The Subtle Knife

Chapter 4: Cadence

Ah, Halloween. Only two days away...

Draco loved Halloween, possibly more than Christmas. But then, who didn´t love Christmas and all the gift-getting? Draco himself always had a large stack of presents from his family. Halloween though...

It was his favorite holiday. He loved the décor at Hogwarts- the floating pumpkins that were ghoulishly carved with their gaping triangle eye sockets and jagged mouths, the life-like bat charms that flitted throughout the classroom corridors (with the added benefit of being guano-free), the massive spiders´ webs that seemed to manifest themselves in every corner (even though they clung to Draco´s robes like really severe dandruff), especially down in the dungeons. He loved the packages of extra sweets his mother would send from home and he loved the Halloween feast.

He loved, most of all, that Halloween made him forget things. The presence of ghosts and goblins and werewolves and vampires permeated the air with an intoxicating brew of horror and delight. Draco could forget how much the Gryffindorksas a whole annoyed him, his (impending) initiation into the ranks of the Death Eaters, and him.

Most of all, him.

Draco also forgot most of the events of the remaining afternoon that first weekend of the year in Hogsmeade. He vaguely recalled, after spending the better part of an hour puking and dry-heaving all over the stubbly, dying grass, stumbling back up to Hogwarts. Luckily, his disappearance went unnoticed. He ended up crawling into his bed where Pansy cooed over him and nursed his skull-shattering headache with a potion sent by her mother. A light all-healing snog was also appreciated.

Draco wasn´t sure if Snape knew what Crabbe, Goyle and he had done, or, for that matter, even acknowledged it, but the Potions Master hadn´t been too impressed by something. He glared at Draco for the better part of the following week in class and in their frequent passing in the dungeons. Although, given the back-up choices, Snape would have never gone as far as to take away Draco´s prefecture. Draco had the last laugh over this.

The majority of the memories from that day were of the pounding pain, however, and Draco reminded himself never, ever to do that again.

It was a Tuesday, before dinner and Draco was passing the time curled up in his bed. The weather was getting colder and the sun setting earlier by the day. He had several candles floating around his room lazily, bathing it in a faint glow. He was reading a book that he had swiped out of his father´s library over the summer- The Moriens Curse: Less Deadly and Less Illegal than the Unforgivables. It was actually a rather enjoyable read, if a bit heavy on the content and wording. He was completely absorbed in a detailed section about the debilitating pain and nerve-splitting anguish it put the victim through (complete with colour picture and caption about the bursting blisters and chaffing, red, raw skin that peeled back slowly, exposing muscle and bone to the air) that he didn´t hear someone enter his room and sit down on the bed beside him.

"Draco?"

He jumped a little, startled by the interruption, but maintained his Malfoy composure as always. "Oh, it´s you, Pansy." Draco nonchalantly set down the book on the table by the head of his bed, next to the dagger he had left there earlier. He then picked up the glass of water he had sitting there and took a quick sip. The air was a lot drier in the autumn.

Pansy gave him a devious smile, and unbuttoned the top button of his white school shirt. Draco had removed his jumper earlier in favor of one his mother had bought in the spring for him. Pansy followed the action with a second button, then a third. Then she stopped.

Draco scowled vexingly at her. "What are you doing? Why are you stopping?" he snarled. He took her well-manicured hand and placed it on the next button. "I´m waiting," he said impatiently.

She laughed, hairspray-stiff brown curls flying in her face, and she pushed him down onto his back before she crawled over top of him, straddling his stomach. Draco´s shirt, half-buttoned, bunched itself up around her hips. Pansy playfully pinned his wrists under her own, then ran her tongue along his lower lip slowly. The chill of her saliva meeting the cold air of his dorm prickled his lip. Draco shivered involuntarily and kissed her back sharply, biting her own lip sharply between his teeth in mock-revenge. He hoped it would be painfully arousing for the girl.

It must have been. She gave a throaty moan and poked her tongue into his mouth where Draco playfully nipped at it with his teeth. He knew that Pansy detested when he did that, but in a strange way, loved it all the same. His fingers were pulling her greysweater over her head and he was pleased to encounter that Pansy had left her bra in her own dorm again. Draco hooked the back of her calf with his ankle and flipped them over.

She laughed shrilly. "Have I left you that deprived of sex recently? Aren´t we eager today?"

Draco growled. Pansy resumed pawing at his belt as he undid his shirt roughly and slipped it off. Her hands ran through his hair, tousling it and this annoyed Draco to no end. He pulled back from her mouth.

"Don´t," he said sharply. "I´ve told you not to touch my hair."

Pansy pouted, sticking out her darkened lip, obviously wanting to be kissed again, but Draco ignored her. Instead, he tugged off her skirt, ripping the seam at the side, and sucked and bit the flesh along her neck, which tasted horribly of that bitter orange perfume she doused herself in. Draco grimaced at it and stuck out his tongue. Pansy wrapped her legs crab-like around his and forced off his trousers; Draco tugged at one of her engorged nipples with his teeth at the same time, knowing it would get her hot and bothered, or at least bothered. She ran her own hands along his back, scraping harshly in the way she knew he liked.

