Complete Harry Potter Fan Fiction, page 1
The Complete
WORKS
Of
Maya
Book One
Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing... Rat?
Chapter One
Coffee and Polyjuice Potion
The worst day of Draco Malfoy's life started, as the majority of days do, by his waking up. A sleeping Crabbe and Goyle were doing their usual vigorous impressions of the Hogwarts express, and Draco woke at six with a vague idea that he had been trapped in a landmine.
Once he got tangled up in his sheets and fell off the bed, he realised this was probably not the case.
He used to wake up like this a lot in first year, he reflected. Lucky he had grown so there wasn't such a long way to fall...
Of course, lucky he had grown in any case, since the love life of a four foot tall sixth year would be a sad, lonely and pretty much one-on-one affair.
Mind you, if he could have been a bit shorter it would have helped with Quidditch. The best Quidditch players were small, it was just like those people who rode horses in the Muggle world... Jackies, or wait, no, wasn't that a president's wife?
Whatever a president was.
Draco reviewed the thoughts he had just had and realised he was in dire need of caffeine.
Preferably injected straight into the vein.
I'm a Malfoy, he thought. A creature of the night. This early in the morning is just not on.
Right, all this calls for is a little bit of will power.
Up!
All right, maybe that was a tad optimistic.
Along, then.
Draco crawled manfully across to where he had dropped his clothes the night before. Once he was dressed in some haphazard fashion, he scrambled to his feet and staggered out of the door.
He felt, and probably looked, a lot like a vampire risen from the grave with a horrible thirst.
Coffee! I must have... Coffee!
By the time he got to the Great Hall, he was sure he was cursed with an unholy hunger for all things caffeinated, which would be passed down to all his descendants.
It being a hideous time to be up, the Great Hall was almost empty.
Two Ravenclaws were kissing and studying together - typical Ravenclaw idea of romance - at their table.
"That shouldn't be allowed," Draco mused aloud. "They're going to ruin someone's appetite."
"Like the sight of you has ruined mine, Malfoy?"
Oh, perfect. A member of the Dream Team. How typical of the irony gods, and how typical of Hermione Granger to be up studying at six.
"Granger, all alone with a book? How terribly pathetic - and yet somehow unsurprising."
She shot him an Avada Kedavra look through her dark hair.
"Malfoy, where are Crabbe and Goyle? Doesn't the brain cell you share shut down if you're apart for too long?"
"Where are Potter and Weasley? Indulging in the love that dare not speak its name upstairs?"
She turned a page with unnecessary vehemence.
"Don't tell me you can quote Oscar Wilde. He was a Muggle."
"Sure?"
Draco smirked.
Granger sighed, and muttered. "Ferret."
"Mudblood," Draco returned, not to be outdone. But he was letting this idiot girl distract him from his sacred quest.
Coffee...
The Slytherin table was bare. Draco had no idea of how to get coffee. And Draco absolutely positively had to have coffee.
Granger took a sip from a cup.
Draco only just stopped himself from going completely feral. He took several deep, calming breaths.
I will not torture the information out of her. I will not seize the cup and try to lick the bottom.
I will retain some aspect of my dignity.
I want coffee I want coffee I want coffee!
"Oh, Granger?" He drawled in his most unconcerned tones. "How would one go about getting served at this damnable hour?"
Coffee, wailed his utterly spoiled inner child. Right now!
Granger was looking up at him with a slight frown. "In six years, you've never once gotten up early to study? How in the name of God did you get to be a prefect?"
Why are you wasting my time, woman? Give me coffee!
"I study like a normal person," Draco said between gritted teeth. "At night."
"Yes, I can see you're not exactly an early bird," she sniffed. "Are you aware that your robes are in a state and you haven't brushed your hair?"
"And yet it still looks better than yours... Look, Granger, I don't have time for this. I just want some coffee! All I want in the world is some coffee! If I had one wish, it would be for coffee!"
That wasn't dignified.
Granger was eyeing him as if he had gone insane. "Just ring the little bell on your table. A house elf will come and serve you. They're not supposed to be seen, but it's so early... Of course, it's appalling that-"
He held up a quelling hand.
"Please, Granger - I'm too tired... I think I might spew myself if I have to listen to you babbling..."
He strode over to the Slytherin table and rang the bell.
"It's not spew," Granger rambled on. "It's S. P. E. W... Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare!"
Draco sat down at his table and let his head thump forward onto the wood.
"Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?" He mumbled in understandably muffled tones.
"Can't you see that that is a terrible name? What's wrong with H. E. L. P, House Elf Liberation Party, or something?"
Granger seemed startled for some reason, but just at that point Dobby, Draco's old house elf appeared on the scene.
Draco was so relieved he could have kissed him. If not for the unbelievable gross factor involved, and the fact that Draco didn't really fly that side of the Quidditch pitch, and that lack of caffeine had robbed him of the ability to move.
In all fairness, Dobby looked delighted to see him too.
"Master Malfoy! Dobby is pleased to see you! Dobby has been hoping to see you for months!"
"Yes, well, Draco has been extremely busy," Draco said, not shifting his head from the table.
