Chapter 3: Gryffindor
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Draco’s heart skipped. It stuttered. It almost stopped altogether, and he would have preferred if it stayed that way, because when it started again, the world he returned to was far from pleasant.
The hall was perfectly silent. Neither the Gryffindors nor the Slytherins made a sound. Even Professor McGonagall’s mouth parted, and she did not attempt to remove the hat from his head.
His breaths came quickly. His chest heaved. He thought about running. He might be able to make it to Snape’s office, and Floo home from there, and he could — he could — he didn’t know what he’d do—
A single clap broke open the silence, like shattering the ice on the surface of the lake. It came from behind him.
Professor Snape slowly drew his hands apart and clapped again, lazily, as if he were so bored by the proceedings that he couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to applaud properly. He glanced at Draco, lifted his eyebrows, and sent a meaningful glance at the Gryffindor table.
Draco understood the message being communicated. It was neither sympathetic nor cruel, disappointed nor approving. It said, If you want them to stop staring, take off the damn hat.
It was just the sort of practical Slytherin wisdom that he badly needed, and he felt a pang of affection for his godfather so strong that it overwhelmed him. Draco made a mental note to send Snape a box of ridiculously expensive cigars, if he didn’t end up flinging himself from Gryffindor Tower that night.
He rose, removed the hat himself, and with all possible dignity, he handed it to Professor McGonagall. Then, twitching back his robes and slipping his hands in his pockets, he swaggered casually and deliberately over to the Gryffindor side of the room. His footsteps echoed loudly on the stone floor. The eyes of hundreds remained glued to his back.
He didn’t sweat. He didn’t flinch. He thought, Go ahead and watch me, you feckless nobodies. Just go ahead and look your fill. You’ll be staring for the next seven years, might as well start now.
When he was about halfway from the podium to the table, Fred Weasley — shaking himself out of a dazed and slack-jawed stupor — stood up and let out a wolfish howl. He started clapping. George joined him instantly. A cheerful-looking boy with dreadlocks came after them, and in a belated explosion of glee, Gryffindor issued a bold, if somewhat confused, explosion of cheers for its newest member.
Percy Weasley stood up and waved him over, bulldozing a few Fourth Years out of the way to clear a seat. “Good show, Malfoy,” he said incredulously. “Good show — wouldn’t have expected it of you — but well done, well done, well done—”
Draco grunted and sat down.
“Yes, welcome, welcome, welcome, that’s all I can say! Percy Weasley, I don’t know if we’ve met, I think you ran into my brothers earlier. Fred and George? They’re twins, it’s hard to miss. And of course, you might know my brother Bill, he’s a cursebreaker at Gringotts, he’s done some work with your family before…”
Wordlessly, Draco turned his back to Percy. He hadn’t a moment’s peace before Granger came bounding over and squeezed her way in beside him, wedging herself into a gap less than half her size and forcing him to shimmy over to avoid bearing the brunt of her weight on his lap.
“Congratulations!” she cried, eyes shining. “I had no idea — I never thought — but this is fantastic! We’ll have all our classes together!”
Draco let out a groan that was mostly lost under the cheering. He wondered if he slammed his head very hard into the table whether he mightn’t wake up in an empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express, or better yet, in his bed back home.
There weren’t many people left now. Theodore Nott strutted forward when his name was called, and the hat had barely touched his head when it howled, “SLYTHERIN!” He trotted down to the Slytherin table, carrying the full weight of Draco’s envy with him.
“Paisley,” “Patil,” and “Patil” came and went (“Splitting up twins, that’s rare,” mused Percy), then “Perks,” and finally: “Potter, Harry!”
It was the only Sorting so far that matched Draco’s in terms of whisper volume. A small, shaggy-haired boy with a dark, slender face climbed the stairs to the podium, his robes trailing behind him. He was quite skinny. His limbs were short and birdlike, and there were hollows under his cheeks where puppy fat ought to have been. Across his forehead ran a series of pale raised lines, almost like lace or netting, which Draco realized in a nauseating jolt were actually one huge scar.
“They oughtn’t all be whispering like this,” hissed Granger, also whispering. “It’s nerve-wracking enough without everyone gossiping.”
Potter received the hat with a trepidatious expression, clinging tightly to the edge of the stool. It sat on his head for almost as long as it had been on Draco’s before belting, “GRYFFINDOR!”
Predictably, the house went wild. Draco was knocked about by a sea of flailing elbows and caught a stray wallop to the back of his head. Granger, for her part, stood up and gave a hearty cheer — though not any louder, he noted with satisfaction, than she’d cheered for him. Potter disappeared into the cheering crowd down the table, followed by another Weasley (Draco wondered wildly how many of them there could possibly be) and after a few more names, the Sorting was over.
The food appeared, and it looked delicious, but Draco had lost his appetite. He halfheartedly piled a few slices of roast beef on his plate and pushed them around until the feast wrapped up. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see his father’s face, drawn with shock and disappointment. It was enough to turn his stomach.
At the High Table, McGonagall and Snape were leaning their heads together and talking about something. Draco tried to catch Snape’s eye, but he couldn’t. He did manage to catch the eye of Theodore Nott, whom he glimpsed across the hallway at the Slytherin table. The boy cocked his head and somewhat bemusedly raised his cup. Draco dropped his gaze to his plate.
