Author's Note: I am so sorry for not updating this in forever! I did have 99% of the story written, but then my computer crashed. I didn't start rewriting it until now because I got very busy with schoolwork, but now that it's summertime, I should be updating more!
Please review!
True to his word, Potter-and the other two-thirds of the Golden Trio-stayed away from Draco in the following weeks, giving him only an awkward smile or a brief "hello" when they happened to be near each other. This, of course, suited Draco very well, as he had more than enough to occupy him.
First and foremost was the matter of Pansy. She still wasn't speaking to him, turning her nose up at him, giving a haughty "humph!", and walking in the other direction when he approached. Draco also wanted very desperately to be angry with Blaise Zabini for trying to steal Pansy away from him, but couldn't bring himself to it. Blaise was nice enough, and Pansy was quite a catch, so he could understand the other boy's wish to steal her away. Still, this only made Draco all the more frustrated, feeling as though he were becoming too much of a forgiving, docile Hufflepuff.
Then Draco had to worry about Tonks. She'd gone into some undercover operation with another Auror, a man named Kingsley, and although she'd warned him well in advance, it was disconcerting not to receive a cheerful letter once or twice a week with his morning toast and bacon.
Finally, between Quidditch and that new, rubbish Defence professor, Draco was already starting to worry that he wouldn't be ready for his OWLs in fifth year. Cedric had only made it worse when Draco mentioned it, laughing and telling him that he should partner with Granger, because she was probably thinking the same thing.
As September faded into October, Draco's frustrations festered and grew, until, by the time Halloween came, the young Hufflepuff was fit to burst.
"Cheer up, mate," Cedric told him the morning of the feast. "It can't be that bad—besides, tonight's going to be great. Hagrid's pumpkins are so big this year that you could fit in half of the Quidditch team broom shed, and you know that means there's going to be tons of pie."
"You'll excuse me if Halloween isn't something I'm excited about," Draco not-quite-snapped, "but given what happened last year, I think my distress is justified."
"That was a one-off, Draco," Cedric tried to reassure him. "Nothing like that had happened before while I've been here. Besides, after it happened once, I'm sure the professors wouldn't let it happen again."
"You say that, but the professor in charge of defence is a blithering idiot," Draco murmured darkly, and Cedric's lips twitched. His opinion of Professor Lockhart wasn't very high, either.
"You shouldn't be disrespectful towards professors," he reproached Draco, but it was done in the same tired, nonchalant fashion as his rebukes for swearing, and so the younger boy only rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Draco. Everything's going to be fine. We're going to go to the feast, eat until we all gain twenty tonnes, laugh at the dancing skeletons Dumbledore's getting, and then we're going to come right back here and go to bed so we can practise early on the pitch tomorrow. It'll be fine." Draco continued to look at Cedric doubtfully until his older friend finally sighed and changed the subject.
In the end, Draco's doubts, it seemed, were entirely justified.
Entering the Great Hall, Draco was tense, on high alert. Seated firmly between Cedric and Susan Bones, he tried to relax and laugh at the skeletons who were floating above the Head Table—at that moment doing a dance that Justin informed him was a Muggle one called the Macarena—but he simply couldn't, and it was all Harry Potter's fault, as usual.
"Where have they gone to now?" he groaned, and his friends looked at him oddly.
"Where have who gone?" asked Cedric, happily shovelling pumpkin pie into his mouth. As it was his favourite dessert, he had elected to start there, grateful that the sweets had appeared on the table at the same moment as the rest of the food.
"The Gryffindor Golden Trio," huffed Draco. "The last Halloween they disappeared, it was because the three of them were battling a bloody mountain troll."
"Draco-" But he missed the rest of Cedric's reply as he cried out, feeling a chill wash over him as the Fat Friar, the ghost of Hufflepuff house, passed through him.
"Oh, I'm quite sorry, my boy!" said the Friar, turning just above their table to look at him. "How clumsy of me."
"Quite alright, Friar," Draco said through gritted teeth, trying his best to be polite.
"Say, I couldn't help but overhear," the ghost began, "and I heard a rumour that Harry Potter and his friends were going to Sir Nicholas' deathday celebration! I suppose I'll see in a moment, though, as I'm headed there now. Shall I give them your regards?"
