Written for: hd owlpost
Summary: Draco has the perfect plan to get revenge on all his classmates their last year at Hogwarts, until they exclude him from participating in the Christmas charity event. He should have expected it. It's what they always do. When he thinks the situation can't get worse, Harry Potter shows up at his door.
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Hogwarts High, Non-Magical AU, Suicide attempt
Notes: My knowledge of England is very limited, so if what I'm imagining in the story sounds too American it's because I'm too American. Thanks to C, L, and T for looking through this for me on such short notice and so quickly. Y'all are the best.
1997
'Remember, Seventh Years, our winter drive goes on for the entire month of December, and the team that gets in the most donations wins a party the last day of school before Winter Break,' the overly excited voice of the Headmaster said over the intercom. 'The groups will be posted on the bulletin board outside the main office and, of course, will also be on the bulletin board online on our school web page: www. hogwarts high .com.' As he continued to ramble on about upcoming school events, Draco sat in English, his first class of the day, reading through his notes for a test he had in Astronomy that day.
At least, he tried to.
Draco had been waiting for this announcement all year long. He'd been waiting for it since he'd heard that same announcement his first year at Hogwarts High. That announcement was his revenge on all his peers.
His parents were rich and he had this competition in the bag. He'd been going through his things, and then his parents' things, even the basement and the attic since the summer before, gathering everything they no longer wanted, needed or had simply forgotten about. At the beginning of the school year, Draco started going through their kitchen cupboards every week pulling out all the cans of food he knew they'd never actually eat. Since his mother just kept buying more of them, he then had two boxes of them stored with everything else.
Oh yes, his team was sure to win, and they'd know it was all because of him. For once they'd have to be grateful to him or, much more likely, be jealous that none of them could have done what he had done. He wouldn't even go to the party. Just let them look around knowing their failure and stew in their hatred and jealousy of him. The revenge was petty and childish and Draco knew that but it was for his peers' petty, childish behaviour in the first place so he didn't care.
The Christmas drive and resulting Christmas party were major events at the school. Their Headmaster, who came from America, had come up with it his first year there. He'd been with the school for twenty years.
Draco wanted their memories of it, whether they were in the group which won or one of the ones which lost, to be as sour and ruined as all his memories of school; from his first day of stepping into the building.
Draco didn't look up from his notes. He didn't want any of his classmates to know how much he cared about this annual event. They were all buzzing with excitement around him, but part of his plan was to ignore that, to pretend it was such a silly thing to get excited about and completely beneath him.
In short to pretend to be the person they all just knew he was. That way, when he donated more than they ever could, they'd hate him for ruining their fun that much more.
He avoided the front offices for two reasons; both of them were because of that list.
To pretend he wasn't interested meant he couldn't be seen looking at it to find out what group he was in. But also, because every other seventh year did care, that hallway became way too crowded and it would make him late for class just trying to push through it.
Because, he didn't care—and said so in every class to make sure everyone knew how little he cared—he arrived before anyone else to all of his classes the rest of the day.
As soon as Draco arrived home that evening, he ran upstairs to his room.
It was what he did every day as part of his revenge against his mother for her part in this whole situation because really it had been all her fault to begin with. Only, unlike his classmates, he loved his mother. So for the most part, he tried to not hurt her. Avoiding her until dinner was the most he'd ever do.
The sun was at that level where it shone right into his eyes when he entered his room, so he shut his curtains before he sat at his desk and opened his laptop.
Draco's father was hardly ever around, always out working in the city during the week. Even when Draco was a toddler, he'd only come home on the weekends. Those weekends happened less and less, and before the major school decision, Draco only saw him about once month. His parents were still married, and his mother didn't seem to see anything going wrong in their marriage, but Draco was pretty sure those weekends weren't work related. He was also pretty sure his father wasn't sleeping in a studio apartment with just a bed and computer during the week either.
His mother and he lived in a smaller town, Cholsey, in a house, they'd had built for them after buying two run-down cottages that sat next to each other in one of the wealthier parts of town.
At least, that was how his parents looked at it. The neighbors weren't so happy about the teardown and refurb of them, but they were too polite to say it his mother's face. He'd heard it himself when people thought he wasn't listening.
