Dance of The Faithless

A year later...

"Good morning Hogwarts! It's a sunny day with a gentle breeze, the ground's are hard for a perfect take off, all in all, we're set for Quidditch! Now tell me, are you ready to rumble?!"

The school roared back at Dean Thomas. The Quidditch fans of the school had suggested to the Headmaster to convert school Quidditch into something which looked like a cross between professional Quidditch and the NBA. Some muggleborns had brought in a turntable, and the more electronically inclined took turns to spin out pumping tunes during the match while the players did their job in the air above them. The person in-charge today must have been a muggle, as he or she was spinning out a suit of rap metal. To top it off, Honeydukes decided to join in and now during every Quidditch match, they sent representatives with carts of goodies and candies which were sold to students as in game entertainment.

"We're here for the Gryffindor versus Slytherin match, but first of all, let's give a big hand to the Gryffindor Seeker Harry Potter for making the British Under-18 team! Well people, looks like the cup's staying with the red house this year. Pity bout the state of the Slytherin team though. It used to be such a joy, and yes, I mean joy and this is coming from a Gryffindor, to watch Harry have some competition. Even Mr Potter himself was overheard saying he needed new challenge. Oh well.

Speaking of the Slytherin team's state, has anyone actually seen Malfoy for the past year? I mean, no sign of him at all. Oh of course, there's rumours. Why, I just heard one the other day which said he was in a private ward in St. Mungo's after his father..."

Dean's voice went quiet as he noticed Professor McGonagall glaring at him, then heard her hissing at him.

"Leave the private lives of others out of your commentary!"

Dean shrugged slightly.

"And here the teams come! There's something odd about the Slytherin team today...can't pinpoint it at the moment...hang on... whose the bloke wearing a hooded robes? Dude, take the hood off. There's no way you're going to see what's going on around you playing with that up!"

The crowd laughed. But they soon quietened down when they noticed that even though the person had his hood up, the lower half of his face was still visible.

And the "bloke's" lips were pulled up into a familiar, scornful smirk.

The figure stepped out from amongst his team mates, standing tall and straight, threw his hood back.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd as they saw the familiar blonde hair and the unmistakable pale face.

Draco Malfoy was back.

***

I knew I was being threatened
Do you think it's worth holding out?
I mean I've heard some pretty ugly things about those guys
Ugly stories

***

The music was blasting in the background.

Over in the Gryffindor side, Harry Potter smiled to himself after seeing the slicked back hair and gripped his Firebolt firmly.

Finally a proper match after a full year of playing pushovers.

"Let's roll!"

***

Watch them flee
Watch them flee
Rap up
Watch them flee
Hip-Hop hits
And you do it like this

***

"And, they're off! What a way to start the season! Rather, what an unexpected way to start of our seventh year season..."

Draco blocked out the voice of the noisy commentator mentally. It felt good to be back in the school grounds, good to be back on a broom, even if he missed his life for the past year. He mused to himself how he could put his newfound abilities to use on the Quidditch pitch, and seeing that he hadn't flown for over a year, he probably would have to rely on them to get anything close to a win. He couldn't resist the temptation of coming back to represent his house as the Seeker again, seeing how Snape had emailed him time and time again about Slytherin losing match after match without his ability. The last straw had been the official team of his house playing against the Hufflepuff second year squad in a friendly and going down to them 30 to 270.

How embarrassing.

Now, where can that's snitch be...

***

It's going down
The rhythm projects 'round the next sound
Reflects the complex hybrid dialect now
Detect the mesh of many elements compressed down
The melting pot of a super-future X-style

***

On the ground, the bushy haired Gryffindor squealed and clutched the hand of the red head next to her and yelled over the loud decibels of noise.

"Draco's finally back!"

Ginny frowned.

***

The combination of a vocal caress
With lungs that gasp for breath
From emotional stress
With special effects
And a distorted collage
Carefully lodged between beats of rhythmic barrage

***

The music pounded on. Harry wasn't familiar with the song, but it was thoroughly hyping him up with its beat.

Harry skimmed the pitch. There was no sign of the elusive snitch, so he turned his attention over to his old nemesis. The past year at school had been uncannily boring without the boy, not in the sense that there wasn't any trouble. Lucius' trial results had really, there was no other word for it, pissed Voldemort off big time. Deprived of his favourite crony, he had destroyed Privet Drive thinking it was Harry's doing. But just like any other average person in the Wizarding world, Harry had no idea of who had led to Malfoy's demise. Oh, the Dursleys were on vacation in Majorca, so they were fine, and to top it off Dumbledore had arranged for a house twice the size of Privet Drive and in a neighbourhood of a much higher class to be in their ownership. It sounded like the Dursleys would have been happy with the outcome, but it didn't occur to them that they could give a little of the happiness to Harry.

The holidays had been as bad as ever.

***

It's going down
The logical progression on a the timeline
The separation narrowed down to a fine line
To blur the edges so they blend together properly
Take you on an audible odyssey

Now it's going down

***

But back to Draco Malfoy. The line between nemesis and entertainment has lost its boundary over the last year.

