Chapter Two: I hate that you're so rude to me
"Nice job, Mr. Malfoy. The whole classroom is back to the way it originally was before we came here. I'm extremely impressed with the way you've handled the class. Professor Snape didn't think you were up for it, but your scores said different, so I insisted to have you here. It is a decision I most definitely won't regret."
"Thank you sir. Your praise is enough to make me to continue this course. At first I didn't think I'd appreciate studying advanced Charms. However, I am rather enjoying it and you can be reassured that I wont drop it. I'm enjoying it far too much already. I'd also like to thank you for this opportunity"
"Why, Mr. Malfoy, I have never heard such kindness come from your mouth. I see the holiday's seem to have changed you, and for the better. Well, enough of this chatter, I have taken enough of your lunch time. I expect to see you, nice and pumping for Charms next Friday afternoon."
As you may have already realized, its Malfoy here, contributing to my wife's little story of how we met. She kindly asked me to help her out, and I simply could not refuse. Our relationship certainly has changed a lot from those days. That is the point of this story, to inform you of how it happened.
I was a cheeky brat back then. In fact, as Flitwick left, I began to laugh at the fact he thought I had changed. Me, Draco Malfoy, change? I don't think so. I had enjoyed torturing this little Lavender girl. She didn't seem to understand why. Well it's quite simple actually.
First of, she was a Gryffindor, and Slytherin's hate Gryffindor's. Secondly, she had laughed at Pansy, my love interest at the time, which was definitely not acceptable. Back then anyway. It was because of those two reasons I annoyed her so bad. A third reason had formed that day. Her reaction had created a sort of satisfied feeling in me.
What can I say? I was just an ordinary guy and all I wanted was to feel loved. Is that so wrong? I just wanted to annoy the Lavender girl by pretending I was a suck up. It certainly worked. At the same time I felt a little guilty.
That's one thing I can't stand feeling. The guilty feeling overcame me by the night, and as I sat in the biggest armchair by the fire within the Slytherin common room, I became even more annoyed at feeling what I felt. So I did what any person would do. I confided in my closest friend, Blaise.
"Hey Blaise," I said, poking him as he lay on his bed, sprawled out everywhere. He certainly was a heavy sleeper. Then again, I think most of us Slytherins are. So, to wake him up, I did what any Slytherin would do. I kicked him as hard as I could, and boy did he react.
"What in the world was that for?" he demanded, sitting up and rubbing his head. I snickered, amused at his sudden anger. That was the thing about Blaise. His emotions seemed to vanish fairly quickly.
"Well, Malfoy, spit it out" he snapped, glaring at me. He was always groggy. Possibly because every girl wanted him. I even saw Pansy eyeing him once. At the time I barely cared. That's the thing with me and Pansy. We were more like friends than girlfriend and boyfriend material.
"Okay, I'll tell you. Only cause you're my closest friend. I don't want you to be spreading it around though, Especially to Pansy. You know what she's like. The whole school will find out in a day, and it's important that no one finds out what I'm doing. The teachers will definitely be mad at me."
As I suspected, Blaise just stared at me blankly. I sighed, realizing he properly thought it was something to do with Voldemort. Sure, I was planning to become a Death Eater. I had briefly abandoned the project, more focusing on my studies, while learning Occumency off my aunt Bellatrix.
My plan was to become the best Death Eater ever, before I presented myself to Voldemort. I wanted to proudly outdo my father, who was complaining that Snape was getting all of Voldemort's attention. My father just didn't understand that Voldemort didn't want friends. He wanted skill on his side, which was my current aim.
"Draco?" Blaise said, waving his hands in front of my face. I woke up from my little day dream, realizing I was wasting good sleeping time. "Are you going to tell me what the hell you woke me up for or do I have to pull it out of you?"
"Okay, Give me a second" I snapped angrily. "You know how I'm stuck in that advanced Charms class with that Lavender girl from Gryffindor?"
Blaise nodded, looking uninterested. I wasn't discouraged, so I continued.
"Well, I've fooled Flitwick into thinking I'm the good little boy, while making her look like she wasn't one bit qualified for the class. I'm proud to say it worked like a charm"
"Ahahaha!" Blaise laughed, hitting his fist on the bed. I smiled, realizing it wasn't at all a mistake telling him. "Wait to find the best way to torture one of them stupid little Gryffies!" He stopped laughing, and looked at me, confused. "So what's the problem? You got a reaction. That was the point of it all, right?"
"Yeah," I said. "I don't know why though Blaise, but … well, I feel a little guilty. I'm so mad at myself for feeling this way. It's annoying and I don't want to feel like this. I just don't know how to stop feeling this way."
