Disclaimer: I don't own a Time-Turner, ergo I cannot go back in time and direct and produce the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean films myself, and pretend that they were my ideas all along, and get insanely rich. Ergo, I don't own them.
Author's note: Out of morbid curiosity, is anyone even reading this?
=Chapter 3: The Substitute=
The stairs were going screwy.
Draco hadn't noticed it at first, but after every single staircase he stepped one foot on swung hypnotically toward the astronomy tower, and all the staircases behind and below him COLLAPSED, even Crabbe and Goyle couldn't help noticing something was screwy.
Especially after they got left behind on one of said collapsing stairs...
If Professor McGonagall dared take points off of Slytherin House for Draco being late for Transfiguration class, he was going to write a letter of complaint to his father, who would in turn write a letter of complaint to the Board of School Directors.
Personally, Draco was wondering whether he should keep going up- which would bring him into a distastefully close proximity to that filthy little blood-traitor first-year redhead Weasley girl on the next stair up- or whether he should just stay where he was until she walked through the door she seemed to be contemplating walking through. Which was the same door he would have to walk through, since it was the only way to go besides down. Which was a long drop, judging from when he heard Goyle and Crabbe crash.
As Draco waited for the Weasley snippet to go first, he suddenly realized that that would be demeaning. Why should she go first? It's not like she's even a lady! Deciding to risk coming within five feet of the Weasley, Draco stalked rapidly past her, snatched the door-latch, and entered the Astronomy Tower first. He had to stalk up one final step of spiraling, non-moving stairs, to get to the tower roof.
"You're late!" scolded a voice with a gratingly familiar accent.
"How can I be late, I'm not even supposed to be here!" Draco snapped.
"Well, I'm sure you're late for something then. Ten points from Slytherin!"
"I'm writing a letter of complaint-" Draco began huffily, then paused in petrified disbelief. "-Hey, aren't you that nutters newsie from the bookshop?"
"No, I'm the substitute Astronomy teacher," replied the newsie chirpily. "Tragically, Professor Sinistra tripped off the tower parapets while peering through her telescope during midmorning, and accidentally blinding herself by staring at the sun. Sad, eh?"
"Um, excuse me..." trilled the annoying Weasley blood-traitor girl. "I think my class schedule's wrong..." she said softly, practically hiding behind a sheet of paper, and staring fixedly at Potter over the top of it.
She probably snuck up here on purpose, just to gawk at him, Malfoy thought snidely.
"Oh, too bad, class has already started," the newsie said with a strangely manic, gleeful expression, dragging her in by the hand, slamming the door shut behind her, and shoving her into Draco's side. "You pair up with tardy albino clone," the newsie told the girl, "and Potter, your partner will be the smart-alec girl, and the rest of you... just pair up with whoever. Who cares."
"What did you just call me?" Draco asked the newsie in aghast disbelief, while shoving the Weasley brat as far away from him as he could.
"Oh yes," the newsie replied brightly, "I've just been dying to ask, kid- do you have a mum?"
"...I'm not even going to condescend to lower myself to answer that!" Draco all but snarled.
"I knew it! Clone."
"Course I have a mum!" Draco burst out snappishly.
"Curious..." the newsie said contemplatively. "So what did Lucius do, drug the poor girl?"
"...I don't have to stand for this!" Draco exclaimed after another shocked, wordless pause.
"Well you could always take it lying down," the newsie suggested with a smirk. "Astronomy class doesn't have any chairs. So those are basically your only two options."
He is getting sacked, he is so getting sacked! Draco thought venomously. "I suppose you think you're terribly funny," he said snippily. Noticing Potter and his friends and all the other students on the roof were practically chortling, Draco swerved his glare on them, and added, "I suppose you think he's terribly funny!"
Sniggering behind his hands, Potter's atrocious friend Ronald Weasley snorted, "Well, yeah."
That was it. Draco whipped out his wand, but before he could hurl a nasty curse at Weasley's smug, round, freckly, beady-eyed face, the silver-blond's wand was being tugged up out of his fingers by the newsie, who was too cheap to even use a proper disarming spell. Really, tugging someone's wand out of their fingers with one's bare hands- barbaric. I mean, who does things like that? Draco wondered, appalled. And a teacher, no less?
However, it didn't matter that Draco hadn't blasted Weasley with wand-magic, because Weasley had instinctively pulled out his own wand, which promptly backfired on him.
