He is about to get mad. "Do you realise who you're talking to?"
"Double Potions, with the Gryffindors," says Draco, looking up from his timetable with a grin.
Ted, while putting together his breakfast cereal, returns his grin. "Well then, we're curious how the great Harry Potter's doing in class."
In fact, Draco hopes that Potter turns out to be a lousy student, otherwise he might think too much of himself. Even the teachers stumble over their own feet when he walks by and gape at him in awe as if he were a damn miracle!
Of course, Draco knows as little as anyone else what really happened ten years ago, but he shares his mother's view: the Dark Lord was NOT killed by a one-year-old child. Someone or something must have helped him, but most people are idiots who believe what they want to believe.
And what is more, Potter looks like a nobody who is not even able to comb his hair properly. He grew up with Muggle relatives, however, from which a civilised behaviour cannot be expected anyway.
"Potions is already my favourite subject," declares Draco.
Blaise Zabini yawns. "How do you know that?"
"First, it's taught by the best teacher in the whole school. Second, as Grandfather Abraxas would sometimes let me help preparing a potion, I'm familiar with some ingredients and active substances. And third, the other subjects aren't an option really."
"I think Charms is okay," says Ted. "And in History, we can at least have a nap."
Zabini grumbles in agreement, while Crabbe is fully engrossed in his bowl of porridge, and as for Goyle, Draco isn't sure whether he's just staring into space or actually sleeping with his eyes open. On the other hand, who could blame him after yesterday's Astronomy class didn't start until midnight? At least, Draco got five points for Slytherin, because he could name the constellations they studied with their telescopes.
The most difficult subject so far has been Transfiguration. In her first lesson, McGonagall demonstrated her Animagus skills and welcomed the students in the shape of a grey tabby cat. Quite an impressive performance, even if Draco doesn't really like cats. But the rest of the lesson was rather sobering. After a speech on what she will not tolerate in her class, she set them the task of turning matches into needles. None of them came even close to succeeding. The only match that changed at all was Crabbe's - it went up in flames. McGonagall was not amused.
The biggest disappointment, however, was Defence Against the Dark Arts with "Professor" Quirrell, whose classroom stinks of garlic, as he's allegedly chased by a vampire from Romania. Furthermore, it was tedious to follow Quirrell's words; he was unable to form a single sentence without stuttering and kept losing the thread so no one knew what he was getting at. And when Goyle had to sneeze, Quirrell was so startled, they thought he'd have a heart attack.
Draco begins to understand why his father wanted to send him to Durmstrang, a boarding school in Eastern Europe. The curriculum is said to be very demanding there, and they reasonably do not accept Muggle-born students, who, at Hogwarts, breathe the same air as the pure-bloods as a matter of course.
Still, his mother insisted that Draco attends Hogwarts, which isn't that far away from home. And even if his father would never admit it, she always has the last word. He knows it, Draco knows it, and probably all of England knows it.
"When does training start, Flint?" asks John Bletchley who sits near them, and Draco pricks up his ears.
Marcus Flint, a dark-haired student who has to repeat fifth grade this year, replies, "Tomorrow. Snape has blocked the field for us for the next three Saturday mornings. Looks like Wood has to throw over his schedule."
Bletchley snorts. "He better finds a new Seeker! Speaking of new, how is Miles doing?"
"I have nothing to complain about. He is fast, focused and fits in well with the team."
"I just hope you'll give him time to learn. Everyone knows you like to overdo it."
"Are you going all big brother now? He'll be fine," says Flint, lowering his voice. "To be honest, I'm more worried about Higgs right now."
Draco clears his throat. "Are you the team captain?"
Flint turns to him. "And if so, what do you care?"
The other boys look expectantly, too.
"I want to apply for the team."
Now even Crabbe stops his breakfast.
Flint bursts out laughing. "Of course you do! They all do, but I'll tell you a secret, kid: first-years will not be admitted. For all I care, you can collect the balls after training."
Normally, Draco would give that bigmouth an appropriate answer, but he's not stupid enough to mess with the Quidditch team captain.
"Told you so," Ted murmurs, whereupon Draco gives him a deadly look.
Bletchley whispers something in Flint's ear, but he just rolls his eyes. "He could be Salazar himself - I collect trophies, John, not names."
