Breath in. Breath out.
Draco was trying to clear his head. This was not happening. This was so not happening. After dinner the houses were shown to their dormitories, and not enough the Slytherin's dormitory was in the basement, it was a shared dormitory. Which meant they would all sleep in the same room. Together. Draco's mind was a mess and he was really pulling himself not to break down in front of everyone. He couldn't do this - no way! This way he would have no privacy at all, this way he would have no place to walk around in… Draco pictured the dress. The dress that he had brought. That he had stolen from his mother. It was black and with little yellow flowers all over, and it was his favorite of them all. All he hoped for was that his mom wouldn't notice in the instant. He would like to keep it just a bit longer. As when he was smaller, Draco still liked to walk around in dresses. Just walk around in them. It made him feel pretty, somehow. But now that was over, supposedly. With his head dropping all the way to the floor, he trudged inside the dormitory. Their suitcases had already been brought up, but Draco didn't even care to unpack. He just dropped on his bed and the moment after, he was fast asleep.
The next morning, when he opened his eyes, the early morning light was shining through the window beside his bed. Already cringing from the expectance of sounds all around and boys walking around his bed, he rubbed his eyes in disgust - but there were no sounds. He looked around, and apparently everyone was still sleeping. It was probably way too early to get up, but there was no way he could fall asleep again now, knowing that there were way too many undiscovered areas at Hogwarts for him to explore. So he got out of bed, silently changed his clothes and walked out in the common room of the Slytherins. It was way much cozier than he remembered from last night. The walls and furniture had a dark green-ish color, just like his tie, like everything was color-coded. For a second he imagined Harry sitting in an all red-and-gold room and couldn't help but smile. By the wall was a fireplace, a few armchairs and a sofa. It was actually quite nice. Or, it could have been worse, at least. It wasn't dead in the same way as the Malfoy-house. This wasn't so bad of a place to live. Besides all the other people and the lack of privacy, but oh well, he could probably live with that. Maybe there was an unused classroom or something like that in where he could walk around in his dress. He quickly looked at a clock on the wall. A quarter to five. Normally he would be totally bummed at this time of the hour, but now he wasn't. Actually, it seemed like he had way too much energy. Last night Dumbledore had said something about a corridor that students should stay away from if they did not wish a most painful death (a little overdramatic, to be honest, Draco had thought), but he couldn't remember which one. Anyway, he would probably find out eventually if one of the corridors were life-threatening. Without a second thought, Draco leaped out the door to explore his new home.
The first thing he noticed when he went outside was a smell. It was a smell most delicious, so delicious he couldn't even describe it. Before he knew it, he was following the smell down the hall, taking him places where he could probably not find back from, but he didn't really care right now. He was following his stomach. He didn't have any apatite last night (plus, he kept glancing at Harry from time to time, so he didn't really have time to eat, honestly), so he hadn't eaten properly since the breakfast yesterday morning. Finally he saw light at the end of a hallway, and he followed it. It was a kitchen, filled with steam and the delicate smell of food. All over the kitchen there were house elves preparing the food, just like the ones they had at the Malfoy-house. A house elf saw Draco from the other side of the kitchen, which was quite big, and was there in the glint of an eye (literally).
"Can I help you with anything, sir?" she said. Her eyes were lively, so lively you couldn't really avoid eye contact.
"Oh, I'm no sir" Draco said and laughed, slightly awkward.
"In here everybody is a sir" the house elf said and smiled. It might be weird to say about such a crooked face as a house elf's, but she was kind of beautiful.
"Well…" Draco started, and looked around the kitchen.
"Do you have something to eat?" He finally asked, looking down at the house elf.
"Are you at Hogwarts?" she just asked back, and Draco glanced at her, a bit confused.
"Uhm… yeah?" he answered and shrugged.
"And this is the kitchen, right?" the house elf continued, Draco's face turning into one big question mark.
Suddenly the elf busted into laughter and started dragging Draco inside.
"Why, of course we've got something to eat!" she said, still chuckling. Draco sighed in relieve and followed.
"What would you like, my boy?" she asked, as she started scrambling with something at a table.
"Do you have scrambled eggs?" he asked and tried to look past her.
"With bacon!" she declared, and stood in front of him with a plate full of scrambled eggs, bacon and a piece of bread. This was probably the best meal Draco had ever seen, helped by the fact that he was starving.
