Draco Imperius

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The Dragonslayer Who Wasn't

Draco......

Imperius....

Rise.

The world is not as we know it. Since time immemorial, scientists have been trying to prove that magic and sorcery do not exist. That what we see at a magic show at Las Vegas is nothing more than an illusionist's tricks. That dragons are actually fictitious characters, and manticores are as real as phoenixes.

How wrong they are.

There is a place where dragons do exist. They shared the skies with the phoenixes, and the land with centaurs, dwarves, goblins, elves, sorcerers and other races. They paused to drink in waters where merepeople swam, and giant squids dwelled. It was the land of the wizarding folk, a realm in which Muggles do not know about, or refused to believe in. There was, of course, the occasional Muggle who cited a dragon or other fantastical beasts, but he would be obliviated by wizards acting upon the Ministry's orders. Those who escaped the Memory Charm were dismissed as raving lunatics.

As for the dragons, they continued the legacy of their distant cousins, the extinct dinosaurs. Soon, someone would call upon them to be his minions. He would saddle them, and force them to perform his malicious deeds, which is to rid the wizarding world of Muggle-borns. Voldemort not only wanted to rule over the wizarding folk--he wanted to control every creature that walked his land. And if they refused, they, too, would share the fate of the damned dead.

"Wake up!" shouted Professor McGonagall, as she rapped Draco's desk with her wand. Her face was as black as the thunderclouds, and her mouth a thin grim line. Storm was brewing outside, but chaos had already begun in her Transfiguration class. "How dare you fall asleep in one of my classes?!"

Draco stirred, and as his eyes focussed on a very furious teacher. He swore mentally; what a foul way to start his sixth year! The class was so silent that he could hear the footsteps of Detention arriving.

"I.....I don't know," he muttered bashfully, but under his desk, Draco gave the unfortunate Crabbe a vicious kick that said, "Why the hell didn't you wake me up?"

"You don't know," echoed Professor McGonagall angrily. "You don't know anything, do you? I take it that you do know how to summon the essence of fabric?"

Draco tried his best not to goggle at her, since she was scowling so deeply. Instead, he said smoothly, "Certainly. It is one of those elementary ones, Professor." He was quite pleased with his reply because it meant that he had answered her question without having to actually summon the essence of fabric, whatever the Merlin it was.

"It's a very useful spell to know, especially if you want a quick change of attire. We have to walk among Muggles sometimes, and when we do, we must appear as inconspicuous as possible. Now, Malfoy, we're still waiting."

He fingered his wand, and faked a pensive look. The essence of fabric? It's my Sixth Year, for Merlin's sake, and she's teaching us how to change clothes? Father is going to hear about this.

"The word is 'Inviligroto Cosdimiens', in case you're wondering."

The essence of fabric, he thought uneasily. What do Muggles wear? I had seen pictures of Muggles in various Dark Arts books that father owns, but in all of them, they were dressed in tunics, and, he added grimly, in rather distorted positions.

"5 points from Slytherin,' snapped Professor McGonagall. "And it will be ten if you don't transfigure your robes now."

Draco's mind swirled and to his annoyance, his heart thumped against his chest. The other Slytherins were already shooting him murderous looks--and they could get very nasty too, Draco knew. Why, he himself had led them on various 'potential testing' duels, which usually involved advanced hexes and jinxes.

"10 points from your house, Malfoy," came the dreaded statement. "And it will soon be fifteen."

He couldn't stall any longer. Draco closed his eyes, pointed his wand as his chest, and shouted, "Inviligroto Cosdimiens!"

A chilly sensation enveloped his body, but it was not altogether unpleasant. It was as though the threads on his robes were rearranging themselves to form an entirely different outfit, one which he had no idea what it was going to be. He lowered his arms, and felt something pricking his thigh. Still, he dared not look down. Instead, he kept his eyes defiantly on Professor McGonagall's, as though silently daring her to mock whatever he was wearing.

When the class gasped, Draco became uneasy. Professor McGonagall didn't hold his gaze, but her eyes widened as she took in his creation. "Strange," she murmured, making Draco shift from one foot to another. "Very unconventional."

He couldn't stand it any longer. His eyes travelled down, and with each inch it saw, his heart pummelled lower. It was certainly something that Muggles do not wear. In fact, no wizard would go around wearing what he wore at the moment. No wizard except.....

-------

"A Dragonslayer," repeated Dumbledore with a twinkle in his eye. "Minerva, April's Fool has long passed, as you would surely know."

Minerva McGonagall crossed her arms across her chest and leaned back into her chair. Fawkes watched her with curious eyes, before deciding to preen his feathers. "I do not jest," she shot back with iron in her voice. "You should have seen him revelling in his fancy attire. I expected to find him in a suit and tie, but he was clothed as though he was going dragon-hunting! That dark green vest, worn black sharkskin gloves, black demonhide trousers and boots, and he even had the audacity to wear them with arrogance!"