The Prefect winks at Draco. "Don't take it personally, the Slytherin team is something like the love of Flint's life."
Flints wants to respond, but the next moment, everyone turns towards the entrance. Wingbeats can be heard. They're getting louder, and suddenly, hundreds of owls are flying into the Great Hall. Draco has never seen so many of them, probably because all parents of the first-years have sent their replies. His mood improves instantly.
It's raining envelopes and small packages. Ted, Crabbe and even Goyle get letters, while Zabini sprays himself with the men's perfume his mother has sent him. Pansy Parkinson receives a pile of magazines which all girls around her pounce on with enthusiasm.
Perseus, the Malfoy's eagle owl, drops a letter sealed with the family crest and a package from Sugarplum's Sweet Shop onto Draco's toast. He puts the sweets in the middle of the table. "Help yourselves."
Immediately, the others go for the Liquorice Wands, Blowing Gums and Jelly Slugs, while Draco places his finger on the letter's enchanted seal, which can only be opened by family members. Seconds later, he unfolds the high-quality parchment, written in his father's unfussy handwriting.
Draco,
congratulations on being sorted into Slytherin and upholding our tradition.
In the light of your previous, cost-intensive private tuition, we can expect that your performance will be among the best in your class.
As for Harry Potter, you have nothing to reproach yourself for. It should not be your problem if he prefers to bother with the social underclass. You will do well to stick to your comrades and classmates from respectable families.
Although it seems a little premature to express your Christmas wish, we keep it in mind - provided we receive positive feedback about you from Professor Snape.
Father & Mother
Grinning, Draco puts the letter into his robes. Of course his parents will give him the brand-new racing broom for Christmas.
This summer he had admired the Nimbus Two Thousand from outside of Quality Quidditch Supplies, but unlike the other kids who pressed their noses against the shop window, Draco has parents who can buy him anything he wants. And he gets what he wants. Like he has always done.
Ten minutes later, they enter the Potions classroom. It is only lit by torches, like the rest of the dungeon. The shelves are full of potion ingredients, pickled creatures and strange-looking objects, and in the corner there's a gargoyle.
The Gryffindors huddle in the back rows, looking around anxiously. They also seem to be surprised by the cold down here.
Suddenly, the door flies open with a bang and the whispers stop. With hasty steps, as if something were about to explode behind him, Snape crosses the room, with his long black robes fluttering. He stands in front of the teacher's desk, eyeing the students like they were a nasty disease. Then he begins, in a quiet but urgent voice, to take the register.
Draco returns his nod of greeting shortly afterwards, looking around smugly.
"Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new - celebrity," Snape says a moment later, and Draco chuckles to himself.
After he has finished calling the roll, Snape's dark eyes wander through the rows. "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making." His voice has a threatening undertone. Unlikely that anyone would dare not to pay attention.
"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses."
Obviously, stirring in a cauldron behaves to Snape such as playing Quidditch to Flint.
"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
Draco's gaze falls on Goyle, who listens fascinated.
"Potter!" Snape says suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Asphodel, wormwood … a sleeping potion!
Draco looks over his shoulder. The hand of Hermione Granger, a Gryffindor girl with a wild hairstyle, shoots up in the air.
"I don't know, sir," says Potter, slightly startled.
Snape's lips curl into a sardonic smile. "Tut, tut - fame clearly isn't everything."
Draco gloats.
"Let's try again, Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
"I don't know, sir," Potter repeats.
That's what comes from growing up with Muggles.
"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?"
The Slytherins laugh softly.
"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
Granger raises her hand so high, she almost touches the ceiling. But judging by the look on her face, it might be that she just really needs to go to the bathroom.
"I don't know," says Potter again. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try her?"
Ronald Weasley giggles, but Snape silences him with an icy look. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Dead. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"
A loud rummaging for parchment and quills follows.
"And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter."
Draco wonders if they'll be able to unscrew the grin off his face in the hospital wing.
In the course of the lesson, the students have to brew a simple potion to cure boils. Step by step, Draco follows the instructions in his textbook, weighing dried nettles and crushing the fangs of a snake. He and Crabbe prepare the ingredients twice and, when Snape isn't looking, pass the other half over to Goyle, who is staring helplessly at his book.