By boring Harry meant that there was no one to glare at and let his frustration out on in school, no one to swing a punch at and make a nose bleed, no one to keep him on his toes and on his guard. Sure, there were the other Slytherins ready for slaughter, but there wasn't the challenge. Verbal sparring with Crabbe and Goyle was the equivalent to using a needle to pick a hole in the boulder, while fist-on contact was just asking to be flattened like Asphalt by the circus elephants in Soul Music. There were the slenderer choices, like Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson, but the former's jokes never had the finesse that Malfoy's always had (The first time Zabini tried to pull one on Harry he successfully carried out the planning in full view of Trelawney and McGonagall, and earned himself a month's worth of detention. It had involved a live rooster, a plush cushion from the Divination classroom and the table leg of McGonagall's table in the Transfiguration classroom.), and with the second one... well, it would suffice to say that Harry didn't enjoy the bald patch on his scalp which for some odd reason, he was unable make it sprout back.

Draco's disappearance following his father's trial had brought about plenty of speculation about his whereabouts. He laughed to himself as he remembered Ron's personal favourite. His best friend fondly referred to it as The One Where Draco Malfoy Becomes Moody's Pet Ferret. Harry thought that was a really far fetched theory.

Even more than the one where Draco was taken as a sex slave to Voldemort.

Now, that was just plain gross.

Harry honestly did not know what to make of Draco's disappearance. But he was curious, just like he always was.

I'll just go ask him then.

***

Put put put it up
It said it goes like this
And you do it like this
It's going down
Put put it up
It said it go- go- goes like this
And you do it like this
Its going down

***

Draco watched the Potter boy flying towards him. Now what? Looks like it might turn out to be another Potter-you-scared-you-wish conversation. It always goes like this. He sighed inwardly. He had spent the past year reflecting and he realised how similar the two of them were now. Not that Potter knew. His family matters had been hushed up, and there was a grand total of four people who knew where he had gone. The three Professors and his Arithmancy partner. He was tired of all the fighting and squabbles, but as a Malfoy, he had a façade to keep up.

Well, here goes.

"Malfoy."

"Potter."

"How are you? Haven't seen you for quite sometime."

Draco looked at Harry with a bemused look on his face. Now this was unexpected. Proper conversation, no snide remarks. He started to draw the corners of his lips up into a sneer, then thought, What the hell.

"Been good, Potter."

And he smiled.

***

Once again it is
Composed sentences all together venomous
The four elements of natural force
Projected daily through the sound of the source
Everybody on board with this blend
The sword with the pen
The mightiest is the weapons

***

Harry stumbled - as much as it was possible to do so on a broom hanging in mid air though. He had never, ever seen the other boy smile without a hint of malice or scorn in his eyes. The combination of decent words and an amiable face came almost akin to the blow of a sword. Words, yes, just words. Or wait, maybe it was just a new way to throw him off. It did, almost, literally. He was Draco's face take on an amused smirk, as the other boy swept his eyes across the pitch looking for a hint of gold.

"So Malfoy... What exactly have you been up to?"

"It's really none of your business is it? All in due time, Potter, all in due time. I'm sure you'll get to know sooner or later, but it won't be now."

Now Harry was really puzzled. The arrogant, proud, son of a bitch had taken on the persona of...

"Who are you? Dick Tracy?!" Harry laughed at his own joke. He knew that Malfoy being the pureblood would've no idea what he was talking about.

"Actually, noir isn't really my cup of tea. I do like contemporary art house though..."

This time Harry was so shocked that his broom actually lost a few feet of altitude. Malfoy in a cinema. What was this world coming to? Now that he had a closer look, he noticed something really strange about the other boy.

When he had returned from his fifth year, all students in his level were changing. Not in a bad way, except for poor Neville who was fighting a losing battle with the invading forces of acne on his face, the rest of them had blossomed to be young men and women. He himself shot up a good six inches even with his underfed diet, his face lost the baby fat to show defined cheekbones while his hair decided a style for itself. But Malfoy in front of him... he hadn't changed in the least bit. A little taller maybe, but the hair, the face, nothing had changed over the last year. The person in front of him was exactly the one he had in his memory, blonde, thin, almost like a sculpture took the carbon copy from his brain and moulded the lost person back into his life.

Fingers snapped in front of his face.

"Hey yo! Your captain's asking if you decided spacing out at a ferret was your new way of summoning the snitch to hand!"

Harry shook himself mentally and shot an apologetic look at Ron.

"Hey, you haven't been around for the past year. How did you know that Ron is the new Gryffindor captain?"

Draco shrugged.

"I get around."

At the shrug, Harry noticed that Malfoy had changed a little. Sure, he was still elegantly poised with his every move screaming pride, but there was something more now. In the past arrogance had always given his poised demeanour a shell of malice, but that was now replaced by something else. It was replaced by grace. He gave the feeling of someone who was able to make his way through a room whose floor was littered with crystal glasses while balancing a stack of books on his head. Strange.

"I hear you've been chosen for the National Under-18s. I wonder if I would've made it if I was around last year..."

"I doubt so Malfoy. You've never won in all our past..."