She hissed in pain. "Stop that, Draco." She slipped off his silk boxers, freeing him finally.

Draco managed to shove a hand under the waistband of her purple lace panties and yanked them off before resuming to roughly kiss his way down her exposed chest.

Pansy arched wantonly against him, kneading his shoulders. "No!" she cried.

Draco looked up, willing very much to reverse roles. Change was good every so often. He drawled impatiently placing a lazy hand on her inner thigh, "What?"

The girl squeezed herself out from underneath his weight and stared him down with her small, dark eyes. "On your back," she commanded.

Draco snorted and raised an eyebrow, but complied. "Haven´t done this in a while," he mumbled as Pansy stroked him expertly in just the right places before nibbling at his jugular, feeling the blood pulse faster under his pale skin.

"Only if `a while´ counts as `a few days´."She licked his ear lobe, fingering his sternum seductively, refusing to dip her nail lower still.

"Fuck, Pansy, get down there!" he groaned in frustration as she neglected a most-vital organ.

She grinned up at Draco and scooted down like an obedient pet, or wife. Her tongue dipped around his navel in swift circles, then below-

-as she scraped her teeth painfully slowly across him and he felt his need grow, painfully so. Draco was thrusting into her face mechanically, desperate for release, but she ignored him this time and sat on top of his ache, straddling herself above it. She was rubbing against him again and again, moaning out his name as she did so and he squeezed and squashed her breasts under his hands, assaulting her nipples.

With a flex of her hips, she slipped suddenly and Draco fell into place with a satisfied grunt. He laughed and Pansy scowled and he thrust deeper into her, eliciting a moan in unison from both of them. Pansy fell forward, leaning over top of Draco, her hair scratching his face. Her hands were on either side, cushioning her weight and she rocked her hips in rhythm with his own. Pansy ran her tongue along his pointed jaw and Draco looked up to her eyes, his own glazed over as orbs of silver.

A dog stared back. A pug. An ugly, wrinkling, smushy-faced beady-eyed dog.

He blinked, but it was till there. He blinked a second time, and again nothing but the dog.

Draco screamed in horror and the dog pulled away from his face, breathe still hot and feral, laughing with its tongue drooping below its chin. "Like that, do you?" it barked and then licked his face again.

Somewhere, in the back of Draco´s mind, a voice was telling him that he was seeing things, that it was his imagination. A very disturbed imagination at that. But his brain registered a dog face where Pansy´s own should have been.

"Ugh! Get off!" he shouted, frantically trying to push the dog-faced girl off his body and dislodge himself from her, but her weight rivaled his own and she remained as fixed in place as ever. It was too gross to fathom going any further. Draco was suddenly and completely unimpassioned. It was fucking a dog!

Beady eyes, black, looked down at him in confusion. The pupils totally obscuring whatever iris they may have had.

"Get off me!" he screamed again, pushing hysterically at its body, which was unmoving. "Get out! Get out!" The Common Room down the corridor would be able to hear his banter through Draco´s closed door. It didn´t matter.

"I...I can´t- not yet," the dog-girl begged and thrust against him again in desperation. "Let me finish."

Draco couldn´t take it any longer. It was too disgusting. Nasty. He was not into bestiality. He groped frantically for his wand on the bed-side table and pointed it at the she-bitch Who Was Pansy. "Reducto!" he shouted.

Pansy was finally pulled off him and she few across the room, hitting Draco´s trunk with a sickening crack. Draco saw her face flicker with the pug´s, but the dog´s returned, whimpering, with human hands covering its canine face.

"Get out!" he yelled at her. "I never want to see you again!" Draco felt so revolted. So dirty. Dirtier than a Mudblood could ever feel.

Dog-Pansy was in a frenzy, groping for her clothes and managed to slip on her underwear and jumper, but...

She wasn´t leaving!

Draco grabbed the remaining things from the other side of his bed and hurled them at her A glass of water, half-emptied. A Charms textbook. A lone sock. A bottle of moisturizer. His eyes were blazing in disgust and anger and the bitch cried out again when they hit her repeatedly like shrapnel.

"Get. Out," he said through clenched teeth in a low voice, but Pansy stood there shaking. "Get out!" Draco hollered at her again, shaking with a combination of rage and utter disgust. She finally ran out, like a dog with its tail tucked behind itself miserably, only Draco saw brown curls flapping this time.

Draco flopped backwards onto his bed. He closed his eyes, groaning in disgust. What the hell was that? He was just fucking Pansy, merrily minding his own business until...that thing appeared instead. Draco growled in frustration. If it had been Peeves playing a sick joke then the Baron would here of it immediately.

