Surfeit Of Curses

Only moments after promising Hermione access to the members-only archives at the Denalo Museum, Draco Malfoy found himself back at Malfoy Manor, running along the marble floors just fast enough so that he slid around the corners in his loafers. As he ran, he pulled off his sweater, en route to his bedroom so he could change back into his usual robes.

He was not allowed in the wizarding sections of London in Muggle-style clothing, and that was where he was heading next.

Ever since Hermione had told him that she had released Rita the day before, he'd been itching to get back to London, to find the reporter before she returned to the Prophet. His stomach was twisted into knots so tight that he'd been able to sense them even during his Projection. He kept repeating the same word to himself, failure, failure failure - he had made a commitment to Lucius, he had created an intricate plan that he was so sure would be successful, but if he didn't find Rita at Simon Branford's spa, Lucius would kick every remaining shred of self-assurance out of him.

As soon as he'd changed, he ran through the kitchen on his way out the door, grabbing a few energy bars to sustain him through the afternoon. Draco realized he hadn't had a real meal since breakfast the previous morning, back at Hogwarts; there was no reason to start being sensible now.

In the broom closet, he eyed his mother's Nimbus Limited. Flying that would shave more than ten minutes off his trip to the Seezon Alley, but he didn't want her to catch him on it. His eyes glanced to the side and he noticed the family eagle owl, Kira, snoozing on her perch. Her flight to London would be much more rapid than his, even if he was on the 2001, and he paused for the first time in hours to pull a pen from the writing desk beside Kira's perch.

Draco signed the letter D. Malfoy, where the "D" was so loopy that it could have been an "N", and hoped that the receptionist at the spa would see it as that way. There was no chance that he would actually forge either Narcissa's or Lucius' signatures, but something ambiguous could be explained if they questioned him later. A well placed word and an accompanying Galleon to one of the servants would allow him to intercept the mail when it came in, and he had enough in his Gringotts vault to cover whatever Rita's afternoon expenses would be. This way, if she was still in Seezon Alley when Kira arrived with the letter, she'd be there when Draco arrived on his broomstick.

Only moments after Kira took to the sky, Draco mounted his broomstick and followed her towards the clouds. Ordinarily, he loved flying, loved pushing his broom to its limits over long distances, but flying the same route so many times in one day was a little boring, and he found his mind wandering through subjects as varied as what he would like to have for dinner (He was hoping for Kelp Rolls, but with the protein kick Narcissa was on, it would likely be Newt Loaf) and how he was going to explain his marks, at least his Dark Arts mark, to Lucius.

He'd been working on that speech almost all year, ever since the first time he'd met Professor Moody...

That morning, there'd been an article in the paper about Weasley's dad; every few months, Lucius took the opportunity to vent at Arthur Weasley through the Prophet, and even though everyone else who'd been at school with the two of them knew that it was just Lucius' neverending grudge, born almost forty years before on the Quidditch pitch, most witches and wizards didn't realize that those articles would never make the paper if Lucius didn't personally put them there.

Therefore, it was a perfectly fine morning, that first schoolday at Hogwarts. No homework yet, no regular Quidditch practice at all because of that stupid Triwizard Cup (which, of course, was only stupid because of that unfair age limit), and what started out as a diverting little battle with Potter and Weasley. But then Potter had to drag Narcissa into the scene. Even though Draco regularly thought not-nice things about her, nobody outside the family had ever dared to insult one of his parents in front of him, especially not so publicly. Draco did the only reasonable thing - he called Potter on his nasty comment - but instead of standing behind what he'd said, Potter had the gall to try and walk away. Coward Draco thought.

He hadn't planned on actually hitting Potter with a curse with his back turned - he sent that silly Sparktacular spell over his shoulder to get him to turn around, to make him finish the game - when the world turned inside out. It wasn't the first time Draco had seen the world from a few inches off the floor, and it wasn't until after Professor McGonagall had returned everything to normal that he even realized what Moody had done to him. When it was happening, he just felt very small and very scared. He remembered trying to flee, but he wasn't any more successful running from Moody than he'd ever been at running and hiding from Lucius.

Draco knew how to take a punch, he could withstand hours focusing on the most miniscule detail Lucius could find, he had worked through sleeplessness and complete physical exhaustion, learning the lessons his father wished to teach him. But being slammed from ceiling to floor, when he wasn't more than a foot high, was almost worse than the time Lucius had stranded him in their Quidditch goal hoop, and he'd had to jump thirty feet to the ground, and broken both his ankles.

Even after Professor McGonagall ended the spell, the pain and humiliation didn't end.

Once Moody had him out of her view, he threw Draco against the wall, which sent another wave of pain and fear through his body. Other students walking to class glanced at them and rushed past. He worried that someone would send an owl to Lucius before he'd hand a chance to talk with Professor Snape in private.

"The only reason I'm bothering to take you down to see Snape is because Dumbledore's second in command said I had to," Moody started. "If I had my way, boy, you'd be spending the rest of the day cowering on the Great Hall floor, with all the other students gawping at you." He pulled on Draco's chin, forcing his face up, and Draco tried the ploy that usually worked with his parents, and instead of meeting his accuser's eyes, he looked over Moody's shoulder. "Look at me!" Moody demanded. "I know that trick, tried it with my own father when I was your age. That's not going to work around me. Like I told the Professor, I know your father from the old days, and I know Severus Snape. Between the two of them, I'll bet you've gotten away with everything you've ever tried. I've heard all about you, Malfoy, bribing your way onto the Quidditch team, throwing your weight around your house, and I'm sure those beautiful marks on exams aren't all your own doing either. Who're you copying off of?" Draco tried to protest but Moody gripped the front of his robes again, almost pushing him into the wall now. "Lupin left me notes on all the students, had some nice things to say about you, but how can I trust commentary on a Malfoy from someone who was best friends with You Know Who's most trusted lieutenant." Draco didn't know what Moody was ranting about. Professor Lupin had been a good enough teacher, but it had been pretty creepy to learn at the end of last term that he was a werewolf - strong proof, Draco though, that attitudes were deceiving.

Moody was still talking. "How are your Dark Magic studies coming? Practice much these days? Your whole stinking family was right there with the Dark Lord, weren't they? But the powerful Malfoy clan is still getting away with murder, keeping all their power, all their money, while other wizards lost everything they'd spent years building, just from being a few inches away from those who were accused of being Death Eaters. How do you feel about that?"

Was that a rhetorical question? Draco started to answer, "I wasn't, I mean, I was only one year..."

"Harry Potter was a year old when he destroyed the Dark Lord, that's what everyone says, isn't it? To my mind, Malfoy, you're just another Death Eater who's spent the past thirteen years denying the Dark Lord's power, and if there's one thing I hate, it's watching a Death Eater walking free."

Draco wanted to say, I'm not! I haven't done anything! but Moody didn't give him a chance. With those words, he let go of Draco, and pushed him down the hall towards Professor Snape's office. As they reached the door, Moody pointed his wand, muttered "Alohamora" and shoved Draco into the room, which was empty, apart from the Professor.

"What is the meaning of this, Moody?" Snape almost shouted, glancing at Draco's pink face and Moody's scowl. "Why are you manhandling my student?"

"Your student?" Moody asked with a sneer in his voice. "Your pet, if I understand correctly." Snape seemed like he wanted to interrupt, but Moody was having none of it. "Malfoy here thought it would be fun to cast a curse in the hallways, which as you know is a violation of school rules, and can you guess who he tried to curse? I'm waiting, Snape..."

Professor Snape's voice was as cold as ice. "Based on my knowledge of just which students have assaulted and picked on Mr Malfoy..."

"Pick on him? Who would dare?" The chill in Moody's voice matched Professor Snape's. "This brat threw a curse at Harry Potter, and for absolutely no reason at all."

At this, Draco tried to interrupt, "It wasn't for no reason, he insulted..."

Both professors turned to Draco at the same moment and yelled, "Be quiet!" He sat down hard in one of the chairs, folded his arms over his chest, and resolved to simply observe what was going on, and see if there was any escape. He'd been in rooms with that much tension and anger before, but usually only when he'd been dining at Malfoy Manor with his parents, and he'd certainly never seen Professor Snape yell at another adult before.

"All right, Moody," said Snape tersely. "Explain to me what you're doing here."

"I wouldn't be here if Professor McGonnegal hadn't demanded I bring Malfoy to you. She insisted that as Head of his House, it's your right to punish him for violating school rules. Personally, I think I was punishing him properly, but we must follow protocol, mustn't we? It would be wrong for any professors to break the rule of law, wouldn't it?"

Professor Snape suddenly did something very strange. He seized his left forearm convulsively with his right hand, as though something on it had hurt him. "If that's all," the Potions Master began, "then you can leave Mr Malfoy to me. You needn't worry about the repercussions for his misbehavior - he will be serving a satisfactory detention for it." Without thinking, Draco started to let out a sigh of relief - that didn't sound to terrible - when Moody's weird eye swiveled over to him, and glared. That stopped Draco's relief in an instant.

"Fine, Snape. And I'm sure you won't mind if he serves his detention with me?"

Professor Snape replied, "He will not! Detentions for these kinds of transgressions are served with the head of the house of the student who was attacked. If I understood you correctly before, Mr Malfoy will be doing his detention with Professor McGonnagal, or if she authorizes, with me."

Moody didn't respond immediately to this, but instead turned and walked to the door. After he had turned away, Professor Snape gestured to Draco to stay in his chair for a moment. Moody must have been watching this, because he swiveled back on his wooden leg, pointed a finger at Draco and said, "I expect you'll be reporting his actions to his father? I'd like a copy of whatever letter you write before you send it, in case I have anything to add." He was out the door before either Draco or Professor Snape could reply to his veiled threat.

