"Hey, you... okay?" It took Draco way too long to notice that Harry Potter had been addressing him, and it took him even longer to formulate an answer. "Yeees…?" The blond drawled, looking at the other boy with a raised eyebrow even though his answer came out as a question, rather than a statement. What did Potter want? Just half an hour ago he had been arguing with him, why was he asking if Draco was okay? "Why?" He asked then before Potter could mention his slightly uncertain tone. "Well, there's been food in front of you for the past ten minutes and you haven't even looked at it." The raven haired boy said in a matter-of-fact voice and then immediately clamped his mouth shut, his green eyes wide with a look of fear as if he were about to be slapped. "Uh, I mean, you just… I… Nevermind." He quickly shook his head and messed up his dark hair with his hand as he looked back at the somewhat small amount of food on his plate, purposefully looking anywhere but Draco as he scooted a tiny bit away from him.
For a few seconds all Draco did was look at Harry in confusion, wondering what he possibly could have done to make the other boy, the boy who had saved the wizarding world as a baby, scared of him. The first thing you did when you met him was basically bully him. If he wasn't slightly hesitant of you, it would be strange. He thought and then looked away from the Boy Who Lived, beginning to pile food onto his plate. There really was a lot of food, at least a hundred times as much as there was on the table every day at the Manor, and that was saying something considering how much food their house elves seemed to think the Malfoys needed.
"That looks delicious." A slightly airy sounding voice pulled Draco out of his thoughts and he looked up from his plate, only to realize that the ghost hadn't been speaking to him in the first place. The shimmering, pearl white form of a man in incredibly old fashioned robes hovered just a few inches over the stone ground just across the table from Draco, right behind Ron Weasley, looking at the food on Harry's plate with a look of severe longing. "Can you not-?" Said raven-haired boy began to ask, but before he could finish the ghost interrupted him with a slight scowl. "I haven't eaten a thing for almost four-hundred years. Of course, I have no need to, but one still misses it. Have I even introduced myself yet? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, at your service. Ghost of Gryffindor house; I live in the tower."
Draco slowly raised one dark blond eyebrow, and was about to go back to his food, becoming uninterested in the conversation once again, when the youngest Weasley burst out in an excited voice: "I know who you are! My brothers told me about you. You're Nearly Headless Nick!" The blond's head snapped up again, a bit more of an instinct than complete interest, though the redhead's words did confuse him slightly. The ghost's head looked perfectly intact, attached firmly to his neck. "I would much appreciate it if you would call my Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-" The ghost of Gryffindor started but Draco interrupted, not really thinking about how rude it probably came off as, just wanting to get the question out of him. "Nearly Headless? How in Merlin's name can someone be nearly headless?"
The ghost's expression seemed to turn cloudy and Draco could have sworn his appearance became more of a transparent, pale blue than white for a brief moment. "Like this." His voice sounded slightly angered as he grabbed hold of his left ear and pulled harshly at it. Draco couldn't stop his silver eyes from widening in horror and disgust when the ghost's entire head tipped easily to the side and fell limply against his shoulder. A grossed out gasp escaped his lips at the soft thud the head made. Obviously someone had attempted to decapitate the ghost at some point and hadn't had enough force in their swing to fully succeed, therefore leaving him with a thin layer of skin keeping his neck and skull together. A small, smug grin tugged at the corner of Nearly Headless Nick's pale lips at the sight of all of the first year Gryffindors' shocked and slightly disgusted faces. It looked eery on the face that was tilted far too much to the side, beside the colorless, bloody stump of his neck.
"So- The new Gryffindors! I hope you all will try your best to get us to win the House Cup this year? Gryffindor has never gone this long without a win. Slytherin's gotten the cup for the past six years! The Bloody Baron is starting to become quite insufferable; - He's the ghost of Slytherin." The ghost said as he tugged his head back into place, hiding every trace of his neck's abnormality besides the faint silver line that ran through its middle and was mostly hidden by the collar of his robes. Draco couldn't stop herself from looking down at his food at the mention of the house he had been told he should have been in and the reminder that he was in the rival house instead in the same sentence. All of his previous doubts and thoughts, which had momentarily been pushed to the back of his mind, resurfaced suddenly and he probably would have zoned out again had one of the other first year boys, who was sitting on Harry's other side, not spoken up.
"How'd he get so covered in blood?" The boy asked, his voice strangely curious and awed considering he was talking about the ghost of a person whose robes were soaked through with silver colored blood. The ghost opened his mouth, about to reply, only to be interrupted by Draco as he looked over at the strawberry-blond haired boy over Harry's head. "Nobody knows. There's tons of legends about him among the Slytherins, like that he fought off a dragon and killed it before dying, to name one, but nobody actually knows what happened. He won't tell anyone." He said, using the subject of one of the few things his mother had ever told him about Hogwarts to push away his thoughts about his father and actually get himself into a conversation, even if it was just for a few minutes.