He still had a raging, aching hard-on that needed to be sated. His thoughts left him. Draco pulled on a silk robe and walked off to the showers to wank off and finish what needed to be done. Wash off the dog-smell that lingered in his imaginative nostrils.

Strangely enough, though, Potter´s face flashed before Draco´s eyes as he climaxed in the shower. This new image only made him come harder, so much so that he nearly blacked out with the force of it. Potter just had to pervade everything. But his face was, if not a little shocking, a welcome break from that disgusting bitch-dog.

There was a hesitant knock on the door to his room sometime later. Crabbe and Goyle had obviously taken the hint with the yelling and left Draco to stew on his own, mostly about Pansy, not Potter, though. He stared up at the aging forest-green canopy of his bed, hands behind his head. He really didn´t want to deal with other people just yet, but he didn´t refuse their entrance.

It wasn´t Crabbe and Goyle, nor was it Pansy. Draco could tell that much as he heard the familiar sashaying up to his bed. He sat up, and Blaise looked sadly down at him. She was dressed in a pretty red taffeta skirt with her hair pulled up loosely, some flyaway strands sticking out.

They were silent for a moment, and then Blaise sighed.

"Going out or coming back?" Draco asked wearily, not that he really cared. She was at a rendezvous with a professor, no doubt.

The corners of the girl´s mouth twitched, red from her lipstick and swollen. "I cam back an hour ago," she paused, "...to listen to a crying and pitiful-sounding girl sobbing her tragic life story to Millicent and Tracy and Queenie. Then she started pigging out on crisps."

Draco nodded slowly into his pillow. "Ah...but I thought you weren´t friends with them. Why are you telling me this?"

Blaise snorted. "I´m not. They just want me to sympathize with Pansy." She gave Draco a long and drawn out appraising look.

Draco flinched under the azure eyes. No, Draco told himself, Blaise wouldn´t make me feel guilty. Pansy had been pug-faced, for fuck´s sake. Pug-faced like the Weasel and Potty and the Mudblood had always said...

Potter!

It had to be him! He put a hex on Draco. That explained the Snitch and the hard-ons and everything else. Oh, he was going to pay...The vitriol flared in Draco´s eyes. It must have been a spell, designed to throw the Slytherin off. A nasty spell at that.

Blaise had evidently noticed his change in expression. "Don´t." she warned him, scowling. "Whatever you´re thinking about doing, don´t."

Draco sneered at the wall and silence lapsed once more. He didn´t need to be told what not to do by a teacher´s whore.

Blaise brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt. "What was that all about? Pansy was wailing like it was the end of the world. She says that you don´t ever want to see her again."

The Slytherin Slut wouldn´t understand the vision of the dog-faced girl on top of him that he had seen. "Bloody right she is."

She looked at Draco, worry and reassurance in her eyes at once. "I hope you´re okay-"

He snorted in defiance. Blaise was stupid. Sexy, but stupid, which was why she had resorted to sleeping with half of her teachers (it was rumoured).

"Go take a walk, then, Draco," she said finally. "Clear your mind and all."

She left stiffly, without her hips swaying. It looked strangely natural that way. Draco could tell by her gait that she wasn´t pleased. She just walked carefully out the door and closed it behind herself on her way to dinner, or another shag with a professor.

Draco didn´t go down to dinner that night, but late in the evening he did pull out his own Invisibility Cloak. He had acquired it after complaining to his father all summer before his fifth year about Potter having one. Lucius probably only gave it to his son to shut him up. Regardless of the reason, Draco had one now. He slipped past a group of fourth years playing `Pin the Brain on the Muggle´ in the Common Room and slithered out the doorway into the main dungeons corridor.

Normally, Draco wouldn´t have used his cloak; he was a prefect and could go where he pleased without excuses, but he wanted to be left alone, really alone, for the time being. There were a number of Slytherins wandering the hallways that evening and Draco had to slink along the far walls, pressing his body tightly against them to avoid detection. Crabbe and Goyle were returning from dinner late along with Millicent Bulstrode. Draco sucked in a breath and squashed his body as closely into the damp, cold wall as he could, hoping that Goyle´s wide berth wouldn´t brush into him. He really did not want to talk with anyone just yet, except maybe to curse Potter for hexing his former? girlfriend.

But Goyle missed him, by mere inches. Draco had always thought Goyle was a little larger than he was.

"Poor Pansy," he heard Millicent say. "She said Draco just...snapped. That he went crazy."

Crabbe and Goyle nodded empathetically. Draco thought that Goyle fancied her, but he wasn´t positive. Goyle was too thick to be sure of much.

Millicent continued, "Has he been acting weird lately? Barmy at all? Nutters?"

Crabbe shook his head as the group of them turned a corner in the hallway.

"Well, keep an eye on him for Pansy. I´m really..." her alto voice drifted away into the mildewy stone buttresses above their heads.

