Draco gets bullied quite a lot in this chapter… don't kill me! Don't want to die (cowers behind TV)!
"Could you PLEASE not follow me around?" Draco said through gritted teeth. Aleron grinned charmingly at a passing girl, who flushed, smiled weakly back and hurried off.
"Why not dad? C'mon, be more hospitable to your son" Aleron said, putting his elbow onto Draco's head and leaning onto the shorter boy.
"And don't DO that!" Draco snapped.
"Why not?"
"It's insulting my height"
"But you're so short!" Aleron laughed. Draco scowled. Aleron sighed.
"Man, you're no fun" he sulked, crossing his arms.
"Good! I like being that way!" Draco retorted. Aleron shook his head and mimed holding a pencil and notepad.
"Short, mean AND nuts" he said. He tutted. "Doesn't look too good. We'll have to send you to hospital soon"
"PLEASE can I curse him?" Draco begged a grinning Fred, who was standing nearby.
"You know the answer to THAT one"
"Just for ten minutes!"
"No"
"Five!"
"No"
"Three!"
"No"
"ONE!"
"No!"
Draco scowled again. "That's being downright unreasonable"
"So says the Slytherin who wouldn't let his own son have some of his ice-cream"
"Yeah! And you had ONE WHOLE BOWL!" Aleron whined.
"Do you have any idea how difficult it IS to get ice-cream here? I had to get Crabbe to get it for me. And it took me AGES to get him to understand my SIMPLE directions!" Draco mimicked the bigger, duller boy "Huh? What? I don't understand Draco! What door?" Draco threw his hands up in the air. "Took me almost half an HOUR!"
"You could have gone yourself you know" Fred commented.
"What? To SNAPE'S room?"
"I meant the kitchen"
"Snape keeps ice-cream?" Aleron asked.
"Cartons of the stuff"
"How does he stay so THIN?"
"How would I know?" Draco retorted.
"Better cut down on the sugar Draco otherwise you'll end up as fat as Goyle" Fred warned jokingly. Draco snorted.
"Right. Chances of THAT happening is one out of a THOUSAND"
The past two weeks had not been too good for the Slytherin. Aleron was charming, friendly, good-looking and, Draco hated to admit, a strong rival for Draco. While Draco was shorter and slimmer Aleron was tall and more muscular. Not saying that Draco was weak, he just didn't seem to be capable of growing very big. Obviously those genes had come from Aleron's mother, whoever she was. Because of his fun-loving nature (again, he must have gotten that from his mother) and charm (courtesy of his father) he became instantly popular with the guys and girls (the girls thought he was 'adorable'). Plus Draco had endured so many 'like father unlike son' wisecracks he swore he would personally strangle the next person who even said the first WORD of the joke. What irritated Draco the most was the fact that Harry, Ron, Fred and George had liked Aleron and he had liked them back. Now they were firm friends. AND Aleron insisted on 'hanging around' with his father, meaning that whatever Draco was doing, at any time, THEY could 'pop' up. Draco remembered the time when he had lain down onto his bed to rest and they had suddenly shot out from under it and yelled 'surprise!' He also remembered with burning cheeks the VERY loud VERY girlish scream he had let out. Curse Aleron for being mischievous enough to rival even the Marauders.
"He's got that faraway look again" Fred grinned.
"Quick, grab him before he floats away!" Aleron shouted, grabbing one of Draco's arms tightly. Draco gasped in pain.
"What are you DOING?" he yelled, yanking his arm away. Aleron stared at Draco's arm in surprise. The spot he had grabbed was turning a nice blue-black.
"Cripes you bruise easily"
Draco pulled his sleeve down quickly. "Wish YOU did" he snarled.
"Now, now Draco, watch your temper. If your blood pressure goes any higher you'll pop a vein" Fred joked.
"I… you… ARGHHHH!" Draco shouted in anger and stormed away. Fred stared at the disappearing Malfoy.
"You know, in all my years in Hogwarts, I have never seen Draco STOMP," he said to Aleron. The blonde Gryffindor looked at his dad and giggled.
"Yeah, like a deranged rhino. Such a delicate kid shouldn't stomp. Might break his delicate widdle foot bones," he said. Aleron and Fred exchanged looks. Then burst into helpless laughter.
"Malfoy?" Harry called, poking his head into Draco's room. Draco's heart did a jump in shock and, trying to hide, plonked his head into his pillow.
"What do you want Potter?" he snarled, trying to muster his dignity and try to straighten his shaking voice. Harry walked in then stopped at the look of Draco.
"Draco… why do you have your head stuffed into that pillow?" he asked, confused.