"Draco promises to come and see you more often if Draco could just please, please have some coffee immediately. Draco has far too much blood in his caffeine system."
"Of course, of course..."
Dobby went bustling off. Draco felt a lovely sensation of relief sweep over him.
It was almost immediately dissipated by the eminently annoying voice of the Mudblood.
"How do you know Dobby?"
"Hello, he worked in my home for the first twelve years of my life," Draco muttered. "House elves practically bring up highborn wizarding children... Not that you'd know that Mudblood."
"I did actually. I've also read many 'pureblood' genealogies, and for 'highborn' you could just as easily read 'inbred.' Or 'evil ungrateful enslavers of elfkind.'"
"Granger, you can just take whatever book you're reading and-"
"Here's your coffee, Master Malfoy!"
Dobby came trotting in with a tray heaped with breakfast and, filling Draco's eyes like a mirage, a gleaming coffee pot...
He watched greedily as Dobby poured a cup...
"You look like a drug addict, Malfoy."
"And you look like a beaver, Granger."
Draco fell on the cup and drained it. Oh, coffee, my one true love! Coffee and coffee and coffee, sweet sweet coffee!
"Dobby remembered you like it black, sir."
Draco smiled. "Yeah, thanks. It's really good."
"Is Miss Hermione wanting anything more?"
"Just Malfoy's head on a plate, thanks," Granger murmured, not quite low enough.
"If you came here to study, Granger, then study and stop annoying me."
"Oh, you are so one to talk, Malfoy, but I think I'll take your advice. Arithmancy is so much more interesting than you."
Dobby was starting to look upset and bewildered.
"Particularly Summoning Sums," Granger added loftily.
"All right, now I know you're mental," Draco said. "Trigomancy is by far the most interesting part of the course."
He began to butter some toast, scowling over at the girl who had beaten him in the Arithmancy exam by five lousy points. To his somewhat overwhelming astonishment, she smiled brilliantly.
Her teeth really had become a whole lot smaller since first year.
"Oh, that's really fun as well!" She agreed enthusiastically. "Tell me, did you prefer using the Theoremagic or did you like the manual spellcasting? It takes longer but I think you get much more of a feel for the subject-"
"Are you mad? The only spell worth considering is the Calculatus spell-"
Draco was really starting to feel much better now he had coffee. And Arithmancy was one of his favourite subjects.
"I never really got that one," Granger confessed, as if she was telling him about her secret life as a Spellstripper.
Well, it wasn't as if this was in public...
"You'd have to be completely stupid not to get that one - oh, wait, there's the reason - Look it's perfectly simple."
Dobby crept off. Draco spent the next hour conducting an across-tables shouting match with Granger about Arithmancy.
Eventually even the absorbed Ravenclaw couple noticed.
"Look," said the boy, "If you two want to talk, can't you just sit together?"
"Go sit on a Blast-Ended Skrewt," Draco suggested sweetly. "T
They had been Accio! Ing each others' napkin diagrams for some time when the door opened again.
"See here, Ferret boy, Pythagoras' Theoremagic Theorem is a classic," Granger was saying heatedly.
"You mean it's old and useless, Mudblood? Quite so."
"Malfoy! Why are you bothering Hermione?"
Oh, lovely. If it wasn't the Boy Who Lived To Be Self-Righteous, and his sidekick, Weasley the Freckled Wonder.
Granger looked around and beamed. "Harry, Ron! Nice of you to join us!"
"Us?" Echoed the Weasel.
"Granger and the little voices in her head," Draco explained loftily. He finally remembered about his toast, which had gone stone cold. "And I'd be eating, but the sight of you is having such an effect on my upjerk reflex..."
"And the sight of you is having such an effect on my Really Wanting to Pound Your Pasty Face In reflex," growled Weasley.
"One, I wasn't doing anything, Weasel boy, and two, I'd like to see you try it, and three, what do you mean by pasty?"
Draco stood up, weighing the odds. He could take Weasley, Wizard Wannabe alone, and with Potter added... Hmm...
"Just leave it, Ron," Hermione said. "You don't need to waste time on narcissistic Slytherins..."
"Huh?"
"What about Malfoy's mother?"
Draco rolled his eyes and left. No wonder, with friends like that, that Granger was occasionally desperate for a bit of intelligent conversation.
He wandered back to the Slytherin rooms, wondering if Crabbe and Goyle would be up to the intellectual challenge of learning to breathe through their noses.
Draco had thought Potions would be relaxing after his somewhat odd breakfast.
Draco should have remembered the law of Murphy, greatest and most depressed Irish wizard of his time. (A teetotal Irishman is a dangerous thing. He may begin to think. Then he may take over the world.) He was lounging in the back row, wondering what would be the most disgusting thing he could drop down Longbottom's robes and horribly torn between slugs and fresh Boomslang skin, when Snape strode in.
Draco liked Snape. He honestly did. The man was funny, he was a good teacher and he sided with Slytherins against the - oh, rest of the world. As far as Draco was concerned, he had only two faults.
There was the obvious lack of personal hygiene. And there was the apparent PMT.
It was hard to tell behind all the hair, but Draco would have laid a hundred Galleons that the man had a nasty glint in his eye.
