Evil Masterminds, or Becoming Draco Malfoy

Chapter Three: Of Petty Thieves and Diaries

    “Stupefy!”

    A resounding thud, a body hitting the floor. Silence. Then,

    “Ernie, stop cowering like a girl.” Madeline’s voice. Ernie glanced up. Madeline’s figure standing above him. Madeline’s hand placing Madeline’s wand back into Madeline’s robe pocket. Ernie looked over.

    Draco Malfoy’s prone form on the ground.

    Madeline’s utterly incredulous tones. “You didn’t nick his wand?!?”

    “He wasn’t going to use it being tied to a chair,” said Ernie, being helped off the floor by Justin; his response sounded weak in his own ears.

    “Hannah, help me,” said Madeline, pocketing Draco’s wand, then bending down to lift him off the floor and onto the chair. “All right, now what’s an effective binding charm to use…”

    Without hesitation, Hannah muttered a spell. Malfoy’s state was unchanged. Madeline looked at Hannah questioningly.

    Hannah shrugged. “I have a little brother who’s a serious prankster. Idolizes the Weasley twins. I believe he learned that charm from them too. It makes the one on the receiving end stay in one place until the one on the casting end says otherwise. And the caster can direct exactly where the receiver can go.”

    “Brilliant!” applauded Madeline. Then pondered, “So if you told him to go to hell…?”

    Hannah’s face became thoughtful. “I really don’t know.”

    Madeline pondered some more, wondered if they should attempt it, then shook herself to get back on task. “Ernie, if you’re going to begin on that Polyjuice, you might as well go now. I think the hair is a concluding step, so we can wait on that. Prolong Malfoy’s suffering a bit.”

    Ernie left, grumbling slightly about his evil mastermind title being taken away, by a girl no less. Madeline and Hannah became indignant. And why couldn’t an evil mastermind be a girl, they asked as he exited.

    Justin drew their attention back to the situation at present by commenting that Malfoy was waking up. All turned in his direction and watched, fascinated, as he repeated the routine from the first time he woke up. Bleary eyes, head moving up, taking in his surroundings, wide eyes, then came the profanity (they had not replaced the gag).

    “You fucking Hufflepuffs (apparently, their house name was synonymous with very, very bad people), let me go now or I will fucking hex your thrice-damned, sorry asses into oblivion! Your names will go down in bloody fucking infamy; fucking children will fear to speak them because of the mighty retribution that will inevitably fucking follow! Tremble before me, you spawns of demons, you sons of bitches, you fucking losers!”

    Hannah had covered her ears. Justin was trying to count the number of times Malfoy had said “fucking” on one hand (and finding he couldn’t). Madeline was watching her wrist watch. She looked up at his silence.

    “Gracious, Malfoy, I was expecting you to go on for at least a full minute. Your ranting copped out around 46 seconds. I am severely disappointed.”

    “I don’t doubt it’s a common sensation in your life,” replied Malfoy, glancing at the other two Hufflepuffs in the room, who both scowled fiercely in return. Madeline rolled her eyes.

    “Should we gag him again?” asked Justin, continuing to scowl.

    “Nah,” said Madeline, looking scornfully at Draco. “He’s pretty harmless right now.”

    “Harmless my-” Malfoy began, but was interrupted.

    “Yes, but what about the language?” asked Hannah. “I certainly don’t want to hear anymore of his… colorful vocabulary.”

    “Do you have a spell for that one?”

    “No.”

    “Well, we could just threaten to jinx him every time he gets vulgar,” Madeline suggested brightly.

    “I like that idea,” put in Justin immediately, and Hannah nodded her head in satisfaction. It was Draco’s turn to scowl.

    Madeline suddenly spied something on the floor. “Is that Malfoy’s stuff?” she inquired.

    “Yeah,” answered Justin. “We just brought it with us, thinking it could help us in this whole revenge thing.”

    “It most certainly can,” murmured Madeline, bending down to shift through the pile of assorted Malfoy possessions. Draco shifted uneasily in his chair.

    “Let’s see here… potions textbook… arithmancy notes, looks absurdly difficult to me, but then again, I’m just a Hufflepuff… chocolate frogs… wait, lots and lots of chocolate frogs, Draco, honey, I think you have a serious problem here…”

    Malfoy snorted. “You mean other than being kidnapped and forced to endure the company of you lot?”

    Madeline ignored him. “Oh, look, Fizzing Whizbees… your teeth are going to rot out… wouldn’t that be attractive?”