After the meal, Percy Weasley led the first years out of the Great Hall. While they waited for everyone to congregate, Weasley seized the chance to launch into a historical lecture: “And that’s a portrait of Wilhelmina Swallow, Headmistress of Hogwarts in 1296, pioneer of the Disillusionment Charm… and that’s the Great Bell, it rings on the hour-mark and for meals… bequeathed to Hogwarts as a gift from Beauxbatons, to celebrate the allied British and French victory in 1919…”
True to form, Granger greeted every dull detail of this tour with coos of interest and awe. This was sweet at first, but quickly became annoying, and Draco wished she would go stand by someone else.
As they were milling around in the Great Hall, waiting for the last few first years to trickle out, Draco heard someone call his name. Crabbe and Goyle came slinking out of the shadows near the passageway that led to the dungeons.
Draco — after casting a quick glance at Weasley, to make sure he wouldn’t notice — ducked into the corridor with them.
“What do you want?”
“Oi,” said Crabbe. “You haven’t been very nice to us, you know, Malfoy.”
“Yeah,” added Goyle. “We feel like we deserve a proper apology. For what happened on the train.”
“An apology?”
“Right. An apology. Especially since you’re not even a proper Slytherin, now, you’re a numpty Gryffindor.”
Draco drew himself upright, which put him about eye level with Goyle’s sternum and Crabbe’s chin. “I’m not apologizing to either of you,” he said evenly. “And I’m not a Gryffindor.”
Crabbe giggled stupidly. “Hat says you were, though.”
“Well, the hat was wrong. I’m going to go talk to McGonagall tomorrow, and if she doesn’t help me, I’m talking to the Headmaster. But I’m not staying in this wretched house, you can believe that.”
“No, really,” Goyle said, grinning. “Wait until my dad hears about this! I’ll hear him laughing all the way from me house. And my mum was always on about how smart the Malfoys were, too. But you ended up in the dumb house, an’ we’re in the smart one, so there.”
“That’s Ravenclaw, you idiot.”
“Naw. Ravenclaw’s just for the skinny drips what can’t do nuffin but read books. We’ve got the real smarts, Slytherins.”
“Certainly seems like it,” Draco muttered.
Goyle seized a handful of his collar and shoved him against the wall. Draco’s head smacked on the marble, and he let out a yelp of pain.
“What was that?” Goyle said lowly, leering. His sour breath washed over Draco’s face. “Did you wanna say somefin’ about our house?”
“Let me go, you turd, there are people watching.”
“Make me.”
“You think I can’t? See what happens when I tell my mother about this.”
This was a wild bluff, and one that failed to touch sides. Crabbe and Goyle both snickered at the empty threat. Crabbe, sensing the ripe opportunity for violence, threw a punch into his gut, and Draco groaned, doubling over.
“You ain’t nobody’s boss, Malfoy,” sneered Crabbe. “We ain’t got to listen to you. Your family ain’t nuffin anymore, not nuffin at all. We was going to be nice and all because we felt bad about your daddy, but you’re a git, and some proper purebloods ought to teach you how a Slytherin minds his manners.”
“Yeah,” said Goyle. “And figure this, Malfoy: we ain’t even need our wands to do it. Guess that makes us stronger than you.” He hefted his meaty fist and leered.
Draco grit his teeth and braced himself for pain. Not the face, he thought. He didn’t want evidence for others that he was a target.
“Oi!”
A new voice rang out from the mouth of the corridor. It stalled Goyle’s hand long enough for Draco to wriggle himself free of his grip.
Two boys, one dark-haired and one redhead, came striding out of the Great Hall. The latter was tall, freckly, and wore robes several sizes too small for him, showing off much of his ankles and wrists. The other was small and birdlike, and had so much hair he and Granger ought to start a club. He had piercing green eyes that occasionally hid behind his fringe, and without being told, Draco knew his name.
“You two leave him alone,” said Harry Potter.
“Yeah, sod off,” barked his ginger companion. “I’d say pick on someone your own size, but I dunno where you’d even find a troll around here.”
Crabbe and Goyle let out grunts of irritation, but they did amble away from Draco, giving him a bit of space to breathe.
“Aw, look, Greg,” Crabbe said. “Three widdle Gwyffindors, sticking together.”
Potter planted himself in front of Crabbe. The size difference between them was comical. Draco almost laughed, feeling vaguely hysterical.
“Have you got a problem?” Potter said.
“Yeah, what’s got up your trousers?” the redhead demanded. “Get lost on your way to the dungeons? Doesn’t surprise me, you look like you need a map of your own bathroom.”
Goyle sneered at Malfoy. “We’ll come find you sometime,” he promised darkly. “When your pals aren’t around to watch your back.”
“I hope you do,” said Draco coldly. “Find out what happens.”
Crabbe and Goyle retreated down the corridor, flashing sour stares over their shoulders. Draco watched them go until they rounded the corner, fighting the itch to grab his wand and go after them.
“Blimey,” said the redhead, scratching his neck. “Those two sure aren’t missing meals, are they?”
“Nah,” said Potter. “Like to see them go ten rounds with my cousin. Hey, are you all right?”
Draco straightened his robe where Goyle had twisted it askew with a sharp tug, and glanced at them. “I suppose you expect me to thank you,” he said.
The dark-haired boy blinked at him. “Only if you feel like it,” he said. “Didn’t have much choice, really. Everyone’s waiting for you to go upstairs, and Hermione said she’d seen you wander off this way, so we thought we might as well check.” He stuck out his hand. “Harry Potter. Nice to meet you.”
