~~~The Slytherin Renaissance~~~
By My Cat Frank
Yeah, if my cat went to Hogwarts, he'd be in Slytherin. ^_~
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters belong to J. K. Rowling and her people. I am using them without permission, sure, but am I making any money off of this? No way! Sheesh, if I needed money, you'd think I'd be doing something productive, wouldn't you? :P Oh yeah, other references will be cited at the end, so as to save the surprise.
Warnings: Eventual slash (H/D), spoilers for GoF, muggle pop cultural references.
Also, please note that postings on this fic will not be so frequent. My goal is to post one chapter per month. Between work and school, I haven't had much time…surely you've all heard that story before. Also, this is un-beta'd….I figure that since the university is paying me to help other people with their writing, my work done don't get no better than this. ^_~ Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! --HUUUUG-- Things should pick up speed beginning right about now, as far as plot devices go….gotta love those plot devices….
Chapter 2: A Skirmish of WitSummary: Leave it to the Ravenclaws to unsettle our heroes and their carefully-constructed realities. Queen fanaticism, clairvoyant hamsters, snozberries, and Draco is officially declared an underdog. More Malicious Play, this time with Voldemort!
After the tragic incidents following the Triwizard Tournament, many of the witches and wizards who knew about Harry Potter's dealings with You-Know-Who wondered just how the poor boy would cope with such a traumatic experience. He was, after all, spirited away to the care of the Dursleys, who could not understand the significance of the events. Nor did anyone expect the extended family to offer him much support or nurturing.
The Dursleys had been warned, however, and officially advised to treat the boy wish some degree of care. For the Dursleys, this translated into a policy of careful avoidance. What with Harry's identity as a potentially dangerous wizard, his escaped-convict godfather, and the threat of God-knows-what-else, it seemed much safer just to leave Harry be--alone and uninterrupted.
Harry really couldn't have asked for better. For the most part, he was left alone to mope about his bedroom and play out the part of the anguished fifteen-year-old boy that he was, and the most frequent interaction with his family came when Aunt Petunia knocked on his bedroom door to let him know that she had brought him some food. He never had to eat with the Dursleys all summer. In fact, were it not for the meals left in the hallway or the occasional chance meeting on the way to the bathroom, they had almost completely forgotten that Harry was still staying with them.
So Harry whiled away his time in private--working on his homework, staring off into space, or amusing himself with the collection of random junk that his relatives had piled into his bedroom. The room had become a sort of dumping-ground for whatever they no longer used or wanted. The most amusing discovery for Harry came when he happened upon a box full of old vinyl albums and a record player that had belonged to Aunt Petunia before she had gotten married.
The music gave him a happy diversion from his thoughts, and he ended up spending most of his waking moments listening to the records—most of which belonged to bands of the seventies and early eighties. Harry became well acquainted with Blondie, ABBA, and Meatloaf, but the band that really spoke to his soul was Queen.
What need did he have for any other kind of music, as long as he could listen to Queen! Harry instantly fell in love with the melodies, the harmonies, the gentle and soothing voice of Freddie Mercury--but most of all, he fell in love with the lyrics. He believed that he could relate to each and every song written by the band; for every mood that Harry felt, surely enough, there was a Queen song that expressed his feelings for him.
Hermione had given him a multi-disk compilation of Queen CDs for his birthday, and told him of a spell that would allow him to play the CDs magically without a CD player. This meant that Harry could continue to listen to his favorite music even at Hogwarts, and had done so, to the bafflement of his classmates. Ron would roll his eyes and share a quiet look with Hermione that expressed their mutual concern over Harry's musical obsession.
"Absolutely nutters," Ron would whisper, shaking his head.
Seamus, Dean, and Neville likewise failed to figure out how to approach this new side of Harry. Harry was still the same old Harry that they were used to, but now he was known to prance about the dorms lip-syncing Queen lyrics and holding a hairbrush to his face like a microphone. There had been no stopping him.
