A/N: This installment’s been a long time coming, and for that I apologise very very much. Thank you SO MUCH for hanging in there. It’s all of you that kept me going! I only hope this lives up to your expectations. Please do leave a review, as I love to hear which bits you like and which bits you think sucked donkey droppings. Plus, I love your suggestions for future chapters (no, I don’t ignore them!!). SUCH BIG THANKS to kbpkrissy. Omg sweetie, I could NOT have done this without you. And massive hugs also go to those of you that have read through this fic at all over the months and been so supportive. *love and hugs* I’d also like to thank my cat, Moppet, for meowing in all the right places, and my milkman for…. *grin* just kidding. On with the show.
Links:
Part 1: Who Let the Fawkes Out
Part 2: Let’s Floo Crookshanks
----
Late Night Antics, Part 3:
Dumbledore’s False Teeth
Draco Malfoy was seated, as he always was on Monday mornings, in Snape’s Potions lesson.
"God, this is boring," Draco mumbled more to himself than to his thuggish friends sitting either side of him.
*Flick*
Snape was pacing the front of the class, rambling about what could have been armadillo bile and table legs for all Draco knew. The blonde Slytherin had long since stopped paying attention. However, watching Pansy pick her nose while Blaise grimaced disapprovingly was something Draco would rather not witness either.
*Flick*
‘And look at those perfect Gryffindors, taking notes like such good little students,’ he thought bitterly, scowling at the trio.
*Flick*
He had to hand it to Seamus Finnigan though, who wasn’t only managing to avoid taking notes, but also somehow not staying awake either. Dean Thomas seemed to be enjoying himself shoving the feathery end of his quill up Finnigan’s nose. Draco wiped his own nose instinctively and turned away from the scene.
*Flick*
Suddenly, a crumpled up ball of parchment bounced off the top of Crabbe’s forehead and landed directly in front of Draco. The blond Slytherin looked up and saw Potter and Weasley glaring at him. Smirking, he smoothed out the note and read:
"Stop flicking dragon eyeballs at us, you prat!"
Goyle was already poised with the fifth eyeball, ready to ping it across the room at them the moment Snape’s back was turned. Chairs scraped against the stone floor as everyone stood up and began preparing their ingredients for Balding Potions. Potter stood with everyone else; but Weasley was still glaring fiercely back at him, eyeing the slimy organ balancing on the end of Goyle’s ruler and mouthing, “Don’t you dare.”
Draco raised a mocking eyebrow at the red-head and motioned for Goyle to “ping away”, but Goyle was distractedly talking to Crabbe. Weasley and the Balding Potion were momentarily forgotten as Draco overheard his friends’ discussion.
“I can’t believe what happened on the way to this lesson,” Goyle guffawed.
“Oh yeah,” Crabbe sniggered suddenly, looking over at Draco. “Luna Lovegood slapped his arse!”
He and Goyle promptly burst into fits of laughter. Draco glared at them, his ears turning pink.
“Shut up.”
“She did what?!” squealed a giggling Pansy from the table in front of theirs.
Draco groaned and covered his face with his hands.
“Nobody did anything. Go back to the hole you crawled out of, Parkinson,” he moaned wearily through his fingers.
Pansy ignored him and just as she gleefully turned around to face Crabbe and Goyle properly, the sound of smashing glass made everyone look around eagerly to see who had messed up their potion. Many groaned as Neville stuttered “O-oops…” then proceeded to look guiltily between the fragments of glass scattered around his feet and Snape, who sat at the front of the classroom seemingly engrossed in a book titled, “How to Skin a Cat Using Only a Tuning Fork and a Sock”. Pansy regarded the scene for a second, then shook her head and turned her attention back to the boys just as Snape slammed his book down and swished past them out of the classroom, muttering about other uses for tuning forks.
“So what happened, then?” she whispered eagerly. “Does Draco have an admirer?”
“Oh get laid, Parkinson,” Draco sighed, his words still muffled by the hands over his face. “Yes, Luna is my new admirer. Happy now?”