Both of them remained motionless for a moment, in case Moody burst back in, before Professor Snape rounded on Draco, still sitting in the hard, wooden chair. His arms and legs were aching even more, and he was sure he looked as uncomfortable as he felt. "It's the first day of school - how on earth did you do something so dumb so quickly? Why in Merlin's name did you cast a spell at those Gryffindors in front of Alastor Moody? Explain yourself."

Draco took a deep breath, and began his defense - he had enough practice explaining things to Lucius over the years, and the Professor had always seemed to like him well enough, so hopefully he'd accept what Draco said. "First, I didn't cast a spell at Potter, I cast it towards him. I missed on purpose - I just wanted him to ... well, that's the second part. Potter insulted my mother, in front of half the school, and I couldn't let him get away with that. I wasn't going to actually curse him, but I couldn't very well challenge him to a duel - under the official rules, of course - with him walking away, and under all those rules, if I didn't challenge him there and then, I would've lost my right to do so, right?"

Professor Snape nodded, still looking very serious, and Draco continued, "I'll accept whatever punishment you think is fair - I did break a rule, after all - but please don't let Lucius - I mean, my father - know about this. I don't want him to think Potter got the best of me, because he didn't."

"So that developing black and blue mark on your cheek isn't from Potter? Did Weasley get a punch in this time too?"

Draco lifted his hand to his face, felt the bruised skin, and said, "Um, no, that was from Professor Moody, I think. He transfigured me." He was almost too embarrassed to tell the Professor what Moody had turned him into, but Snape then asked; Draco almost whispered his response. "I'm not sure. I think the Professor said something about a rodent of some sort. But I felt too big to be a mouse or a hamster. It's a little hazy."

"You wouldn't get bruised from a transfiguration, Draco. What else happened?"

"He, um, bounced me off the floor a few times."

Snape let off a string of expletives the likes of which Draco had never heard from a grownup, and started pacing around the room. "Crazy, lunatic, obsessive man. Has it in for anyone who was ever with You-Know-Who." He finally stopped in front of Draco's chair and spoke directly to him. "I was afraid Moody'd try something like this with you, but I didn't expect it so soon. He really hates your father, you know." Professor Snape hesitated, as if he feared revealing too much. "How much do you know about what your father did in the 70's? And what he's done since then about the Dark Arts?"

Now it was Draco's turn to pause. How much did Professor Snape already know? Did he know that Lucius and Narcissa had been among those levitating Muggles at the World Cup? Should he tell the Professor that he'd just spent the summer cataloging his father's extensive collection of Dark Arts memorabilia, amulets, sigils, potions and torture devices, some of which dated back hundreds of years, and others which were as recent as You Know Who's final months of power?

Draco thought back to the dinner six weeks before, when Lucius had ranted about Ministry wizards sticking their noses into other people's private property, even when the things weren't being used, but had a lot of value and couldn't just be thrown into the ashbin, and how he didn't want to get rid of them but didn't have a way to get them out of the house, while still keeping them in the family, and Draco had voiced the idea that if they were given, on loan, to the Museum of Tolerance in Stonehenge, they'd be out of the Manor but still under Lucius' control. That little comment had resulted in wonderful weeks in the Diagon Alley branch of the Boolean Library, researching the history of various potions, over thirty talismans, which generated forces, expanded by the magical ability of the owner or wearer, to achieve a certain objective, and a dozen amulets, which have intrinsic power to give protection to its wearer by absorbing Light Magic energies, learning which Dark wizards had used it, what powers it, or its user, could possess - all in all, it was a wonderful academic exercise. Dark amulets protected by absorbing Light Magic energies, which the wearer does not want, and dark talismans generated a force, expanded by the magical ability of the wearer, to achieve their owner's objective. The new Malfoy Wing at the museum had already started putting Lucius' things on display, with Draco's notecards as the primary source for the curators' descriptions.

The Malfoy Collection was public knowledge by this point; it had been written up in the paper the week before the World Cup. "I know Lucius had a lot of Dark Arts things, but we got rid of them this summer, and he was only a collector; it's not like he used all those things." Draco knew full well that his father *had* used some of them, especially the amulets which allowed Lucius to spy on other wizards and witches, but he was equally convinced that the strangest, most frightening devices, the ones that Draco couldn't touch without wrapping himself in anti-Dark Magic spells, hadn't been part of Lucius' personal arsenal.

Professor Snape just looked at him, and said, "Go on."

"I know the paper was very supportive of You Know Who when he was becoming powerful, but that was because of the Imperius Curse, and I know my father has always thought that pure-bloods shouldn't mix socially or in school with Mudbloods, but, well, so what?"

Now, the Professor sighed. "I didn't realize your father had been so forthright with you."

"He wasn't!" Draco interjected. "I read it, at the paper, in books, and he's never talked to me about it. Well, other than the stuff this summer, but that was different. I needed something to do, and a museum internship seemed like an interesting project. And all the stuff people did at the World Cup was more of a jape than anything else - it's not like any Muggles were hurt, or like any wizards really tried to hurt anyone. It's like sport, isn't it?"

The Professor didn't answer the question directly, but just said, "Since you know all those things,, then you've probably also figured out why Moody was so harsh with you before, and with me. Anyone who was involved with You Know Who, even if they were under the Imperius Curse, Moody thinks of as a Death Eater. He'd have all those people in Azkaban if he had his way. He killed Death Eaters, those who were supporting You Know Who out of their own free will, and those who were under various curses and potions." Draco noticed that Professor Snape rubbed his arm again, the same way he had earlier. "And because of that, it certainly looks like he has it in for you. Please, Draco, tell me if he treats you differently than any other Slytherin. I am sure Moody is going to keep a close eye on certain of my students, including you, so stay away from Potter and Weasley this year as well. If you see them up to their usual hijinks, don't confront them - just tell me."

"What about the letter to my father?"

"I do have to write something, but I will make it clear to your father that the only reason you were singled out was because of Moody's obvious vendetta."

"Moody said I was a Death Eater," Draco said quietly.

Professor Snape closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he had a headache. "I'll speak with Dumbledore about that - it was completely uncalled for. You're a few years too young for that, even if you wanted to, or could, be one. You Know Who never took any followers who were under sixteen, at least none that I know of. But since it's Moody who's doing this, and since it's you, all I can suggest is that you live with it. If his treatment becomes unbearable, Dumbledore or I will step in, but for now, please try and live with it.

"I don't like the idea that a teacher has it in for a student, but in this case, there's really nothing we can do about him. Moody was a law unto himself as an Auror, and he'll be the same way here, I'm sure." The Professor opened his eyes again, and told Draco to go to class, even though he was already late for Arithmancy. As Draco stood, gingerly stretching his aching body, Professor Snape reconsidered his directions. "On second thought, go to Madame Pomfrey and get those bruises looked at. I'll send a note to Professor Vector before she even finishes teaching. "

Without another word, Draco followed Professor Snape's orders, and ended up spending the afternoon resting in a squishy arm chair in the Infirmary, sipping a bubbly healing tonic, and cursing himself for missing an afternoon's worth of classes. I'll have to get Arithmancy notes from Hermione - hopefully we'll keep the study group this term, Draco thought as he flipped through the first chapter of the class's textbook, Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to Charmed Owl Post.

When the group had first started a year before, Draco had almost refused to join. Working next to Mudbloods in class was one thing - if a teacher gave an assignment, you had to do it. Studying *with* a Mudblood was something else entirely. There were two reasons he'd bothered with the group. First, if Hermione pooled her resources with three Ravenclaws, the four of them would naturally take top places in every class, and he'd be left far behind, possibly even in Potions, but if he worked with them, he'd have a shot at getting the top marks, or would at least be second, which wouldn't please Lucius, exactly, but was certainly better than being fifth. Second, Quidditch was a time-consuming activity, especially in the weeks before matches, and all through second year, he'd been spreading himself too thin, taking expansive notes in class during the day, spending hours on the pitch before and after school (all to prove that he hadn't bought his way onto the team), and doing homework and writing outlines in the evenings. In a study group, he'd be able to copy his classmates' notes if he missed something, and they could share the task of creating outlines, which would lighten his load. He certainly didn't trust borrowing class notes from any other Slytherin, and while he didn't mind sharing his outlines with Vin and Gregory, it wasn't as if he would borrow anything they did.

As he read in the infirmary, Draco's mind wandered back to the morning altercation with Hermione at Care of Magical Creatures that morning. Those skrewts were horrid-looking things, and he was sure that even she didn't think they could be good for anything, other than, perhaps, putting under the beds of people one didn't like. She was close to Hagrid - maybe she'd help him "borrow" a skrewt, so he could put it under Moody's bed ... but it was probably safer to follow Professor Snape's advice and avoid him as much as he could.

The next two days passed without incident, unless you counted Longbottom melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape was understandably upset by Longbottom's continuing ineptitude, and gave him a much-deserved detention, which, coincidentally, he served on Wednesday evening, at the same time as Draco. Since Professor Snape was already supervising the detention for Longbottom, Professor McGonagall allowed Draco to serve his in the Potions lab as well.

Both boys were set to preparing ingredients for the next day's Seventh Year class, who were going to make a Disconcerting Ointment. Draco thought Longbottom was lucky - he only had to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads - while Draco spent four hours pulling the wings off a huge pile of cockroaches.

The first Wednesday afternoon in September, Draco's study group resumed, but Viola had dropped out. She had started dating some rich Mudblood in Hufflepuff over the summer, and Reilly said she wanted to spend all her time with him. The remaining four made a bet amongst themselves as to how far her marks would drop before Christmas.

As they didn't have much homework yet, they drew up timetables and calendered goals for outlines, essays for Binns' classes, and completion dates for the set list of Rune books. Reilly asked the others if they'd attended the World Cup, and for the first time, Draco looked straight at Hermione. He'd been avoiding her gaze since they sat down; it was the first time they'd been close enough to talk since that night.

