The Slytherin Saga: Book One: The Year Without Quidditch

Chapter Two: November the fifteenth

Draco stood in the Slytherin common room glaring at the clock on the wall. He was aware of the particular eccentricities of that clock; that the clock tended to do as the person viewing the clock felt it should: if you were running behind, the minutes went by faster, or if you were waiting for someone or something to arrive, then the hands moved extra slowly. In the Slytherin dungeons, time really did fly when you were having fun. However, at the moment when nothing much at all was happening, Draco felt it dragged on for an age. He shook his head and went toward the entrance to the hallway leading to the dormitories. "Crabbe! Goyle! Urquhart! Blaise!" he called. "Damnit, what's taking so long?" he asked, more to himself than to his missing comrades. He shook his head and walked back into the center of the room. Trying his best to avoid looking at the cursed clock, he flopped down on the couch in the center of the room and decided to strap his shin guards on. Just because everyone else was running late, didn't mean he had to.

He had noticed a week before that the laces fastening one of the straps to his right shin guard had come loose, and he had remedied this for the time being by pulling it tighter into the buckle. The tightening of the strap had more than made up for the loose stitches, but had only truly served to loosen the stitches even further, not to mention cutting the circulation off a little. This time, when he pulled on the strap to tighten it yet another notch, the stitches gave way altogether and Draco was left holding the dislodged bit of leather. "Damn!" he cursed.

"Can it be all that bad?" he heard a voice call out from behind him. Draco turned and showed his sour face to Orinda, who had just come in to the common room from outside.

"That loose strap came off," he informed her.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes at him. "Give me a minute," she said, walking back toward the exit to the dungeon and through the door into her room. In less than a whole minute, at least according to the clock on the wall, Orinda had returned wearing her Quidditch officiating robe and holding all of her gear in one hand and a small wooden box in the other. She seated herself on the couch directly opposite him and reached her hand out. "Give it here," she instructed. Having no reason not to do as she asked, Draco picked up the broken shin guard and handed it, along with its uncooperative strap, over to her. "Where is everyone?" Orinda asked him as she opened the box and pulled out a pincushion.

"Some of them had detentions," Draco informed her, watching her action suspiciously.

"On Sunday?" Orinda asked her eyes wide. She pulled some thread out of her box and threaded the eye of a thick needle which she had pulled off of the cushion. Draco nodded. "Well, they had better hurry themselves a bit," she commented. "This can't take all night." She began stitching the strap back on to Draco's shin guard.

"Is that... are you repairing my shin-guard like a...a...Muggle?"

"Yes. You say Muggle like it's a dirty word."

"Well they certainly are dirty. Wait until you meet Mudblood Granger. She'll do your head in," he sniggered, before looking pointedly at her wand.

She looked at him sharply for his insult before she rolled her eyes again and took up her sewing again. "Don't worry, dearest, I'll put some sequins on it for you if you feel it would be a bit less mundane."

Draco considered the fashion value of a sparkling shin guard before he decided against it - no matter how spiffy it was he'd get tormented by the older boys.

"What is taking them so long? I only have a few hours to give you."

"I suppose you have a date?" Draco enquired curiously.

"I might," she retorted. Draco's eyebrows shot up and he sat up a little straighter in his seat; that comment had been a joke, and he couldn't tell exactly, but it seemed to him as though her reply may not have been.

"You'll tell me who it's with?" he prodded.

"I certainly will not," she informed him. "Perhaps it's not any of your business." She smiled over at him as she tied off her stitches.

"What's none of Draco's business?" Liese Lagergren called as she was coming into the room. She had Millicent Bulstrode and Blaise Zabini in tow. Orinda laughed.

"That would be none of your business as well, Miss Lagergren," she answered. As if on cue, Miles Bletchley, Crabbe, Goyle, Urquhart, and Warrington came scurrying into the room.

"Pucey, Pritchard, Montague, and Baddock, are right behind us," Warrington informed the room. "They got into some row with some Gryffindors over their 'Potter Stinks' badges and they're getting a lecture from McGonagall, I think."

"Tell me, Draco," Liese asked him, "what's none of your business?" Draco shot Orinda his most evil grin.

"Orinda has a date tonight after Quidditch," he announced to the room. "And she's not telling anyone who it's with."

"I have half a mind to rip all those stitches right back out," Orinda spat to Draco, flinging his now fully repaired shin guard into his lap. "But that'd ought to do you," she finished.

"Well, it's not anyone in this room," Warrington observed. "And if it was one of the others playing in the match tonight then he wouldn't be late."

"It's a Durmstrang," suggested Blaise.

