The Amazing Bouncing Ferret
Professor Flitwick handed out the timetables to all the Ravenclaw students at breakfast, and Mizuki set hers down at the table, looking it over quickly. She had History of Magic with the Slytherins, Potions with Hufflepuff, and double Arithmancy. Not bad, she thought. Since she had no idea where the classrooms were, she waited until she spotted some girls in her year and a boy with dark hair and blue eyes that she had only seen in passing last night named Anthony Goldstein. She got up and followed them out of the Great Hall toward the classroom, taking a seat near the window where Anthony sat down next to her.
"Hi, I'm Anthony Goldstein," he introduced as the rest of the Ravenclaws and Slytherins slowly filtered in.
"Pleasure to meet you, Anthony," she said. He already knew who she was, but she felt like she had to introduce herself anyway. "I'm Mizuki Saito."
He grinned at her just as Professor Binns floated in through the blackboard. He glided through the aisles, checked off the attendance list in his hands, and then went back to the front where he began to drone on about Goblin Wars. Mizuki couldn't help but notice a white-blond-haired boy from the corner of her eye, and when she turned her head, she saw Draco taking down notes. Her heart sped up slightly as she watched him for a few moments, and turned her head back to her own parchment, scribbling down as fast as she could. However, she was so sleep-deprived that it didn't take long for her hand to still and her eyes to become glassy. Professor Binn's had a monotonous voice that lulled her—and the other students to sleep easily. Most of the students weren't paying attention anymore, but Anthony was doing his best to take notes. He noticed that Mizuki's eyes were closing, and he nudged her gently in the side.
Mizuki sat up straight and began to take notes again, but it was increasingly difficult. Mizuki kept stopping every now and then, and Anthony would have to continue nudging her to keep her awake. A few times, she had to nudge him too, and by the end of the lesson, they were so thankful that it was over that they had gone into the courtyard for their break, gulping in copious amounts of the cool, rainy air that revived them.
"Could I borrow your notes later?" Mizuki asked him shyly, her cheeks pink. She had never almost fallen asleep in class before, and she was terribly embarrassed about it.
"Of course!" Anthony said brightly. He asked her questions about Mahoutokoro and the Quidditch team, and she found him easy to talk to. He was telling her about a trip he went on during the summer as their break ended, and they headed back into the school and down into the dungeons where they had their first potions lesson with Professor Snape and the Hufflepuffs.
They sat down at the desks as Professor Snape strode in, waving his wand to slam all the windows closed. With another flick of his wrist, writing began to appear on the blackboard, instructing them that they would be reviewing a potion from last semester. Mizuki groaned when she saw what the potion was; it was one that she wasn't that good at either—in fact, she wasn't very good at potions at all. It was an exact art that most people couldn't understand, and it took some people years to become good at it with enough practice. Mizuki couldn't understand why Potions was so difficult for her.
"Don't worry, everyone had trouble with this last year," he informed her. That cheered her up slightly. As everyone got to work, she looked over her textbook to find the ingredients and instructions on how to prepare the potion, paying extra attention to the finer details that might be overlooked. However, by the end of it, her potion was bubbling, pink perfumy fumes emitted from her cauldron as Snape walked by, smirking. With a wave of his wand, her cauldron emptied.
"Zero for you, Saito," he said.
Mizuki sighed, slumping her shoulders slightly. Anthony's potion, on the other hand, looked exactly how the textbook described it.
"I think you stirred it too fast," Anthony told her as he filled up a vial, and put the stopper in it.
He was probably right, but she was so nervous and tired because it was her first day, that it was hard to concentrate. Plus, she was distracted thinking about Draco.
Mizuki was going to head down to the Great Hall for lunch, but she was so tired and had so much homework that she decided to skip it. Instead, she went to the library where she found a table in the corner of the room near a window where she set her books down and took out her homework. She started with the readings, taking down notes as she read, and once she was finished, she made a skeleton outline of the essay. By the time she was finished, it was time for her next class, which was double Arithmancy—one of her electives.
