bookishwench (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookishwench) wrote2008-04-29 11:51 am
bookishwench) wrote2008-04-29 11:51 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Shadowed Live Part 9 (FRT, Draco-centric)
If you're experiencing deja vu with this chapter, that's because I posted the original version a couple days ago. However, as it was pointed out to me that fully a third of the chapter was completely incompatible with canon, I yanked the original version, retooled the chapter, and fixed the problem (hopefully).
Previous chapters can be found here
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco’s first day at Hogwarts has is a lot more than he bargained for.
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: Some information double-checked through the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Author Note 2: This is a re-edited version of the original part 9 as it was kindly pointed out to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snowe that Luna Lovegood is actually a year younger than Draco and would therefore not be at Hogwarts in his first year. Color me deeply embarrassed!
Part 9: History, Herbology, and the Hospital Wing
Draco arrived outside the classroom for History of Magic only slightly out of breath. In truth, he had been puffing like a locomotive, but not wanting to look like a fool, he had stopped briefly in the boy’s lavatory for a full minute, regardless of whether it would make him late, to pull himself together, make sure his sleek blond hair was flawless, and reacquire the necessary look of bored hauteur for his rank. He was pleased to realize that the rest of Slytherin house was also gathered by the door, meaning he was not yet late. Casually, he strolled up to Goyle and Crabbe.
“You missed breakfast,” Goyle said, giving him a pitying look as though this were the worst possible fate that could befall anyone.
“I wasn’t really hungry this morning,” Draco said with a shrug. “That was a big feast last night.”
His stomach punctuated the lie with a thunderous growl that he studiously ignored.
“I wonder what Binns will be like,” a Slytherin girl with dark hair and sharply pointed features said to Pansy.
“No idea, Daphne,” Pansy said, giving Draco a winning smile. “History’s all about dead people anyway, so really, who cares? Ghosts?”
Theodore smothered a laugh at her comment that Draco found rather inappropriate, but as the door to the classroom had just unlocked itself, he was too busy pushing towards the front of the line to do more than give Theodore a disapproving glare.
Draco was closely followed by Crabbe and Goyle in taking seats in the back of the class. The ancient desks were covered in rather a lot of graffiti, Draco thought as he stared at them with a critical eye, wondering just how bored students had to be to create so much damage. On his own desktop alone he found a variety of curses, a nicely detailed snitch, a drawing of a quarter moon and a star that were engraved so deeply they must have been traced over hundreds of times along with a heart containing the letters RL and SB, whoever they were, and the truly offensive epithet “Slytherin stinks.” He firmly and rather loudly set his books down on top of the scrawled words and turned to Crabbe, who was looking confused.
“What’s a prongs?” he asked, pointing to the word on his desk.
Draco shrugged, then noticed something.
“Where are your books?” he asked.
“Books?” Crabbe asked.
“Yeah, you know, the textbook for the class,” Draco said, speaking rather slowly, a habit he was sure he would need to pick up. “Did you leave it in the room?”
“I didn’t know we needed it,” Crabbe said, frowning.
“Yeah,” Goyle, who turned out to be similarly text-less agreed. “What do we need with a book on the first day?”
Draco sighed.
“You two can look on with me, then,” he said, opening the creaky tome that was rather intimidatingly thick as the two pulled their chairs in closer on either side of him, leaving Draco barely room to breath. He was just about to tell them to back up when he suddenly used up the little remaining air left in his lung to yelp loudly.
A ghost had just come through the blackboard, and Draco’s hadn’t been the only surprised cry. In fact, Pansy’s friend Daphne had actually fallen out of her seat in surprise and Pansy herself, who had been applying lipgloss, had missed her mouth entirely and had a streak of begonia pink across her chin.
“I am Professor Binns, and this is History of Magic,” the ghost said in a monotone. “We will be beginning in your text with chapter one, ‘Primordial Magical Events.’ Turn to page three.”