"Give them to Sir Nicholas only, if you would," instructed Draco after a moment's consideration. "I'm boycotting Harry Potter and all of the trouble that comes with him." The ghost looked moderately puzzled at that, but also highly amused, and beside him, Cedric chuckled. With a nod and a promise to wish Nearly Headless Nick a happy deathday, the Fat Friar was gone, and Draco finally relaxed enough to laugh when Susan shrieked as a charmed bat-shaped lantern got caught in her hair.
The rest of the feast passed calmly, leaving Draco in a much better mood than before. As it was nearing midnight, he waved to Neville and Luna at the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, respectively, as he and the majority of the Hufflepuffs prepared to follow the Slytherins, who had left first, out of the Great Hall.
That was when Draco and the rest heard the shouting—it sounded suspiciously like Nott's voice, and he knew as they came into view exactly what he was yelling about.
"'Enemies of the Heir, beware!'" repeated the Slytherin boy, reading what was written on the wall in what looked to be—Draco blanched—blood. Next to the words "THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE." hung Filch's cat, Mrs Norris, who looked stiff and cold and very much dead. Draco felt his stomach turn. "You Mudbloods are going to die!" Again, he felt an unpleasant lurch at the glee in Theodore Nott's voice, and for a moment, Draco could hardly believe that this was the same boy who, at one time, had visited Malfoy Manor to play on children's' broomsticks with him-
"What's going on here? What's going on?" It was Filch, and the man shouldered his way through the crowd, only to stop short as he saw his cat dangling from the torch bracket. "My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs Norris?" And when he turned his head, Draco finally noticed the Golden Trio standing there gaping alternately at Filch and at Mrs Norris, and he felt his stomach drop. Why had he let his guard down? Of course they were up to something!
Filch was screaming at Potter, screaming that he was going to kill the boy, not that Draco could really blame him, and then he felt himself ever-so-slightly calm—not that everything was alright, mind you, because it most certainly was not—because then Dumbledore was there, the crowd parting to let him through seemingly instinctively.
As he led away the Gryffindors—Filch and Lockhart, who looked rather unduly and inappropriately excited, both following almost uselessly behind them—they passed right by Draco. Entirely by accident, his own wide, startled eyes met those of Harry Potter, and Draco quickly looked away, his face burning.
And Potter had had the gall to say that he wasn't in any trouble.
Back in the Hufflepuff common room, Draco found himself stressed and admittedly frightened for the second Halloween in a row. Just as before, Cedric took it upon himself to try to calm his younger friend down. Draco had sequestered himself in one corner of the room, farthest from the fireplace and, by extension, all of the other Hufflepuffs, and Cedric had followed after only a few moments.
"And you thought everything would be fine," Draco huffed quietly, giving Cedric and offended glare. Cedric sighed and shrugged as he sat down next to Draco.
"I was wrong," he said. "Sorry." Draco continued to glare until finally he simply rolled his eyes.
"Well, it wasn't your fault," said Draco, "it was Potter's." Cedric's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"Harry Potter? Draco, I know you think every bad thing that happens here is because of the three of them, but do you really think that Harry Potter would kill Filch's cat?"
At that, a seventh-year girl sitting only a short distance away, trying to read—Cedric's counterpart Prefect, Draco remembered distantly—piped up. "I heard that the cat was just petrified, so the mandrakes Professor Sprout is growing will revive her."
"Oh, that's wonderful," said Draco, voice dripping with sarcasm. "She's only petrified! That's still very, very powerful Dark Magic!"
"See, Draco? If it's that powerful, how could second-years be capable of it?" asked Cedric hopefully, but his friend just glared.
"How could first-years have been capable of getting past the professors' traps on the way to the Philosopher's Stone?" he retorted, and Cedric closed his eyes briefly, bracing himself, and ran a hand through his hair.
"Look, Draco. Harry Potter is just not the type to petrify a cat, we both know that." Cedric frowned as he tried to ignore Draco's muttered "maybe you know that." "Besides, the writing on the wall about the Heir—I think that means the Heir of Slytherin." As soon as Cedric said that, Draco's brow furrowed and he sat up a bit straighter.