"None of your business. Get out"
"Well Dumbledore sent me to find you… he thinks he's found a way to send Al back"
Draco's head shot up. "What? Really? This isn't another one of your jokes, right?" he asked hopefully. Harry stared.
"Draco, why are your eyes red?"
"Shut up, answer my question"
"Were you crying?" Harry asked gently.
"No! Of course I wasn-"
"It's okay to cry you know. I cry sometimes. But one hug from my Barney doll makes me allll better"
It was Draco's turn to stare at Harry. "Barney… the dinosaur?" he asked in an odd voice.
"Yeah, hey, how did you know? I thought you hated Muggle stuff"
"You have a BARNEY THE DINOSAUR doll?" Draco asked incredulously.
"Uh… yeah… how do YOU know about Barney the Dinosaur?"
Draco remembered back when he was a small child, when Lucius had taken Draco with him on a business trip in the Muggle world. There Draco had strayed into a Muggle toy shop. 'Toys 'R Us' it was called, if Draco could remember correctly. He remembered seeing shelves and shelves of the purple dinosaur toys, and one really big Barney the Dinosaur toy, mouth open in a friendly smile, one hand waving. He looked around. It seemed that other kids liked the dinosaur, by the fact that they kept smiling and pointing at it. He had looked up at the gigantic purple doll. From his point of view, the dinosaur's grin looked quite evil, almost as if it was cackling. And those terrifying yellow claws… All he could remember from then on was a kid running, the kid knocking into the doll, the doll falling over, Draco's head finding its way into the dinosaur's mouth… and him wailing about how the 'big ugly scary dinosaur' tried to decapitate him for weeks after. In fact, that was pretty much the reason why he had hated Muggle creations.
"I saw it once. In a Muggle shop" Draco said evasively.
"You know, I loved Barney the Dinosaur since I was a really small kid. I remember this once in a Toys 'R Us shop… that's a Muggle toyshop… Dudley was bullying me and I ran to this giant Barney doll screaming for it to protect me…" Harry's voice went distant as he remembered a moment of his life "All I remember next was me accidentally slipping and crashing into the dinosaur… then I blacked out…" he chuckled. "I remember when I woke up people were muttering something about how a blonde kid was shrieking and kicking at the Barney doll, calling it a 'bad dinosaur' for trying to chomp off his head"
"The kid was YOU?" Draco yelled.
"Yeah, were you there?"
"You IDIOT!" Draco bellowed "Do you have any IDEA how EMBARRASSING that was?"
"Oh, the blonde kid was you?" Harry asked, amused. Draco was suddenly aware of the fact that he had told Harry too much.
"Don't laugh, it's not funny!" he said. Harry grinned.
"What makes you think I'd laugh at your terrible predicament? I'm not MEAN Malfoy," he said.
"Good. Let's go" Draco said and walked out of the room. As soon as he was only one foot away from the door he heard Harry crack up into loud helpless laughter.
"AHAHAHA! BARNEY, EATING UP HIS HEAD! AHAHAHAHAAAAA!"
Draco let out a low growl of irritation and embarrassment. He turned around and slammed the door loudly, leaving Harry to roll around on the floor, tears of laughter rolling down his face.
"Okay, okay HAHA Malfoy, I'll HA stop AHAHA laughing no-" Harry burst into laughter again. Draco stared at the door handle. Then he coolly took out his wand.
"Cataracta" he said calmly, pointing the wand at the door. Immediately chains flew out and wrapped themselves around the door.
"Hey!" yelled an alarmed Harry. Draco heard (with a sly grin on his face) Harry yell, "Alohomora! Alohomora! Come on you stupid door, OPEN!" then a few thuds, no doubt Harry either throwing stuff or himself at the door in a virtually futile attempt to open it.
"Come on Malfoy! Open the door!" the Gryffindor hollered.
What's that Potter? I can't hear you!" Draco shouted back, smirking.
"Draco! OPEN THE DOOR!"
"When you wish upon a starrrrr…" Draco sang loudly, and strolled casually to Dumbledore's office, feeling quite pleased with himself.
"What took you so long?" Hermione asked.
"Hey… where's Harry?" Ron asked. "Didn't he go off to fetch you?"
Draco shrugged. "He was being annoying. So I knocked him unconscious, dragged him up the stairs to the Astronomy Tower and hurled him into the Great Lake."
"WHAT?" Ron yelled.
"Yep, in the future the merpeople will be telling tales of how Hogwart's Golden Boy Harry Potter was killed by a school of hungry goldfish. The Dark Lord would be so proud" Draco said sarcastically. However, no one seemed to catch it apart from Hermione and Dumbledore, who smiled secretively.