Idiot. "Give me my wand back!" Draco hissed, futilely jumping up to try to grab it back as the newsie mockingly bobbed it above his head.
"No fighting in class," the newsie said, stuffing the wand somewhere in the folds of his absurd red robe. "Weasley, that goes for you too. Twenty-four points from Gryffindor."
"But-" Weasley protested, gaping, "-ow- the only person I- ow- hit, was me!"
"Thirty-nine points from Gryffindor for talking back to a teacher," the newsie replied smoothly. "Now class... find the Big Dipper."
It was harder to miss than it was to find. It was looming in the sky directly in front of the students, as huge and obvious as a flying elephant.
"Why the deuce do we need to pair up to find the Big Dipper?" Draco demanded irritably.
"Ninety-seven points from Slytherin for asking questions in class," the newsie said curtly.
"What?"
"Ninety-seven more points."
Draco shut his mouth reluctantly, clenching his teeth. This had to be a joke.
Judging from the fact that Granger's mouth was wide open, and then closed reluctantly, she probably had an unasked question on the tip of her tongue too.
"Now, has everyone spotted the Big Dipper yet?" the newsie said, pointing directly at it, in case anyone was blind enough to have missed it.
"Yeah," Draco scoffed, "you're sort of pointing at it."
"Ooh, very good mini-Malfoy!" the newsie warbled mock-proudly, while patting Draco on the head, and then rustling his gloved fingers through Draco's pale hair roughly.
"Ow!" Draco yelped, as the newsie plucked out a few whitish hairs, stared at them curiously, and stuck them into another one of his impossible cape's pockets. Draco swiped his hair back viciously, as if trying to forever rid it of the appalling memory of the newsie git's glove.
"Right then," the git continued, "Class dismissed. "No no-" he added swiftly, flapping his cape out wide, and cornering Draco up next to Potter, Granger, and the little Weasley girl, "-not you four. You're detained after class for... remedial astronomy."
"What for?" Draco growled.
"Well, no wonder you haven't any curiosity ten years from now, you used it all up!" the newsie said randomly, sounding inspired. "Oh yes, Ninety-seven more points from Slytherin for asking questions in class. But whilst we're on the subject- you're being kept after class for tardiness, your short redhead partner is being kept after class for being mis-scheduled, and Potter is being kept after class for wearing green spectacles, which is outright flouting the dress code."
"It is not!" Granger argued hotly, obviously not able to contain herself when it came to defending Harry Potter and pointing out rules. "There's nothing in the dress code that specifies what tint students' glasses must be! I know, I've read every article!"
"Know-it-all," Draco muttered.
"-And you're being kept after class for being a smart-alec," the newsie informed Granger dryly.
"This is preposterous..." she grumbled under her breath.
Draco found himself wholeheartedly agreeing with her- and was seriously annoyed by that fact. "I don't believe you really have any sort of teaching license," he snapped at the newsie. "Where's your credentials? I daresay you're just aiming to get a story- some 'secret' scoop on Hogwarts, is it, undercover newspaper reporter?"
"As much as I hate to agree with Malfoy-" Granger began reluctantly, obviously just as irritated about their present like-mindedness as he was.
"Shut up!" Draco interrupted. "I hate you agreeing with me too! It's demeaning, and greatly reduces the value of my opinion!"
"And what is the value of 'your opinion'?" the newsie asked, reaching one of his hands frightfully close to Draco's ear, and then pulling out a pair of pitifully small copper coins, from, apparently, behind the ear, but most likely, from the cuff of his glove. "Two cents?" the newsie finished mischievously, as if he'd actually done something impressive.
"That, is the lamest, trick, ever," Draco scoffed. "So you keep Muggle coins in your gloves, SO what?"
The Weasley brat was the only student who looked remotely impressed, and she was looking at Potter.
"How about a bribe?" the newsie proposed to Draco in all seriousness. "These two pennies, in exchange for you never opening your mouth again? You can just teleport food into your stomach if the thought of starving bothers you."
Draco's jaw twisted into a totally disbelieving, contemptuous expression. "I, am filthy rich," he informed the newsie acidly. "What would I want your filthy Muggle coins for?"
"Oh," the newsie said brightly. He dropped the copper coins on the stone roof, then added, "Pick them up. It's good luck!" When Draco made absolutely no move to pick the dusty Muggle coins up, the newsie added perkily, "You can't buy good luck you know- well, actually you can, but not for as cheap as two pennies!"