Draco glanced at the pale waiting face of his outstretched palm. Reluctantly, he clasped it. Harry Potter shook his hand.
The ginger said, “Looked like you took a knock on the head, there, mate. You need the infirmary?”
“No. I’ll be fine.”
“Bang on. I’m Ron, by the way. Ron Weasley. And you are?”
He suppressed a sigh. Rescued by a Weasley: would indignities never cease? “Draco Malfoy.”
Weasley sniggered.
“Oh, think my name’s funny, do you?”
“Yeah, a bit, to be honest,” he said. “My mum said that the old pureblood families had batty names, but I never met one before.”
Draco rounded on him. “Did she? Mine told me that every Weasley has a dozen brats and names them all after muggles.”
“Oi!”
Potter stepped forward. “Hey. Lay off him, he was only joking.”
“Yeah? I’m sure he’s told you all about my family. I don’t suppose you know anything about wizarding families, but in case you were wondering, mine and Weasley’s here are about as far apart as you can get.”
“Oh, really?” snapped Weasley.
Potter folded his arms. “I think I can tell for myself which families are worth what,” he said coolly.
“Right. Well, good luck. I’d offer my help, but obviously you’ve already made up your mind.” Draco added spitefully, “I suppose when the whole Wizarding World’s in love with you, you can afford to run around with riffraff.”
“I don’t know what your problem is, but you ought to be careful what you say about Ron,” Potter said angrily.
“I’ll say what I please. I don’t owe you anything.”
“No, but you might try some manners, seeing as we just stopped your nose from being caved in,” Weasley said indignantly.
“Potter! Weasley!”
Weasley (Prefect Weasley, the fussy one; it dawned on Draco with disgust that if he was going to live in Gryffindor Tower, he would need to learn to tell them apart) appeared in the mouth of the corridor, his face pink with exertion. “Malfoy! There you are! We’ve been looking for you!”
They herded back into the Great Hall while the prefects did a final headcount. Draco traded a cold stare with Potter and Rude Weasley as they disappeared into the crowd. He glimpsed the Slytherin first years being led off down a flight of stairs into the dungeons, and wondered longingly where they were going. The Slytherin commons couldn’t be underground, could it? That seemed unfair.
Perhaps more unfair, however, were the number of sodding stairs that Gryffindors were apparently expected to climb. The first three flights Draco weathered without complaint, but by the sixth or seventh, his legs had turned to jelly, and it was downright pathetic how Weasley kept trying to rally them with exhortations of “There you go, one more now!” or “Almost there! Worth it, I promise you!”
Granger, who was flushed ruddy pink and well out of breath, mumbled: “You’d think they’d consider putting in an lift.”
“Gryffindors,” muttered Draco disdainfully. “Probably never thought of it.”
“You’re a Gryffindor.”
“Under protest.”
A bundle of walking sticks was floating in midair ahead of them, and as Percy took a step toward them they started throwing themselves at him. “Peeves,” Percy whispered to the First Years. “A poltergeist.”
“What’s a poltergeist?” said one round-faced boy fearfully.
Granger twisted around. “It’s a mischievous magical spirit,” she announced loudly, ignoring the fact that they were several steps above the boy who’d spoken and that the question had not been addressed to her. “It’s bound to a particular location, and the longer it dwells there, the harder it is to banish. The Hogwarts poltergeist is named Peeves. I read about it in—”
Draco mouthed along when she said it: Hogwarts, a History.
“Oh, no,” fretted the round-faced boy. “Is it scary?”
“Not if you’re older than five,” muttered Draco. “So for you, maybe.”
But he must have said this too loudly, for Peeves contorted in midair, folded his legs into a pretzel, and zoomed headfirst toward Draco. Draco forced himself to hold still as Peeves made a swooping pass over his head, ruffling his hair.
“My toad!” shouted the round-faced boy. “Where’s my toad? I’ve dropped him!”
“See, that’s why I didn’t get a toad,” said Granger matter-of-factly. “It just seems impractical. You’d have to worry about people stepping on it all the time.”
“An owl’s more useful anyway,” said Draco absently.
“Yes, that’s what I thought. But I couldn’t convince my parents to let me get one. I told them and told them, Mum, Dad, it’s normal, it’s how wizards send letters and things, everybody has one, but they said if I couldn’t take care of a gerbil there was no way they were buying me a bird of prey.”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “What happened to your gerbil?”
“Nothing!” she said shrilly, and he made a mental note never to loan her his owl.
At the stratospheric top of the staircase hung a portrait of a rubenesque lady in a pink silk dress. “Caput Draconis,” said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They climbed through, and found themselves in a round, stone room, paneled with tapestries and dark wood bookshelves, covered in a patchwork quilt of dark red rugs and crammed full of old soft-looking leather armchairs. Half-melted candles and abandoned teacups sat here and there amongst stacks of parchment, ghostly white busts of strangers’ heads (famous Gryffindors, Draco presumed), oil portraits, red wool jumpers, fluffy throw pillows, and shaggy wool blankets draped thickly over the back of each chair. Near one end of the common room, a giant fireplace roared behind a wrought-iron grate, and covered the room in its golden light.
At the top of a spiral staircase, a series of doors lead off to little suites, and behind the furthest door stood five empty four-poster beds, each hung with thick red curtains and gold tassels.
