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bookishwenchPrevious parts may be found here
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you.
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 takes tea with his godfather, who explains a few misconceptions.
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.
Part 11: Tea and Bitter Biscuits
It took Draco the better part of half an hour to find his godfather’s office. Just after he had reached the dungeon level, Peeves the poltergeist had bounced out of one of the empty classrooms. Through the door, Draco was able to see every wall was covered in trails of putrid green sludge. He almost had to admire what a first-rate job Peeves had done in utterly destroying the classroom.
“Ooo, one of the ickle Firsties!” Peeves cackled loudly, zooming back and forth in front of Draco, ricocheting from one wall to the other down the corridor while propelling himself backwards so he was face to face with him. “Whatcha doing here, Blondie? Do you have permission to be roaming about without your mummy?”
Draco decided silence was probably the best response.
“Kitty-cat got your tonguey-wongy?” he asked, blowing a loud raspberry. “Why you limping like that? Something nasty bite you? Oooo, are you the Slytherin stupid who went and got bit by a pansy?”
Great, Draco thought. Just what he needed: a poltergeist who knew he’d been attacked by a glorified weed.
“Stop your gob,” Draco said through gritted teeth.
“But your battle should be told in epic song!” Peeves said, grinning broadly before breaking into a very loud, very off-key song.
“Oh stupid wittle boy
You should not annoy
The flowers that live here at Hogwarts!
A violet kicked your bum
Because you’re so dumb,
At least that’s what the professor reports!
Now you limp like a berk
‘Cause a flower went berserk
But I don’t think that you’ve learned your lesson.
I give it just a week
Until you’re just a freak,
And you work in a delicatessen!”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” Draco yelled in frustration.
“Well, you try rhyming the word lesson,” Peeves said, nodding sagely. “Did my best, I did, and do I get a thank you? Nooo, not a single kind word for old Peevesy.”
“Bugger off,” he said, getting truly annoyed now.
“No,” the poltergeist said as he floated merrily in front of Draco. “Bored. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.”
“Why don’t you go annoy someone else for a while then?” Draco said.
“Like who?”
“I don’t care! Go… bother the house-elves or something. There must be hundreds in this place,” Draco said. He was fighting the urge to pummel the thing, but he knew from experience that a poltergeist didn’t have any physical body. There had been one for a brief while at the Malfoy estate, but then…
“Why you grinning like that?” Peeves asked, his tone suspicious.
“Oh, nothing,” Draco said nonchalantly. “I just remembered something.”
“What?” Peeves asked, and his face looked just a little concerned.
“Nothing much,” Draco said with a feigned shrug. “Just that poltergeists aren’t terribly fond of certain sounds. Isn’t that so?”
Peeves’s eyes shifted nervously from side to side.
“For example...,” Draco said, pausing for effect, “they don’t like, oh, say, lyres? Especially silver ones? Particularly when someone plays a glissando three times?”
Peeves’s eyes opened comically wide.
“How do you know that?” he asked, a tremble in his voice.
“My family had to get rid of one of your kind a few years ago,” Draco said. “Now, unless you want me to tell every single person at Hogwarts exactly how to banish you from here for good, you’re going to keep mum about my little run in with the fanged geranium, right?”
Peeves looked sulky but nodded.
“And you’re not going to give me any trouble, right?” Draco said, starting to smile in earnest.
“No… sir,” Peeves responded almost against his will.
“And let’s say I need you to do a little something for me sometime in the future, you’d be willing and pleased to do that, wouldn’t you?” Draco said, giving the poltergeist a grin that he knew was just a shade too wide.
“Peeves would be honored to do so,” he grumbled.
“Fine. My first request is for you to go bother someone else, then,” Draco said. “Try a Gryffindor. Not one of the girls, though,” he added quickly, remembering Hermione. “The boys. Go after them.”
Peeves bowed and sped off down the corridor. Granted, just before he was out of earshot, Draco heard him blow a particularly loud raspberry back in his general direction, but he didn’t mind. He had just managed to get a very good spy and all around servant for himself via blackmail. Father would be so proud.
Two more twisting passages later Draco found himself outside a large wooden door labeled “Professor Snape.” He sighed heavily, and steeling himself, knocked on the door loudly.
“Enter,” said a familiar syrupy voice.
“Enter,” Draco mockingly mouthed to himself before he turned the knob and went in.
His godfather sat at his desk, looking directly and unnervingly at the opened door. He rose, beckoned Draco to one of two chairs sitting by a very small fire, and shut the door with a resounding clang behind them.