He'd barely seen her since then. Unfortunately, she was often around when he was trying to bait Potter and Weasley into an argument, so they both fell back on their mutually agreed upon public posture of acting like nothing more than common and indifferent acquaintances. Plus, the humiliation of his transfiguration at Moody's hands still stung, making it even more difficult to start chatting with her during a study session.

Hermione seemed to have the same problem with starting conversations that night, and it wasn't until they had their books in their bags that she touched him on the shoulder, and said, "Thanks for getting me out of the way at the World Cup, and I'm sorry about what Moody did to you on Monday."

She didn't even wait for him to reply before she turned and walked out of the library.

***

The next morning, Draco woke with a terrible sense of unease. It only took a moment before he realized why - in less than two hours, he'd be under Moody's creepy eyes, suffering through a morning of Dark Arts lessons. He could barely eat breakfast, and folded the letter from his father which Kira dropped into his lap, without even reading it. Lucius would know, of course, that Draco hadn't broken the seal immediately, but he was too nervous to even think about that.

What was Moody going to do in class?

Draco had heard other students chatting about Moody's class - they used descriptions like "Brilliant" and "Amazing" and "He knows!" -even Slytherins were singing Moody's praises.

Keeping Professor Snape's admonitions about not getting on Moody's bad side in mind, Draco arrived at the classroom door ten minutes early, flanked by Vin and Gregory. They were the first ones there, and so took seats in the middle of the classroom. Moody didn't arrive until the rest of the class was there, their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, perched on every desk. Just before nine, they heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. They could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

"You can put those away," he growled, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them today."

They returned the books to their bags; some of the students looked almost excited.

Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled gray hair out of his twisted and scarred face, and began to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student as he or she answered.

When he reached Draco's name, he ordered him to stand up and trade seats with Millicent Bullstrode, who was sitting in front and center, right in front of Moody's desk. "I'll be keeping a close eye on you, Malfoy - both eyes, in fact!" he said, chuckling, as Draco gathered his things and swapped seats.

When the last person had declared themselves present, he began. "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures - you've covered boggarts, Red Caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas, and werewolves, is that right?"

There was a general murmur of assent.

"It was very interesting to learn what you Slytherins saw as your boggarts during the final exam. Mr Zabini, how did you get into Slytherin with that fear of snakes? Ms Parkinson, your fear of werewolves must've hurt the Professor's feelings. And Mr Malfoy," Moody paused ominously, his magical eye turning to read a sheet of paper in his hand "you're afraid of Unicorn blood-drinking zombies, is that right? Very embarrassingly childish for someone your age, isn't it?"

"Not as embarrassing as what you did Monday," Draco muttered.

Moody heard him, and swiveled that horrible eye straight at Draco. "If you think that was embarrassing, I don't know what you'll think of this class, Malfoy."

Draco shuddered as Moody continued. "You're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses, although not as badly as those sixth years, who didn't do any real curses with that Lockhart two years ago. Silly idiots all think that pointing a wand, wiggling it, and muttering Peskipixi Pesternomi will actually cause Cornish Pixies to burst out of their wands. Ninnies." Moody added. "What all this means is, I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. Now, I didn't think that a class which is almost entirely pure blood Slytherin children of Death Eaters, their sycophants and hangers on need to learn more curses, but Professor Dumbledore says that I've got to teach the same thing to each of my Dark Arts classes, so we are going to go straight into it." Draco wanted to look around the room - he was sure that some of his classmates smiles had been wiped away by Moody's speech.

The Professor continued. "Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that. You're not supposed to learn what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it till then, although I have a feeling some of you have seen them before, and have practiced them in your little dungeons at home. Am I right?" He looked directly at Draco again, who sat silently, face turned to his notes, as his quill flew across the page, taking notes on Moody's every word.

"As you probably know, a wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. Malfoy, have you ever seen a Dark wizard tell you he's going to hurt you before he does it?" He didn't pause for Draco to answer, so Draco concluded that this was going to be the start of questions and pointed remarks from Moody which were designed to call attention to him. "You need to be prepared," Moody added. "You need to be alert and watchful. So. . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Pansy's. Moody called on her.

Pansy hesitated before saying, "I've heard of something called the Imperius Curse, is that it?"

"Correct," said Moody appreciatively. "I'm not surprised you've heard of it, Miss Parkinson, as your nutter father claimed to be under it for years. He and a number of other claimants gave Aurors a lot of trouble over the years with the Imperius Curse."

Moody leaned across the desk, opened a cabinet, and took out a glass jar. Three tarantulas were scampering around inside it. Draco sat back in his chair and drew his feet off the floor - was Moody going to release those in the classroom?

Moody reached into the jar, grabbed one of the tarantulas, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could see it clearly. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!"

The tarantula leapt from Moody's hand and did a backflip, landing atop Moody's copy of their textbook, then bent its legs in what was unmistakably a curtsey.

Everyone was laughing - everyone except Moody.

"Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you? You think Muggles liked it when Death Eaters did that kind of thing to them?"

The laughter died away instantly.

"Total control," said Moody quietly as the tarantula balled itself up and began to roll over and over. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, jump right into Malfoy's hair . . ."

Draco raised his hand to cover the front of his head. He didn't trust Moody not to make it do that!

"Years back, the Ministry had an impossible job, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. Some think that not all their determinations were correct." His two eyes looked in different directions as he said this; Draco thought he was eyeing both Vin and Millicent.

"The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked, and everyone jumped.

Moody picked up the somersaulting tarantula and threw it back into the jar.

"Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"

Nobody spoke.

"I find it difficult to believe that a class such as this doesn't know the other two illegal curses. Zabini!"

Blaise jumped in his seat. "Yes, sir?"

"Your mother was arrested for performing an illegal curse on a Ministry Mediwitch, was she not?" Blaise nodded, almost imperceptibly. Draco had known that Mrs Zabini had spent a few months in Azkaban before Voldemort's downfall, but Blaise never spoke about it, and Mrs Zabini had always been perfectly normal when he'd seen her at King's Cross. "Which one was it, Zabini?"

"The Cruciatus Curse," said Blaise in a small but distinct voice.

Moody was looking very intently at him, this time with both eyes; he made no other comment. Turning his weird eye back to the class, he reached into the jar for the next tarantula and placed it upon the desktop, where it seemed to curl up on itself, cringing in terror.

"The Cruciatus Curse," said Moody, and raised his wand again, pointing it at the tarantula, and muttering, "Crucio!"

At once, the tarantula's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound came from it, but Draco could tell from its motions that it was crying in pain. Moody did not remove his wand, and the tarantula started to shudder and jerk more violently. Draco didn't even realize that he was rocking back and forth in his chair until Gregory kicked at the seat, and called out to Moody, "Stop it! Please! It's freaking people out!"

Moody raised his wand. The tarantula's legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch. "Again, I am surprised by you, class. If it bothers you to watch a dumb insect suffer in pain, how will you ever be able to torture others? But I will leave this curse, for now - we will come back to it later. Now, finally, what do you know about the Killing Curse?"

Nobody raised their hands, moved a muscle or said a word. Draco stared at his paper, his quill clutched in his hand. He hadn't written a word since Moody had started the Cruciatus Curse.

"Nobody knows?" Moody asked. "The last and worst illegal curse? Avada Kedavra ... the Killing Curse."

He put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third tarantula almost jumped around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he grabbed it, and dropped it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.

Moody raised his wand, and Draco felt a rush of foreboding. He had seen his father perform this curse during a fox hunt two summers before, when their dogs had trapped the little red creature by a stream. The goal of the fox hunt was to have perfect aim with the Killing Curse, so as not to mark the quarry's body, and Lucius' aim always hit his target.

Moody's roar snapped him out of his reverie, "Avada Kedavra!"

There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as though an enormous invisible demon was flying through the air - the tarantula instantaneously rolled onto its back, as unmarked as the fox had been, and unmistakably dead. Moody swept the dead tarantula off the desk onto the floor, near Draco's feet, which were still a few inches off the floor.

"Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one person has ever been know to survive it, and I can't imagine any of you have ever talked to Harry Potter about it, have you?"

Moody went on, discussing the curses. "Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it - you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed, even from those of you who've been practicing the curse for years. You're not old enough to hold such power in you, but that doesn't matter. I'm still going to teach you how to do it, and someday, you'll be able to use it, if you have to, and if you're willing to face the consequences..

"Now. . . those three curses - Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus - are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being can be enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you. Get out your quills. . . copy this down. . . ."

Draco spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang - but when Moody had dismissed them and they had left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices - "Did you see it twitch?" "- and when he killed it - just like that!"

Before he'd started at Hogwarts, when he'd spent six days each week working with tutors in the classrooms and on the grounds at the Manor, Draco had learned hexes, along with magical history, literature, languages and mathematics - it was just another subject, learned from books and rarely actually applied, outside of the demonstrations for Lucius that he did, since he was never set traditional exams.

Moody taught his class in a very different manner.

During the second week's class, he lectured for three fourths of the session, on curses that changed the victim's body temperature or reaction to heat or cold, then announced that since Draco had the best marks in Slytherin's fourth form, he would have the honor of partnering Moody in the in-class demonstration of the Tactus Frigidalus that day. Moody said, "You'll be less badly off than your classmates if you miss a little note taking. You are clever, aren't you?" he added in a sneering voice.

Draco looked Moody straight in the eye, and thought, I understand you, I know what you want, and I am not going to break for you; you think you see a teacher's pet, too smart for his own good, just as Dark as his father, don't you? I'll be stronger than you think, and I'm sure I can be smarter than you. Draco didn't say a word in reply to Moody, but assumed the traditional dueling position that he had learned years before.

And Moody struck at him, and shouted "Frigidaire!"

