Through Gates of Horn

Draco didn't look at his teammates after the loss. He wouldn't let them see his hatred for them. They weren't good enough to see his hatred of them. He focused his eyes on smaller things. Their shadows stretched on the playing field while the Ravenclaws celebrated. The hissing of cloth against flesh as they dressed out of their sweaty playing clothes and into their living clothes. The suffocating warmth of his bathing water. And then, it was the little pool created on his dresser by the water dripping from his hair. He stood straight, ran his fingers through his clean, wet hair, and sighed. The boy in the mirror narrowed his eyes and turned away from him on his way to the four-poster bed. The sheets were dry and soft and felt nice on his damp skin.

Focused on the sheets. Focused on the quiet sleeping sighs of his housemates. Focused on the moaning of the wind outside of the castle until sleep overtook him.

***

There was one at every party, and at this one, there were two. Dark and round and using their roughly hewn mouths to mutter and cackle in their own language as they swung for someone's head or rammed into someone's stomach. And all the time the little one danced about, giggling madly when someone caught him with their eye and could only dream of catching him with their hands.

Lucius handed Draco one of the china cups of dark red liquid and whispered in his ear: "He is yours to take."

Draco nodded. His father was always right and it gave him courage. He ducked a punch the dark, round one threw and his eyes fixed on the prize. The little one giggled (something like a pebble hitting a metal rod) and swung its arms around in wild circles and at his bidding, the sky became dark. Lightning played in the heavy clouds. The little one winked at him and jumped into the air, his flailing arms carrying him up toward the lightening. Draco leaped off the ground and flew after it.

They were both far above the crowd of partygoers below now. Draco was so close to catching him that he could feel the little hairs on the back of his neck before it jerked away with a new found burst of energy. He turned back to Draco and giggled at him coyly before a bolt of lightning turned him black and he fell to the ground like a limp rag doll. When his little one hit the ground, Draco could feel the impact in his own body.

***

Draco shuddered into awareness, panting and sweating. He sighed irritably and forced himself to breathe normally. It was the third morning that had started with the uneasiness of a bad dream clawing at his insides. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Little flickers of scenes appeared, but they were maddeningly intangible and he could not grab hold of any of them long enough to recall even a hint of what the dream was about. [Change to "...recall even a bit of his dream."] Sleep was supposed to be his escape, but he found himself eager to slide his slippers on and pad away from his bed.

Of course, he was only escaping a four-poster prison into a much larger one. The little thrill of freedom only lasted until he pulled his robes on, gathered his books and headed toward the Great Hall for breakfast. He grimaced at the sight of the other students. Hungry little piglets shoving food into their filthy mouths. He kept his eyes focused above their disgusting heads as he made his way to the Slytherin table and sat. Crabbe and Goyle grunted their 'g'mornings' between sausages.

Pansy would have been a ray of light in that hovel of filth if not for her unfortunate nose and round cheeks. He found that if he focused on her lips closely enough as she spoke, it wasn't so painful to look at her.

"Good morning, Draco." Her lips were very full and pink today with just the lightest hint of gloss to them. Draco was pleased.

"Good morning, Pansy. I trust you slept well."

"Well enough. It could have been better." She ran her tongue along the edge of her even, white teeth.

"We'll have to find a way to improve your sleep when I don't have detention with the senile old bat, won't we?" His stomach turned at the thought of Madam Trelawney. That evening would be the fourth he would have to spend with her, listening to her ramble on as he polished crystal balls. He frowned and pushed away his plate. "I think I'm going to head to class early, actually. Care to join me?"

"Oh, most certainly."

She scrambled to follow him so quickly that she nearly overturned her plate. Draco frowned. He wouldn't have even allowed her to follow him if she had, indeed, hit the tip of it hard enough to make it topple instead of rattling against the table slightly. She cringed, realizing her mistake and glancing at him (her eyes weren't as nice as the lips, but he could look at them without feeling physically ill) to see if he had noticed. He stood gracefully, making no sign that he had noticed her transgression. He walked with long strides away from the Slytherin table and out of that festering mass of greedy, messy mouths.

Her footsteps were tap-tapping a bit too loudly in the nearly empty hall with a pace just slightly too quick. He stopped short and turned around to meet her. Stylish leather shoes skidded slightly to save them from the collision.

"My, aren't we eager today," Draco said, letting his disapproval show in his voice.

Pansy brushed back a few strands of hair that had found their way over her shoulder in the abrupt stop she'd made. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You'd rather just get to an empty classroom and fuck, right?"

Her eyes widened into intolerably round saucers. She'd experienced his bad moods before, but he was never so crass. He held up his hand to stop her words before she got them out.

"Pansy, darling, it's a bad morning. I'm only warning you that what we do in that classroom had better improve it or I won't come anywhere near you ever again. Do you understand?"

She drooped slightly, like a flower that had become brown at the edges. "Of course... I'll try my best. I always do for you. You know that."

He managed a thin smile and cupped his hand around her cheek. "I know."

***

It was a bit unnerving, really, the way she watched him. Her eyes were on him when he slammed her into the door and they were still on him when he left. He was very picky about eyes. Pansy's were pretty enough for the average man, perhaps, but to him they were too wide, too dull, too empty. It was looking back at her that made him feel empty too, so he never looked directly into them. He barely looked at her at all. She was nothing more than a race to relief before the morning bell rang.

