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bookishwenchI know, I know, took me long enough.
Previous parts 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 Potions lesson leads to a different sort of chemistry.
Author note: A few sections of dialogue have been taken from chapter 8 of Philosopher’s (or Sorcerer’s) Stone.
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.
Part 15: Potions Class
Draco wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Professor Flitwick, but Charms seemed to be more interesting than any class other than Transfiguration. At any rate, Draco took great pleasure in being able to levitate his feather much faster than Nott or Zabini did. He’d actually managed to earn five points for Slytherin, which had nearly offset the deficit from the incident with the Fanged Geranium. Crabbe and Goyle were, predictably, the slowest in the class, and Draco suspected this was a trend he was likely to see continue for many years to come.
Defense against the Dark Arts, though, was enough to make him question Dumbledore’s sanity. Quirrel was basically a moron, and anyone with fashion sense terrible enough to think a gigantic purple turban was making a positive statement needed to get his head examined… possibly literally, Draco thought, as a pungent and disgusting odor followed Quirrel wherever he went. It set his nerves on edge.
Still, at least it meant Draco could have a little fun. Each time the professor went past, he immediately held his nose, managing to resume a normal posture the moment he turned around. This led to stifled laughter from Pansy, Daphne, and Millicent, though Quirrel couldn’t figure out what the joke was and was getting annoyed. Just as Draco was really beginning to enjoy the attention, though, unfortunately Crabbe and Goyle decided to get in on the act. They were caught immediately.
“T-t-ten p-points from S-s-slytherin!” Quirrel said with surprising anger, and for a split second Draco thought he had seen the man’s eyes go red, but he chalked it up to the torchlight.
Still, there was something about him Draco didn’t like. If his complete ineptitude, the ridiculously heavy penalty to Slytherin, and the deeply offensive smell weren’t enough, there were also the disappointed faces of Crabbe and Goyle as they left class. Dim as they might be, they were his friends, and he didn’t like seeing them embarrassed.
“Points are for wankers, anyway,” Draco said encouragingly. “Everyone knows Slytherin’s best without counting the stupid emeralds in the Great Hall. Besides, Quirrel had it coming.”
“Yeah,” Crabbe agreed. “Someone ought to send him a cake of soap.”
“Or just dump a bucket of water on his head,” Goyle added. “That hat is stupid.”
“Deeply,” Draco agreed as they reached the Slytherin common room. He took one of the chairs near the enormous fireplace, Crabbe and Goyle sitting to either side of him, and stretched out luxuriously. At least here it wasn’t quite so damp.
“Off with you,” commanded a gruff voice, and Draco looked up to see a very tall boy standing in front of him. He appeared to be in seventh year… actually, judging from sheer size it appeared he was in seventh year for the third time.
“No,” Draco said coolly. “We were here first.”
“You’re a first year,” the boy said grimly. “You haven’t been here long enough to be anywhere first. Who are you anyway?”
“Draco Malfoy,” he enunciated clearly, standing with his hand on his wand. “And who precisely are you?”
The boy looked at him uncertainly, then shifted his gaze to the fireplace.
“Malfoy, you say?” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” he said firmly. “What of it?”
The boy gave him a hard glare as though he’d like to say something that would start a fight, but he held his tongue.
“Wouldn’t want to sit here anyway,” he said. “Get covered in ash that close.”
As they watched the retreating figure, Draco was feeling very gratified. Finally, some of the respect of the Malfoy name was being acknowledged. It all seemed to go right over Crabbe and Goyle’s heads, though. Crabbe was rummaging through his bookbag, which of course contained no books, and he finally produced a package of Ice Mice.
“Want some?” he offered the other two.
Draco took one without a second thought, figuring that the minty freshness of the treat might make him feel a little less drowsy, but he carefully avoided saying thank you since doing so would break his father’s rules of etiquette. Goyle took one as well, and soon their teeth were all squeaking away amiably by the fire.