Draco glanced over at Nott, who had given a quiet chuckle at the uproar. He remembered the laugh in the hall at Pansy’s expense and realized Theodore must have known Binns was a ghost. Well, he supposed given the circumstances it really was understandable why he’d laughed. Draco decided he’d let the affront to his… he couldn’t get used to thinking of her as his fiancé… even “girlfriend” seemed too odd… what exactly was she, anyway? Well, in any case, he’d let Nott’s laugh slip this once without incident.
For the next two hours, Binns rattled on about early cave-dwelling wizards who had been able to conjure fire and levitate rocks at attacking saber toothed tigers, but as much as those topics seemed like they could have made for a decent story, Binns did not have a flare for the dramatic. By the end of class, three-quarters of the students were sound asleep, including Crabbe, who was draped over his desk like a lumpy, snoring tablecloth. Goyle was awake, but his eyes were glazed over. When Binns exited through the blackboard once more, Draco felt nearly as relieved as he had when he was sorted into Slytherin.
“Wake up,” Draco said, rapping Crabbe smartly on the back of the head with a knuckle. “The torture’s over.”
“What’d I miss?” Crabbe said, scratching his head and yawning.
“Blaise drooling in his sleep was pretty much the highlight,” Draco said. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Herbology has to be better than this tripe. Goyle?”
Goyle continued to sit, motionless, staring into space, until an alarmed Draco punched him in the arm and he started awake.
“You can sleep with your eyes open?” Draco said, not sure whether to be impressed or slightly sick.
“Uh-huh,” he said as the three of them followed the rest of the Slytherins down the corridor.
“Actually, in this class, that could be the most useful skill possible,” Draco admitted. “Now, where are the greenhouses?”
“Outside?” Crabbe ventured.
“Probably,” Draco sighed.
The three jogged lightly into the hallway, and Draco just caught sight of Blaise, half a head taller than any of the other first years, turning right down a corridor. Draco followed, Crabbe and Goyle at his heels, but by the time they had reached the spot, the Slytherins had disappeared once more, and this time they could have chosen to go down any of three separate corridors, behind a tapestry, or up a staircase. Hell, Draco thought, they could have dropped though the floor for all he knew.
“Uh…,” Goyle said. “I’m lost.”
“No kidding,” Draco said, exasperated but realizing “lost” was probably a permanent condition for his new friends. “Actually, Crabbe probably had the best idea.”
“I did?” he said, looking pleased.
“Yeah. Greenhouse has to be outside, so we go out the front door and circle the castle until we find them,” Draco said. “The Great Hall is back this way, I think.”
The three boys wandered back through the twisted passageways as an almost eerie quiet descended over the corridors. The last students had slipped into their classrooms, and there was absolutely no doubt they were now good and late for their first herbology class. By some miracle, the caretaker who had seemed so threatening at dinner the night before was nowhere to be seen, so they were able to sneak through the front door without incident.
It was the first time Draco had seen the castle and its grounds by daylight, and really, it was rather a lovely spot, he decided, even as he, Crabbe, and Goyle ran haphazardly around the gigantic building. He remembered an old book of fairytales he’d had when he was very small, in which there had been a drawing of a tall castle that looked something like this. The story itself had been about a princess who was asleep in the tallest tower, and a prince had needed to fight a dragon to kiss her awake. He’d rather liked the story, but the picture had been weirdly stationary. Shortly after he had read it his father had burned it, telling him it was trash that mixed Mudblood tales with Wizarding ones and that he was to forget it entirely. It was one of the few times he remembered when crying didn’t get him his own way. In fact, he’d been sent to bed without dinner.
As they rounded yet another corner of the extremely large castle, Draco was nearly blinded by light glinting off glass.
“Looks like we found them,” Draco said, his eyes darting from one apparently identical greenhouse to the next. “The question is, which one.”
The interior of each building was so crowded with greenery that it was impossible to tell which one the Slytherins were inside. Draco didn’t like the idea of just opening a door and falling into a class that had already begun, but there didn’t seem much else to do. He swung open the door of the first greenhouse in the row, whose door bore a large, scarlet number six, and peered cautiously inside.
It appeared to be empty of human occupants, but the plants themselves were moving, and fast at that. In less time than it took to turn around and say, “No one here,” a dazzling, sickeningly pink geranium bit through Draco’s robes and into his leg.