Well, there hadn't, until one morning in September when Harry lost his favorite Queen CD. The last time he had seen it was at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall at breakfast. After he was sure it was no longer in his bag, he had gone back to check the Great Hall--he had even visited the house elves in the kitchen. One knee-crushing hug from Dobby and a plateful of chocolate éclairs later, he was no closer to finding his lost treasure. And, sadly, Harry had stopped listening to the rest of his CDs with such fervent devotion, instead mourning the loss of his favorite. And, incidentally, the rest of the Gryffindor fifth-year boys' dorm secretly cheered the silence.
Oh, it was too rich.
Draco cheerfully headed for his Care of Magical Creatures class, unable to prevent the devious grin from overtaking his face. He had spent the past two weeks "researching" this strange muggle music that Potter had accidentally left in the Great Hall, and now he just knew that he had the perfect resource for taunting the wizarding world's favorite Golden Boy. This was a key to unlocking the mysteries of Potter's soul. Of course, he had also received some small pleasure from knowing that he held in his possession something that Potter undoubtedly cared about. Draco chalked this up to a newfound position of power over his enemy.
When he first began listening to the "CD"—as Zabini had called it—he had to admit that the music was not as bad as it could have been. In fact, the first song on the disc actually had him tapping his foot before he realized it. The melody and harmony were pleasant enough, and the lyrics were about magic—so it almost made up for the fact that it was a muggle band.
But then he reached the second song, which the CD jacket had labeled as a "rhapsody". The beginning was soft and soothing, but then all of a sudden the entire song took a hefty dive off the deep end and Draco had no clue what was going on. His only conclusion was that the band had to be totally psychotic, and subsequent song lyrics supported his hypothesis.
So after some careful study and much jotting down of some of the more peculiar song lyrics, Draco was finally ready to use this against his arch-enemy. After all, if Potter actually enjoyed this bizarre music, then he must be just as mad. And so, he looked forward to a confrontation in class over Potter's odd taste.
It wasn't the most exciting of Care of Magical Creatures classes, as far as the curriculum was concerned. Hagrid had the students studying a unit on clairvoyant hamsters after he had received some backlash from angry parents for presenting the class with man-eating giant octopi in the lake. No one really knew what to do with the hamsters, though. They were just like regular hamsters, only clairvoyant. On that particular day, Hagrid had given each of them a hamster and told them to try to test its psychic abilities by asking it questions telepathically.
Harry had wandered off to a patch of grass by himself and was sitting with a hamster in his lap. He tried to think of an appropriate question to ask a clairvoyant hamster, but his mind was completely blank. What sort of questions were they supposed to ask, anyway? And how would he be able to tell if the hamster had heard—or even understood, for that matter—what he was thinking? It was in this state of uncertainty mixed with boredom and growing disinterest that Harry suddenly felt someone approach him from behind. He then heard a familiar drawling voice inches away from his ear.
"I see a little silhouett-a of a man."
Harry's eyes widened and he turned around in disbelief. Draco was kneeling on the grass extremely close to him, holding a small white hamster and grinning from ear to ear. He raised his eyebrows innocently. "Tell me, Potter. Will you do the Fandango? Because I'm just dying to know."
"Malfoy!" he exclaimed, and scooted backwards far enough to put a respectable distance between the two of them. He lowered his voice so only the other boy could hear, not wishing to disrupt Hagrid's class. "Where did you hear that from?"
Draco held up the furry, white animal in his hand. "When the hamster plants messages inside my head, I listen."
Harry furrowed his eyebrows. "So your hamster has been telling you to listen to Queen?"
"No, they've been telling me that you listen to the queen."
Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder if you're not a queen, Malfoy."
"Moi?" Draco either did not understand or chose not to respond to this last comment. Instead, he pulled out the CD from a breast pocket in his robes, enjoying the shocked look of growing comprehension on the other boy's face. He handed it back to its owner ceremoniously.
"My CD!" Harry exclaimed. His eyes flashed dangerously. "So you STOLE it!"
"You lost it, and I found it," Draco corrected in his trademark drawl. "Really, I found it quite entertaining," he continued. "I had expected that you might have 'gone slightly mad' after the end of last year, but I had no idea that you would completely lose your mind."
"Why? Because I listen to muggle music?" Harry asked, frowning.