Eventually, Draco went off to the dormitory to do his homework (half a parchment on the necessity of checking under one’s bed before sleeping in a strange place for Quirrel and another go at the levitating charm for Flitwick). He wasn’t the least bit surprised that Crabbe and Goyle preferred to remain napping by the fire rather than do any work. Briefly, he wondered if the majority of the Hogwarts students really weren’t interested in what they were supposed to be learning. It certainly seemed to agree with Hermione’s description of the Gryffindors. Well, at any rate, he’d have a chance to see it first hand tomorrow since they were scheduled to have double Potions together. Somehow, Draco felt that was going to be memorable.
Draco slept a bit later than usual the next morning and found himself rushing to get dressed, stuff his Potions textbooks into his bookbag, and then run to breakfast. Sadly, the other Slytherins had not chosen to sleep in as well, and by the time he got there, there were only a couple of pieces of rather depressed-looking toast with a pathetic dab of gooseberry jam (his least favorite) each. Stuffing the leftovers in his mouth and forcing himself to wash it all down with a goblet of his hated pumpkin juice, he managed to join the silver/green and gold/red throng outside of Snape’s classroom before the professor actually arrived.
“You were late,” Crabbe said.
“Nearly,” Draco said. “What’s wrong with the help in this castle? Why is there never enough breakfast for everyone to get a decent meal?”
Goyle shrugged and picked at a bit of sausage still stuck between his teeth. Draco sighed in frustration and stared at the classroom door. Why, he wondered, was the Potions classroom a dungeon? He had a mad moment of contemplating whether his godfather might not somehow enjoy dungeons as some sort of decorating motif, what with his office, his classroom, and the common room of his house all being of a similar pattern, but before he could further ponder why Snape might want to feel like he was being punished wherever he went, the man himself arrived.
Striding down the corridor and dressed in his customary black, Draco could understand why a good number of the students were pulling back in some horror. Snape was really rather impressive in a menacing way. He gave them all a look of deepest loathing mixed with disappointment as he surveyed each face one after the other, but when he got to Draco, the smallest, icy smile was on his lips for a split instant. With a bang, Snape opened the classroom door, the students following in his black-garbed wake and finding themselves seats with commendable speed, though one very small Gryffindor boy managed to trip over his own feet, sending his books flying in every direction and uttering a groan of despair as he scrambled to collect his things.
That one, Draco decided, might just be a good way to pass the time.
As Snape got out his notes, handouts, and books for the class, all in amazingly angry silence (and with a glance of sheer disgust at the Gryffindor who had tripped, and who now somehow seemed to have gotten his foot stuck in his bookbag), Draco surveyed the class. The Slytherins were at least a little less terrified than the Gryffindors, but even the sea of silver and green seemed rather unnerved. The Gryffindors, Draco was pleased to note, looked fairly ready to run screaming from the classroom, with one predictable exception. Hermione had somehow gotten textbook, parchment, quill, and ink onto the desk with no fuss at all and was busily reviewing the first chapter. Draco also noted she seemed to be the only one with a book out at all, though he had to admit, the girl with the light brown hair who was whispering nervously to her friend had an excuse. She was pretty enough not to need to study, as his father would say. As for Potter, who happened to be sitting next to Hermione, he seemed a bit dazed.
Snape began to call the roll. As each student responded quickly with “Present,” Draco noted that Snape’s reaction was different depending upon whether the boy or girl was seated with the Gryffindors or Slytherins. The Slytherins generally received a perfunctory yet polite nod of the head, while the Gryffindors earned looks of immediately dislike. Through this he was able to find out that the pretty girl was named, of all the stupid, idiotic combination, Lavender Brown. It made her sound like a crayon color gone horribly wrong. With that name, she’d better be pretty, he thought.
Hermione’s answer of “Present!” which Draco had to admit sounded rather wildly eager, earned her an eyeroll from the Weasley sitting to her left and an unpleasant grimace from Potter along with a few stifled giggles from the other Gryffindors. He honestly couldn’t see what was so funny. He did, however, note that the idiotic crayon girl was whispering under her breath to an almost equally pretty Indian girl next to her and making whirling motions around her head as though imitating Hermione’s wild hair, which got them both laughing in suppressed snickers. Suddenly, Lavender Brown seemed much less pretty. In fact, wasn’t her nose rather excessively pointy?
Draco nearly missed his own name in the role but was actually saved by a nudge from Goyle.
