Snowflakes

The image of Slytherins playing in the snow was not something a Hogwarts pupil would forget easily.

The sound of all the forever stern and evil-looking Slytherins' laughter made them almost human.

The look of Draco Malfoy having his hair messed up with snow, Blaise Zabini jumping around screaming after he had snow fall down his back, and Pansy Parkinson's face being buried in snow so her make-up was smeared all over her face was well worth skipping a class or two.

Then, when almost all of the pupils of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were standing just outside of the castle and looking at the Slytherins, the roles were turned. Quickly the Slytherins dug up their plastic-bags that were filled with snow and ran towards the other pupils.

It took almost a minute before their peers realised the idea that the Slytherins had. When the panic broke loose and everybody tried to come inside, most fell in the snow, taking others with them in the fall and Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were lying about in the snow, crawling around when the Slytherins attended the party.

"Go on then," Draco Malfoy drawled, standing in front of the students who looked up at him from the ground. "It's no fun unless there is hunting involved." The pupils crawled themselves up and reached for the door. As the first pupil had got his head inside, he felt an icy cold pain in the back of his head. The snow fell down behind the neck of his black jumper, and he gave a scream. He was pushed aside by other pupils who desperately wanted to be inside where they thought they were safe.

"Spread around, fellow Slytherins!" Everyone heard the message from Draco and realised that no place was safe. This was planned. This was the work of the Slytherins. Some gave up getting in the small door, as they were just standing there and easy to hit with snowballs, and did too spread.

"Malfoy, this is....!" A snowball interrupted Harry Potter, hitting him in his forehead.

"Didn't hear you, Potter!" Draco grinned as he threw a hard snowball at the back of Hermione Granger's head; she fell immediately and buried her own face in the snow. "She's yours, Zabini," Draco commanded.

"Don't make me hex you!" Harry said, after regaining his confidence.

"Well, fuck me Potter, do you see anyone else using magic here? We're doing it Muggle- style! Don't blame me that Granger doesn't know how they play in the snow in her own world!"

"This is insane, Malfoy!"

"Aw, you're no fun, Potter!" Draco gave a laugh, mostly because he was watching Blaise baptizing Hermione in the snow. He just managed to see the snowball that came against him from Harry, and jumped away. "Oh, resistance!" he shouted back at Harry who was making a new snowball. At the same moment, Draco saw three people running away from the castle, probably with the intention of running away from it all.

Draco gave a sign to Vincent Crabbe to continue the snowball-fight with Harry, as Crabbe was one good thrower.

"Just stand here, and throw snowballs at the boy with dark hair and glasses. Try to make him lose the glasses," Draco drawled into Crabbes' ear. "Then he has no chance in hitting you." Crabbe gave a goofy grin, and threw a snowball so hard that Harry lost his balance and fell backwards. The proud smile of Draco and a pat on the back almost made Crabbe loose his balance, too.

Then Draco went hunting. He refilled his bag with snow, and followed the three pupils who apparently didn't know they were being followed. The landscape for hiding couldn't be better as the snow had been blown by the wind so it lay like small hills and almost made it impossible to see them. Along with him came Blaise, who had stopped baptizing Hermione when the Gryffindors, all of who joined up against the Slytherins, had attacked him.

"There, one of them is taking another turn," Draco whispered as they were getting closer. "You do that, I'll take those two."

"I think it is girls," Blaise replied, frowning. "How come you get two?"

"It was my idea, wasn't it? All this was my idea." Blaise didn't look pleased.

"If it's Gryffindors, you'll be in trouble, you know. They're not going to give up without a fight."

"And since when did you start to worry about me?" Draco spat, giving Blaise a glare.

"I'm not, I'm only warning you. You'll know what I mean when four Gryffindors throw themselves at you like they did with me a few minutes ago," Blaise replied looking like he was tempted to do the same with Draco.

"Look, we can't fight right now. We must take these... whoever they are. They can't escape, can they?" Draco asked, getting a nod in reply from Blaise. "Okay, let's move."

Draco and Blaise split, and Draco's eyes searched the snow in front of him. It was girls, no doubt about it. Small feet and small steps, even if they'd had not been running. Draco took one last look behind him to make sure that nobody was following him. True enough, the Gryffindors had joined each other in the fight against the Slytherins, but Draco didn't worry. He knew that the Slytherins knew what to do, even if he wasn't there. As long as Crabbe managed to keep Harry to the ground, Draco was safe.

All of a sudden Draco had to stop as he heard voices.

"Do you think somebody followed us?"

The voice didn't ring any bells for Draco. There were way too many girls at Hogwarts for him to remember every one of them.

"I don't know."