She found an empty seat and sat down, looking around at the other students filing in from all the other houses. Surprisingly, she saw Hermione and Draco enter the classroom, though not together. He scowled when he saw Hermione and went to the farthest corner of the room where he sat down and placed his chin in his hands, a bored expression on his face.
Draco was so tired from only getting a few hours of sleep that he hadn't noticed Saito there. He was focused on the front of the room, his eyelids drooping until they were half-lidded. The students near him that weren't Slytherin watched him warily as he looked disgruntled. He didn't like this class, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. He just wanted to get these stupid classes over with so he could bury himself in homework and forget about life in general. He just wanted to slip away unnoticed, his mind drifting somewhere else to anywhere but here.
His friends were the same as they were every year. He couldn't have any real or meaningful conversations with them. He had to appear shallow and aloof. Pansy was relentless in her attention to him, and it was starting to annoy him—so much so that he was tempted to find somewhere to hide where he didn't have to be surrounded by anyone. He didn't know what was worse, being surrounded by people and feeling alone or being alone and still feeling alone. He sighed.
Hermione saw Mizuki, smiled, and came over to sit with her.
"How was your first day?" Hermione asked excitedly.
"Great. How were your classes?"
"Fantastic. Well, apart from the Blast-Ended Skrewts." Hermione showed Mizuki the edge of her robes which were singed. "We've still got that class and potions with the Slytherins, and oh—" Hermione stopped as Professor Vector came in with handouts. "It looks like we're going to get even more homework," she said with some excitement. Mizuki smiled. She was probably the only person excited about homework.
"Good afternoon, students. Today, I will be randomly pairing you up with your partner for the rest of the term. You will be given a series of documents, and you will have to assign the correct numerical values for them. If you don't finish, you will complete it for homework and submit it for grading no later than Thursday."
The class groaned.
"Now, when I call you and your partner's names, you are to sit together and start translating." Vector began to call out the names, and eventually, she heard her name.
"Miss Saito and Mr. Malfoy." Mizuki could feel the class staring at her as they gasped in surprise. Some of the students were giving her a sympathetic look as she looked up and made eye contact with Draco. Hermione was already sitting with her partner on the other side of the room, and the space next to Mizuki was empty, but so was the space next to Draco's.
The moment he heard Saito's name he froze, too stunned to do anything except look around the classroom until his eyes rested on her face. She looked just as surprised as he did. He felt that little bud of hope inside of him unfurl a little more as they looked at each other. His heart began beating faster and he started to feel warm all over with nervousness. Should he go over there?
—No, don't be stupid. That's not something that you should do. Everyone will think it's weird!
Tension filled the room, so thick that Mizuki felt she could have cut it with a knife as the two stared at each other. Who would move first?
Clearly, Draco wasn't going to move. Mizuki picked up her bag and went to him, the students' eyes on her as she sat down next to him. Vector began handing out the documents that she wanted to be assigned. Mizuki took them and shuffled through them before Draco grabbed them from her, scowling. There must have been at least twenty pages there.
The amount of homework I have is ridiculous! Wait until father—but Draco remembered what his father had said. He expected Draco to do well on the O. , and if not, well, Draco didn't want to think about what would happen if he didn't get the results his father wanted.
"Why don't we each do half, that way it'll go faster?" she suggested. Draco looked at her from the corner of his eye as he leafed through the pages. He gave them all to her.
"Fine," he mumbled. "Take whatever half you want," he huffed.
What in the name of Merlin was wrong with him? She divided the pages, handing him the second half. He took them and began working through them, but he was too distracted by their proximity that he felt like his heart was going to jump out of his chest. He never thought that she would be in one of his classes let alone his partner for the whole term. The very idea was insane, unbelievable, yet here they were.
He played absentmindedly with his quill as he pretended to be reading, but he was really watching her. The way she quickly moved across the page, looking at the whole paragraph before she scribbled down the numerical assignments on her parchment. How she looked up the codes in her book and furrowed her brow when she was confused.
"…What?" she muttered almost inaudibly so that no one else except he could hear. She flipped through the textbook until she found what was looking for. "Oh, it's just a seven," she corrected quietly, scribbling it down. The corner of Draco's mouth turned up in a small smile as he began working on his portion of the assignment—something that he wouldn't have ordinarily done. If it had been anyone else, he would have made them do the entire thing.