"Picking up pennies as a means to give oneself good luck," Granger began in her 'I-know-everything' voice, "is nothing more than a silly superstition, much like tossing salt over your shoulder or knocking on wood."
"Those aren't silly superstitions," the newsie interrupted knowledgeably. "If you knock on wood, and ask, 'Is anyone in there?' and you hear, 'Yes', you're far less likely to be accidentally burgling an occupied home, and that's lucky; and if you toss salt over your shoulder, you're far more likely to dissolve the eye-stalks of the giant slug that's been following you, and that's lucky too; and if you pick up pennies, you're far more likely to duck out of the aim of the sniper who's trying to shoot a hex at you, and that's lucky too!"
Just then, Potter interrupted with the first minisculely intelligent thing Draco bet he'd ever said in his whole life: "Can't you please just tell us what we're doing for remedial astronomy, so we can all go to bed?"
Draco, of course, would've left off the 'please', and added in a 'you imbecilic moron'. The newsie had obviously only kept them after class to insult them. He was the most imbecilic adult Draco had ever had the displeasure of meeting, and that included Dumbledore and 'Professor' Lockhart put together.
"Ah," the newsie said. "Right. All of you, step over there, to those tiles there, right by the edge of the parapets."
"You mean where Professor Sinistra fell?" the Weasley twit half-whispered.
"Don't fret, little bird, there's no sun out!" the newsie informed her brightly.
All four students stared down over the balcony uneasily. Draco could swear he could see a roughly astronomy-teacher-shaped imprint on the ground at the base of the tower. "So what's our assignment?" he sneered. "Finding the Little Dipper?"
"Oh no," the teacher said, with an annoyingly pleasant little laugh. "Nothing so difficult as all that. All you little rugrats have to do, is spot the second star to the right."
"Second star to the right of what?" Granger asked.
"You'll know it when you see it," the newsie promised. "Oh yes, three-hundred sixty-two points from Gryffindor house for asking questions in class." "
"Rugrats?" Draco repeated finally.
Ignoring Draco, as he seemed to have this obnoxious habit of doing, the newsie strolled right past him, and tossed something golden over Potter's neck. To which Potter howled inexplicably,
"I'M NOT MODELING YOUR STUPID GOLD CHAIN NECKLACES!"
Draco would've sneered back something snide and supremely insulting to that random comment, but instead found himself yapping, "What the DEUCE are you doing?", since the newsie was tossing something over his neck too. Glancing down, Draco saw, horrified, that the thing dangling around his neck was, in fact, a gold chain necklace. Studded in pearls.
The Weasley brat and Granger probably would've been laughing their filthy little heads off, except at that moment, the newsie was tossing necklaces over their necks too- and the funny thing was- well, apart from the fact that the substitute astronomy teacher was putting necklaces on them- all four necklaces were chained together by a spinny thing and looped through each other. This of course brought Draco into a distastefully close proximity with Potter, Granger, and Weasley.
Draco tried to tear his necklace off, but the newsie simply grabbed the back of it, tugging it tighter like an absurdly fancy noose, and said, "No-no-no, this is a device to position your heads in precisely the right alignment to spot the second star to the right! You have to keep it on!"
Like a show dog in a pearl-studded collar, Draco temporarily stopped struggling, so that the necklace was loosened just enough for him to bark out, "When MY FATHER hear about THIS, he-"
"He'll be wondering where you are..." the newsie said mysteriously, while kneeling down- which was extremely undignified- and slipping a fifth gold chain necklace, which was also attached to the spinny thing- around his own neck.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Draco demanded, feeling a bit unsettled, and thinking, again, of astronomy-teacher-shaped craters.
"It means he'll be wondering why you're still in remedial astronomy, instead of graduating with the other, more brilliant children," the newsie explained.
"On the subject of us more brilliant children-" Potter cut in tentatively.
"Oh, I don't think he was talking about you," Draco cut in over Potter. "If you've failed to notice, Potter, you're being kept after class too."
"Look," Granger sighed to the newsie pleadingly, "Could you possibly please just tell us what we're supposed to be looking for?"
"Look for the second star to the left, and then four stars to the right of that, you'll see the star you're to be looking for," the newsie said patiently.
"How'm I supposed to focus on seeing anything when I'm practically rubbing noses with a ruddy Mudblood?" Draco growled, glaring into Granger's scowling face, which was precisely three inches away from his own, on account of their 24-karat choke collars.