His last hopes that there had been a mistake were dashed when he saw his trunk and owl had been brought up and laid at the foot of one bed.
Potter and Weasley were already unpacking. They ignored him, which was fine by Draco, and in fact preferable. The round-faced boy with the toad was rifling through his own trunk, tossing books and pairs of underwear left and right.
“I can’t find him! My gran will kill me! I promised her I could take care of him…”
“…not a surprise, but still nice,” one of the other boys was saying. “Six generations, all Gryffindors. Me mum’ll be pleased…”
“…s’pose I can borrow some pajamas? I buried mine and can’t be arsed to unpack—”
“Got you, mate, catch—”
Draco ducked as a clutch of soft red fabric went sailing across the room.
“Thanks!”
“Don’t mention it.”
“…called ‘ceedees,’ they are, me dad showed ’em to me. You pop ’em in the player an’ it spins ’em real fast, an’ somehow that makes music. Muggles came up with it. Bloody brilliant if you ask me.”
“Sod off. And you’re telling me there’s no magic involved at all…?”
“Get off, Scabbers! He’s chewing my sheets.”
“…called a ‘deejay,’ an’ he plays ceedees for a living.”
“Muggles can make money doing that? Playing other people’s music? You’re joking!”
“Hey, you.”
“Am not. An’ here’s something else. You ever heard of a band called ‘R.E.M.’?”
“You there,” someone said loudly. “Pale bloke. Here.”
Draco realized he was being spoken to. An unfamiliar prefect held out a bundle of something red and gold.
“What’s that?” he said, though a pit in his stomach told him he knew.
“Your house ties,” said the boy. “Last part of the uniform. They’re mandatory for classes, school events, and any meetings with professors that take place on school grounds.”
When Draco did not take them, the prefect set them on his bedside table. “Failure to comply with dress code will lose you house points. If you need help tying them, you can ask me or Percy.”
He stared at the prefect like he’d grown a second head.
“What?”
“I know how to tie them,” he said indignantly.
The prefect shrugged. “No need to sound uppity about it. There’s lots of first years who can’t.”
This, perhaps more than any other facet of Gryffindor culture, was appalling. Any self-respecting pureblood who could not, at the age of eleven, tie his own full Windsor, would have been deemed unacceptable for introduction to polite society. He doubted very much that any Slytherin prefects needed to make such offers of help.
In the privacy of his bed, with the hangings drawn, Draco changed into his pajamas and crawled beneath the covers. He could hear the various murmurs and stirs of the dormitory as the other boys went about their nightly routines. Remembering belatedly that Dobby wasn’t there to do it, and muttering a curse, he crawled out of bed again and fed Ulysses, sprinkling a few food pellets through the bars of his cage. Ulysses snapped them up and hooted at him balefully, obviously resenting his entrapment. Draco felt a great deal of sympathy.
He swaddled himself in the covers and indulged in some good old-fashioned wallowing. As if everything else weren’t enough, Weasley had started snoring, great honking snores that seemed to rattle the bedposts, and rain had started coming down on the windows outside. Draco tried to think of Malfoy Manor, its wide silent rooms, and his soft goosefeather mattress with a hot bedpan at the foot. But this was in the way of a mistake, because thinking of home only reminded him of his mother, and the letter he would have to write, explaining himself. Dear Mother. The quest to restore the family name is going splendidly. I have started by humiliating the family and shaming us forever by breaking a centuries-old tradition…
He was interrupted in his moping by one of Weasley’s ear-shattering snores. It was a reflection on his sorry state that he actually felt grateful toward Weasley in that moment, if only for distracting him from his misery.
At some point he must have fallen asleep, because he found himself in a long, dark hallway surrounded by green doors. He was walking toward the big door at the end of the hallway, but the faster he walked, the further away the door drew, so that with each step the distance became farther and farther, until he was sprinting after a door no larger than a speck of green on the horizon. Panic gripped him, and he knew at once, with the certainty that only exists in dreams, that if he didn’t reach the door, something horrible would happen to him. Somewhere, someone was laughing, a raspy woman’s laugh that grated in his ears.
Someone shouted, and Draco shot up in bed, sweating.
He snatched back the hangings and found himself staring at Harry Potter, who was sitting bolt upright in his own bed, wide-eyed and trembling, obviously just surfaced from a nightmare. Sweat had slicked his mop of hair down to his head.
The two boys regarded each other. A clock on the wall said it was nearly three in the morning. The other boys were all fast asleep.
Slowly, Draco lifted a finger to his lips.
Potter nodded.
They both drew back the respective hangings of their beds, and they went back to sleep.
Life began its strange, militant lockstep onwards. As Granger intimated, first years took their classes together as a house, which meant there was no escaping the brigoon of boisterous, noisome tweens that were Draco’s housemates. Luckily, the number of students in their year required most professors to teach double-blocks. They shared Transfiguration, History of Magic, and Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, Charms and Astronomy with the Ravenclaws, and Defense Against the Dark Arts with one or the other twice a week. Potions they took with the Slytherins, under the blissfully competent instruction of Severus Snape, whose lessons were such a relief from the puerile hand-holding of Flitwick and Sprout that Draco went to McGonagall at the end of the first week to ask if he could take Potions II instead of Herbology.
