He was creeping ever so silently down the stairs, lip caught between his teeth, deathly afraid the stupid fuzzy velvet slippers his mother had thought were just too adorable were going to make him trip on the plush carpet. And anyway, he was too old to be adorable. In another few years he'd be old enough to go to Hogwarts; sooner, his father had suggested vaguely, if he managed to 'pull some strings.'
Draco didn't know what that meant, pulling strings, but he thought it was a very good thing to be able to do. When his father pulled strings, things tended to work out his father's way.
It would be nice if he knew what strings to pull to get one of the house elves to bring him a glass of water; the regular old bell-pull wasn't working tonight. Someone was going to get a thrashing for that. Thrashing were what happened when pulling strings didn't work.
Of course, if his father ever found out he'd set so much as one toe outside his room tonight, he was in for a thrashing himself. His father had Guests tonight. They were doing Grown-Up and Important Things that Draco wouldn't understand. Guests were very important, and not to be bothered by little boys wanting glasses of water.
Biting his lip and taking the last step off the stairs into the wide hallway that led toward the kitchens, Draco thought that he was perfectly happy to leave Father's Guests to whatever Important Things they were doing. Important Things, from the sound of it, weren't very pleasant.
There were screams echoing off the cavernous walls of the hallway, coming from one of the adjoining rooms; it sounded like one of the dining rooms. Painful sounding screams. And shrieks. And groans.
Draco tip-toed as fast as he could.
The screams sounded closer in the kitchens, which were dark and empty, not a house-elf to be found. Draco's lip quivered; he didn't know where the glasses were kept. He bit down hard on his lip as someone in the adjoining dining room gave an agonized wail. He was far too old to cry. Crying was another thing that resulted in thrashings. He hoped his father gave the stupid house-elves the thrashing of their lives for going missing when he wanted something; of course, Father wouldn't know he needed to unless Draco told, and if Draco told he'd be in just as much trouble.
It was very unfair, and he was thirsty, and all the screaming was making him feel like someone was playing a game of Quidditch in his innards.
Then the door at the end of the kitchen burst in with a resounding bang and clatter as the latch gave way. Draco whipped around, freezing on the spot. The screams were very, very close now. There was a screaming girl running right at him.
She wasn't wearing anything, except a large amount of blood. Her feet made wet splats on the floor as she scrambled and lurched forward; she stumbled, and looked up, her eyes latching onto his face.
"Help me!" she shrieked.
Draco stood frozen, as if petrified, wanting desperately to run, scream, anything to get away from this horrible creature scrabbling towards him, but his legs wouldn't move. He sucked in rapid breaths that were almost screams themselves.
"Help me, please, help me, get me out of here, please!" the girl wailed, crawling towards him. In between the streaks of blood her hair looked like it had been blonde, like his.
"Can't get away, Muggle!" a deeper voice sing-songed from the door. A heavy-set man stumbled into the kitchen, grasping the doorway to support his wide frame. Mr. Goyle, Draco realized. Oh thank Merlin. He knew Mr. Goyle. Mr. Goyle was a friend of his father's, he'd save him -
"Draco!" Mr. Goyle boomed out, sounding delighted, the words vaguely slurred. He lumbered into the kitchen, none too steadily, a bemused grin plastered across his wide face. "Draco, my boy!"
Why was he smiling? Didn't he see the bloody girl? Didn't he hear the screaming?
"Please!" the girl wailed, as Mr. Goyle caught up to her and grabbed her by the hair. Draco felt like he couldn't breath. The girl was just shrieking wordlessly, twisting and clawing at the meaty hand that held her, carelessly, the way you might hold a hat or a shopping bag.
"How've you been, boy?" Mr. Goyle asked jovially.
Draco couldn't answer, couldn't speak, his eyes riveted on the girl. Mr. Goyle noticed this, glanced down at her as if he'd forgotten she was there.
"Oh, you want a go?" Mr. Goyle offered. Draco hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.
Then Mr. Goyle tossed the wailing girl right at him. She fell and skidded across the floor, stopping with a bit of her blood-soaked hair inches from Draco's velvet-slipper-clad feet.
Draco found that he could move. He scrambled backward faster than he'd ever moved in his life, and suddenly there was air in his lungs for screaming.
"Please!" the girl wailed, reaching for him with clutching hands.
"What in the bloody hell is taking so long?" a familiar voice demanded from the doorway. Father.
"Just letting Draco .. er .. well I thought . . " Goyle slurred, words tapering off at the murderous look on Father's face. Draco snapped his mouth shut as his father strode purposefully across the room, grabbed the girl by one arm and shoved her at Goyle.
"Get out," Father snapped, and Goyle hastily complied, dragging the bloody girl with him. There was a cheer from the other room as they disappeared back through the doorway. Draco swallowed hard, his pulse thundering in his ears as his father rounded on him.
There was blood splattered on Father's dress robes.
"I thought I told you to stay in bed tonight," Father said coldly.