Draco's mother wanted him to have a simpler life. More like what she had while living in a mansion in London with her two sisters, except for not as extravagant. They ran around the neighborhood with kids their age who were everywhere—just like the neighborhood she'd picked in their town—whereas his father grew up in a manor in the country. His father had had very little contact with kids his age, except his cousins who were always around, until he went to a public school at eleven.
His father wanted him to go to that same public school, but his mother wanted him home in the evenings. She wanted a closer family life than that, like how she imagined life as a commoner was. His father pointed out that, even though she went to the same public school as he had, she still remained close to her family. As well as he did have a very close relationship with his family while living with them at the manor. Things had simply changed after they'd married.
Draco was never told what had changed. That they didn't choose to live in the manor was probably a big part of it. The odd way his parents lived in their marriage was probably the rest of it.
But in the end, his father wasn't around and his mother was.
So even though Draco never did make friends with the kids in his neighbourhood, never did at the state schools she sent him to, never in the classes—from dancing to karate—she had him take for character building, she sent him to Hogwarts High with the same kids who'd wanted nothing to do with him for years.
Draco avoided her after school and only made an appearance for dinner. That seemed to be enough for her, anyway.
Of course, on that particular day, he ran upstairs because he did, in fact, care a great deal which team he was on, and he had to get online to see it. Family computers were common among his classmates. Just because his mother wanted him to have an average life didn't mean she wanted him to be without the best. He was still in a good school district and he had his own computer: a laptop that all his classmates would envy if they knew it existed.
Draco treated it like a desktop computer, even though he could take it with him wherever he went. If he tired, he'd probably have been jumped for it anyway. Sometimes he took it to the living room just because he could.
There was a student committee that organized the Christmas charity event.
Draco had at first thought about joining it, but as there was no way to ruin the campaign in general—and he had no desire to as it was a good idea—ruining their fun in it after it was all over was a much better plan in his mind.
Every year there were four groups, but the committee got to choose how they came up with them on their own. So it was different every year. Once it was alphabetical by their last names and another time it was done by what neighborhood they lived in. It was the only thing that changed each year. Sometimes they named the groups and less creative committees just called them one, two, three and four.
The page loaded.
This year they'd come up with mascots and colours for each team as if they were sports teams. There was a lion, raven, snake and a badger of all things. Draco began scanning the list for his name to see which color he should probably avoid wearing the next day at school.
Although, he would try to avoid all of them for a while. The difficulty was that they were the primary colours: red, green, blue, and yellow. Draco wore a lot of neutrals, but they had secondary colors of silver, gold, gray, and black. Avoiding wearing gray as well as black would be a challenge. He hoped most people went for the primary colours for their group pride, so he could go unnoticed in grays and blacks.
He didn't see his name right away and began trying to figure how they divided up the list. It was random. Some people lived near each other, but then others were on the other side of the district. The names—first, last, and what Draco knew of the middle—didn't line up alphabetically. The only thing that they seemed to have in common was that they were all with their friends.
Draco swallowed and groaned.
That was it.
Their committee grouped them by their groups of friends.
They put the overachievers and bookworms together. They put the jocks of various sports together. They put the geeks and nerds with the stoners for some reason, and the gamers with the drama club—well, once Draco looked closer it was all the clubs: chess, video games, mixed in with future teachers, and the debate team. There was a lot of overlap that they had to sort out, but it looked more like they were putting people together not just by their stereotype but by who they genuinely got along with.
Like Zabini was on the debate team, so he was in the group with them, even though he also played football. He was known to spend more time with his debate friends than anyone on the team even though they were all his friends. Longbottom was with the jocks even though the only sport he played was golf because, despite the fact he did smoke a bit of pot and was more of a loner, he spent the most time with Potter and Weasley out of anybody.
Loners. That was another label he could have given the nerd, geek and stoner group, and maybe that was what it really was. But Draco was the ultimate loner, and his name wasn't in that group.
He'd checked every one.
