Meles Malfoy

After the incident at midnight, the Hufflepuff boys appeared to have come to a consensus not to mention what had or had not happened. This led to a few uncomfortable silences and icy glares between them at meal-times and between classes. Draco, for his part, was quite relieved. In his opinion the whole thing was a fiasco, though at least they didn't have to put up with that awful Granger girl nagging them about it. From what he had noticed so far in the classes he had with the Gryffindors, Draco could tell that Hermione didn't mix well with the other girls and was making up for it by pestering Potter and Weasley at every opportunity, who in turn tried to have as little as possible to do with her. "She must be a nightmare, no wonder she hasn't any friends," thought Draco.

One evening, while Draco and Justin were moping about in a corner of the common room, not speaking to each other, they were approached by a rugged looking fifth year with a boil on her nose called Catherine Duddy.

"Right, lads; Quidditch Pitch in five minutes!" she announced.

"I beg your pardon?" replied Draco.

"I thought first years weren't allowed on the Quidditch team," said Justin.

"Who said anything about you playing for the house team ye wee eejits?" she asked amiably.

"Then what do you need us for?" asked Justin.

"Target practice, most likely," mumbled Draco under his breath.

"You catch on pretty quickly, young Malfoy."

"You cannot be serious."

"I'm being deadly serious. If you ever want to make it onto the house team, you have to start at the bottom and that means target practice."

"But what if we get killed? Those Bludger things are solid iron!" interrupted Justin.

"Well, if you are as good at flying as you are at whingeing, you shouldn't have any problems," replied Catherine.

At the Quidditch pitch, they lined up with a small group of other recent conscripts and waited while the team captain organised people into different groups.

"New recruits?" asked a tall third-year boy.

"Yes," replied Justin.

"I expect Duddy cornered you in the Common Room." Justin and Draco looked at each other. "Yes, she tends to do that. It's how I ended up mixed up in all this, but I can't complain. With a bit of luck I'll be on the First Team before very long. I'm reserve Seeker already."

"I think you'll need a bit more than luck, Seeker is my position," said Draco.

Later, completely exhausted and quite badly bruised, the pair collapsed into opposite armchairs in the common room.

"Honestly, that was the worst two hours of my life," began Justin.

"So you're giving up on Quidditch and going back to your Muggle sports?" asked Draco.

"Goodness no, there's just so much more to Quidditch. The first match is against Ravenclaw and Lynch said that they always try weird maneuvers and complicated set-pieces and that the best way to beat them is by playing a solid, defensive game. Just wait until we play Gryffindor and Slyth..." Justin trailed off, realising that Draco had expected to go to that house. He still wasn't sure how his room-mate felt about it.

Draco was silent for a while. "I suppose so," he replied eventually.

Just then, Ernie arrived and asked, "I hope you two aren't planning any more night-time wanderings. We don't want a repeat of the last time," loud enough for a number of the older Hufflepuffs to look in their direction.

"We were just talking Quidditch training, if you really must know," replied Draco.

"Yes well... as long as your school work doesn't suffer," said Ernie.

Just as he was about to say something horrible, Draco surprised himself by holding his tongue and instead, caught Justin's eye.

Justin, not slow on the uptake, then asked, "Weren't you going to show me that Charms book your mother sent the other day?"

"Yes," replied Draco, "You and I can look at it in our room."

Despite their annoyance at Ernie, there were a great many things that Justin and Draco were able to do for some amusement. It was relatively simple to provoke an argument with the prickly Zacharias Smith (who let it be known that he was never to be known or referred to as Zach). Ravenclaws were also easy to annoy, you just needed to ask them a series of progressively stupider questions in a deadpan voice, which they would answer until they realised eventually that they were being wound up.

There was flying practice any time they were wanted as targets for the redoubtable Beater, Catherine Duddy. Not to mention that Webley or one of the other prefects always needed something fetched from their rooms. Draco also made sure that he took time out to speak with Crabbe and Goyle; he was still worried that someone may try to warn them off him.

And so passed October. Close to the end of the month, the castle began to get ready for Hallowe'en. Justin got a few quizzical looks at the breakfast table one morning when he asked what everyone was going to dress up as.

The Hallowe'en feast was everything that they had expected it to be. The Great Hall was festooned with creepy floating pumpkin lanterns, a cloud of live bats. Peeves was popping out from behind concealed doorways and inside suits of armour more than usual.

The mood at the among all of the house tables was very jolly indeed. Draco noticed that even Potter and Weasley were having a good time now that Granger had decided to eat elsewhere.

