Chapter 1: Nice? Draco Malfoy?
“Red, Longbottom, not green,” Professor Snape said, shaking his head. “I clearly stated that you put in the unicorn hairs before you heat the cauldron again. Get your Potion right, Longbottom, or it’ll be points from Gryffindor. Granger, if I see you whispering instructions in his ear it will be ten points.”
Draco Malfoy smirked. It was his trademark smirk. It always pleased him to see Longbottom quail under Professor Snape.
Draco turned his attention to his Disappearing Potion. He had put out the fire a few minutes before and was now waiting for it to cool down. If he had done the Potion right whoever drank it would disappear for a few minutes. Professor Snape would know at a glance if it was right and if it was, Draco would probably earn a few points for Slytherin.
Professor Snape stopped at Harry Potter’s cauldron. His lip curled. Almost everyone knew that Snape loathed Harry and was always finding ways to get points off him. Harry was just putting in his unicorn hairs. Snape took five points from Gryffindor for being “too slow” and Draco’s trademark sneer appeared on his face. Draco and Harry were arch-enemies; they had been since they had met on the train to Hogwarts, six years before.
Presently Professor Snape stopped by Draco’s cauldron. “Very good,” he said. The potion was a fiery red. “Ten points to Slytherin, Malfoy.”
Draco gave a self-satisfied smirk. He was Professor Snape’s favourite student. It was well-known that Snape favoured his own house, Slytherin, over the others and he also seemed to have taken a great liking towards Draco Malfoy.
When the bell rang ten minutes later Draco kept all his things and walked to the Great Hall for dinner. His cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle were on either side of him.
Draco seated himself at the Slytherin table. Crabbe was on his left, Goyle on his right. Adrian Baddock, a Chaser on the Slytherin Quidditch team was seated opposite Draco. Terence Higgs was on Adrian’s right. Terence was the reserve Seeker on the team. Draco himself was Slytherin Seeker and Quidditch captain.
They had Shepherd’s Pie for dinner. It was, Draco thought, very good. He noticed Terence looking a bit fidgety.
“What’s with you?” he asked.
“He’s trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl to take a walk with him on the grounds,” Adrian answered for him. Adrian gave Terence a sideways glance. “He won’t tell us who.”
Draco raised an eyebrow in interest. “Really? Come on, Terence, tell us, who?”
Terence just shook his head and refused to tell them. Draco took some of his pumpkin juice and almost choked.
“What is this?” He set the glass on the table.
“Pumpkin juice?” Goyle asked.
“No, it’s---different.” Draco felt a burning sensation in his throat. Then he started to feel sick.
“Mine tastes just the same.” Adrian said, looking at Draco closely. “You look a bit sick.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Draco moaned. He got up from the table and stumbled to the boys’ lavatory. There was someone there, leaning against one of the sinks. Draco took no heed of him and threw up at the nearest sink. It amazed him how he had managed not to throw up on the way to the lavatory.
Draco straightened up. Then he noticed who the boy was. It was Harry Potter. He looked pale. He had probably been throwing up as well, Draco thought. It never occurred to Draco that Harry and him seemed to be the only students who had been sick after drinking their pumpkin juice.
“Pumpkin juice not sitting well with you, either?” Harry asked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Disgusting, thought Draco.
Draco ignored Harry. “Stupid house-elves. What did they put in the drink? When Father hears about this. . .” Draco exited the lavatory, muttering darkly. He made his way down to the dungeons and into the Slytherin common room. He found he had a headache, so he went to bed early.
The next morning he woke up, all traces of a headache gone. When he went to the Slytherin common room he found Crabbe and Goyle already there, waiting for him. Draco nodded to them and they followed him out of the common room and into the Great Hall.
Draco had turned to tell Crabbe something when someone bumped into him. It was that Gryffindor Mudblood with the camera. His name was Cole or something. He worshipped the ground Harry Potter stood on and Draco found him extremely annoying.
“Sorry! I’m so sorry!” Cole said, his eyes wide with fear.
“It’s alright,” Draco said automatically, and then he stopped dead in his tracks. “I mean. . .” What did you say that for? You were supposed to say, watch it, Creevey, or watch it, you filthy Mudblood, not it’s alright! Are you a Slytherin or not? Are you a Malfoy? “Watch it, Mudblood.” It lacked malice, Draco thought. It lacked Malfoy-ism. Fortunately Creevey had taken one look at him in terror and fled away. Well, it was Creevey. If it had been Granger she’d probably have laughed at him.
Draco scowled at himself and sat down on the Slytherin table. He spotted the Dream Team, Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger entering the Great Hall. Harry looked sulky. They were going to pass him, he saw, and he already had a string of insults ready.
“I’ve forgotten to bring a quill. Harry, can I borrow one of yours?” Ron asked.
Draco opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Harry scowled. “No. I don’t exist to give you things you’re too forgetful to bring yourself.”
What’s the matter with you? Draco’s mind screamed at him. Say something! Insult them! Be a Malfoy!
Harry’s face turned into a surprised one. Nevertheless, he continued, “You’re just plain lazy. Go back to the common room and get your quill, it’s not like you don’t have legs.”
Say something! Do it now!
Ron looked shaken. “Um, okay, Harry. Hermione, can I---?”
“Yeah, sure, Ron. I’ve got an extra quill.” She looked at Harry with an odd look on her face.
Dammit, Draco, you’re too late! They’ve gone!
