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bookishwenchAuthor: Meltha
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.
Previous chapters found here
Note 1: A small bit of dialogue in this section is taken from chapter 10 of the first book.
The rest of September passed by and most of October followed it without much of anything happening. Draco would have liked to think it would speed along, but truthfully it moved slowly for him.
Potter had somehow managed to become the Gryffindor Seeker and gotten a really first rate broom into the bargain even though first years weren’t allowed them. The blatant favoritism was so obvious Draco nearly choked on it. The Slytherins were all furious, and Draco spent a good deal of time fantasizing about how things would be next year when he was on his own house team and could level the competition himself.
Crabbe and Goyle (no matter how he tried, Draco couldn’t call them Vincent and Gregory and have it seem natural) were still his nearly constant companions. The problem was they were also horribly dull. They never read anything, they napped through class whenever possible, and their conversational skills were limited to saying various people were ugly, stupid, or in a few cases both ugly and stupid. He sometimes thought his mind was going to liquefy and run out of his ears from sheer boredom.
Zabini was a bit better, but he rarely deigned to speak to anyone, preferring to spend his time either practicing spells in the common room or talking with Theodore Nott, who seemed to be his best friend. Nott was something of an enigma to Draco. He was pure-blood, no doubt, and his parents would have deemed a friendship with either him or Zabini entirely acceptable, but for some reason Draco couldn’t place, they simply didn’t hit it off.
Pansy was, well, Pansy. She was pretty, somewhat delicately flirtatious, and seemed to be fascinated by eye shadow, perfume, and lipstick, her usual topics of conversation. As Draco had only the most passing interest in any of these, he decided to simply admire his apparent future wife from afar and spend blessedly little time actually talking to her, a situation that, on further reflection, was quite common among his parents’ married friends. So perhaps that was normal.
Classes were at least a distraction, and Draco found himself doing well in most of them. History of Magic was deadly dull, and he didn’t like Herbology with its focus on puttering about in the dirt or Defense Against the Dark Arts with Quirrell stammering his way through lessons that seemed ludicrously obvious and never taught them anything useful. One entire class had been spent informing them that they shouldn’t leave home without their wands, and another explained that Manticores were not for riding. Charms and Transfiguration more than made up for the others, though, and in spite of Flitwick and McGonagall being in charge of them, Draco grudgingly had to admit he was learning a lot. More than that, he was one of the very best at Potions, and not just because his godfather was the professor. There was something about the process of putting the different bits and pieces together in the right order that felt natural to him. This seemed to be a source of distant but distinct pride to Snape, who sometimes would give him a rare ghost of a smile for his best concoctions.
The only unpleasant thing about Potions was Hermione. Gryffindor and Slytherin shared the class, just as they did Herbology. However, it was relatively easy to avoid looking at her in Herbology since so much time was spent staring at whatever inane potted plant Sprout had chosen to slap in front of each of them that day. The sheer amount of vegetation meant blocking his view of her was very easy. Potions, however, had no conveniently enormous Flutterby Bushes and required more moving around, getting supplies from cupboards or running out of the way of whatever Longbottom had blown up, melted, or imbued with accidental life that particular day. Unless Draco stared into his cauldron very intently, it was impossible to miss Hermione head only a table or two away.
He hated her.
He reminded himself every day how much he hated her, and he made certain everyone else knew it as well. Still, if she really was cheating her way through classes, she was brilliant at it, which in itself made no sense since a Mudblood shouldn’t have been able to be brilliant at anything. As there was no way to bully her about her stupidity or her bad marks, he took to insulting her unfortunately awkward looks whenever possible, taking a cue from Parvati and Lavender’s earlier cruelty that he had previously loathed and happily punished.
He had never once gotten Hermione to cry, though. Her chin would go up and the muscles in her jaw would clench, and once or twice after a particularly slashing insult he thought he’d seen her eyes go too bright, but she had never actually cried. He should regard that as a challenge, he told himself, but one for a later date when he could savor it more. Some other time. Not now. And if she learned her place and simply left Hogwarts as any decent Mudblood should, he might even allow “not now” to turn into “not ever.”