You're weak. You're letting your emotions get the better of you, his father's words echoed in his head.
I'm not weak! Draco thought back, frowning. Mizuki happened to look up at that moment, and thinking that he was stuck, she pointed the tip of her quill in the air at the numbers.
"That means that person won't have any obstacles to face."
"I know what it means!" he snapped. The moment he said it, he clamped his mouth shut. The gut-wrenching realization that he had just snapped at the only person that didn't seem afraid of him smacked him in the face as hard as Lucius' cane. He glanced at her face, noting the look of surprise that briefly crossed her face. He wanted to apologize, but he wasn't good at apologizing.
A Malfoy doesn't apologize—Oh, shut it! He fought internally with himself as he tried to find the courage to tell her that he was sorry, but by the time he found it, the moment had passed. It was too late.
Nice going, Draco, he thought irritably as he returned to his numerical assignments.
Mizuki was able to get through eight pages of the document before their double lesson was over, but Draco was still stuck on the fourth page because he was too preoccupied with his own self-deprecating thoughts. As the bell rang, he watched her pack up her things. He had to say something, right? They had to finish this assignment for homework now, so didn't that mean that they had to work together after class too? But as he thought that he realized that if they worked on it together, it would most likely be in the library where everyone could see them. He kept his mouth shut.
"See you later," Mizuki said before turning and leaving. Draco could only nod his head, watching her inconspicuously as she left, and he packed up his own bag.
Fuck.
Draco knew that he had messed up, and he didn't know how to fix it. He stormed off to the hall, following behind Saito, who was lost in the throng of students that were headed there too. Crabbe and Goyle found him just before he finished descending the stairs, handing him the Daily Prophet, and showing him the article about Ron's dad. Draco grinned, forgetting about earlier as he went into the hall, speaking loudly as he read the article aloud.
"Hey Weaselby, look a this! Your dad's in the paper. It's bad enough that they got his name wrong, but there's even a picture of your parents outside your little shack of a house!" Draco said, turning the paper so everyone in the hall could see. All eyes were on him, and he reveled in it. "Is that really your mother? Dumpy sort of woman isn't she, Weasley? Do you think the photo is what makes her look fat or is she really like that in person too? Potter, you'd know. Don't you spend lots of time at their house—if that's what you can really call it?"
The Slytherins sniggered. Potter, however, stood up from his seat and insulted Draco's mother.
"At least she doesn't have that permanent look like she's just smelled shit! Ah, that must be because she's smelling you."
The cocky grin on Draco's face vanished instantly, his face becoming pale but his neck pink.
"Leave my mother out of this, Potter!" Draco spat. No one insulted his mother. She was the only one that was there for him when his father was cruel. She was the only one that showed that she cared about him. She was the only one that had ever shown she loved him.
Harry turned around. "Shut your trap, then, Malfoy." Harry shrugged as he turned around to sit back down. Draco took out his wand and people in the hall screamed, he pointed it at Harry, and the spell narrowly missed Harry, scraping his cheek.
"Malfoy!" a loud voice boomed in the hall. Professor Moody was limping toward them, his magical eye rolling around in his head, wand pointed at Draco.
BANG!
A white ferret appeared where Draco had been. It let out a squeak and tried to take off, but Moody stopped him, lifting him in the air with his wand and bouncing him around. The ferret's body smacked against the floor of the dungeon, and despite Mizuki feeling like Draco had asked for discipline, this was not the discipline she had in mind.
Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes wide in fear. The ferret was letting out squeaks of pain every time he hit the ground. Moody was hurting him. She thought about the frail bones inside of Kuro-chan's body when she had found him, remembering the pitiful cries he gave when she had picked him out of the dumpster and her eyes welled with tears.
Without thinking, Mizuki pushed past the other students that were standing near her.
"Stop it!" she shouted. "Stop it! Please, Professor, you're hurting him!"
McGonagall happened to enter the hall at that moment, assessing the situation with her shrewd eyes.