Just as the food had appeared on the golden plates in front of them, Professor Quirrell burst into the Great Hall very disheveled indeed and looking as though he had just seen a vision of his own grisly death. "Troll - in the dungeons - thought you ought to know," he stammered before collapsing, unconscious on the floor.

The whole school immediately started panicking and people began shouting and screaming. It took the loud bangs of a number of fireworks from the headmaster's wand to quieten everyone. Dumbledore then ordered the prefects to take the students back to their common rooms.

As they were being led back towards the Sett, which Webley assured them was in a different part of the castle's basement from the troll, Justin grabbed Draco's arm and asked, "Did you see where Potter and Weasley went? They headed straight to where Quirrell said the troll was."

"If Wonder Boy and his comic, ginger sidekick want to get killed in a rather brutal and pointless manner, I can't see why I should be expected to care," replied Draco. "I suppose, though, that it would be rather amusing to watch," he thought to himself.

Just then, Ernie joined them. "Come on you two, we need to get to the common room. Didn't you hear what the headmaster said?"

"We just saw Harry Potter and Ron Weasley head off towards the dungeons," replied Justin.

"Are they mad?" responded Ernie with incredulity. "They are going to get themselves killed for sure!"

"That was exactly my point," added Draco.

"We have to tell a teacher at least," said Justin, looking around the rapidly emptying Great Hall, "but they've all gone and so has the rest of our house. We have to do something."

"Well, they have to be stopped. It's the only decent thing to do," agreed Ernie. "No arguments, Malfoy, you're coming as well!"

Draco did not like the idea of rushing into something as dangerous as a dungeon to rescue a pair of people he didn't particularly like from a savage, bloodthirsty monster. "First the hat puts me in Hufflepuff and now the Hufflepuffs are trying to get me to audition for Gryffindor." But since he didn't want to be blamed for the brutal and pointless deaths of his house-mates, Draco followed in the direction that Justin had said Potter and Weasley had taken.

When they got to the dungeon, the first thing to notice was the smell. Draco had heard stories from his father and other relatives about trolls and he had understood that they weren't the cleanest of animals, but the stench of this giant creature had the three boys gagging for air. It really was horrific.

The smell may have seemed overpowering to the boys, but the troll itself was clearly used to it and recognised that something new had entered the area. Three somethings, to be precise, and they smelled rather tasty. The troll turned around and began to lumber towards the stone spiral staircase from where the Hufflepuffs were watching.

"Can you two deal with one of these things?" shouted Justin, as the troll began picking up speed.

"What do you mean, deal with it?" replied Ernie, aghast at the very thought of being so close (and closer by the second) to a fully grown bull troll.

"Well, you both are from wizarding families, aren't you?" Justin explained.

"Can you diffuse a teutonic bomb?" shouted Draco.

"A teuton... atomic bomb...I get your point. But if we don't do something, Potter and Weasley are going to have to go up against it alone."

"Your point being?" said Draco sarcastically.

Ernie added, "Come off it Malfoy! We can't just let them get killed."

By then the beast was almost on top of them. Without a further word, the three boys decided that they could, in fact, leave Potter and Weasley to go up against it alone. So they turned on their heels and fled back up the narrow steps, right into the folds of some very black robes, whose owner they knocked over and landed right on top of.

Professor Snape was not in the least bit amused.

"Get back to your common room!" he shouted, picking himself off the ground with a little difficulty. "There is a very dangerous animal on the loose and you three would not stand a chance against it."

"But Sir! Potter and Weasley are down there and we were trying to stop them... or help them... or... something," said Ernie.

"Mr. Macmillen, I don't remember you being sorted into Gryffindor. So the carryings-on of two of the more foolish members of that house are hardly any of your concern. Now if you aren't back in your house in two minutes, I shall give you the very same detention that Weasley and Potter are very shortly going to receive."

The boys didn't need to be told again and headed straight for Shakespeare's sister to get into the Sett by the back door. The three sneaked into Justin and Draco's room.

"What was he doing coming down those stairs?" asked Draco.

"What do you mean? He was on his way to help the other teachers fight the troll, wasn't he?" replied Ernie.

"But there were no other teachers," answered Justin. "And did you see the way he was limping? I don't think that was caused by us knocking him over."

"There's definitely something strange going on..." began Draco.

"Well, if you two are going to sit around and make up stupid conspiracy theories that could get us into trouble then I'm going to bed."

After Ernie had left, Draco and Justin stayed up long into the night exchanging ludicrous stories about what Professor Snape might really have been up to, and the dreadful fates of Potter and Weasley.