AN: If you're close-minded or looking for character bashing, move on. If you're okay with people being human instead of just tropes, read on.
It was late, late enough that Madam Pince had turned in already but not so late that Filch would be scuttling about the library in search of students to mutter ominously at. The grumpy caretaker would reach the library eventually, though, and anyone caught would go straight to their head of house for a detention sentence. Ron had begged off over an hour ago despite not being finished with the very transfiguration essay due tomorrow Harry himself was working on and Harry had told Hermione it was fine for her to go a while ago. Harry was fine with the assignment, knew the material well, and would have been done by now had the write up for his potions project not taken so terribly long. As it was, Harry sat in a very dimmed and very empty library scratching away at his parchment with a quill that could use a new nib if he'd remembered to bring any. Hermione would have had spares, she always did.
Sighing, Harry rubbed his eyes and tried to refocus on finding the spot in his book which had the wording he wanted to use. McGonagall would have his ears as her new teacups if he didn't use quotations, so he had stopped scanning the pages to put the beginning marks before he forgot entirely and lost his place as a result. Harry scribbled the line down when he found it again knowing full well his penmanship left much to be desired, but he could live with that if his owl-scratch letters at least got onto the parchment before his eyes closed for good. He moved onto another open tome, Hermione had a habit of leaving pertinent books lying all around opened to useful passages so they could all reference them quickly, when he heard a muffled sound.
Automatically fearing the worst, as what Boy-Who-Lived wouldn't by now, Harry's head shot up and he peered around. All thoughts of essays gone, he strained to listen closer, already halfway out of his chair and hand on his wand. He had learned a long time ago that threats to him did not exist solely outside of Hogwarts. The sound came again and when Harry realized it was someone crying, he bolted to his feet and was sprinting toward the noise before he even registered his feet moving. Tearing past aisle after aisle of empty work areas, he finally came skidding to a halt.
A solidly built girl was looking up at him in surprise and shock. Her crying had stopped but Harry could see glistening tear tracks on her face plain as day. Looking her over, he saw that she was unhurt but the stationery around her was not so lucky. Crumpled creamy white parchment and broken quills surrounded her along with a multitude of books in various states of disarray. Edging closer carefully, for Harry could see she was a Slytherin and one never made sudden moves on anyone from the snake house, he made sure she saw him put his wand away.
Vaguely recalling a name to go with the face, Harry wet his lips before speaking. "Are you okay? You're...Millicent Bulstrode, right? Was someone just here? Did they hurt you?" The chance of someone having been actually here and doing something to her was slim, but it was always best to be absolutely certain. Harry wouldn't go off on an assumption ever again. Not after Sirius.
Seemingly dumbfounded for a moment, the girl came to her senses and wiped her eyes hastily with a corner of her robes. "I...yes. Yes. I am. And...no, but...but!"
Her eyes filled with tears and Harry watched with horror as she began crying anew, covering her face with her hands. What did one do with crying people? Hermione hugged him when he was upset but he couldn't really do that in this situation without feeling like some sort of sexual harasser or getting hexed immediately. Plus, Harry was almost certain that Slytherins didn't hug. Instead, he decided he would stick with words.
"But what?" Harry asked. So far she hadn't thrown any vitriol at him and he rather thought that was due to distress, but either way he couldn't just ignore her like a heartless monster. Even if she was a Slytherin.
"McGonagall hates me! She hates me and she's trying to make me fail!" Millicent said through her hands, voice heavy with sorrow.
Harry was surprised for many different reasons. First and foremost was that Harry was sure McGonagall didn't hate anyone except Voldemort himself. She was hard as tacks but surely she didn't wish any of her students to fail at anything, much less actively try to cause such. Also, Millicent seemed to be as upset over the prospect of failing as Hermione had been when she'd faced the boggart. Saying so, though, likely wouldn't help her as she seemed rather convinced of it all.
Taking another step forward, Harry tried a follow-up question. "What makes you say that?"
Eyes peeked at him through her fingers and Millicent lowered her hands, wiping at her eyes again. "I don't understand any of this new material!" she exclaimed with a gesture at the mess of books and tortured parchment covering her table. "And she knows it! Every time I schedule an appointment with her for help, she cancels it at the last minute," she finished, sounding rather put out.