"Extremely bad muggle music, Potter. I'd say this music has rotted away your brain. What I want to know is whether you think—" Draco pulled out a small piece of paper from his pocket and quickly checked over it. "—Do you think that you're a banana tree?"
Harry chuckled in spite of himself. "For someone who claims to think it's so awful, you certainly seem to know an awful lot about their lyrics, Malfoy."
Draco shrugged. "The better to taunt you with, Potter. If it means that I can make your life more of a living hell, I'm willing to assault you with a barrage of the words you so fancy." His face once again resumed its triumphant smirk. "Now, could you please explain to me that part where they say that Beelzebub has a devil put aside for them? Don't worry about explaining about 'thunderbolt and lightning/very very frightening me', though, because if I had to see that ugly scar of yours in the mirror every morning I know I'd be afraid of thunderbolts too. Looking at your face right now is enough to put me off my lunch, and that's saying quite a bit about my powers of digestion."
Harry frowned again, crossing his arms over his chest. Although the strangeness of hearing his enemy spout Queen lyrics had been amusing him, Draco's sudden switch back to his more traditional insults reminded him that he was supposed to be annoyed. Still, if the other boy wanted to fight in the arena of Queen lyrics, Harry supposed that he could play along. "So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye, Malfoy? Is that what this is all about?"
"And what? Love you and leave you to die, I suppose? In your dreams, maybe. Then again, that's what your parents did, isn't it? Too bad you didn't have the good sense to die then, and spare us all your tragic life story."
That was the last straw for Harry. He suddenly realized that he did not want to play this game with Malfoy, even if it meant that someone else in the wizarding world was familiar with his favorite band He was tired of Malfoy's way of constantly trying to push his buttons, and this last little outbreak had tipped the scale of four years' worth of torment. With a frustrated growl, he grabbed Draco by the collar and pulled him close enough to tersely vent, "Then what IS it with you, Malfoy?! Ever since first year, you've been hounding me and insulting my parents and my friends, then stealing my stuff just so you can go to great lengths to show off just how much of a total bastard you are. Why can't you just leave me the fuck alone!!??"
Draco looked down at the hand holding him by the collar and the corners of his mouth turned up into a sly, wicked smirk. His plan of getting under Harry's skin had worked beautifully. Now that he had the Golden Boy so worked up, it was time to bring him crashing back down to reality. "Because you stole something very precious to me, Potter."
"I stole something from you?" Harry seethed, still livid. "What on earth have I ever taken from you?"
"My thunder."
Harry certainly was not expecting this answer, and blinked in confusion. His grasp loosened on Draco's collar. "Your thunder?"
"Do you remember that day on the train our first year, Potter? When I offered you my hand in friendship? Do you remember how you snubbed it?"
"I remember you snubbing my friend Ron before I snubbed you, Malfoy."
Draco sneered in contempt. He was terribly good at it, after all. "I was supposed to be the most popular boy at Hogwarts, Potter. With my looks, pedigree, brains, and charisma, I had everything going for me. If you had become my friend, we could have ruled this school. But no, you had to make friends with that Weasley instead of me. And everyone thinks you're so wonderful," he continued bitterly, an icy edge coming over his voice. "And you never lose at Quidditch, and everyone kisses the ground you walk on, just because you're Harry fucking Potter and you have a damned scar on your head." This was not entirely heading in the direction that Draco had intended, but now that he had started there was no turning back. He wanted the other boy to understand just what he had done to him.
"That's not true, Malfoy," Harry muttered, letting go of Draco's collar. He edged away from him in the grass. Both of their hamsters had wandered off toward where the rest of the class was grouped.
"I made a promise to myself," Draco continued. His eyes pierced Harry's and glittered with malice as he slithered across the grass and stopped with his face mere inches away from the Gryffindor's. "You may have turned me down, but you'll never be free from me. I promised myself that I would be a part of your life, even if I have to make it a living hell. No one turns me down and gets away with it. I will always be the thorn in your side, Potter. No matter where you go, or how happy you think you are, I will be there, ready to tear it all down before your eyes." Draco's heart was in his throat. What a feeling of triumph he felt in saying these words to Potter! He could see his enemy tremble under the force of his hatred, and the image enthralled him. He would certainly have to remember this moment for a very long time.
