Day 2
When Draco awoke the next morning, his head was still pounding with all the ferocity of a Cornish Pixie loose in his skull, beating on his brain with a hammer. He groaned loudly, clutching his hair in a grip he instantly regretted for the intensified ache.
He resolved to not make the same mistake as yesterday and just go to the hospital wing for a headache potion. Maybe his day would turn out better if he started it on the right foot.
Dressing quickly, Draco made his way up to the fourth floor. If he hurried, maybe he'd have time for breakfast before class, but when he arrived, no one was around. Madam Pomfrey should have been there, should have shown up at some point, but after twenty minutes, no one appeared, and Draco had to leave so as not to be late for class.
When he arrived at Transfiguration, class had just barely started.
“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Malfoy. If you would, please sit with Mr. Goyle,” McGonagall said, pointing to the seat next to Goyle right in the front row.
“Again?” he complained, not looking forward to tiny ears to match his tiny nose from yesterday.
Goyle laughed when Draco sat down and told him a story about some first-years starting a food fight at breakfast that morning, but the blond tuned him out so he could concentrate on his spell. Human transfigurations were hard enough without being distracted by idiotic anecdotes, and even though any transfiguration applied incorrectly to Goyle's face would have improved his looks, Draco still wanted to do it correctly. At the end of the class, he sported the same nose he'd worn yesterday (the product of Goyle's shoddy spellwork, not Draco's, of course), and in the corridor, the same Hufflepuff girl laughed at him. He did a double take as she walked by, but it was definitely the same girl. When she met his eyes, she blushed and looked away, scurrying down the hall quickly to avoid his glare.
“Today we'll be studying Protean Charms. Does anyone happen to be familiar with this charm?” Professor Flitwick announced at the beginning of Draco's next class.
Odd, Draco thought. Didn't we go over this yesterday? He raised his hand while on the other side of the room Granger raised hers, though much less gracefully than he.
“Excellent! Mr. Malfoy, why don't you show us how it's done then?”
Before Draco could finish uttering the incantation, his nose grew back to size, startling Professor Flitwick. The little man giggled at first, obviously trying to contain his laughter, but the guffaws of Draco's classmates undid him. Draco felt no pity when Flitwick lost his balance and fell off his stool. In fact, he was irritated that the shock of such an occurrence was still as funny today as it had been yesterday and irritated that it had happened to him twice.
And all the while, his head continued to hurt.
For his study break, he decided to stay away from the library, in the case that Zabini was in the same foul mood as yesterday, and instead ventured back to the hospital wing to see if Madam Pomfrey had seen any sense in showing up. Before he made it there, however, he met Ron Weasley on the Grand Staircase, and still sore from the punch he received yesterday, Draco confronted him.
“Hey, Weasley!”
Weasley turned around, his eyes narrowing when he saw Draco.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to let you know that you won't get away with punching me yesterday,” he replied as he drew his wand.
“What are you talking about?” Weasley said, but Draco didn't bother to answer.
He flicked his wand in an upward motion as he thought Levicorpus.
“Hey—!” Weasley's body flew up into the air, jerked upwards by one leg as if caught in a trap.
“Tarentellegra!”
While he hung upside down, his legs began to jerk in twitchy dancing motions. Weasley tried to pull out his wand, but it fell out of his shaky grasp onto the floor. Draco smirked as he kicked the wand down a flight of stairs.
“I say, you scoundrel! You wait until Dumbledore hears about this!” a man with a rather long goatee yelled at Draco out of a portrait next to the door to the west wing of the castle.
“I'm not afraid of Dumbledore,” Draco said, shaking his wand at the portrait. But the man had gone.
“M-Malfoy! G-g-get me d-down from here!” screamed Weasley, his voice trembling with his body's twitching.
“If you lay one hand on me again, you'll receive much worse, you can be sure,” Draco warned, and then continued on his way, feeling smugly satisfied.
The hospital wing was cool when Draco entered, as if the air temperature was regulated separately from the rest of the castle. It was also brightly lit with orbs of white light hanging over each bed, which, combined with the white sheets and curtain dividers that concealed the beds, made the room look pristine and clean. It was always a strange experience to walk from the dark drafty corridor into the bright hospital wing.
Draco shivered. He'd never felt comfortable in this part of the castle, sure that it was contaminated with illness and disease with which he wanted no contact.
