Draco Malfunction

Taptaptaptap... Draco continued tapping his quill against the blank sheet of parchment, but unfortunately, the only effect this was having was breaking the concentration of the other students present in the library.

"Mister Malfoy, if you would kindly desist, I am certain everyone would benefit," hissed Madam Pince.

"Huh?" Draco blinked, seeming to come out of a daze. He looked at the librarian, gray eyes unfocused and dull.

"Your quill," the librarian stated, and hmphed.

"Oh. Right." Mildly embarrassed for being put in such an unflattering spotlight, Draco glared at nobody in particular (with a general feeling of loathing towards the entire library), but the tapping stopped. Draco began to stare down at his page, silently pleading for it to stop being so blank. Alas, to no avail.

The next noise to assault the library and the students within should have been much more commonplace, more of a white noise, as another student sat himself across from Draco. Regrettably, this particular student seemed slightly detached from the rest of the world, as if he were overly stressed. His chair ground against the stone floor as he pulled it back, he flopped down gracelessly, shuffled his papers and books, and his chair ground sharply once more against the floor as he pulled himself closer to the table.

Draco looked up to glare at this oblivious student, but upon realizing who it was, his glare deepened into a scowl. It was that damned Boy Who Lived. Always getting in Draco's way, always being loved by everyone, always being so sickeningly good, even when he was breaking the rules...

But Harry didn't seem to notice Draco at all. He unscrewed the cap on his ink bottle, an action that Draco wouldn't have thought to be so impossibly loud... But then, he wouldn't have thought that a feather quill made so much noise... Shut up, Malfoy, you're indirectly sticking up for the prat! he thought at himself. But I'm also sticking up for myself directly. Damn!

And finally, Harry settled down and began to write. Draco decided to ignore him, and returned to looking at his clean (too clean) piece of parchment.

Scratchscratchscratch... Draco was beginning to go cross-eyed. Damn that infernal Potter, he thought viciously. Scratching away at his Potions homework like he owns the place, well, isn't that just like typical, I'll show him--

"Potions essay?" Draco asked, softly and casually. He was hoping to unnerve Harry with his easy tone, and then perhaps Harry would at least move away... If not suffer from some sort of shortage that could cause brain damage, or something else equally interesting.

The maddening quill-scratching stopped as Harry looked up. He replied, just as casually, "Yeah, what else?"

Draco blinked in surprise. Maybe he's just suppressing his unnervedness, Draco thought, then wondered if unnervedness was a word. Probably not. But anyways, what was I thinking? Oh, yes. Maybe he's trying to unnerve me, by being so calm and casual, like I'm not his arch nemesis. "Why are you still in Potions, anyways? You hate the professor, and you're rubbish at it, to boot."

"I don't hate Snape. And I need the class to become an Auror." Sweet and simple. Then Draco sacked the idea that anything to do with Harry could possibly be "sweet." But "simple," yes, that was a good word for describing his adversary.

But then--if his adversary was simple, and most of the time came out on top, the favored, the best in everything... What did that make Draco?

"Damn," Draco hissed under his breath.

"Pardon me?" Harry asked.

Draco felt the repetition of his curse was unnecessary. So he moved on. "What do you mean, you don't hate Snape? Don't you think he's a slimy git who hasn't showered in an infinite number of days?" Privately, Draco believed this to be true as well. He felt that this wasn't such a bad thing to believe, though, since the rest of the school had mutual feelings about the Potions master. Well, except Crabbe, but that was a different matter entirely.

"Of course I do, doesn't everyone?" Draco paused at this reply. Great, now we even think alike, he thought, deciding not to include Harry in "the rest of the school," because he had never once done so previously. Harry had always been a separate entity. Like a ghost, except annoyingly more substantial.

Harry was continuing, "I just don't hate him. I don't hate a lot of people, Malfoy."

So many questions were forming that Draco thought his head would explode. He took a quick moment to pick out the best one, threw that one out of his head (of course, he was never one to be blatantly obvious), and asked the next best one: "When did you stop hating him?"

"Fifth year."

Draco had to admit (to his own disgust) that he was curious, and retrieved his original best question. "Why?"

"Because I could sort of understand where he was coming from. I don't like it, I don't like the way he treats me, and I still don't think it's fair, but I can see why."

Oh, so now he's Mister Sensitive-and-Understanding-Boy-Who-Lived-Next-Door. This made Draco want to sneer, but he kept a hold of himself--barely. Instead he asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously, "Do you hate me?"

"No, not really."