“Mr. Malfoy,” she said, “although I’m sure Professor Snape will be flattered to hear of your passion for the subject, you must be aware that we do not allow first years to transfer out of any core class.”
“Yes, I read the handbook. But if I got a special permission slip from Professor Snape—?”
“He assuredly would not give it, and in the hypothetical event that he did, I as your head of house would have to approve your study list,” said McGonagall severely, looking down at him over her spectacles. They were ensconced in her office, a warm, sunny room off the Transfiguration classroom, full of old books with metal-studded spines, and plush leather furniture. She said, “May I ask if you have something against Herbology?”
He scowled. “Sprout never makes us do anything. She spent half the first lesson talking about the proper way to wear gloves.”
“You don’t consider your own safety a valuable educational priority?”
“I don’t see why we’re being made to muck around in the dirt for a letter-grade.”
McGonagall steepled her fingers on her desk. “Herbology is admittedly not my specialty, but it has always been my understanding that dirt is where the plants tend to be.”
Draco threw up his hands. “It’s not dignified,” he said passionately. “We get out all filthy and sweaty after an hour in that sweltering greenhouse, hauling around henbane planters, and then it’s straight into Charms, so there’s no time to bathe or change our clothes, and I’ve had dirt under my fingernails for about a week, and she has us carrying these giant watering cans that she could just as easily levitate if she wanted to—”
“You think it’s beneath you,” said McGonagall calmly.
“It is beneath me. It’s beneath any pur— any wizard.”
The elderly witch arched her eyebrow, but said nothing. Nevertheless, he knew he’d lost her. She rose and waved her wand, and the door to her office swung open. “Your request to transfer is denied,” she said. “If you do well on your end-of-term exams, you may submit yourself to be considered for advanced placement in Second Year. Until then, I suggest you find some way to cope with dirt under your fingernails; I am personally partial to a good Scouring Charm.”
Thereafter, Potions remained the sole point of light in his schedule. Defense Against the Dark Arts was passably interesting, though Quirrell had no great surfeit of teaching talent, and after a few days of Transfiguration he began to harbor a begrudging respect for McGonagall, who gave no quarter and suffered no fools. He excelled in Charms, though he complained to anyone that would listen that the work was mind-blisteringly easy. History of Magic bored him to tears, and he couldn’t even complain to Granger about it, because the daft witch spent the whole class in rapt attention, hanging on Binns’ every word.
“They don’t teach it the right way,” he told her later.
She dropped the book she was reading and frowned at him. Her hair was ineffectually roped back into a ponytail and there was a smudge of jam on her chin. “What do you mean?”
He thumbed his jaw meaningfully, and she pinked and grabbed a napkin. “They don’t start at the beginning,” he complained. “They have us reading Bagshot’s A History of Magic, which starts in the Golden Age of Athens, with Atlantis as the first Wizarding community, but it’s established archeological consensus that magic existed in the Mediterranean prior to the Bronze Age Collapse.”
“Well, you have to start somewhere.”
“Yes, but it’s wrong.”
“It’s not wrong, it’s just incomplete,” she pointed out. “And I expect we’ll go back and study the more complicated historical questions when we’re older. After all, they have to catch up all of us muggle-borns who’ve never learned any magical history before.”
“Then they ought to put you lot in a different class,” Draco said irritably.
She set down her fork. “You don’t mean that,” she said, stung.
“It’d be for your benefit, if anything. It’s not fair for them to grade us on the same curve when you’re coming in already at a disadvantage.”
“I don’t mind it,” she said, after a pause. “I’d like to be graded the same way as everyone else. I don’t want anyone to make special exceptions for me because I’m a muggle-born.”
They already have, Draco thought nastily. That’s why you’re here.
But he merely shrugged, and said, “Albus Dumbledore agrees with you.”
He and Granger were developing something of a rivalry. She was, predictably, a ruthlessly hard worker, much more so than he, but he had an instinctive edge to even the score. Granger, after all, had rarely seen anybody do the spells they were learning. He instinctively mimicked parts of wand-posture and hand movement that the professors didn’t think to explain, and which Granger had to figure out for herself. To her credit, she didn’t let this deter her. Whenever he got something before she did, the witch would descend on him like an inquisitorial squad unto herself, demanding to know how he did it and what technique he used and what she wasn’t doing right.
(He thought about refusing to help her; it would probably boost his class rank. But one day, after he fell asleep in History of Magic, Granger elbowed him awake with a hiss of: “Wake up, or you’ll miss the chance to turn in the homework!”, thereby sparing him from a zero on the assignment, and after that, he felt it would be unsporting to begrudge her the precious few hints she asked for).
She had him by a nose in Transfiguration and D.A.D.A., while he led by a hairsbreadth in History and Charms, and neither of them cared much for Herbology.
In Potions, however, it wasn’t even close. Snape rarely even came over to check on his table anymore, so rare was it for Draco to require instruction. His homework was so frequently used as a model for the class that he might as well have been credited in the curriculum. Once, he put up his hand to ask a question about the chemical properties of boomslang venom, and it turned into a twenty-minute conversation between himself and Snape on the various uses of snakeskin in potioneering. It was the most interesting conversation Draco had with anyone since entering the castle. Of course, he’d always known his godfather was talented, but not until now did he realize that Snape was a proper genius, and it made his status as pet-prodigy into a source of personal pride.