"You forgot the sword," reminded Dumbledore gently, with another twinkle in his eye.

"Yes, and that dratted sword," snapped Minerva, annoyed that she should forget the flamberge at his hip. "Did I mention that he also had an enormous bow slung at his back?"

"No, you didn't," replied Dumbledore. Creases appeared on his forehead, and he stared intently at his fingers, while Professor McGonagall tapped her foot impatiently. For a while, there was silence. Then-

"I wonder what made him choose that outfit," muttered Professor McGonagall. "How could he have known...."

"The clothes that appear must be something that the spellcaster already has in mind. I suppose that he must be thinking about it when he cast the spell," remarked Dumbledore simply. "If I were you, Minerva, I wouldn't fret about young master Malfoy's clothes. Perhaps he was simply......careless?"

"Showing off is more like it," chirped a portrait on the wall. "A Malfoy, you said? Always strange creatures, them. Flamboyant, too."

Dumbledore spared Phineus Nigellus a glance, before turning back to his Deputy Head. "Would you like a lemon drop?" he asked slyly.

------

Back at the Slytherin Common Room, Draco was in the process of discovering that his housemates could easily curse a fellow Slytherin, as they would a Hufflepuff. And this is really a bad time, he thought tersely. They had better not try anything today.

"So," commented Jorah Holsten, a burly Slytherin with unruly eyebrows and a tattoo on his left cheek--he insisted that it was for religious purposes. "How're you planning to earn back the points you threw away, Malfoy?"

"Definitely not by auctioning you off, Holsten," Draco replied with a sneer. "You have a face that only a house elf would love. Your house elf, to be precise."

Holsten growled, enraged, but Crabbe and Goyle stood in his way like two hulking sentinels. Draco tapped his wand lightly on his palm, and treated himself to a pitying look. "You know, Holsten old friend," he said with fake cheerfulness, "Even without them," he jabbed a thumb at his bodyguards, "you'd still be too sissy to hex me."

Holsten howled something foul, but Draco wasn't in the mood for a verbal banter. He was tired enough, and there was something that he must attend to immediately. Back at his dorm, he pulled out a gilded box from under his bed. Inside, a single luminous scale rested. He took the scale in his fingers, while his eyes savoured its magnificent blue and silver colouring hungrily. Nobody else knew about it, and he didn't know who, or what it belonged to. He'd woken up last week to find it on his bed. A single scale as big as his palm, and unexpectedly hard too.

He smiled craftily to himself. It was his, and all his, that beautiful, strange thing.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "how much it's worth."

------

"She what?!" demanded Ron Weasley with the wide-eyed expression that his friend, Hermione Granger, found eternally annoying. Hermione resembled Professor McGonagall in more ways than she realised, and the both of them hated repeating themselves to people who didn't pay attention. "How dare she?!"

"You heard me," snapped Hermione, and awarded her astonished friend with a scathing glare. "Don't make me repeat it just for the sake of giving you an opportunity to express your gratefulness to Professor McGonagall."

Ron's jaw sliced the air in its hurry to hit the ground. Sarcasm whizzed right over his head so fast that it produced a whistling sound. "Who says that I'm thanking her?" he asked calmly, but his ears were turning pinker by the second.

"That was sarcasm," said an amused voice behind him. "You've got to try it sometimes."

Ron leapt up from his seat and grabbed Harry by his shoulders, his face still frozen in utter shock. "You know what McGonagall did?" he asked loudly, despite knowing perfectly well that Harry didn't. "She-"

"I think," interrupted Hermione with steely authority in her voice, "that it's up to me to break the joyful news to Harry." Her hand was itching to silence Ron--either with a spell, or with a smack. She was already dreading the sessions with the 'human ferret', and it didn't help that her best friend, who was supposed to be supportive and consoling, was getting even more worked up over the matter than Hermione herself.

"It's not joyful news!" postulated Ron almost immediately. He slowly turned his face to her. "Is it?' he added suspiciously.

"Yes, seeing that I have just received my first proposal."

As Ron's legs failed to support him any longer, Hermione sighed and gestured for Harry to sit down. After the Ron fiasco, she wasn't taking any more chances.

"What is it?" asked Harry as he eyed his friend questioningly. He was fully aware that it didn't take much to get Ron into neurotic mode, but the weariness in Hermione's eyes told him that whatever it was, it was definitely a lot worse than dissecting blast-ended skewrts.

"Malfoy's grades are worse than ever," she sighed. Her eyes darted around the Gryffindor common room, and she turned her voice a few decibels lower. It wasn't something that she'd like to announce in public, especially not when it included helping a Slytherin.

"And you're troubled because.......?" Harry's voice trailed off.

"She's instructed to help that flea-bitten ferret!" complained Ron vehemently. "Why her?"