Draco didn´t know exactly where he was going, but out onto the castle grounds seemed to hold an appeal to him, if only to vent his problems to the night sky. Plenty of air out there. He emerged from the dungeons no through the main floor, but through a little-used trap door that led out to the Forbidden Forest. He had discovered it in his first year. He guessed that the door had been there for centuries and it was nice to have a secret entrance of his own (like Potter and pals probably did).

He might have intended to wander into the Forest(just a little ways) to scare his wits back into himself, but he noticed the Great Oaf in his garden, picking pumpkins that were to decorate the Great Hall.

Draco scowled. Stupid freak, spoiling everything. He didn´t want to be caught by Hagrid, even though he was wearing his Invisibility Cloak. Better safe than Giant´s fodder. Besides, he was alone- no Crabbe or Goyle- and giants eat children, even grown men. His father had warned him of that when he was a child. If the oaf wasn´t a giant (Draco wasn´t too sure) then he must like to eat children like Draco anyways to satisfy his enormous appetite anyway. Besides, Draco liked to think he was a tasty morsel himself.

He looked around for some place relatively isolated to go and be alone. The Astronomy Tower? No, too many fifth years snogging there. The lake? No, the giant squid had been creeping close to shore this past week. The Quidditch pitch might work, providing Potter and friends weren´t up there practicing for their November game with Hufflepuff. Draco had overheard in Potions that they had been doing that most nights of the week.

They sure as hell need the practice, he thought. Pathetic Gryffindolts.

Draco breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped onto the darkened field and the scum of Hogwarts wasn´t there. He crept around one end of the pitch, the Hufflepuff stands which were the furthest away from the castle, near the goal posts and sat down. He was still holding his cloak protectively around himself. He sighed and rested his chin in his hands.

What the hell was going on?

He looked up around the pitch, unfocused and bleakly. It was cold out that night and he cursed himself for not wearing anything warmer than his school shirt and slacks, tie half-falling off. Why he had bothered to put it back on after the episode with it was beyond him.

He knew he hadn´t been able to think properly that evening.

A muffled cough was heard about twenty feet to his right and a plume of powder blue smoke rose up from a void. Perplexed, Draco crept over on his toes and jabbed at the air with a finger, startling himself and the other person when he hit solid flesh. He jumped back.

The person turned, only half-concealed by a respective Invisibility Cloak. It was The-Boy-Who-Lived. His expression changed from confused and vacant to mild annoyance when he recognized Draco.

"Malfoy."

"Hullo Potter." Draco gave into the sick urge to sit next to the Gryffindor. Draco pulled his legs up to his chest for warmth. "Shove over, would you?" Potter moved grudgingly. Draco grinned and looked the Gryffindor in his green eyes and then lingered on his neck.

Potter began to twitch uncomfortably and looked away towards the Forbidden Forest to the west. "Would you stop? You´re staring at me again."

Draco snapped his eyes away. Not that he was staring at Potter´s chest anyway. "Not much to stare at anyway." Draco could feel his cheeks begin to tingle at this little fib, but he went on. "Anything you might have- which I doubt you do- it´s all hidden under your baggy robes. You have a chunk of dinner on them, did you know that?" A little piece of carrot had been ground onto the collar of Potter´s shirt.

"Sod off." Potter turned away and coughed again.

The Slytherin smirked and noticed a flash of glowing malachite necklace on the Golden Boy´s neck. The necklace. "Where´d you get that?" he said disdainfully. It was obviously a woman´s necklace and the prat was too dumb to even realize that. He looked ridiculous in it.

"What?"

Draco rolled his eyes. Honestly. "The necklace, dimwit."

"Oh, I found it!" Potter looked proud and pleased with himself for a moment before returning to his strange vacuous expression.

Draco´s eyebrows rose but he left it at that. He clamped his mouth shut to prevent himself from making a retort about Potter being a fag for wearing that poncy piece of jewelry. Draco vividly recalled his thoughts from the previous few weeks about the other boy.

Potter had his back turned to him and smoke clouds ascended from the other side. A sweet, disgusting, burning stench permeated the inkiness that was Potter and his cloak. Why anyone would still need an Invisibility Cloak late at night on an empty Quidditch pitch was beyond him.

"What are you doing?" Draco asked dryly. There was no hint of malice in his voice or sarcasm even. He genuinely wanted to know.

"What does it look like?" Potter turned around a little so that he was solid flesh again. He held out his hand, a smoldering roll of paper wedged between his lips and two fingers.

Draco realized that Potter was smoking a Muggle cigarette, although it smelled a little different than the ones he had ever been near. He had seen one once, in France, with a group of avant-garde young wizards and witches. It wasn´t one of the better experiences of his life, either. Especially when the one witch had offered him one to try. Draco had refused. It was a Muggle habit, after all, but the smell of simply being around the cigarette had clung to his body for days.