"No, Mr. Zabini, it is not a Durmstrang," Orinda defended, beginning to chuckle.

"Then it's someone from another house...?" Urquhart looked positively stunned.

"What's someone from another house?" Montague asked. The rest of the missing players were following him into the room, all of them dressed in full Quidditch gear and ready to go.

"Our Miss Hartlestead has a date tonight," Liese told the new arrivals. "And she won't tell us who it's with."

"Everyone's here now," Orinda announced, standing up with her equipment in her hand. "We should get on the field. I've already got the key from Filch. We can choose up sides on the way."

"Not so fast," Montague insisted, as Orinda began trying to get to the door. "You really should tell us who you're going out with, Orinda," he encouraged. "What if there's something that you should know about him that we could tell you?" Orinda laughed and shook her head.

"Okay," she conceded. "You have worn me down and now I have to confess it." She placed her right hand over her heart in an overly dramatic gesture and continued. "Tonight, I will be passing time with..." She looked Draco square in the eye. He looked wickedly at her, proud of the fact that she had been broken so easily. "Harry Potter- I hear he's great in the sack," she decried. All of the jaws in the room fell and Orinda couldn't stop herself from laughing. "I'm kidding," she announced almost immediately. "You should see the looks on all of your faces, though." She shook her head. "I haven't been here long," she allowed, "but I have been here just long enough to figure out that I could never date a Gryffindor- even if I had it on some authority that he was an incredible lay." The younger students and most of the girls giggled a little at that last comment, and the older boys' eyes widened a little. "If I were to do something like that, you lot would never speak to me again," she confirmed. Orinda shook her head again. "And if it's any of any of your business," she concluded, "I have a meeting with Professor Dumbledore tonight to discuss the topic of my thesis. I've even been told that the esteemed Professor Binns might stop by, and I must say that I'm a might bit excited at the prospect of having a ghost as a potential advisor. Apparently he has to approve the curriculum I plan to teach. So I have to get back here at a reasonable time to get showered and dressed and to get all of my folios in order to present them. Are you satisfied now?" Heads around the room nodded, although Draco was certainly disappointed in the result of the conversation. He had sincerely hoped that there would be something juicy for which he could harass Orinda later in the week. He looked over at her and rolled his eyes. She was looking square at him and wrinkled her nose to mock him. He wondered if that was maybe an advertisement of victory and that she would not, in fact, be spending the evening engaged in academic pursuit with Dumbledore. Or maybe she was spending the time with Dumbledore and the old bat still had it. Draco shuddered.

"Baddock and Pritchard," Orinda called into the group as she set off, the fourteen players scurrying in her wake. A pair of first years scurried to the front of the group and flanked Orinda on either side. "You two are the only first years playing with us," she reminded them. "Now, where I went to school we didn't have any restriction on who could play Quidditch," she explained, "but then again, there were barely as many of us in the entire place as any one of the four Hogwarts houses alone. Anyway, the first years had to take turns acting as captain during training to help them understand the rules better and to understand what they needed to work on. There's no better way to understand your own weaknesses than to see them in other players." She looked down at each of them. "So you two are our captains today," she informed them. "I'll help you to choose up sides once we've gotten out to the pitch," she told them. The two young boys smiled and ran ahead, Montague and Warrington hot on their heels; it was obvious to Draco that each of them would be 'adopting' one of today's captains to get his own choices of team mates. Draco shoved his way through the other players to catch up with Orinda. He grabbed a hold of her hood and tugged until she stopped to let him catch up.

"Why the hell did you make the first years the captains?" he asked her snootily. He was more than just a little bit annoyed that two eleven-year-olds were getting to captain a Quidditch team before he'd had the chance to. And it was not in his nature to let such a lapse in judgment on the part of any official go without some degree of reprisal.

She frowned up at him. "Perhaps because those boys have never had to take the sport seriously and last week I was nearly ready to toss a Bludger at them myself for their lack of attention," she looked him in the eye and then kept walking. Draco wondered if she knew that he was thinking that she should have just Bludgered them. That would have learned them good, and it would have been more palatable a solution in Draco's mind than having made them captains, that was for damned sure. "So last Monday evening,' she continued, "I gave each of them a very nice copy of the official rulebook published by the Department of Magical Games and Sports. I need to know that they read and understand them or else I am not going to be letting them onto the pitch with us again any time soon. I'd rather take a Bludger out of play and play only one Beater per team than to have a couple of boys out there who have neither any idea of nor any respect for the rules of the game. So with the two of them as captains, I'll be able to get the best assessment of whether or not they've bothered to learn anything this week." Orinda grinned smugly at Draco.