"What?!" Draco burst out, earning enormous glares from the librarian and several tired-looking students. He fell silent, not wanting to attract their attention more than he already had; if they discovered the Boy Who Lived didn't hate him, well, that would be bad for his Image, wouldn't it? "You don't hate me?" he hissed after a moment, mortified, and a little hurt, though he refused to admit that to himself. He paused a beat, then added softly and in what hoped was a dangerous tone, "Don't go thinking you understand me. Because you don't." He continued, unaware that his voice was beginning to crack under all the pressure, "But you hate me, I know it, you do. Because we're arch nemeses. We have to hate each other."

Harry raised his eyebrows and a small smile played upon his lips, which intrigued Draco, which in turn annoyed him. "You think we're arch nemeses? I shan't even begin to understand you, Malfoy."

'Shan't?' Who uses the word 'shan't?' Draco asked himself. "We're not arch nemeses?" This was something Draco had relied upon for the entirety of his Hogwarts career. If they weren't arch nemeses (Draco noted that the word 'nemeses' had now come up so often it was beginning to sound quite unlike a word, and instead more like gibberish... Not including the fact that 'nemeses' didn't even look like a real word to begin with--too many E's), why had Draco spent the past 7 years of his life trying to ruin Harry? What a waste of time.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath, but this time, Harry said nothing. Though he did look a little bewildered. Good, thought Draco, anything so long as it's not happy. Or amused, or content, or joyful, or...

"Well, Malfoy," Harry began slowly, as though he were speaking to a child (causing Draco to scowl much like a child would), "I have had someone trying to kill me since I was a year old."

"Oh. Right. Forgot about that." And to Draco's surprise, Harry laughed. Damn! he thought furiously. He noticed bitterly that the librarian and students were perfectly capable of ignoring his noisy outburst. Glowering, Draco sat back in his chair and righteously crossed his arms over his chest.

"I think you need to find somewhere else to sit, Potter," Draco stated. "You are distracting me." You cheeky bastard, basking in... in... in something you should clearly not be basking in. "I am unable to tolerate the stench of you any longer." It was weak, but these were proving to be dark times.

"Oh, but we were getting along so well," said Harry with mock-disappointment. Draco wanted to hit him. No, that wasn't true. Draco wanted to take Harry's Potions homework and... not tear it to pieces, but instead, use it to administer hundreds of tiny, painful-though-they-don't-seem-like-it paper cuts, and drop Harry into a vat of ice cold lemon juice. Yes, let him suffer with pain and humiliation. The whole idea made Draco want to grin evilly, but he felt that his evil grins were not up to par, and would make him look sort of stupid rather than menacing.

"You have to leave now, Potter, before I do something we both regret." Draco hoped he sounded intimidating, and then chided himself for hoping; of course he sounded intimidating, he'd been practicing for years. Truly, it was an art, the intimidation he could inspire. He had, of course, conveniently forgotten (or perhaps repressed) the time he had spent as a ferret.

But, to Draco's horror and disbelief (and disgust), Harry merely snorted. Snorted. "You're just jealous because I've got a start on my Potions essay, while you've been sitting here for Merlin knows how long, and haven't gotten so much as a drop of ink on your parchment."

"You want a drop of ink, Potter?!" Draco's voice had cracked and broken, all composure lost due to this very strange situation, latest insult, and, unfortunately, the truth in Harry's words. "I'll show you a drop of ink!" With that, Draco thrust his fingers into his ink pot, and then proceeded to smear them along his parchment wildly. He managed to both flail his arms in the air and ink up his parchment in the same instant. His eyes ablaze, he took his fragile (and apparently quite noisy) quill and jerked it up and down, left and right, all over the page, all the while smiling disconcertingly and murmuring, "At last I shall have my vengeance!"

For a few good minutes, Draco carried on. When, finally, he came to a stop, his forehead was beaded with sweat and dotted with ink, and he was panting quite heavily. The parchment was .. Well, it was either a complete disaster, or a breathtaking piece of modern art (Draco preferred the latter--later, he would call it "The Blank Page"), with fat streaks, thin streaks, big splotches, little splotches, awkward angles and smooth curves, and smooth curves angling awkwardly. Draco collapsed into his chair, head bent down. The other students did not dare to send glares Draco's way this time.

Harry cleared his throat. Draco looked up, expressionless. "Yes?" he asked calmly.

"I'll, er, just, um, begoingthen..." Harry gathered up his things, lightning fast (this particular comparison amused Draco mildly, considering Harry's famous deformity), and pushed himself out of his chair.

A thought suddenly occurred to Draco.

"Hey, Potter?"

Harry turned, slowly, not making any sudden movements. Draco enjoyed the look of terror upon Harry face much longer than was necessary.

"Can I borrow a piece of parchment?"

And with that, Draco resumed tapping his quill. No one said a word.