All of the other first year Gryffindors that had at least been paying some amount of attention to what was being discussed with Nearly Headless Nick looked at him, some in shock and some in confusion. "How do you know that?" The same boy asked and Draco hesitated for a moment before answering. "My parents were in Slytherin." Surprise flickered across his features and, despite the fact that he had never felt anything but pride about who his parents were and their Hogwarts House, Draco found himself looking down at the table in a mix of shame and embarrassment, his normally pale cheeks slightly pink.
"How'd you end up in Gryffindor then? My mum always made it seem like kids who had Slytherin parents were pretty much always in Slytherin themselves." Draco shrugged a bit helplessly and didn't answer, instead beginning to pick at his food again with his fork in an attempt to distract himself. Generally, what he had said was true; almost all wizards with two Slytherin parents ended up in there too. Why did he of all people have to be the one, rare exception? Relative silence fell over the small group of Gryffindors after that, and Draco's thoughts drifted off all over again.
Did his father know where he was sorted into? His mother? No, surely, neither of them had any way of knowing yet, though he had no doubt they would be aware by morning. His godfather worked in the school after all, was the Head of Slytherin House at that, he was bound to owl, or floo, his parents as soon as he possibly could. Oh Merlin, he was in for it now. His father would most definitely send him an owl the next morning, a normal letter if he was extremely lucky, a Howler if he wasn't. Draco let his fork fall onto the table beside his plate with a soft, almost inaudible thud as he groaned quietly. He was just about to push the golden plate away from himself when all of the leftover food on his and everyone else's plates vanished into thin air and the food on the platters running in a long line down the middle of the table was replaced by hundreds of different desserts.
Draco froze in place for a few brief seconds before pulling his plate back towards himself slowly and biting his lower lip. Everything looked unnaturally delicious, and his mouth watered ever so slightly, he hadn't seen this many sweets in his entire eleven years of this added together. He really didn't feel hungry anymore, his appetite seemed to have disappeared, yet he couldn't stop himself from grabbing a piece of chocolate cake and beginning to slowly eat it, his mind somewhat going quiet, nothing he hadn't already thought whispering in the back of his mind. Distantly, he heard the other Gryffindors begin talking about their families and let himself get caught in their conversation, effectively silencing his still nagging thoughts as he listened to them with barely any interest.
"I'm half and half," the strawberry-blond haired boy from before, Seamus Finnigan, Draco thought his name was, was saying at the moment. "My dad's a Muggle. Mum didn't tell him she was a witch until they were married. Was a bit of a shock for him alright." Everyone but Harry and Draco laughed at that, Draco because he just couldn't bring himself to find something incredibly amusing at the moment and Harry… well, Draco wasn't sure, it seemed to him like something the other would think was amusing, but the green eyed boy just stayed silent, his expression blank and slightly distracted. He didn't seem to care about the other boys' families anymore than Draco did, though there was a contemplative look in his eyes as if he were thinking hard about something, unlike the most likely somewhat fearful glint that no doubt was displayed for all to see in his own eyes.
What could he possibly be thinking about that made him look so distracted and blank? Draco wondered and almost asked him about it, only to stop himself just as he opened his mouth. No, I shouldn't ask. He already doesn't like me, no need to make it worse by making it sound like I'm trying to find out all his secrets. A soft sigh escaped him and Draco stabbed his fork into his cake a bit too violently for it to look casual as he glanced back over at the boy next to him. Seemingly in the exact second he did this however Harry gasped out in pain, his emerald eyes snapping shut and his right hand flying up to his forehead as if something had hit him there. "Ow…" He mumbled under his breath, the corners of his lips turned down into a grimace as he massaged his forehead with the palm of his hand as if to ease some kind of pain.
"You alright there, Potter?" Draco found himself asking and Harry looked over at him abruptly in surprise, lowering his hand slowly and nodding. "Y-Yeah." The light tremble and stutter in the raven-haired boy's voice gave away that he was lying but Draco decided not to call him out on it, no matter how much he wanted to. Harry glanced back in the direction he had been staring aimlessly a few seconds previously and his face screwed up into a confused frown. "Do you know who the teacher with the kind of long, dark hair is?" He asked suddenly, and even though his tone made it obvious he didn't think he would actually receive an answer, Draco followed his gaze, finding himself looking straight at his godfather. "Yes. He's Professor Snape, he's the Head of Slytherin." Draco immediately averted his gaze from the man again and slowly lifted the last bite of his cake into his mouth before pushing his plate and fork away from himself, he really wasn't hungry anymore now.