Say It Again

Draco stirred his potion too vigorously, his attention far diverted from the task at hand. Who had intervened on Ellie’s behalf? Who had taken it upon themselves to curse Pansy? And why had they done either? Last year the answer to all of these questions would have been immensely easy to answer, it would have been Draco himself. But it wasn’t this time and that’s what kept his attention at bay.

With one far too robust stir, splashes of sunset orange potion landed on and burned through Draco’s robes and books. He cursed the disaster, dropping his ladle and shoving back from the cauldron.

“Draco, my boy,” said Slughorn heartily, swiftly waving his wand to clean up the orange mess. “A little anxiety goes a long way to ruining a potion.” He peered down into Draco’s cauldron and pulled a face at what he saw.

“Sorry, Professor,” hissed Draco curtly. With a slash of his wand, Draco vanished the contents of his cauldron.

“You can try again next class,” Slughorn suggested warily, moving onto the other students.

Shoving his now burned book and wand into his bag, Draco stormed from the potions classroom. His footsteps clacked obnoxiously as he made his way through the dungeons not to the Slytherin Common Room, but rather, to the West Tower to kill the half hour before lunch would be served in the Great Hall. Ten minutes later, soft voices caught his attention halfway up the stairwell to the tower.

“It doesn’t look so bad anymore, the potion you’ve been applying must be very good.” He didn’t recognize the first voice right away, but it did have an airy quality which was annoyingly familiar.

“It works well enough, but Seamus and Neville still look pretty rough. They both deny it hurts, but I know they’re lying. I got cursed too, even if not as badly as them and it hurt like hell.” Ellie’s determined voice froze the air in Draco’s lungs.

He sunk back against the curved wall unable to announce himself and just as unable to walk away. She continued without pause, utterly unaware that he was hiding, listening, only feet away. “If Madame Pomfrey hadn’t been handing off the ingredients to me for the potion, we’d all be in a distressingly worse condition. That vile Death Eater Amycus forbade Madame Pomfrey or any other teacher from helping us.”

“It is rather alarming how much control the Death Eater’s have over Hogwarts. Father writes all about it in the Quibbler.”

Quibbler! Draco’s eyes lit up with realization. Looney, Ellie was talking to Luna Lovegood. He sneered; some things never changed.

“How is your father?” Draco caught the trace of anxiety in his ex-girlfriend’s words.

“Oh he’s fine. He’s most worried about the lack of pages he has to dedicate to his more prominent interests in the Quibbler. What with promoting Harry’s innocence and looking out for Death Eaters and the such, all the pages get eaten up rather quickly. And more people than ever are subscribing which is somewhat of a wonder to Father since his topics have never been less varied.”

The two lapsed into a silence that Draco thought meant the end of their conversation. He waited to hear their footsteps, but they never came. Then suddenly Luna spoke again. “Did you and Draco Malfoy break up?”

The question so startled Draco that he almost toppled down the stairs, but gripping tightly to the curved railing, he clung onto his position.

Ellie coughed uncomfortably. “Ehm, yes, I guess we did.”

“You don’t know?” Luna asked before starting to hum casually.

“No. We aren’t dating, but it is not exactly like we broke up officially either. He aided in killing Dumbledore, and that was the end of our relationship.” Ellie’s voice was devoid of emotion as though the entire relationship was something she was far better off without.

Draco viciously agreed with her. He was much better off without a weak girl like Ellie. She was so predictable, so dull, so trusting. All the traits that added up to someone who could never last under Lord Voldemort’s regime.

“How sad. It must be very hard to stop caring about someone so completely.”

“Not really,” Ellie said decidedly. “Draco was positively awful to Seamus. Now that he’s a proud Death Eater the rest of us are scum beneath his heel; it’s despicable,” her tone took on an acidic edge. “He is a worthless, disgusting, shame of a true wizard!”

Draco’s anger flared. He flicked her wand in their direction, murmuring a quick spell. Hundreds of spiders, very small, black, scuttling ones dropped from the tip of his wand. They raced toward Ellie and Looney. He smirked in grim satisfaction as Ellie screamed. Draco positioned himself directly in the center of the stairwell and when the two fair haired girls raced around the corner, Ellie smashed directly into him.

“Get out of my way, Filth,” Draco demanded harshly.

Her blue eyes went wide then narrowed. “Shove off, Malfoy!” She slammed her small shoulder into his, knocking him off balance and consequently out of the way.

“Come on, Luna.” She grabbed her friend’s hand; together they disappeared down the staircase and out of sight.

Draco righted himself feeling resentfully satisfied. So Madame Pomfrey was helping the Gryffindors. That was information he could easily use against precious Ellie and her stupid friends. Winding his own way slowly down from the West Tower, Draco headed to the Great Hall.

After pushing open the wooden doors, Draco took his customary seat at the Slytherin Table. Pansy wasn’t there since she was still in the hospital wing recovering from her boils. Unlike the Gryffindors, Pansy hadn’t been black listed from the aid of the professors and Madame Pomfrey. As Draco reached for the Pumpkin Juice, Zabini sat down beside him.

“I have a note for you.” He handed Draco a folded slip of parchment. Upon opening it, Draco saw scribbled, barely legible handwriting followed by two signatures. The note read:

Tonight, 12am, Trophy Room
Neville is my second.
To settle yesterday’s argument.

It was signed by Seamus and Neville.

Draco ran over the message a second time. “Are you going to do it?” Zabini asked who had been reading over his shoulder. “Or are you going to turn them into the Carrows?”

The rat, or more accurately, the white ferret in Draco voted for turning the note into the Carrows and extracting justice through punishment of the offenders. But a much stronger half of him wanted to duel Seamus. “Will you be my second?” Draco asked, his eyes snapped to Zabini.

“Of course,” answered Blaise in surprise. “I doubt you’ll need it against Seamus, the eyebrowless wonder that he is.”

Draco didn’t respond. After crumpling up the note, Draco ignited it with the tip of his wand. He watched with morbid interest as the parchment burned itself out of existence. Tonight, Seamus would be on the receiving end of Draco’s best Death Eater behavior.