The hex made his hands and feet feel as if they were made of ice. It was even more uncomfortable than the summer day he'd sat on the floor of Lucius' study for seven hours with his legs crossed over each other, keeping an icicle frozen solid, hovering exactly forty two inches off the floor. It didn't wear off until halfway through the Astronomy lecture that afternoon. He tried to ignore the sympathetic looks people threw his way - he'd withstood the curse, hadn't complained to Moody or his classmates - why were they looking at him like that?

That evening, Draco sat on the floor in front of the fire, finally feeling like his body temperature was close to normal, pouring through one of the books Luicus had sent that week - Violent Justice, a work of historical fiction about a team of Aurors who apprehended the support team for the Dark wizard Grindlewald in 1944 - when Professor Snape's head appeared in the fireplace, and made a few brief announcements to the assembly of Slytherins. He spoke briefly about the upcoming Triwizard Cup, and encouraged a few of the seventh year boys to submit their names. "Any Slytherin under the age of 17 who attempts to enter will serve five detentions with me," he added. After a mention of an all-Slytherin inter-year Quidditch series and a recommendation to the second years about a book he'd placed on reserve for them in the library, he finished by saying, "Draco Malfoy, please come to my laboratory immediately."

A whisper flittered through the common room. Draco was sure that his classmates were telling the others what had happened in Dark Arts that day, but he closed his book, stood and walked through the stone door entrance with his head high, stepping into the dungeon hallway, and around the corner to the Professor's Slytherin House lab. When he stepped through the door, he half-expected the Professor to be working over one of the half dozen cauldrons scattered across the floor, but instead, he was sitting behind his desk, drumming his fingers against an ink bottle.

Draco had been in Professor Snape's lab before - at the beginning of second year, following a note from Lucius Malfoy, demanding to know why Draco wasn't able to best a Mudblood in any of his subjects, including Potions, and three times in third year, after the Hippogryff attack, when he reported seeing Potter in Hogsmeade, and at the end of the year, when he'd offered, along with four other students, to help straighten up the lab. Rumor had it that Professor Snape had trashed his own office in a fit of rage the night the Hippogryff and the murderer escaped, and Draco's sympathy for another person who was angry with Buckbeak inspired him to volunteer for the task. The extra fifty points towards his marks had been a nice perk, and pushed his Potions mark for the term above Hermione's. This time, he stood in front of the desk, knowing why he was there, and waiting for the Professor to speak.

"I heard you had a bad time of it in your Dark Arts class today. Are you alright?"

"I wouldn't call it a bad time. Moody demonstrated a hex on me - I'm fine. It's not the first time I've been cursed."

"Draco, I have a feeling you can't even remember the first time you were cursed," Professor Snape replied. "Be that as it is, I did warn you about Moody, and I'm not completely surprised that he did this today." He looked very grave, and hesitated before he continued. "If you're not suffering any adverse affects, then go back to the common room - we don't need to rehash what he did. But do let me know what happens in the next class. I don't want to overhear it again."

"I promise, I will," Draco said. The Professor turned back to the papers on the desk, and Draco, dismissed, went back to the Slytherin dorm. It was nice to have someone keeping an eye on him, not to criticize him for the mistakes he made, but for more positive reasons. As long as it wasn't reported to Lucius...and Professor Snape wouldn't do that, not after what he'd promised Draco after the first altercation with Moody.

Next Thursday afternoon, a school owl visited Professor Snape with a note.

It was signed, "Stinkily, Draco".

Professor Snape came up to the infirmary anyway. He and Draco conversed by shouting through the Distribution Slot; mostly, Professor Snape repeated the suggestion that Draco deal with class as best he could, and continue to let him know what Moody did in each class. "Moody'll be pleased if you act like a good sport about it, and a self-satisfied Moody is a happy Moody who doesn't poke his battered half-a-nose into other people's business."

As the term continued, Draco was hauled to the front of the class during almost every Dark Arts lesson. If he hadn't had Professor Snape's practical reason for keeping Moody in a good mood, he would have refused to do it.

Draco managed to block some of Moody's curses on the first try, especially if Lucius had already taught him the countercurse. He countered Rictusempra, Tarantallegra, which he had used successfully on Potter years before, Tripsichore, which gave the victim two left feet, or Curio, which made the victim's skin turn to leather (Author's Note - This is the closest you'll get to Leather Pants!Draco in this story (at least for now)so don't ask for more!).

If the hex didn't strike him, Draco had to put his wand back on his desk, and Moody would curse him again; he was always successful the second time, as Draco had no way to protect himself. (Moody was always admonishing the class for not carrying their wands at all time, even while sleeping. "Constant vigilance!" he would shout, at least twice per lesson.)

But Draco never had a chance to really practice the countercurse before Moody used him as an example, and some countercurses were not easy to perform on the first try. He missed every meal one day because he was stricken by a curse developed in colonial America, the Headless Horseman, which made his head invisible for twelve hours, and he couldn't see his mouth. At least that curse wasn't painful when it was performed, and the whole class got a good laugh out of part of Moody's lecture that day. "The Headless Horseman can be performed on body parts other than the head, and is therefore commonly used by drunken wizards against grooms at bachelor parties."

The October day that they learned the Curse of Simon Branford, Moody didn't teach them a countercurse. He didn't hex Draco that day, as the curse could only be performed by a witch, so he instructed Pansy Parkinson instead. She stood at the front of the classroom, pointed her wand at Draco, and shouted, "Simonize!" - he dashed across the room, stepped behind her, and began rubbing her shoulders, arms and back as she sighed and closed her eyes. Moody lectured around them, explaining that the curse had been created only three years before by a witch who was angry that her lover, Simon Branford, hadn't given her a meaningful birthday present; until the curse was removed, he had to give her constant, uninterrupted massages. He had become so skilled at the task that by the time the witch removed the curse three days later, they decided to open a luxurious spa, which was now the most famous destination in Seezon Alley. Pansy stopped the curse with a languid Finite Incantatum only twenty minutes after class ended, but the Slytherin girls taught it to the younger witches in their house (for a small fee) and until Draco managed to find the book in the Restricted section of the library, thanks to a pass from Professor Snape, every evening, the Slytherin common room was filled with very relaxed girls and very annoyed boys.

That day, the worst that had happened was he developed a cramp in his hands. On other days, listening to Moody describe the levels of confusion, disfiguration, discomfort or pain caused by particular hexes, Draco would half concentrate on the words, taking notes dutifully, his stomach twisting into knots of fearful expectation, while the other half of his mind plotted ways to get back at the Professor.

Every Thursday morning, he let the shouts of "Good luck!" and "He can't be worse than last week!" and "He can't find a reason to pick only you again!" wash over him. The frustrating thing about the hexing part of class was that he had to be *there* for it - he couldn't let his mind fall away, or go into a trance or project, he had to listen to Moody and respond and try to block the hexes and jinxes. When he expected Moody to demonstrate the Nasosanguinus curse, he tried to zone out once he was in the front of the room, but Moody noticed that something was off, and hit Draco with the Unguen jinx instead. His feet slid out from under him; he landed on his bottom, legs splayed to either side, and couldn't stand back up without falling down. Moody dismissed the class early but left Draco on the floor. The Professor spent almost a half hour yelling about ungrateful students who didn't understand the importance of what they were learning, and the glory and importance of having the teacher consider him strong enough and smart enough to fight the curses.

Draco knew Moody was lying. The sadistic bastard just liked causing pain, suffering and embarrassment.

Studying was much better than Dark Arts class.

The group was meeting twice a week, three hours Wednesday evening, and two hours or so every Sunday, and fell into their familiar routine behind the wards Draco still put up before every session, researching antidotes for Potions, editing each other's essays on goblin rebellions for Professor Binns, creating three dimensional proof diagrams for Arithmancy, and translating newly discovered runes into Latin, which they subsequently translated into English. The Ravenclaws and Hermione shared their notes from Dark Arts classes with him - even though Moody had said they were all learning the same things, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw classes were very different from Slytherin's.

In the first few weeks of the term, he hadn't thought to mention that he'd been the guinea pig during Moody's classes. The Thursday before Halloween, Moody cursed him with the Obliviscor hex, which made him forget to do his homework for Potions the next day; in the Sunday study session, Hermione asked him why he never did in the assignment, when he'd seen her working on it Wednesday night.

"Because Moody cursed me, so I'd forget things, including the assignment. Who'd he get in your class Thursday afternoon? Longbottom? If so, I can't see how it would make any difference."

Hermione looked at him blankly. "He didn't curse anyone. He lectured about it, we passed around some pictures an Auror took of victims of the curse, where they looked all dizzy, and that was it. Miranda, did he curse any of the Ravenclaws?"

"No!" she said, horrified. "If he had tried it, we'd've cursed him right back. Can you imagine a professor messing with Ravenclaw minds?"

Now Draco looked around blankly. "So he only cursed me? He's only actually demonstrating the hexes in Slytherin classes?"

"The sixth year Ravenclaws have Defence with the Slytherins, and none of them mentioned Moody cursing anyone, other than with the Imperius curse, but they're doing more OWL work than curses, so that might be why," Reilly said.

"I'm sure he's not going to keep doing it every week," Hermione said reassuringly. "If you asked him to demonstrate them some other way, he would."

"I can't do that. First, it would be a show of weakness, and Malfoys are never weak. Second, to say that would be admitting that he's broken me. I already thought that's what he was trying to do, and you three have convinced me of it," Draco retorted, his eyes shining with something like malice. "I'll find some way to beat him at his own game, or at least get him to pick someone else, even if it takes me all year."

Hermione and Reilly glanced at each other. She said, "You have to be careful. If you go too far ... Draco, don't get yourself trapped in something you don't want."

"I don't need your advice here," he replied sharply. "But I do want copies of all of your Dark Arts notes, and if you want to let me know if you learn anything about Moody's history, I'd be pleased to have it." Draco turned back to his books, finished with discussing Moody, at least for the moment.