Harry indeed shivered involuntarily from the coldness of Draco's words. He had never imagined that this other person could feel so passionately about something that seemed to be of so little importance. At least, that's how he felt about his own success. Why should Malfoy really care one way or the other about what he did? Harry's fierce gaze never wavered from his eyes, however, and he was so engrossed in facing off against Draco's hostile bitterness that he failed to see Ron, Hermione, Crabbe, and Goyle approaching them. Draco noticed them out of the corner of his eye, and stood up, dusting off his robes.
"Well, then, Potter," he said, his voice resuming its normal sneer of nonchalant superiority. "I think you've had enough taunting for today. Until next time!" he tossed his hand in a casual goodbye gesture and left behind a bewildered Harry Potter just as Ron and Hermione reached them, regrouping with Crabbe and Goyle first. He whispered something to them that the Gryffindors could not hear, and the Slytherin trio burst into gruesome laughter as they looked back at the other three.
"Absolutely nutters," Ron said, shaking his head. "What was that all about, anyway?"
Many years later, Padma Patil would still deny the idea that she could ever have made a lasting impression on a Slytherin on that particular autumn afternoon. She rarely gave any of them much thought, to be honest. It wasn't that she was stuck up or particularly snobbish, but she had her own circle of friends, and she knew how to entertain herself. Mostly, though, she was a quiet girl who preferred to listen to the interesting conversations of other people. Being in Ravenclaw, that was not very hard to come across. Most students in Ravenclaw were very interesting to talk to and many of them were quite brilliant conversationalists. So when the Ravenclaws had Herbology with the Slytherins, she never partnered up with any of her Slytherin classmates if she could help it.
Much in the same way, Professor Sprout avoided being in a bad mood whenever she could help it. Most of the time she showed the world a pleasant, easy-going demeanor, and reserved her dark looks only for the most particularly annoying individuals like Gilderoy Lockhart. Of course, this might partially explain why Draco Malfoy never seemed to get on her good side. Today, unfortunately, she happened to be in one of her bad moods—which were pretty rare, but they never boded well for the class as a whole nonetheless.
"All right, class," she addressed them, hands on her hips, "Everyone needs to pick up a bucket from the wall on the far side of the greenhouse and come back here to these snozberry bushes. You will work three to a bush for the remainder of the class and collect as many snozberries as you can in that time."
"SNOZberries?!" Draco interjected unwisely. "Whoever heard of--"
"DON'T start with me today, Mr. Malfoy," Sprout seethed warningly down at him with thin, beady eyes. Draco shut his mouth. The rest of the class took that as a cue that Professor Sprout was not in the mood to put up with any smarmy attitude, and quietly hurried to collect their buckets and set to work picking snozberries, whatever they were.
Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle grouped around one of the bushes. A small bag of snacks fell out of Goyle's backpack as he set it down on the floor, and Sprout pounced upon them.
"Mr. Goyle, I do not tolerate outside food in my greenhouse," she informed him, and snatched up the snack food before he could stuff it back into his bag. "Five points from Slytherin." Goyle looked hurt and confused. Draco caught his eye and mouthed a word that summed up his opinion of Professor Sprout. Luckily, she failed to notice this exchange.
"I think it's time to break up the Triumvirate today," she announced, and before Draco could open his mouth to protest she had grabbed him by the arm and ushered him over to another bush next to Lisa Turpin, Mandy Brocklehurst, and Padma Patil. She then pushed Padma over to the bush with Crabbe and Goyle. "That should keep you fairly quiet," she decided, and marched back to her office. Draco rolled his eyes.
"Geez, what's gotten into her today, I wonder?" Lisa asked. "I mean, she's usually nicer than this."
Draco chuckled. "She must be overdue for her fix of 'special' herbs." He smirked. "After that and Goyle's junk food, I'm sure she'll be back to her usual slumpy self again." Mandy giggled.