“Can I help you, Mr. Malfoy?” Madam Pomfrey asked as if she were being inconvenienced by his being there.
“I've had this horrible headache since yesterday morning and I wanted something to get rid of it,” he replied, rubbing his forehead in irritation. The action reminded him of Potter, and once it did so, he dropped his hand to his side as if burned. “I came this morning, but no one was here,” he added, a bit of an accusation in his voice.
“Of course you did. Unfortunately, there are several hundred people in this castle, not just you, so I was busy with another patient this morning. Take a seat, and I'll see what I have for a headache cure.”
She left through a door in the back of the room, which Draco supposed concealed a supply closet. He did as she commanded and sat at the foot of a bed, but he did so petulantly, feeling wrongfully chastised.
He hadn't sat there long before someone entered the ward noisily, slamming the door open and letting it fall shut behind them. When they were within his line of sight, he discovered the Weasley girl hoisting a male body over hers. She was panting heavily from the effort, though Draco marveled that she'd been able to carry him at all, while the boy seemed to be unconscious.
“Where's Madam Pomfrey?” she asked, and he noticed now that there were tears in her eyes, though they didn't seem to have fallen. There was an odd note in her voice as well, something strained. It made her sound mad.
“Is he dead?” Malfoy asked, wondering if that might be the reason she was crying.
“No!” she cried, sniffling loudly. “What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be somewhere else?”
“Excuse me?” Draco asked. She approached him and Draco jumped off the bed, wary of her, but she just deposited her load onto the bed and sighed.
“You weren't here yesterday,” she replied. “W-when I brought Henry here yesterday. You weren't in here.”
Draco eyed the lump on the bed, taking in the dark blond hair and wide nose. He vaguely remembered the story Weasley had told Madam Pomfrey yesterday about a toxic anti-aging potion. It seemed as if she and Zimmerman couldn't get their potion right today either.
“So?” Draco replied. She looked as if she was going to say something else, but at that moment, Madam Pomfrey returned from the supply cabinet, a vial of potion in hand.
“What's this? Miss Weasley?”
Weasley's lips quivered as she answered, and she was wringing her hands nervously.
“W-we were doing anti-aging potions and Henry turned ours toxic. The—the fumes got to him, and he fainted.”
“Oh dear. The fumes of toxic potions can be very unkind to magical bodies. Mixes with our power oddly,” Pomfrey said in a softer tone than she'd used with Draco. “Here you are, Mr. Malfoy. Drink that and you should be good as new,” she added, handing Draco the vial.
He downed the potion and immediately felt the effects, the pressure in his forehead fading and the pounding at his temples completely stopping. He felt like a brand new person, and suddenly, his taxing day seemed less horrible.
He even felt good enough to thank the matron on his way out, but before he'd moved two steps, Weasley called to him, her voice shaking.
“You're different. No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.”
He didn't understand her meaning and thought her raving, maybe from the fumes of her ruined potion, so he turned his back on her and exited the hospital wing.
Draco spent the rest of his study break in the Sytherin common room—definitely not hiding from the male Weasley's wrath (if he ever got down from the ceiling, that is). When it was time for Potions, he left early, moving cautiously, in case the other Weasley was charged with walking around the dungeons with cauldronfuls of toxic potions again. He did not want a repeat of yesterday and ruin a second set of robes or risk his own life.
They passed each other near the door to Snape's office, and he saw that she was being equally as careful herself, to prevent any more mishaps. Her eyes were dry now, with a determined edge to them. She nodded to him as he walked by and he nodded back.
When Draco sat in his usual seat at the back of the classroom, he noted the presence of Granger and Potter sitting at the front, but Weasley was obviously absent. He smirked to himself, wondering if he was still hanging in the air somewhere on the Grand Staircase.
Draco didn't have to wonder long because a nervous looking Ravenclaw girl entered the classroom and approached Snape's desk. She spoke for a moment or two before Snape nodded tersely and called Draco's name.
“Professor McGonagall wants to see you. Take your things.”
That did not bode well.
Draco gathered his belongings together, putting away his cauldron and supplies, before he exited the room on the heels of the girl. She didn't speak to him as they climbed the stairs, but she eyed him out of the corner of her eye. Draco knew what McGonagall wanted him for; he didn't have to be told. His prediction proved itself true as he met Ron Weasley's eyes upon entering the Transfiguration teacher's office. The expression on his face was smug, while the one on McGonagall's was livid.
