Draco awoke the next morning to the loud voices of three of the other five boys in his dormitory arguing and a thin beam of bright sunlight hitting him right in the face as it fell through a small gap in his curtains, nearly blinding him when he cracked his eyes open. Seamus, Dean, and Ron were all yelling at each other about something, though what exactly it was Draco didn't bother attempting to figure out before he sat up, feeling annoyance rise up in him. "Can you guys shut the bloody hell up? Some people are still trying to sleep!" He snapped, interrupting the three Gryffindors and causing them all to face him as he opened the scarlet red curtains surrounding his bed.
"They started it!" Ron said quickly, pointing at the other two boys who both looked at him indignantly. "Did not! You did!" Seamus snapped back, his glare like daggers as he clenched his hands to fists. "You're the one who started yelling at me!" The redhead glared right back at the other Gryffindor, crossing his arms firmly over his chest. Dean rolled his eyes slightly and shook his head, turning away from the others as he scoffed and walked over to his trunk without saying a word, obviously wanting out of the conversation.
"What are you guys even arguing about?" The soft, slightly slurred with sleep, voice of Harry asked from the bed directly to Draco's left. "Ron knocked over my trunk when he got up and woke me up!" Draco scoffed in disbelief and rolled his silver eyes, shaking his head and causing a few stray strands of platinum blond hair to fall into his face."That's what you woke me up at…" He paused for a brief second, looking around for a clock and spotting one just over the door to their dorm room, slightly out of place in the stonewalled room. "Six Forty in the morning for?" He rolled his eyes and threw the curtains around his bed completely open, standing up. Why couldn't I be in Slytherin, or at least Ravenclaw, if nothing else? At least then I wouldn't be sharing a dorm with a bunch of idiots! Draco thought as he began to rifle through his trunk, ignoring the Gryffindors who had begun arguing again and wondering if he could find some way to get around wearing his red and gold robes. Being in their house was bad enough, add wearing their colors into the mix and that makes it even more intolerable.
Not without losing house points I can't, and if this is my house now… Draco sighed begrudgingly in defeat and glared over at the other boys, still yelling for completely pointless reasons. How was he going to handle being in this dorm with them for the next nine months without going completely mental?
…
About forty minutes after Draco had entered the Great Hall for breakfast, and had received his schedule from Professor McGonagall, hundreds of owls swooped down from the ceiling, coming in through hidden windows with letters and packages tied to their legs. All around him owls were landing on the table and extending their legs towards students, who took their mail quickly and began opening it excitedly, their food forgotten for the moment. Draco gulped slightly, terrified of the owl he was bound to receive sometime in the next day from his parents. There was no universe out there where his father would accept his house as being Gryffindor. The best possible ending to this would be his father simply being disappointed about it, worst case…
The steady stream of owls gradually slowed down and eventually only a few owls came in at a time. When ten minutes of owls flying in had passed and nothing happened, Draco felt his shoulders sag in relief and he buried his face in his hands for a brief moment. His dad hadn't sent an owl yet. His father was all about timing and making sure nothing was late. If an owl hadn't shown up for him ten minutes after all the others did, he was surely safe. Maybe he wouldn't even get the owl in the Great Hall, maybe it would be in his dorm, where he-
A hoot from an owl, coming from just to his right, made him look up in fear again, his previous relief gone. His father's barn owl, Thoth, was perched on the wooden table right beside him, its yellow eyes glinting and its brown feathers metallic and bronze looking in the morning sunlight streaming in through the large windows behind the staff table. A blood red envelope was attached to its left leg, which was extended towards him in a way that made Thoth look impatient, if owls really could look impatient in the first place. Draco's eyes widened in horror at the sight of the letter, frozen in place as he comprehended what the scarlet paper meant. His father had sent him a Howler, in the middle of breakfast, where he was surrounded by hundreds of students.
That's the point of a Howler. So everyone knows you're in big trouble. A voice whispered in the back of his mind and Draco let out a shaky breath, reaching over to untie the letter from the barn owl's leg with trembling hands. What was his father going to say? It definitely wouldn't be anything along the lines of "Well done on getting into Gryffindor, your mother and I are so proud!". Yeah, Draco would be questioning his sanity, and all of reality, if that was even close to what his father said.
