The Hardships of Being Draco Malfoy
Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters originally penned by J K Rawlings, don't even own the computer this is being typed on. But a girl can wish can't she?
Pairings: Not yet but will be Draco/Potter eventually
Warnings: Whiny Draco ahead, not to mention some probable OOC-ness to be had by all. But what can I say, first time Harry Potter writer.
Authors Note: Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, unfortunately you probably wouldn't believe the stuff I had to go through just to get it written, Thankfully the third draft made it to the posting stage, and is as you see now. As always thanks to all for reading! Also, there are two lines taken directly from the first book, and combined together. Just want to see if anyone can spot it. Good luck hunting!
Crazy (in my head) - Sarcastic? Me? Ok, I can accept that. Thank you, for the review, and I hate to say this but the O.W.L.s never really entered my head, I had completely spaced them off. But it is still early in the story, I think, and I can read up on them, and fit that in there somehow.
The Lady Wolfshead - Slacking? I think not, no more then I have been at least. Damn life for throwing such distractions our way! Truthfully I was sure that I was going to have to defend the way I wrote Ron to people, on account that we aren't seeing things from the HP perspective, but so far so good! And I agree all five seconds of Potter's and Draco's interaction was interesting. At the rate I am going maybe soon I will be able to devote an entire Part to the two of them. At least that is what I am working towards. But not yet. Dammit.
Louisa - Thank you! Hope that you enjoy this part!
Part 8
Draco Malfoy was a wreck.
It was the day of Halloween, and things were not going well at all, although he did realize things could be going worse. Ever since what Draco had come to regard as 'The Weasley Incident' happened, and also what happened after, Draco had begun to find things rapidly spiraling away from him, not that he had a handle on things since the start. He now, upon reflection, realized that he should have gone straight to the infirmary after Ron had beat him up. Sure Madam Pomfrey, would have asked questions, and of course there was the whole thing he had against visiting the infirmary before Potter had even visited it. He wasn't sure where it had come from, but somewhere over the past few years Draco had decided upon a rule that out of the two of them, he wouldn't be the first one to go to see Madam Pomfrey per year.
So instead he had gone to see his head of house Professor Snape, who was at rest in his private quarters. Draco had figured it would be the best solution, while there he could rat on Weasley to someone he trusted, bitch about what Pansy had done, and get a potion for the pains he was experiencing. But unfortunately Snape had been, shall we say, less then helpful. He had indeed allowed Draco to vent about Weasley and Pansy and had even given him a minor healing potion to take away the appearance of the bruises blossoming over Draco's pale body, but it unfortunately left the tenderness, aches and pain to heal naturally. Throughout it all the professor's expression had not flickered from its normal display of mild annoyance.
Draco had just finished his tale of woe concerning his run in with Weasley, and was about to launch into a brief synopsis of what was going on with his dorm mates, when Snape held up a hand and stopped him.
"While I am sympathetic to your plight Mister Malfoy," the potion's professor began in his usual condescending monotone. "You must realize in your shunning of Slytherin House, you have shunned all possibility of receiving any help from me. Also I most assuredly will not listen to anymore of your inane ramblings"
Draco sputtered for a moment, in shock over what had been said. Snape, unfairly biased in favor of his own house, Snape, was not going to help Draco. He had just handed the potions master a bit of information on Ron Weasley that could get the boy, at the very least, in detentions for the next month, and the information was apparently not going to be used.
"Surly you were prepared for this Mister Malfoy, when you told of your plan to the rest of your year mates, that to make it look convincing, you would have to be despised by the entirety of Slytherin house." Draco could only stare in shock as Snape guided him to the door. "Mister Zabini informed me of the plan you had imparted to him on the platform, and while I wish you luck, you are completely on your own. I have helped you as much if not more then I should have. Goodbye Mister Malfoy." With that Draco was shoved unceremoniously out the door, which was firmly closed after him.
Draco leaned heavily on the door for a few moments despondently pushing his hair out of his face as the realization sunk in that he was truly alone this year. It had never occurred to him that Snape would no longer be on his side, even when he had been replaced as teachers pet in potions class. He had always imagined his favorite professor would be there for him, now he knew differently, and Draco was scared. He had nothing to fall back on in case things in the Slytherin dorms got out of hand. He couldn't go to any of the other teachers, none of them truly cared about anyone in his house. Dumbledore might have been an option if Draco was really switching sides, but he didn't want to, and even if he was desperate he didn't think he could bring himself to talk to that muggle-loving old fool.