Draco made a grimace as he realised that the other girl was no other than Ginny Weasley. He turned his face towards the way Blaise had gone and wished that they had switched. He'd rather fool around in the snow with one cute girl rather than two - when one of them was Ginny.

Draco took snow in his hands, pressed it together so it was round like a ball, crawled over the little hill that separated him from the two girls. He saw the red back head of Ginny, and just managed to see the other girl before she saw him.

"Ginny! Behind you!" Ginny managed to turn just to get the snowball between her eyes. When it was crunched in the meeting with her face it covered up most of her face. Meanwhile the other girl ran as fast as she could in the snow. Draco ran down to where Ginny stood, and she was trying to take the snow off her face.

"You're an arse, Malfoy," she said, her voice revealing that she was on the edge of crying.

"Of course I am," Draco replied, and surprised her by actually touching her shoulder, but only to put his foot in front of hers and force her down in the snow. "That's my image, you know." Ginny didn't manage to stop from falling or to support her self with her hands, when she hit the ground, her face went straight down into the snow.

"Oh, Weasley, you make it way too easy for me," Draco drawled as he kneeled down by her and pushed her face further down in the snow. Then he grabbed some snow with his right hand and shoved it down the neck of her jumper. Finally Ginny reacted, and tried to get up again using her arms, but Draco held her easily down. He did, however, let her breathe.

"You.... Are... Evil..."

"Thanks, love," Draco said amused. He patted her back, and made her nearly scream as the snow was spread all over her back and started immediately to melt. It was like she didn't want to humiliate herself with a scream in front of Draco Malfoy.

It was not until she heard him walk away she let her tears warm her cheeks.

Draco followed the small steps that leaded him over another small hill, before the steps all of a sudden stopped. Draco looked around to see if he'd made a wrong turn, and as he turned to look back he was hit in his face by a snowball.

"Fuck!"

"Cold, isn't it!"

"Who is this?!" Draco demanded, and the reply was a laugh. Draco furiously shook his head so the snow fell from his face, and stared at a small Asian girl who was holding another snowball in her hand.

She was in the lead, and Draco knew the only way to make him take over the control was to attack her. He surprised her by almost jumping at her like a tiger, and she fell backwards into the snow with him over her. The fall made him bang his forehead against hers, and he almost knocked the breath out of himself.

"Ouch! You idiot!" the girl tried to push him off, but not only was he lying there with all his weight on him, but he was also almost incapable of breathing properly. "Get off me!"

"This usually goes much better than it did this time," he replied slowly.

"Oh, it does? What a relief. Shall we try again?"

"Don't be smart with me," Draco replied, slowly regaining his breath. "I'm still on top of you."

"I've noticed. Now get off."

"I'm comfortable, thank you very much. You're much warmer than the snow will ever be." The girl tried to push him off without success. His victorious smile was really annoying her. The snow was crawling into her clothes, melting against her skin and making her clothes soaked. He could probably lie there all day just to annoy her.

So she kissed him.

She managed to get her hands loose, placed them at each side of his face, covering his flushed cheeks before she kissed him. At first he seemed very surprised, he almost pulled away from her, probably knowing it was just a trick. He didn't even know her name, and she couldn't imagine that this was what he'd had in mind when he had run after her.

Only this was exactly what has been in Draco's mind all the time. Which was why he had been so disappointed when he realized he had followed Ginny Weasley. True enough, he had only a slightly idea who this girl could be, but he hadn't arranged all this just to get even with Gryffindors. That too, of course, but as the teenager he was, Draco would never miss an opportunity to snog a little - even if it was outside in the snow.

The frustrating part for the girl was that she quite enjoyed it. However, her plan could not fail. She could not just simply lie there in the snow and probably end up sick because she was snogging Draco Malfoy. She therefore wrapped her legs around his waist, before she rocked from right to left a few times and Draco just managed to be suspicious before he was lying at his back with her on top of himself.

However, her plan had a flaw. Yes, she now was not longer lying in the snow, but her legs were still trapped under his back. And he knew this fact as well. She saw a devilish smile spread across his face before he had turned rolled back again with her under him.

"Not too bright, though," he drawled, making her grab some snow and throw it in his face. They both heard the voices at the same time, which made Draco quickly trying to get her feet off him. She didn't let him, as she heard the voices belonged to people Draco most certainly didn't feel like meeting.

"You don't want to meet Harry and Ron, Malfoy?"

"It's unfair you know my name, and I don't know yours. And no, I don't fancy meeting them."

"I suppose you'd like me to let you go then?" Draco didn't answer, as his stare would be enough. To his enormous surprise, she unwrapped her feet, and he got up. And to her surprise, he offered her his hand, which she took after slight hesitation. Draco gave a glance towards where the voices came from, before he gave a bow to her and a brilliant smile.