Draco screamed, wagging his leg frantically from side to side in an effort to shake off the deranged flower that was tenaciously clinging to his flesh. Crabbe and Goyle, terrified by their leader’s situation, echoed the screams and ran away, flailing their arms wildly. The noise echoed through the greenhouse as Draco continued to attempt prying the plant off his leg by throwing various jinxes at it and, when that proved completely useless, grabbing a nearby flowerpot and repeatedly banging the plant over the head with it. Instead of making it let go, it instead emitted a loud squealing noise that brought six other geraniums hopping towards him, their teeth bared threateningly and growling in an oddly high-pitched tone.
“Back off!” Draco yelled, but the order did no good at all.
Thankfully, at that moment the greenhouse door flew open and a short little witch with grey hair came running into the room, waving her wand frantically.
“Stupify!” she called out, and at once all seven flowers dropped to the ground, completely inanimate once again.
“Thank Morgana,” Draco mumbled as he hobbled away from the scene of floral attack.
The witch, however, ran directly past him and stooped to look at the flowers, then rounded on him.
“Do you have any idea how expensive a Fanged Geranium is? How long it takes to raise them? The extent of the damage you’ve just done?” she said, cradling one of the broken pots.
“My father will pay for it,” he snapped, annoyed. “I’m bleeding over here, you know!”
“And that’s about what you should expect! Imagine, a first year wandering into greenhouse six and provoking the plants,” she tutted.
“I wasn’t provoking them! I walked in the door and that thing jumped me!” he said, growing angrier by the second.
“Ten points from Slytherin,” the professor said gravely, “for your total lack of caution. Now, let me see that leg.”
Draco raised the hem of his robes to reveal a ragged gash through the lower part of his left trouser leg, and beneath it a wound that was oozing blood and what appeared to be green pus. He also became aware that he had an audience present as someone shifted in the doorway behind him. He turned his head to realize the entire class was standing outside and staring in curiously at the scene. Great. Exactly what he needed on his first day.
“You’ll need to go to the hospital wing,” the teacher said. “Fanged Geranium venom isn’t terribly dangerous, but it can lead to permanent discoloration of the skin, and if you don’t want a green leg to match your Slytherin robes for the rest of your life, you’ll need to see Madam Pomfrey at once.”
“And where exactly,” Draco said through gritted teeth, “is Madam Pomfrey located?”
“The hospital wing, of course,” the teacher said as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.
“And where exactly,” Draco said, his voice showing considerable starin, “is the hospital wing located?”
“I’ll show him, Professor,” Blaise said calmly. “I was there this morning.”
“Very well. Class, back to mixing dragon dung fertilizer. What is your name?” she said, turning to Draco once more.
“Malfoy,” he said, ennunciating the name clearly in hopes this crazy woman would have the good sense to be ashamed of treating the son of one of the best wizarding families in so shabby a manner. “Draco Mayfoy.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding more weary than impressed. “Of course. Be sure to get notes on the class from your two friends later.”
Draco hobbled outside towards Zabini. He was frankly unsure what to make of the other boy. He had barely spoken at dinner last night and not at all this morning, not that Binns’s class was particularly condusive to student participation, other than loud snoring, of course. There was something just a little strange about him, something oddly rarified, as though he’d spent his childhood in truly extraordinary luxury, possibly moreso than even Draco himself.
Draco instinctively disliked that.
“Does it hurt?” Blaise asked, peering curiously at the wound.
“No,” he huffed out. “I actually enjoy bleeding and oozing pus. It’s my very favorite hobby. Of course it hurts!”
Blaise sniffed somewhat indifferently.
“I suppose you’ll have to lean on me,” he said, regarding Draco with as wary an eye as the other boy was looking at him.
Draco was mortified to realize that he actually did need help to walk, and he found himself leaning rather heavily on Blaise.
“How much further is it?” he asked, actually starting to feel woozy but desperately not wanting to pass out.
“Not far,” he said blandly, “but there are some stairs between here and there.”