“Present,” he said smoothly, trying to cover his error with an excessively confident grin.
Snape nodded again, though the nod lasted a split second longer for him than the others, before he continued with the list of names until he came to Potter.
“Ah, yes,” Snape said quietly, “our new—celebrity.”
Draco led Crabbe and Goyle is a fit of giggling of their own that he felt was entirely justified. Snape didn’t appear to notice, or perhaps he merely approved, and continued down the list, ending with Blaise. He then launched into a rather lengthy and poetic introduction to the art of potion-making that including words like shimmering and seeping, bewitching, and somehow or other “brewing glory” and “putting a stopper in death.” The melodrama was bordering on a Celestina Warbeck ballad by the time Draco was starting to nod off, when suddenly Snape’s tone changed entirely.
“Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” he shot off as though he were seconds away from hexing him.
Oh boy, Draco thought, sitting up much straighter. This was going to be good.
“I don’t know, sir,” the bespectacled boy responded, and Draco grinned, though he had absolutely no idea what the ingredients made either.
On the other hand, Hermione looked like an invisible ghost was pulling her out of her seat by the arm she had raised it so high. Obviously, she knew. Draco was beginning to wonder if there was anything she didn’t know.
Snape clucked his tongue in mock sympathy at Potter and said, “Clearly, fame isn’t everything.. Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”
Harry answered again that he didn’t know, but this time Draco did. Bezoars were found in goat stomachs. He’d had to swallow one when he was three after eating the leaves off his Uncle Orion’s prize Mankiller Mandrake. He considered raising his hand but decided that particular story was one he’d rather keep to himself. Instead, he led Crabbe and Goyle in another, slightly less quiet round of guffaws, laughing so hard that he heard only the words “monkshood and wolfsbane” when Snape quizzed Potter again.
“I don’t know,” Potter said, then Draco saw him get a look in his eyes that spelled trouble. “I think Hermione does, though. Why don’t you try her?”
Hermione still had her hand raised high in the air, and, yes, that settled it, she was in the wrong house. The Gryffindors were bloody well laughing at her for being smarter than St. Potter of the Holy Headscar! What was wrong with those idiots?
This, Draco decided, meant war.
“Sit down,” Snape said to Hermione in a tone that made Draco frown. She might be a Gryffindor, but still, there was such a thing as manners among Purebloods.
Snape launched into a diatribe about potions, aconite, and the idiocy of the students in general, culminating in taking one point from Gryffindor. One? Draco grumbled loudly. Why did Sprout hit him with minus ten and Potter got off with only one?
The potion to cure boils, the thought of which disgusted Draco to the point where he was rather glad he’d gotten only toast this morning, went fairly well. The directions were simple enough if they were followed carefully, and Draco found he had a knack for this sort of thing, which was lucky as Crabbe nearly caused their shared cauldron to explode. Snape seemed pleased with Draco, at any rate, which was a good thing as it undoubtedly distracted him from looking at the mess Goyle and Bulstrode had created in their cauldron. Draco’s experience with potion making was admittedly thin, but he was absolutely certain it wasn’t a good sign when the ingredients were trying to walk away, especially if they’d never been alive in the first place. When the pathetic boy accidentally made a highly corrosive acid that came close to dissolving the shoes of everyone near his melted cauldron, Draco decided he was having rather a good day, especially when Snape thought Potter had done it (though really, Draco couldn’t follow the logic there) and had penalized Gryffindor again… for another lousy single point, but still, these things do add up.
Potions ended without anyone losing a limb, which Draco thought was rather a miracle, and the Gryffindors and Slytherins poured into the corridor as though they had been freed from jail... which was a rather apt description as they were leaving a dungeon, after all. As the Gryffindors went one direction and the Slytherins the other, Draco looked over his shoulder to see if he could catch Hermione’s eye. He was just in time to see Lavender and Parvati setting on her, one pulling her hair hard from behind to distract her as the other yanked her bookbag off her shoulder and to the floor before they took off running, giggling in a truly annoying way.
“Hey!” he yelled before he could stop himself.
The other Slytherins had already gone ahead, and Hermione and he were alone in the hallway. She was on her knees, picking up her scattered (and unsurprisingly numerous) books, when Draco crouched next to her and grabbed her copy of History of Magic.