Then all of a sudden, Malfoy sped away from him.

He had spotted the snitch.

Without wasting a moment, Harry shot straight after him. After all, Malfoy was still on his Nimbus 2001. Even with a head start, he didn't have much of a chance against Harry on his Firebolt.

***

Swinging right from the chin
The elevate of mental states
Long gone with the wind
To defend men for shoddy imitation pretends
It's going down
Stalence emulation readily
Trekking through the weaponry
Of the pure pedigree
Cleverly seeing through whatever is ahead of me
Whatever the weather be

***

The crowd screamed as they watched the two Seekers chase after the snitch. It was the first time in over a year that any Seeker had spotted the snitch before Harry, and it certainly brought the excitement level in the stadium to an all new high. Dean was yelling his heart out, commentating frantically about how the match was about to boil down solely on the ability of the Seekers, as the score was currently differing by a hundred points with Gryffindor in the lead.

On the pitch, the Chasers and Keepers and Beaters lost their concentration in their roles in the match, and all slowed down to watch the two Seekers, a blur of green and red zipping around the sky above them, amongst them, even through the crowds. All of a sudden, it was a though the snitch decided it wanted a change of course, it closed its wing and started a journey of freefall for a few seconds, before buzzing at a stationary point and staying their, as though mocking the two seekers' inability to followed its sudden drop. Above it, the Harry and Draco swiftly brought their brooms to a halt, stopping directly above the snitch.

***

We invent the steadily
It's going down to sub-terrestrial high
I rhyme regiment that's calling the shots
Execution of collaborative plots
Ready to bring the separation of style to a stop

***

"And now the two seekers and their target have all come to a dead stop! Looks like it isn't going to be easy to take this one down boys. Make your choice on how you're going to go after that darn thing 7 feet under you! And I hope you do realise that if you turn your broom straight down you're going to go right past it..."

***

Harry made his choice. He knew that Dean was right, his Firebolt could handle tight turns, but trying to turn it down ninety degrees downwards was just going to send him flying straight pass the target. He brought his broom up swiftly in a pike and begin to climb a little, preparing himself for the flight down after the snitch...

***

Draco saw the snitch hovering under him. He was aware that if Harry didn't dare to take a Firebolt down in a direct dive to it, his Nimbus was even more likely to let him down. Well, time to put some of the things he's learnt to use then...

***

It's going down
X-men 'bout to blast of world wide
Yo it's request only
X- men 'bout to blast of world wide
It's built from scratch
Album in stores soon
'Bout to blast off world wide
And you do it like this

***

Ron held his breath as Harry gained altitude quickly. What the hell was that Malfoy doing? Not that there was much to worry about, superior broom plus superior flyer versus a ferret on a lousy broom. The winner was a clear one. He grinned at himself.

The rodent's going down.

***

It's going down
Put put put it up
It said it goes like this
And you do it like this
It's going down

***

Hermione squealed again.

Ginny frowned even harder.

***

Draco turned his broom upside so that he was hanging off it in a sloth grip. Then, he locked his ankles around the broom handle and released his hands, tucked his robe end between his knees and straightened out his body so that he was dangling straight at right angles with his broom. He was oblivious to the sounds of the crowd. The sounds of surprised yells and noisy cheers, catcalls and impressed shouts. All he knew was that the snitch had moved slightly, so that it was somewhere to his back while he was hanging upside down.

Draco arched his back in what looked like a back bend and stretched out his hand, clasping the snitch in his long fingers just as Harry flew straight past him in an almost plummeting pace, fluttering Draco's gelled back hair with the wind from his flight.

"AND SLYTHERIN WINS!"

***

It's going down
Put put it up
It said it goes like this
And you do it like this

***

Draco descended down to the ground upside down and got off his broom by doing a hand stand, then dropping to his feet and plucking his broom out of the air. He raised the snitch in triumph. Then Potter appeared in front of him.

"Good game Malfoy."

"You too. Think you'll still be in the under-18s?" Draco smirked slightly.

"Oh well. There's a first and last time for everything right?" Harry returned the smirk.

Then, the crowd went silent for the second time that day as the two rivals smiled at each other and shook hands.

"Still, a punch for old time's sake?" Harry asked, feeling the frustration starting to creep in that even with a new Malfoy, this was not a nice way to start the new school year. Plus, there was all that annoyance that Malfoy had a good year off while he had a downright awful time away from school. And of course, Malfoy needed to pay him back for the year of boredom without him.

Actually, Harry was just trying to justify with himself why he had an overwhelming urge to kick Malfoy very hard in the nuts.

"You're on."

Harry swung his arm and caught Draco in the gut, causing the other boy to stagger back slightly, coughing at the unexpected amount of strength put into the punch. Looks like he really needs to let some steam off. As soon as he regained his composure, Draco retaliated fiercely with a well aimed kick into Harry's side.

"You bastard of a himbo..."

"Disfigured asshole!"

The crowd sighed in relief.

***

It's going down
Like this...

***

Hermione started to shriek.

"Draco! Harry! Nononononono..."

And Ginny was frowned really, really hard.