Draco was still riding high on his triumph over Harry Potter earlier that day, and not even Professor Sprout could sour his good mood. It had felt so wonderful to put down Potter like that! At least, that's how Draco remembered it, and Potter had seemed adequately humbled by Draco's declaration of life-long revenge. Well, as far as he was concerned, Potter was just going to have to learn to put up with it, because there was no way that Draco was going to back away from it now. He grinned to himself as he picked snozberries off of his side of the bush, tuning out the murmured conversation between the two Ravenclaw girls.
"Say, Draco?" Mandy Brocklehurst looked over the top of the bush at him, snagging him out of his pleasant fog of Potter-filled thoughts. He snapped his head up and raised an eyebrow, not expecting anyone besides Pansy Parkinson to address him by his first name.
"We heard you got into a fight with Harry Potter this morning in Care of Magical Creatures," Mandy asked, phrasing it more like a statement than an actual question. "Terry Boot said at lunch that he heard it from Justin Finch-Fletchley who heard it from Dean Thomas, who saw Harry Potter grab your robes in class."
Draco's face was a mask of aristocratic virtue. "There was no fight, per se," he informed them, dropping snozberries into his bucket. "Words were exchanged, and since I had the upper hand, Potter couldn't help but take his anger out on my robes." He smirked. "He is a rather abusive git when it comes to clothing, isn't he?" He smoothed out the front of his robes, which were still slightly creased where Harry's fingers had curled around them.
Mandy and Lisa looked at him. "You're an interesting person, you know that?" Lisa said, going back to picking berries.
"Yeah, we've always thought so," Mandy agreed. "You're a fun person to study, and we try to guess why you do some of the things you do. You've sort of been our project for a while now," she told him, then turned her head away as she blushed. Draco stared intently into the snozberry bush, unsure where this conversation was headed and not at all convinced that he wanted to know, either. Mandy Brocklehurst and Lisa Turpin were not exactly in the 'in crowd' at Hogwarts and as they usually kept to themselves most of the time, he had no interest in them. Nor had he had any indication that these girls had been studying him, and the thought was more than just a little alarming.
"Anyway, we think we've figured you out," Lisa continued, "and even though you're unpopular with the rest of the school, we know why you act that way and we want you to know that—"
"I'm unpopular?" Draco asked in disbelief, interrupting her. A snozberry twig snapped in his grasp and fell awkwardly into his bucket.
"Duh," Mandy replied into the snozberry bush. Seeing the undisguised look of shock on Draco's face, she immediately softened her expression. "Oh, don't worry, we still like you. That's what we're trying to say," she explained, as if this changed everything.
"That's right!" Lisa chirped. "And we're here to cheer you on, even when no one else is."
"What do you mean, I'm unpopular?" Draco frowned, fixing his deadly gaze on the two of them.
Meanwhile, at the other bush Crabbe, Goyle, and Padma were collecting berries in deafening silence. Padma sighed.
"This is a stunningly thought-provoking conversation," she commented sarcastically, dropping a small handful of snozberries into her bucket. Crabbe and Goyle looked at her.
"Huh?" Crabbe asked. Padma raised her eyebrow at them.
"What do you two usually talk about? Have you read any good books lately? Have you done anything interesting?"
Goyle snickered. "Malfoy pissed off Potter this morning," he told her.
Padma rolled her eyes. "Good lord! Now there's something you can take credit for! Now tell me about something that you've done."
Crabbe and Goyle turned to each other and blinked. Something they had done that was not connected to Malfoy and his schemes to annoy Potter?
"Um, well…" Crabbe began hesitantly, but trailed off when he had no idea what to say next.
"That's what I thought," Padma answered coolly. "You two don't ever think for yourselves, do you? Oh well, it was worth a try, but never mind now." She sighed in a display of put-upon boredom and resumed her berry-picking. "It's just that it's such a good waste of a class period where you can stand around and talk to people all hour without getting into trouble for it. It's not like you can have conversations in the middle of Potions or Transfiguration, you know. It's too bad that Professor Sprout has to be in such a bad mood today, or else I could be discussing really interesting and intelligent topics with other Ravenclaws right now."