"That´s disgusting!" His mouth curled up in a sneer. "What would your beloved Gryffindorks say? Saint Potter smoking cigarettes?"

Potter exhaled a puff of dark smoke and smirked, rivaling one of Draco´s own. His pupils obscured the greenness of his eyes and made his glasses look even more owlish than usual. "I´m not innocent, and they don´t know. Besides," he added with a strange and silly grin, "it´s not a cigarette."

Draco smirked back. "Oh? Then what is it?" He knew what a cigarette looked like. The stupid git was pulling his leg.

Potter leaned a little closer and snorted a plume of smoke through his nose, then swiftly coughed again. "It´s a Muggle joint," he said in a low whisper, not that anyone else was in the vicinity. His eyes were shifting guiltily and he had a grin on his face.

Draco didn´t know what this was. He stared blankly, but tried not to make his naivety apparent.

Potter gave a silly little giggle. "I´m smoking marijuana, idiot."

Oh.

Draco did know what that was. He vaguely recalled something about it from Herbology, that it was good for healing spells and clairvoyance and that it was a dangerous hallucinogen. Even Hufflepuffs or the Dark Lord´s followers weren´t daft enough to smoke it.

Only Potter could be.

Draco rolled his eyes at Potter´s little admission and smirked back at the Gryffindor. Let him do stupid things to himself then.

"Why are you talking to me?" Potter asked, puffing away cheerfully. Unusually, he wasn´t bothered by Draco´s presence. The hallucinogen was working well on the other boy. He seemed so much more laid back and mellow this way. Draco could get used to this Harry Potter.

Draco was chewing absently on his thumb, peeling the fingernail back with his teeth. Because I´ve been thinking lurid thoughts about you daily of late."Better than talking to myself, I suppose."

"That´s not an answer. We hate each other, Malfoy. I´m not high enough to forget that." He inhaled his rolled up `joint´ again, glancing over to the Slytherin boy. "Wait! You do that? You bite your fingernails?"

Draco didn´t answer, but his scowl told Potter everything he needed to know. "I don´t know what you´re talking about Potter. That stuff is getting to your head."

Potter just smiled anyways. "All right then."

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, absorbing the cool autumn air that smelled of Potter´s `joint´ and crisp leaves. They had run out of civil things to say, but neither made any attempt to move. Potter puffed on his smoldering piece of cannabis and Draco stared off into the nighttime space, trying not to breathe the fumes in too much. This was hard as the smoke made a habit of wafting in his direction. His throat was being tickled from the inside-out, uncomfortably.

At last the smoke was too overpowering and Draco had to cough; the fumes were drying out his throat. "Why are you doing that?" he croaked none-too eloquently. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.

"Smoking up? I do it once in a while." Potter frowned and squished the butt underneath his old trainer.

"Mmm..." Draco raised an eyebrow.

Potter laughed, a little nervously, and wrung his hands into the Invisibility Cloak that still covered much of his figure, including the larger portion of his chest. "Don´t ask..." Draco eyed the other boy skeptically, waiting for an answer. Eventually Potter let out a sigh of defeat. "Sometimes I just...you can´t imagine how much of a burden I have- or rather, the Boy Who Lived has...I just..." he turned a little red around the cheeks and looked down to the ground.

It hit Draco like an Unforgivable. "You just want to be Harry."

Potter nodded uncomfortably and looked off into the night environs. Draco slipped back into disdain, deciding it was a good time to talk about something different if he didn´t want Potter to walk off and leave suddenly. "Where did you get it? The herb? Are those Weasleys trying to grow some- pay off their debts and all?

Draco received a blurry glare from the Gryffindor. Weasley-bashing was frowned upon even by a high Potter. "I...borrowed it from someone."

"Borrowed? To use up?"

The dark-haired boy groaned. "Erm, yes...someone...someone like my cousin," he said quietly, but with conviction.

"And this Muggle relative of yours let you borrow it so that you could sneak it outside and smoke up?"

Potter´s cheeks burned and he mumbled, "Not exactly- it doesn´t matter, Malfoy!"

Draco grinned at the flustered boy. This was too good. Potter, the thief! "You stole it," he accused and gave a gasp of feigned surprise.

Potter´s eyes widened with worry. "I transfigured some normal grass as a placemat- replacement so he doesn´t know," he stammered, "E-every time. He hasn´t noticed. He knows I can´t do magic over the summer hols."

Draco nearly brought a finger to Potter´s lips to silence the boy, but thought it would be very strange and out-of-character (and not to mention, camp!), so he stopped himself. "Our little secret," he drawled; now he had even more blackmail against Potter. They were even over the Oculus Potion incident on September first.

Potter tried to change the subject quickly, "You weren´t at dinner,"

"You noticed?" Draco asked conversationally, a little taken aback.