This made him beloved by nobody. In fact there were few things, aside from dropping his pants and shooting a Dark Mark over the Astronomy Tower, which could have generated more animus from his peers. The result was acute inflammation of the ego combined with chronic hatred of the self, a combination whose symptoms included confusion, misery, and a lack of friends to whom he could complain about it.
It also helped that Snape utterly disdained Harry Potter, and did not labor to conceal that fact. The dungeon became the one place that Draco could hide from the school’s obnoxious fawning over Saint Potter and his trashy friends.
“I don’t get what you have against them,” Granger sighed at dinner, flouncing down so forcefully it lost him a spoonful of tomato soup. It was not an excellent tomato soup, so he was not cross with her. True to Dobby’s wish, none of the cooking at Hogwarts rivaled anything from home. “They’re not my best friends either, but they haven’t done anything wrong. Harry tries to be nice to everybody.”
“Oh, please.”
“He does!”
“Of course he does. He struts around this school like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.” Draco became aggressive in his treatment of the soup, which failed to achieve anything: the soup, being soup, was unintimidated. “And the professors let him. They coo and fawn and try to get him to like them, it’s obvious. I think Flitwick would let him teach the class, if he asked.”
“But that’s not his fault,” Granger objected, ladling herself a bowl.
“And he doesn’t try.”
That clouded over her open, earnest features. “Well,” she said, “no, maybe, not exactly, he doesn’t.”
“Not at all. Don’t get me started on Weasley. And they cost you house points like you wouldn’t believe. Example!” He indicated his own (perfectly knotted) Gryffindor tie. “Weasley’s inability to master the intricate theorems of the full Windsor has cost Gryffindor fifteen points in the last week.”
“Us,” she chided, in a tone that was positively McGonagallesque.
“What?”
“You said ‘cost you house points,’” she said. And because he had nothing to say to that but indiscriminate grumbling, he buried himself in mediocre soup.
Draco did not consider himself a Gryffindor.
He did not attend house events. He did not linger in the common room after classes. He came and went directly from his bedroom in the morning and evening, and spent any free hours roaming the castle. He did not like the Gryffindor ghost, a pompous knight with a cervical problem. He did not like the house colors, which clashed with his complexion. He did not like the one hundred and twenty-four stairs that laid between his bed and his breakfast. He did not like that whenever he passed a group of Slytherins, they could be relied upon to break into a chorus of hissing. He did not like that unless Granger decided to inflict her presence upon him, he would sit alone at meals, in classes, and anywhere he chose to sit in between. He liked least of all the fact that his mother still had yet to write back to him, three weeks into the term.
On September 23rd, in addition to his daily edition of the Daily Prophet, Draco received a large package in the post, wrapped in dark green paper and tied in silver string. It was far larger than anything anyone else had received, and he ignored several jealous stares as he picked it up, left the table, and marched into the nearest empty classroom.
Inside lay a careful matrix of smaller boxes, all fit together, individually wrapped, and carefully insulated with tissue paper. He pried them out one by one and shredded the wrapping paper greedily. There was a box of assorted chocolate caramel truffles, dusted in sea salt and a snowy crown of powdered sugar, which had been his favorites since he was four. There was a small bottle of cognac (this was crammed underneath a large wad of tissue paper, as if the person packing the box had attempted to hide it) and a travel-size bottle of his mother’s perfume. A spherical package the size of his fist turned out to be a pack of gardenia-scented bath salts, and the last was a tall green candle with golden marbling, which the label promised would smell like “wherever the witch or wizard who lights it considers home.”
At the very bottom of the box lay a note, folded into quarters. He unfolded it.
wishng mester Draco al the best and hopping he is having a good tim at skool. we is missing him gretly but we no he is becomng a very gret wizard and are proud of him but still we are wishng always he is coming home soon. love dobby
And it was still not this — not this stroke of unsolicited kindness, not this cruel reminder of a distant home, not this devastating blow to any red-blooded wizard’s stiff upper lip — which undid him. No, the thing that broke Draco was the realization that, beneath his gratitude, his affection for Dobby, and beneath even his animal pleasure at receiving presents, there was a pit of disappointment as wide as the Atlantic opening at the bottom of his stomach: for he had hoped until the very last word that the note would bear his mother’s name.
It was for this reason that he spoke little in Potions that afternoon, despite knowing the answer to every question, and despite Snape offering him several opportunities (summarily refusing to call on Gryffindors who already had their hands raised). He fiddled with his quill and remained silent, forcing Snape to call on Granger not once, not twice, but thrice, each time finding less and less to criticize in her answer. After class, as everyone shuffled around collecting their books, Snape swooped over to his table and loomed over him while he packed his bag.
“A word, Mr. Malfoy,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
This was not unusual. He often hung back after Potions. What was unusual was that Snape, instead of striking up a conversation about lacewing flies, escorted him into his office and shut the door behind him.
“Is this about my class schedule, sir?”
“Sit,” said Snape, pointing to the chair.
Draco sat. “Because I spoke to Professor McGonagall about it, and she told me I couldn’t take Potions II as a first year. But I thought, if you spoke to her, then maybe—”
“You cannot.”
“Oh,” he said, deflated.
Snape swept over to his desk and “I was disappointed by your performance today in Potions. You were ill-tempered and uncooperative, and you did not conduct yourself in accordance with your considerable talents. It will not happen again.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” This was the second blow in a day against his bruised pride. It was a special misery to disappoint the one teacher whose opinion he actually cared about.