The next time Draco had a chance to speak with Professor Snape, he got a pass to use the history shelf in the Restricted Section, and didn't have to tell him why. Draco wanted to get his hands on A Day In The Life: Aurors of the 20^th Century and The Phantom Menace and Those Who Fought It, which were in that section because of some gory pictures of Aurors in the line of duty. He already owned The Keeper Was A Spy, and could find It's Not About The Broom, Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, Notable Magical Names of Our Time and No Ordinary Time on the regular shelves - between those covers, he should be able to find a lot of biographical material on Moody, and as Lucius always said, "An enemy unresearched is a hollow man." Draco couldn't scheme against Moody properly until he did a lot more research, and learned his flaws and weaknesses. Of course, he could have asked Professor Snape a lot of questions, but he was concerned that questions about Moody would not be answered with useful information.

As if watching their professor systematically hex one of their classmates wasn't evidence enough, Moody's sadistic streak was driven home to the Slytherins the day he put everyone under the Imperius Curse. Millicent whirled around the room on her toes like a graceful ballerina. Blaise lay down on his stomach and slid around the front of the room like a snake. Violet Musgrave performed the Azuran curse on herself, and turned bright blue. Lavinia Pitkin sang the school song backwards, and Vin imitated every move Greg made, which drove Greg so crazy that he sat rigidly in his seat until Moody ended Vin's curse, and set Greg to mimicking a cat.

"Last, and least," Moody finally growled, "Malfoy, you're next."

Draco moved forward into the middle of the classroom, into the space that Moody had cleared of desks. Moody raised his wand and pointed it at Draco. His voice was chilling as he said, '1mperio!"

It was the most amazing sensation. Draco felt like he was floating, almost the same way he felt when he was going into a Projection trance, but he could feel his limbs, heavy and weighted down, as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness. He stood there feeling immensely relaxed, and was dimly aware that, out of all the curses Moody had placed upon him, during this one, he didn't mind everyone watching him.

And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody's voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Declare your loyalty. Speak your support for the Dark Lord.

Draco opened his mouth and twisted his arm, for some reason pulling his robe away from his right wrist, when another voice in the back of his brain said, "Why, then?"

They were words he'd never heard before, but his mind seemed to know them perfectly.

He tried to close his mouth, to pull his left hand away from his robes, but a familiar crushing sensation gripped his body, and he felt himself spasm. "Don't fight me," a third voice said. It didn't sound like Moody - it was a younger voice, an almost splintered sound.

The twinned sensations of ecstasy and pressure lifted simultaneously, and he grabbed the side of the desk to keep himself from falling to the floor. He looked up, straight into Moody's eyes.

The bastard was just standing there, smiling.

"Class dismissed," he called.

Draco practically ran out the door and back towards his common room, ignoring the shouted voices behind him. He sprinted through the dungeons, past time fireplaces, and into his room, where he leapt onto his bed and pulled the curtains closed.

He was shaking, completely dumbfounded by what he had said and done. He didn't want to swear loyalty to a defeated wizard, and even though he certainly agreed that magical blood was, as a general rule, far superior to anything else, he wasn't about to make an oath without knowing more about what that would commit him to. Magical oaths were like wishes and gift-curses - they bound the one who said it to his words.

Was an oath given under the Imperius curse that binding?

He needed to find Professor Snape, but he didn't want to talk to anyone else, didn't want to answer questions about what he'd done in Dark Arts. It wasn't clear enough to him yet, so how could he explain it to other people?

But Snape knew that Draco could Project! If he waited until the evening, he could talk to his Professor in private, and his roommates would assume he was sleeping. All he had to do was spend the rest of the day hiding in his bed...

It was nine o'clock before Draco thought it would be safe to Project into Snape's office. Over the course of the evening his roommates had wandered in and out, but he'd ignored them when they called his name, and they probably assumed he was sleeping. He used his wand to seal the curtains closed and create a Focusing Ball, then sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed and watched the tiny, bright sparks fly around the six inch sphere. He closed his eyes and felt the familiar wave of lightness come over him.

When he opened his eyes, he was in front of a heavy stone door marked Professor S. Snape. In this state, he was useless at knocking on the door or pulling the heavy cord that rang the tiny bell on the teacher's desk inside, so he crouched down to the ground and poked his head right through the door. As he hoped, Professor Snape was inside, but too engrossed in marking papers to notice Draco, who moved the rest of the way through the door, stood and said softly, "Professor? Can I have a moment?"

Professor Snape nearly jumped out of his chair, but recovered quickly and said, "Draco, I didn't hear the door. Did you knock?"

Draco shook his head. "I'm in a Projection state. I didn't want to walk through the common room, and I needed to see you tonight. Something happened in Dark Arts class today."

"Come, sit, tell me about it," the Professor said.

Draco refused the chair, since sitting was somewhat irrelevant, but stood in front of the desk and described what he'd done under the Imperius curse to a very shocked Severus Snape.

"I don't know what it means. Am I now bound? Did what I said make me into a Death Eater? I didn't follow any of the steps to make it a true oath, since I didn't give any part of myself - no hair, no blood, not even a fingernail - and I didn't have anything to drink or touch the person performing the oath ceremony, at least I don't think I did. What do you think?" His voice was a little shrill by now.

"I don't know the answer. I'm not an expert on oaths myself, since the only ones I've ever given followed all the rules of procedure, but I do think that someone is only bound by the Death Eater's oath if it's performed before You Know Who himself, and yours wasn't."

"Because he's gone, he's nowhere?" Draco asked.

"He's certainly not lurking around Britain," Snape replied. "You could ask your father, but..."

"No!" Draco shouted. "He'd kill me if he found out that I gave in to Imperio, no matter what I did under it. He's been trying to teach me to fight it for eight years." Snape's eyes were wide as he listened to Draco continue. "The best I can do is delay the onset for a few seconds, and that's only with him. When Moody performed the curse, I fought it for a moment, and it felt very different than when Lucius does it, but if I'd known what Moody was going to do..."

"I can't go to Dumbledore about this, Draco. Ministry regulations require him to report all on-campus Dark activity that he knows about, but the teachers don't have the same requirement, because we sometimes have to perform small Dark spells to teach you about defenses and antidotes. My Veritaserum, for example. The Ministry would say that it's a Dark potion, but the seventh years have to use it as an ingredient for a potion that lets them trace the original location of farm animals, which for some reason has been on the N.E.W.T.s for three hundred years, so I don't have to report that I've made it."

"What do I do now?"

"Draco, everyone in your class knows you said it while you were under the Imperius curse."

"But what if they think I fought it off, and did that out of my own free will? What if Moody tries to get me into trouble by telling Dumbledore what I did?"

"I don't think he will, but there's a way to at least get your statement on record." Professor Snape stood up, walked to a small cabinet across the room, and pulled the door open. A strange blue glow filled the room. "This is my Pensieve."

Professor Snape pointed to a shallow stone basin, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols describing the concepts of memory, thought, the conscious mind and the examined life. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which were like nothing Draco had ever seen before. He could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, almost the same color as his hair, and it was swirling ceaselessly. He saw Karkaroff's face swirl across the surface, then what looked like an older version of Harry Potter.

He began to describe his device. "I can put my memories about what you've told me in here. It's not possible to put someone else's memories in my Pensieve, but I can get you started on creating your own. It's very advanced magic, not something a fourth year would ordinarily do, but if you have one, and you use it properly, what it holds may protect you some day. Here, watch."

He drew his wand from his robes and placed the tip against his hair, near his temple. When he took the wand away, a hair seemed to be clinging to it. Draco wondered for a moment how his own hair had gotten onto the Professor's wand, but then realized that it was really a glistening strand of the same strange silvery-white substance that filled the Pensieve. Professor Snape added this shining thought to the basin, and Draco was surprised to see Hermione's face swimming around the surface of the bowl.

Then, he gestured for Draco to move away from the bowl, closed the doors around it, and moved back to his desk to look at his calendar blotter. "If you want to work on creating your own, I will help. But it'll have to wait until next term, I'm afraid. I have a lot to do before the holidays. Shall we start in January?"

Draco nodded, thrilled that his Professor had a suggestion that looked like it might help. A Pensieve to hold his memories! He could put classes into there, and things Lucius wanted him to memorize and detailed Quidditch moves, and every single thing Moody had ever done. And when the time was right, he'd be able to *get* him.

Draco had also been reading the books that Professor Snape's library pass had enabled him to access. If he had to wait a few weeks to start on the Pensieve, he should at least see if there was anything he could do to either annoy Moody or make him see Draco in a different light, in the meantime. He had already learned that Moody had spent over fifty years as an Auror, where he not only worked in the field but had also taught interrogation techniques inside the Ministry and in a criminology class at Merlin College, Cambridge, and found more personal information as well. Moody had been married for over a decade years in the 1930's, but his wife had been hexed to death by a minion of Grindlewald, and he had never remarried. They'd had no children, but one of the books claimed that Moody was able to connect with children during his investigations.

Most interesting to Draco was learning that Moody was famous throughout the Ministry for his renditions of Muggle show tunes on the piano.

At school, Draco never played anywhere that he could be interrupted; while Lucius tolerated his playing at home, the piano was kept in his room, so no visitors would see it in the drawing room, and he had been told not to let anyone at school learn about his musical interests. When he first went off to Hogwarts, he assumed he'd only be able to play a real instrument during vacations, but one afternoon, he stumbled across a harpsichord in a room down the hall from Dumbledore's office. He'd only been able to spend two afternoons playing before he was spotted by a Hufflepuff fourth year named Cedric Diggory. Diggory acted impressed, but Draco knew that given a chance, he'd tell everyone about what he'd seen. Draco didn't want to be humiliated before his housemates, and insisted that Diggory keep his secret; Diggory agreed but Draco was always afraid that he'd let the information slip. Midway through second year, though, on his way back from Quidditch practice (he was, as usual, running behind the rest of the team, since he had Lucius' exercises to finish) Draco spotted Diggory with the Ravenclaw seeker. That bit of blackmail made him feel more assured that Diggory wouldn't let on about Draco's music.