Potter flushed a little. Draco was really beginning to like the effect he seemed to be having on the Gryffindor´s nerves. The scarlet in his cheeks was rather becoming for Potter. "No, not really...well, you didn´t try to trip me or sneer at me or tell me how perfect I am- sarcastically, of course." He looked over expectantly to the Slytherin boy.

He groaned. He did not want to talk about the incident with Pansy with Potter of all people, especially since he was probably involved. Potter...involved...and he was high. This was the perfect opportunity to find out how the git did it.

Potter´s bright green and ostensibly innocent eyes bored into Draco´s like a basilisk´s. "Is it true that you lost it? In the middle of..." He waved his hands wildly, gesticulating something emphatically. His face was wrinkled up in disgust. "...with Pansy? Pug-girl?"

That did it for Draco. That Potter would joke about something so vile and mind-scarring. How could Draco ever have sex with Pansy again without seeing the dog? He shot up and glared furiously at the twit with his hands clenched. "Would you all stop fucking bothering me about it? You weren´t there! You don´t know what you did to me!"

Now confess, you dork!

Potter´s eyes darkened. "Did what, exactly, to you, Malfoy?" he asked uneasily.

"Don´t play innocent with me, Potter! I don´t fall for it like everyone else does," Draco hissed. "I know you slipped me something."

Potter scowled blankly back at the Slytherin. He suddenly seemed quite sober. "Don´t start blaming me for your failed relationships, Malfoy. I didn´t do anything to you; I am not that low." He stared Draco down, albeit a little spaced-looking, but he certainly didn´t look away.

Potter didn´t know. The look on his face- his face is an open book.

So, Potter didn´t know. He didn´t do anything. He wasn´t there and he wouldn´t have understood what Draco had seen. Draco could tell that the other boy had inched away perceptibly from himself and was trembling (with rage? Annoyance? Fear?)at his outburst.

Draco sat down again. "I´m sorry," he mumbled, feeling stupid with himself. How Hufflepuffs lived their days like this was beyond his comprehension.

"What?" Potter looked perplexed again.

"What?" Now Draco was equally confused.

"You just apologized to me," He snorted a little. "I didn´t know that I was worthy of being counted as a person in your awe-inspiring presence Malfoy." He gave Draco yet another foolish grin and Draco felt relieved.

"I believe you´re thinking of the opposite there, Potter." Draco stifled a low laugh. "Sorry, though, for giving you the wrong impression." He leaned in closer, enough to feel the warmth radiating from Potter´s body. The Gryffindor´s presence was addictive, like fingernail biting. "Because you´re not- worthy, that is. I just wasn´t thinking."

Draco was caught up in thinking of some witty comeback to say to Potter´s expected, `Since when do you ever think?´ when he heard something very different.

"There! You did it again." Potter laughed diabolically. Draco grinned at the absurdity of it. "You said `sorry´ again!"

"Oh, sod off, scarhead!" Draco was back on familiar ground now.

"You sod off! I was here first."

"Well, I´m a more important person than you are. Heir to the Malfoy family fortune and all."

"I´m the bloody Boy Who Loved!"

"What?" Draco spun around, not believing his ears. His mouth hung open.

"I said `I´m the bloody Boy Who Lived´!" Potter pushed Draco over playfully and they both began to laugh after a stiff silence. It felt a bit uncomfortable and forced. Something was hanging in the air, unsaid or undone.

"Well, I´m leaving." Potter stood up, grass clinging to him and covered the cloak over all but his head. The head floating in the air brought memories back from Draco´s third year. If only there was mud to throw at Potter´s head this time.

"Why are you announcing it to me, then?" He smirked, shakily though, suddenly remembering the eyes from his dream. "Like I give a toss."

"I´m not," he said as he walked off, a head floating in the darkness.

"Might want to cover your head there, Potter," Draco called out. He saw the head duck under the cloak fully, unseen to all now. Or unseen at least to the Slytherin boy and the empty evening air.

Why did I just say that to him? He shrugged to himself, uncertain. Something had nagged Draco from the back of his head that he really did know why.

He disregarded the thought and walked off in another direction, his own head floating unknowingly in the night.

Draco slept relatively peacefully that night. His dream had only fleeting glimpses of messy black hair and emerald eyes and a girly silver necklace and he had completely forgotten Pansy after his conversation with Potter the night before. Blaise had been right after all about the fresh air clearing his mind. He´d have to try it more often.

However, talking with Potter...

It had been strangely civil for once, Draco thought as he wandered down into the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning. It didn´t help matters that Potter hadn´t been behind his strange hallucinations of Pansy, as he had no idea of who might have been- didn´t the Triumvirate usually work together? So that ruled out the Mudblood and the Weasel... It was so much more complicated now. Draco really didn´t have any other `enemies´.

Draco sat down in his usual seat on the bench sandwiched between Crabbe and Goyle. Pansy was nowhere in sight and for that Draco was grateful. He didn´t want to be reminded of sex and pug-dogs together. It was disgusting. And dirty. Other than that, a sense of normalcy had returned to him.