"Malfoy's got a Howler!" Seamus exclaimed and Draco looked up in slight shock to see a bunch of people at the Gryffindor table look over at him at the strawberry blond haired boy's statement. He gulped slightly at the curious and slightly amused glances of those who had grown up in wizarding families and the confused ones of the muggleborns, and Harry, and looked down at the silver seal of the envelope, which suddenly seemed to be melting around the edges. The urge to stand up and run away was so all consuming that Draco could already feel his feet planting themselves firmly on the marble floor, only for him to slump back down again. There was no way he could get out of earshot of everyone before the envelope opened on its own and started speaking, and he couldn't let people know how much of a coward he was. He couldn't run from this. He was in the house for the people who were brave, he couldn't be seen as the opposite now. He'd have to endure this, and not let anyone see how much it truly affected him. Malfoys didn't show weakness, that's what his father had always told him.
With a shaky exhale he slit the envelope open and immediately dropped it onto the table in front of him as he waited for the yelling. He didn't have to wait long for that; barely a second after he had broken the wax seal the loud, thundering voice of Lucius Malfoy boomed around the Great Hall. Students and teachers looked up from all over the hall, staring at him, some slightly scared looking. "DRACO MALFOY," his father's voice started out eerily calmly, despite its volume, though Draco had heard him use that tone enough times before to know that he was beyond angry. "IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT YOU WERE SORTED INTO GRYFFINDOR LAST NIGHT. I AM SEVERELY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, I THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER THAN THIS. I SUPPOSE I WAS WRONG. I WAS LEAD TO BELIEVE I HAD RAISED YOU WELL, BUT I SUPPOSE I WAS WRONG ABOUT THAT AS WELL. YOU ARE NO SON OF MINE, YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE MALFOY NAME. ALL OF OUR PLANS FOR YOU TO RETURN TO THE MANOR OVER SCHOOL BREAKS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED AND YOU WILL STAY AT HOGWARTS UNTIL SUMMER. DO NOT OWL US, WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN HEARING FROM YOU."
Draco felt tears burn at the back of his eyes, threatening to spill down his cheeks in streams of saltwater as the Howler from his father erupted into bright orange flames. Whispers and snickers broke out around the room, laughs drifted over to him from the Slytherin table as well, laughs of the people he had grown up being friends with: Pansy, Blaise, Theo, Crabbe, Goyle… For a moment he continued to stay where he was, feeling a bit numb as he stared at the ashes of the letter which had basically just informed him his parents had disowned him. Thinking those thoughts, thinking he was a disgrace and a disappointment was a completely different thing from hearing someone else say them to him. It made them have so much more meaning, so much more power over him.
That's when it really hit him, what his father's words meant. His father considered him a bloodtraitor, his parents hated him, he was no longer really part of the Malfoy family, he had been thrown out. Malfoy Manor would never truly be his home now. Draco pushed himself to his feet, trying to control the trembling of his small frame as he grabbed his schedule and bookbag, walking briskly out of the Great Hall, attempting to hide the fact that he was wiping at his eyes with the balls of his hands. The whispers of his fellow students followed him out into the corridor like a predator hunting its prey, and in his haste to get away before anyone saw his weakness, his tears, he missed the look Harry Potter sent his way, one that wasn't pity, but more a type of understanding.
Without fully knowing how he managed to get there, fifteen minutes later Draco found himself in the empty classroom of Professor Binn's History of Magic class, which he had first on Mondays with Slytherin. His bookbag lay discarded next to his feet, leaning against the side of the desk in the far back corner he had collapsed onto, his schedule roughly shoved into it. The young, newly sorted Gryffindor crossed his arms on top of the desk in front of him and buried his face in them, his built up sobs finally escaping him, wracking his body in shuddering trembles. Tears quickly soaked the sleeves of his robes, but he couldn't quite bring himself to care.
It felt like he was drowning in his own tears, suffocating at the hands of his sobs, being ripped apart by his trembling. Everything felt like it was weighing down on him, and he just couldn't get his father's words out of his head. "You are a disgrace to the Malfoy name. You are no son of mine. I am disappointed in you. We have absolutely no interest in hearing from you." What had he done to deserve this? He couldn't help where he was sorted! Yet, despite his small, weak reassurances to himself he continued to cry. How could one person have so many tears in them to shed? How could someone keep sobbing this much without going hoarse or passing out from exhaustion?