Second year, Draco had thought about miniaturizing his own piano and smuggling it to school, but daily shrinking and expanding of such a large instrument would drive it out of tune too quickly, so it wasn't practical. Wizards had used self-playing sheet music for years, as the only way to write a song competently was to ink it onto PERFECT PITCH parchment, but that was only good for hearing songs. Third year, though, Draco managed to work another spell on top of the parchment, which created a full sized keyboard on a roll of parchment, and by setting it up in a table, he could at least practice playing. The sound was paper thin and scratchy, but it was better than nothing. And it was wonderful to take the parchment into a deserted room, or into the common room in the middle of the night, and just play, let the music flow through him as he created enchantments in sound.

He'd read just enough music theory to know that the ancient Greek wizards considered music another form of magic. Muggles, or whatever they called them back then, were only allowed to create music under a wizard's supervision. It wasn't until centuries later that a select group of Arabian wizards had discovered how to temper the magic in music, and seeded the world with their charms, to prevent Muggles from inadvertently casting of spells through song. However, even when it was suppressed, music still had at least some ability to change thought in a fashion that was almost imperceptible, even among trained wizards. In recent centuries, music had been associated with those who fought against Dark magic, like Professor Dumbledore and his interest in chamber music, which, to Draco, was enough to explain Lucius' distaste for song, and for his son's interest in it.

It was a sign of just how desperate Draco was to get Moody to stop cursing and hexing him that he was actually considering letting the Professor know how music-minded he was. Maybe by creating a bond between them, Moody would be nicer to him. It always worked with Professors Vector and Snape, but how to do it with Moody?

He wouldn't be so blatant as to pull out his paper piano during class. Moody would probably hex him where he sat! And how could he just strike up a conversation with a teacher that only spoke to him to argue, criticize or curse?

It was mid-November by the time Draco put his plan into action. He had to put off focusing on a solution to the Moody problem when a few seventh years challenged the fourth and fifth years to create a Triwizard Cup Anti-Potter button, with fifty Galleons from the losing team to the winners. But after a class in which Moody hexed him twice - once with a modification of Expelliarmus, which made him drop what he was holding, which, at that moment, was everything that Moody found in his desk's drawers, and once with a derivative of Wingardium Leviosa, which made everything fly into the air and drop onto his head - Draco walked right in front of the Professor's desk and faked a trip. For the third time that day, his arms were emptied, as his small, four octave piano parchment and three scrolls of sheet music adapted from some American thing called Into the Woods spilled across Moody's desk and into his lap.

Draco sputtered an apology and tried to look embarrassed as he asked Moody to please hand him the scrolls, each of which had fallen open. "Malfoy, if you can't have slightly better coordination in class, I shall speak with Snape about putting an end to your Quidditch career." Moody began to pick up the scrolls, crumpled them and added, "It's probably very dangerous having someone as clumsy as you on a broomstick so high in the air."

"They're two completely different skills - walking and flying," Draco replied, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Can I please have my music back, sir? Or would you like to take a look at it first?"

"Don't patronize me, Malfoy. I'm not sure you should get these back. They're not for a class, are they? Muggle studies perhaps?" Moody didn't wait for Draco to reply. "No, you wouldn't be allowed to take that, would you?" How did Moody know that, Draco wondered, as the Professor continued. "Music is a frivolous pastime, a waste of time, in fact, and if you have time to listen to this Muggle junk, then you have time to serve a detention or write an extra paper. Which will it be, Malfoy? No extra credit for either, but if you don't do it, then fifty per cent of this term's grade will be a zero."

Draco gulped. This wasn't what he'd expected to hear at all. He stuttered, "But...sir...I wanted to talk to you about ... I thought you..."

"Your answer, Malfoy. If you don't let me know in the next two seconds, you'll be doing both this weekend."

"The paper!" Draco exclaimed. At least he could do that on his own time, after he made some sense of Moody's behavior. It's not that it was out of character, since he was as prickly and critical as he'd ever been, but it didn't mesh with what he'd read in the book.

"On my desk Monday morning, then. Dismissed!" Moody said shortly. Draco stood in front of the desk for a moment, expecting Moody to give him back the sheet music, but the Professor crumpled the parchment up and squished into his Firefile under the desk, where Draco, could hear them catch fire. He couldn't look at Moody again as he stomped out the door. His breath was coming fast, he was almost consumed with fury about what Moody had done. He leaned against the wall just outside the now-closed door, and ranted under his breath. "Damned Mudblood teacher. It's bad enough that Dumbledore allows Mudbloods as students - but to have a professor like that! So damned irresponsible." He started off down to the Great Hall, still grumbling, and paid no attention to the students he passed, who were looking at him as if he'd grown a third arm. "Prejudiced git, hates me for no reason, just like a Mudblood to do that. No conception of wizarding pride, even after decades in the wizarding world. Lucius is right, they just don't bloody fit in. If he did, he'd know he shouldn't mess with a Malfoy..."

That weekend, Draco told his study group cohorts what Moody had said. (At Hermione's request, he never wore his Potter Stinks badge while they were studying - she said the flashing gave her a headache, but he had wondered if there was another, more personal reason.) He showed them the passage about Moody in the book, and asked, "What do you think? Is this just another sign that he's gone barmy in his old age?"

"Maybe," Miranda said. Reilly nodded.

Hermione looked thoughtful. "There're a few possibilities here. First, Moody may not like the musical that you dropped the songs from. Second, Moody may so dislike you that he doesn't want to have a conversation with you, no matter what it's about. Third, that book is over twenty years old. Given what he's seen since then, fighting Voldemort and all, he may not like light and frivolous music anymore."

Draco shrugged. "Maybe. I just don't know what I'm going to do. I'm getting so sick of class."

"Now you know how Gryffindors feel in Potions," Hermione said.

"This is worse. Snape never tortures any of you. Or at least he doesn't do it every week."

"So, what's the new plan going to be, Malfoy?" Reilly asked.

"I don't know what the hell I'm going to do," Draco moaned, putting his head down between his arms. "There's only another month of classes before Winter Break. Maybe I'll just be sick and miss class one week. What do you think of my falling off my broom during a pickup game of Quidditch?"

"You can't play that now - the field is off limits," Hermione said. "And if you're just flying and fall off, deliberately or on purpose, Moody might say your balance is off and you should be banned from flying entirely. Not a cunning enough plan." He lifted his head slightly and glared at her. She quickly added, "The falling off part, I mean. Not the sick part - that would probably work, but only once."

"What if your father came up to visit you on a Thursday?" Miranda asked.

Draco dropped his head back into his arms. "No go. He doesn't even know what's going on, and if I asked him to come up midweek, he'd get all suspicious. I do not want to deal with that. Anyhow, I'm supposed to have lunch with him in Hogsmeade this weekend - it'll be the first time I've seen him since the start of term - and I don't want to explain all of this to him. I barely understand it myself."

The other three looked at him sympathetically for a moment, then looked up as a large form appeared right behind Draco's chair. Draco sighed, oblivious to the expressions on the others' faces, and sat back up, and said, "Enough of my whinging. Let's get back to work." He looked around at the open mouths on their faces and said, "What? Did my hair suddenly turn purple?"

Hermione's eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over Draco's head, and he slowly lifted his face towards the ceiling.

Viktor Krum was standing right behind him, and it looked like he was smiling.

Draco had been vaguely friendly to Viktor since the first day the Durmstrang students arrived at Hogwarts. Lucius had suggested strongly that Draco strike up friendships with as many of Karkaroff's students as possible. "One never knows when one will need friends abroad," he said before Draco went back to school, and he'd reiterated the theme in many letters since then. They'd been introduced briefly at the reception the morning of the World Cup, and that was why Krum had sat next to him during their first dinner at Hogwarts, and at various of the meals since.

Draco had also seen him in the library, since Krum spent a lot of time there, avoiding the off-putting motion of their ship, the SS Schwärzung, reading anything that might help him with the first Triwizard Task, whatever that was. They talked quidditch a lot, and about books and history. Draco pumped him for information about Durmstrang classes, in part because Karkaroff's students learned a lot of curses and their defenses, and he hoped the knowledge would help him withstand sessions with Moody.

"Viktor - what are you doing here? How did you break my wards?" Draco asked as he stood and faced the Bulgarian.

"I saw no wards here. I saw you four studying, so I came by to say hello."

Hermione looked from one boy to the other. "Draco, I thought you said the wards were perfect protection against our being bothered by other students. They've worked for fifteen months, what happened this time?"

Draco had pulled his wand out, and was waving it behind the chairs. "They're still here, same as they always...Oh, hinkypunks! I didn't change them when Beauxbatons and Durmstrang came!"

Reilly asked, "What d'you mean? Why would you have to change them?"

"The incantation is Hogwarts-specific. It only keeps out people who've been inside Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor or Hufflepuff houses. All the students have, all the Professors have, either as students or as professors. Even Pomfrey, Hagrid and Pince were students here, and the house-elves and ghosts have all been into one house or the other, as has Filch. But if you've never crossed a House threshold, the wards can't keep you out. I'll change them right now." He busied himself with his wand, making changes to the warding charm. Krum moved into the empty seat at the table; it had been Viola's, and they kept it for her, in case she broke up with that Hufflepuff and returned to her senses.

"May I sit here?" he asked the four of them. All but Draco said yes instantly; he was still focused on the spell.

An uncomfortable silence hung over the table until Draco pocketed his wand and returned to his chair. Krum was still smiling that odd smile.

