Draco's Draught

Quidditch

The next few weeks passed excruciatingly slowly. I sped through the common room every morning and evening to avoid my housemates. I sat near the teacher's table at all meals, which prevented any of the other students from doing more than teasing me lightly, giving me poisonous looks, or ignoring me entirely. In classes, I invariably sat alone, only partnered when a teacher forced me to work with someone. Potions class was the worst.

As none of the other Slytherins would sit with me now, Snape consistently chose Potter to pick on nine times out of ten, and so I would have to sit through the entire class ignoring him at all costs, despite pokes, prods, whispers and notes from the dark-haired git. After one particularly tedious class, I rushed from the room before the rest of my classmates, and hid myself down a nearby hallway until I thought they had all disappeared.

Turns out, I was wrong. As I returned to the main hallway, I heard the door to the potions room open and close behind me. Thinking it was just Snape making his way to dinner, I continued towards the Slytherin common room. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, definitely not big enough to be Snape's and I started. When I turned, I was able to hide my immediate fear of who it could be behind another, much stronger emotion--anger.

"Potter."

"Malfoy." Good. At least he got that right this time. And then he did it again. "I know you don't exactly want to talk to me..."

I sneered. "Too right, Potter."

He took a deep breath. "Could you just hear me out, maybe? Then I'll go away or whatever, and won't bug you, okay?"

"And obviously I should believe you because you're a Gryffindor, right?" I crossed my arms. Still a less comfortable position than I was used to, but I wasn't going to let him know that.

"I don't care if you believe me or not, Malfoy. It's the truth. I don't like to be where I'm not wanted." His eyes had darkened with anger. Good. That meant I was in control. It was something, at least.

"Funny. It never seemed like you minded before." Smirk. "If it'll stop you following me around like a lost puppy, Potter, go ahead. I can't guarantee I'll listen, but, please, do indulge yourself." Okay, so that may have been the wrong wording, but he got the message.

Potter took a deep breath as he tried to control his anger. "I keep trying to talk to you..."

"Well, it so happens I haven't been interested."

The anger in his eyes flared again. "And if you keep interrupting me, I'm going to have to keep bothering you." He smiled grimly. "Or maybe that's what you want, Malfoy?"

Damn, there I went, flushing again. "Just say what you have to say and leave already."

"First I have to explain. That kiss...I mean, well...I honestly didn't chase you down to do that, that night. It just kind of...happened." I held my tongue for his little fumbling recitation, but he closed his mouth with a snap and stared at me, so I assumed that he wanted some kind of response to this.

"Just happened?"

"Well, I kept trying to get you to listen, and you wouldn't shut up. So I figured...I mean, you're a girl now..."

I was so angry that I couldn't see straight. My wand was in my hand, and against his throat before I could blink. "Take it back, Potter," I growled.

Those green eyes opened wide in fear and horror. "Draco..."

"Stop calling me that! You're not my friend, you never will be, and you won't ever be anything else!" I closed my eyes to calm myself. Hexing Potter would do me no good, and it would probably cause me even more problems. I backed down, but my wand stayed in my hand.

"D...Malfoy, I'm just trying to say that if I can help you..."

"What, you mean like kissing me? Or maybe getting rid of my bloody virginity?" I glared at him.

Potter flushed crimson. At least this time it wasn't me. "No. I just thought..."

I grimaced. "No you didn't, Potter. You're as bad as everyone in my house." I waved a hand at my "new" body. "This changes nothing. I'm still Draco Malfoy. It's everyone else who's acting differently. And you're one of the worst, Potter! Constantly following me around, waiting for my guard to drop. You're almost as bad as Zabini. Of course, he only tries to attack me when I'm in the common room. If you weren't so bloody noble, I'd wonder why the sorting hat didn't put you in Slytherin!"

"It wanted to." The way he looked at me, green eyes staring directly into mine, I could tell he wasn't lying.

I was floored. "You? In Slytherin? But...it put you in Gryffindor!"

"Yeah, well, I'd already met you, and I didn't want to be in any house you were in at the time..."

Smooth, Potter. If that was what passed for sweet talk for Gryffindors, it was a good thing that I wasn't interested. "Whatever. Are we done here?"

I could tell that he had just realized that he'd said something wrong, but he recovered quickly. "Look, I just wanted to say that if you needed someone to talk to, or help with homework, or...anything..." I smirked at this. He blushed. "Not that!"