“Couple of gits, those two,” he said, cramming it back in her bag, but Hermione didn’t look up from the floor. “I can see them ending up with Potter and Weasley. Of course, the children would be morons.”
“I really, really hate this school,” she said through gritted teeth. He’d been half-afraid she was crying, but one look at her face corrected that thought. No, she was about as angry as anyone he’d ever seen. “Maybe I should transfer to Beauxbatons.”
“Don’t bother,” Draco said, wrinkling his nose. “I met a few of them once when my family was vacationing in Nice. It’s like a whole school full of those two.”
Granted, Draco thought, it wasn’t just that they were all snobs but that they were also almost ridiculously attractive, but he didn’t mention that bit. Hermione huffed loudly at him and sat back on her heels, looking at him curiously.
“What?” he asked.
“I’ve got an idea.”
It wasn’t what she said. It was how she said it. Whatever was going on under that riot of curls was undoubtedly at least slightly evil, and he found himself grinning.
“Does it involve revenge?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said firmly.
Then he frowned.
“Can we get detention for it?” he asked. It wouldn’t do for his parents to get notice that their son was besmirching the Malfoy name with detention during the first week of school.
Hermione squinted and turned her head sideways, considering, and he could almost swear he could see her lips moving as though she were going through the entire Hogwarts Code of Student Conduct.”
“Actually, I think there’s a loophole,” she said, smiling broadly.
“Then count me in!” he said, slinging his own backpack on his shoulder.
“There’s only one little problem,” she said as they walked along. “I’ll need to do some research about poltergeists.”
“What, you mean Peeves?” Draco said, looking at her curiously.
“Mmm,” she said, nodding. “I’ll need to find some way to bribe him for this to work.”
Draco laughed, and now it was Hermione’s turn to look confused.
“Mademoiselle d’Arc,” he said with a bow, “you have absolutely no idea how easy that will be. I told you before, friends can be useful, especially those with the right connections, and you’ve got one. Now, tell me, what precisely did you have in mind?”
They walked off together, happily laying out their battle strategies and snickering with anticipation.
Previous parts 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 Potions lesson leads to a different sort of chemistry.
Author note: A few sections of dialogue have been taken from chapter 8 of Philosopher’s (or Sorcerer’s) Stone.
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.
Part 15: Potions Class
Draco wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Professor Flitwick, but Charms seemed to be more interesting than any class other than Transfiguration. At any rate, Draco took great pleasure in being able to levitate his feather much faster than Nott or Zabini did. He’d actually managed to earn five points for Slytherin, which had nearly offset the deficit from the incident with the Fanged Geranium. Crabbe and Goyle were, predictably, the slowest in the class, and Draco suspected this was a trend he was likely to see continue for many years to come.
Defense against the Dark Arts, though, was enough to make him question Dumbledore’s sanity. Quirrel was basically a moron, and anyone with fashion sense terrible enough to think a gigantic purple turban was making a positive statement needed to get his head examined… possibly literally, Draco thought, as a pungent and disgusting odor followed Quirrel wherever he went. It set his nerves on edge.
Still, at least it meant Draco could have a little fun. Each time the professor went past, he immediately held his nose, managing to resume a normal posture the moment he turned around. This led to stifled laughter from Pansy, Daphne, and Millicent, though Quirrel couldn’t figure out what the joke was and was getting annoyed. Just as Draco was really beginning to enjoy the attention, though, unfortunately Crabbe and Goyle decided to get in on the act. They were caught immediately.
“T-t-ten p-points from S-s-slytherin!” Quirrel said with surprising anger, and for a split second Draco thought he had seen the man’s eyes go red, but he chalked it up to the torchlight.
Still, there was something about him Draco didn’t like. If his complete ineptitude, the ridiculously heavy penalty to Slytherin, and the deeply offensive smell weren’t enough, there were also the disappointed faces of Crabbe and Goyle as they left class. Dim as they might be, they were his friends, and he didn’t like seeing them embarrassed.
“Points are for wankers, anyway,” Draco said encouragingly. “Everyone knows Slytherin’s best without counting the stupid emeralds in the Great Hall. Besides, Quirrel had it coming.”
