L'amore del Drago

Chapter Two: In Which Blaise has a Bad Breakfast, Pansy Prevents his Pejorative Proclamation, and Draco is Haunted by his Horrible Hallucination.

The Slytherins had very few official house rules. (There was an extensive handbook of the unwritten ones.)

Firstly, they were never to bad-mouth another Slytherin in front of other houses.

Secondly, they were never to fight amongst themselves in front of other houses.

Thirdly, any discussion of purely in-house matters must not be conducted in front of other houses.

Which could really be summarised, Draco thought idly, as 'Present a united front.'

Bloody stupid, really, considering it's the Hufflepuffs who are noted for loyalty.

Of course, it did mean that emergency information had to be conveyed...somewhat oddly.

"Draco, darling," Pansy cooed at him the moment he sat down at breakfast. She threw her arms around him, and muttered: "What the hell are you doing here this early?" in his ear.

Draco pulled back from the embrace and smoothed his hair into place. "Pansy, light of my life," he said in a pained voice, "much as I love you, I really cannot permit you to spoil my hair." In an undertone, he added: "Trouble with Blaise's coffee; I'll tell you later."

Pansy blinked involuntarily, but managed to convert the gesture into a fluttering of eyelashes. "Oh, Draco," she said flirtatiously, passing him a plate of French toast.

Draco forcibly restrained his mouth from drooling onto the plate, and forgave Pansy all her sins, past and present. When she passed him the coffee pot, he decided to forgive her future sins as well.

A crash across the table distracted Draco momentarily from his breakfast. Looking up, he saw that Blaise, having managed to dress and stagger up from the Slytherin dungeons, was now unconscious in the chair opposite to Pansy.

Draco, glancing at Pansy, saw that she was rolling her eyes. Lifting the coffee pot from where it sat between her plate and Draco's, she cautiously waved it in front of Blaise's supine form.

The next few moments seemed to Draco to be a blur, as Blaise seized the coffee pot and downed three cups in rapid succession.

Without opening his eyes, too, Draco thought in mild admiration.

"What's up with him?" Pansy said in a low voice, nodding towards Blaise.

Draco looked around to make sure no one was listening to them, and lowered his voice as well. He quickly filled Pansy in on the events of that morning.

Although Pansy had to fight a tendency to laugh at the conclusion of the story, she looked at Blaise with an expression of sympathy. "Poor Blaise. And in the morning, too!" She glanced inquiringly at Draco. "Who did it, d'you think?"

Draco shrugged, and opened his mouth to reply. "I--"

He was interrupted by the howl of fury that emerged from Blaise's throat as the dark-haired Slytherin spat out the mouthful of coffee he had just taken. Both Draco and Pansy jumped involuntarily at the sudden noise.

"Bloody hell, Blaise," Pansy exclaimed. "Now what--"

"This is ENOUGH!" Blaise screamed, standing up and knocking his chair over in the process. (He later claimed that it had been a yell, but Draco and Pansy disagreed.) "I have HAD IT! The bidonista that's messing with me, you think you're such a cacasentenze, but when I find out who you are, I will rompere i coglioni..."

His voice was cut off as Pansy, with what Draco considered to be great presence of mind, darted around the end of the table and clapped her hand over his mouth. She shot a quick glance at Draco, and dragged Blaise over to the doors and out of the Great Hall.

On the whole, Draco could only agree with her actions. When Blaise was really annoyed, the range of Italian invectives that he issued forth could be quite stunning.

Not to mention very instructive, Draco thought idly.

I don't think McGonagall would share that opinion, though.

Draco rose from the table a minute later, and sauntered casually towards the door. As he glanced around, however, he noticed Gryffindor's Golden Trio sitting glaring in unison at him from their table. Changing his trajectory, Draco came to a stop directly in front of them.

"Malfoy," Granger said shortly.

"Mudblood," Draco returned.

"Don't call her that!" Weasley said angrily, half-rising from his seat.

Draco raised his left eyebrow, a trick he had spent many hours perfecting in front of the mirror. "What should I call her instead?" he inquired sardonically. "Bookworm? Gryffindork? Blot-on-the-landscape? The clearest proof yet that Dumbledore is getting senile in his old age--" He broke off as Weasley, purple-faced and propelled by fury, launched himself across the breakfast table.

Granger, to Draco's secret delight, grabbed Weasley by the back of his collar and hauled him back onto his seat.

"He only wants you to lose your temper, Ron," she informed the choking boy. Potter, in an attempt to be helpful, patted Weasley on the back, which had the effect of making Weasley choke even further, as Granger still had his shirt in a stranglehold.

"Good work, Potter," Draco drawled, suppressing the urge to burst out in fits of laughter. "Keep that up, and you'll have even fewer friends than you already don't have."

Potter scowled as fiercely as he knew how to, which wasn't very. "At least I don't have to pay people to be friends with me, Malfoy," he said fiercely.

"And here I thought they just wanted me for my body," Draco said sweetly.

Potter spluttered incoherently in combined protest and disgust.

"Careful there, Potter." Draco smiled insincerely at the other boy. "After all, we wouldn't want the Boy Who Lived to become the Boy Who Choked To Death On His Cereal, now would we?"

Draco was smugly walking away from the table, when a sudden recollection hit him in his tracks.

Boy Who Lived.

Harry Potter.

Hal.

Please tell me I didn't have that dream, Draco thought in rising panic as the details flooded back to him.

And I thought Blaise was the one who needed help.