I sighed in frustration, not quite finished with my little tantrum. Blaise seemed to have heard enough. He was looking at me with an unbelieving expression.
"It's obvious what to do now," he said. I stared at him with much confusion.
He got up, sighing, turning away. A few minutes passed, before he turned back around, with a fairly simple explanation. "You prank her., again and again. Her reaction obviously disturbed you, and that isn't cool. So we come up with a great prank before your next Charms lesson, plain and simple."
So that as that. Blaise and I pulled our brains together to come up the perfect idea for pranking Lavender. The problem was we had way too many ideas. That's the best thing about being a Slytherin. Coming up with ideas to pester others is just too much of a simple task. The key was to pick the best one.
"Spiders on her cereal," Blaise said, pacing up and down, gazing out the window.
It was the morning of Friday, the day of my next Advanced Charms lesson, and Blaise and I still couldn't think of anything good enough. I looked up and saw Blaise staring at a spider web. We'd been reduced to getting our idea's from our common room. He turned and saw me looking.
"Sorry," he mumbled, frowning. "I think we've come up with nearly everything, but nothing is good enough yet. It seems so hopeless now. There's just nothing good enough, or original. I don't know about you, Draco, but I think we've come up with every single idea that there is that's decent. Let's just pick something and go with it."
"But we need something good," I whined, stressing it. "I want it to really annoy her. To the point that she is speechless."
I closed my eye's imagining her reaction. It was all too clear. What wasn't clear in my vision was what had caused her to become so speechless. It seemed to be non existent. This just caused more frustration, and I knew if I didn't come up with something soon, Blaise would give up.
However, a sudden cry interrupted my thoughts, and Blaise and I looked at each other, recognizing the cry. We both ran up the stairs, in the common room, to find Pansy sitting there and sulking, her gang of girls surrounding her. Blaise and I fought through the crowd to find shattered glass all around her, and her hand cut up.
"What happened?" Blaise demanded, as I sat next to Pansy, holding her in an attempt to calm her down. I looked up as all the girls gazed at Blaise, attempting to explain something about a package, containing a trick glass. Blaise and I looked at each other, alarmed.
"Take her to the hospital wing," I said, defiantly.
They marched her off while Blaise waved his wand around, sending the shattered pieces of glass into a bin, before sitting beside me, staring at the box in my hand. It contained those trick glasses, and I was immediately aware of them being from the Weasley's joke shop. The two W's being crossed together to form a hand gesture made it obvious.
"This is it!" Blaise exclaimed, s we continued to stare at the glasses is awe. "These are perfect for your prank, and they work to! You're doing glasses today, aren't you?"
He looked at me, and the excitement on his face described exactly how I felt. It must have been visible on my face, because Blaise didn't bother to wait for my answer. He took the box from my hands and stared at it.
"There are five of these things left!" he said, delightedly. "It's such a perfect plan! You can't even get caught for it, its perfect!"
"It means I have to get there early enough to switch the glasses," I replied, facing a slight problem. Blaise didn't seem to care though.
He looked at me, and started laughing. I didn't understand why. Then I realized I had told him my whole plan of annoying Lavender, and understood. Blaise realized that I understood, but took it in his own liberty to answer anyway.
"You ask Flitwick, like the good little boy you are, if it's alright for you to set up for him to save him time," he said.
We both looked at each other and began laughing. It was obvious that all this waiting, all this planning wasn't a waste of time after all. I knew it would work, and it was all I could think about through my first four lessons of the day. My vision of speechless Lavender now included her with a cut up hand. I smiled contently to myself, happy that the guilty feeling had vanished.
"So sir, is it okay that I set up today?"
After a rushed lunch, I'd raced up to the head of house table, explaining to Flitwick when I found him, how I wanted to help arrange the classroom. He didn't look like he agreed with this idea. I wasn't prepared to give up yet, so I went into one of those 'helping people is a new light for me' speeches. That was enough to fool that sucker!
"I'm very pleased by your enthusiasm, Mr. Malfoy," he said, taking me to his office. On the desk was a crate containing wine glasses. I smiled as I realized they were completely identical to the trick glasses. I picked up the crate, which pleased Flitwick, and we walked to the classroom. What happened next was enough to put a big smile on my face.
"There!" Professor Flitwick said happily. "The classroom's all set up for three. Now all we need is to place the glasses."
His face suddenly turned stony and I had a scary feeling he could tell I was planning something. That wasn't quite it though.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy; I seemed to have forgotten the books. Would you mind finishing setting up while I got grab them?"
"Not at all, sir" I replied, smiling my 'good boy' smile.