    “Your concern is heartwarming,” declared Draco in sarcasm-ridden tones.

    “… assorted quills and ink pots…”

    Hannah had joined in on the fun. “Ooh, I found some cash!” She immediately left the fun, pocketing something small, metallic, and distinctly shiny.

    “What’s this?” Madeline wondered aloud, pulling out a small book bound in antique-looking green leather.

    “Oh, that’s just-” said Malfoy hurriedly, two spots of pink appearing on his cheeks.

    But Madeline had already opened it and was reading the first page. Her eyes grew very, very wide. Then she placed the small book in her robe pocket, desperately trying to contain her laughter.

    “What was it?” Hannah asked curiously.

    “Let’s just say that we won’t have any trouble making sure Malfoy doesn’t rat on us when this is all over.”

    Justin and Hannah looked impressed and intrigued, but didn’t ask any more questions.

    Malfoy was still pink. Madeline avoided his eyes, forcefully repressing a smirk. That would just be too Slytherin of her.

    Hannah had returned to scrounging through Malfoy’s belongings, obviously hoping to find something as interesting as whatever Madeline had come across. “Here’s his timetable. Suppose this will come in handy.”

    “Yes, that will. Put it somewhere safe. So what’s the Slytherin password?” Madeline asked, not looking up from her scavenging.

    Malfoy looked scandalized. “I’m not going to tell you that, what kind of-”

    “I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Justin,” she interrupted, glancing toward the Hufflepuff. His response was a blank stare.

    Now Malfoy looked incredulous. “You didn’t even think to get the Slytherin password?!?”

    “We weren’t planning on entering enemy territory, just doing the damage during the day and hiding out at night,” Justin explained hurriedly.

    “Don’t you think some of the Slytherins will notice that their king is missing at night?” Madeline inquired, forcefully preventing herself from banging her head against the wall.

    “Not really,” Justin answered. “I mean, his dorm mates are Crabbe, Goyle, Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott.” He began ticking the Slytherins off on his fingers. “Crabbe and Goyle are so thick they wouldn’t notice a herd of hippogriffs waltzing in the Great Hall;, Zabini, I heard, spends most of his time in the girl’s dorm, doing Merlin only knows what nasty things with his girlfriend (here Draco snorted, but didn’t argue as to the veracity), and Nott is in the Hospital Wing with the flu. Should keep him there for days.”

    “And besides that,” Hannah spoke up, “it’s not as if Malfoy spends a great deal of time in his house anyway. Every night last week I saw him at the library, alone and studying.”

    “Excuse me for wanting to maintain my grade point average,” Draco growled.

    “So, it’s not likely that his housemates will notice if he’s not there much, or at all,” Hannah concluded, ignoring Malfoy’s interruption.

    “What about Pansy? She fairly shadows Malfoy,” Madeline pointed out.

    Justin did what could almost be classified as a smirk. “Not recently. She’s been trailing Michael Corner for about three weeks now. Hadn’t you noticed?”

    "Corner? The female Weasley's left-over? That Ravenclaw pussy?" Draco started raging.

    "Can we jinx him now?" Hannah asked.

    "No, not for that... he could have meant a cat," said Madeline feebly.

    "Who does he think he is? When I'm free again I am going to hex him so hard he won't know his arse from his head!"

    "Does he currently?" pondered Madeline.

    "Can we jinx him now?" Hannah asked again.

    "Oh, come on, Malfoy, what did you expect? You ignore a girl long enough, she will eventually give up on you," said Justin, shaking his head as if Malfoy were the village idiot.

    Everyone not Justin stared at Justin. A Hufflepuff had just given relationship advice to a Slytherin. Would wonders never cease?

    Malfoy continued to grumble about the inconsistency of females and the bastard-ness of males.

    Madeline glanced at her watch. "It's almost dinner time. Have you guys thought about what you are going to do for the times when you're not in your room?"

    "Ummm..."

    Madeline moaned. "Okay, we'll take turns. Each meal we'll switch out who stays here to make sure he behaves. Luckily," she continued, thinking hard, "our classes are varied so that one of us can be here at all periods." She looked back up at the assembled group. "So who wants the first watch?"

    "I'll stay, I've got some food my mum sent from home," replied Justin.

    "Thanks, sweetie." Madeline stood and turned to leave, Hannah following her. Madeline suddenly turned back around to look at the other girl.

    “Oh, and Hannah?”

    “Yes?”

    “Put Malfoy’s money back. We may be kidnappers, blackmailers, vile schemers, and overall bad people, but we are not petty thieves.”