“Had Professor von Rheticus not informed Professor Dumbledore of your unprovoked attack on Mr. Weasley earlier today, he might still be hanging there, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco suppressed a snort, knowing how well that would go over with the Transfiguration teacher. Then he wondered who the hell Professor von Rheticus was and remembered the portrait of the man with the goatee. That snitch.
“This sort of unprovoked attack—or any attack, for that matter—will not be tolerated here—”
“Wait just a minute!” Draco interrupted. “He's the one who punched me first! Yesterday, after dinner!”
McGonagall turned her steely gaze on Weasley, whose smug expression turned to one of outrage.
“I never laid a hand on him! Not yesterday, not any day!”
“Yes, you did! You told me to stay away from your stupid sister and punched me!”
“I bloody well didn't—and what are you doing with my sister, anyway!”
“That's quite enough!” McGonagall cried. “Mr. Weasley, Mr. Malfoy, you'll both serve detention with Mr. Filch this evening. Until then, I want you to remember that fighting is strictly prohibited, and if I hear word from another portrait that either one of you has been fighting again, I'll take the matter up with Professor Dumbledore himself. Good day.”
The boys filed out of the room, both of them sharing in their indignation.
“It's just like you to make up a story to bring me down with you,” Weasley muttered ferociously.
“I did no such thing,” replied Draco in a seething voice.
“You don't have to pretend with me, Malfoy.”
Before Draco could reply, Weasley disappeared through a secret passage that led to the next floor up, leaving Draco alone in the corridor. Why couldn't he just have normal days, instead of everyone going mad on him?
Later that night, they served their detention with Filch, sweeping and mopping floors, shining suits of armor, and even scraping Drooble's Best Blowing Gum from the underside of classroom desks. Draco and Weasley regarded each other with tense silence, but, just like his detention the day before, the time passed quickly and wordlessly. Filch worked them giddily until well past midnight, and for the second night in a row, Draco dropped into his bed, exhausted down to his bones. These past two days had been the longest, most trying days he had ever experienced. He could only hope the next day would be better.
When Draco awoke the next morning, his head was still pounding with all the ferocity of a Cornish Pixie loose in his skull, beating on his brain with a hammer. He groaned loudly, clutching his hair in a grip he instantly regretted for the intensified ache.
He resolved to not make the same mistake as yesterday and just go to the hospital wing for a headache potion. Maybe his day would turn out better if he started it on the right foot.
Dressing quickly, Draco made his way up to the fourth floor. If he hurried, maybe he'd have time for breakfast before class, but when he arrived, no one was around. Madam Pomfrey should have been there, should have shown up at some point, but after twenty minutes, no one appeared, and Draco had to leave so as not to be late for class.
When he arrived at Transfiguration, class had just barely started.
“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Malfoy. If you would, please sit with Mr. Goyle,” McGonagall said, pointing to the seat next to Goyle right in the front row.
“Again?” he complained, not looking forward to tiny ears to match his tiny nose from yesterday.
Goyle laughed when Draco sat down and told him a story about some first-years starting a food fight at breakfast that morning, but the blond tuned him out so he could concentrate on his spell. Human transfigurations were hard enough without being distracted by idiotic anecdotes, and even though any transfiguration applied incorrectly to Goyle's face would have improved his looks, Draco still wanted to do it correctly. At the end of the class, he sported the same nose he'd worn yesterday (the product of Goyle's shoddy spellwork, not Draco's, of course), and in the corridor, the same Hufflepuff girl laughed at him. He did a double take as she walked by, but it was definitely the same girl. When she met his eyes, she blushed and looked away, scurrying down the hall quickly to avoid his glare.
“Today we'll be studying Protean Charms. Does anyone happen to be familiar with this charm?” Professor Flitwick announced at the beginning of Draco's next class.
Odd, Draco thought. Didn't we go over this yesterday? He raised his hand while on the other side of the room Granger raised hers, though much less gracefully than he.
“Excellent! Mr. Malfoy, why don't you show us how it's done then?”
Before Draco could finish uttering the incantation, his nose grew back to size, startling Professor Flitwick. The little man giggled at first, obviously trying to contain his laughter, but the guffaws of Draco's classmates undid him. Draco felt no pity when Flitwick lost his balance and fell off his stool. In fact, he was irritated that the shock of such an occurrence was still as funny today as it had been yesterday and irritated that it had happened to him twice.