"Professor Moody is that a student?" she asked disbelievingly. She began to chastise him for transfiguring a student as Draco reappeared, lying on the floor in a disheveled heap. He quickly got up and was about to run for it when Moody stopped him, his large hand on the back of Draco's shirt.
"Oh, no you don't, laddie. You are coming with me to pay Professor Snape a visit!" he growled. Moody began to clunk away from the hall with Draco in his grip.
The other students were howling with laughter, including Harry and his friends. Mizuki, on the other hand, was so horrified that she stood in the middle of the hall watching them until they disappeared.
"Miss Saito, are you quite alright?" McGonagall asked her. "You weren't injured, were you? Do you need to go to the hospital wing?"
Mizuki looked at McGonagall in a sort of daze. She shook her head, and without thinking, she ran out of the hall and down the marble staircase that led to the dungeons, following Moody and Draco while McGonagall raised an eyebrow. Mizuki rushed past Dumbledore who was watching with amusement from the corridor as she fled down the stairs and arrived in the dark dungeon just as she saw Moody and Draco disappear into the potions classroom.
She saw that there were some marble benches outside of the classrooms, so she sat down on one, waiting anxiously. Her stomach growled in protest, but she remained seated, ignoring the pangs of hunger from skipping lunch. Mizuki didn't know how long she had been waiting, but eventually, Moody came out. He looked at her with both his eyes and clunked away down the hall, drinking out of his hip flask. She could hear the potions teacher admonishing Draco in low tones, and Draco replying 'Yes, Professor,' repeatedly.
"Now, get out!" Snape hissed. Draco emerged from the classroom, shoulders slumped, face downcast. He was holding onto his arm and hadn't even noticed her sitting there.
He was a complete failure. Even Professor Snape, his head of house was mad at him for letting his emotions get the better of him; but when it came to Potter, he couldn't help it. Potter always had everything going for him. Draco had nothing except the Malfoy name, which meant that he had to be cruel like his father, it meant that he had to live up to certain expectations.
Mizuki stood up and tentatively approached him.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
The moment he heard a voice, he flinched and jumped back slightly. He looked up and saw her standing in front of him. She was looking at him, eyes full of concern. Concern? Why would she be concerned about him? Shouldn't she be with Potter and his stupid friends? Why was she even here? –But he remembered the way she had pleaded with Moody to stop, the look of worry on her face. Had she done that for him?
Get a grip, Draco. You're reading too much into it.
I hurt all over.
"I'm fine," he said gruffly, letting go of his arm and standing tall again, his face impassive.
Yeah, just keep those defenses up, Draco, he thought miserably.
Mizuki came toward him with her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but she didn't, she just looked directly into his eyes. Her lavender eyes felt like they were piercing right through his façade, seeing past the ugliness and into the very core of the pathetic excuse of a human that made up Draco Malfoy, cowering inside, too disillusioned to believe that anyone could understand the real him. It made him uncomfortable, so he looked away.
"I can't believe Professor Moody did that," she finally said. "You should get to the hospital wing right away."
Will you come with me?
"I said I'm fine," he growled.
Mizuki reached for his arm, but he slapped her hand away. He saw her flinch, and it tore at his insides, clawing them out with sharp talons.
"You should—" his voice wavered.
Damnit, Draco, get yourself together!
"You should get back to the hall. You'll miss dinner." He avoided looking at her because he couldn't bear to see the pain he had caused with his words and actions.
The sooner you realize I'm a monster like everyone else thinks I am, the better, he thought.
He moved his arm, which was a mistake, and he winced. He really did need to go to the hospital wing. He wouldn't be surprised if there were bruises starting to form on his body too.
"You need to go to the hospital wing," she insisted, pleading with him.
I don't want to go alone.
Draco grunted.
He turned and started walking away from her, heading up the staircase to go to the hospital wing. He heard her footsteps behind him and expected to see her return to the hall once they reached the main landing. To his surprise, she followed behind him the entire way to the hospital wing. She remained sitting in the corner as Madam Pomfrey attended to him behind the curtain, and for the first time since he could remember, Draco didn't feel so alone.