“It is a pleasure to see you, godson,” Snape said, though his voice still held its perpetually bored tone. “I congratulate you once again on your placement in my house.”
“Thank you, godfather,” Draco said, looking curiously around the office.
The walls had a great many glass jars, each one with something more disgusting floating in it than the previous one. Absolutely everything was coated in dust except for the books, several shelves of them, most of them with cracked bindings that looked centuries old. They were piled high and deep on the desk, stacked on the floor in neat piles, and Snape actually needed to move two of them from the remaining chair before he could sit down. The bare stone walls had no pictures, no photographs, not a single ornament at all. In fact, the entire room was somehow devoid of personality, almost deliberately so. Draco couldn’t help feeling rather unnerved by it.
“Have you had tea yet?” Snape asked him as he waved his wand in a complex pattern and a small tea table appeared between them, complete with a piping hot, though non-descript, pot of tea and a plate of biscuits. Those caught Draco’s attention immediately.
“No, sir,” Draco responded eagerly.
“Excellent,” Snape said, and for a moment he almost seemed pleased, nearly human. “Do you take sugar?”
“Two lumps,” Draco said, watching as his godfather prepared a cup for him, then one for himself, that one lacking sugar.
“You may help yourself to the biscuits,” Snape said, gesturing to the plate, and Draco didn’t need a second invitation to take two of them. They turned out to be not wonderful, but far from the worst thing he’d eaten that day, and before he knew it Draco had polished off a much larger number than he knew was polite. Snape didn’t take any but sat perfectly still across from him, holding his cup and saucer and eyeing his godson intensely.
“So,” Draco said, feeling awkward. “Ehm… how’ve you been?”
“Well enough,” Snape replied, placing the untouched cup of tea back on the tray, then steepling his fingers just beneath is chin. Snape looked at him intently, and Draco experienced the curious sensation that he was being examined, not merely from the outside but the inside as well. It was unpleasant, and he fought not to squirm in response. Snape nodded once, and a rather satisfied look came over the potion master’s face, but it died quickly. “How do you find Slytherin?”
“It’s alright, I suppose,” Draco said with a shrug. “I haven’t really had the time to speak with the others much yet.”
“I would suggest, Draco,” Snape said slowly and deliberately, “that you choose to be very careful about what you say and to whom. Have you taken time to inspect the mantle above the common room fireplace yet?”
“No,” Draco said, surprised and bemused by the strange question.
“You may wish to do that this evening. The motto written there will give you all the advice you could wish for in life,” Snape said, lifting the teacup to his mouth again. “Your mother has written to me regarding your post from this morning.”
“She has?” Draco said, startled that she hadn’t contacted him herself. “Is she sending taffy?”
Snape gave a long-suffering sigh that sounded rather dangerous.
“I believe she said something to that effect,” he said dismissively. “However, you and I have much more important matters to discuss than sweets, specifically the other issue you raised in your letter.”
Draco thought wildly for a moment about suggesting someone was going to do something about how damp the Slytherin accommodations were, but decided he really didn’t want to try his godfather’s patience any further.
“You mean about the missing mudbloods, godfather?” Draco said, and he was met with a nod.
Snape stared into the fireplace for a long minute in perfect silence, and Draco watched the flames do strange things to his godfather’s eyes. He had the sense that Snape was remembering something from very long ago, and it increased the perpetually bitter expression on his face.
“There are, of course, mudbloods galore at Hogwarts,” Snape finally said, his eyes never leaving the flames, and even the word “mudbloods” seemed distasteful to him. “They are everywhere. You simply have not seen them.”
“So they’re, what, invisible then?” Draco asked.
“In a way,” Snape said, finally shifting his gaze towards Draco. “They’re hiding in plain sight. Despite the stories you’ve always been told, the endless parade of witticisms and picturesque descriptions regarding the semi-animal characteristics, both physical and mental, of mudbloods, you need to understand that those were… exaggerations.”
Draco was stunned by this revelation.
“Just how exaggerated are they? Do they walk on all fours? Use broken twigs for wands?” Draco asked, feeling deeply betrayed.
“No,” Snape said, and there was a visible tightness in the lines of his mouth. “None of those is literally true. Visually, it is practically impossible to tell a mudblood from a pure-blood, even if one is standing next to you.”
“You’re telling me some of the students I was Sorted with yesterday are mudbloods?” Draco asked, rather horrified.
“Yes,” Snape said.
“They just parade around, pretending to be like the rest of us, when they know they aren’t our equals at all?” Draco said, his voice rising in indignation.