Draco wasn't in any clubs for obvious reasons. He was listed as a member of two, but he'd gone to only a few meetings before he gave up on the idea that clubs were going to help him make friends either. Chess and debate were where he'd tried. It was also the group, that if they were going for getting along with, Draco did. With a few, at least. Zabini's locker was next to his and they had a few classes with each other.
They weren't friends. Draco had made the mistake of confusing someone simply being nice to him as them being his friend or wanting to when he was younger, he wouldn't repeat that mistake now that he was older. But they were polite to each other.
Yet, Draco wasn't on that list either.
Since he was a loner, he was always studying or reading a book, so he thought maybe they put him there, but after reading the list for the third time his name was still missing.
Draco played no sports, not since he quit the football team after Fourth Year, and he got on the least with the people who did.
Tapping on the keyboard, he scanned the list, wondering what they'd meant by it if they had added him there, and how it might be even better for his revenge if he hated his teammates.
The obvious people were on the list: Finnigan, Thomas, Brown. This must have been another one of their pathetic slights against him. Group everyone with their friends or people they got on with well, except him. If his group was people who hated him the most, then maybe he'd back out and not participate at all. Well, their plan wasn't going to work. Excitement bubbled in his stomach as he read the names, remembering why he hated each of them.
Then everything began to crash around him as his name was missing from that list as well.
Of course, they'd exclude him.
It's what they'd always done.
The next day at school, Draco was angrier with everyone around him than usual. When he slammed his locker, Zabini quietly closed his own and asked, 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing out of the ordinary,' Draco said shaking his head. They fell in step as they walked to class. 'Just everyone . . .' being their usual hateful selves.
'Hmm,' Zabini said, 'did you read the winter drive list?'
Draco scoffed. 'Why would I bother? We're donating money and gifts all year long.' Which was true. One guy at the Salvation Army called him by his name because Draco came by so often he felt odd not knowing it. His mother was big on giving as well, especially around Christmas.
'We don't need an event or competition to have a reason to be involved in helping the community.'
It was more important than ever for Draco to keep up the charade that he didn't care.
Although, Draco wasn't self-involved enough to believe that Zabini bothered to look for his name, he knew there were people who'd have noticed it missing. Like the people who made the decision to not include him to begin with, and the people who hated him just as much as he hated them and, therefore, wanted to make sure he wasn't in their group.
So it had been a really good thing he hadn't figured out he'd been excluded until he was safe at home the day before. They would have been looking for his reaction. And it was important that he did not give it to them the next day or the day after that or they'd win.
They already had, though. And that was the real reason for Draco's foul mood. Years of waiting and months of preparing and they took it away from him.
He was stuck.
Draco couldn't go to the committee and demand to be placed in a group because then they'd know he cared and that team winning wouldn't have the effect he needed it to have. Maybe some would still be jealous, but it wouldn't be enough if they knew he cared just as much as they did. The same thing would happen if he just added himself to one of the teams without telling anyone. And there was no way of getting the information about how much was donated to even out all the teams and keep any of them from winning because he wasn't on the committee.
The only thing he could do was keep his mouth shut and pretend none of it affected him.
Just like he had from the moment he decided that hating them was much more worth his time than trying to become friends with them.
At home, Draco was confronted by the massive amount of stuff he had gathered in his living room. His because he was the only one to use it. It had a large television and all his video games with an oversized couch that looked unused because it mostly was. Draco preferred the wingback chair, even if it was off centre from the television. It was more his father's taste: dark browns and leather. His mother had her own sitting room and office upstairs, even though she didn't work. It was filled with creams and floral patterns with accents in blue; her favourite colour. Draco didn't really know what his taste was, but he suspected something in the middle. He didn't like the darkness in the living room and the leather made him feel cold. His mother's rooms were too bright and full, making him feel suffocated much like her presence sometimes.
In his living room there was so much stuff piled together for the drive that it spilled over into the entryway, but as he was the only one to ever come through the front door—and their entryway was almost as big as his living room—it really wasn't in his way.
It was, however, a constant reminder of his failure.
Not just at his revenge, but of his inability to fit in or ever make friends with any of them to begin with. He needed to get rid of it.
