Hey, everyone. I'll just add two following chapters to make you better see my way of writing. I just added some personal progress and hope that you will like !
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Draco breathed out slowly. He shortly considered tripping this Dumbledore girl up, that she would know how to act in front of him, but he thought of that as too much effort. He smirked. Poor girl, she lost her parents lately. But her family was one out of hundred, out of thousands which would follow, when the Dark Lord took all over.
Draco sighed and his palms grew sweaty.
Leave your thoughts be, Draco, he said to himself, as very vivid but cruel pictures raised in his memories. He shook his head angrily to shy them away.
He wouldn't make his coat dirty because of that little Dumbledore girl. There was so much left to do, which he had to care more about.
Several times he'd already skipped McGonagall's or Snape's classes, who was announced to be the new Defence of Dark Arts teacher, but he didn't really care about it. These classes had their only advantage of how easily he could skip them, because Snape would never dare to denigrate one of his favourite students. So he now could easily concentrate on his task.
He must not fail, or his days would be numbered sooner as he liked them to be.
Draco smiled to himself. He was well prepared and he would not fail.
He felt it deep in his heart.
"You have to flick your wand with a more delicate movement, just limp-wristed!", Hermione grizzled with a vicious smile as Alanis tried to dye her left eyebrow green and her right one purple. In fact, Hermione and Alanis always pushed up one another to get best performances, especially at Transfiguration.
Alanis just gave her an annoyed smile and quickly tried to prevent her eyebrow from growing exuberantly until it would cover half of her face. But she didn't even look worse than Ronald did. He managed to let himself grow a gorgeous yellow beard which definitely did not match with his red hair.
Hermione snorted with laughter, as well as Alanis and Harry did, as a bunch of yellow hair grew out of his ears too, which made him look like a straw man. Ron threw his hand mirror at the girls, but Alanis quickly transformed it into a big iridescent butterfly.
"How dare you throw a mirror at your classmates, Mr Weasley! Five points from Gryffindor!", Professor McGonagall shouted angrily, reached out and if she called it, the butterfly sat down on her hand."And fifteen points for you, Miss Dumbledore, for this beautiful charm!"
Hermione's expression grew sour. Alanis just patted her back, grinning haughtily and Hermione shivered.
"Ok, yes, it was a beautiful charm!", she mumbled and quickly changed her eyebrows into pink ones.
Harry later elbowed Alanis, as the friends retired to the common room, while Hermione tried to help Ron getting rid of his hairy problem, hardly suppressing her laughter.
"That was amazing! You definitely would be missing, if you weren't here, Alanis."
Alanis blushed slightly.
"Thank you, Harry."
They sat down in the big armchairs at the fireplace and Hermione quickly began to write the essay on the Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration they got for homework.
"Apropos missing, did you notice Malfoy skipping the classes today?", Alanis continued, Harry and Ron nodded, Hermione otherwise pretended to suddenly be deaf. She knew what Alanis was starting with this few words and she was really annoyed from it.
"I hope he won't be playing for Slytherin the next week. There've been some rumours that he even paid Harper to take his position over!", Ron said and rubbed his chin as if he still felt that awful beard.
Harry cocked his eyebrows.
"He paid someone to replace him?", Harry repeated excitedly.
Harry had this strange conviction that Draco Malfoy had just become a death eater like his father and was trying to concoct something by Voldemort ordering him to do so. Malfoy's strange behaviour that he displayed gave Harry enough evidence to claim him having now entirely thrown himself to the dark side.
Hermione was reluctant to believe that and even Ron had his doubts. Alanis was undecided with her opinion because she hardly knew anyone at Hogwarts, perhaps except her friends.
But would some powerful dark mage like Voldemort even care about a young boy like Malfoy? Wouldn't he be a waste of time? Why should Voldemort assign a task to a sixteen year old boy who had just grown out of his diapers?
"I just don't want him to play next week. It's just an advantage we have for the game.", Ron said nervously and rubbed his hands as if he imagined him playing Quidditch. Alanis was very surprised that Ron made it to the Gryffindors keeper, because Ron's biggest enemy was he himself. He was just a nervous wreck and seemed to lose his mind even more with every day the game came closer. Lavender Brown, to Hermione's annoyance, seemed to admire Ron even for that lack of self-confidence.
"Malfoy always loved it to play Quidditch and attract a great deal of attention to himself playing in the Slytherins team. He really must have good reason to skip it, especially a game versus Gryffindor.", Harry said, not wanting to drop that conversation.
"I suppose he will say that he's ill."