“I understand you are unhappy with your house.” Snape settled behind his desk, his robes billowing like vast bat wings.
Draco fidgeted in his seat and gave no answer.
“You would have preferred to be in Slytherin.”
“Of course I would have,” he said bitterly. “That’s where everyone respectable is.”
“You do not consider Professor McGonagall respectable.”
He rolled his eyes. “Except Professor McGonagall.”
“You do not consider Albus Dumbledore respectable.”
“I’ve never met him personally. I couldn’t say.”
“Whom do you consider respectable?”
This was an example of what a Slytherin might call ‘free lunch.’
“Well, you, sir,” Draco said immediately. “Obviously.”
Snape did not appear moved by the flattery. “Indeed.”
“And… and my father. He was a respectable man.”
“Indeed so. Dead, also.”
Draco flinched. “Yes, sir,” he said tightly. “As I have been made aware, my father is, in fact, dead.”
“There is no need for that tone of voice. I am merely reminding you of the salient facts.” Snape opened a drawer in his desk and rummaged in it. “It is my understanding that you have not heard from your mother yet this term.”
“Who told you that?”
“Irrelevant. That is my understanding. Is it incorrect?”
Sulkily, Draco muttered, “No, it’s not.”
“Speak up, I can’t hear remarks addressed to the floor.”
“No, it’s not incorrect.”
“Good. And you have not been in contact with anyone else by post?”
Draco frowned. “No, I haven’t.”
“You have not sent any letters from the Hogwarts owlery, nor received any?”
“No. I mean yes. I sent one the first night, to my mother. I told her… well, I told her.”
“And after that?”
“No. I don’t get letters. I get the Prophet in the morning. That’s all.” Draco wracked his brain. “And a package from home, earlier today, I suppose. Trinkets, candy, things like that. But not correspondence.”
“Good.” Snape withdrew a letter from his desk and shut the drawer. He held it out to Draco. “This is from your mother. It is for you.”
Draco gaped at him for a moment. Then he lunged forward and snatched it. Snape sprawled back in his chair and watched, expressionless, as Draco tore open the wax seal and ripped open the envelope, shaking out a single sheaf of creamy paper covered with elegant black script.
Dear Draco,
Hello, my sweet one. I was very sorry to get your letter; sorry not because I am ashamed but sorry because you sounded so dreadfully unhappy. Please know that I could not be disappointed in you if I tried and though I am dismayed, I admit, at this rupture in a grand and admirable family tradition, I cannot be cross at you for a failure of the Sorting Hat to do its job. We will write to Dumbledore and see if you can be reassigned somewhere more suited to your talents and heritage. In the meantime, hold fast, and be strong, my darling. I know that it is hard to be in a strange place but I believe that you above all others have the power to bear it. You are the son of a man whose great virtue was the ability to bear anything for his family and I know this power lies with you also.
Please forgive me for not writing sooner. It was difficult to get ahold of Severus, for he is busy and does not often have time to come visit. For reasons which he will hopefully explain, it was not possible to contact you by owl, and so I apologize for any distress I have caused you by waiting. Know that it was not my intention and that I have been suffering far more than you these long weeks, for anyone can agree that it is far worse for a mother not to hear word of her son than a son not to hear word of his mother. I remember when I went to Hogwarts it was a source of private joy that my mother knew so little about my life.
As to my health and happiness, do not worry. I am occupied with the maintenance of the estate and the accounts, and of course, the gardens. I have been thinking of putting in a new species of flower to replace the jasmines — what do you think of yellow roses? I know it may be an overreaction to suggest such a dramatic change, but with my son gone, I am prone to restlessness.
Remember what that greatest of all magicians, Homer, once wrote: Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier, I have seen worse sights than this.
And remember also what that silliest of all witches, your mother, once told you: I love you more than sunlight and moonlight and wine and music, all the pleasures of the world put together.
All my heart,
Mummy
Draco read it twice, and then a third time, for good measure. When he was finished, he folded it and slid it into the breast pocket of his robes, where it pressed against his heart. He murmured, “Thank you, Uncle Severus.”
“Inside the walls of this castle,” said Snape, “you will refer to me as ‘sir,’ or ‘professor.’ And you are welcome.”
The Potion Master’s face was veined and sallow, lined with wrinkles that foretold premature age, and a furred brow cast a long shadow over eyes of shineless black. They were unreadable, even to Draco, who had known them for the better part of his life.
“Sir,” he said, “permission to speak freely. As family.”
“Granted.”
“Why is my mother using you as a go-between?”
“Safety,” he answered. “I do not know what your mother wrote to you, but whatever she wrote, I imagine she would prefer that it remained between you and herself. She solicited my help in ensuring that fact.”
“Ensuring… are you saying someone’s spying on my mother?” A hot tongue of anger licked up his throat. “Who would dare—”
“I did not say that,” said Snape tonelessly.
“But then what do you mean?”
“Precisely what I said. I did not say,” drawled Snape, examining his fingernails, “that someone was spying on your mother.”
He looked at Draco.
It took a moment for the implication to sink in.
“On me?”
“You will refrain from raising your voice in this office.”
“But who would want to spy on me?” Draco demanded. “I’ve not done anything to anybody! I’m innocent! I’ve never even had a detention! I’m ELEVEN!”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Draco, I detest tedium.”
Draco gripped the armrests of his chair for strength and grounding. “But,” he struggled, “but, but. But.”