“Actually, many of them believe they actually are our equals,” Snape said, and his gaze was back on the fire again. “And many wizards, including the current Headmaster, agree with that supposition.”
“But… that’s wrong, isn’t it?” Draco said, and there was a note of desperation in his voice. “They aren’t. They can’t be. Father and Mother have always told me…”
“What they have told you is entirely correct for a boy of your purity of background,” Snape interrupted smoothly. “The less you have to do with mudbloods, the better it will go for you.”
His godfather looked away from the flames and back at Draco, and his eyes seemed to crackle with some suppressed anger.
“They can destroy you. Do not for one moment believe mudbloods are incapable of that. They are more dangerous than you can possibly realize. Stay as far from them as you can, Draco, if you wish to lead a happy life.”
Draco stared at him, his mouth a bit slack as he tried to absorb the information that Snape was telling him, but it still wouldn’t quite fit with his view of the world. And that phrase, “They can destroy you…” It reminded him too much of that fevered dream of two nights ago. He shivered instinctively.
“I believe our tea is finished,” Snape said, rising abruptly. “Again, you have my sincere hopes for a celebrated career at Hogwarts. Your mother will be sending taffy and a copy of a wizarding guide to pure-blood families by tomorrow’s post. I shall see you in the last class of the week. Until then…”
Draco rose as he realized his godfather had already opened the door back to the corridor.
“Yes, until then,” he said, then hobbled quickly back through the door and off towards the Slytherin common room, his mind swimming with thoughts and contradictions. It gave him an unpleasant lurching sensation in his stomach, as though a rug had been pulled from under him. Finally, he dealt with it as he handled all things that bothered him: he chose to ignore it until it went away. He felt better straight off.
After he gave the password and was admitted into the common room, he sat in one of the tall chairs by the fireplace. The room was otherwise deserted, the others having gone down to dinner, but with a belly full of Snape’s stale biscuits Draco wasn’t at all hungry. Remembering what Snape had said about the mantelpiece, Draco glanced up at the single monolith that made the wide mantle. It was dimly lit, but by the flickering light of the common room fire he could still see the three words that were carved deeply into the stone: “Trust no one.”
“Well, that’s something to dwell on,” Draco said with a shudder before going to the first years’ dormitory, hoping one of the other students had taken decent notes on the first day’s lecture.
On to part 12 here.
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you.
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 takes tea with his godfather, who explains a few misconceptions.
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.
Part 11: Tea and Bitter Biscuits
It took Draco the better part of half an hour to find his godfather’s office. Just after he had reached the dungeon level, Peeves the poltergeist had bounced out of one of the empty classrooms. Through the door, Draco was able to see every wall was covered in trails of putrid green sludge. He almost had to admire what a first-rate job Peeves had done in utterly destroying the classroom.
“Ooo, one of the ickle Firsties!” Peeves cackled loudly, zooming back and forth in front of Draco, ricocheting from one wall to the other down the corridor while propelling himself backwards so he was face to face with him. “Whatcha doing here, Blondie? Do you have permission to be roaming about without your mummy?”
Draco decided silence was probably the best response.
“Kitty-cat got your tonguey-wongy?” he asked, blowing a loud raspberry. “Why you limping like that? Something nasty bite you? Oooo, are you the Slytherin stupid who went and got bit by a pansy?”
Great, Draco thought. Just what he needed: a poltergeist who knew he’d been attacked by a glorified weed.
“Stop your gob,” Draco said through gritted teeth.
“But your battle should be told in epic song!” Peeves said, grinning broadly before breaking into a very loud, very off-key song.
“Oh stupid wittle boy
You should not annoy
The flowers that live here at Hogwarts!
A violet kicked your bum
Because you’re so dumb,
At least that’s what the professor reports!
Now you limp like a berk
‘Cause a flower went berserk
But I don’t think that you’ve learned your lesson.
I give it just a week
Until you’re just a freak,
And you work in a delicatessen!”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” Draco yelled in frustration.
“Well, you try rhyming the word lesson,” Peeves said, nodding sagely. “Did my best, I did, and do I get a thank you? Nooo, not a single kind word for old Peevesy.”
“Bugger off,” he said, getting truly annoyed now.
“No,” the poltergeist said as he floated merrily in front of Draco. “Bored. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.”
“Why don’t you go annoy someone else for a while then?” Draco said.
“Like who?”
“I don’t care! Go… bother the house-elves or something. There must be hundreds in this place,” Draco said. He was fighting the urge to pummel the thing, but he knew from experience that a poltergeist didn’t have any physical body. There had been one for a brief while at the Malfoy estate, but then…
“Why you grinning like that?” Peeves asked, his tone suspicious.