"Like I told you before, Ron," said Hermione patiently, "Professor McGonagall thought that since I'm the best in Transfiguration, I should help the worst." Her voice sounded blank and hollow, as thought she had just been given sentenced to a kissing session with the Dementors, but her face wore a strangely proud look.

"She's the Head of Gryffindor," argued Ron with passion in his voice. If Hermione could, she would have nominated him for an Oscar. "She's supposed to be on our side!"

"And that's why every time he makes some progress, I'll earn our house 10 points," replied Hermione curtly. "It's not as bad as it sounds, actually. I'm to tutor him during the Christmas hols."

Harry gave her a sidelong look, while Ron resumed his eyes-as-wide-as-dining-plates look. "Hermione," smiled Harry with a glint in his eye, "are you saying that because you're dedicated to earning points for good ol' Gryffindor, or was it because McGonagall branded you as 'the best in Transfiguration'?"

Hermione flushed, and studied the statue of Godric Gryffindor which stood at the southeast corner of the room. "It's so that we'll win the House Cup, of course," she replied matter-of-factly. "How could you have thought otherwise?"

But her eyes told a different story.

-------

"Your eyes are shifty," said Draco, as a house elf cowered before him. It wasn't a question, but a statement that pierced accusingly. "Something is wrong, yes?"

"Master no angry!" whispered the house elf, as it trembled with the cowardliness that Draco hated. "Fink only does job.....listen and tell! Fink knows nothing but to serve Master!"

The blond Slytherin carefully placed the scale back in its cushioned box, and leaned against a bedpost. Fink noted anxiously that his wand never left his side. To the house elf, a wand in a Malfoy's hand could only mean one thing.

"You remember why you're sent here, Fink?" drawled Draco lazily. He toyed with the thought of sending Fink to McGonagall armed with stinkbombs, on a suicide mission.

"To keep an eye on Master," recited Fink with a glazed look in his huge eyes. In case the house elf would succumb to amnesia, Lucius had even imprinted the words on Fink's arm with a Tuccudus spell, which can only be taken off by the spellcaster himself. If he dared to stray from his task, the words would burn fiercely, and if having your arm on fire couldn't serve as a reminder, then nothing could. So far, Fink had managed to not char his skin by posing as one of the Hogwarts house elves.

"And what did you discover? I am assuming that you managed to find anything out at all, of course."

Draco gave the unfortunate elf a crippling kick, which sent the creature scuttling away in pain. He had no use for servants who kept things to themselves. Not that this wretched thing can, thought Draco. Not unless he wants to be the first pyro elf in history. Then again, he might not be the first. I remember Father saying that Salazar himself used to fire his house elves when he had no need for them.....literally.

"You no likes it," squealed Fink, as he rubbed his stomach tentatively. "I advises you to not know, Master."

Draco'd had enough. Although Fink was a servant of the Malfoys since Dobby's unblessed departure, he was only entirely loyal to Lucius, and, occasionally, Narcissa. In many ways, he was polite and worshipful, but he was also deceptively sneaky.

"It involves the masterful girl, master," whimpered Fink. Draco frowned, and finally deduced that by 'masterfu', the intellectually-challenged elf meant 'bossy'. "Beauty girl. Hair like Fieries." Fieries were, of course, the complete opposite of the stunning Veelas. Their most distinguishable feature was their hair, which resembled the hair of someone who had been electrocuted over and over again.

"That's beauty to a filthy creature that lacks taste like you!" snapped Draco, losing his temper. "If it's Granger that you're referring to, then I must congratulate her immediately. Looks like she's gotten herself a boyfriend."

Fink's face turned purple, and his expression was similar to Hermione's when Ron found out about her letters to Victor Krum. Draco, though, was seething with cold fury that his house elf should think that a Mudblood was beautiful. What blasphemy! What would the other Slytherins think, if they found out? Thus far, nobody knew that Fink reported to Draco every other day to fill his master's son in on the going-ons in Hogwarts. If somebody found out.....Draco shuddered to think that his father's actions could get him expelled.

All the same, he found himself intrigued.

"What about that Mudblood?" he asked.

"You won't likes it," stalled Fink.

"Just tell me, or Father would hear about this,' snapped Draco. He knew that the line was getting horribly redundant, but Lucius, or even his name was invaluable when it came to intimidating Fink.

So Fink told him about McGonagall's plans for Draco during the Christmas hols.

Draco didn't like it.

Especially not when he had a mystery to solve--a mystery involving the blue-silver scale that belonged to a creature of unknown origins. A creature that had emerged from its refuge in the wilderness to heed the calling that had roused it from years of hibernation. As Draco's mounting disbelief rose exponentially, a beast with a body covered in scales similar to the one in Draco's possession opened its eyes somewhere across the world. Draco might not know it, but the changes that he would go though might turn out to be more drastic that he'd envisaged.

Beauty girl. Hair like Fieries. He would never forget Fink's description of Hermione, not unless he self-obliviated himself.

And he'd be dammed if he had to invite her to his manor during the hols.