DRACO
"Draco!"
Draco groaned, batting at the hand on his shoulder.
"Draco, please, you'll be late for class!"
He blinked open his eyes. He was back in the Slytherin common room, and Crabbe was shaking him away urgently.
"C . . . class?" Draco slurred, his voice thick with sleep.
"Potions!" Goyle's face appeared over Crabbe's shoulder. "We'll be late for Potions and Snape will give you h—"
"I get it," Draco snapped. He dressed, found his bag, and ran for Potions. His stomach rumbled uncomfortably as the trio ran, and Crabbe heard it. He pulled a large chocolate square of . . .
"Brownie?" Draco gasped. He snatched the block out of Crabbe's hand and sniffed deeply. "Where did you get this?"
"It was on the table in the Great Hall," Crabbe said, stunned.
"No kidding," Draco breathed. He held the brownie up to the light, wondering if it was some kind of joke. Then he took a bite.
Flavor flooded his tongue, rich and chocolaty and delightful. If bliss could be turned into food this would be it. "I love it," he said, although it came out as "I wowfv ifth".
"I know," Goyle exclaimed enthusiastically, understanding him despite the mouthful of food. "It's great!"
"I wonder where the recipe came from," Crabbe added thoughtfully, stroking his chin in an attempt to look intelligent. All it did was make him look ridiculous. "I'd like to learn it."
Draco smiled inwardly in the silence. I know where it came from, and if you found out you'd barf.
As the quiet stretched on, he realized that Crabbe's statement was a cue for him to say something nasty. "You? Learn something?" He sneered. "I'd like to see you learn the alphabet."
"He knows the alphabet," Goyle protested.
"Yeah," Crabbe agreed. "A, B, C, D, B, X, Z, H, I, J, K, E, S—"
"That's enough," Draco said quickly, before it turned into Crabbe trying to come up with a letter, Goyle offering suggestions that the former waved away, and Draco trying to get them to class on time. It had happened before.
Someone brushed by him, head lowered. It was Tess; Draco recognized her because she wasn't wearing robes, just a simple gray sweater and black jeans, along with worn-out Converse.
"You go on ahead," Draco told Goyle. Crabbe was stuck on M, even though he'd said all the other letters.
"'Kay," Goyle said, nodding. "Crabbe. Crabbe! CRABBE! Yeah. Hi. Still here. We've got to get to Potions. . . ."
Draco didn't hear the rest of what Goyle was saying. He hurried after Tess, keeping several feet behind her and ducking into nooks every time she turned around. She was heading towards Ravenclaw tower . . . but at the entrance to the staircase, she turned left. Draco sped up. He jogged through the arch just in time to see Tess step furtively through the wall. He lunged forward and grabbed hold of her arm. With a sucking sound, he was falling. He landed on a trampoline and bounced to his feet instinctively, drawing his wand. Then, before he could do anything, he was pushed backwards into the stone wall behind him and the tip of a wand was pushed up to his throat, cutting off his breath. "How did you—oh. You."
Tess relaxed, lowering her wand. Draco found he could breathe normally again. He tucked his wand back into his robes slowly. "Me."
"Why did you follow me?"
There were tear tracks on her face. Draco wondered idly if she'd been crying again. Duh. Of course she had been. "Because . . . um . . . I wanted to see why you weren't going to Potions, or whatever your first class is."
"Well that's none of your business," Tess said sharply, "now is it?"
She spun, bouncing a little, and climbed down from the trampoline, and walked away. Draco hadn't really been paying attention to the rest of the room, but now as he watched her stalk into the middle of it, he looked around. They were in a huge room, quite unlike a typical Hogwarts room, and the walls were entirely bookshelves, except for a small patch behind him. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a small patch of tables, while closer to the bookshelves were chairs and couches, all with end tables on one side. The tables had built-in never-melting candles.
"Nice place," Draco commented.
"You're not supposed to be in here!" Tess whirled angrily, her green eyes blazing. Her hair was in a long over-the-shoulder braid. "This is a Ravenclaws only room!"
"What is it?" Draco asked, clambering down from the trampoline. He eyed the bookshelves and turned to Tess.
"A second Room of Requirement," Tess confessed. "But it's supposed to be only for people in Ravenclaw."