He pushed away from his head of house's door and walked to the Slytherin commons, careful to keep to the shadows as much as possible until he was in his dorm. Thankfully the room was empty, his roommates apparently still entertaining themselves with the rest of the house.
He walked over to his trunk intent on changing into his nightclothes and getting to bed, but found that his clothing was missing from it. Instead there was a polite note saying that the rest of his year mates had decided that his clothing was in need of cleaning and could be found in the boys lavatory. Draco groaned tiredly he was to exhausted to deal with this, but he also knew that it was something that the sooner he did, the better it would be.
However first he needed to rest for a moment and so thinking he dropped down onto his bed, wincing as his head struck something hard and solid. Since his dorm mates had begun playing their tricks, Draco had never just done something without his mind fully noticing everything around him, and with few exceptions like loosing his wand earlier, and washing his hair with blood this ability had served him well. Looking down at his pillow as he sat up he could see nothing that would have hurt him, and logically it couldn't have been something under the pillow, as his head met the object before it met the pillow. He ran his hand across the surface, skimming along the white cotton casing, until his hand ran into something that wasn't there. Carefully he ran his hand around the unseen object and found it to be a rectangular box. He prodded it gently seeing if it was attached to anything before slowly picking it up. He figured if the thing was going to hurt him, there was nothing he could do about it, being as he no longer had his wand.
Draco briefly considered what he was going to do about getting his wand back, Pansy could always deny having it, and he had no proof as to her actually taking it. He wondered if lost wands were a planned for occurrence in Hogwarts and how they might go about locating it. As he thought Draco traced the outside of the box absently, it rather felt like it was made of some sort of cloth, or rather that it was covered in some sort of cloth. Draco smirked as he came to the realization that it wasn't and invisible object, rather it was a box covered in a bit of invisibility cloth.
Technically it was the same stuff invisibility cloaks were made from, only it wasn't as hard to find, much smaller, slightly less expensive, and infinitely less useful. Draco had heard of people trying to make a cloak out of collected bits of cloth, but for some odd reason sewing the bits together had the same effect as looking at a broken or warped mirror, and while the contents under the cloak was not seen, it was painfully obvious that something weird was in the area. So while the cloths were of no real use for hiding a human, they could still unerringly hide a smaller object depending on the size of the cloth of course.
Draco finally found an opening in the cloth and gently pried the stuff from the box, some genius had used spell-o-tape to hold it on. Then when the box was free, and in a move that had the look of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, he set the box down and carefully folded the cloth up before putting it in the pocket of his robe. Having finished with that he picked up the box and studied it, there was nothing special about it, it was approximately 15 cm long by 4 cm tall and 4 cm wide. Made of what looked to be oak with a very cheep finish on it, and no carvings, or designs on the outside. there was however a keyhole Draco glanced around the bed, wondering if maybe the key had fallen out when he unwrapped the box. Finding nothing he went back to examining the oaken box. He shook the box gently and heard the unmistakable sound of something metallic rattling around, maybe it was the key to the box that was inside.
Draco opened it, and found not only the key, but also inside was his wand and a note. He removed all three objects and pocketed his wand. The note had been folded up as much as possible, so it took a moment before he could really look at it, and even longer before he could process what it said.
Written in narrow, loopy writing he had never seen before were the following words:
Just in Case
Maybe someone was looking out for him, but if that were the case who? Pansy had taken the wand, but it wasn't her handwriting. In fact he sincerely doubted that anyone in Slytherin had given him these, for clearly he wasn't meant to give the box, or the cloth back. But who? In fact why would anyone try and help him in any way? It completely baffled him.
Draco retrieved his clothing from the boy's lavatory later that night, after he was sure that the rest of the house had gone to bed. He was thankful that there wasn't much of anything in his stomach, because unfortunately when they said in the lavatory they really meant in the toilets. The toilets that were still being used, despite the fact that they really couldn't be flushed. Needless to say he was very glad that he remembered a cleansing charm from back in fifth grade. Other wise he would have been unable to get them back into his trunk, let alone out of the toilets. As it was his stomach was revolting at every step of the process.
Draco's feelings of anger changed to a quiet type of acceptance, as he realized that there was next to nothing he could do, save for ignoring the whole of his house and trying to not let it get to him. He had written to his mother giving a horrendous version of events, but only got in reply how proud Narcissa was of her boy and if he could just continue on for a bit longer, then everything should go back to normal, and that she would inform him of when that would be. She also wrote as a post script that she would be away for the next few months and that unfortunately there was no where he could go for Christmas, so he was just going to have to stay at school.