He didn't think much of her hair either. It was always so mussed afterward. She was usually late to class trying to fix it after a morning encounter. But his was always perfect and unmoving as it had been when he'd stepped into the classroom. As he walked coolly to his destination, no one would have known what he had been doing moments earlier.

However, no matter how certain he was that no one could possibly tell, the flickering light in Professor Snape's eyes made him wonder if perhaps someone could tell. Snape's eyes always followed Draco to his seat and Draco would try his best to make certain he slunk as seductively as possible on this journey. He liked catching the professor's eye. He liked the professor. A bit more, in fact, that he would admit to anyone but himself or Snape himself if he were to show further interest.

That morning, Snape's eyes lingered on him just a moment longer than usual and in that moment, Draco thought he saw the day turning in the upward direction. But, as always, Potter drew those dark eyes away. Draco's turned his head slightly and watched the boy and his two friends finding their seats. He took a deep breath as his stomach muscles tightened at the sight. No one had so strong an affect on him. He turned his attention back to his desk. He wished to see Potter as little as we wished to see Snape staring at him.

At some point, Snape began to drone on in front of the class about some project they would be working on for the next few weeks. They would be working in groups and for a fleeting moment, Draco wished that Snape would pair up himself and Potter. He soon regained his senses and was happy with being paired with Blaise, another Slytherin as was typical.

"I assume you paid attention to Snape's rambling," said Draco dully, knowing the answer before Blaise spoke it. His eyes drifted back to Harry, who was working with an ugly Gryffindor girl who was smiling and batting her eyelashes at him, something that he seemed completely oblivious to. Draco almost felt sorry for him. It would have been so easy for him to merely use her attraction to him to his advantage so that he wouldn't have to raise a finger for the project.

"Are you listening to me?"

Blaise's voice broke through Draco's bitter amusement.

"Should I be?" he snapped. "You're going to do it for me anyway. Unless, of course, you'd rather not." He nodded meaningfully toward Crabbe and Goyle, who were fumbling with a vial and staring at a jar of nightshade in bewilderment.

Blaise, a small boy for his age, frowned deeply and didn't bother Draco for the rest of the class.

***

It was after his classes were over -- when he was sitting in the olfactory torture chamber -- when he felt perhaps he hated Trelawney even more than he hated Potter. She was perched on a great pink pouf, sifting through papers, and babbling on and on about sortilege. Occasionally, he felt the need to slam the pestle into the mugwort so hard that the mortar cracked. The third time he did this, Madam Trelawney looked at him over her ridiculous glasses with an arched eyebrow.

"That's quite enough. Now, mix it in with the water and clean the crystal balls, no, not those ones, the ones over there, with it. And use the cloth right there on the shelf. That's a good boy."

"Yes, Madam." He was used to hearing that false sound in his voice. He was used to the bitter taste.

He poured the mugwort into the bowl of water Trelawney had pointed out. The mugwort floated on the top until the water soaked it through and dragged it down into its depths. He looked at the shelf of crystal balls he was to clean. There were forty of them. He sighed audibly (though he doubted Trelawney could hear over her incessant babble) and wet the cloth in the mugwort water to performed his chore.

One crystal ball.

"The trick of it is all in the wrist. You have to throw them out on the mat and flick your wrist like this, are you watching? Like this."

Four crystal balls.

"When you read them, you have to put your own sort of flavor into it. Not change the cast, mind you, but just a touch of personality. Are you listening, Mr. Malfoy?"

Seven crystal balls.

"I've never been one to exaggerate, but some people do and get the querant upset. You should be very sober when telling a bad fortune. If you had seen the things I've foreseen..."

The tenth crystal ball sat in his lap, but his chin was at his chest and he was fast asleep.

***

A whisper. Barely a whisper. He looked up and Trelawney was gone. There was a shadow of a boy (it could have been a girl, but Draco knew it was a boy) and he ran out of the room. Draco scrambled up to follow. The crystal ball in his lap fell from him and crashed to the floor, not broken, but shattered and looking like it was filled with a million spider webs. He grabbed it and took it with him as he followed the shadowboy.

He felt like he was running for hours. Somehow, all of the staircases looked the same. And then they changed. He was in a part of the castle that he remembered vaguely, but couldn't quite remember why. The shadow was just ahead of him. It seemed to be flying above the stone floor. Draco wondered for a moment if it were a ghost he was chasing.

It couldn't be a ghost. He wouldn't care enough to chase after a ghost. He cared about the shadowboy he followed. He knew he had to keep chasing him. He knew that...

The boy stopped and Draco followed suit to grab his knees and breathe.

There was a flash and Draco found himself on the ground looking up at the castle he had been in only seconds earlier. He could see the shadow high up on an overhang, standing outside of a huge window. Draco remembered why he was chasing the shadowboy when he saw the figure leap from the overhang and fly toward the earth.

He had been trying to save him.

The shadow fell into him, dropping him to the earth. For a moment, he could feel the entire entity of the boy inside of him.

And in another instant, it was...

***

"Mr. Malfoy!"

Draco was startled into awareness, but the dream lingered. Even the scent of the moist earth he had fallen to still filled his nostrils.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Of course I am, Madam Trelawney."

"All right then. You go ahead and go to bed. It's late and you can finish cleaning the crystal balls tomorrow evening."