“Bloody hell, be more careful!” Draco growled at him abruptly as they continued down a corridor, each step sending a stab through his injury. “It feels like I’ve got sparks inside my leg!”
Blaise had no visible reaction to this pronouncement, though he did slow down slightly.
“Professor Sprout had just been telling the class about the importance of not going into any of the other greenhouses when we heard you screaming. It underscored the lesson nicely,” he said.
“I wasn’t screaming,” Draco lied quickly. “I may have yelled in surprise, but that’s all.”
“You screamed,” Blaise said, a direct statement of fact.
“I didn’t,” Draco said, practically daring him to say it again, but to his annoyance Blaise simply continued walking, though the ghost of a smug smile was at the corner of his mouth. They continued in silence until they reached the stairs, which turned out to be a rather long, steep flight. ““What idiot decided to make the hospital wing upstairs?” he grumbled. “Didn’t they stop to think that injured people would be walking up there?”
Blaise shrugged, the motion unsettling Draco’s arm and nearly knocking him off balance. Draco was forced to grab the carved stone banister with his left hand and continue supporting himself heavily on Blaise’s shoulder to navigate the steps. The continued silence was unnerving, and Draco eventually broke it.
“So why were you in the hospital wing this morning?” he asked him, hoping the answer would be something suitably embarrassing.
“I found myself rather dyspeptic after last night’s feast,” he said smoothly.
Dyspeptic? Draco thought. Who in the world actually says the word dyspeptic?
“Well, we’re here,” he said as they crested the top of the stairs. “Madam Pomfrey is right through that door. I hope she fixes your leg adequately.”
“Thanks,” Draco called after him before clapping a hand over his mouth in shock at the completely inappropriate response. He had to stop doing that.
“You’re quite welcome,” he said over his shoulder as he disappeared down the stairs.
Two hours later, a rather pale but no longer green Draco emerged from the hospital wing, his leg smarting but emptied of venom. He’d easily missed the rest of double herbology for the day, and the lack of breakfast was making lunch sound extremely appealing. The problem was he couldn’t allow himself to be seen with his robes in such a state. He made his way back towards the Slytherin common room, up to his dormitory, and began rummaging through his trunk for his other set of robes. With any luck, the school house-elves would be able to fix his bitten ones. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed the two letters lying on his bed.
On to part 10
Previous chapters can be found here
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco’s first day at Hogwarts has is a lot more than he bargained for.
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: Some information double-checked through the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Author Note 2: This is a re-edited version of the original part 9 as it was kindly pointed out to me by
snowe that Luna Lovegood is actually a year younger than Draco and would therefore not be at Hogwarts in his first year. Color me deeply embarrassed!Draco arrived outside the classroom for History of Magic only slightly out of breath. In truth, he had been puffing like a locomotive, but not wanting to look like a fool, he had stopped briefly in the boy’s lavatory for a full minute, regardless of whether it would make him late, to pull himself together, make sure his sleek blond hair was flawless, and reacquire the necessary look of bored hauteur for his rank. He was pleased to realize that the rest of Slytherin house was also gathered by the door, meaning he was not yet late. Casually, he strolled up to Goyle and Crabbe.
“You missed breakfast,” Goyle said, giving him a pitying look as though this were the worst possible fate that could befall anyone.
“I wasn’t really hungry this morning,” Draco said with a shrug. “That was a big feast last night.”
His stomach punctuated the lie with a thunderous growl that he studiously ignored.
“I wonder what Binns will be like,” a Slytherin girl with dark hair and sharply pointed features said to Pansy.
“No idea, Daphne,” Pansy said, giving Draco a winning smile. “History’s all about dead people anyway, so really, who cares? Ghosts?”
Theodore smothered a laugh at her comment that Draco found rather inappropriate, but as the door to the classroom had just unlocked itself, he was too busy pushing towards the front of the line to do more than give Theodore a disapproving glare.