"I think the only ones being ill are you both. Just leave that silly presumptions of Malfoy be! You have to care about other things, like school! You're not done just with your O.W.L.s, you have to focus on the N.E.W.T.S.!", Hermione said angrily, looking up from her piece of parchment, gripping her quill so hard that ink dropped down on her skirt.
"But Harry's got good reasons, Hermione. And with his explanation, everything seems to fit, even Malfoy's unusual mood.", Alanis said.
"Look, Hermione, even Alanis agrees! There's no better thing than hanging around and slag Malfoy off."
Hermione squinted her eyes.
"That seems to be quite nice, Ronald, but I won't be messing around, wasting my time with talking about an unimportant bloody ferret. If you're likely to do, you can be sure that you'll have to face the consequences and results at the end of this year!
"Hermione, what did you do to yourself in the Transfiguration lesson? Did you want to change your mind into Percy's? You should ask Alanis to change it back into a far more chummy one!", Ron grumbled and as if he made the funniest joke of all time, Lavender Brown giggled from the back of the room and smiled at Ron, who blushed, obviously very satisfied with himself.
But Hermione didn't laugh at all. She broke her quill into two pieces, grabbed all her stuff, plugged it into her bag and rushed out of the common room, with waving fuzzy hair.
Alanis looked at Harry, who as much seemed to be embarrassed and as well not appreciating Ron's comment. But she wasn't able to bear the uncomfortable silence between them and desperately wanted to wipe Ron's priggish look off his face. Alanis cleared her throat:
"When do we visit Hogsmeade?"
"Do you urge to get back to Hogsmeade? It can't be special to you, you've stayed there for months!", Ron said.
Alanis grunted. How compassionate Ronald was! But in fact, Alanis had lived with her grandpa for three months before she attended Hogwarts school and it was true that she hated being at the Hog's Head.
"Perhaps, Ronald, I want to go there because I'm as tired as you are from school and want to get some free time, without that aurors observing us even going to the toilet! Besides, I have to visit my grandfather."
Harry cocked his eyebrows.
"I thought you can't abide him?", he asked astonished.
"He's my grandpa and I have to try to come up with him. I still have to be with him for one and a half year until I've finished with school.", Alanis shrugged.
In fact, Alanis already surrendered with her will to be kind and friendly to Aberforth, because she never ever got a glimpse back. Aberforth seemed to be mostly reluctant of having to put her under his wings and therefore they quickly transformed to simple feathers.
Harry nodded understandingly, but she knew that he still had his problems with the Dursley's too. And even after all the things that they've done to him, after they treated him like an unpleasant attachment, they still were part of his family and she knew that he even would try to protect them if they were in danger.
"And perhaps he will welcome me with some mulled mead and cauldron cakes, at least.", she said and smiled sadly, standing up and grabbing her bag. "I'm off for Hermione."
Alanis suggested Hermione being in the library, but there was no sign of her. They both loved that place, the ancient knowledge hidden there, safely stored on the room-high shelves. As she passed the restricted section, she could hear the very angry voice of Draco Malfoy and stepped closer.
"I have this permission of Professor Snape to enter, woman! Let me go through!", he ordered with a harsh voice, but Madam Pince was just as insistent.
"The aurors closed that area to prevent little prying students like you to get into contact with things that they should not know! And there are no exceptions, even if you have a permission!"
Alanis saw Draco swallowing down his anger.
"I just want to read about foeglasses for my DADA essay!"
Alanis supposed that this was a lie, because there was no DADA essay like that, but it hid the truth about his concern. Perhaps he did want to know about magical artefacts, but none of the good ones, if he wanted to look them up in the restricted section.
"Well, you then just have to get along with the common books. But you surely would be so kind searching them by yourself, would you?"
And with that Madam Pomfrey rushed away to shy away some first classes who dared to enter the library with a package of acid pops. Malfoy seemed to be very upset and turned around his heel, but obviously undecided about what he should do next. Alanis sighed, grabbed a book from a shelf and walked to him.
"Malfoy."
As he noticed her beneath him, he backed away. She held out that book she took before and waited until he would accept it.
"What do you want?", he spat at her, but Alanis didn't answer.
She just put it on the table beneath them and left the library, not very clear with herself what had driven her to help Draco Malfoy finding a book he wanted, or perhaps which he pretended to find. Maybe it could serve him.
It's Harry's fault, she told herself.
Except the death of her parents, she never faced any dark forces or even realized how dangerous they could be. She did not know them, and therefore wanted to investigate them. Draco Malfoy seemed to be a part of it and therefore her best source. Whatever he concocted, even if he did, she wanted to help Harry finding out. She wanted to support Harry defeating the dark, for her own sake, that she could avenge her family's death.
That's why she wasn't able not paying attention to Draco Malfoy.