The Black Sheep

The noble and brave house of Gryffindor represented everything Draco Malfoy had ever hated. The in-your-face bravery, as if they were the heroes of every fairy tale, their attitude towards everything and everyone… and how everything always had to be a battle of good versus evil. So melodramatic!

And now, Draco reflected bitterly to himself, he was one of them. What did that say about him? The person he always thought he was wasn’t really him at all? Did it maybe have something to do with spending whole years away from his family – and most particularly – his father?

“No,” he whispered savagely to himself.

This was Dumbledore’s doing. It had to be. Draco wasn’t a Gryffindor. He was a Slytherin, since the day he was born into one of the most noble, ancient families. They lived in a Manor, for crying out loud.

Draco stood up and surveyed his new dormitory; fortunately everyone was still downstairs in the common room, making a racket and being completely self-absorbed. They were probably all discussing their new member.

There were four-poster beds all around the circular room, and a fire in the middle. The curtains on the beds were red, the bedspreads were red, and Draco even thought he could distinguish a reddish tint to the walls.

God, I hate this place, he thought.

Draco counted the beds around him, and realised there were five – six, including the one he was sitting on, that had default bedspreads and nothing on the walls.

And there would never be anything on the walls, Draco decided. He only had two more years in this dump, and if he could help it, he wasn’t going to paint his life in this hole of a common room, in Gryffindor Tower.

Draco sat down on the bed (his trunk, broom and new Gryffindor clothes already on a chair beside it) and longed for the cool Slytherin common room, with its greenish glow, stone walls and, most importantly, single-bed bedrooms.

And then five boys came hurtling into the room; five boys who seemed to have been making the majority of the noise downstairs, and who became completely silent when they saw Malfoy still awake. They had been planning to burst in and wake him up… so much for that plan.

Draco, expecting them to glare, sneer or at least say something mean, was surprised when they ignored him completely and went back to what they were doing, hopping in their own beds, their conversation picking up.

Their conversation got louder when Draco pulled his curtains shut, changed into his pyjamas and got into bed. When they thought he was asleep, the real conversation began.

“So what are we going to do?” Harry asked.

“About?” replied Seamus, who was just stuffed a Cauldron Cake into his mouth, and who spat crumbs as he asked.

Harry didn’t reply, he just pointed his head in the direction of Malfoy’s curtains.

“I think we should just chuck him out the window and be done with it,” muttered Ron.

“Or maybe into the fire while he’s sleeping, so he gets a nice, warm wake up,” added Dean, and they all started laughing as loud as they possibly could, though it wasn’t really that funny.

Neville, who had remained silent for the majority of the time, finally piped up.

“Why would we do that? He’s a Gryffindor now.”

Ron, Harry, Seamus and Dean all turned to stare at Neville with the exact face Ron and Harry had given Hermione hours before, in the Great Hall. Why anyone in Gryffindor Tower would want to stick up for precious daddies-boy-Malfoy was beyond logical understanding, according to Harry.

Neville noticed their expressions and hastily added, “Look! I know he’s a bit of a toe-rag, but if he was exactly the same as he always was, he would’ve been sorted back into Slytherin. But he wasn’t. He was sorted here, which means some part of him as changed, and I just don’t believe he can be all that bad if he changed houses.”

Of course, he was right. If Malfoy was exactly the same as he was when he left then he would’ve went straight back to Slytherin, but he wasn’t. Which meant there had to be something different about Draco… somewhere deep down, under all of his attitude. It had to be there…

But they were all too stubborn to accept that Malfoy could be anywhere near good, and so they raised their eyebrows at Neville, blew out their candles and went to bed.

Draco, who had listened with a sneer on his face, got up from his bed and crept down the staircase in his green striped pyjamas, and into the common-room, where there was no-one to be seen.

“Of course not,” Draco said silently to himself, “they would’ve all gone to bed when Potter did. There’s no fun without precious Potter.”

At that precise moment, a cool draught echoed through the common room, and Draco made his way towards the red coals of the fire, where an occasional flame would still blow up. It would be warm enough for Draco, who was used to the coldness of his own common room.

He headed towards the squishy chair he had been sitting in hours before, before Harry “Precious” Potter had shooed him out of it. He was about to sit down when –

“Granger!” he shouted, surprised to see a bushy-haired, buck-toothed girl sitting in the chair, blinking her eyes numerous times as though she had only just woken up.

“Draco! Oh, I’m sorry. Here, you sit here, you’ve had a rough day,” she said kindly, getting up and extending her hand to the chair. But Draco, his instincts getting the best of him, didn’t take it. Instead, he said:

“No thank you. I’d rather sit in the fire, than use the same seat as a Mudblood.”

And he watched in satisfaction as her eyes glistened with tears and she ran out of the common room. Draco couldn’t help noting as she ran that her hair was the most disgusting colour of brown.

Hermione ran up the stairs and into her own dormitory, where the other girls were already asleep. She tried wiping the tears from her face, but then the disgusted face of Draco downstairs when he had called her a Mudblood filled her mind, and they started again.

Why had she stood up for him in the Great Hall today? He was as vile and cruel as he ever was. She had thought that maybe, since he had been moved to Gryffindor, he had changed somewhat… but she was wrong.

Now she hated him (again) as much as she ever did, and for all she cared, he could go and throw himself off the Astronomy Tower.

Hermione smiled to herself as she got into her bed, and fell asleep to the images of Draco Malfoy twirling in the air to the ground.