Including the package from home.

He grinned as he caught the package of sweets from home that dropped from his Eagle owl that brought his mail. His mother had sent him his rations of Halloween sweets. After tearing into the paper packaging, he began to munch his way through several Chocolate BombsTM: Explode in your mouth, not on your hands. Draco snapped the red wax seal on the accompanying envelope and pulled out the letter.

The scrolling, loopy lilac letters told him that his mother had written, which was unusual. It was most often his father who went out of his way to correspond with his son.

Dear Draco,

You´re most likely wondering why I´m writing (clever boy!)-

Draco smiled.

- but that is because your father is in Zurich on some business trip again for the week. I believe he was meeting up with some old friends of his after his meetings- do you recall Mr. Belial? (He was over for dinner a couple years ago with the Crabbes.) And a nice American couple Mr. and Mrs. Mavangou, but I´ve only ever met them once, before you were born, darling. They´re staying in a luxury resort in the Alps. It sounds lovely there. I would have gone with him, but it was a last-minute trip and I wouldn´t have had time to pack properly. Oh well. I´m sure he´ll buy us both something nice over there. Chocolates, I hope. I know you love them. I have to watch my figure, so perhaps not though...

I trust that you are all right at school. Did you ever finish that Fermentum Potion that Professor Snape had you brew? You told me so much about it in your last letter. I´d so like to hear the results.

Don´t forget to take your Oculus Potion on Friday! Malfoys don´t wear glasses.

Love,

Mother

XX

Draco laughed to himself at that. Yeah, as though Professor Snape would be stupid enough to teach that potion to sixth years. He was a little surprised that his mother hadn´t accompanied his father on the trip to Zurich. Usually his mother did, especially when his father had meetings on the continent. Zurich...what would his father be doing there? There was a small wizarding school in the vicinity, but Draco couldn´t recall the name. It was mostly for Mudbloods and Halfbloods anyway.

He shoved the letter into one of the pockets in his robes and wandered over to the Gryffindor table to bother Potter. The boy was awkwardly shifting on his feet and looking sympathetic towards the Mudblood and agreeing with her when she snuffled about `them´ all `being hurt´ and the need to `raise money immediately for the victims´. Weasley looked absolutely livid.

Oh, stop with the Pansy sympathy! He couldn´t believe it; Potter and pals, too? Ugh...Potter hadn´t been like that at all last night, even though he was high- why did he need to start now?

Potter was speaking. "I just heard, Hermione...it´s...er...really tragic for all of them who were involved...I´m really sorry for them,"

Draco stepped up behind the little sympathy-fest. "Oh, screw `them´," he said, knowing full-well they could only mean Pansy. He sneered. "Maybe they deserved it. Disgusting, really, what happened." He had no need to mention names. They all knew who they were speaking about.

Granger looked up at the Slytherin, hair as bushy as ever and her eyes were red and puffy. "How can you say that?" the Mudblood asked in a dead whisper, "After all those people were hurt? Are you that inhumane?"

Pansy was a person now? After the trauma he had been through. The last Draco had seen of her, she was a bitch in heat. "They´re not people. Not when they do that. And they were hardly hurt," he said casually. "I should know best, shouldn´t I?" Draco studied his chewed fingernails with an air of indifference.

Weasley´s nostrils flared and his flaming hair stood up like a Celt in battle. "So you were involved! You probably planned it. Rot in hell, arsehole!" he spat, saliva nearly flying into Draco´s face.

Draco laughed, slightly confused, but he wouldn´t let the Gryffindorks get the better of him. "Oh, Weasley, you flatter me. It was more...impulsive. Now can´t you bloody let it alone?"

The Mudblood, Potter and Weasley all gasped in shock. Granger was a lovely shade of whitish-green in the face.

Draco glared at them. He didn´t need to be lectured further. "Never mention that again. I´m sick of hearing about it." He marched off to go find where Crabbe and Goyle had lumbered off to. They at least wouldn´t bother him about Pansy.

Most of all the other sixth years avoided Draco that day, except Crabbe and Goyle, and even they seemed to be cowering as best they could, given their size and bearing, in his presence.

Draco couldn´t have strutted around more happily or proudly. At long last he was getting some of the respect being a Malfoy entitled him to, even if he had to be traumatized by `the experience´ to get it. He tried to shrug it off and forget about it, which seemed to be working.

It was, however, very strange when Professor Snape shot him a wary and almost loathsome look in double Potions that afternoon. He´d never done that before. Draco might have been a little concerned over this, but he kept his mouth shut.

Not until Arithmancy on Friday did Draco find out why. Unfortunately, Professor Vector had set out a new seating plan the previous class that had forced Draco to sit next to the Mudblood Granger, despite Granger´s desperate pleas against it and Draco´s malicious sneers.

It was a review class of a fifth-year lesson on the Major Pinnacles (which Draco had aced the year before) and neither he nor the Mudblood were paying much attention to it, not that they needed to anyways.