"She - she was -" Draco stammered. That wasn't what he'd meant to say. He needed an excuse, a very good one, for being here. No excuses were coming, though, just the image of the girl's blood-streaked face. Father's expression slipped from accusingly to plainly disgusted.
"Stop whining," Father snapped. "Merlin, *how* old are you, boy?"
"S-seven," Draco stuttered out. "S-sir." Father shook his head in clear disappointment.
"Your mother's fault for coddling you," he pronounced. "Go back to bed, Draco."
Father turned without another word, stalking back out towards the dining room. Draco watched the broken door slam awkwardly shut behind him, biting his lip until it hurt and scrunching his face up, trying so very hard not to cry.
From the other room, the girl gave an ear-splitting howl.
Draco was sick all over his velvet slippers.
"Hello? Anyone there?"
Draco snapped dizzyingly back to the present, sucking in a great gasp of frigid air. It tasted putrid. He blinked, and was disgusted to see he'd been sick all over the cobblestones. He backed away in hasty revulsion, not even caring that he was crawling around on his hands and knees.
But the screaming stopped. No more screaming.
"It's okay to come out now," a vaguely familiar, tremulous female voice announced, as if echoing his thoughts. "Everybody's done rioting."
He kicked a bit of snow over the place where he'd vomited and curled himself in tighter behind the stack of boxes, hoping she'd just go away.
If father ever, ever finds out I . . I sicked up all over myself like some coward . . just because there were people screaming.
But so loud. They were screaming so loud and it was my fault.
Of course it was you fault, you worthless git. That's the *point*. You can make them scream, just by making a sign in the air. That's power.
His stomach gave another uneasy lurch.
"Look, if you're a Hogwarts student, you're supposed to go to the Three Broomsticks," the voice continued. "Professor Snape sent me and my brother to fetch everyone."
He almost laughed. Snape? Snape would probably clap him on the back and congratulate him, old mate of his father's that the bastard was.
What would Snape do if he knew I was cowering back here, hiding next to my own vomit?
Fifty points from Slytherin for acting like a sniveling Hufflepuff. Like a stinking piece of mudblood trash.
"He said he's going to give detention to everyone who's not there in a half-hour," the voice warned, "so if you're a student you'd really better get moving." There was that urge to giggle again.
Detention? Merlin, detention? Are there people who still give a bloody fat damn about detention? I shot up the Dark Mark! Voldemort's returned! Gee, I wonder if I'd lose my house points for being a fucking Death Eater.
Initiate.
Though I suppose I passed. No one here to know what happened after. When the screaming started.
But Merlin, if I do that every time there's screaming . . what if there's blood . .
"I'm not going to hurt you," the voice announced, and something in the screwing-up-my-courage tone of it clicked in Draco's memory. Weasel's little sister. Oh, bloody wonderful. "So don't do anything silly, okay? But I'm gonna come looking for you now. Unless you want to come out."
He didn't answer her, of course.
"Are you hurt?" Ginny's voice asked, sounding an even mix of concerned and petrified. There was a pause. "Okay then; okay, I'm coming."
"Don't!" Draco snapped out, only it came out more a croak than a snap. His throat was painfully raw.
"W-who's there?" Ginny retorted.
"Go away!" Draco yelled, and it came out a little better this time.
"Not until you show me you're not hurt!"
Bloody interfering Gryffindors.
"I said go away, Weasel!" he snapped without thinking. There was a momentary hush.
"Malfoy?" Ginny gasped.
Oh, fuck.
She stomped abruptly into view; there was something disheartening about how very unafraid she was, now she knew it was just him.
Just me, the wanna-be Death Eater who pukes when people scream. Stupid wanking git.
"What are you *doing* back there?" she demanded in a very prim way, hands fisted on hips. Her nose wrinkled up. "And what's that *smell*?"
He realized that in all the retching and having of flashbacks he'd dropped his wand; she was nearly stepping on it. When he didn't answer, her eyes narrowed.
"What *are* you doing back here?" she repeated, but far more coldly.
"None of your bloody business," he retorted, getting to his feet. His feet felt far less stable beneath him than he would have liked. He reached for his wand.
She kicked it back out of his reach.
Bloody little bitch! I didn't think she saw it!
"You had something to do with this, didn't you?" Ginny accused, and her pale, freckled little face was beginning to flush. "You and your . . your lousy git of a father, didn't you?"
"What if I did?" he challenged, sneering. Oh hell. Oh bloody hell. If she tells . . if Father finds out I got caught . .
"What if you did?" she mimicked, her face nearly purple by now with righteous rage. "What if you did?"
"Yeah, that's what I said," Draco stepped in close to her, glaring nastily down his nose at her narrowed, angry eyes. "What are *you* going to do about it?"
She brought her knee up, hard, right between his legs.
He was sick, again, all over her.