Draco was closely followed by Crabbe and Goyle in taking seats in the back of the class. The ancient desks were covered in rather a lot of graffiti, Draco thought as he stared at them with a critical eye, wondering just how bored students had to be to create so much damage. On his own desktop alone he found a variety of curses, a nicely detailed snitch, a drawing of a quarter moon and a star that were engraved so deeply they must have been traced over hundreds of times along with a heart containing the letters RL and SB, whoever they were, and the truly offensive epithet “Slytherin stinks.” He firmly and rather loudly set his books down on top of the scrawled words and turned to Crabbe, who was looking confused.
“What’s a prongs?” he asked, pointing to the word on his desk.
Draco shrugged, then noticed something.
“Where are your books?” he asked.
“Books?” Crabbe asked.
“Yeah, you know, the textbook for the class,” Draco said, speaking rather slowly, a habit he was sure he would need to pick up. “Did you leave it in the room?”
“I didn’t know we needed it,” Crabbe said, frowning.
“Yeah,” Goyle, who turned out to be similarly text-less agreed. “What do we need with a book on the first day?”
Draco sighed.
“You two can look on with me, then,” he said, opening the creaky tome that was rather intimidatingly thick as the two pulled their chairs in closer on either side of him, leaving Draco barely room to breath. He was just about to tell them to back up when he suddenly used up the little remaining air left in his lung to yelp loudly.
A ghost had just come through the blackboard, and Draco’s hadn’t been the only surprised cry. In fact, Pansy’s friend Daphne had actually fallen out of her seat in surprise and Pansy herself, who had been applying lipgloss, had missed her mouth entirely and had a streak of begonia pink across her chin.
“I am Professor Binns, and this is History of Magic,” the ghost said in a monotone. “We will be beginning in your text with chapter one, ‘Primordial Magical Events.’ Turn to page three.”
Draco glanced over at Nott, who had given a quiet chuckle at the uproar. He remembered the laugh in the hall at Pansy’s expense and realized Theodore must have known Binns was a ghost. Well, he supposed given the circumstances it really was understandable why he’d laughed. Draco decided he’d let the affront to his… he couldn’t get used to thinking of her as his fiancé… even “girlfriend” seemed too odd… what exactly was she, anyway? Well, in any case, he’d let Nott’s laugh slip this once without incident.
For the next two hours, Binns rattled on about early cave-dwelling wizards who had been able to conjure fire and levitate rocks at attacking saber toothed tigers, but as much as those topics seemed like they could have made for a decent story, Binns did not have a flare for the dramatic. By the end of class, three-quarters of the students were sound asleep, including Crabbe, who was draped over his desk like a lumpy, snoring tablecloth. Goyle was awake, but his eyes were glazed over. When Binns exited through the blackboard once more, Draco felt nearly as relieved as he had when he was sorted into Slytherin.
“Wake up,” Draco said, rapping Crabbe smartly on the back of the head with a knuckle. “The torture’s over.”
“What’d I miss?” Crabbe said, scratching his head and yawning.
“Blaise drooling in his sleep was pretty much the highlight,” Draco said. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Herbology has to be better than this tripe. Goyle?”
Goyle continued to sit, motionless, staring into space, until an alarmed Draco punched him in the arm and he started awake.
“You can sleep with your eyes open?” Draco said, not sure whether to be impressed or slightly sick.
“Uh-huh,” he said as the three of them followed the rest of the Slytherins down the corridor.
“Actually, in this class, that could be the most useful skill possible,” Draco admitted. “Now, where are the greenhouses?”
“Outside?” Crabbe ventured.
“Probably,” Draco sighed.
The three jogged lightly into the hallway, and Draco just caught sight of Blaise, half a head taller than any of the other first years, turning right down a corridor. Draco followed, Crabbe and Goyle at his heels, but by the time they had reached the spot, the Slytherins had disappeared once more, and this time they could have chosen to go down any of three separate corridors, behind a tapestry, or up a staircase. Hell, Draco thought, they could have dropped though the floor for all he knew.
“Uh…,” Goyle said. “I’m lost.”
“No kidding,” Draco said, exasperated but realizing “lost” was probably a permanent condition for his new friends. “Actually, Crabbe probably had the best idea.”
“I did?” he said, looking pleased.