“Oh, nothing,” Draco said nonchalantly. “I just remembered something.”
“What?” Peeves asked, and his face looked just a little concerned.
“Nothing much,” Draco said with a feigned shrug. “Just that poltergeists aren’t terribly fond of certain sounds. Isn’t that so?”
Peeves’s eyes shifted nervously from side to side.
“For example...,” Draco said, pausing for effect, “they don’t like, oh, say, lyres? Especially silver ones? Particularly when someone plays a glissando three times?”
Peeves’s eyes opened comically wide.
“How do you know that?” he asked, a tremble in his voice.
“My family had to get rid of one of your kind a few years ago,” Draco said. “Now, unless you want me to tell every single person at Hogwarts exactly how to banish you from here for good, you’re going to keep mum about my little run in with the fanged geranium, right?”
Peeves looked sulky but nodded.
“And you’re not going to give me any trouble, right?” Draco said, starting to smile in earnest.
“No… sir,” Peeves responded almost against his will.
“And let’s say I need you to do a little something for me sometime in the future, you’d be willing and pleased to do that, wouldn’t you?” Draco said, giving the poltergeist a grin that he knew was just a shade too wide.
“Peeves would be honored to do so,” he grumbled.
“Fine. My first request is for you to go bother someone else, then,” Draco said. “Try a Gryffindor. Not one of the girls, though,” he added quickly, remembering Hermione. “The boys. Go after them.”
Peeves bowed and sped off down the corridor. Granted, just before he was out of earshot, Draco heard him blow a particularly loud raspberry back in his general direction, but he didn’t mind. He had just managed to get a very good spy and all around servant for himself via blackmail. Father would be so proud.
Two more twisting passages later Draco found himself outside a large wooden door labeled “Professor Snape.” He sighed heavily, and steeling himself, knocked on the door loudly.
“Enter,” said a familiar syrupy voice.
“Enter,” Draco mockingly mouthed to himself before he turned the knob and went in.
His godfather sat at his desk, looking directly and unnervingly at the opened door. He rose, beckoned Draco to one of two chairs sitting by a very small fire, and shut the door with a resounding clang behind them.
“It is a pleasure to see you, godson,” Snape said, though his voice still held its perpetually bored tone. “I congratulate you once again on your placement in my house.”
“Thank you, godfather,” Draco said, looking curiously around the office.
The walls had a great many glass jars, each one with something more disgusting floating in it than the previous one. Absolutely everything was coated in dust except for the books, several shelves of them, most of them with cracked bindings that looked centuries old. They were piled high and deep on the desk, stacked on the floor in neat piles, and Snape actually needed to move two of them from the remaining chair before he could sit down. The bare stone walls had no pictures, no photographs, not a single ornament at all. In fact, the entire room was somehow devoid of personality, almost deliberately so. Draco couldn’t help feeling rather unnerved by it.
“Have you had tea yet?” Snape asked him as he waved his wand in a complex pattern and a small tea table appeared between them, complete with a piping hot, though non-descript, pot of tea and a plate of biscuits. Those caught Draco’s attention immediately.
“No, sir,” Draco responded eagerly.
“Excellent,” Snape said, and for a moment he almost seemed pleased, nearly human. “Do you take sugar?”
“Two lumps,” Draco said, watching as his godfather prepared a cup for him, then one for himself, that one lacking sugar.
“You may help yourself to the biscuits,” Snape said, gesturing to the plate, and Draco didn’t need a second invitation to take two of them. They turned out to be not wonderful, but far from the worst thing he’d eaten that day, and before he knew it Draco had polished off a much larger number than he knew was polite. Snape didn’t take any but sat perfectly still across from him, holding his cup and saucer and eyeing his godson intensely.
“So,” Draco said, feeling awkward. “Ehm… how’ve you been?”
“Well enough,” Snape replied, placing the untouched cup of tea back on the tray, then steepling his fingers just beneath is chin. Snape looked at him intently, and Draco experienced the curious sensation that he was being examined, not merely from the outside but the inside as well. It was unpleasant, and he fought not to squirm in response. Snape nodded once, and a rather satisfied look came over the potion master’s face, but it died quickly. “How do you find Slytherin?”
“It’s alright, I suppose,” Draco said with a shrug. “I haven’t really had the time to speak with the others much yet.”
“I would suggest, Draco,” Snape said slowly and deliberately, “that you choose to be very careful about what you say and to whom. Have you taken time to inspect the mantle above the common room fireplace yet?”