"Maybe it's kind of like the Fidelius Charm," Draco said. "If you Apparate inside the Fidelius Charm border thingy with someone else, then you're a Secret Keeper too, and you can bring people in. I was touching you when you went through the wall."
"How do you even know about the Fidelius Charm?" Tess demanded.
"It's on our house," Draco blurted. "So the Ministry can't fin—" He stopped when he realized what he'd been about to say. "So . . . um. . . ."
"I see," Tess said sarcastically. "Use your words. So the Ministry of Magic can't find you because your father's a Death Eater. Don't bother trying to deny it; Harry Potter—"
"Don't speak to me about Potter!" Draco shouted, disgust and anger mixing to form a very dangerous formula.
"Why not?" Tess asked calmly. "Do you hate him so much? Are you jealous that he's so famous and you're not? Even though Lucius Malfoy, who has close ties to the Minister of Magic and is a Death Eater, is your father, you just don't get any attention, but Harry 'Chosen One' Potter does. I know what your problem is, Draco."
Draco pulled himself up to his full height, about to say a few choice words to the short girl in front of him, but before he could, she plowed on. "Your problem's attention, Draco. You need attention. Lucius Malfoy's always going on about how he hates Harry Potter but he never pays attention to you. He didn't even congratulate you when you nearly killed me, a Mudblood . . ." Pity was showing in her eyes. "You want attention, Draco Malfoy." She shook her head, smiling sadly. "And you'll go to any lengths to get it."
Draco swallowed hard, feeling as if he'd ripped his heart from his chest, shoved it in Tess's face, and said, "READ THIS!" She had everything right. He just wanted to do something that would make his father pay attention to him.
"Do you need help with your homework?" Tess asked, acting as though she hadn't just bared his soul.
He couldn't speak, just pointed in the general direction of Potions.
"Nah," Tess said. "I've got off from classes for as long as I need, because of . . ." She trailed off, then continued: "And you're the teacher's pet. Snape won't give you detention." She crossed to one of the tables. What was with her? First she was shoving her wand into his throat, then acting like he was four, then telling him how he was feeling, and now she was trying to help him with his homework.
"I don't need help," Draco got out. His chest felt like Crabbe was sitting on it. He slowly joined her at the table, sitting opposite her, and dumped his bag on the seat beside him. "You got anything on the Wolfsbane Potion?"
"Oh, yeah . . ." Tess looked around distantly. "It was here somewhere . . ." A book floated off the shelf behind her and placed itself on the table between them. Draco picked it up. "A Guide to Defense Against the Dark Arts: Everything (Spells, Potions, etc.) You Will Ever Need to Know? Isn't that a little presumptuous?"
"Well, look at the size of it," Tess pointed out. "It's approximately six inches thick. Do you have a spare quill?" She had a piece of parchment in front of her. Draco dug into his bag and came up with a dark gray quill with white spots.
They worked in silence for several hours, and by the time Draco was done his essay, it was ten scrolls long instead of three. He had crammed every single scrap of information in that he could.
"Wow," Tess exclaimed, standing and bending over his stack of scrolls. "That's a lot."
"I know," Draco said ruefully. "I have no idea how I'm going to be able to fit them in my bag."
"Let me see it." Without waiting for him to give it to her, Tess took his bag and unceremoniously dumped out its contents. Then she shoved her wand in the bag, muttering a few words. Then she stuck her head in it. "Oh, yeah," she crowed, her voice muffled. "I did it!" She proceeded to tuck her entire body in. "I DID IT!"
Draco reached across the table and pulled the bag off of her. "What did you do?"
"I cast an Undetectable Extension Charm on it," Tess gasped, her hair frizzed from being in the bag. "Go on, stick your arm in!"
Draco tentatively did. His arm went all the way in. "Holy—how did you that?"
"It may be a bit difficult to keep track of things," Tess admitted, "but it's plenty big enough."
Draco loaded all the contents and peered inside. "There's still room," he exclaimed.
"Yeah." Tess looked pleased with herself.
"Will I be able to put Perch in here without losing him?" Draco asked, glancing up from the bag.
"P—what? Who?"
"Perch," Draco said. Then he realized that Tess didn't know who Perch was. He delved into his pocket and pulled out the pet rock, already whispering the activation word. He placed Perch on the table and let him explore.