Finally, Halloween arrived. Even Draco was impressed by the massive size of the pumpkins in the Great Hall. He’d always especially liked Halloween for as long as he could remember. His parents were in the habit of throwing a gala ball every year on the day, and though he was still too young to attend, regardless of how many tantrums he had thrown, he had been permitted to peer between the balusters from the landing and watch the important people arrive. They made a stunning show of silks and velvets and dragon hide, all of them surrounded by an aura of power. After everyone had entered the mansion, one of the house-elves escorted him back to his bedroom, but he could still hear the music from the small orchestra Father would hire to play as they danced. He’d already had lessons in most of the more intricate dances practically since he could walk, and while he wasn’t especially fond of mincing about in time to the music, he still thought it would be great fun to join the rest of the grown wizards someday for the party.
This was the first year he would miss the Malfoy Halloween Ball, but he was more than happy to trade it for the feast in the Great Hall that evening. He’d heard rumors about how wonderful it was supposed to be, and he was anxious to see if it was going to live up to its reputation. So, it seemed, was everyone else. As he left History of Magic that day, the corridors were filled with students who seemed much happier than usual, laughter ringing against the stone walls and excited chatter from all corners.
Perhaps that’s why what happened next stood out so clearly. In the midst of everything, Hermione looked miserable. Draco certainly hadn’t been looking for Hermione in the throng of black robes, had most definitely not remembered that Gryffindors had Charms at this time, though he supposed he might have accidentally memorized their schedule, purely for the purpose of terrorizing his least favorite Mudblood. He’d just been trying to come up with something particularly horrid to say, but someone beat him to it.
“She must have noticed she’s got no friends,” he heard the Weasel say loudly enough that half the school must have heard him.
It was obvious who the “she” was. Hermione’s eyes darted from Draco to Weasley and Potter, then back again for a split second, and their eyes locked. He was momentarily dumb-struck by the look of sheer pain there, and he was equally certain that his own expression slipped for a moment into something less than the pure hatred he was using to cover his own disillusionment and anger and, if he allowed himself to admit it, confusion. Finally, what he’d been waiting for happened. She broke. He caught a glimpse of tears coming from her eyes as she hugged her book bag closer to her and ran down the corridor.
Weasley and Potter had both noticed as well, and his immediate instinct was to curse them, but he managed to hold himself back. They were only doing what he himself had been doing for weeks: making her life miserable. He should thank them for it. For once they were on the same side in something.
He tried to tell himself it was his distaste at agreeing with the pair of them about anything that made him feel strangely sickened. They walked past him, exchanging looks of deep loathing, but Draco barely saw them. His eyes were still following where the wildly curly hair had swept around the corner and out of sight.
He could, he thought, go that way.
But he didn’t. He let himself be pulled along with the current of students going the opposite direction. He was sure his parents would approve. But somehow, the holiday cheer was separate from him now, and he had the uncomfortable feeling of being on the outside of everything rather than part of it for most of the rest of the day.
His bad mood began to dispel somewhat when the feast was ready to start. The house-elves at Hogwarts, he was happy to say, were extremely good cooks, and the roast beef and potatoes and pies and all the other dishes piled high before them were almost ridiculously delicious. Crabbe and Goyle had no complaints either, and the entire Slytherin table was in high spirits. Even Millicent looked positively happy as she sat beside Pansy and ate steak and kidney pie. For once, the high reputation of something hadn’t proven to be a disappointment. Draco clinked a flagon with Nott and took a deep drink of hot chocolate, but as he looked over the rim of the pewter cup, his eyes automatically noted one empty spot at Gryffindor’s table.
Good, he told himself. Now maybe she really would leave and he could have some peace. She’d probably be happier back with her own kind. Maybe, perhaps, it would be for the best on all sides, not that he was supposed to care about that.
Somehow the hot chocolate wasn’t quite as good as it had been a moment ago.
Crabbe had said something to him, and Draco had no idea what it was. He turned to ask him to repeat it, blaming it on all the hubbub in the Hall, when suddenly Quirrell came running at top speed from the door and towards the staff table. Everyone turned to watch, silence suddenly falling.
“Troll! Troll – in the dungeons!” he screamed, his voice several octaves too high, then added almost as an after-thought, “Thought you ought to know.”
Then Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who was supposed to be teaching them all how to defend themselves against the very worst possible scenarios, who had faced horrors beyond imagining, passed out from terror.
There was a single beat of stunned disbelief before the Great Hall erupted in screams, including one Draco was surprised to hear coming from his own mouth. He had more than a little phobia about trolls. Actually, it was impossible for anything about trolls to be little.