“Yeah,” Crabbe agreed. “Someone ought to send him a cake of soap.”
“Or just dump a bucket of water on his head,” Goyle added. “That hat is stupid.”
“Deeply,” Draco agreed as they reached the Slytherin common room. He took one of the chairs near the enormous fireplace, Crabbe and Goyle sitting to either side of him, and stretched out luxuriously. At least here it wasn’t quite so damp.
“Off with you,” commanded a gruff voice, and Draco looked up to see a very tall boy standing in front of him. He appeared to be in seventh year… actually, judging from sheer size it appeared he was in seventh year for the third time.
“No,” Draco said coolly. “We were here first.”
“You’re a first year,” the boy said grimly. “You haven’t been here long enough to be anywhere first. Who are you anyway?”
“Draco Malfoy,” he enunciated clearly, standing with his hand on his wand. “And who precisely are you?”
The boy looked at him uncertainly, then shifted his gaze to the fireplace.
“Malfoy, you say?” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” he said firmly. “What of it?”
The boy gave him a hard glare as though he’d like to say something that would start a fight, but he held his tongue.
“Wouldn’t want to sit here anyway,” he said. “Get covered in ash that close.”
As they watched the retreating figure, Draco was feeling very gratified. Finally, some of the respect of the Malfoy name was being acknowledged. It all seemed to go right over Crabbe and Goyle’s heads, though. Crabbe was rummaging through his bookbag, which of course contained no books, and he finally produced a package of Ice Mice.
“Want some?” he offered the other two.
Draco took one without a second thought, figuring that the minty freshness of the treat might make him feel a little less drowsy, but he carefully avoided saying thank you since doing so would break his father’s rules of etiquette. Goyle took one as well, and soon their teeth were all squeaking away amiably by the fire.
Eventually, Draco went off to the dormitory to do his homework (half a parchment on the necessity of checking under one’s bed before sleeping in a strange place for Quirrel and another go at the levitating charm for Flitwick). He wasn’t the least bit surprised that Crabbe and Goyle preferred to remain napping by the fire rather than do any work. Briefly, he wondered if the majority of the Hogwarts students really weren’t interested in what they were supposed to be learning. It certainly seemed to agree with Hermione’s description of the Gryffindors. Well, at any rate, he’d have a chance to see it first hand tomorrow since they were scheduled to have double Potions together. Somehow, Draco felt that was going to be memorable.
Draco slept a bit later than usual the next morning and found himself rushing to get dressed, stuff his Potions textbooks into his bookbag, and then run to breakfast. Sadly, the other Slytherins had not chosen to sleep in as well, and by the time he got there, there were only a couple of pieces of rather depressed-looking toast with a pathetic dab of gooseberry jam (his least favorite) each. Stuffing the leftovers in his mouth and forcing himself to wash it all down with a goblet of his hated pumpkin juice, he managed to join the silver/green and gold/red throng outside of Snape’s classroom before the professor actually arrived.
“You were late,” Crabbe said.
“Nearly,” Draco said. “What’s wrong with the help in this castle? Why is there never enough breakfast for everyone to get a decent meal?”
Goyle shrugged and picked at a bit of sausage still stuck between his teeth. Draco sighed in frustration and stared at the classroom door. Why, he wondered, was the Potions classroom a dungeon? He had a mad moment of contemplating whether his godfather might not somehow enjoy dungeons as some sort of decorating motif, what with his office, his classroom, and the common room of his house all being of a similar pattern, but before he could further ponder why Snape might want to feel like he was being punished wherever he went, the man himself arrived.
Striding down the corridor and dressed in his customary black, Draco could understand why a good number of the students were pulling back in some horror. Snape was really rather impressive in a menacing way. He gave them all a look of deepest loathing mixed with disappointment as he surveyed each face one after the other, but when he got to Draco, the smallest, icy smile was on his lips for a split instant. With a bang, Snape opened the classroom door, the students following in his black-garbed wake and finding themselves seats with commendable speed, though one very small Gryffindor boy managed to trip over his own feet, sending his books flying in every direction and uttering a groan of despair as he scrambled to collect his things.
That one, Draco decided, might just be a good way to pass the time.