"You have one too?" Tess exclaimed. A smile crossed her face and she also took out her pet rock. "I named mine Glaedr."
The two dragonlike pets approached each other warily, sniffing the other's nose. Slowly Perch stepped back.
Glaedr ran around Perch, stopping in front of Draco. He bared his teeth and bit down on Draco's finger, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hurt.
"Glaedr!" Tess exclaimed, lunging across the table. She tried to snatch her rock away, but Glaedr didn't let go for a full two minutes.
"I'm really sorry," Tess apologized, cradling Glaedr up to her chest (this was after he let go). "I didn't think—OW!"
Perch had fastened himself to her finger.
"Whoa, whoa," Draco said softly, touching his rock's back with one finger. "Let go, little buddy."
There was a short intake of breath from Tess.
"This shows that I like her. It was the same with Glaedr."
Draco stumbled backward, all the blood leaving his face. He tripped over his chair and almost fell down, but caught himself before he hit the floor. He wracked his mind for an explanation, but the only one he could come up with was that Perch had telepathically talked to him.
Tess was wearing an expression that matched what Draco was feeling. "Glaedr talked . . ."
"So did Perch," Draco said slowly.
They sat in silence, staring at their rock pets. Suddenly Perch let go of Tess's finger and she sighed in relief. "Ow.
"So you like Coldplay?" Tess said, absently scratching Glaedr's chin.
How did she find out? This girl knows everything! "How'd you know?"
Tess explained how Draco had said I believe in miracles and she knew that was close to one of the lines from Miracles, a Coldplay song, and that it was her who played Violet Hill that one day in the Great Hall, and she'd seen him mouthing the words, so he either liked Coldplay or he was forced to listen to it every day.
Draco leaned back in his chair, shaking his head slowly. "You are brilliant," he told her, awe creeping into his voice. "Remarkably amazingly terrifically wondrously brilliant."
Tess locked gazes with him. Then she blushed, smiling.
"Someone is looking for you!" Perch's voice echoed through Draco's head and he rubbed his temples. This telepathy thing was going to take some getting used to. He scooped up his pet rock, slung his bag over his shoulder, and looked around for the exit. "How do I get out?"
"Better hurry, Draco . . . you're about to miss Quidditch practice. . . ."
"Over there," Tess said, pointing at the wall behind the trampoline. "There's a ladder. Why?"
"I'm about to miss Quidditch practice," Draco said. He ran to the trampoline, shot on, and scrambled up the ladder. "Thanks! Bye!"
He passed through the wall and hurtled to Quidditch practice, pausing only to cast the Summoning Charm to get his broom. It caught up with him as he was running out onto the Quidditch pitch. He dropped his bag, shoved Perch in his pocket, and vaulted onto his broomstick.
"Took you long enough," Urquhart called. "We're skirmishing Hufflepuff as practice and we've had to use Harper!"
"Couldn't find my broom," Draco lied smoothly. He joined the Captain and looked around. "Where is Hufflepuff, anyway?"
"Taking a time out," Urquhart informed him. "The Keeper took a Bludger to the nose."
"Nice." He felt sick. Not nice at all.
"Yeah."
They floated side by side for a while. When Hufflepuff didn't show for ten minutes, Draco took off around the pitch, enjoying the wind in his hair. Finally Hufflepuff shot back onto the pitch. The Keeper looked fine.
"Blow it, Harper," Urquhart called down to where Harper had landed on the grass.
Harper lifted a whistle to his lips and blew hard. The note was okay at first, but then it became piercing. Draco winced, his hands automatically going to his ears. The Snitch buzzed past his nose.
Instantly he was on alert. He grabbed at it, but it flitted out of his reach. The Hufflepuff Seeker, Summerby, whipped past his broom with an outstretched hand.
Draco raced after Summerby, overtaking him easily. He spurred his Nimbus Two Thousand and One faster until he was next to the Snitch. He reached out—
The Snitch dropped at least one hundred feet. Draco dove after it. He reached out again and clasped the Snitch in his hand, pulling up sharply when he had it. "Yes!"
Of course, it wasn't a real game, but he felt good all the same. And Summerby was a twit anyway. Thought he was the best in school. Maybe this spectacular defeat would take him down a few notches.
"Why are you so excited?" Summerby asked. "This isn't a real game."