Dumbledore set off a loud firework from his wand, and the whole hall quieted down again immediately. The next thing Draco knew, he and the rest of the students were being sent back to their dormitories, guarded by prefects, as the teachers went to deal with the extremely unwelcome visitor. However, he couldn’t help noticing that the troll had last been seen in the dungeons, and the Slytherin common room was, well, right next to the dungeons. Everyone else was completely ignoring that fact as well.
“Is it my imagination or wouldn’t we be better off staying in the Great Hall with the door locked?” Draco said to Zabini, who considered this for a second before nodding his head. Pansy, who had been halfway to the door, heard them and turned back around.
“Good point,” Nott said, then waved over their current Head Boy, Ignotus Carrow.
“Why aren’t you moving?” Carrow, a very large boy, said with a slight threat in his voice.
“Because they’re sending us right into the path of the troll,” Draco pointed out.
Carrow frowned, then nodded and said, “I’ll ask Snape if we can just stay here.”
Unfortunately, Snape had disappeared so quickly no one had seen what direction he’d gone. He had a rather annoying habit of doing that, Draco thought, mostly annoying because he himself had not yet been able to master that trick, and it was, he had to admit, pretty cool.
He mentally kicked himself for using Muggle slang even in his own head as he scanned the rest of the quickly emptying hall for any teacher at all. One he’d never met approached the Slytherin table.
“Why are you still here?” she asked, but it didn’t sound like she was angry, only concerned.
“If the troll is in the dungeons, why are we supposed to head that way, Professor?” Draco said, and Marcus Flint gave him a look of disgust for some reason.
“Quite right and well noticed. Ten points to Slytherin,” she said, and while Draco smiled at the reward, many of the other Slytherins still looked more put out than anything else. “However, the Great Hall wouldn’t be the best place for you. Most likely, given the troll’s height, the professors will try to lure it here to keep it contained until Hagrid can remove it. I think it would be better if you evacuated to the library. Carrow, would you please see that they get there safely and bolt the door once everyone is in? I’ll inform the Headmaster of your change in location.”
“Right,” Carrow said, sounding surprisingly surly to a teacher. “Come on, you heard her. Library it is.”
“What’s everyone so fussed about?” Draco asked Nott as they made their way out of the Great Hall and up the stairs.
“That was Professor Burbage,” Nott said, nodding at her retreating back. “She teaches Muggle Studies.”
“Oh,” Draco said, embarrassed. His parents had been petitioning the school for years to have that class removed as unfit for wizarding study. In fact, they’d used the textbook as kindling in their annual Yule bonfire as least twice. “Right.”
“It’s not like you could have known,” Pansy said consolingly. “No one takes her class until third year anyway.”
“Yeah, why would I have bothered finding out what the old bat looks like? It’s not like I’m planning on taking her stupid class,” Draco said rather loudly, trying to turn his error into a point in his favor. “Who cares?”
Even if Burbage had seemed rather a decent sort, really. He wondered if she only studied Muggles or if she was a Mudblood herself. Until a few months ago he would have assumed her ability to speak in complete sentences made the answer obvious, but he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Carrow, wand drawn, led them up the main stairway and along the corridor that led to the library. Draco didn’t like to admit to being anything less than perfectly calm, but the situation was unnerving him. No one else seemed particularly happy about it either. Pansy was handling the stress by babbling along at a mile a minute with three of her friends, mostly about how horrid it was they were heading to the library when there were so many other more interesting places they could have gone for shelter. He’d nearly forgotten her dislike of any and all books, and that’s when he suddenly remembered.
“Pansy, do you still have that copy of Leaves on the Tree of Perfection?” Draco asked.
“What? Oh!” she said, blushing a deep pink. “I nearly forgot. I’ve had it in my bag for two weeks now. I’ll give it to you once we’re in the library.”
Draco noticed her entirely appropriate lack of apology and nodded gravely to show his acceptance of her returning it. There really was no point in looking at it now, though. He already knew the most important name that would be missing, but perhaps, he reasoned, there might be other missteps he could avoid in the future if he at least glanced at the thing.
The brief conversation had managed to distract him from the shadows that suddenly seemed to populate every corner of the castle, the weirdly amplified sound of their footfalls, even their own shadows that stretched eerily across the walls and flickered in the torch light. Draco had never run into a troll personally, but the thought of a gigantic, smelly, stupid, completely destructive creature, most likely with a very large club, roaming around what was now his home was giving him the collywobbles. At least they were all in a pack and going somewhere safe. He would have hated to be alone in this.