As Snape got out his notes, handouts, and books for the class, all in amazingly angry silence (and with a glance of sheer disgust at the Gryffindor who had tripped, and who now somehow seemed to have gotten his foot stuck in his bookbag), Draco surveyed the class. The Slytherins were at least a little less terrified than the Gryffindors, but even the sea of silver and green seemed rather unnerved. The Gryffindors, Draco was pleased to note, looked fairly ready to run screaming from the classroom, with one predictable exception. Hermione had somehow gotten textbook, parchment, quill, and ink onto the desk with no fuss at all and was busily reviewing the first chapter. Draco also noted she seemed to be the only one with a book out at all, though he had to admit, the girl with the light brown hair who was whispering nervously to her friend had an excuse. She was pretty enough not to need to study, as his father would say. As for Potter, who happened to be sitting next to Hermione, he seemed a bit dazed.
Snape began to call the roll. As each student responded quickly with “Present,” Draco noted that Snape’s reaction was different depending upon whether the boy or girl was seated with the Gryffindors or Slytherins. The Slytherins generally received a perfunctory yet polite nod of the head, while the Gryffindors earned looks of immediately dislike. Through this he was able to find out that the pretty girl was named, of all the stupid, idiotic combination, Lavender Brown. It made her sound like a crayon color gone horribly wrong. With that name, she’d better be pretty, he thought.
Hermione’s answer of “Present!” which Draco had to admit sounded rather wildly eager, earned her an eyeroll from the Weasley sitting to her left and an unpleasant grimace from Potter along with a few stifled giggles from the other Gryffindors. He honestly couldn’t see what was so funny. He did, however, note that the idiotic crayon girl was whispering under her breath to an almost equally pretty Indian girl next to her and making whirling motions around her head as though imitating Hermione’s wild hair, which got them both laughing in suppressed snickers. Suddenly, Lavender Brown seemed much less pretty. In fact, wasn’t her nose rather excessively pointy?
Draco nearly missed his own name in the role but was actually saved by a nudge from Goyle.
“Present,” he said smoothly, trying to cover his error with an excessively confident grin.
Snape nodded again, though the nod lasted a split second longer for him than the others, before he continued with the list of names until he came to Potter.
“Ah, yes,” Snape said quietly, “our new—celebrity.”
Draco led Crabbe and Goyle is a fit of giggling of their own that he felt was entirely justified. Snape didn’t appear to notice, or perhaps he merely approved, and continued down the list, ending with Blaise. He then launched into a rather lengthy and poetic introduction to the art of potion-making that including words like shimmering and seeping, bewitching, and somehow or other “brewing glory” and “putting a stopper in death.” The melodrama was bordering on a Celestina Warbeck ballad by the time Draco was starting to nod off, when suddenly Snape’s tone changed entirely.
“Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” he shot off as though he were seconds away from hexing him.
Oh boy, Draco thought, sitting up much straighter. This was going to be good.
“I don’t know, sir,” the bespectacled boy responded, and Draco grinned, though he had absolutely no idea what the ingredients made either.
On the other hand, Hermione looked like an invisible ghost was pulling her out of her seat by the arm she had raised it so high. Obviously, she knew. Draco was beginning to wonder if there was anything she didn’t know.
Snape clucked his tongue in mock sympathy at Potter and said, “Clearly, fame isn’t everything.. Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”
Harry answered again that he didn’t know, but this time Draco did. Bezoars were found in goat stomachs. He’d had to swallow one when he was three after eating the leaves off his Uncle Orion’s prize Mankiller Mandrake. He considered raising his hand but decided that particular story was one he’d rather keep to himself. Instead, he led Crabbe and Goyle in another, slightly less quiet round of guffaws, laughing so hard that he heard only the words “monkshood and wolfsbane” when Snape quizzed Potter again.
“I don’t know,” Potter said, then Draco saw him get a look in his eyes that spelled trouble. “I think Hermione does, though. Why don’t you try her?”
Hermione still had her hand raised high in the air, and, yes, that settled it, she was in the wrong house. The Gryffindors were bloody well laughing at her for being smarter than St. Potter of the Holy Headscar! What was wrong with those idiots?