"Will you introduce me to your friends, Draco?" Viktor asked. Draco didn't bother to correct Viktor's assumption that he was friends with the others in his study group. It was fine to chat with them, to work with them, to exchange information with them and get notes and other views on class projects, and he'd enjoyed at least some the time he'd spent with Hermione outside the classroom the year before, and over the summer, but outside of study group, Reilly and Miranda were too preoccupied with each other, and Hermione was spending most of her time this year with Potter, and hadn't expressed any interest in joining Draco on a visit to Hogsmeade or even for a study session in the Astronomy Tower. Then again, he'd been pretty preoccupied with Moody and with some concluding research on some of the Dark amulets he'd researched over the summer, and hadn't given much thought to girls this year, other than the times he'd been ensorcelled into massaging Pansy.

Draco pointed around the table, "Gene Reilly, Ravenclaw, and his girlfriend Miranda, also Ravenclaw, and Hermione Granger, Gryffindor. You didn't meet at the World Cup, did you?" he asked Viktor, who shook his head no.

Viktor nodded at Reilly and Miranda, then turned to Hermione and extended his hand, which she took. But instead of shaking it, like an ordinary person would, he drew it up to his lips and kissed it softly, the way Draco had seen visitors to Malfoy Manor do to Narcissa. "Miss Granger, I am very pleased to meet you."

What was Viktor doing, Draco wondered. It looked like he was flirting with Hermione! Draco cleared his throat, and looked at Viktor. "We have to get back to studying, we've got homework to do, so can I find you later?"

Krum's smile disappeared as he pushed his chair back from the table. "I will return to my research. Nice to meet all of you, and you, Miss Granger." He gave what was indisputably a small bow, and returned to a table that looked like it was covered with books about curses and magical creatures. Draco heard giggling in the distance, but put it out of his mind as he focused on their discussion of an upcoming Arithmancy assignment.

Before she started in on the diagram, Hermione pondered aloud, "I wonder what he's always in here for. Every time I'm in the library, I see him haunting the bookshelves, with all those girls following him. Draco, did you know Pansy's been trying to hover around him all week?"
Draco shook his head, and realized that he didn't much care. He was somehow preoccupied by Hermione. Seeing the way Viktor had looked at her ... she seemed different somehow, but he couldn't puzzle out why or how. Maybe it was just the way her eyes lit up when she was figuring out a particularly difficult assignment, or the way she pulled her hair over to one side when she was concentrating particularly intently on something...

Three days later, Draco hung around the castle until eleven, when he wandered over to Hogsmeade to meet Lucius. Draco spent almost half an hour waiting in the entrance to The Shifty Lemur across the street from the Three Broomsticks. Naturally, he had a book with him, a copy of The Keeper In The Rice, an almost fifty year old story about a rebellious wizard who was booted out of a fictionalized version of Hogwarts. It was Lucius' own copy, which he'd given to Draco on his thirteenth birthday. Between the two of them, it had been read over three dozen times, and Draco more or less had it memorized.

He perched in the window seat at the front of the Lemur, so far away from the bustle that it was not agreeable to be dragged back suddenly by a shout from Lucius as he entered the room. Never did Draco find anything so difficult as to keeping himself from losing his temper when he was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. "It makes me feel as if someone had hit me," he had said once. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered." The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage, but around Lucius, it had to be done.

He returned to reality as quickly as he could, and took a few subtle yet deep breaths to calm himself down. He'd known for days that this wasn't a social call for Lucius; for him to make a trip up to Hogsmeade during the term meant either that something was wrong at home, or he thought something was wrong with Draco. Lucius had mentioned the ferret incident once, in a letter during the second week of school, and it was clear from Lucius' words that Professor Snape had told him that Moody had overreacted and Draco had been acting properly, defending the family honor. However, Draco was concerned that his father had somehow found out about Moody's classes, and a few hints that Lucius dropped indicated that to be the case.

Lucius let Draco's concerns fester, as he asked the waiter for his views on the current dispute over the ownership of certain lands in Dover, which had been on the front page of the Prophet since Wednesday, then ordered dandelion salads and Roast Beast for both of them, with Butterbeer for Draco and single malt scotch for Lucius.

Finally, he started in on his son with a flurry of questions. "Why didn't you tell me about Moody? Why can't you protect yourself? Why have I bothered to teach you how to defend yourself? Do you enjoy bringing shame onto the family? Are you happy that every time your mother sees one of your classmate's parents, she is reminded of your failures in this Mudblood's class? And that it drives her to drink? Do you enjoy shaming me? Why didn't you tell me? Why did I have to hear this from Rita Skeeter? Did you know that she wants to write a story about this? Mad Eye Moody Achieves Vendetta Against Malfoy Family. If I wasn't the publisher, she'd get away with it."

Draco let the questions flow over him, his hand gripping tight on the Butterbeer stein's handle. All these questions had the same answer, and he knew Lucius wasn't going to like it. "I am sorry. I want to please you, I want to protect you, father. I've tried to get on his good side, I try to defend myself every time he curses me, especially last month when he hit me with the Crucia Menore and Imperio one class after the other. I try to fight him off, but if I do, all he does is take my wand away, and I have to face him defenceless."

"Bullshit, Draco." Lucius' hand flashed out and held his son's wrist in an iron grip, twisting his arm until it burned. "I have taught you wandless defences, I have wasted my time explaining how to avoid hexes and jinxes, and to thank me, you stand there in front of your class, in front of your inferiors! And you let a filthy Mudblood hex you!

"I know that you planned to stay at school over the holidays, but when you get back to the castle, sign up for the Hogwarts Express back to London. You're coming home over the holidays. I will take some time off, so we can practice, so you can come back to school and face down that sanctimonious, mad git."

Draco forced himself not to gasp at the pain or Lucius' threat. Miss the Yule Ball? Be sent home for the holidays when everyone else was staying at school? That would make his humiliation complete. "Father, please, don't do this. Professor Snape thought that the best way to deal with Moody, the best way for the family, was to not back down, and take everything he could throw at me, and just walk out of that room after each class, knowing that Moody didn't break me. That's what he's trying to do, he said as much to the Professor weeks ago." He didn't want to tell Lucius about the Pensieve yet, he might forbid Draco to create it. It wouldn't surprise Draco if a few of his memories were of concern to Lucius.

The waiter reappeared with their lunches, so Lucius finally let go of Draco's arm. As he shook his arm out under the table, to get the blood flowing again, Draco glanced across the table, to see if any of his arguments were getting through to Lucius.

"So? Have you at least come up with a plan to get back at Moody? Has Snape helped you create anything like that?" Lucius asked in a voice as cold as an icicle.

"I am working on it. I did come up with one, but Moody didn't have the reaction I expected. But I've read a lot about him, and if there's anything else you can tell me, that would help, because during the holidays, I think it'll be a good time to try something else."

Lucius quizzed him on what he'd learned about Moody, and finally left off that subject and asked him what he was learning in his other classes. He put his concerns about the Dark Arts to the side, and his eyes were shining as he spoke about their newest Rune project. "It changes some of the conclusions I originally had about the sapphire emerald amulet you donated to the museum. Since we thought that it was a Sumerian piece, the runes indicated that it was used to call and control Mermaids, but had no effect on Mermen, but the Professor said that a tablet that was unearthed last year shows markings which are similar to the Sumerian ones, but are really Babylonian, which means that I want to take another look at the piece. They should probably pull it off the display until I can get to it."

Lucius was almost smiling at Draco's rambling discourse. "If we didn't have a newspaper for you to run, I'd pack you off to become a curator somewhere." Draco flushed. He hadn't meant to run on like that, it was risky for him to tell Lucius so much about something he liked this much, but the only other person who'd been willing to listen to him ramble about recent archeological findings was Hermione. She'd even written to Weasley's brother, who worked for Gringotts in Egypt, to get the answer to a question Draco had about a sculpture that was dug up in an Arabian vampire's tomb. At least one Weasley was good for something.

They finally finished their lunches, and Lucius commented that since Draco wasn't flying much this term, neither of them should have dessert. Draco didn't really mind, since he was planning to meet Vin at Honeydukes at three. Lucius pulled out his pocketwatch and muttered something about meeting his reporter at the pub. "I may ask you to give her some background information for a few stories she's doing. And," his voice dropped to a whisper, "I'm going to let you in on a company trade secret. Rita's an unregistered Animagus." Draco's jaw dropped. He'd never heard of such a thing - the Ministry kept a close watch on people who tried the Animagus transformation, because it could go so horribly wrong, and made sure they knew their markings, so wizards and witches couldn't hide in their animal form.

"What is she?" he asked softly, so none of the other diners could overhear.

"A beetle! Isn't it great? She says she was inspired by some Muggle named James Bunt, who uses these Muggle devices called 'bugs', but to be honest, I don't care why she did it. All that matters to me, and to the Prophet is that she can get into all these tiny places, overhear all sorts of interesting things, and write it up for me, so we sell more papers, and go out for nice lunches like this one. So no killing any flying bugs at school, alright?"

Draco nodded, too dumbfounded to speak.

Lucius, having paid the check, stood up, gripped Draco's shoulder and led him back into the street. "I'm still not happy with what's been going on in that damned class, and I want you to report to me each Thursday about everything he says and does, and put together a scheme or trap that will make him change his ways. It's exactly the kind of behavior I expect from a Mudblood; no pure-blood would ever behave that way to another, and especially wouldn't to a Malfoy."

"And the holidays?" Draco asked, and he was proud of himself for masking the anxiety he felt.

"I'll let you know by Kira in the next few weeks. It depends entirely on the reports I have from you and about you."

With that, Lucius turned his back on Draco and strode into the pub across the way.