Draco couldn't remember the last time he had felt like this, like everything was falling apart. The closest he could come up with was when his family had moved from their manor in France, which his parents had bought just after getting married so as to make it easier to hide from the Ministry of Magic. He had been six, and even though he just barely remembered what it had been like there, even though he could only remember vague, blurry faces and parts of names of his old friends, he could clearly remember the pain of having to leave them behind. It had felt similar to this in so many ways. He had lost what little familiarity he had left, again. He had left behind his friends and now he was all alone. His surroundings were new and terrifyingly unknown.
Except, now his parents weren't there with him like they were before. His mother wouldn't hold him to her chest and comb her fingers through his hair when he woke up crying. His father wouldn't be there to read books to him before he went to bed to drive away the memories that manifested themselves as nightmares. Pansy wouldn't be there to talk to about anything he wanted to. Blaise wouldn't be there to play quidditch with him when he just needed to forget everything. Theo wouldn't be there to talk about books. Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't be there to pull pranks with. None of them would, because he was a Gryffindor. Because he was in the house of the brave, he was in the house filled with mudbloods -muggleborns, his mind distantly corrected him for no particular reason- and bloodtraitors. Because he wasn't like them anymore.
He was completely alone, with nobody to turn to.
Eventually his sobs died down into quiet hiccups and then completely disappeared, leaving only a few stray tears on his cheeks and his face slightly blotchy from crying. Draco furiously rubbed at his eyes and cheeks, hoping to get rid of all traces of his previous crying. He got all of the tear stains off his usually pale cheeks and his eyes became slightly less red-rimmed, though only time could remove the rest. A soft, slightly shaky sigh escaped his lips a few moments later and he grabbed his leather bag, taking his copy of A History of Magic out and placing it on the desk in front of him. Surely, class would be starting soon, and it was better to have your stuff out before the professor got there and thought you were incompetent because you didn't care enough to have your materials.
Sure enough, just under five minutes later, students started to slowly trickle into the room, walking together in groups. Pansy, Theo, and Blaise were the first to come in, laughing amongst themselves as if one of them had said some hilarious joke. I wish I could be over there laughing with them, knowing who said the joke, being with people who I actually know. They walked towards the desks in the very middle of the classroom, placing their bags onto the floor and then looking around the room, possibly studying its deep violet curtains, dozens of paintings, or artifacts lining the walls, or possibly looking to see if more people were in the room. When their gazes landed on Draco, he felt himself stiffen, suddenly nervous. The laughter disappeared from all of their faces and Pansy started towards him, a nasty smirk spread across her face.
"Oh look, it's the bloodtraitor. You enjoy that letter from your father, Malfoy? I think even the teachers found it amusing and pathetic how you ran out of there. How does it feel to know that you're now on the same level as the mudbloods, and the Weasleys?" The Slytherin who used to be one of his best friends leaned forward against his desk, balancing her weight on her arms and one foot as she leaned so far across it that her nose was just inches from his own. Her dark brown eyes glinted maliciously in the sunlight streaming in through all of the windows in the classroom, and her dark hair looked almost like it was made of ink as it framed her pale face and unusually pink mouth.
Draco averted her eyes then, unable to look directly into them without feeling a deep sense of longing for things between them to be normal again. He didn't respond to her taunts, couldn't even begin to come up with some kind of comeback to them. A part of him, the part that existed because of his father's opinions on the world and the way he was always told to think, whispered that his former friend had a point. The rest of him seemed too defeated at the moment to argue with that and so he simply looked down at his textbook as if it was the most interesting book in all of existence.
"Nothing to say to that? Maybe you realized quicker than most who's superior and should be respected. Then again, you were always too easily convinced to do things. You've always been so weak and foolish. Just the fact that you're a Gryffinfreak now is proof of that. Maybe it would have been better for all of us if you hadn't been born, then at least your parents wouldn't have to be so ashamed of someone who doesn't deserve to be their son. I could arrange for you to vanish from this world if I wished to, in fact, I might just do it here. You're a freak and a bloodtraitor, nobody would care if you disappe-" A different voice suddenly cut the rest of Pansy's sentence off, and both her and Draco's heads snapped to the right, the Slytherin in annoyance and the Gryffindor in shock.