"HUNGRY GOLDFISH?" Ron hollered.
"He's going to drown!" Fred wailed.
"He's probably dead already!" George howled.
"Do goldfish eat people?" Aleron wondered.
"Oh yes, beware the vicious man-eating goldfish" Draco said sardonically.
"MAN-EATING GOLDFISH! AHHHH!" Aleron yelled. Then he stopped. "Do man-eating goldfish live in lakes?" he wondered. Hermione rolled her eyes.
"You have a sick sense of humor Draco," she said. Draco smirked.
"Thank you so much for noticing."
"Where is Harry really?"
"Tied to a very tall metal pike stuck in the ground near the Whomping Willow"
"Draco…" Hermione said warningly.
"Fine, fine, hanging out of my window by his toes"
Hermione turned to Aleron. "Al, did I tell you about this DADA teacher we had? His name was Mad-Eye Moody. And you know, he did this really interesting thing to your dad"
"Really? What?" Aleron asked curiously.
"Well, have you ever imagined your dad as a bouncing little white fe-"
"Potter's upstairs in my room, I locked the doors" Draco said hurriedly. Hermione smiled triumphantly and hurried off to the Slytherin dorms.
"A bouncing little white feh?" Aleron asked in puzzlement.
"No idea, you know how strange girls are oh and by the way what were you going to say to me Professor?" Draco asked the elderly man who was watching the teens with interest and amusement.
"Oh yes… I think I may have found the way to get Mr. Malfoy- Aleron back home"
"Really? How?" Draco asked.
"Well, we didn't have any information on time travel but I did find out how to communicate with people from different times. I managed to talk to the headmaster of you time, Aleron, and she told me how to make a time portal. In your time she is working on making the potion that will enable time travel. We must both use the potion at the same time for it to work"
"Yes? And?" Draco asked eagerly.
"Well you see, it's a bit difficult to make so it may take some time"
"What? Difficult? Why?" Draco asked.
"Because I need a feather of a phoenix in order to make this potion work"
Draco knew how difficult getting a phoenix feather was. He sighed in disappointment. Something nudged his arm consolingly. He looked dejectedly at a fiery reddish-orange bird that was staring back at him kindly. He sighed again. Then something clicked. Fawkes screeched in alarm at the evil grin that suddenly spread across the boy's face.
"Come on! Just one feather!" Draco yelled, shaking his scorched hand. Fawkes screeched from the top of Dumbledore's bookcase.
"Uh… sir? Should we stop him?" Fred asked, kind of scared.
"YAHHHHHHH!" Draco yelled and, scaling the bookshelves at an amazing speed, leapt up to the top of the bookcase, grabbing at a handful of the phoenix's feathers. Fawkes screeched again and flapped furiously away.
"AHA!" Draco shouted in triumph and hollered a Tarzan cry. George turned around and slammed his palms onto Dumbledore's desk.
"Please Professor, do something, this is just scary!" the redhead pleaded. Dumbledore looked at Aleron, Fred and Ron who were staring up at the crowing Slytherin with wide eyes and mouths.
"I agree. Mr. Malfoy!" Albus called. Draco suddenly snapped back. He jumped down the bookcase.
"Here" he said dumping the handful of feathers onto the headmaster's desk.
"Why did you have to get so many feathers Draco? You KNOW the Professor only needed ONE" Ron asked.
"Back-up. Got to get RID of this git as fast as possible"
"Oh yes, I am so feeling the love in this room. Nice to feel wanted" Aleron said sarcastically.
"Okay… I'll call in Severus. We'll start on the potion right away" Dumbledore said. He smiled at the teens. "Run along now… I'll call you in again when it's done"
"Today you'll be working in pairs. Harry, yer with Ron"
"Yes!" the boys cheered. Hagrid looked at his list.
"That leaves… Malfoy with Aleron"
Draco scowled. It always seemed that, with teachers, he was referred to as 'Malfoy' while his son was referred to as Aleron. It was annoying. Aleron bounced over.
"Hey this'll be sizzlin' yeah?" he said excitedly.
"Yeah. Sure"
"Hope we get those Nifflers again"
"Doubt it"
"Aw, why not? They were fun!"
"They trampled Snape because he was wearing a gold amulet"
Aleron giggled. "Yeah, that was fun wasn't it? And how he looked like he was going to strangle Hagrid!" he asked enthusiastically.
"Tell me, how much SUGAR do you take in a day?" Draco asked. Before Aleron had time to figure out whether Draco had insulted him, complimented him or just asked a simple question Hagrid came out with a big box.
"Ohhhh no. NOT Blast Ended Skrewts again" Seamus moaned.