“No,” Draco said, surprised and bemused by the strange question.
“You may wish to do that this evening. The motto written there will give you all the advice you could wish for in life,” Snape said, lifting the teacup to his mouth again. “Your mother has written to me regarding your post from this morning.”
“She has?” Draco said, startled that she hadn’t contacted him herself. “Is she sending taffy?”
Snape gave a long-suffering sigh that sounded rather dangerous.
“I believe she said something to that effect,” he said dismissively. “However, you and I have much more important matters to discuss than sweets, specifically the other issue you raised in your letter.”
Draco thought wildly for a moment about suggesting someone was going to do something about how damp the Slytherin accommodations were, but decided he really didn’t want to try his godfather’s patience any further.
“You mean about the missing mudbloods, godfather?” Draco said, and he was met with a nod.
Snape stared into the fireplace for a long minute in perfect silence, and Draco watched the flames do strange things to his godfather’s eyes. He had the sense that Snape was remembering something from very long ago, and it increased the perpetually bitter expression on his face.
“There are, of course, mudbloods galore at Hogwarts,” Snape finally said, his eyes never leaving the flames, and even the word “mudbloods” seemed distasteful to him. “They are everywhere. You simply have not seen them.”
“So they’re, what, invisible then?” Draco asked.
“In a way,” Snape said, finally shifting his gaze towards Draco. “They’re hiding in plain sight. Despite the stories you’ve always been told, the endless parade of witticisms and picturesque descriptions regarding the semi-animal characteristics, both physical and mental, of mudbloods, you need to understand that those were… exaggerations.”
Draco was stunned by this revelation.
“Just how exaggerated are they? Do they walk on all fours? Use broken twigs for wands?” Draco asked, feeling deeply betrayed.
“No,” Snape said, and there was a visible tightness in the lines of his mouth. “None of those is literally true. Visually, it is practically impossible to tell a mudblood from a pure-blood, even if one is standing next to you.”
“You’re telling me some of the students I was Sorted with yesterday are mudbloods?” Draco asked, rather horrified.
“Yes,” Snape said.
“They just parade around, pretending to be like the rest of us, when they know they aren’t our equals at all?” Draco said, his voice rising in indignation.
“Actually, many of them believe they actually are our equals,” Snape said, and his gaze was back on the fire again. “And many wizards, including the current Headmaster, agree with that supposition.”
“But… that’s wrong, isn’t it?” Draco said, and there was a note of desperation in his voice. “They aren’t. They can’t be. Father and Mother have always told me…”
“What they have told you is entirely correct for a boy of your purity of background,” Snape interrupted smoothly. “The less you have to do with mudbloods, the better it will go for you.”
His godfather looked away from the flames and back at Draco, and his eyes seemed to crackle with some suppressed anger.
“They can destroy you. Do not for one moment believe mudbloods are incapable of that. They are more dangerous than you can possibly realize. Stay as far from them as you can, Draco, if you wish to lead a happy life.”
Draco stared at him, his mouth a bit slack as he tried to absorb the information that Snape was telling him, but it still wouldn’t quite fit with his view of the world. And that phrase, “They can destroy you…” It reminded him too much of that fevered dream of two nights ago. He shivered instinctively.
“I believe our tea is finished,” Snape said, rising abruptly. “Again, you have my sincere hopes for a celebrated career at Hogwarts. Your mother will be sending taffy and a copy of a wizarding guide to pure-blood families by tomorrow’s post. I shall see you in the last class of the week. Until then…”
Draco rose as he realized his godfather had already opened the door back to the corridor.
“Yes, until then,” he said, then hobbled quickly back through the door and off towards the Slytherin common room, his mind swimming with thoughts and contradictions. It gave him an unpleasant lurching sensation in his stomach, as though a rug had been pulled from under him. Finally, he dealt with it as he handled all things that bothered him: he chose to ignore it until it went away. He felt better straight off.
After he gave the password and was admitted into the common room, he sat in one of the tall chairs by the fireplace. The room was otherwise deserted, the others having gone down to dinner, but with a belly full of Snape’s stale biscuits Draco wasn’t at all hungry. Remembering what Snape had said about the mantelpiece, Draco glanced up at the single monolith that made the wide mantle. It was dimly lit, but by the flickering light of the common room fire he could still see the three words that were carved deeply into the stone: “Trust no one.”
“Well, that’s something to dwell on,” Draco said with a shudder before going to the first years’ dormitory, hoping one of the other students had taken decent notes on the first day’s lecture.
On to part 12 here.
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Date: 2008-05-30 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 06:17 pm (UTC)