"Leave him alone." Harry Potter said, his emerald green eyes alight with anger and determination behind his round glasses and his hands clenched tightly at his sides. "Oh, and why should I do that, Potter? How are you going to stop me?" Pansy retorted and straightened her posture so that she was now facing Harry with her arms crossed over her chest and an amused smirk once again on her lips. "You're at least three inches shorter than me, and you don't have a clue about magic, what do you think you can do? Get a teacher? I don't see any around here, so I don't think you'd have much success."
Harry's eyes narrowed ever so slightly and he took an angry step forward, ignoring the hand of Ron Weasley that was on his arm, trying to pull him back. "I defeated Voldemort as a baby, I think I'm fully capable of stopping you." The Gryffindor's voice seemed to ooze with self-confidence, though that seemed slightly unusual to Draco based on the way the raven-haired boy had been acting the other day and in Madam Malkins. He seemed like he wasn't all arrogant and boasting about his power, but then again, maybe he really was and had simply hidden it in an attempt to make a better impression. Or maybe he was just really pissed off -though that made no sense to him considering the only reason he could be angry was Draco and he had made a very bad first impression on the other boy- and therefore was acting confident to get what he wanted.
Pansy's smirk faltered for a brief second and she glared at Harry, pushing herself away from the desk Draco was sitting at. "I'm not afraid of you, Potter, but I find it rather amusing to see you attempt to make me scared. I'll leave this bloodtraitor for now, but you can't stop me from doing whatever I please." She smirked again and then sauntered off to Draco's other old friends, leaving Harry and Ron standing there, both a bit lost on what to do.
Draco looked down at his desk again, swallowing down the bitter taste in his mouth and resisting the urge to curl up into a ball in a dark corner of the classroom. "Thank you, I had it under control, Potter." He said, hoping his voice didn't shake as he did so. "You're welcome. And you can call me Harry if you want." The Boy Who Lived said and walked towards Draco, only to stop a foot or so from his desk, looking hesitant. "I prefer Potter. We're hardly friends, so I see no need to address you as such." The blond said, forcing a small smirk onto his face and looking over at his housemate.
Harry hesitated again and then sighed, suddenly looking slightly uncomfortable. "We could be friends, though I think we got off to the wrong start." Ron's gaze, which had been firmly directed angrily at Draco, snapped to Harry at that, his blue eyes wide. "Harry-" He started to say indignantly, but the other boy cut him off before he would continue. "He is our dorm mate, Ron. Do you really want to not be friends with one of the people we're going to live with for the next seven years?" The redhead pursed his lips slightly, still looking angry. "No, but Harry, it's Malfoy." He said this in a way that made it sound like he meant Draco was a demon of some sort and the blond looked down, wishing to hide his hurt at that statement.
"Yeah, but you saw the way those Slytherins were treating him. It's hardly fair for us to treat him like that as well just because we had bad first impressions." Harry said and then moved over to Draco's left, sitting down next to him. Draco looked over at him in shock, about to say something only for his eyes to widen in shock when the Weasley sat down next to Harry, though he didn't look exactly happy about it. "What-?" He started to ask, only to break off when Harry turned in his seat to face him, a small, genuine smile on his face as he extended his hand towards him. "I think we got off to the wrong start. I'd like to try again. I'm Harry Potter, it's nice to meet you."
For a few moments all the young Malfoy could do was stare at the tan hand, which had faint scars on it, hinting at him having been a bit of a rebellious kid, that was in front of him, waiting for him to shake it. His silver eyes looked up at the other's green one and he hesitantly took the hand as he met the other's gaze. "Draco Malfoy, nice to meet you too." Harry smiled at him and then let go of his hand, reaching into his bag to pull out his own textbook. Ron rolled his eyes, and did the same, though he didn't so much as spare a glance at Draco as he turned to face the front of the classroom afterwards. Still, Draco couldn't help but feel slightly relieved, and much less lonely than before. Maybe he wouldn't be completely alone this year.