An awful feeling of guilt spread through his stomach and Harry did his best not to show it. As one of the runners-up to be next captain of Gryffindor's quidditch team, Harry had been assigned with overseeing tryouts and decisions on who would be good for certain positions. While Ron's chosen beater was doing great, Harry's chaser was causing problems both on and off the pitch. McGonagall's involvement in the team had increased exponentially alongside the tension between teammates. But telling all of this to the tearful girl sitting at the table wasn't going to help her, and he doubted she'd welcome an explanation anyway.
That feeling of guilt prompted him to bite his lower lip with what he was about to suggest. "What if...well. Maybe I could help?" When he received a gobsmacked look in response, he hurriedly went on, "I've always done all right with transfiguration, and I'm almost done with my own essay. If you like, I mean. I don't mean to...impose or anything."
After a moment of her glancing over whatever was on her paper and sighing unhappily, she looked back up. "Are...are you sure? I mean I'm...well, really, it's just that you're... You know?"
Harry knew full well what she was getting at, oh did he ever. Their houses, for one, were not friendly by any means. His fellow Gryffindors would definitely not understand his decision to help her, and who knew how the Slytherins would react to one of their own receiving help from Harry bloody Potter himself. Another thing was that she was friends with, if not Malfoy himself, Malfoy's closest friends. That would go over even worse. They might both get fed to the giant squid. Still, it was his fault McGonagall was always getting called away. The head of house herself had said she'd had to cancel appointments for "this ruckus" involving the team.
"Yeah. I won't take offense if you say no. But, I mean, if you're willing, then so am I."
She took a good while to think it over, and Harry was thankful that the library was empty except the two of them. Then she nodded and began tidying up the area around her so he could move his things across from her, as sitting next to one another would be much too awkward. After a bit of hesitancy and verbal tiptoeing, they got into the actual subject. While she was just as sarcastic and sharp-tongued as any other Slytherin he'd dealt with, it was either comical or directed at the way the material was explained. In the Slytherin girl's company, Harry felt inexplicably free to let his own well of sarcasm run rampant in a way he didn't with his Gryffindor housemates and he found the cheeky banter rather fun.
While not on the same level as McGonagall by any means, Harry wasn't total rot at communicating the ideas behind trans-species transfiguration and was able to do so in such a way that made sense to his table companion. Her eyes lit up in much the same way Ron's did when he finally understood something Hermione had been trying to hammer into him for hours. It didn't take anywhere near the time it took Ron, however, and Millicent was extremely pleased if the furiousness of her quill-scritching was any indication.
"Right," Harry said, leaning over the table to look at her parchment. "Don't forget the V, and you have it. Yeah, that's it."
She finished the equation they were working on and gave a satisfied huff. "Thank Merlin, Potter. Really. Does this method work on other transfigurations as well or just the trans-species?"
"Well it's the same equation all around, so it works the same. Just a different way of solving it on paper. Mentally you'll get the same results too, I do. I can show you if you want."
Millicent's face was hopeful. "Oh, would you? I just know I'll bollocks the practical if I can't work it through during casting this way."
"Sure, here I'll do it with one of your broken quills first." A smile made its way onto Harry's face as he stood up and slowly, she was still Slytherin regardless of how well this tutoring session was going, got his wand out. Pointing it at the one nearest her so she could see it up close, he made a gesture with his wand and opened his mouth to say the incantation.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry was in the air, flying, until he wasn't anymore. A sharp and lancing pain spread through his side as he fell to the ground hard after hitting one of the bookcases. Dazed and extremely confused, he let out a moan and when he opened his eyes he realized his glasses had come off. It wasn't until that moment that Harry registered he'd been attacked. Footsteps were coming toward him and he reached wildly out until his hands, caught his glasses and stuffed them onto his face.
His vision was full of livid grey eyes and wild platinum hair.
