A/N: Yep. I'm on a roll with this pairing, and this forum. I just absolutely love it! You all should totally go there. To the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenge forum, that is.

Below, we have the first part in a fifty prompt series. Some may link back to others, but most will be unrelated. All for my OTP - Draco/Neville


It should be good. The pudding, that is. In fact, it should be more than good. It should be wonderful, fantastic, mind-blowing. It should be magical, as over-used of a word as that was here, at Hogwarts.

Should be, but isn't.

Draco's face twists into something more then irritated but less than annoyed. His steel-blue eyes narrow, looking down at his plate with nothing short of condescendance. And isn't that just great? Now, he is gloating over being better than a food item.

This is really beginning to mess with his head, he decides, prodding the mass of bread and raisins with the prongs of his fork. It gives, and a trickle of sweetened cream bubbles out of the holes he leaves behind.

Just like bread pudding should. Better even, because this pudding is made here, at Hogwarts, where everything is just fabulous. Sarcasm, m'dears, sarcasm.

"Hey, Draco?" asks Goyle, from the blond's side. "Are you okay?"

Draco starts, and glances over at the larger boy. There's a slight layer of concern in Goyle's dark eyes, which the Malfoy heir does his best to brush aside. He shifts, straightening his shoulders out of the brooding hunch they had fallen into, and gives a curt nod. "Of course. Perfectly fine."

And he is, because it's just pudding. He can deal with a little bread pudding, can't he? Of course he can. He's Draco - and with that thought in mind, he uses his fork to cut off a piece of the pudding and pops it into his mouth. At first, it tastes sweet and doughy. Like a piece of cloud that has been pulled out of the skies, just for him. Then Draco's gaze wanders - over and over and across the hall, to a table filled with reds and golds, where it lands on an awkward looking boy sitting off on his own.

Like magic, the pudding turns to ash in his mouth.