"Yes, yes, you're right!" he said, peering at Cedric, eyes wide. "I remember my father mentioning the Heir of Slytherin once... Yes, when he told me about the Chamber of Secrets!" This had caught the attention of the Hufflepuffs near them, and they turned their attention fully to Draco, waiting for him to continue. "Well, my father told me that Slytherin built a secret chamber within the school before he left, a place containing a monster that only Slytherin could control—or one of his descendants. He said that only someone related to Slytherin could even find and open it, and that when they did, all of the Muggle-borns in Hogwarts would..." Draco trailed off, his eyes meeting Justin's without his consent. He swallowed thickly.
"Theodore Nott said that we would die," said Justin, sounding disgusted and unimpressed more than frightened. One corner of Draco's lips twitched upward in an almost-smile despite himself at that before he registered what his friend had said.
"Er, well, yes. The monster was kept there for that reason," Draco admitted meekly. There was a long moment of heavy, uncomfortable silence, and then Susan spoke up.
"But that was just a story, wasn't it, Draco?" she asked. "This is just somebody's Halloween prank, right? From someone who'd heard about the Chamber." A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd before Draco looked over his house-mates and then slowly, hesitantly shook his head.
"My father told me that fifty years ago, even before he was at Hogwarts, someone opened the Chamber, and that..." Draco paused—he could remember the night his father had told him the story. He had been ten years old, and he was starting to get impatient about going to Hogwarts. He couldn't wait to go away and become a Slytherin and play Quidditch and have his own wand at last, and that night after dinner he had begged his father for new stories about Hogwarts-
"Get on with it! What happened, Draco?" called one of the older Hufflepuffs from near the back of the room.
"A monster was let loose," Draco said, suddenly feeling strangely detached from his body, hearing the words coming out of his mouth without really commanding himself to say them, "and the school was almost closed after... a girl, a Muggle-born... she died."
For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs Norris. Filch kept it fresh in everyone's minds by pacing the spot where she had been attacked, as though the attacker might come back. He'd been seen scrubbing the message on the wall with Mrs Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover, but to no effect; the words still gleamed as brightly as ever on the stone. When Filch wasn't guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like "breathing loudly" and "looking happy."
Draco had sent a letter to his father before going to bed on Halloween night, asking for more details about the last time the Chamber had been opened, though he'd not received any reply. It had been passed around the school quickly enough that Draco knew more than the other students about the Chamber, and some had taken to following him around, asking if he knew who the Heir of Slytherin could be. Draco, in turn, began to hide in the more obscure sections of the library.
He was sitting in the Magical Forestry section, trying to finish his four feet on "The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards" for History of Magic the following day when a soft, slightly off-key humming sounded, signalling the presence of another student. Draco tensed, preparing to shuffle behind another bookcase, before relaxing as Luna came into sight.
"Oh, hello, Draco," she said, cocking her head to the side and giving him a small smile. "Are you friends with Neville because you're interested in plants, too, then?" Draco blinked in surprise, wondering if he was ever going to become accustomed to Luna's odd fashion of beginning conversations, and then shook his head.
"No, I'm simply trying to get away from everyone. They've somehow gotten it into their heads that I know who the Heir of Slytherin is," huffed Draco, and Luna nodded sagely.
"I'm sure they'll stop asking you soon," she said rather decisively. "Most people think that Harry Potter is the Heir of Slytherin, and that he defeated Voldemort when he was a baby because he's the true Heir and Voldemort wasn't. Are you alright, Draco?" He was suddenly aware that he had become very red, and was close to sputtering. Draco cleared his throat several times before replying.
"Don't say his name, Luna. It's... well, it just isn't done. And Potter... I have no idea how he survived the Killing Curse, but that's why he's so miraculous, isn't he? But he couldn't be the Heir of Slytherin. He's not even a Pureblood!"
"No, I don't think he's related to Salazar at all, either," agreed Luna, beginning to rock back and forth absently. "But his life is rather exciting, I've heard, so it makes sense that people might think that. Do you know who the Heir of Slytherin is?"
"No," answered Draco rather curtly, but Luna wasn't offended. She gave him a wan smile, and then twirled around once.
"Oh!" she said, coming to an abrupt halt in her pirouette. "Your friend Pansy told me that I shouldn't ever speak to you again. Should I listen to her?"