"You are very clever," Draco said to her as though it were some great revelation. He was impressed by her desire to keep the game as proper as possible, but more so, really, at the deviousness of her methods. The manipulation delighted him more than a shiny penny did a Weasley. It might not have occurred to him to treat the first years quite like that, and it certainly hadn't occurred to him that it was possible to play with half the Beaters and only one Bludger. He had much to learn; a fact which he found equally fascinating and aggravating, but one he was willing to deal with for the time being.

"You," she poked him in the chest playfully, "would be wise to remember that, Malfoy." He snickered at her and pulled her hood up over her head before darting ahead with Crabbe and Goyle behind him.

* ------- * ------- * ------- * ------- *

Draco chewed the inside of his cheek as he stared down at the folio in his hands, deciding whether to open it or not. His fingers were almost burning with the need to do so, but then again, it wasn't his, and it wasn't any of his business. His attention started to drift, taking in the details of Orinda's large, private room again before he remembered why he had come over to her messy desk in the first place: boredom. Draco ripped the cover open but immediately slammed it closed again. It wasn't a last minute appearance of morals - he wasn't fully convinced that he even had a set of them - it was the possibility of something foul attaching him for his curiosity. Poking around his father's study as a child had taught him caution a long time ago. Slowly this time, he peeked inside the cover, careful to assure that any pages inside weren't enchanted in such a way as to spray him with ink, slap him in the face, make a loud sound, or otherwise cause him dismay. Satisfied that the pages were not so booby trapped, he opened the folio the rest of the way up, hoping that the papers inside might contain the precious knowledge of casting silently. The notes inside of it looked like they had come from a Muggle source, written in pencil. He flipped through the pages looking for anything that stood out, but finding nothing that did, he started in on the first page.

Draco was awfully shocked, and a little bit embarrassed, at what met his eyes. The pages were fiction; at least he only hoped it was fiction. There were never more than three or four pages devoted to any one set of characters or circumstances, but more often than not the characters were finding themselves in very erotic situations. If he weren't so embarrassed he might have pocketed them to use as blackmail material later, but Draco could feel his face getting hot as he read the unfinished stories. He had to admit to himself that the writing wasn't terribly good, but the vivid descriptions of the romantic encounters were quite a lot like Draco had imagined such an encounter to be. He became so engrossed with the adventures of a farm hand and a veela's daughter that he didn't hear the door open. Orinda lumbered into the room and kicked the door shut with her foot. Draco turned his head just in time to see her robe fall off of her shoulders and the stack of books and folios in her hands begin to teeter as though she were about to drop them. He stood to offer her a hand, but before he could reach her, she had slid over to stand close enough to the bed that she was able to dump the stack of books onto the mattress.

It was at this moment that Draco remembered that his presence was not expected. Orinda looked up from the pile of books that she had just dropped and squealed, startled, before calming herself after seeing his face. Her eyes were wide and her mouth agape as she sighed and shook her head at him. She relaxed further after a moment and pulled her robe the rest of the way off. "Draco," she addressed him, her breathing still somewhat labored. "Hello," she added.

"Sorry I..." Draco began trying to explain. She shook her head and walked toward the closet on the far side of the room.

"Talk to me in a minute." She looked around and called out, "Lumos!" to which the lights responded by springing to life. She went into her little hallway and pulled open the door to the closet until it blocked his view of her. "I guess you can talk to me now," she allowed. "I can hear you from over here. Mind telling me what you're up to in my room in the middle of the night?" Draco moved a step closer to the foot of the bed.

"You called a penalty on me this afternoon," he complained. He crossed his arms over his chest so that, were she to look at him, she could see as well as hear just how put out he was with her at the moment. He could hear her shuffling around behind the door and he saw movement from her shadow that made him almost certain that she was changing her clothes. He had half a mind to try and peer around the door, but thought better of it and stood fast where he was.

"You're kidding," she called out to him. "You're here at eleven o'clock at night to dispute a penalty?" she asked him, poking her head around the door that separated the two of them. "You cobbed her, Draco," Orinda insisted. "Sure as the day is long and the sky is blue you did."

"I was reaching for the Snitch," he argued.

"And you had it in your hand when your elbow got her in the chin, and you were looking straight at her. In case you're worried, she'll be back from the hospital wing in time for class tomorrow."

"You didn't have to call the penalty," Draco told her, sliding into her desk chair and beginning to fiddle with the pages on the desk. He thought it was a good hit. It made sure that Liese wouldn't get into the habit of cutting him off. Orinda should be admiring his tactics rather than reprimanding him.