“But Draco, I only did it because you told me to,” piped a dreamy voice from behind them.
“Gah!” Draco squawked, and swung around to face the newcomer. “Where did you come from?!”
“I came to give you this,” Luna said, holding out a rather scorched piece of parchment.
“But “ but you’re not even in this class!” he said, still unable to comprehend how she got there.
“Well I had to come and find you, didn’t I?” she said frankly, and waved the piece of parchment in front of his face.
Draco wondered if this was a very odd dream. He took the parchment.
“‘Spank me if you think I’m sexy’...” he read aloud. “Lovegood, is this your idea of a joke?”
“A joke?” she said, nonplussed. “No. It was on you. This morning. I thought you had it on to raise money for charity or something, so I complied.”
Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle burst out laughing at this.
“And that,” Luna continued, pointing at the piece of parchment in Draco’s hand, “came off in my hand, so I thought you’d want it back.”
Draco stared at her.
“Well... bye, then.” She waved and skipped off out the dungeons.
He continued to stare after her.
“Wha…?”
“Oh Draco, lighten up. You’re starting to sound like one of them!” Pansy said, gesturing towards Crabbe and Goyle.
Draco abruptly snapped out of his dazed stupor when Weasley caught his eye and smirked at him.
“I knew it was them!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“Er “ knew what was who, Draco?” Goyle asked, the confused look back on his face.
“This!” Draco said, madly waving around the piece of parchment Luna had handed him. “It was them!”
He pointed to where Potter and Weasley were sitting on the other side of the room. The others followed his gaze and breathed a soft “Ohhhh!” in unison as they understood what Draco meant.
Goyle, seeing this as a good opportunity, set up the last eyeball to flick over at the Gryffindors. Draco was struck by a sudden burst of inspiration and leant over to Goyle, laying a hand over the ruler causing the eyeball to roll off the end and across the table. “Don’t. Not yet,” he murmured.
“Wha-?” Goyle grunted, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Just “ wait,” Malfoy hissed impatiently. “Save that last one for later. For dinner, this evening.”
Crabbe and Goyle stared at him with their mouths hanging open. “Oh my god, Malfoy. You’re going to “”
“That’s right,” Draco said smugly, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in his seat.
““you’re going to eat the eyeball for dinner?!”
Draco choked and nearly fell out of his seat.
“NO!” he screeched incredulously. Everyone in the room fell silent and turned to look at him. He smiled weakly. “No, Professor Snape! Er “ don’t stop making us take notes,” he said in what he hoped was a convincing voice to the professor who’d just marched to the front of the classroom. “G-Granger won’t know what to do with her Mudblood-self if she doesn’t have at least twenty pages written up by the end of the lesson...”
He heard a disgruntled “Hmph!” come from Granger’s direction, but everyone else was still staring at him. Snape narrowed his eyes at Draco suspiciously but said nothing.
“As I was saying,” Snape continued waspishly, “your homework for tonight will be“”
Again, Draco tuned Snape out. He’d bully some first year into doing it for him or something. Glad that everyone was now jotting down their homework instead of looking at him, he turned back to Crabbe and Goyle.
“How could you think that I’d want to “ that I’d “” He struggled to find the right words for their bizarre and embarrassing assumption. “Ugh “ anyway. No I’m not going to eat it, you idiots. We’re going to get them back for what they did,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of Potter and his friends.
“Uhh...”
Whatever Crabbe and Goyle were trying to do, it looked rather painful. Were they… thinking?
“What did they do?” they said eventually.
“Wh-what do you mean, ‘What did they do?’” Draco was nearly screeching again. He hated it when he screeched. “Don’t you remember? The note on my back?”
Crabbe and Goyle still looked confused. Draco threw his arms up in the air and tried hard not to pound the table in frustration.
“Just now!”
A pause.
“Ohhhh!”
“Finally!” Draco sighed, flopping his head onto the table and not caring that it hurt. “Listen, Goyle,” he said shortly, sitting up straight with a faraway look on his face. “Keep that eyeball safe.”