And that’s when he suddenly felt his gut hit with the realization that Hermione had not been in the Great Hall, had not heard Dumbledore’s instructions, and was most likely alone somewhere, completely miserable and unaware of the danger she was in.
“Oh, Merlin,” he moaned quietly.
“What?” Crabbe asked.
“Just stubbed my toe,” Draco invented quickly. “Hurts like a bloody dragon burn.”
Crabbe nodded sympathetically and lumbered on, as did the rest of Draco’s year as he slowly fell towards the back of the line. He wanted Hermione out of Hogwarts, obliterated from his memory, and possibly humiliated if possible.
He did not, however, want her dead.
If she ran into a troll alone, that was very likely to happen, especially as she was only a first year Mudblood and couldn’t be expected to actually be very good at spells, even with what she’d managed to do in classes. He’d nearly convinced himself that she was a remarkably good cheat, and now, for reasons he didn’t choose to think about, he suddenly hoped that every bit of what he’d seen her accomplish in the last few weeks had been real. If the troll got to her first, she was going to need all the help she could muster.
Draco didn’t really make the decision to try to find Hermione, at least not consciously. He knew there weren’t any teachers around, that Carrow and any of the other older Slytherin students wouldn’t bother to help Hermione, and that her total lack of friends, as Weasley had pointed out, meant probably no one other than himself had noticed her absence. The only problem was he had no idea where she would be.
“Think like a girl,” he told himself as he carefully slipped out of line entirely and concealed himself in a particularly dark shadow behind a statue of Belzinda Wickerweed, a rather plump witch had first captured the Giant Squid, or so the label on wall next to her claimed. “Where would a girl who’s upset go to have a good bawl?”
His first thought was her bedroom, but with Parvati and Lavender as roommates, he doubted she’d go there. The greenhouses? No, Sprout had the keys to those. Possibly the library, but he doubted from what he’d seen of Pince that she’d put up with a blubbering girl in there for hours. Draco found himself racking his brains, and the panic he was feeling was no joke.
“Bathroom,” he suddenly said out loud, but the corridor was blessedly empty now. “It’s the only spot left, isn’t it?”
But which one? There were dozens, and it wasn’t as though he was familiar with the location of all the girls’ bathrooms in the school. He wasn’t even sure if he knew where a single one was. Well, he was going to learn.
He raced over the stone floors as silently as he could, his black robes keeping him fairly well concealed. A thunderstorm had begun outside, and when flashes of lightning split the sky, the huge windows filled with momentary light, illuminating the castle almost too brightly. The troll could be anywhere. So could the girls’ bathrooms. His mother would faint if she knew what he was doing, he quickly thought, but he stuffed the idea into the back of his head to deal with later.
Finally, just across the way from one of the boys’ bathrooms, he saw a door marked “Girls’ Toilet.” He put his hand on the knob and was about to turn it when he realized what he was doing. He couldn’t just go in there. It was forbidden territory. Instead, he looked up and down the corridor to be sure he was alone, then pounded on the door.
“Granger!” he yelled. “Are you in there, you bushy-headed Mudblood?”
Nothing. Then again, he thought, what had he expected with that particular tactic? Thinking quickly, he came up with a lie.
“McGonagall’s downstairs looking for you in the Great Hall, and she made me try to find you or Slytherin is losing 20 poxy points! You’d better get out of there now or she’ll have your hide, not that I care!” he said, trying to sound annoyed rather than terrified.
He waited half a minute, and when she didn’t appear, he decided she couldn’t be in this one. If he was right and every boys’ bathroom had a corresponding girls’ one, that meant he only had, oh Merlin, ten more to go on this floor alone.
He moved on, repeating the performance at each of the next five bathrooms without the slightest sign of Hermione. He had just rounded a corner when he immediately ducked back from the direction he had come and peered warily into the darkness. The next bathroom’s door had been torn off its hinges, and an absolutely repulsive stench filled the hallway. McGonagall, Quirrell, and Snape were silhouetted against the light from the doorframe, and just past them, lying on the floor, he could see two enormous, ugly feet that had to belong to a troll. In the stillness, Draco could hear McGonagall speaking in one of her sternest tones.
“Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” she said.