"Pleasure," he said, before he turned and ran the other way and disappeared over another hill made of snow. The girl reached after her wand in her pocket, waved it carefully over his footsteps and whispered a spell. The footsteps disappeared, and she just managed to put her wand in her pocket as the Harry, Ron and Ginny appeared.

"Padma, are you alright?" Ginny asked, while the two boys were more interested in finding Draco. When they asked her where he'd gone, she shrugged and when Ginny frowned at her, Padma gave a smug smile.

"I want to change my clothes," she finally said, and began walking.

"You're sure you didn't know where he went?" Ron asked and didn't look too convinced about the fact that she didn't know.

"It was all a blur, really," she replied.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Ron asked Harry, who shrugged.

"Girls," he mumbled.

:::

Two days before Christmas, Draco found himself sitting at the dirty floor in one of the corridors that leaded to the Ravenclaw common-room. He had been confronted by The Trio just after the snowball- fight, and in their war of words her name had been mentioned. This girl, Padma Patil, had disturbed his mind ever since he'd left her in the snow.

Probably it was just because she was not exactly "allowed", as she wasn't a Slytherin, but then again she wasn't a Gryffindor either.

That would have been a disaster.

Draco got up to his feet and started to walk towards the Great Hall. He was constantly looking over his shoulder as he had this strange feeling that he was being followed. As he walked by the girls' toilets, something suddenly stood in his way. He pushed what to the eye seemed to be air, but it most definitely felt like a human. The door into the toilets was opened behind his back, and the invisible human pushed him inside.

"Potter?!" Draco knew about Harry's cloak that made him invisible, but this hardly made any sense.

"Oh, yes, obviously," Padma replied as she took her cloak off.

"You nicked his cloak?"

"I really thought you were wiser than that, Malfoy."

"You got your own?" Draco asked, his face glowing with envy.

"Indeed." The silence between them was awkward, and it was quite obvious that they really didn't have too much to talk about.

"I know your name now," Draco drawled, as if he really wasn't interested. "Shall I call you Padma or Patil?"

"Are we close?"

"Not exactly," Draco said, frowning. "You call me Malfoy, so I suspect not."

"It's only because your last-name makes you sound much more of a bad ass than your first-name," Padma said with a touch of smugness in her eyes. Again there was silence. Draco licked his upper lip, staring at her.

Then he reached out for her invisibility cloak and put it over her, moved closer and put it over himself as well. She was giving him a strange look, and he smirked.

"I always wondered how it was underneath one of these."

"You don't have one?" she said back as if it was the most usual in the world.

"No, I don't," he mocked her back. "Children of Death Eaters usually aren't...." She placed a finger vertically across his lips. He carefully kissed her finger, and she gave away a small smile. He then removed her finger and kissed her lips as he felt the cloak fall off him.

He felt a slight push from her side that made him walk backwards into the wall. Draco quickly turned it around, with her against the wall. Her fingers were digging into his hair, and she almost separated his hair from his head when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. While his hands were traveling down her thighs, she started on loosening his tie. She suddenly did an unexpected jump, and wrapped her feet around his chest again.

"Sporty," Draco managed to whisper as he regained his balance now with a girl hanging on to him, though the wall was still supporting most of her weight. Draco's long fingers began to travel up her thighs, while he mumbled between kisses: "What a silly skirt..." Padma gave a giggle, as she supported her front head against his. He stood completely still and looked straight into her eyes. He didn't know this person - at all. He got to know her name two days ago, and how he was about to feel her up in a public toilet in Hogwarts.

Draco tilted his head to the side and kissed her again, hungrily. He needed this person, and it was quite obvious that she needed him, too. His hands were playing with her knickers, his cold hands against her warm, soft skin. It was then he heard a noise that wasn't supposed to be there. Somebody was coming. When he opened his eyes, he saw her alarmed eyes, and both his and hers ended up at the cloak at the floor.

When Ginny and Lavender Brown walked into the toilets they didn't see anything unusual. Under the cloak they didn't see in the corner sat a smiling Padma Patil and Draco Malfoy. As the two girls left again, Padma gave her watch a glance.

"I must go," she said, "it's getting late." Quickly she wrapped the cloak around herself, and left Draco without saying another word. Left alone in the bathroom was Draco, who didn't know what just had happened. Slowly he let his hand run through his hair, before he straightened his shirt, tightened his tie and quickly left the toilets realizing he would never understand girls.

After walking out the door, Draco looked to the right and left, straightened his cloak, titled his head to one side so his neck made a cracking sound, sniffed and began walking towards the Dungeons.

In his head he was already planning his next move to harass his fellow Hogwarts students, including cold water, almost harmless potions and another visit at the girls' toilets.

He was, after all, a Slytherin.