And all the while, his head continued to hurt.
For his study break, he decided to stay away from the library, in the case that Zabini was in the same foul mood as yesterday, and instead ventured back to the hospital wing to see if Madam Pomfrey had seen any sense in showing up. Before he made it there, however, he met Ron Weasley on the Grand Staircase, and still sore from the punch he received yesterday, Draco confronted him.
“Hey, Weasley!”
Weasley turned around, his eyes narrowing when he saw Draco.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to let you know that you won't get away with punching me yesterday,” he replied as he drew his wand.
“What are you talking about?” Weasley said, but Draco didn't bother to answer.
He flicked his wand in an upward motion as he thought Levicorpus.
“Hey—!” Weasley's body flew up into the air, jerked upwards by one leg as if caught in a trap.
“Tarentellegra!”
While he hung upside down, his legs began to jerk in twitchy dancing motions. Weasley tried to pull out his wand, but it fell out of his shaky grasp onto the floor. Draco smirked as he kicked the wand down a flight of stairs.
“I say, you scoundrel! You wait until Dumbledore hears about this!” a man with a rather long goatee yelled at Draco out of a portrait next to the door to the west wing of the castle.
“I'm not afraid of Dumbledore,” Draco said, shaking his wand at the portrait. But the man had gone.
“M-Malfoy! G-g-get me d-down from here!” screamed Weasley, his voice trembling with his body's twitching.
“If you lay one hand on me again, you'll receive much worse, you can be sure,” Draco warned, and then continued on his way, feeling smugly satisfied.
The hospital wing was cool when Draco entered, as if the air temperature was regulated separately from the rest of the castle. It was also brightly lit with orbs of white light hanging over each bed, which, combined with the white sheets and curtain dividers that concealed the beds, made the room look pristine and clean. It was always a strange experience to walk from the dark drafty corridor into the bright hospital wing.
Draco shivered. He'd never felt comfortable in this part of the castle, sure that it was contaminated with illness and disease with which he wanted no contact.
“Can I help you, Mr. Malfoy?” Madam Pomfrey asked as if she were being inconvenienced by his being there.
“I've had this horrible headache since yesterday morning and I wanted something to get rid of it,” he replied, rubbing his forehead in irritation. The action reminded him of Potter, and once it did so, he dropped his hand to his side as if burned. “I came this morning, but no one was here,” he added, a bit of an accusation in his voice.
“Of course you did. Unfortunately, there are several hundred people in this castle, not just you, so I was busy with another patient this morning. Take a seat, and I'll see what I have for a headache cure.”
She left through a door in the back of the room, which Draco supposed concealed a supply closet. He did as she commanded and sat at the foot of a bed, but he did so petulantly, feeling wrongfully chastised.
He hadn't sat there long before someone entered the ward noisily, slamming the door open and letting it fall shut behind them. When they were within his line of sight, he discovered the Weasley girl hoisting a male body over hers. She was panting heavily from the effort, though Draco marveled that she'd been able to carry him at all, while the boy seemed to be unconscious.
“Where's Madam Pomfrey?” she asked, and he noticed now that there were tears in her eyes, though they didn't seem to have fallen. There was an odd note in her voice as well, something strained. It made her sound mad.
“Is he dead?” Malfoy asked, wondering if that might be the reason she was crying.
“No!” she cried, sniffling loudly. “What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be somewhere else?”
“Excuse me?” Draco asked. She approached him and Draco jumped off the bed, wary of her, but she just deposited her load onto the bed and sighed.
“You weren't here yesterday,” she replied. “W-when I brought Henry here yesterday. You weren't in here.”
Draco eyed the lump on the bed, taking in the dark blond hair and wide nose. He vaguely remembered the story Weasley had told Madam Pomfrey yesterday about a toxic anti-aging potion. It seemed as if she and Zimmerman couldn't get their potion right today either.
“So?” Draco replied. She looked as if she was going to say something else, but at that moment, Madam Pomfrey returned from the supply cabinet, a vial of potion in hand.
“What's this? Miss Weasley?”
Weasley's lips quivered as she answered, and she was wringing her hands nervously.