"Thank you so much!" he said, his eyes shining like he was literally looking at the love of his life.
"I'm Draco Malfoy, by the way" he said, his mouth already stuff with eggs.
"Oh I know who you are" she said and smiled. Draco's face turned into a weird grimace.
"Everybody knows a Malfoy when they see one!" She said, obviously sensing Draco's confusion.
"It's probably the hair" she said and gestured at Draco's neatly trimmed, blond hair. If only she had seen him before he got his hair cut, he might not have been labeled as a Malfoy from the start.
"By the way, I'm"
"FELICIA" one of the other elves came storming from the back of the kitchen, his eyes furious. Draco never thought he would be afraid of a house elf, but if there was to be one, this was definitely it.
"HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU WE DO NOT SERVE FOOD OUT OF HOURS" he yelled, and was standing beside her the next second. Felicia just sighed and started leading Draco out of the kitchen (which was actually pretty crowded with house elves, it was even hard to make it to the entrance).
"The boy was starving, Bart" she said, not even caring to look over her shoulder.
"You go, boy" she whispered and gently pushed Draco out in the hallway as she turned again to pick up the fight with Bart. Draco didn't think twice before he was far away from that place. He didn't want anything to do with that furious little elf.
As soon as Draco was done with his plate, he started looking around. So many places to explore! It was quite a luck that he had 7 years to get to know everything here. If Narcissa had been here, she would probably say something like "For god's sake, boy, spend your time on something proper instead of this useless time-wasting" or "You don't need to explore. The world is in your books!". But she wasn't here now, so he could do what he wanted to. A roaming joy started filling in his chest, and before he knew it, he was jumping around in the halls, screaming and singing, as if just to use his voice for something. He started spinning, imagining he was wearing his dress, imagining the wonderful clothing draping around his legs, swinging like it would do in his own room at home. In the end he couldn't even control his spinning anymore and ended up falling over his own legs and faceplanted the floor. When he was younger, this would have made him break into tears (these situations had occasionally caused quite a few blood stains on his mother's dresses), but right now he just couldn't stop laughing. He was just lying there on the floor, rolling around, laughing his lungs out when he suddenly looked up and noticed a ghost was right over him.
"AAAH!" he squealed and started backing off. The ghost just looked at him, but then busted into laughter.
"Why, aren't you a squealer!" he said, still laughing like a maniac.
"Who are you even?" Draco asked, slightly confused.
"Me?" the ghost said, between small chuckles.
"Why, I'm Peeves, of course! The best legendary prankster of Hogwarts!" he said in a kind of proud, but still sarcastic voice.
"Aren't you the only legendary prankster of Hogwarts?" Draco asked and sat up.
"Well, that also makes me the best, now, doesn't it?" Peeves said and looked offended for a second, before he turned to his sassy smile again.
"What are you even doing out now?" he asked with a skeptic look in his eyes.
"Students aren't supposed to be up yet. Why the heck aren't you sleeping, boy?"
Draco just shrugged.
"I couldn't sleep any longer, I guess" he said and finally stood up again (he had not been able to stand up before, because his head kept spinning around so that he could hardly even see Peeves properly).
"Well, I'll be off then" Draco said, but before he could go anywhere Peeves leaped in front of him as if he could actually stand in his way.
"You think I'm just going to let you go like that, huh? You know, we're supposed to tell the teachers if we see any students out of bed out of hours." Peeves said and put his hands in his sides.
Draco suddenly stiffened. He didn't want to get into trouble with any of the teachers already. He was just about to beg Peeves to please not tell, but he interrupted him.
"But lucky for you, I don't' like the teachers. Too many rules." He said, and moved out of Draco's way.
"Thanks!" Was all Draco managed to say, before he stormed out the front door. He needed to get out into the open air, where there was proper room for his spinning.
Outside it was a bit chilly, but it was nice. He took off his shoes and socks just to feel the grass between his toes (Narcissa never ever let him do that, because he would get "dirty feet") leaped around himself a few times and fell to the ground, but the grass was soft so he didn't even feel it. It was as landing on a pillow - as magic (could it really be true that even the grass here was magic?). For a long time he was just lying there, thinking about how awesome it would be when he learned magic himself. When he learned to make the butterflies himself. And not turn them into bats. Because at Hogwarts he was not like Lucius Malfoy. At Hogwarts he was not Draco Malfoy.
Here he was just Draco.
