask remained in place, but internally Draco was raising his eyebrows. Even he could fake more empathy than that, but he supposed it was understandable when it came to Granger.
"Wow, Ron. You're right. Who could ever want a ring made by stupid Muggles? I mean, they don't even have magic, so how could it be of any importance to someone? If that's how you really feel, I don't want your help!" She sounded like she was holding back tears.
Harry quickly intervened, saying, "Hermione, you know he didn't mean it like that. He meant that-."
"Forget it, I'll look for it by myself," she said in a smaller voice than before.
With that, the conversation was over, and they were silent. Draco mulled over his options. Obviously, the ring he had in his pocket belonged to Granger, but what to do with it? She had mentioned that it was a special project, so maybe his instinct to explore its enchantments, if she had put any on yet, was correct. His musings were cut off by the lesson beginning and Draco's questions were replaced by Transfiguration theories.
As soon as class was over, Draco told Crabbe and Goyle that he was going to work on some homework and didn't want to be disturbed. He found an empty classroom nearby and cast a Notice-Me-Not and a Silencing charm before pulling out the ring and setting it on a desk. For about five minutes, he cast all the detection spells he knew. He sat back in a chair and stared at the ring, all the while contemplating his next step. If he hadn't found anything wrong with it so far, could he put it on? Granger was only able to do so much damage and he'd bet she wouldn't cast curses on it, especially if she was planning on wearing it.
He put the colour-changing ring on his left hand and waited. He didn't feel any different. Maybe it affected his appearance? Draco pulled out his wand again, conjured a mirror, and intently studied his reflection. After many hours spent looking at himself in a mirror, he was sure he would be able to tell if something was altered, even if it was just a minor difference. Still, nothing.
Disappointment welled up inside him. Surely Granger was better than - he stopped cold and retreated behind his Occlumency shields. He searched through his recent thoughts and found the little one that had almost finished forming. It struggled, but he eventually grabbed ahold of it and shoved it inside a mental box that had at least seven locks on it. No way would he let that little bugger float around his brain for anyone to find, not with the current political climate.
When he was forming his Occlumency mind palace, he fashioned it as a library reminiscent of the one in Malfoy Manor, which was somewhere he always felt safe. Each category of thoughts was a shelf and each memory was a book. He also had a section of the library for books that contained lists. However, for all his forbidden thoughts, such as all negative opinions on Voldemort or all curiosities about mug-mudbloods, there was a special cabinet in the very back corner of the library. It was filled with metal boxes that had different types of locks and protections on them. Wards, key holes, passwords - you name it, he had it. They were based on how much he wanted to keep the thoughts away from intruders, with the most off-limits ideas having the highest amount of locks.
The box that housed all his potentially nonnegative (positive, maybe, was not the right word for them) thoughts had multiple passwords and key holes with a few wards thrown in for good measure. Interestingly enough, a number of the speculations had to do with Granger and the contradiction that she was. Draco didn't like to think about that, though, hence the tight security.
He came out from Occlumency shields, trying to puzzle out the ring that was slowly changing from a mix of pink and purple to solid purple. Why did it keep changing colours? Did the colours mean anything? Maybe Granger had a key to what each colour signified somewhere in that bulging bag of hers. Right, time to go steal a bag, he thought.
AN: Hi, again! This is just a little something I thought I'd leave here. I may or may not have been inspired by Shayalonnie's The Debt of Time, I honestly can't remember. Let's say that I have because the scene I'm thinking of is one of my favorites and has probably buried its way into my subconscious. I won't give away what happens, just in case someone hasn't read that amazing story. (They totally should, though.) Anyways, please review and let me know if you'd like to see any more!
~Rose