"I did so," she contended, closing the closet door, revealing her flannel pyjama pants and white undershirt. "Draco," she started, making her way back to the bed, "were you not listening earlier when I said what I did about needing to make sure that the first years get the rules? I had to call the penalty because that's the rules."

"You're supposed to be on my side," he sulked.

"Do you have any empathy at all? What if I officiate a real game one day and you're the captain and someone does that same thing to you that you did to Liese today. And I penalize them, and Slytherin makes the shot and it's the difference between the win and the loss. Now, how do you want people to see me calling that foul? Do you want folks to think I play favorites or would you rather they call the penalty shot good and put Slytherin one more win closer to the cup?" she asked leaning back against the mound of pillows on her bed.

"I think you would have had a little bit of understanding, since you were a seeker," he contended.

"Ach," she began, "and how did you know about that, lad?" she asked him. "Been doing your homework, I see?"

"And what if I have been?" he spat. "Does it bother you? Afraid I'll tell?" She rolled her eyes and threw a pillow at him. "I wouldn't want people knowing that I was the fastest flyer at Clontarf Academy of Magic but I wasn't coordinated enough to catch a Snitch or brave enough to even look at a Bludger."

"I really was kind of terrible," she agreed wryly, but with a half-chuckle. "That's how I learnt all the inane rules you know; I didn't even get any real playing time, but as third string I had to be at every match; because, you see, being Irish Quidditch, we had to keep a pretty deep bench. I'd like to see you play a game back home, me English lassie."

"Lassie?" he demanded raising an eyebrow. "That's right; tease English Quidditch skills when the whole world knows that the Irish have no finesse."

"Is that right? Is that why the English team was... where during the World Cup final...? Oh yeah: having a pint at the pub while the Irish finished off the Bulgarians."

"You know I'm right. We do things different here on the mainland, mate. If we have a problem or a difficult play we can't solve it by bludgeoning people with potatoes or however it is you resolve conflict. It just isn't on."

"Whatever you say, crumpet," she said sweetly. "At least the Irish don't cry when we break a nail or have our hair messed."

Draco's face went a curious shade of red and cradled his right hand protectively. "That isn't fair, she fouled me, and it really hurt. I notice you didn't call blatching against her." He could barely go on, Orinda was laughing to hard. "Have you gotten a good look at Millicent Bulstrode at all? She sat on me once, Orinda, and I almost died."

"Maybe you should try the official's exam through school like I did. It got me off the bench and it might get your pretty face out of harm's way," she cooed in response before continuing to giggle.

Draco snorted. "I bet I'd kick your arse at officiating," he said, leaning back in the chair.

"If you could catch me," Orinda sneered back at him, nodding her head toward the Stratus 5K leaning against the wall in the corner. Draco frowned and tried to think of something appropriately witty and scathing to hit her back with.

"Whatever," was the best he could come up with. He leaned even farther back in the chair and propped his feet up on her desk.

"Make yourself at home," she offered, sarcastically regarding his feet.

"Don't mind if I do," Draco said back to her. He was fiddling with one of the blank parchment pages he had picked up from off of her desk.

"So you were really here to object to a penalty I called?" she asked him. She looked over at her desk and at the disturbed pile of pages and folios. "I hope you weren't waiting here long," she smirked at him as she continued, "that is- how many of my papers did you manage to read before I got back?" Draco felt his face flush and he had to look away from her. "You don't have to answer that," she told him, smiling. She took off her glasses and set them on the night table where her wireless set was kept. "But," she interjected, "speaking of interesting reading material," she grabbed a page off of her nightstand and flung it at him. "Did you see yesterday's Daily Prophet?" she asked him. "There's an article in there about the school, er, well, this Triwizard tournament and that Potter lad from over at Gryffindor."

"Potter," Draco sneered.

"You say that word as though it were 'refuse'," she commented. "You really hate him that much?"

"You don't know the half of it," he growled. He opened the paper and began scanning the article.

"Then why don't you enlighten me?" she asked. She got up from where she'd been sitting and walked over to her desk. "Excuse me," she said to him as she bent down and reached in to a drawer that was beneath his outstretched legs. From the drawer she produced a rather large cake and a small pitcher of sauce. "Cake?" she offered, sitting the confection on the desk right in front of him. Draco put his feet back on the floor and looked at the cake.

"Please," he answered.

