Mockery
"This is utter rubbish," Draco said sulkily, pushing away his charms essay. He rubbed his throbbing temples with his fingertips and glanced up to see Blaise looking at him with concern.
"I'm so sick of this place, Zabini," he said. "What's the point? How is learning this shit going to help me in life? No one's going to hire me for anything worthwhile anyway, not with this on my arm," he growled, waving his left arm back and forth.
Draco loathed the ink buried in his skin, loathed it more than anything else about his situation in life – more than his father being in prison, more than his mother wasting away in their too-big manor, more than the utter pointlessness of finishing his education, more than the fact that everyone avoided him like the plague, even more than the fact that Blaise Zabini seemed stubbornly determined to be his friend.
Blaise said nothing, but Draco knew he was paying attention. "What am I doing here?" he sighed, resting his cheek on his fist and staring at the unfinished essay on the tabletop. He had the strangest desire to tear it shreds and throw it in the grate.
"Maybe this is just what you need to be doing," Zabini suggested. Draco sneered at him. Blaise was always spouting vague, useless advice. He was deplorable, and in that moment Draco hated him.
"Maybe this is what I need to be doing?" he asked, his voice mocking. "What I need to be doing is taking a hot bath," he added scornfully. Blaise frowned, looking almost wounded.
"Honestly, Zabini. You're such a girl sometimes," Draco added to drive the stake home.
"Piss off. Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself all the time," Blaise said shortly, standing up. "It's no wonder no one can stand you, Malfoy. You're such a child." And he walked away, leaving his homework behind, walking right out of the common room without a backward glance.
Draco stared after him in outrage. How dare he? Draco didn't see his father in prison or a feared and hated tattoo plastered on his arm. Zabini was free to do whatever he pleased. Draco was a pariah.
He snorted. Stupid Zabini. He acted like Draco wanted to be his friend. What use did he have for friends? They just got in the way. Or left. Or died.
He felt the faintest stirrings of unease as he flashed back to the hellish fire that had killed Crabbe. Then he shook it off. It was his own fault; he'd been the one stupid enough to cast the Fiendfyre in the first place. Shaking the memory away, Draco went back to the pointless task of finishing his essay.
[]-[]-[]
"What am I doing here?" Draco muttered, staring at the wall in front of him. He glanced around nervously; no one was anywhere to be seen in the deserted seventh floor corridor. "This is so stupid," he sighed, beginning to pace back and forth.
A door appeared on the third walk-by, just like always. Draco noticed something different about it though; it looked old, weathered, tired if a door could be tired. He touched it nervously. The wood was worn and splintered, charred. His fingers came away black with ash.
"Don't be a coward," he told himself angrily when he took a step back in fear. He swallowed hard. Just do it.
He turned the blackened handle and pushed the door open.
The Room of Requirement was a skeleton of the grand place it had once been. It was the same grand, high hall he'd once used to fix the Vanishing Cabinet, but now it was empty. The fire had eaten away everything in the room. He stared around him, fear prickling the back of his neck and making him sweat. He didn't know why he was afraid though, and that made him irritable. He took a step forward; he foot sank into the gray of the floor – it was covered in ash. He withdrew his foot immediately.
The room gave him an odd feeling he didn't have a name for. He was simultaneously frozen in the doorway and clinging to the top of a haphazard stack of rubble, watching Crabbe fall into the inferno below just second before jumping on the back of Potter's broom. His chest tightened painfully and his breathing was suddenly coming in short gasps. He felt ashamed to feel the wetness on his cheeks and brushed the tears away angrily.
A loud crack rang out, and Draco jumped violently. Whether the sound came from inside the room or not, Draco never knew and didn't stick around to find out. He backed out as fast as possible, slammed the door behind him and took off down the corridor at a run.
He didn't see the two sheepish third years, faces dirty with the ash from an exploding toy wand they'd found, round the corner at the other end of the hall.