Draco managed the next few weeks by busying himself in the library, and trying not to think about Moody's class unless he absolutely had to. Every professor, including Moody, who claimed to hate grading papers, had assigned essays which all were due in the three days before the holiday break began. Once the first task of the Triwizard was over, the Slytherins began competing in inter-year pickup Quidditch matches, and apart from an unfortunate incident where Millicent Bullstrode, playing Beater, hit a Bludger straight into Draco's right elbow, the fourth years won the three matches they played that fall. Draco wrote two extra essays for Potions, and asked Professor Snape to write a letter to Lucius reporting on Draco's excellent concentration, his lack of complaints about the Quidditch accident and quick recovery, and the amount of time he was spending in the library. Lucius' return letter granted permission for Draco to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays, on the condition that Professor Snape accompany him to either lunch or dinner with Lucius in Hogsmeade on Draco's fifteenth birthday in January.

Apart from one small thing, the month was pretty much like the three that preceded it. That small thing was Viktor Krum.

Since the day he had visited their table in the library, Viktor had made a point of sitting next to Draco at meals at least once a day. He asked about classes and professors, including those who had taught Dark Arts classes in the past few years, but were no longer at the school. And the Monday after the first task, he asked if he could sit in on their study group for the next few weeks.

Draco wondered if he was asking out of a pure thirst for knowledge, or to get inside information about Potter's skills? What better way to learn what Potter knew than to listen to his classmates talk about what they were studying, especially when one of the group's members was Potter's best friend?

I don't like Potter, Draco thought, and I don't want him to win the Tournament. But I don't want to give the game away to Viktor either. It feels like cheating, and school pride has to count for something.

After debating with himself all day, he knew what his decision was, which was not to decide. Instead, he asked Viktor to wait until he'd asked the others, so on Wednesday night, before they started critiquing each other's essay drafts, he asked whether they'd be willing to let Viktor join the group, at least temporarily.

Their reactions were as he'd predicted. Miranda didn't see any reason why not, and Reilly was concerned that he wouldn't be able to pull his own weight, but was willing to bring him in if he could make a contribution to their pool of knowledge. Hermione was opposed to any discussion on the subject at all. "I can't do that to Harry," she insisted. "How would it look if I gave Krum any information about, well, anything, and it turned out to be useful on a task?"

Draco played devil's advocate, and asked her, "What if all he wants to do is keep his mind fresh and have some educated discussions about magic in general? What if he isn't trying to get specific information at all?"

"Did he tell you that, Draco?" she asked.

"No, but I didn't really ask. Are you so sure that his motives are bad?"

"No, but..."

"Then go over there and ask him," Draco demanded. "I'd like to know, but I didn't want to ask him a whole bunch of questions if all of you were opposed to it. As it turns out, only one of you is, so I think we should get some information from him, about what he wants out of this, and what he can contribute. Moody didn't assign the Gryffindors an essay this week, so Hermione has less to do than the rest of us, so I think she should go and talk to him. Agreed?" he asked Miranda and Reilly.

They nodded, and Hermione grimaced. "His fan club is lurking again. It's so creepy, all these second years goggling at him - and the sixth years are worse. They actually think that if they convince him to talk to them for a moment, he'll fall swooningly in love."
Reilly laughed. "I can't imagine him swooning over anything, other than a Snitch or a really amazing broom. Take four minutes, Hermione, what can it hurt? If you still say no, then we won't have him join us."
"Right," Draco added. "Go. What have we got to lose?"

She stood up, squared her shoulders, walked over to Viktor's table, touched him on the shoulder to get his attention, and started to sit down. From their table, Draco saw Viktor jump up and pull a chair out. Hermione looked very serious when she said something Draco assumed included the words "Harry" and "Potter", but as Viktor talked, her face seemed to relax, and finally, when she shook her head, she smiled at him. Then she touched his arm in a much more gentle manner than she had when she'd come up to his table, and nodded. She gestured to her study group, and Viktor stood again, and pulled her chair back so she could stand up again.

Less than five minutes after she'd left the study group table, she was back. She was still smiling, almost nervously.

"You're alone? You still don't want him to work with us?"

"No, I don't think it's appropriate, not just because of Harry, but because of Diggory, too. It's just not right for Hogwarts students to help the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students."

"I'll bet," Reilly interjected, "that Roger Davies is helping that Veela from Beauxbatons."

"Why?" Draco asked.

"Because she let him ask her to the Yule Ball. What guy wouldn't help the girl he's taking to the ball?"

For some reason, Hermione, who had been sipping from a bottle of pumpkin juice that she'd brought into the library with her, had suddenly turned red, and made a choking sound. "Are you ok?" Miranda asked, pounding her on the back.

Hermione gasped, swallowed loudly and said, "Just swallowed wrong. Shall we get to work?"

Draco hadn't given much thought to the Yule Ball, since he didn't even know if he'd be able to go. It was only a few weeks away, though, and he should probably line up a date. If Lucius called him home, he could always claim a family emergency and cancel; the girl wouldn't have to know that he had known he wouldn't be able to go. But who to take?

Pansy Parkinson was the most obvious choice. Her father would be thrilled, but Matthew Derrick, one of the Slytherin beaters who had graduated last year, had once said that dating someone from your own house was nearly impossible before seventh year, because if you broke up, you'd still have to see that person in every class, at every meal, and every night in the common room, for years. This wasn't a date though, just one school dance. Put her on the list of possibilities.

He certainly wouldn't take a Hufflepuff. He'd had a few conversations with some of the girls in that house, at Quidditch games and in the library - three of the third year girls had been sitting at his regular table in the library recently - and they had just about one brain between them. Cheerful enough, pretty enough, but not worth talking to.

Almost all the girls in third and fourth year in Ravenclaw already had steady boyfriends. He'd noticed, from observing Reilly and Miranda, that Ravenclaws started dating earlier than students in the other houses because they spent so much time in small groups, studying, and the relationships just grew from there. Reilly had once said that no Ravenclaw over fifth year ever sat in the common room, because of too many bad breakups and romantic rivalries; he then squeezed Miranda's hand and said, "We'll never be like that, will we darling?" and she'd leaned over and kissed him and Draco and Hermione had pretended to be busy with a chart of the placement of Polaris.

There were some cute third years in Gryffindor, and one of Hermione's dorm-mates clearly had some nymph ancestry, but she was dating that Irish boy.

Hermione. Certainly more fun to talk to than Pansy, but he couldn't even imagine dancing with her - not in public, not with someone who wasn't pure-blood. But if she wasn't going with anyone, he didn't have to get a date either, and they could just meet there and hang out and that wouldn't be bad.

Draco turned his mind back to his books, and spent the rest of the study period graphing the results of the potions he'd created so far that term and editing Miranda and Reilly's essays on the Agricultura curse, which was difficult because every few sentences, he'd want to scratch his arms and shoulders, where grass had grown after Moody performed that curse on him.

They wrapped up just before ten, so they could get back to their common rooms at a reasonable time. Hermione was dawdling, and Reilly and Miranda left before Draco had finished rolling up his twenty foot long chart, so he waited to walk out with her. As she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, he asked the question he'd put out of his mind before. "Hermione, you're not going to go to the Yule Ball with a date, are you?"

Her reaction was not what he'd expected. "Of course I am! Why are you asking something like that? You don't think I'm cute enough to get a date? You don't think a boy would ask me?" Her voice was getting louder, and since he'd taken down the wards already, the few students remaining in the library were turning to stare at them. He put his hands gently on her shoulders, hoping to quiet her down. "Get off me, Malfoy." She pushed his hands aside.

"I am so sick of this Ball. All you boys are acting like such, such children! All these expectations and judgments and assumptions, and it's completely ridiculous. Why can't any of you act like mature adults?"
Draco was dumbfounded. "I am acting mature."

"Ha!"

Madame Pince glared at them from her desk by the door. The other students were still staring.

"I asked you that because if you weren't going with anyone, I wouldn't go with anyone either and we could just, well, just see each other there." His voice was much quieter than hers had been. "I don't want to make a big thing of it, and I may not be able to go in the first place."

"Then why not just ask me?" She was smiling again, but it wasn't a nice smile. It reminded him of the expression on Narcissa's face when she had some unpleasant news for him from Lucius.

"I don't want to go *with* you, I don't want to date you! I just want to see you there."

Madame Pince was walking towards them.

"Let me get this straight. You don't want to go with me, but you want me to not go with anyone else? That is the craziest thing I've ever heard! I think all those classes with Moody are mixing up your brain cells a bit, Draco." She stepped back as if she was about to walk away.

"Don't you dare bring that into this." Draco grabbed her hand and kept her from getting too far. "I had a thought, you said you weren't interested, and that should be the end of it."

Madame Pince was now standing right between the two of them and the door. She pointed her wand at Draco and said, "Malfoy, Granger, out, now. If I hear either of you so clearly again this year, it'll be detentions from now until the giant squid walks up to the library door and asks to borrow a book on the deserts of Algeria." She waved her wand at each of them, and Draco felt his mouth seal shut. Hermione too gripped her lips with her hands, a gesture that was very reminiscent of her reaction to the time he'd accidentally hit her with the Densaugeo curse. Madame Pince pulled Hermione's hand away, exposing a line of buttons across her mouth. Draco assumed he looked the same.

"You can unbutton those when you get back to your dorms, but while you're in my library, you will be quiet!" Madame Pince had a frightening way of yelling very , very quietly.

Hermione tried to gesture an apology, but Draco simply gathered his books, headed toward the door as quickly as he could, and resolved to ask Pansy to the ball at breakfast. After that scene in front of so many other students, he *had* to go to the Yule Ball, and he had to go with the prettiest girl he could.

As he walked through the almost-deserted halls of the castle, his jaw locked behind his buttoned lips, his mind drifted back to Hermione. "Wonder who she's going with," he thought. "Probably that blasted Potter. I should put something nasty in his cauldron in Potions on Friday..."