Draco was also becoming slightly paranoid. He spent hours in the library, often times missing dinner so that he could research different types of protective wards, and locking charms that were resistant to the Alohomora spell. Then he would practice them in an abandoned classroom that he had found on a walk. By second week of October his bed and trunk were some of the better-protected places in the Slytherin dungeons.
He also found it next to impossible to eat anywhere around his housemates, and there for only went to get food early in the morning, before any self respecting Slytherin would be seen outside their pajamas. Because of his stomach he still only had the one or two pieces of toast, but he would also steal a few apples or oranges to eat later in the day.
Draco knew that he really couldn't afford to lose that much more weight, as it was his clothing was hanging dangerously off of his thin frame. The only thing was, that he couldn't figure out how to get more food, without being in danger of having to face his housemates. He could have picked up something in Hogsmead, but unbeknownst to him, his mother had canceled his permission to go there. Technically he could take more things with him from breakfast, but he so hated crumbly food, he didn't want to dirty his robes from things in his pockets, and only took what could be easily concealed in his robes.
Strangely enough around mid October he came down to breakfast as per normal, and sat down to eat his toast when a snowy owl flew in and settled in front of Draco, a note for him in it's beak. He took the note and watched as the bird ruffled it's feathers a bit and looked at him expectantly. He picked two saucers off the table and put some water in one and a few bits of bacon in the other before placing them in front of the bird. "Sorry I don't have anything else to give you," he said watching the bird carefully, as it drank some of the water and pecked at the bacon half heartedly, before flying up and out of the windows.
The handwriting was again not one that he knew, it was a narrow messy sort of scrawl, and the note itself was fairly short. It said:
It is not good for you to be eating so little.
You need to keep your strength up.
The rest was directions on how to get to and enter the kitchens. As with the last strange note he had gotten, this one was unsigned, and really baffling. But that night Draco found himself following the directions to the Fruit portrait and though he felt like a complete prat doing it, he tickled the pear. The doorway was revealed and Draco almost stumbled over his own feet in his haste to get to the wonderful smells that greeted him.
Within moments he was surrounded by house elves asking what they could do for him, and he managed to get out that he would like something to eat. After getting his food he was directed to a table near the fire, so he could sit and eat. He watched the elves running around franticly as he ate, it seemed there was always something that had to be done that very minute. there were however two elves not joining in. One was sitting by the fire with a bottle of butter beer clenched in it's little hands, hiccupping dejectedly every few minutes, a quite mournful look on its face as it stared into the flames. The other seemed to be shifting nervously under what appeared to be hundreds of badly knitted, there were no other words for them, things, and was looking straight at Draco.
He managed a half smile for the frightened little house elf, before looking back down at his plate. Every time Draco finished something on his plate an elf would stop what it was doing to come over and offer something else for him to eat, or drink. Throughout the entire time he was in the kitchen he felt the oddly dressed elf's eyes upon him, and it was with great relief that he finally left, to go to his dorm room to sleep. Sadly enough the strange quirks of the elves were still preferable to spending time around his housemates.
Then there were the problems of his classes. Draco never volunteered information in class, but his homework was always 'practically perfect in every way.' He really wasn't surprised to find that his teachers didn't seem to notice him anymore, rarely ever calling on him or singling him out for any sort of reason. The only exception was Snape, who seemed to be treating him as if he was in the same category as the Gryffindors. But Draco supposed it could have been worse, he could have to put up with more then just the Mud-blood and Scar-head in his class, thank god Weasley had not been intelligent enough to get a good grade on his Potion's O.W.L.S. otherwise he might have to put up with him also. He still wasn't sure how Potter had managed it.
But at least he only had one more day until the weekend, and fortunately tonight everyone was going to be at the Halloween feast so he would have the entire library to himself. Draco was practically in a good mood, as far as they went with Draco, that is, as he entered into potions class. All of his Slytherin year mates were already seated, as were the few foolish gluttons for punishments that hailed from other houses. Draco looked around the only open seats were right next to Potter, or at a table all by himself. 'Oh big decision there,' he thought as he dropped into a seat at the empty table.