"Fine then, focus on the ruddy Mudblood," the newsie retorted, finally sounding a bit strained. "Not as fun to stare at as she'll be in ten years, granted, but still- not too shabby."
"Are teachers allowed to say such things about students?" Granger gasped in an incensed tone of disbelief.
All the other students gaped in disgust too- except for some reason, the Weasley girl's gape was directed down towards the groundkeeper's hut, where a small flock of roosters were having a crowing contest.
"I'm a substitute teacher," the newsie retorted, "I can say whatever I like. Like, Petrificus Totalus."
Granger went stiff as a flagpole- nothing new for her, actually- and then fell flat on her back- which made Draco, then Potter, then Weasley, topple over like dominoes. So did the newsie, who then, on his elbows, pointed Draco's wand at the remaining three students in turn, and exclaimed: Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus!" Sighing as he caught his breath, he added, "That'd be so much more dramatic if I only had to say it once. There really ought to be a ranged version of that spell..."
Sitting back up on his knees, which tugged all four of the stiff students' necks up an inch, the newsie started twirling the twirly, roughly hourglass-shaped thingy attached to the five necklaces they all wore.
Draco couldn't move his eyes, but he recognized the color and kinkiness of the hair in front of his face, and realized in abject disgust that he'd fallen on top of Granger- and judging by the weight on his knees and the fact that Potter had been standing on his other side, Potter had probably fallen on him- which meant that the only student not getting crushed was the Weasley girl. Who was probably freaking out in pathetic fangirlish glee to be squashing her idol.
After getting over the initial disgusted shock of learning who he'd fallen onto, Draco realized he still felt like he was falling backwards. This was made even weirder by the fact that he'd fallen on his face atop Granger.
Through the pounding in his ears, Draco heard the newsie rattling on about 'questions they should be asking', after he'd only just been docking an outrageous number of points from their houses for asking questions! The nerve. The newsie was also blabbing about 'revenge' and 'vacuums' and 'pterodactyls', none of which had the remotest thing to do with astronomy. He kept blathering on forever and ever about who-the-deuce knew what.
Draco wasn't paying much attention, since he was distracted by the far more pressing thought of, Ew, ew, Granger's ruddy hair is in my face! Her dead protein fibers are contacting my skin! Ugh! Worst, Astronomy class, ever!
The flying backwards sensation seemed to go on for years. Years of having to listen to the torturous drone of the newsie's irritatingly accented voice, which occasionally went obnoxiously high-pitch as he imitated the students' voices, pretending they were asking him questions.
The imitations were awful. Except Potter's. Potter's was okay. In fact, Potter would say something like, 'You'll never get away with this!'. No, wait... Potter just did say,
"You'll never get away with this!"
Draco had actually felt Potter's lips moving against the back of his head. Which was freaky, and repulsive, since Potter was probably getting spit all through his hair.
Then it hit Draco- and apparently, the same thing hit the other three students, since they all dizzily sprang up to their knees and feet, all accidentally tugging the connected chains around all their necks.
Before they managed to tug the chains off though, the newsie rapidly shouted, "Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus!"
And Draco's brief moment of not falling was at an end.
This time, he actually fell on his back. He could feel something disturbingly like a nose under his shoulderblade- it must have been Granger's, since both Potter's and Weasley's noses were pressed together, along with their cheeks. Weasley was probably having another fangirly freakout- Draco could just imagine her writing in her diary once this was all over, something like,
'OMG! I squashed the famous, perfect, adorable incomparable hottie HARRY POTTER, and he practically kissed me!'
But this mental image turned his stomach, so Draco quickly tried to think of something else, while stashing the stomach-turning image away to tyrannically tease Potter with later.
Finding something else to think about was easy. He was looming right above Draco, on the left side of his vision, and he was still twirling his stupid little hourglass thing attached to all their necklaces, and he was still babbling. Only this time, Draco couldn't hear him, since the pounding in his ears had magnified. Draco could, however, read lips, which was something he'd picked up from having to deal with Crabbe and Goyle, who both had the most pathetic speech impediments, inflicted on them by their mothers.