Crabbe and Goyle blinked at each other in uncertainty. After a moment Goyle leaned in to Crabbe and whispered so that only his friend could hear. "You know, I could be wrong on this one, but," he glanced at Padma, who was ignoring them in favor of picking berries, "I kind of get the impression that she thinks we're…well, stupid."
Crabbe's eyes widened and a soft expression of doubt overcame his face. "But what would make her think that?" he whispered back.
Goyle shrugged. "We'd better prove her wrong and think of something dreadfully intelligent to talk about," he decided.
Crabbe nodded. "Right," he agreed, and the two of them proceeded to collect snozberries as they wondered what subject they could discuss that would make them sound particularly smart.
The rest of the class period passed by for all three of them in gloomy and uninterrupted quietude.
While Crabbe and Goyle were busy thinking of clever conversation topics, Draco was busy wishing for silence. He was still struggling to get over the idea that anyone could find him--THE Draco Malfoy, of all people—unpopular.
"It's because you're so mean," Mandy had explained. "Always picking on Harry Potter like that! He's had it rough, you know," she informed him, as if this was something Draco had not been aware of. He snorted. "And Cedric Diggory," she added, "I don't think any of the Hufflepuffs have forgiven you yet for what you said about him last year on the train. Word gets around, you know."
"Exactly," Lisa chimed in. "Most people don't see why you would attack him like that, especially when you were supporting him in the Triwizard Tournament so…well, adamantly." She dropped a few berries in her bucket.
"Though there are some theories going around about that—well, about you supporting Cedric just to piss off Harry," Mandy added, "and of course a lot of people are going to get weirded out by your strange obsession with him, but some of us are not total homophobes and we have a soft spot for gay men." Here Mandy blushed again, lowering her head and returning her attention to the berries she was supposed to be harvesting.
Lisa grinned. "Yeah, even if you're going about it all the wrong way, it's still cute to watch."
Draco, who had been concentrating on ignoring the lecture he was receiving from two girls he barely even knew, suddenly caught on to what they were saying. To say that his face reddened would be an overstatement, because Malfoys never held enough color to turn visibly red. More accurate would be to state that he "pinkened"—in an incredibly bright, vivid pink that was normally reserved for only those special remarks that could seriously upset the otherwise indifferent Malfoys. He had been crouched low to the ground to collect berries from the bottom portion of the bush, but suddenly sprung up to his full height and peered down at Lisa Turpin with his most deadly, seething glare—a glare designed to scare the average person out of his or her mortal coil. Thin pink scratches lined his face from where he had brushed against the snozberry thorns in his sudden movement, and his nostrils twitched so violently that one could almost see invisible trails of smoke billowing out and curling up around his face.
"WHAT…DID…YOU…SAY?????!!!!!!"
"Mr. Malfoy!" Professor sprout called from the other side of her office door. Those standing close enough could see the real trails of smoke drifting from her office, followed by the subtle scent of her "special herbs". "Ten points from Slytherin for your lack of decorum in my classroom. And if I hear any more outbreaks from you, I'll make it fifty!"
Lisa looked up at him, nonplussed. "See? Even Professor Sprout doesn't like you, and she likes everybody," she said calmly.
Draco exhaled sharply and crouched down close to Lisa and Mandy and lowered his voice to a level that Sprout would not be able to hear.
"For your information, I am not gay!!!"
"Mm-hm," Lisa replied absently, examining a snozberry on the branch to check if it was fully ripe.
"And my relationship with Potter is one of hatred. Mutual hatred, only hatred, and that's it! I hate him, and he hates me, got it?"
To his horror, Mandy Brocklehurst actually giggled. "This message has been brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department," she said. Lisa giggled at that, too. "You're like a boy who pulls on the pigtails of the girl he likes," Mandy explained.
Lisa nodded. "Only it's not a girl, but Harry Potter," she added, "and instead of pulling on his pigtails (because he hasn't got any, of course), you, say, dress up like a dementor, for example."
Draco huffed and returned to his own side of the bush in annoyance. "That's not how it is at all," he protested—though quietly, as he did not want to summon Sprout's anger again. He glanced dispiritedly at his bare wrist and cursed his morning's decision that a watch didn't go with the outfit he was wearing. Oh, when oh when would this horrid class period be over?