"No" Hagrid said, beaming. "Something better. Come look!"
The class gathered around eagerly as Hagrid opened the box. And almost instantly jumped back.
"SNAKES!" Lavender shrieked.
"Yep. Dumbledore said I should widen my classes, so I decided to bring in some Muggle creatures" the huge gamekeeper said happily. He took out a snake slowly and gently. The creature shot quickly up his arm.
"Playful little creatures" Hagrid said, amused, and pulled the snake back by its tail.
"Do… do they bite?" Parvati asked stepping forward slightly, afraid.
"Bite? Nah"
Everyone visibly sighed in relief and stepped forward to peer into the box.
"However they are VERY poisonous. If they DO bite it can kill you within ten minutes at the least"
Everyone leapt back again. Hagrid looked a bit put out.
"Come on now everyone! They're only poisonous, not dangerous at all!"
"What do I write?" Aleron asked.
"Docile. Quite docile. And relaxed" Draco said. He calmly jerked his shoulder. The snake shot down to his feet. Aleron jumped.
"Slag it Draco! Aren't you scared it'll bite?"
Draco picked the snake up gently and placed it onto his arm where it curled around his forearm. He held his arm in front of Aleron's face. Aleron recoiled.
"Didn't I ever teach you Latin?" Draco asked softly, staring in fascination at the reptile.
"Uh… well I DID have some German lessons… but I quit those… French… I failed the exams… five times… I think you DD try to teach me Latin. But Latin's so OLD! And dead. I didn't bother listening"
"As usual" Draco scoffed. "Well if you had, you would know that Draco means dragon"
"So?"
"And serpent"
"Oh…"
"Here. You hold" Draco said, picking the snake up with one hand pinching its head so it couldn't strike and the other supporting its body. He set the hissing reptile down onto Aleron's head where it proceeded to curl and slide down his face.
"Ahhh-"
"Shh! Don't scream, you'll scare it!"
The snake dropped to Aleron's neck and curled around, almost like a necklace.
"Draco…"
"What?" Draco asked irritably, looking up from his notes of the snake.
"It's curling tighter"
"So?"
"Very soon I won't be able to breathe"
"Really? Hey, then we won't have to waste perfectly good phoenix feathers"
"I'm serious!" Aleron yelled. The snake, startled, wrapped itself tighter around the boy's neck.
"Ah!" Aleron yelped. The snake –now thoroughly convinced that Aleron was threatening it- placed one of its long fangs on the boy's neck.
"What is it NOW?" Draco asked.
"Drac… I think it wants to bite me…" Aleron whispered so the snake wouldn't pick up the vibrations of his throat.
"Good for you snakie. Remind me to give you a treat later"
"Dracoooooo…" Aleron tried to howl while whispering.
"Ho hum, the snake's fangs ARE quite long now aren't they…" Draco said cheerily, writing something down onto the notepad.
"Daaaaadddd… come on, I'm your sonnnnnn" Aleron whined.
"Fine, if you INSIST" Draco sighed, grinning. He moved his hand slowly, closer to the snake then with one quick, fluid motion he grabbed the snake by the head rendering it unable to bite. Then he took the snake's body and pulled slightly. Eventually the snake uncurled from Aleron's neck and settled itself comfortably on Draco's arm. Aleron felt his neck.
"I'M ALIVE!" he hollered gleefully. Having had quite enough of all the yelling and commotion the snake slithered down Draco's back and raced to the Gryffindor's foot. There it stopped and glared at Aleron, who stared back. Then it opened its mouth, revealing its long, dripping fangs. Aleron's eyes widened. Draco grinned and stroked the snake –which had gone back to Draco's arm- gently as Aleron ran away screaming "AHHHHH! KILLER SNAKE ON THE LOOSE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" at the top of his voice.
Everyone likes to joke about how people get scared from watching Barney the Dinosaur. But no one ever gives the reason WHY. Well now you ALL know firstly the reason that Draco HATES Muggle creations and why he's afraid of Barney. Muahaha just drank two cups of coffee and ate a whole bar of chocolate! Sugar level very high! Ahaha!
You can all blame the Tweenies for the idea of me scaring Draco with Barney the Dinosaur. I was watching it yesterday. They two girls were singing about their fingers to the youngest Tweenie (Jake, I think he's called. The orange one anyway). 'First comes the thumb (sticks out thumb) then comes the pointer, lalala (sticks out index fingers and wiggle them around) THEN come the middle fingers (sticks out middle fingers and wave them around…) O__O;;;
The potion gets made in the next chapter! Will that be the end of Aleron? What happens to Draco? Hmmm…