Draco reasoned that Hermione at least still had to be alive. McGonagall wouldn’t be deducting points from a corpse. The troll was under control, and he could leave. Just as he was about to go, he heard McGonagall add, “And you, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, have each earned five points for Gryffindor.”
Draco stood stock still. Potter? Weasley? They were the ones who stopped the troll? He’d assumed it must have been the teachers. Had those idiots been trying to help Hermione or had it all been another one of their attempts at seeking yet more glory?
“That was supposed to be me,” Draco growled quietly. “Not them. I took all the risks. Aside from knocking out the troll, but that’s beside the point.”
He also realized he really needed to stop talking to himself. As he watched the three students leave, he slinked back down the corridor, taking a shorter route to the library now that there was no need to try to avoid a rogue troll. He felt very uncomfortable, wondering exactly why he had felt the need to try to warn someone so much beneath him. He couldn’t come up with a good excuse for why he’d risked his own neck for a Mudblood. At least it had come to nothing and he hadn’t needed to actually save her.
The nagging disappointment he felt over that was equally uncomfortable, so he decided to completely ignore it.
“The troll’s taken care of,” he called out the moment he stepped into the library, and everyone’s face turned in his direction. “We can go back to the dormitory now.”
Technically, he hadn’t been told to tell them that, but it was a good way to get attention off of his sudden reappearance and distract them with something else to think about as everyone sighed in relief and began to get up, chairs scraping and bags slung onto shoulders.
“Oh, is that where you’ve been? Hunting the troll?” Pansy asked with a note of adoration.
He was starting to find that a trifle annoying, but as she was very pretty, only a trifle.
“No,” Draco said. “I had something else to do. The teachers have it in hand. No one’s hurt.”
“Too bad,” Pansy sniffed. “A troll’s club would have been an excellent way to deal with the excessive number of Mudbloods here. Speaking of which, here’s your book back.”
Pansy handed him the book, and Draco noticed a glittery green stain on the front of it and picked at it curiously with his thumbnail.
“Oh,” Pansy said. “I think a bit of varnish got on the cover. I was reading it just after painting my nails.”
Draco nodded, mentally reminding himself to at least attempt cleaning it off later. Normally he’d leave that sort of thing to the house-elves, but he felt as it was his parents’ book he really should oversee it himself. Pansy had not apologized yet again, another sign of her excellent breeding, but he wondered if perhaps in the case of damaging the property of a Malfoy she should have made an exception.
The brief walk from the library and down to the Slytherin common room and at last into his dormitory and finally to bed felt much longer than usual because Draco was so tired. Leaves on the Tree of Perfection: A Wizarding Genealogy still looked as dull as ever. The good-sized splotch of nail varnish didn’t even disturb its heavy aura of tedium. Draco pulled out his wand, tried the cleaning charm that Flitwick and been attempting to teach them for the last week, and found that the stain disappeared easily. He mentally told himself that if his future as a high-ranking Ministry official didn’t work out, at least he was being well prepared for a career as a janitor.
He wanted to put out his candle and go to sleep. The others already had, though how anyone was sleeping through Goyle’s snoring was beyond him. But he needed to see.
He opened the book and quickly scanned the contents. The families were in alphabetical order beginning with Abbott. Draco immediately remembered the Hufflepuff girl with braids. Really? She was a pure-blood? She seemed too, well, wholesome for that. Every time he saw her he was strongly reminded of adverts for flower-scented soap. The last entry in the book was for, of course, Zabini, whom he could have guessed was pure-blood from across a room. Almost against his will, he flipped back to the Gs, not even pausing at the middle to read about his own family. He looked carefully in case some idiot hadn’t known the alphabet well enough and put the family name out of order, but no, there was indeed no Granger mentioned, the section skipping from a rather terrifying family called Gaunt to another he’d never heard of named Greengrass. There had been no mistake.
He closed the book and stared vacantly at it for a while. A sudden, mad desire came over him to throw it into the fireplace, but instead, his sense returned, and he tucked it into the drawer of his nightstand next to Persephone’s treats and his spare quills. He may perhaps have slammed it a bit harder than strictly necessary if the faltering of Goyle’s rhythmic snores was anything to go by, but Draco was asleep so quickly that he didn’t have time to contemplate that or any of his other earlier motives tonight.
Note 2: I know in the video game of Chamber of Secrets there is a different, unnamed, male Muggle Studies teacher. I'm basically ignoring that.