“W-we were doing anti-aging potions and Henry turned ours toxic. The—the fumes got to him, and he fainted.”
“Oh dear. The fumes of toxic potions can be very unkind to magical bodies. Mixes with our power oddly,” Pomfrey said in a softer tone than she'd used with Draco. “Here you are, Mr. Malfoy. Drink that and you should be good as new,” she added, handing Draco the vial.
He downed the potion and immediately felt the effects, the pressure in his forehead fading and the pounding at his temples completely stopping. He felt like a brand new person, and suddenly, his taxing day seemed less horrible.
He even felt good enough to thank the matron on his way out, but before he'd moved two steps, Weasley called to him, her voice shaking.
“You're different. No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.”
He didn't understand her meaning and thought her raving, maybe from the fumes of her ruined potion, so he turned his back on her and exited the hospital wing.
Draco spent the rest of his study break in the Sytherin common room—definitely not hiding from the male Weasley's wrath (if he ever got down from the ceiling, that is). When it was time for Potions, he left early, moving cautiously, in case the other Weasley was charged with walking around the dungeons with cauldronfuls of toxic potions again. He did not want a repeat of yesterday and ruin a second set of robes or risk his own life.
They passed each other near the door to Snape's office, and he saw that she was being equally as careful herself, to prevent any more mishaps. Her eyes were dry now, with a determined edge to them. She nodded to him as he walked by and he nodded back.
When Draco sat in his usual seat at the back of the classroom, he noted the presence of Granger and Potter sitting at the front, but Weasley was obviously absent. He smirked to himself, wondering if he was still hanging in the air somewhere on the Grand Staircase.
Draco didn't have to wonder long because a nervous looking Ravenclaw girl entered the classroom and approached Snape's desk. She spoke for a moment or two before Snape nodded tersely and called Draco's name.
“Professor McGonagall wants to see you. Take your things.”
That did not bode well.
Draco gathered his belongings together, putting away his cauldron and supplies, before he exited the room on the heels of the girl. She didn't speak to him as they climbed the stairs, but she eyed him out of the corner of her eye. Draco knew what McGonagall wanted him for; he didn't have to be told. His prediction proved itself true as he met Ron Weasley's eyes upon entering the Transfiguration teacher's office. The expression on his face was smug, while the one on McGonagall's was livid.
“Had Professor von Rheticus not informed Professor Dumbledore of your unprovoked attack on Mr. Weasley earlier today, he might still be hanging there, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco suppressed a snort, knowing how well that would go over with the Transfiguration teacher. Then he wondered who the hell Professor von Rheticus was and remembered the portrait of the man with the goatee. That snitch.
“This sort of unprovoked attack—or any attack, for that matter—will not be tolerated here—”
“Wait just a minute!” Draco interrupted. “He's the one who punched me first! Yesterday, after dinner!”
McGonagall turned her steely gaze on Weasley, whose smug expression turned to one of outrage.
“I never laid a hand on him! Not yesterday, not any day!”
“Yes, you did! You told me to stay away from your stupid sister and punched me!”
“I bloody well didn't—and what are you doing with my sister, anyway!”
“That's quite enough!” McGonagall cried. “Mr. Weasley, Mr. Malfoy, you'll both serve detention with Mr. Filch this evening. Until then, I want you to remember that fighting is strictly prohibited, and if I hear word from another portrait that either one of you has been fighting again, I'll take the matter up with Professor Dumbledore himself. Good day.”
The boys filed out of the room, both of them sharing in their indignation.
“It's just like you to make up a story to bring me down with you,” Weasley muttered ferociously.
“I did no such thing,” replied Draco in a seething voice.
“You don't have to pretend with me, Malfoy.”
Before Draco could reply, Weasley disappeared through a secret passage that led to the next floor up, leaving Draco alone in the corridor. Why couldn't he just have normal days, instead of everyone going mad on him?
Later that night, they served their detention with Filch, sweeping and mopping floors, shining suits of armor, and even scraping Drooble's Best Blowing Gum from the underside of classroom desks. Draco and Weasley regarded each other with tense silence, but, just like his detention the day before, the time passed quickly and wordlessly. Filch worked them giddily until well past midnight, and for the second night in a row, Draco dropped into his bed, exhausted down to his bones. These past two days had been the longest, most trying days he had ever experienced. He could only hope the next day would be better.
Leave a Review