"Oh?"

"I'm just trying to be helpful, Malfoy. I guess it shouldn't surprise you that you don't know what that looks like."

"Well, Potter, as pleasant as it has been, I have a practice to get to..."

He looked startled, as though he had expected to get into another fight with me. "Oh. Well, um..."

I turned on my heel, ignoring his floundering attempts at a good-bye, and headed for the Slytherin rooms. This would be my first time on my broom since the "accident." And I was going to let nothing and no one distract me from this. Least of all Potter. I had to be good. I had to be my best. And if I managed to pull off a win for us, especially under Potter's nose...

That thought sustained me through one of my worst practices ever. The reason there are no girls on the Slytherin team has nothing to do with the fact they're not vicious enough, because Slytherin girls can be plenty vicious, believe me. And it doesn't have to do with the fact that we're trying to be gentlemanly, as much as we want others to believe it. The truth is that seventy-five percent of Slytherin boys are Neanderthals, and the twenty-five percent of us that aren't see women only as a means to an end. This means that, no matter what they look like or act like, preserving their pure blood so that we can get our children on them is of utmost importance. Therefore, none of them, no matter how pug-ugly they are, are allowed onto the team. As I was now female, all the other players took it personally that they couldn't simply throw me off the team. After all, I was their only chance at winning against Gryffindor. To work off their anger, each of them took turns that practice slamming into me, or bashing the bludgers in my direction.

By the time I landed at the end of the practice, I was black and blue from the attentions of my teammates. I'd be lucky if I could move tomorrow, let alone play in the match, which was coming up next week. But I'd be damned if I'd let them see what they'd done to me, so I moved carefully back up to the castle, avoiding the locker room. I'd shower once I got back to my own room. I could tell it was going to be another long week.

Even without my teammates' constant haranguing, I could tell that my balance had been completely off, and I was far more sluggish on the broom than usual. How the hell was I going to beat Potter for the first time ever if I could barely steer my broom? I decided that I would practice on my own the nights we weren't having practice, so that I could get used to my balance once more.

The week went by in a blur, coming back from practices battered and even slightly bloody, and spending the rest of my free time working on homework in my room or off on my broom, trying to relearn something that had once been more natural than breathing to me. By the time Friday night came around, I was so stiff I could barely walk from classroom to classroom. Several of the students gave me odd looks, but said nothing. After all, I was Malfoy. Why should they bother? I'd never bothered with them. And now that I no longer seemed to hold any power in the school...I was completely forgettable. After dinner the night before the match, I decided to give myself a break and simply went to bed early. Nothing was really going to help much, but at least I wouldn't have to think or feel for a few hours.

The morning dawned, cold but clear, and I hurried through my morning routine, scarfed down a slice of toast, and disappeared out to the pitch before anyone else could arrive so that I would have a chance to change in peace. Then I took one last fly around the pitch until I saw the first of my teammates arrive, and returned to the locker room. They weren't exactly happy to have me in there, so I soon left and waited outside the room until they were ready, and fell in behind them as we went out onto the pitch.

Now, another thing that Malfoys are never supposed to be is nervous. But for the first time ever since I started playing Quidditch in my second year, I was. Incredibly so. And Potter, surrounded by his teammates, including those two Weasleys--I hate that girl; she's always staring at him, I thought to myself--Harry looked as cool as anything. Like he was just here to do a bit of flying. And I couldn't even hum 'Weasley is Our King' anymore to make him blush. At least that would have taken the edge off a bit. It's always fun to watch his ears go red when he gets angry. Of course, that would just piss off Potter, which is something I don't need right now because when Potter's angry, he just gets more focused, and a focused Potter was something I didn't need. Not until after the game when I could rub it in his face.

Before I knew it, we were up in the air, and the game had begun. Potter stayed as far from me as possible as we zoomed around the pitch looking for the snitch. A couple of times I thought I saw it, but they turned out to be reflections of people's watches or glasses. Then, a half-hour into the match, I heard a gasp from the spectators, and whirled to see Potter zooming towards the ground. No! He couldn't! I zoomed after him as fast as I could, but there was no way I'd catch him in time. Just as I reached the end of his broom, he caught it, and held up his hand to the cheers of the crowd. But my momentum kept me going straight at him, and I could feel bones shatter as we smashed into the pitch.

TBC...