The blond Slytherin’s eyes suddenly twinkled with a rather maniacal glint. “I will be avenged!”
Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle shot each other nervous glances as Draco’s loud, cackling laughter echoed around the dungeon.
After another day’s worth of monotonous note-taking, plant handling, animal-transfiguring and spell-casting, Draco Malfoy and his fellow Slytherin friends made their way into the Great Hall for dinner.
They sauntered past the Hufflepuff table and briefly overheard Justin Finch-Fletchley. “It was a cushion, I swear it! It shot out at me from the fireplace in the common room last night and broke my nose!”
Pansy snorted. “Stupid Hufflepuffs,” she said and carried on walking to the far end of the Slytherin table with the others.
“Gimmie that eyeball, Goyle,” Draco said the second they sat down.
Pansy squealed in disgust as Goyle deposited the dragon's eyeball into the palm of Draco's hand. It was considerably less slimy than earlier, but Draco didn't want to think about it.
Unfortunately Weasley and his friends couldn’t have sat closer to the staff table if they’d tried. Oh well, all the professors seemed to be engrossed in their own conversations tonight and this suited him just fine.
“Uhh... Draco?” Pansy said tentatively. He’d been rather tetchy all day and had kept snapping at them for things like ‘breathing too loudly.’ “What are you doing?”
“It’s all about timing,” he replied simply. He bit down on his tongue, which poked out of his mouth slightly, and closed one eye as though aiming at something.
Pansy and the others watched him carefully and then followed his gaze to once again find him looking towards the Gryffindor table.
Granger had her head, as always, buried in a book whilst trying to spoon soup into her mouth at the same time. Potter and Weasley appeared to be laughing at something the twins had said. The redhead was poised with his glass of pumpkin juice, just about to drink from it, when“
“ARRRRRGGGHHHH!”
The Gryffindors surrounding Weasley leapt up from their seats, staring wide-eyed at the eyeball floating in his pumpkin juice. The Slytherins were positively roaring with laughter at the looks on all their faces.
On impulse, Weasley threw the contents of his glass over his right shoulder. The entire hall held its breath as they watched the eyeball fly through the air in seemingly slow motion towards the teachers table.
It became clear rather quickly where it was going to hit, and was apparent soon after that that nothing could be done to stop it from happening. Draco, feeling half-jubilant and half-terrified at the oncoming fate, was torn between staying put to relish the moment and running away to spend the rest of his life in the Forbidden Forest.
Halfway to the teacher’s table the scene sped up. Too fast… it happened all too fast. The eyeball raced through the air and the CLONK of the organ against Dumbledore’s jaw silenced even the mice scurrying under the tables looking for dropped food.
What hadn’t been expected, however, was for the headmaster’s set of still-chewing teeth to shoot out of his mouth and land on the floor in front of the table. Most of the students and teachers, excluding Dumbledore, craned their necks to see the now motionless dentures as though expecting something to happen. Others stared at Dumbledore in trepidation, waiting for him to either storm out the room, explode, or burst out laughing. However, Dumbledore’s face revealed no emotions. He gazed calmly straight ahead while everyone continued to hold their breath.
Draco began creeping silently toward the entrance, convinced that Weasley’s expression had been well-worth the trouble, yet still not too keen on being labelled as the culprit if he could help it.
Without warning, the teeth began chattering wildly. Students jumped out of the way as they began bumping along the wooden floor, but the teeth’s intentions were clear. They were making their way to the far end of the teacher’s table. Ron Weasley stared at them, gob smacked as they bounced past the Gryffindor table.
‘Definitely worth it,’ Draco smirked.
Filch sat perplexed on the end of the long table as the teeth approached. Oddly enough it seemed as though all the teachers were transfixed in their seats. The teeth were fast, Draco mused, but it was easy enough to get out their way. He sidled his way to the door, wanting to observe the antics of the teeth before someone stopped them, yet was ready to run just in case.
