Orange
by ghostsinthemachine
Summary: Everyone has something they do to keep their mind off Things. Potter flies. Weasley plays chess. Nott makes thousands upon thousands of paper airplanes. And Draco Malfoy likes to eavesdrop…
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling. Everything else is mine.
Draco likes this hiding place, high in the branches of the old beech tree. Here, he can hear everyone and no one can see or hear him. Here, he doesn't have to think about Father and homework and Quidditch and, most of all, those other Things that plague him in the darkest hours of the night.
Mother had once mentioned to him how unhealthy it was to brood all the time, and that one must find a suitable activity to keep one's mind off Things (although, not knowing about Draco's private terrors, she had pronounced Things with a regular t).
Draco smiles grimly. This suitable enough for you, Mum?
Down below his leafy lair, a new group of people moves to sit under the tree. Draco's eyes are closed, the sun detonating orange patterns inside his eyelids. He cannot see who it is but fervently hopes they will be more interesting than the first-year girls from half an hour ago.
Draco's wish is granted.
He recognizes the voices almost immediately, and his desire to find out overrides his desire to jump out of the tree and murder them all.
"…come on, tell us," says the Weasel. Funny, that, how he's the Weasel and they call me Ferret.
"Not out here!" hisses Granger. "Anyone could hear us!"
"It's not one of the real dreams, so I don't really care." That's Potter. "There's nobody around anyway."
"So get on with it then!" says Weasley.
"Well…" Potter takes a breath. "First, I woke up, and there was—"
"Wait, what happened to the dream?" interrupts Weasley.
"He woke up in the dream, Ron," says Granger. "Go on, Harry."
"Anyway… I woke up, in the dream, and when I went to brush my teeth, my toothbrush was orange. Then when I got dressed, my socks were orange. I woke you up, Ron, and your hair was so orange it hurt."
"Why would my hair hurt? It's always been this color!"
"I mean, it hurt me," clarifies Potter. "I had to close my eyes because it was too orange. Then, when we went down to breakfast, Hermione was wearing a bunch of SPEW pins. They were all orange. In the Great Hall, someone had spilled pumpkin juice at all four tables, which turned the tablecloths—"
"Orange," chorus Weasel and Granger.
"Exactly," says Potter. "When we sit down, there's a bowl of oranges directly in front of me, and when I turn my head away, I see Ginny next to me, and her hair is orange too, and at that point there's just so much orange I die."
Silence, in the tree and under it.
"You died of orange?" says Granger incredulously.
"Yeah," says Potter, with a shrug in his voice. "Who said dreams have to make sense?"
They go on, but Draco is no longer listening. His body is in the tree, but his mind is searching the halls of Hogwarts, wondering where to get a bucket of paint.
FINIS