"It may as well be," Draco retorted, "because I'm going to be just as good when we play each other in May."
"I feel sick," Draco groaned. He absently rubbed the inside of his left forearm, staring at the piece of toast on his plate. He hadn't touched it.
"You okay?" Crabbe was stuffing his face with eggs and French toast washed down by a mixture of pumpkin and pear juice.
"I don't think so."
"You should see Madam Pomfrey," Goyle suggested.
"It's not that bad," Draco said, feigning a brave face. "Maybe I'll just go to Potions with you . . ."
"Not if you feel bad," Crabbe protested, spraying eggs across the table.
"Eurgh." Draco swallowed hard, like he was trying not to throw up, and stood abruptly. "Allergic reaction to something maybe—"
He clapped his hand over his mouth and sprinted from the hall. Once outside, he ran a few paces, glancing over his shoulder, and stopped. No one was following him; he dropped the sick act and took off running. He had decided to go to Hogsmeade. How Draco was going to get out without being caught, he had no idea, but he'd think of something.
He ran for the dungeons. Maybe someone had a sort of . . . oh. Duh. He'd hated going in, but he'd visited Fred and George Weasley's joke shop, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and bought a lot of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. When he reached the Slytherin boys' dormitories, he kicked open his trunk, grabbed three of the containers, and ran back out. He had less than a minute to get to the gates down to Hogsmeade.
The caretaker, Argus Filch, was just closing the gates when Draco arrived. He threw a pellet down and ran on. By the time the darkness cleared, Draco was in Hogsmeade, lying in the snow and staring up at the cloudy sky, trying to catch his breath.
At last he got up and went to look around. He spotted a nice looking bookstore, Tomes and Scrolls, and decided to take a look. There wasn't much of interest. He also went into Zonko's Joke Shop, but nothing appeared to him there either. So he went into Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop, where he bought a packet of quills and a fancy snake inkpot for himself. Then, completely out of ideas, he went into Honeydukes.
Tess liked chocolate, right? He browsed the chocolate section and came across a large box of chocolates and truffles. According to the box, as soon as you ate one, another popped up in its place. He bought it (it was six Galleons!) and went back up to the castle, properly equipped. He stopped fifty feet from the gates, though, hidden behind a bush. Filch was prowling around the gate, glaring and muttering. Draco put his packages on the ground, pulled a pellet of the Instant Darkness Powder out of his pocket, and threw it at the stone archway. It shattered.
Again, he ran through the gates in the cover of darkness. Again, by the time the black had faded, revealing a ranting and raving Filch, Draco was long gone.
Draco woke early on Christmas Day, looking at the stone walls of the dormitory. He'd signed up to go home, then canceled at the very last second, leaving Crabbe and Goyle to get on the train by themselves. The oafs would live.
He scrambled to the end of his bed. There were only a few packages, but it was to be expected. Who gave gifts to a Slytherin? There was a present from Mum, Dad, Aunt Bellatrix (ew, why would she give him a present?), one from a random family member he'd never met, and one from Tess. He stared at the small package in surprise and confusion. Girls could be so perplexing. He placed the package on his bed and tore open the one from his mother. It was a black leather-bound notebook that looked a lot like a diary and a round Muggle speaker.
"Oh, god," he muttered. "Really? You couldn't send me anything better?" His mother always gave him a diary for Christmas. He'd turned them into notebooks depicting what he was going to do to his enemies. He put the diary on his bed, reaching for the one from his father. It was a biography of Salazar Slytherin. Draco looked at it with disgust. How complete was it going to be? No one knew about much of anything that the founder of Slytherin did, other that create Slytherin and cast himself away from the rest.
Tossing the book on the bed behind him, he opened Aunt Bellatrix's present with growing tension. The last time she had sent him a present, it had been a Venomous Tentacula. Draco had been in his first year. This year, though, it was something Muggles called an iPod Touch. It must have been magically modified, though, because when he tried to turn it on, it worked, and technology didn't work at Hogwarts because of the magical field around it. He went into the app called Music and proceeded to buy every Coldplay song there was. Then he listened to Miracles as he unwrapped Tess's present. It was three large bars of Honeydukes' chocolate. Draco unwrapped one instantly and started eating it. If need be, these things could sustain him for a week.