“You sound like a parrot. If you have nothing intelligent nor novel to say, say nothing.”
This stung. Nevertheless, out of respect for his godfather, he swallowed his words and his pride. After a moment, he managed, “I don’t understand. Who’s spying on me?”
“That’s better,” said Snape, in a somewhat softer tone. “It’s an apt question. Consider, then, another question: who would benefit from knowing the substance of private conversations between you, Draco Malfoy, and your mother?”
It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to know much about Draco’s life, considering how wretched it was. He took a flying guess. “Dumbledore?”
“Dumbledore has more sophisticated ways of acquiring information about you. You live under his roof. Think harder.”
“…The actuaries?”
“No. You’re thinking simplistically.”
This rankled. He furrowed his brow and stared out the window, deep in thought.
“If one were to think in terms of means,” Snape suggested, “who, of anybody, possesses both the motive and capability to conduct surveillance of owl post?”
“…The Ministry?”
“Better. It is usually best practice to deal in specifics.”
“The Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” he said, leaning forward. “They keep tabs on former Death Eaters, don’t they? Even exonerated ones? I know they had the Trace on you for years—”
“Careful,” said Snape, and his voice was as dark and cold as the bottom of the lake. Draco paled and fell silent, quelled by the glimmer of anger in his godfather’s eyes.
The silence turned brittle, cracked, and passed them by. “My past,” murmured Snape, with a touch of regret, “does not concern us today.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have summoned you here, and ferried your mother’s correspondence, and offered you what guidance I can, out of respect and gratitude for the generosity your mother has shown me over the years. I have done this, also, in fulfillment of the obligations I undertook freely to owe you as my godson. I will continue to assist her, as I am able, in your stewardship and defense. But all her efforts and mine will be wasted if you do not exercise judgment in when to hold your tongue.”
Draco nodded so hard his neck hurt. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand the significance of what you’ve learned here?”
“Yes, sir.” In truth, he didn’t. Supposedly the Ministry was watching his owls, but how and why they were doing that he didn’t have a clue. Perhaps they were monitoring his mother, but he couldn’t think what their suspicions would be; Narcissa hadn’t been a Death Eater. She’d had a stake in the fight, and she certainly didn’t get in her husband’s way, but she’d never touched the mask.
Anyway, what did the Ministry even suspect her of? Voldemort had been dead for eleven years. The Death Eaters were all dead, imprisoned, or living under heavy supervision, like Snape.
Like his father would have been, if he had lived.
Shortly before he died, Lucius had testified before the Wizengamot. Under the baleful sneer of Bartemius Crouch, he had dutifully offered up a complete registry of names: every man, woman, and creature he had ever glimpsed under the mask, every contact he ever made, every safehouse and bunker they ever used in the war. He gave a complete dossier of Voldemort’s arsenal, including what magical artifacts he had seen used and where he had gone to recruit the magical creatures who fought alongside him in the war. He spoke for six hours. (Narcissa, years later, had told Draco all this.) When he was done, Crouch signed his name and dropped the Ministry stamp on a government pardon, and sent him on his way with the Trace hanging from his neck.
Within a year, Lucius was dead.
“That is all I have to say,” Snape said abruptly. He stood, loosing a tidal ripple of black cloth. “If you wish to send your mother a reply, you may enclose it with your next homework submission for my class. I will see that it is delivered to her, although I make no promises as to expediency; I am not your owl.”
“No, sir. Thank you, sir.” Hearing his dismissal, Draco scrambled up and hurried to the door.
As he was leaving, Snape called his name.
“Oh, and Draco?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Your housemate, Neville Longbottom, is abysmal at Potions,” said Snape carelessly. He leaned back in his chair, flicked his wand at the quill on his desk, and it began to scrawl busily over what Draco suspected were student papers. “A hippogriff holds more talent for brewing in one feather than he holds in his body entire. I have no desire to reward poor performance with special treatment, but if he continues in this manner he will hurt himself, and most probably others.”
Draco, who thought this was both amusing and true, agreed.
“You will help him.”
This was far less amusing. He stared at Snape in horror.
“Sir,” he began desperately. “He’s a lost cause. I can’t… I won’t…”
“You can, and you will. A student of your skill should not find it difficult to instruct Longbottom on the fundamentals of potion-making, and in so doing, you will find an outlet for your time and energy beyond badgering Professor McGonagall to let you drop a class — who, incidentally, is convinced that it was my nefarious doing to put the idea of dropping Herbology into your head, when even the most execrable potioneer alive could tell you how absolutely essential herbological knowledge is to all that we do.”
This was not to be borne. Draco wondered, with all possible lucidity, whether Snape didn’t actually want him dead. If he did, putting him in a room near Longbottom and a cauldron for any amount of time was a sure way to achieve it. “Yes, sir,” he managed. “Absolutely. I understand. But really, I mean, Longbottom —”
“An hour every week, I think,” said Snape silkily, and if Draco didn’t know better, he’d say a trace of mirth gleamed in his godfather’s coal-black gaze. “That should do, to start. We’ll see how Longbottom is progressing after that. Dismissed.”
I write full “seasons” (a.k.a. one academic year) of this fic at a time, and then release the chapters on a schedule, so there will be regular updates so long as a particular “season” is in progress.
NEXT CHAPTER: 9/2/22
CURRENT BOOK: 1
Bình luận
0