No more then ten seconds later the door flew open and in swept Professor Snape, who was already halfway into his first explanation as to what they were doing today. The vast majority of the class could never seem to understand Snape when he was doing his Sweeping to the front of the room speeches, but Draco had spent many a year practicing and learning slight mannerisms and speech patterns, and had gotten very good at deciphering what the teacher was actually saying. Which is why he was the only one in the class opening his book to page 492 and glancing over the second potion listed on the page, the Converto-Lingua potion which was supposed to make the listener hear any language spoken in their native tongue.
"Now then class," Snape sneered at everyone but the Slytherins. "Today we are doing a very difficult potion that is going to require the efforts of two people working on it." He watched as his students started to rise in a sort of fruit basket upset, before he called their attention back to him. "I have decided to save time, you will be working with whomever is sitting next to you. If no one is sitting next to you, then you will move over to sit next to the only other someone who is alone, this means you Mister Potter. Get your things and move over."
The entire class turned to watch as Potter stood and walked over to sit next to Draco. "I'm glad you all find our resident celebrity to be fascinating, but to properly brew this potion you need to listen to me very carefully. You will come up and gather the ingredients that you will require for this, and brew the base of the potion. I have no doubt even Mister Longbottom, were he still in this class, would have no problem brewing it. After letting is simmer over a medium flame for three minutes you will add the dried Golden Eardrop's petals, at a rate of one per two clockwise stirs. One stir should be timed at one second for a complete rotation. Immediately after adding every third petal you should add one Cimicifuga leaf and quickly begin to stir counter clockwise for ten strokes, at the rate of one stroke per two seconds. Then you will go back to adding the Golden Eardrops petals. After the required amount of both ingredients have been added you will need to carefully add a quartz crystal to the brew and let it settle to the bottom of the cauldron before adding the final ingredient of finely chopped Fagopyrum make sure that the roots, stem and leaves of this are all added at separate times."
The entire class looked in horror at their teacher, he couldn't be serious. "Also your ingredients should be based in proportion to the weight of your Quartz stone, you will find a formula in your books for figuring out the needed volume of the base, the amounts of petals and leaves, and of course how many Fagopyrum plants you will need. One person should make the potion base while the other figures out the amounts and weights needed. After both are done, you can use the other cauldron at the table to hold the excess base, most of you will be needing it. If you should mess up on the first attempt, make sure that you have kept the left over base on a low flame, and stir it once every five minutes, otherwise you will have to start all over from the beginning."
Snape smiled in an almost happy looking manner. "Now all that remains to be said is don't kill yourselves. I will be making rounds periodically to make sure you aren't doing something too lethal. You have until the end of the class period to make this. Begin"
Potter stood and went to get all of the needed ingredients while Draco got everything set up back at the table. While Draco calculated the necessary ingredients Potter made the potion base. Amazingly enough the two boys worked well together, and very few words were actually said. Out of the entire class they were the only ones who weren't working on their second batch of Base. In fact they were the only ones who completed the potion at all during the class.
Draco had just finished bottling up two vials of the potion, when a brightly colored pink ball, about the size of a Knut, few from the front of the class and landed with a plop into the slightly bubbling cauldron. Draco looked at the cauldron stupidly for a moment as the potion changed from the brilliant blood red it had been to an iridescent blue, and father to an opaque gray, before Potter noticed what was happening and yanked Draco down with him to get under the table. A few moments later the cauldron exploded fortunately it didn't have much of a radius, but what it lacked there it made up for in power.
The cauldron was flattened completely, its sides split open so that it could lay perfectly flat. Large clumps of gray ooze splattered down to the table and floor from where it clung precariously to the ceiling. The explosion only had a range of about fourteen centimeters on either side of the table and up so amazingly enough no one had gotten hurt, and Draco still clutched the vials of completed potion in his hands. Still Snape did not look pleased when he crouched down and glared at the two boys still hiding under the table. "I realize that you may not know this, seeing as you are both still cowering under your table," he began in an almost calm voice. "But there is a hole in my ceiling right now as big as a bludger, thanks to your carelessness. Do you know what this means?"
Snape paused looking from one shocked boy to the other. "This means that both of you have detention, tonight, with Filch. Report to him at six o'clock sharp. Class dismissed."
Draco scowled as he carefully crawled out from under the table, making sure to avoid the goop, and picked up his books from the floor before standing. Thankfully he and Potter had moved everything not essential to the making of the potion to the floor. And tonight was to have been the night when he compared the differences between a protection spell for something living and something inanimate. Oh well he guessed he could do that tomorrow night. He dropped off the vials he had made at Snape's desk before heading off to at least find the books he would need for his research.
Stupid detentions.