When he went up to the Great Hall, it was surprisingly empty. There were only a few people at each table. There was no one at the Slytherin table. He was about to steel himself to go over to the Ravenclaw table when someone pushed on his shoulders, forcing him to sit in his seat. Then Tess sat down next to him. "Happy Christmas, Draco."
"Happy Christmas, Theresa." With a jolt, Draco realized that Tess was calling him by his first name instead of his last. Was this a good thing or bad?
She either liked or ignored his calling her Theresa, because she made no comment about it, instead standing to better reach a platter of small spheres of chocolate. She placed it in front of them, bit into one, and nodded. "I thought so. Oreo snowballs. Try one; they're really good. I've been teaching the house elves in the kitchen some dessert recipes. I think my brownies are down on the end. . . ."
Draco heaped his plate with Oreo snowballs and Tess's brownies, not even glancing at the breakfast foods. After breakfast they went out onto the Quidditch pitch and raced each other.
"I got your present," Draco shouted over the wind roaring in their ears.
"I got yours too," Tess yelled back. Draco did a sort of barrel roll under her broomstick, coming up on the other side. It was starting to snow; there was already a blanket of white on the ground below them.
"Do you like it?" Draco called.
"Haven't tried one," Tess admitted. "What else did you get?"
"An iPod touch, a book about Salazar Slytherin, and a diary!"
Tess burst out laughing, pulling up sharply. "A diary?"
Draco nodded sullenly, stopping also. "My mother sends me one every year. The past few years I've turned them into notebooks depicting what I'm going to do to my enemies."
"I see," Tess said. She was bent over her broom, she was laughing so hard. "And that doesn't count as a diary? HA! A diary . . . oh, wait until I tell the whole school . . . Draco Malfoy got a diary for Christmas. . . ."
"Please don't," Draco said. Trying to change pace, he asked, "What did you get?"
Thankfully, Tess let the subject drop. "Not much. A book from Quinn and a necklace from Raven."
A necklace, Draco mused.
"I thought up this really cool maneuver last night," Tess said. "Want to try it out?"
Draco nodded. Tess spun around and dove, landing on the ground lightly. Draco dropped too. He started to dismount, like Tess, but she held up a hand. "Don't get off. I want you to circle the pitch at about one hundred feet in the air. When reach the hoops behind me, start descending. By the time you get to me, you should be about a foot from the ground. Stay at the same speed, though. You got that?"
"I suppose," Draco said doubtfully. "What will you be doing?"
"You'll see. Just don't forget to hold on. Now go!"
Draco took off, rising acutely through the snow. He did as Tess had asked, flying fast and high until he got to the hoops, where he stayed at the same speed but started declining. As he shot past Tess, she jumped and swung herself on behind him, wrapping her arms around his stomach. "See?" she said in his ear. "Simple. You want to try?"
Draco looked over his shoulder. "Not really . . . I'll leave the jumping to you."
"What if something bad happens and I have to fly?" Tess challenged. Her green eyes were bright. "You have to learn to jump on."
Draco swallowed. "Okay. Just don't be surprised if I knock you off."
"I won't," Tess assured him. "You're so clumsy—"
"Oh, hush," Draco snapped good-naturedly before she could go on.
He steered the broom down to the ground and dismounted, leaving Tess on. "You just have to time it right," she said, offering a smile. Then she was off, zipping around the pitch like she had sixteen dementors on her tail.
Draco closed his eyes, sure he was going to fail. When Tess came racing towards him, he steeled himself and jumped, swinging his leg over the broom and instinctively grabbing onto something—anything.
Then Tess was whooping and taking the broom in loop-de-loops. "You did it, Draco! I'm actually very surprised."
"Don't be," Draco said, opening his eyes. He was hugging Tess so hard he figured she was having trouble breathing, his chin resting on her shoulder. Abruptly he let go, dropping onto the Firebolt, which was beneath them. He rose up until he was neck and neck with Tess. "Let's switch!" he hollered.
"You read my mind," Tess replied. Carefully Draco stood on the Firebolt. Then they both jumped, back to their own brooms. Draco nearly missed and had to grab onto his like it was a gymnastics bar, then pull himself up as best he could. Then, flying close to one another, Tess and Draco high-fived.
A/N: Please keep in mind that this is an alternate universe, so Draco is nicer here, in case you were freaking out like "HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT!"