***
"Ugh!" Ginny screech. "Oh, eugh! Gross! You ass!" She ripped her outer robe off and threw it at Malfoy, who was currently writhing on the ground. "You're *revolting*! You're just too disgusting for words!" The robe missed him by several feet and landed on a nearby crate, before slipping to the ground with a rather nauseating plop. She tried again with her school robes; she hit his feet.
He started giggling.
She kicked him.
He laughed harder.
"What's so bloody funny?!" she demanded, rather shrilly.
"Y-you -" he dissolved into giggles again, tucking his chin down into his scarf, still curled into a fetal position on the ground. She wrapped her now only sweater-clad arms around herself and shivered.
He's lost his marbles. Gone completely out of his head.
Well, you did just kick him in the balls, perhaps you caused brain damage.
Oh Merlin my mother would die if she knew I just thought that.
Though Fred and George would be quite proud.
"You k-kicked me!" Malfoy managed to stutter out amidst the rather creepy and disturbing laughter. "You h-had your w-w-wand out, and you k-KICKED me!"
"I'll do it again if you dare make some joke about muggle-lovers!" Ginny retorted. "And anyway, it worked, didn't it?"
"Oh y-yeah," he agreed with very un-Malfoy-ish good humor. "Fucking h-hurts like hell."
She stared. He giggled.
"Have you *completely* lost your mind?" she exploded.
"U-utterly," Draco affirmed. "Fifty points from Slytherin for being mad as a march hare!" He evidently found his own joke hysterical, because he collapsed in body-shaking guffaws. It was starting to make her skin crawl.
Also it reeks back here.
"You were sick before," Ginny suddenly observed out loud, noticing the patch of off-colored snow with a little lurch of her stomach.
"Yeah? What of it?" Draco asked, finally pulling himself into a sitting position. He quirked an eyebrow up at her.
"Why?" she demanded, a nasty feeling forming in the pit of her stomach.
Oh, don't be silly. This is *Malfoy*. Don't go attributing human feelings to the bastard.
He shrugged.
"You weren't bitten," she pondered aloud, glaring down at him and tapping a foot, "because you're not twitching and unconscious, and besides, you're a pureblood. So why were you sick *before* I kicked you?"
"Remembered a picture I once saw of your mum," he retorted. Ginny ignored him.
"Something scared you, didn't it?" she demanded.
His sneer slipped a little.
I was right!
But .. Merlin, this is *Malfoy*! Why would he be scared by a Death Eater's prank? He probably had a hand in planning the whole damn show.
"Was it something you did?" she blurted, before the thought had even fully formed in her mind. "That happens to me sometimes. Still sometimes."
Virginia Weasley, what the bloody hell are you doing?
Confiding in *Malfoy*?
Are you forgetting it was *his* father who's the reason you scare yourself and have nightmares and sometimes feel you're going to be sick because you thought something that you just know you never would have thought on your own?
"Shouldn't have done that," Malfoy muttered.
"What?"
"My father shouldn't have done that," he said, more loudly. "You're a pure-blood, even if you are a Weasel. He shouldn't have done that." He glared up at her challengingly, as if daring her to make something of it. To gloat, to make fun of his admission. She wasn't feeling remotely like doing anything of the sort.
"But I suppose if it had been Hermione, you would have thought it was great fun," she snapped back.
He shrugged again.
"You know your precious You-Know-Who was a mudblood, don't you?" she pressed, emphasizing the insult. "I know all about it. Everything there is to know about every nasty little bit of his pathetic life."
"Suppose you would," he said neutrally.
"So was it?"
"Was it what?"
"Something you did. That scared you."
"Why should I tell you, Weasel?"
"Why shouldn't I take your wand and tell Dumbledore how I found it?" Ginny retorted.
"Oh, don't give it to Dumbledore," Malfoy suggested mockingly. "Give it to your father. Maybe it'd catch him a promotion."
She bent over and picked up his wand. He didn't move to stop her. "I could, you know," she insisted challengingly; he didn't respond. "Don't you care you're about to get thrown in Azkaban?"
"Yes," he said quiet.
"So why're you just sitting there like a lump?" she snapped.
"No," he corrected her, shaking is head. "I meant - yes, it was something I did, that scared me. Sort of," he confessed.
"Sort of?"
I cannot believe I'm having this conversation with Malfoy.
I think the world has officially turned on its head.
"It was the screaming," he said. "I don't . . don't do well with screaming." He didn't say anything else, just let her watch him appraisingly.
"Promise me you didn't have anything to do with the snakes," she demanded.
"I didn't."
She handed him his wand.
Virginia Weasley, that has got to be the stupidest thing you have ever done in your life.
But .. it felt right.
Malfoy glanced incredulously between her and the wand. "You know I could curse you into next week," he asked disbelievingly.
"But you won't," she said with a confidence she didn't feel.
This is MALFOY! Of course he will, you bleeding moron!
Feeling as if her heart was going to hammer its way right up into her mouth and out the top of her head, she turned her back to him and walked away.
And he didn't.