“Yeah. Greenhouse has to be outside, so we go out the front door and circle the castle until we find them,” Draco said. “The Great Hall is back this way, I think.”
The three boys wandered back through the twisted passageways as an almost eerie quiet descended over the corridors. The last students had slipped into their classrooms, and there was absolutely no doubt they were now good and late for their first herbology class. By some miracle, the caretaker who had seemed so threatening at dinner the night before was nowhere to be seen, so they were able to sneak through the front door without incident.
It was the first time Draco had seen the castle and its grounds by daylight, and really, it was rather a lovely spot, he decided, even as he, Crabbe, and Goyle ran haphazardly around the gigantic building. He remembered an old book of fairytales he’d had when he was very small, in which there had been a drawing of a tall castle that looked something like this. The story itself had been about a princess who was asleep in the tallest tower, and a prince had needed to fight a dragon to kiss her awake. He’d rather liked the story, but the picture had been weirdly stationary. Shortly after he had read it his father had burned it, telling him it was trash that mixed Mudblood tales with Wizarding ones and that he was to forget it entirely. It was one of the few times he remembered when crying didn’t get him his own way. In fact, he’d been sent to bed without dinner.
As they rounded yet another corner of the extremely large castle, Draco was nearly blinded by light glinting off glass.
“Looks like we found them,” Draco said, his eyes darting from one apparently identical greenhouse to the next. “The question is, which one.”
The interior of each building was so crowded with greenery that it was impossible to tell which one the Slytherins were inside. Draco didn’t like the idea of just opening a door and falling into a class that had already begun, but there didn’t seem much else to do. He swung open the door of the first greenhouse in the row, whose door bore a large, scarlet number six, and peered cautiously inside.
It appeared to be empty of human occupants, but the plants themselves were moving, and fast at that. In less time than it took to turn around and say, “No one here,” a dazzling, sickeningly pink geranium bit through Draco’s robes and into his leg.
Draco screamed, wagging his leg frantically from side to side in an effort to shake off the deranged flower that was tenaciously clinging to his flesh. Crabbe and Goyle, terrified by their leader’s situation, echoed the screams and ran away, flailing their arms wildly. The noise echoed through the greenhouse as Draco continued to attempt prying the plant off his leg by throwing various jinxes at it and, when that proved completely useless, grabbing a nearby flowerpot and repeatedly banging the plant over the head with it. Instead of making it let go, it instead emitted a loud squealing noise that brought six other geraniums hopping towards him, their teeth bared threateningly and growling in an oddly high-pitched tone.
“Back off!” Draco yelled, but the order did no good at all.
Thankfully, at that moment the greenhouse door flew open and a short little witch with grey hair came running into the room, waving her wand frantically.
“Stupify!” she called out, and at once all seven flowers dropped to the ground, completely inanimate once again.
“Thank Morgana,” Draco mumbled as he hobbled away from the scene of floral attack.
The witch, however, ran directly past him and stooped to look at the flowers, then rounded on him.
“Do you have any idea how expensive a Fanged Geranium is? How long it takes to raise them? The extent of the damage you’ve just done?” she said, cradling one of the broken pots.
“My father will pay for it,” he snapped, annoyed. “I’m bleeding over here, you know!”
“And that’s about what you should expect! Imagine, a first year wandering into greenhouse six and provoking the plants,” she tutted.
“I wasn’t provoking them! I walked in the door and that thing jumped me!” he said, growing angrier by the second.
“Ten points from Slytherin,” the professor said gravely, “for your total lack of caution. Now, let me see that leg.”
Draco raised the hem of his robes to reveal a ragged gash through the lower part of his left trouser leg, and beneath it a wound that was oozing blood and what appeared to be green pus. He also became aware that he had an audience present as someone shifted in the doorway behind him. He turned his head to realize the entire class was standing outside and staring in curiously at the scene. Great. Exactly what he needed on his first day.
“You’ll need to go to the hospital wing,” the teacher said. “Fanged Geranium venom isn’t terribly dangerous, but it can lead to permanent discoloration of the skin, and if you don’t want a green leg to match your Slytherin robes for the rest of your life, you’ll need to see Madam Pomfrey at once.”