[]-[]-[]
The months passed painfully slowly, and the snow melted as Hogwarts inched toward spring. Slytherin continued to lose Quidditch, mostly due to their captain's lack of interest in his team, and Blaise continued for awhile and then eventually stopped trying to talk to him. Draco made himself forget the incident in the Room of Requirement and once again immersed himself in self-imposed exile, avoiding his roommates and going down to the kitchens well past curfew for supper. When he wasn't hiding in his room, he took up residence in the darkest corner of the library, sometimes working, sometimes just brooding.
That particular evening, Draco caught a glimpse of the ceiling of the Great Hall as he crept past the double doors to the kitchens. Someone had left one of the doors ajar – probably one of the prefects on patrol. He paused in the doorway and glanced up at thousands of sparkling stars and a perfect crescent moon, not a cloud to be seen.
He stood for awhile just looking at the enchanted ceiling, and suddenly he remembered the last time he'd been in the hall after hours. Greengrass. Some unknown feeling made his chest tighten; he didn't like the feeling one bit, incorrectly associating it with the same feeling he'd experienced in the Room of Requirement so many months ago, so he shook himself and turned to leave. This was stupid. Who cared about her?
"Honestly," he muttered, annoyed with himself. He went down the kitchens to grab a sandwich.
On his way back the dungeons, he glanced up once more. A single cloud had skidded across the ceiling, blocking part of the moon.
"Get to bed, Malfoy."
Draco jumped, and his wand was in his hand before he had even turned halfway to see who it was.
"Put that away. I don't want to take points for attacking a prefect as well as being out of bounds after hours," Greengrass's cold voice came from the other end of his wand. Draco blinked and lowered it, and her face swam into view out of the darkness.
"What is it with you and sneaking up on people in here?" he snarled, abruptly furious with her. She snorted.
"I'm a prefect. I have reason to be here. You don't though. So go away. Five points from Slytherin."
Draco scowled at her. "Perfect Ravenclaw Prefect Greengrass," he sneered. "Your parents must be so proud."
She looked legitimately surprised, hearing her name, but the expression was only there a split second before her cool mask returned. "Wow, Malfoy. So you are capable of learning things. Who knew? Now get back to your common room." She turned and walked away, disappearing down the corridor before he could call her back.
Why would I want to call her back? Draco shook his head. She was the most ridiculous person he'd ever met.
[]-[]-[]
The year ended with little fanfare. McGonagall spoke during the farewell feast about how proud she was of everyone for enduring the complicated arrangements of classes and dormitories, and how she hoped everything would continue to run smoothly until Hogwarts was back on level.
Gryffindor won the Quidditch and House Cups of course. They made an awful noise in celebrating, and Draco swore even in bed that night he could hear the party happening in Gryffindor Tower.
On the train ride home, Draco made sure he was one of the first ones on the train, claiming an empty compartment for himself. Two fifth years had the audacity to ask if they could sit with him; he merely scowled at them until they walked away awkwardly.
The train was maybe twenty minutes outside London when the door to his compartment slid open.
"Go away," he said without looking up from his newspaper. Potter and Weasley were currently heading the operation of revolutionizing the Ministry; the story he'd been reading had been about Potter's "heroic efforts" to reform the Auror department.
"You're so friendly. It's a wonder no one can stand you, honest."
"What do you want, Greengrass?" he asked, finally gracing her with his gaze. She was already dressed in Muggle attire, her long brown hair pulled up in a ponytail. For a split second Draco recognized how pretty she looked with her hair away from her face like that. Then he scowled.
"Just checking in. A couple of kids said there was something nasty in this compartment, and what do you know? They were right."
"So clever," he sneered.
"Now that I know it's just your ugly mug, I'll leave you be," she assured him, tipping an imaginary hat before bowing and backing out the door as she slid it shut. Draco wasn't sure, but he thought she might have been mocking him.
So Draco does have feelings. He's just really bad at recognizing them. I don't know if I'll be updating again before I go back to school. Then again, the next chapter will probably be easier to write than this one because I already know how I want it to go. So we'll see. No promises.
Review if you liked it! Review if you loathed it. Review if kiwis sound really good right now...
-Megan