He was, quite obviously, ready to kill. He was demented. He was a merciless man on a mission of death.
"I wish to support cooperation and harmony between the houses."
Draco blinked hard. Or not.
"So I've come to the conclusion that each person should work with a partner from the other house on their Polyjuice Potion."
Snape leaned back in his chair and listened to the buzz of shocked protest as if it was Mozart at his best.
Draco, who had remembered about Murphy by now and was employing his favourite world view of persistent pessimism, waited for more.
"Potter and Bulstrode."
Harry Potter looked vaguely panicked and over at Millicent. She licked her thick lips.
He began to look extremely panicked.
Draco couldn't help smiling. Millicent's mad secret crush on Potter had come out in fifth year and in Draco's opinion, it couldn't have happened to a nicer person... This pairing was too, too cruel.
Too, too perfect.
Giggles broke out across the classroom when Millicent fluttered her eyelashes. Potter looked like he wanted to hide.
Even Weasley and Granger were trying not to laugh.
Draco looked over at Granger, who was stuffing her robes in her mouth, and thought - I'll take her. She's the only Gryffindor with any brains, it will really hack her off which will be funny, and - anyway, we weren't quite done talking about Arithmancy...
"Crabbe and Longbottom."
"Sir, are you trying to pair off all the little secret crush cases?" Draco drawled.
Blaise Zabini fell off her seat laughing. Snape's eyes narrowed.
"I must be, Malfoy, because you and Weasley are together."
Ron Weasley went so pale all his freckles seemed to be fluoroscently lit. Draco was disgusted, but... Well, Weasley's horror was funny, and he supposed he'd asked for it a bit.
Not that he'd ever take this from any teacher but Snape.
"How did you ever guess our naughty little secret?" He inquired as Weasley appeared to suffer a massive coronary. "We thought we were so careful."
"Goyle and Granger."
"Alliteration," Draco said. "Sweet."
He shot Weasley, who was still paralysed with rage, a baleful look.
"I'm not coming to you, lovebunny."
"Just sit there and try not to think disastrous thoughts in the direction of my Potion," Draco ordered in the Malfoy tone which made slaves desperate to obey, enemies desperate to escape and girls... Well, just desperate.
It seemed as if it made Weasley desperate to punch him.
"It's our Potion," he snapped.
"It's my perfect grade that takes a dive if you mess up - which seems to be your destiny in this great lottery of life," Draco sneered. "Sit down! If you think you can manage it."
"I will not!"
"The Weasleys, ladies and gentlemen. Fewer brain cells than Galleons - and that's saying something."
"Oh, yeah? Well, I've got something to say to you, Malfoy-"
"Ron, shut up!"
"Hey," Draco drawled in Granger's general direction. "That was my line."
She stood in front of them, on her way to fetch some ingredient. Her eyes were snapping.
"He's not worth it," she continued.
"Okay, that wasn't."
She leaned over the desk to touch Weasley's violently coloured hair, looking at him with fierce intentness and - somewhat to Draco's amazement - managing not to vomit.
"He's an utter idiot for treating you - for treating anyone - this way. We just have to assume that this is the way he was taught and he's too stupid or too basically nasty ever to question it.
And so he's not worth any of your time or your anger."
"Hey, I'm right here, Mudblood!"
Granger's brown eyes did not even flicker in his direction.
"He's not even worth noticing."
"Pity you didn't work that out a few years ago," Draco called after her retreating back. "It would have saved me a very hard slap across the face."
Granger didn't turn around. Weasley sat back with a smug look on his face.
"Go ahead and mess up the Potion, Malfoy," he said.
"I happen to be good at Potions, Weasel. It's not like you ever made a Potion successfully - let alone this one."
The suddenly smug look on Weasley's face irritated Draco further. It was almost a relief when he started scowling as Draco set up the cauldron.
"Hey, Malfoy, I want to ask you a question."
"That no on the candlelit dinner is final, Weasley."
"I know it's genetically impossible, but could you try to be less of a prat? What the hell were you doing with Hermione this morning?"
"Making mad passionate love across a room. We Malfoys are a talented family."
Weasley's look of speechless fury was a rich reward for the disgusting concept Draco had just presented himself with.
"Talking about school, Wizard Wheezy."
The blank look on Weasley's face was reminiscent of Crabbe and Goyle.
"School?"
"Yes, school. It's this damn great building in which we are all taught, and some of us actually learn, magic? Come to think of it, buggered if we're not there now."
"You were talking to Hermione about school."
"Arithmancy. Remember, that subject you're not intelligent enough to take?"
"Well, you'd just better not do it again."
"What, Arithmancy? Listen, even if I dropped a subject, my grades would still be as far above yours as my family is above yours."
"You leave Hermione alone!" Weasley snarled. "Don't start bullying her."
"Awww, does Ronnie have a crush? Awww, isn't that just too precious for words? Say Weasley, what do you get if you mate a weasel and a beaver?"
Weasley had gone bright red, which was an interesting contrast with his hideous hair. He also looked ready to kill.
"Remember, you each have to drink your partner's Polyjuice Potion at the end of class,"