He would still donate it. He just hadn't had the energy for the last few days, which turned into a week. Draco pictured the conversation with the Salvation Army worker; he had a million times by then. Only now the conversation he was picturing went a lot differently. They worked in partnership with the school for the drive every year, so they were used to keeping track for them.
It was obvious Draco was a student.
They'd ask him, 'What team are you on?'
It'd happened for the last few years as it was and he'd reply that he wasn't a Seventh Year yet. Maybe he could say that again. But the one guy, Tyler, who knew his name wouldn't fall for it because he knew that Draco was a seventh year.
So what would he say?
There was also the problem that it would take more than one trip as it all wouldn't fit in his car, which would just make those awkward encounters that much more difficult to get through.
A week into the competition it was still cluttering up his entryway when there was a knock on his door. His mother ordered a lot of things, so Draco was used to having to sign for them. He didn't even think about checking who was outside before opening the door.
He should have. He really should have because it was Harry Potter.
'Oh,' Potter said, clearly just as surprised to see Draco standing there as Draco was to see him. 'I was just going around to collect things for the drive.'
Draco could have kicked himself for not remembering that they did this as they came by every year. He used to have a box ready for them. One of the reasons the student committee had divided them up by neighborhoods that one year was because the town was already divided up into four groups that were created years before and didn't often change. They could ask for donations, but they couldn't go into another group's territory.
It was to make sure that the competition was fair.
'Well, I don't have anything for you, goodbye.' As Draco was shutting the door, Harry put his foot in it to stop it from closing.
'Wait, Draco! I didn't know you lived here.'
Draco said nothing. Potter would have had he ever come over like—Draco stopped that train of thought. There was no use going back down that road.
'I live just down—'
'I know,' Draco said, 'I've been to your house, and now you know where I live. Please, remove your foot from my door and leave.'
Potter's face scrunched up in confusion and was looking just over Draco's shoulder.
Shit.
'What's that?'
Draco tried to position himself in the crack of the door so that Potter couldn't see any further in.
'It's nothing.'
'It looks like a whole lot of nothing. If that's all for your team, there is no way we'll catch up. What team are you on?'
'Draco?' His mother came up behind him, making him jump and the door swung opened. 'Who's at the door? Oh, hello, Harry! Come in, I haven't seen you in ages.'
Potter smiled and closed the door behind him after he entered. Draco bit the inside of his cheek. This was not going to end well.
'Mum, he was just leaving.'
'But he just got here?' Then she turned to Potter and said, 'You must stay for supper, so I can catch up. I don't know why you boys don't spend more time here. I'm not that scary, am I?'
'He can't stay. He's looking for donations for . . .' Draco trailed off because the pile behind him made that conversation just as dangerous ground. 'He needs to get going.'
'Actually, I'd love to stay,' Potter said and Draco wanted to punch him in his face right then, but he couldn't do that in front of his mother. 'Let me just call my parents and let them know. Can I borrow your phone?'
His mother pointed to the nearest one that was on a table in the living room.
Draco rolled his eyes.
'What? You're hardly ever around anymore. I like to know what you and your friends are up to.' When Potter had joined them again she added, 'I was just about to start cooking, why don't you boys go upstairs and I'll call you down when it's ready?'
Not having much of another choice, Draco stomped up the stairs with Potter following behind him.
One of the things that bothered Draco about Potter was how he seemed to fit and be comfortable wherever he went. He entered Draco's room as if he'd done it a million times before, and sat at Draco's desk without asking. The only other place to sit in Draco's room was his bed, so he grabbed a book and laid across it determined to ignore Potter for the rest of the evening.
'I'm going to look up the groups since you're being so rude about it.' Potter was on his laptop and Draco was off the bed and next to him slamming the lid in a flash.
'Do not touch my computer.'
Potter laughed. 'Fine. We can just talk instead: what did your mum mean about us not spending enough time around here?'
'She doesn't know what she's talking about, just ignore her. You shouldn't have accepted her offer either, she was just trying to be nice.'
'Fine.'
'Fine.'
Draco went back to pretending to read his book as Potter kept trying to fiddle around with his stuff and Draco stopped him at every turn until his mum called them down to supper.