A few minutes later, Snape scurries through the rows to inspect the results. He stops in front of Draco's cauldron, nods in satisfaction and turns to the class. "See how exemplarily Mr Malfoy stewed his -"
HISS - BANG!
Suddenly, the dungeon fills with poison-green clouds of smoke - Neville Longbottom has somehow managed to melt his cauldron into a shapeless lump. The corrosive liquid is now seeping across the stone floor and the students hastily climb onto their stools.
"Moron," Zabini snorts.
Draco gets furious; Snape was just about to praise him in front of the class!
"Idiot boy!" shouts Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with a wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"
Longbottom quietly cries to himself. He's been spattered with his brew, and red boils start to pop up all over his arms and face, making him barely recognisable.
"Take him to the hospital wing," Snape snaps at his partner Seamus Finnigan and turns to Potter and Weasley, who had been working at the table next to them. "You - Potter - why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."
Ha!
Indignantly, Potter opens his mouth, but then wisely decides not to say anything.
After writing an essay on why the precise order of ingredients added to the cauldron is essential, the lesson is over. The Gryffindors flee from the classroom as if they'd been released from prison.
Through a corridor opposite the Great Hall, Draco and the others get to the empty courtyard. It is surrounded by cloister-like walls and columns and lies at the base of a clock tower, whose bell announces the beginning and end of classes and curfew. In the centre, there is a pear tree and an antique white fountain, and at the end of the courtyard, a slope leads down to the lake.
The boys plop down on the edge of the fountain, while the girls squeeze onto a narrow stone bench and flip through Parkinson's magazines, giggling and cackling. They remind Draco of chickens.
While opening a box of Bertie Bott's, Crabbe mimics Longbottom, "Professor, help, my face is burning!"
Goyle laughs like a horse. "They should be called Gryffindorks, hahaha!"
"Have you seen Weasley?" Zabini asks. "I thought he was going to cry."
Draco snorts. "He and his nineteen siblings are lucky that the Ministry covers Hogwarts' tuition fee. Filthy blood traitors."
"Exactly, they're free to leave if they love Muggles so much" says Ted, looking as if he had a nasty smell in his nose. "And they can take the Mudbloods with them."
"We should lock them all up into that forbidden corridor and see what happens," Crabbe suggests, stuffing a handful of beans in his mouth, half of which are falling to the ground.
"Too bad the whole thing is just a joke," says Draco. "You know that my father is Chairman of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, and he never said anything about such a - WAAH!"
Something has slipped under Draco's robes from behind and brushes his legs. He leaps and almost stumbles over a little, three-coloured cat, which is playing with the fallen beans.
The chickens giggle and his cheeks turn pink.
"What are you looking at?" he hisses at the boys.
"Uh -"
"Mabel, stop scaring the poor boy," Pansy Parkinson shouts.
Draco whirls around. "Hey! You'd better keep an eye on your cat!"
"How could I imagine you'd get all hysterical about a kitten?"
He sighs. This brat gets on his nerves. Again. She practically forces him to put her in her place, because apparently, her parents didn't teach her respect for boys. "If I were you, I wouldn't be so cheeky. Next time your animal comes near me, it might get a kick!"
Her expression turns serious. But instead of apologising, she gets up, walks towards him and stops so close in front of him that he instinctively backs away.
As if on command, Crabbe and Goyle appear at his side, which is almost embarrassing; she's one head shorter than him and petite enough that the next breeze could blow her away.
In the corner of his eye he notices Tracey Davis standing up and pulling out her wand.
"Watch it," Parkinson says quietly.
Draco has to laugh. "Are you threatening me, midget?"
She remains perfectly calm. "If you lay a finger on my cat, you will curse the day you came to Hogwarts."
He is about to get mad. "Do you realise who you're talking to?"
"Sure," she says condescending. "A braggart who pretends to own this school, and who can't make a step without being flanked by two bodyguards."
With these words she picks up her cat and goes back to the girls.
While Draco lets the fact sink in, that someone dared talking to him this way, Zabini tries to suppress a fit of laughter. The other three look to the ground sheepishly, until Goyle asks, "What does 'flanked' mean?"