"I... is that all she said?"
"Yes. She seemed angry with me, though I couldn't figure out why. Maybe the jasper-willow creepers got into her brain when she went through the entrance to Platform 9 and ¾." Draco sighed, biting the inside of his cheek. "Why would she say that, otherwise?"
"She and I are supposed to be married," said Draco, and suddenly Luna broke out into a wide grin.
"That's marvellous! I love weddings. When is yours going to be?"
"It won't be at all if I don't do something," sighed Draco. "She's angry with me, and I don't know why, but if I don't figure it out and fix it then she's going to marry Blaise Zabini instead of me."
"Oh, well, that's not very good, is it?" said Luna. "But I'm a girl!"
"Er, yes, you are," said Draco warily, wondering where Luna meant to go with this train of thought.
"That means that I'm supposed to be able to talk to other girls, isn't it? So I can help you fix your engagement!" she declared happily, and Draco slowly broke out into a reluctant smile.
"That's better than all of the ideas I've had so far," he admitted, and Luna grinned back at him.
"Then Operation: Dransy is in effect!"
Draco felt far better after Luna's decision to help him win back Pansy—although he had refused to call it Operation: Dransy, with that utterly ridiculous combination of their two first names—and he practically had a spring in his step by the end of the following week. Things finally seemed to be going his way—Tonks had finally written to say that she and Kingsley were doing well, and had caught an entire ring of smugglers; the Hufflepuff Quidditch team had won its first four consecutive games; Lockhart was still rubbish, but he had finally heard about the Gryffindors having to endure live pixies running amok in class, and was thankful that all Lockhart had taken to doing was reading passages from his books and reenacting the most exciting portions. Draco was also lucky enough not to have been chosen to help Lockhart in these reenactments.
Working with Neville in Herbology was almost soothing by that time, becoming second nature to the two of them. They made pleasant small-talk as they worked—and another thing Draco had to be grateful for was that they were no longer working with the Mandrakes, Professor Sprout having deemed it too dangerous for the younger students now that the plants were more fully grown. Instead, the second-years were working on tending to the dystalia plants, which were also necessary to the potion that Professor Snape would eventually brew to revive Mrs Norris. These plants were much safer, although their vine-like branches often developed an attitude if they were displeased with their caretakers, sometimes slapping the students. Because Neville was so excellent with the plants—even going to far as too coo softly at them, as if they were very small children and he was the very proud father—Draco got to snicker at the other pairs as they were harassed by their charges.
His snickering stopped abruptly when he noticed the Golden Trio looking at him from across the Greenhouse quite thoughtfully, frowning and whispering to each other, eyes always returning to him. Draco resolutely glared at them, and then looked anywhere else.
Whatever they wanted from him, he was not going to get involved this time.
The gardens at Malfoy Manor were widely acknowledged as some of the most beautiful, and this meant that the annual garden party—held in the late fall, and made possible by the Manor's extensive weather charms—was the talk of Wizarding high society for weeks before and after the event. As it was, those who were rich and those who were purest of blood made their way through the intricate hedge mazes and garden paths of the gardens, talking and laughing and drinking.
Most of the attendees were parents with children at Hogwarts, and so, quite naturally, the topic of "that awful attack on Halloween" and "those rumours about the Heir" came up many times, often with a laugh.
"If only it were true," sighed Mrs Goyle. "My Gregory having to go to school with those vile Mudbloods has always weighed heavily upon me."
"I did think about sending Draco to Durmstrang because of it," agreed Lucius Malfoy, "but Narcissa simply couldn't bear the idea of Draco going so far from home."
"But this attack," said Narcissa, "makes me wonder if it truly would have been safer sending him to Durmstrang. Just think of it—they say the cat was petrified, of all things, and that is very dark magic!" A deep, bawdy laugh from Mrs Goyle was met by the strangely tight, secretive smile of Lucius. He raised an eyebrow at his wife as he replied.
"Draco is of pure blood, Narcissa, so what has he to fear from the Heir of Slytherin?" said Lucius. "A reopening of the Chamber could only help our son."
Conversation continued, and unbeknownst to the Master and Mistress of the Malfoy Estate, behind the hedge, Dobby had heard every word.