Draco turned back to his cereal. Wait a minute. Did he just hear Harry Potter snapping at his best friend? Saint Potter, who would never do anything intentional to upset his friends, snapping at them for---as far as Draco could see, anyway---no reason? Maybe he wasn’t such a Saint after all.
After breakfast Draco went to the Transfiguration classroom, where they made complicated notes on transfiguring oneself into an animal. After that everyone had to turn his or her partner into an animal. By the end of the lesson no one had made any progress except Draco. Crabbe’s head was half human, half bear. Professor McGonagall restored Crabbe’s head with a wave of her wand. She seemed quite pleased with Draco. At the end of the lesson Professor McGonagall held them back, giving them heaps of homework.
When Draco exited the class he found the sixth year Gryffindors waiting outside. Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed to be fighting.
Draco swaggered over to them, which was not far as they were fourth in line. “Oh, are the Dream Team having problems?” he drawled. “Or is your little Love Triangle popping up again? I must say, Potter, I’d have thought you would have had batter taste---”
Draco did not get any further. Harry Potter did something Draco would never have expected him to do; Harry punched him. In the nose.
Draco staggered back, clutching his nose and howling in pain. Crabbe and Goyle cracked their knuckles menacingly.
“You’ve broken my nose!” Draco cried. It hurt. A lot. It was also bleeding.
“What’s going on?” Professor McGonagall asked. “Mr. Malfoy, what happened to your nose?”
“Potter broke my nose, Professor,” Draco whimpered, seizing a chance to get Harry into trouble. Draco brought his hand away from his nose, revealing his bloody nose and hand.
“Crabbe, Goyle, get Mr. Malfoy into the hospital wing,” Professor McGonagall said. “Potter, that will be twenty points from Gryffindor and detention. There is no excuse for hitting like that.”
Ron and Hermione were too much in shock to argue.
Madam Pomfrey fixed Draco up. However he still had a white plaster on his nose which made him look ridiculous. Draco missed all his lessons that day. When he finally emerged from the hospital wing it was dinnertime.
Pansy Parkinson, with whom Draco was on-and-off dating, caught up with him as he walked to the Great Hall.
“How are you?” she asked, noting the plaster on his nose. “Does it hurt much?”
Normally Draco would have exaggerated his injury for more sympathy but his response surprised him. “No. I look ridiculous with this thing, though.”
“Oh, I think you look cute,” Pansy said fondly.
Draco rolled his eyes at that. Cute? Pansy was weird. She wasn’t very intellectual. Either. Zabini Blaise was a bit too intellectual for him; besides, she was dead boring. Millicent Bulstrode was, well, Millicent. Goyle was interested in her, anyway. As for the rest of the girls, well, most of them were pretty enough, but they were Pansy’s followers. They did everything she did.
Draco seated himself at the Slytherin table. He was sitting with the Prefects as he had been made one a year ago. Crabbe and Goyle unsurprisingly were not Prefects. It still amazed Draco that both of them had managed to get into 6th year. Both of them had not even one O.W.L. (Ordinary Wizarding Level). As for Draco? He had twelve O.W.L.s, the most you could get---or so he thought. Hermione Granger had managed to get 13 O.W.L.s. Harry and Ron both had 10. Well, if he hadn’t beaten Granger, at least he was better than Potter and Weasley. His father and mother had been delighted when he told them he had 12 O.W.L.s until they had found out Granger had 13. Honestly, there was no pleasing them.
“Are you feeling---what happened to your nose?” Adrian---who, incidentally, was also Head Boy---asked.
“Potter punched me,” Draco replied sourly, scowling.
“Not a Saint anymore, eh, Draco?” Crabbe sniggered.
“Shut up,” Draco snapped. To Adrian he said, “it wasn’t what I’d normally expect Potter to do. Especially in front of a teacher.” He shrugged. “At least Potter got twenty points off Gryffindor, and detention.”
What happened next happened so fast Draco didn’t even have time to blink. There was a crash and suddenly Draco was covered head to toe in treacle pudding. Someone gasped; probably Pansy. It occurred to Draco that the crash had come from the top of his head because it was throbbing. His next thought who, and then why. The problem was, his mouth didn’t seem to be working.
“Harry Potter,” came the cold voice of Professor Snape. “Tut tut. What have you done?”
“Explain yourself,” Professor McGonagall said.
“I, um, I mean, er,” Harry stammered.
“I think it’s quite obvious,” Draco said in a shaken voice, finding it at last. “He dropped pudding on me.”
“I don’t know why…” Harry trailed off.
“Harry and Draco, er, despise each other, Professors,” Adrian said.
That’s an understatement, Draco thought. “Potter dropped the plate on me too.”
“Ouch,” Terence Higgs commented. “So that explains the crash and the broken glass.” He had probably just arrived for dinner. “And Draco covered in pudding,” he grinned.
“I’m sticky, my head hurts, my nose hurts and I’m going to go hungry,” Draco declared, getting up. “I hope you’re happy, Potter.”
“So do I,” Professor McGonagall said. That’s another twenty points you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”
A/N: Hey, all…hope you enjoyed that…what did you think? Please review, it would mean the world to me! Criticism is welcome.
Please note that if I get no reviews at all, I'll take it that no one is reading this, and won't update. How else am I to know people are reading this??
Expect chapter 2 sometime in the next week or two (though more reviews means a fast update :P get the hint?)