The Mudblood had reached into her bookbag and pulled out a folded newspaper article, sighing sadly every so often at it as she read quietly.

Draco tried to peer over her shoulder to look at it. He was curious, but Granger turned it over and glared at him.

"That´s not class-related material, is it?" he whispered insistently, "Let me see."

"You bloody well know what it is. You told me yourself you were involved. You don´t need more proof of what you´ve done, Malfoy," she hissed back, but Draco was quicker than the Gryffindor girl and he snatched it up out of her hand. He unfolded the article under his desk, smirking and pleased with himself.

"Is there a problem, Miss Granger?" Vector snapped in the middle of a sentence about the significance of the Cipher Challenge in regards to past life Metaphysics. She was clearly very annoyed with her best students´ interruption of the lesson.

Granger frowned. "No, Professor."

Professor Vector resumed, but the Mudblood shot daggers at Draco, who had bent his head down low to read the article hidden between the pages of his textbook.

The clipping was clearly from a Muggle newspaper- The Daily Mail. The words were all uniform and squarish and all followed a very straight format. No curls of phrases over pictures or bold, blinking advertisements. It was so plain. There was a picture at the center of the article- something large and metallic and burning. There was smoke all in the image all around the fire and unmoving people in the corners tending to victims of something.

But the strange thing was,the picture wasn´t moving. It was just there. An image, frozen in time on the newspaper. It was so...primitive, and not surprising, that the Muggles had such flat pictures.

His eyes strayed to the title at the top and he read on:

Horrific Train Accident in Swiss Alps- 76 Dead, 53 Injured, 4 Missing

In one of Switzerland´s worst train accidents to date, 76 people are confirmed dead, 53 injured, many still in serious condition, and several are still believed missing in the wreckage. Of the 76 killed, 29 were students from a prestigious private boarding school near Ziehausen, and ranged in age from ten to seventeen.

Officials were unable to determine the exact cause of the crash, which occurred on Monday between the remote villages of Zolne and Ziehausen, near the Austrian border, but it is believed that the train experienced an electrical shortage caught fire and derailed while in the 5 km long tunnel that the railway runs through. The train had the misfortune of locking from the outside by an automated electronic system, thus trapping the passengers in the cars while the fire raged.

The exact cause of the fire remains a mystery, but several eye-witnesses report dark figures leaving the tunnel unharmed as the train fire began. The suspicious persons are reported to have mentioned the name `Vereal´. Anyone with further information should contact the police as arson has not been ruled out.

The list of confirmed dead and injured has been posted in the train station in Zolne and in the national hospital in Zurich and has been updated daily as further victims are identified. They can be found on the following page also. The missing persons are believed to include a Louisiana couple and an unidentified man with light colouring.

Story continued on page two.

Draco slumped back in his desk lamely. "Oh shit," he mumbled. That was what the Gryffindorks had been talking about, not Pansy. It was so obvious now. And he had effectively told them that he had taken part in arranging that...massacre. He sincerely hoped that they hadn´t gone to Dumbledore yet, or he was totally screwed.

Draco certainly fit the description of the unknown accomplice. A man, albeit young, with light colouring, exactly like his father.

His father.

Who was in the Alps where it happened. Switzerland, maybe.

With a Mr. Belial and an American couple. Wasn´t Louisiana near America?

It hit him. This was his father´s business. Death Eater business. Killing a score of people that happened to include wizard and witch children, some of whom (if not all) were indefinitely Muggle-born. His father was a murderer. A mass murderer.

No! His father wouldn´t do this! He was a civilized man, he didn´t need to resort to killing people. Draco trusted his father to be prudent. He knew his father wouldn´t do this. Couldn´t do this.

"...your father is in Zurich on some business trip again for the week..."

"...unidentified man with light colouring..."

How many people had light colouring?

No!

You know it´s true...

His father made a business of murdering.

Oh. God.

He had always thought that his father just tormented them, tortured them maybe (like at the Quidditch World Cup a couple years previous), refused them entrance into the Wizarding society, but...

His lip curled up in a mix of trepidation and disgust at what his father had done. What he himself had said to have done. He was stunned. What could he do now? Denounce himself? No. Denounce his father? No. Denounce his family ties? No. There was nothing. His stomach flipped over and threatened to empty itself fright then and there.

Granger obviously mistook the grimace for a sneer. "Proud of yourself?" she hissed.

Draco was speechless. Completely dumbfounded at the truth. He had to get out of there. Draco gathered his books up quickly, shuffling papers and dropping quills onto the floor.

Professor Vector looked up. "Mr. Malfoy, would you care to explain exactly what you are doing?"

He ignored the Professor, grabbed the newspaper clipping and ran out of the classroom. Down the hallway the Professor´s yelling was heard for him to return to class immediately.

I´ve fucked up badly this time...