The newsie was saying, quite clearly, "...Bla-di-blah-di-blah, oh, isn't he cute when he was ten, bla-di-blah-di-blah, the sun and moon and stars are making me dizzy, bla-di-blah-di-blah, I don't believe how many kids sneak up to this tower to kiss (he was probably referring to Potter and Weasley here, as best as Draco could guess), bla-di-blah-di-blah, ow, my fingers!, bla-di-blah-di-blah, bother it, just how old is this dashed castle?, bla-di-blah-di-blah, ow, fingers, bla-di-blah-di-blah, oh, my poor fingers, bla-di-blah-di-blah, wonder if I'll have to petrify you rugrats again, bla-di-blah-di-blah, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, Petrificus Totalus, bla-di-blah-di-blah, hang it, this gets boring, bla-di-blah-di-blah, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, bla-di-blah-di-blah..." Or something like that.
Deciding that the newsie said 'bla-di-blah-di-blah' too much, Draco focused instead on what he could see of the tower behind the newsie's head- which was mostly just a rush of galloping color, such as one might see when staring through a prank kaleidoscope. Good grief, WHY did Granger have to have a nose? Draco wondered irritably. It did itch so.
After possibly half an hour, the newsie stopped twirling his stupid thing, pulled Draco up by his collar, twisted him around, pointed, and exclaimed, "Oh look, Mini-Malfoy, there are your parents! Fancy that, little Cissy's not even drunk!"
In the direction the newsie was pointing were two very young, very blond people; boy and girl, who had apparently just been kissing. They whirled around in shock towards the newsie, who called out,
"FUNNY, LAST I CHECKED, LOVE POTIONS WERE BANNED IN HOGWARTS! You could get EXPELLED! Oh and you're out of bed after hours! Naughty. I mean, you're an attractive young girl, Narcissa, do you really want your children to turn out looking like him?"
Draco felt a gloved finger poking his stiff cheek. Then he was dropped roughly face-forward into the pile of petrified children- this time his neck fell on top of Weasley's ankle, Potter's knees were under his torso, and Draco's own ankle had somehow gotten tangled in Granger's hair. Draco was really starting to loathe Granger's hair. Did she have to have so ruddy much of it?
"Huh, funny, you haven't vanished, Mini-Malfoy," Draco heard the newsie complain. "Pity, I was so hoping you hadn't been born- but I suppose Narcissy ignored my sage advice. And I heard she was clever. Misinformation, misinformation. Ah well, there may be other opportunities. No, actually, what are the chances of that? Somehow, I can't see even a ditzy brainless troll being dumb enough to let herself be lured up into a tower to be snogged by Lucius Malfoy twice."
The falling backwards sensation returned, and the newsie's highly offensive words again bubbled and blacked out into a pounding, pulseless, noiseless roar in Draco's ears. What was that? Draco thought shakily. What were they? They can't have really been his parents, right? It was ridiculous. It had to be a trick, a joke. A seriously unfunny joke. Maybe he's trapped me in a memory... Draco speculated uneasily. Oh GOSH, did this fruitcake substitute teach honestly steal my parents' memories? Oh GOSH, GOSH, can Granger, Potter, and Weasley see my parents memories too?
That was almost as disturbing as Granger's hair follicles.
But what was the point of it all? It seemed to be an awfully long time to waste on simply sifting and skipping through his parents memories... What, was the newsie looking for some particularly humiliating moment in his parents histories which would ruin Draco's life forever? What could that possibly be? What could possibly be more embarrassing than seeing his parents kissing when they were kids? Besides, even if the memories theory was right, why was it taking so blimey long? His parents weren't that old, and they couldn't have spent their whole lives up on this astronomy tower roof! Bleeding heck, last Draco checked, it was off-limits to students except during Astronomy class!
Draco pondered over this disturbing train of thought, while staring blankly at Weasley's fraying, hand-me-down socks, darned with mismatched yellow-and-orange threads where they had once ripped, and her battered leather hand-me-down and down and down shoes, which were quite obviously boy's shoes, and had quite obviously been chewed and salivated on by some toothed animal. They were a disgrace to Pureblood footwear everywhere. They were coming apart at the seams, the soles wouldn't last long- and they were held on in the back with gum. Draco could see a bit of Weasley's socked toe poking out of the top corner of the shoe, and the shoelaces looked kinked and slightly moldy.
It was a reprehensible thing to have your nose pressed up against. It was enough to make one miss Granger's hair. Almost.
Somewhere in the next twelve hours or decades, Draco fell, and fell, and fell, and fell, and fell, and fell asleep.
He dreamed of soap.