With a momentary pause at Filch’s feet, they leapt up into the caretaker’s pocket. Filch sprang to his feet and shook his tattered coat. Tiny chewed up bits of parchment flew from his pocket while he desperately tried to shake his coat off. Laughter rang out in the Great Hall.
“My list!” he screeched. “My precious list!!”
The parchment containing the hundreds of items Filch had banned from the students was in ruins, and the students cheered loudly.
A few moments later, the teeth fell out of the filthy pocket and onto the floor just as Filch threw his coat to the ground, stamping on it madly. The teeth continued their way around the table.
Off they went, nipping at Flitwick’s toes, causing him to leap into an odd flailing tap dance, then springing up high into the air only to land on Professor Sprout’s head and knock her hat off. The cheering students were once again stunned into silence as they saw that what covered Sprout’s head wasn’t a mass of uncontrollable brown hair, but a pair of bright pink knickers with “Snape is my Dream Boat” spelled out in sparkling green sequins.
The silence didn’t prevail, however, as the Hall burst out into a mixture of whoops and cheers, and gasps of repugnance. With the entire Hall (bar Dumbledore) in uproar, the blushing Professor Sprout hastily crammed her hat back on her head “ the teeth having already hopped off and began making their way further along the teacher’s table. Snape, who had more colour in his cheeks than anyone had ever seen before, had retrieved his wand and begun shooting red sparks at the dentures. Oddly enough, the teeth either had very small eyes or a lot of intuition, as they dodged every single spell Snape threw at them.
One spell hit Hagrid, whose teeth immediately disintegrated.
“My peef! My peef!” he cried, running around in circles.
Draco was absolutely beside himself. Clutching his stomach and having to lean against the large doors to keep himself upright, having completely disregarded the idea of making any kind of escape.
Still chattering madly, the teeth waltzed past Trelawney, who jumped backwards into the chair she’d been sitting in and toppled onto an unsuspecting house elf that had been shrieking and running past behind her.
“Albus, stop this at once!” screeched McGonagall, whose robes were being unravelled from the bottom up as the teeth bounced off holding a long “ and getting longer “ piece of thread. Dumbledore, however, remained seated, his eyes looking slightly amused yet glazed over.
Still holding the thread, the dentures began to make their way down the length of the Great Hall. Some students simply jumped out their way with weary expressions, while others ran screaming.
Along they went, making their way towards the door. Draco, who was still laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his bright red face, hadn’t noticed the teeth’s latest move, despite the fact that everyone’s head were now turned in his direction.
Without warning, the teeth let go of the thread from McGonagall’s robes and with one big leap, jumped up and clamped down on Draco’s nose.
Utterly flabbergasted, Draco’s body became rigid, and he looked down at his nose with wide, fearful eyes. Completely aware that every single person in the school was now laughing at him, he could manage nothing but a squeak.
“ALBUS!!” McGonagall yelled once more whilst trying to cover her bony knees with a plate.
“Don’ worry, Probbepper!” Hagrid shouted as he thundered towards Draco.
Draco’s eyes widened even further as Hagrid approached him and tried to pry the stubborn teeth from his nose. His eyes were watering for a very different reason now, and the other students in the Hall, particularly the Gryffindors, Draco noted with scorn, were roaring with laughter at the scene before them
“Get them off me!!” he squealed pathetically. “Get them o“ ”
Before he could finish, he realised with astonishment that his nose was free. The teeth were gone! He felt suddenly light-headed and looked up at Hagrid with teary eyes, about two seconds away from wrapping his arms around the big oaf “ anything to express his pure, undying happiness. As he took a step forward, Hagrid’s beard twitched.
Draco frowned, and leaned tentatively forwards to peer at the dark, wiry mass.
It twitched again.
Draco gasped loudly and before anyone could stop him, he threw open the large doors and pelted out of the Hall. With another twitch of Hagrid’s beard, Draco was soon being chased by Dumbledore’s false teeth, now with bits of dark hair wedged between each tooth with a few long strands trailing behind them.
Needless to say, the laughter that rang out in the Great Hall didn’t die down for quite a while.
Fin.