My smirk broke through, as he left, and I pulled out the box of the trick glasses. The thing about these glasses was they were fine to be touched by hands. Yet, the instant a drop of magic touched them; they'd shatter at the person casting the spell on them. I regrettably thought that it was a clever idea, coming out of those two blood traitors.
Flitwick and Lavender entered at the same time. It seemed such a long time since I'd last seen her. She hadn't changed much, but her eye's refused to meet mine. I felt satisfied that she was still remembering what happened the other day. I started to feel that if I had been a little more patient, I wouldn't have had to go through with the prank… nah, it was too much of a good idea to pass up.
"Good afternoon, Ms Brown, Mr. Malfoy," Flitwick said as we sat down.
"Afternoon sir," I replied cheerfully.
Lavender just mumbled quietly. I don't know what, but it was some kind of pathetic excuse for a 'good afternoon'. Flitwick didn't seem to care one bit though. He went right into our lesson, which was no problem with me. I'd been dreaming all morning of Lavender's reaction, and I didn't think I could wait much longer to actually see it.
"Last lesson, we practiced cutting up vegetables with charm spells as part of our first unit," he beamed at us, and I nodded smiling. I turned to see Lavender looking up at Flitwick intently, as if doing her best avoid looking at me. I was annoyed to find that she was good at this. It meant that I couldn't throw any tricks her way until we started summoning glasses. It was good Flitwick wasn't bad at moving on.
"Now, today we will be practicing pouring drinks into these glasses," Flitwick continued. Lavender looked up. Her eyes were round with confusion. She put her hand up slowly. "Yes, Ms Brown," he said, looking at her.
"Sir. We did this in Charms last year. It was in our exam," She muttered nervously, trying her to avoid looking at me. It was good for her she was so good at it. I had the biggest smirk on my face. She would surely have sulked if she'd seen it.
Meanwhile, Flitwick let out a little chuckle.
"Oh, I am quite aware of this, Lavender," he said. "However, as advanced Charms students, we will be doing this while charming the glass as well." Lavender looked at him alarmed, but he ignored this and went on. "Don't worry, if you think you might drop the glass, I have put a charm on the glasses this morning to stop them from shattering if they do fall."
He looked at us, smiling. "So, shall we begin?"
And that we did do. We both took some glasses, and began practicing our task. I watched Lavender carefully, successfully levitating three glasses. Number five glass was a trick glass, and I waited with great anticipation to see what happened.
"Look sir! Four glasses," she said merely, clearly enjoying beating me. I was surprised she didn't heed my warning about not even attempting to try and beat me. Silly little girl … she was going to get what was coming to her.
"Why don't you try for five, Ms Brown? That will be a first in Hogwarts history," Flitwick said excitedly.
I rolled my eyes, wanting to point out there had only have been two advanced charm classes before us, usually starting with kitchen charming last. I kept my mouth shut, excited for what was so to come.
It wasn't quite like what I expected. I suppose it was the actual explosion the blood traitors had been working on, more than the actual object they chose. The instant Lavender pointed her wand at the thing; a loud BANG went off, feeling the room with smoke, vanishing almost as quickly as it hard appeared.
"What just happened?" I coughed, trying to open my eyes. I gasped, to see Flitwick covering his face, blood pouring from it. "Sir!?" I gasped.
Lavender was standing exactly where she'd been, staring in disbelief and horror. It turns out Blaise and I weren't exactly right about the trick glasses. They shattered onto whoever was closest. In this case, Flitwick was the victim.
"I am so sorry sir!" Lavender cried. "I don't know how this happened!"
Once again, I'd left Lavender hysterical. Flitwick tried to calm her down, by saying everything was okay and Madam Promfery would fix him right up. Once he'd rushed off, I smiled contently.
"Oh, don't worry, Lavender," I cooed sweetly. "It was a simple mistake, I'm sure you wont be expelled or anything."
Lavender turned around, as red as a raging bull, glaring at me. I should of expected a tantrum, but I didn't expect me to be retaliating back. I'm just not usually like that at all. Lavender just brought out the anger in me.
"I know it was you! You slimy little ferret!" she roared. "I knew you were playing some kind of trick! You jinxed that glass, and that's why you wanted to come in early!"
"Oh what would you know?" I spat. "You're just jealous that I'm way smarter than you. You could never come up with such a genius plan like me."
"Wanna bet?!" she challenged.
"Yeah … I'll make a bet. A bet that you wouldn't be able to stay in this class much longer. You're pathetic to even attempt to think different." She stared at me for a while before turning away from me.
Flitwick returned, and helped us finish cleaning up, announcing we'd worked hard enough to deserve an early mark. As we packed our things, I distinctly heard Lavender hiss, "I hate that you're so rude to me."