“And where exactly,” Draco said through gritted teeth, “is Madam Pomfrey located?”
“The hospital wing, of course,” the teacher said as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.
“And where exactly,” Draco said, his voice showing considerable starin, “is the hospital wing located?”
“I’ll show him, Professor,” Blaise said calmly. “I was there this morning.”
“Very well. Class, back to mixing dragon dung fertilizer. What is your name?” she said, turning to Draco once more.
“Malfoy,” he said, ennunciating the name clearly in hopes this crazy woman would have the good sense to be ashamed of treating the son of one of the best wizarding families in so shabby a manner. “Draco Mayfoy.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding more weary than impressed. “Of course. Be sure to get notes on the class from your two friends later.”
Draco hobbled outside towards Zabini. He was frankly unsure what to make of the other boy. He had barely spoken at dinner last night and not at all this morning, not that Binns’s class was particularly condusive to student participation, other than loud snoring, of course. There was something just a little strange about him, something oddly rarified, as though he’d spent his childhood in truly extraordinary luxury, possibly moreso than even Draco himself.
Draco instinctively disliked that.
“Does it hurt?” Blaise asked, peering curiously at the wound.
“No,” he huffed out. “I actually enjoy bleeding and oozing pus. It’s my very favorite hobby. Of course it hurts!”
Blaise sniffed somewhat indifferently.
“I suppose you’ll have to lean on me,” he said, regarding Draco with as wary an eye as the other boy was looking at him.
Draco was mortified to realize that he actually did need help to walk, and he found himself leaning rather heavily on Blaise.
“How much further is it?” he asked, actually starting to feel woozy but desperately not wanting to pass out.
“Not far,” he said blandly, “but there are some stairs between here and there.”
“Bloody hell, be more careful!” Draco growled at him abruptly as they continued down a corridor, each step sending a stab through his injury. “It feels like I’ve got sparks inside my leg!”
Blaise had no visible reaction to this pronouncement, though he did slow down slightly.
“Professor Sprout had just been telling the class about the importance of not going into any of the other greenhouses when we heard you screaming. It underscored the lesson nicely,” he said.
“I wasn’t screaming,” Draco lied quickly. “I may have yelled in surprise, but that’s all.”
“You screamed,” Blaise said, a direct statement of fact.
“I didn’t,” Draco said, practically daring him to say it again, but to his annoyance Blaise simply continued walking, though the ghost of a smug smile was at the corner of his mouth. They continued in silence until they reached the stairs, which turned out to be a rather long, steep flight. ““What idiot decided to make the hospital wing upstairs?” he grumbled. “Didn’t they stop to think that injured people would be walking up there?”
Blaise shrugged, the motion unsettling Draco’s arm and nearly knocking him off balance. Draco was forced to grab the carved stone banister with his left hand and continue supporting himself heavily on Blaise’s shoulder to navigate the steps. The continued silence was unnerving, and Draco eventually broke it.
“So why were you in the hospital wing this morning?” he asked him, hoping the answer would be something suitably embarrassing.
“I found myself rather dyspeptic after last night’s feast,” he said smoothly.
Dyspeptic? Draco thought. Who in the world actually says the word dyspeptic?
“Well, we’re here,” he said as they crested the top of the stairs. “Madam Pomfrey is right through that door. I hope she fixes your leg adequately.”
“Thanks,” Draco called after him before clapping a hand over his mouth in shock at the completely inappropriate response. He had to stop doing that.
“You’re quite welcome,” he said over his shoulder as he disappeared down the stairs.
Two hours later, a rather pale but no longer green Draco emerged from the hospital wing, his leg smarting but emptied of venom. He’d easily missed the rest of double herbology for the day, and the lack of breakfast was making lunch sound extremely appealing. The problem was he couldn’t allow himself to be seen with his robes in such a state. He made his way back towards the Slytherin common room, up to his dormitory, and began rummaging through his trunk for his other set of robes. With any luck, the school house-elves would be able to fix his bitten ones. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed the two letters lying on his bed.
On to part 10