"Pardon my reach," she implored him, as she bent across him to the top drawer on his far side. She brought out two plates, forks, napkins, and a cake server. "Got this in Hogsmeade this morning," she told him, slicing into the cake. "I knew I would never be able to eat the whole thing alone, but I couldn't resist it. Lucky for me I have company." She smiled at him and sliced off a large chunk of the cake, plopping it onto a plate. She handed it to him with the sauce pitcher. "Have as much as you'd like," she invited him. She cut a slightly smaller piece for herself and slathered it in the creamy sauce from the pitcher before walking around the foot board to sit back on the bed. She propped her plate on the thick square bed post at the corner of the foot board and dug in, "But the price of the cake is you have to tell me why you hate Harry Potter so awfully much." Draco, his mouth full of his first bite of cake, frowned at her, but then shrugged his shoulders.

"He's just wretched," Draco told her, turning in his chair to face her with his plate on his lap. "I offered to teach him the ropes, to let him know who counted and who didn't; but, of course, he wouldn't listen. So he went off and made friends with the Muggle lovers and that filthy Mudblood girl. He does nothing but repeatedly break the rules and he never seems to get punished for it; seeing as he's famous just for being alive. And now he's gone and found some way to get his name into the blasted Goblet of Fire."

"You think he did that himself?" Orinda asked, licking an errant drop of cream off of her fork.

"Of course he did," Draco informed her. "The famous Harry Potter, Hogwarts Champion. It disgusts me."

"You can not be serious," she rebutted. "There is no way in the world that he put his own name in that Goblet."

"You think?" Draco was uninterested. As far as he was concerned, Potter had done it deliberately because he was an attention-seeking, swotty git and no cake-giving Irishwoman was going to persuade him otherwise.

"Professor Dumbledore drew that age circle around the Goblet with his very own hand. And I heard that from his own lips. And if you think for one second that Harry Potter has magic that could outdo Albus Dumbledore, then you have greatly overestimated the boy." Orinda nodded and popped the last bite of cake from her plate into her mouth.

"Probably got Granger to do it for him," Draco muttered bitterly, watching Orinda. She sprang up to a stand and walked toward the armoire on the far wall at the head of the bed.

"If I had to hazard a guess," she continued, her mouth full of cake making her thick brogue even harder than usual to make out. "I'd say that whoever put his name into that Goblet was trying to do him in." Draco leaned back in his chair. He hadn't thought about that before. He wasn't sure exactly why it hadn't occurred to him that Harry Potter would be in grave danger during this tournament and that he might not manage to make it out alive. Draco grinned a little at that. Whoever had put Potter's name in might have had a very bright idea indeed. Good luck to him. Orinda pulled a bottle out of one of the drawers in the bottom of the armoire and then turned back to look at him. "Well, that's a wicked look on your face," she told him, crossing back in his direction. "Would you really be so satisfied at his unfortunate demise?" she asked.

"I hate Harry Potter," he reiterated. Orinda laughed as she again took up her seat at the foot of the bed.

"I think I may have heard you say that before," she joked with him. She pulled the stopper out of the bottle and took a swig. Draco laughed.

"It's just the truth," he told her.

"Drink?" she offered him, Draco considered it for a moment and then nodded his head in the affirmative, hoping it was something alcoholic he could brag about later. She passed him the bottle and he took a tiny sip from it. He scrunched his face at the sour taste. After a second, though, he decided that he liked whatever it was and took a larger swallow.

"What is that?" he asked her. Orinda frowned and looked a little embarrassed.

"I should've warned you," she apologized. "It's sour cider. Probably sort of an acquired taste," she guessed.

"It's good," he commented. "Not at all what I expected," he admitted. She looked over at the clock sitting on her mantelpiece.

"You might ought to be going," she suggested to him. "Not that I'm wanting rid of you or anything," she qualified, "but it's well past lights out and getting on to midnight. I'd hate for Professor Snape to catch you out of bed- and the later is gets the more trouble you're likely to be in. And even worse it would be if you were to fall asleep in your lessons tomorrow morning. That'd get points off in a hurry." Draco nodded and stood up. He smiled over at her.

"I still say that penalty was a raw deal," he reminded her with a frown.

"Good night, Draco," she shooed him, tossing yet another pillow in his direction. He left the room laughing and pulled the door closed as quietly as possible. He tiptoed back to his dormitory, barely missing being caught in the hall by the Bloody Baron. Just as he thought he had made it in to bed without rousing anyone's notice, Goyle rolled over in his bed,

"The hell have you been all night?" he groaned at Draco.

"I had a bone to pick," Draco responded.

"Let the damned penalty go, already," Blaise complained. "We won didn't we?"

"Are you all waiting up for me?" Draco asked, very disconcerted at the prospect. These people needed to get a life of their own if they found it amusing or proper to make sure they knew what he was up to at all hours of the night.

"You're bloody loud," Crabbe complained.

"Shut up," Draco snapped at them. "And go to bloody sleep."