"Though it's a shame," Mandy digressed, "that Harry can't see what's really going on. And all these times that Draco tries to get the better of him or beat him at quidditch, he always fails!"
"You do know what that means, don't you?" Lisa asked Mandy. "Draco here…is an UNDERDOG!"
"I'd thank you not to refer to me as any kind of dog, if you don't mind," Draco mumbled feebly into the bush, but was ignored. He had given up on making any more bold efforts to contradict them, and they seemed to have disregarded his protests altogether in favor of their own discourse.
"Yes," Mandy agreed, "he's just like Charlie Brown, except different."
The two girls laughed at their little joke, which Draco completely failed to understand. Instead, he rolled his eyes and went back to picking snozberries. He mumbled to himself under his breath, "I am not gay, I'm not a dog, and I'm not any kind of brown Charlie."
"Tell you what," Mandy told him, getting his attention by reaching over and placing her hand on his arm. "The next time Slytherin plays against anybody other than Ravenclaw, we'll cheer you on." She grinned energetically.
"Ooh, yes!" Lisa exclaimed. "We should make a banner, too---just for Draco!"
"Of course, we do have to root for our own team, especially for Cho," Mandy explained.
"Yes of course—poor Cho, she's had a hard time too." Lisa sighed dreamily. "Who needs to pay attention to the actual game when there are all these romantic seeker dramas to follow!"
Mandy giggled. Just then, Professor Sprout reemerged from her office looking considerably more relaxed and carrying a faint herbal smell on her robes. "All right class, it's time to clean up," she informed them, "Pour the berries you have collected into that bin by the back wall, rinse out your buckets and stack them in the corner, and then you may leave.
"Thank God!" Draco voiced under his breath, and a minute later he had cleaned up and met with Crabbe and Goyle outside the greenhouse. The three of them walked solemnly back up to the castle. Finally Draco was the one to break the stiff silence.
"I hate Ravenclaws," he spat. Crabbe and Goyle nodded, mumbling their agreement.
Then Goyle stopped and remembered something. "Umm, Malfoy?" He asked tentatively. "Would you say that Crabbe and I are…umm…stupid?"
End of Chapter 2
MCF: Poor guys! Tee hee! ^_^ I'm really not trying to dumb down Draco, but with his pureblood upbringing you really can't expect him to know who Charlie Brown is, and I'm afraid some of the other comments were lost on him, too. Crabbe and Goyle might begin to seem OOC, but I really don't think they're quite as dumb as most people give them credit for, either. Blaise fans do not be alarmed: he's going to come back in the next chapter, don't you worry!
The Queen lyrics quoted above are from "Bohemian Rhapsody", "I'm Going Slightly Mad", and "Stone Cold Crazy". I really am a Queen fan! It's just that I can't imagine Draco being able to fully appreciate that kind of music. ^_~ the other references were to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the snozberries), Peanuts (Charlie Brown). I hope that was all of them.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter! And now for the Malicious Play…
~~~Harry Potter and the Malicious Play, Part II~~~
Flashing back to the resurrection of Voldemort at the end of Goblet of Fire…
"…And none of this could have happened without the help of young Potter here," Voldemort was explaining to the Death Eaters. Voldemort stood in the center of their circle, next to where Harry was tied to the gravestone.
"Wormtail would have had me use any boy's blood, but just see what I can do now," he continued, and touched Harry's cheek. "See? His mother's protection is in my blood now, and so I can touch him without damaging myself. So now, I can do THIS!"
Voldemort put his hand on Harry's forehead, right over his scar. When he pulled the hand away, Harry was wearing a large sticker on his forehead that read:
Be Nice to Me
^_________^
I Gave Blood Today!
"Right then," the Dark Lord said, untying Harry's ropes with a wave of his hand. "Do try not to lift anything heavy or consume alcohol over the next several hours," he advised him. He turned to where Wormtail was still curled up on the ground, whimpering over the loss of his hand.
"Wormtail! Get this boy some cookies and a cup of orange juice!
You don't have to review this fic, but it certainly would fill my little heart with joy and inspire me to keep writing more if you did!
~~My Cat Frank ^_^