This, Draco decided, meant war.
“Sit down,” Snape said to Hermione in a tone that made Draco frown. She might be a Gryffindor, but still, there was such a thing as manners among Purebloods.
Snape launched into a diatribe about potions, aconite, and the idiocy of the students in general, culminating in taking one point from Gryffindor. One? Draco grumbled loudly. Why did Sprout hit him with minus ten and Potter got off with only one?
The potion to cure boils, the thought of which disgusted Draco to the point where he was rather glad he’d gotten only toast this morning, went fairly well. The directions were simple enough if they were followed carefully, and Draco found he had a knack for this sort of thing, which was lucky as Crabbe nearly caused their shared cauldron to explode. Snape seemed pleased with Draco, at any rate, which was a good thing as it undoubtedly distracted him from looking at the mess Goyle and Bulstrode had created in their cauldron. Draco’s experience with potion making was admittedly thin, but he was absolutely certain it wasn’t a good sign when the ingredients were trying to walk away, especially if they’d never been alive in the first place. When the pathetic boy accidentally made a highly corrosive acid that came close to dissolving the shoes of everyone near his melted cauldron, Draco decided he was having rather a good day, especially when Snape thought Potter had done it (though really, Draco couldn’t follow the logic there) and had penalized Gryffindor again… for another lousy single point, but still, these things do add up.
Potions ended without anyone losing a limb, which Draco thought was rather a miracle, and the Gryffindors and Slytherins poured into the corridor as though they had been freed from jail... which was a rather apt description as they were leaving a dungeon, after all. As the Gryffindors went one direction and the Slytherins the other, Draco looked over his shoulder to see if he could catch Hermione’s eye. He was just in time to see Lavender and Parvati setting on her, one pulling her hair hard from behind to distract her as the other yanked her bookbag off her shoulder and to the floor before they took off running, giggling in a truly annoying way.
“Hey!” he yelled before he could stop himself.
The other Slytherins had already gone ahead, and Hermione and he were alone in the hallway. She was on her knees, picking up her scattered (and unsurprisingly numerous) books, when Draco crouched next to her and grabbed her copy of History of Magic.
“Couple of gits, those two,” he said, cramming it back in her bag, but Hermione didn’t look up from the floor. “I can see them ending up with Potter and Weasley. Of course, the children would be morons.”
“I really, really hate this school,” she said through gritted teeth. He’d been half-afraid she was crying, but one look at her face corrected that thought. No, she was about as angry as anyone he’d ever seen. “Maybe I should transfer to Beauxbatons.”
“Don’t bother,” Draco said, wrinkling his nose. “I met a few of them once when my family was vacationing in Nice. It’s like a whole school full of those two.”
Granted, Draco thought, it wasn’t just that they were all snobs but that they were also almost ridiculously attractive, but he didn’t mention that bit. Hermione huffed loudly at him and sat back on her heels, looking at him curiously.
“What?” he asked.
“I’ve got an idea.”
It wasn’t what she said. It was how she said it. Whatever was going on under that riot of curls was undoubtedly at least slightly evil, and he found himself grinning.
“Does it involve revenge?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said firmly.
Then he frowned.
“Can we get detention for it?” he asked. It wouldn’t do for his parents to get notice that their son was besmirching the Malfoy name with detention during the first week of school.
Hermione squinted and turned her head sideways, considering, and he could almost swear he could see her lips moving as though she were going through the entire Hogwarts Code of Student Conduct.”
“Actually, I think there’s a loophole,” she said, smiling broadly.
“Then count me in!” he said, slinging his own backpack on his shoulder.
“There’s only one little problem,” she said as they walked along. “I’ll need to do some research about poltergeists.”
“What, you mean Peeves?” Draco said, looking at her curiously.
“Mmm,” she said, nodding. “I’ll need to find some way to bribe him for this to work.”
Draco laughed, and now it was Hermione’s turn to look confused.
“Mademoiselle d’Arc,” he said with a bow, “you have absolutely no idea how easy that will be. I told you before, friends can be useful, especially those with the right connections, and you’ve got one. Now, tell me, what precisely did you have in mind?”
They walked off together, happily laying out their battle strategies and snickering with anticipation.