"Potter you disgusting filth!" Malfoy yelled, throwing a vicious looking left hook that Harry had to drop completely to the floor to dodge. Then a dark-colored wand was shoved in his face. "What the sodding hell were you doing to her? I'll hex your bollocks off so even your ginger smear of a girlfriend can't find them!" the blond snarled.
"Malfoy, stop! Listen, will you? He wasn't doing anything wrong!" Millicent was trying to pull Malfoy's arm back but the blond was barely having it.
"Don't let this pathetic Dumblebore pet scare you, Millie, I'll have him expelled for attacking a student," Malfoy seethed, never taking his angry eyes off Harry. "You really are a degenerate just like your stupid father, aren't you? Start working on your goodbyes, Potter, I'll see to it you never come back."
"That's rich, coming from—" Harry's insult was interrupted by Millicent.
"Merlin's beard, Draco stop! He was helping me!"
Malfoy's expression went from incensed to confused, but his gaze was still pinned to his opponent. For his part, Harry pushed himself up to sitting again and gave a good cough to clear his airway enough to get a good inhalation of breath. The fall had knocked the wind out of him and there were likely bruises already forming.
"He was what?" the blond asked, astonished. "With what?"
Millicent sighed and started explaining. As the reality of what had been truly going on was made clear to him, Malfoy lowered his wand little by little until it was at his side but made no motion to put it away. When Harry decided to risk getting to his feet to stand like a normal person instead of sitting on the ground like a toad, Malfoy's wand hand twitched but stayed where it was.
"Millie, why didn't you just ask one of us? Blaise is the best at transfiguration, you could've asked him."
Putting a hand on her hip with a scoff, she snapped, "I'm supposed to do that how, exactly, with him fully engrossed in the new bird hanging all over him? He's useless right now." Dropping her hand from its perch near her waist, she added in a softer voice, "if you weren't disappearing so often lately, you'd know that."
Grey eyes shot to Harry and then back to Millicent with an expression Harry couldn't read. Malfoy ran a hand through his hair and sighed wearily. "All right. All right." Raising his wand hand, he did a complicated series of gestures and Harry stared as Millicent's things on the table started packing themselves up neatly. "I'll walk you back, come on."
"Just a minute, you arrogant bastard," Harry protested. While this was all kinds of bizarre, it was still Malfoy who had rudely interrupted Harry and Millicent's studying. Plus, she had said she needed the demonstration he'd been about to give. "Who the hell made you king? She doesn't have to go on your say so."
Shooting a glare to wilt the whomping willow at Harry, Malfoy then looked over at Millicent. "Just for tonight, Mill. I don't want you walking alone and he's an idiot."
"Hey!" Harry cried.
In response, Millicent leaned a little to look past Malfoy at Harry. "Sorry about all this, Harry. He's just...well. Sorry. Can you show me tomorrow? I've enough to finish the essay tonight, at least. I can meet you behind Hagrid's at lunch, no one will bother us there."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. It won't take long."
A derisive snort came from Malfoy as he sauntered over and picked up Millicent's packed bag. "Study date with Harry sodding Potter. Brilliant. I can see Salazar spinning in his tomb." He caught Millicent's eye and cocked his head toward the exit, moving toward it but taking the time to pierce Harry with another withering sneer. "Come on, Millie."
"See you tomorrow, Harry," she said quietly as she passed him on her way out of the library.
After she had gone out into the corridor, Malfoy stared at Harry hard. "I see you raise your wand at her again, Potter, and I'll beat you to death with one of these chairs. If you want to show her something, you do it off to the side."
And then he was gone, leaving Harry standing there feeling uncomfortable. It wasn't specifically the words that made Malfoy's threat eerie, Harry was not new to death threats, it was the absence of any expression of face or inflection of voice.
Adjusting his shoulders, which still ached from the little incident compliments of the creepy blond, Harry went back to the table and started packing up his own bag. The essay could be finished in bed, as Harry was suddenly very keen to be out of the library.
AN: Hello, all! Some of you might know from looking at my profile what 'outsource editing' means for my writing process, but for those of you who don't: basically just that I edited this myself after I wrote it and my editor has not worked on it at all. For my Syzygy readers - please refer to my profile as I have updated it. I promise I'm not neglecting Syzygy on purpose!