On the whole, third year was very strange.
Draco’d already felt unsettled by a summer of not talking to his father, and seeing the Muggles with Terry, and having to make his own hot chocolate without the house elf. Dementors on the train did not help, though hearing that Potter had swooned (some hero he was, the faker) brightened up his first day considerably.
Everything was destroyed with his first Care of Magical Creatures class. That incompetent Dumbledore had actually made Oafy a teacher—and hadn’t he been expelled in third year? How would he have any idea how to educate students sufficiently to a NEWTS level?—Draco felt sick about it before he saw the stupid Hippogriffs.
“Remember not to insult them,” Anthony said edgily, as Draco approached Potter’s Hippogriff, who had bowed to Potter and thus could damn well bow to him. “Remember he said not to insult them, Draco, so control yourself for a change—oh, they look vicious, I’m sure Mother would want me excused from this—”
“Don’t be an idiot, Goldstein,” Draco said briskly, and tried to conceal the thrill of triumph when Potter’s Hippogriff bowed down to him with a careless: “See, it’s not dangerous at all, the great stupid thing…”
One minute he was tickling behind its ears, the next he was in sheer agony with blood everywhere and screaming at the top of his lungs. In a manly way.
In a manly, outraged way.
“It’s killed me!” he howled as Oafy picked him up as if he was a baby. “Put me down at once, you lummox! Hermione, I’m dying, tell my mother that—”
“Yeh’re fine,” grunted So-Called Professor Hagrid. Draco was pleased to notice that Hermione was running along beside them. She was white-faced and clearly understood the gravity of his plight.
“How would you know?” he snapped. “You are not a qualified healer. Take me to the nurse at once, you murderer. Hermione, stay with me!”
“Of course I will,” Hermione whispered.
“Good,” said Draco. “He’s probably planning to dispose of the evidence by throwing me into the lake.”
His first thought was to write to his father about this insanely dangerous class where he would learn nothing and everyone would fail their NEWTs. Except for Potter, probably, since the overgrown lout loved him like his own dwarfed offspring.
Then he lay back against the white sheets, wincing, and remembered that his father was not the sure refuge he had once been. Draco was not going to risk the humiliation of running to Father and having him turn away. Draco was going to have to do this on his own.
When he and Hermione sat in their first Muggle Studies class and Draco heard the terms ‘labour’ and ‘union’ for the first time, he had a truly brilliant idea.
Draco went to Hogsmeade on his first trip and bought a pair of handcuffs, which earned him a very offensive look from the shopkeeper. Then he found out where Dumbledore’s office was, examined the griffon doorknocker, and decided it would do very well.
He handcuffed himself to the doorknocker, and murmured all the wards he’d looked up over the handcuffs.
When Dumbledore came out, even the Head Fruitcake himself looked slightly less amused and omniscient than usual. “Mr Malfoy… what are you doing?”
Draco glared at him. “I am staging a protest. The students of Hogwarts are being deliberately endangered by the appointment of an ill qualified teacher, and someone has already been hurt with no consequences for said buffoon. I have students who will testify to my claims! I have appointed myself their representative, and our demands are as follows: Fire the imbecile!”
Dumbledore stared at him. “Certainly not!”
“Right,” Draco said. “Then I’m not moving. This is a peaceful protest and you can’t make me. I will overcome!”
Terry came up to him with food four times a day. Anthony did not come for three days, and then arrived with a placard that said ‘Free the Ravenclaw One!’
Hermione came at once and raged at him (as was her way) that Hagrid was a very good person.
“Doesn’t make him a good teacher,” Draco snapped. “Do you think anyone’ll want to take that class for the NEWTs? Just because you like him, doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to proper classes. Don’t go all Potter and partisan on me now.”
Hermione breathed out hard through her nose and said, “I don’t see why you hate him so much.”
“Er, because his poor teaching skills got my arm gutted like a fish?”
“I was not talking about Hagrid,” Hermione flashed, and stormed away.
She came back with all of her notes from all of their shared classes, and told him that he might as well give up because she was going to help Hagrid with his lesson plans and make him a better teacher, which was a much more constructive approach.
Once Hermione broke the news of impending ‘Blast-Ended Skrewts’ to people, Draco woke from an uncomfortable doze on the stone floor outside Dumbledore’s office to the shouting of quite a lot of students. He looked around and saw people from every house assembled there.
“What do we want?”
“To keep all our fingers and toes!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
“Free the Ravenclaw One!”
On the fifth day, Draco was told that a Professor Grubbly-Plank had been moved by the students’ clear and urgent need, and had replaced Professor Hagrid. Oafy was to stay on as her assistant, with the view to replacing her in a few years, once he was properly trained.
“You certainly have the strength of your convictions,” Professor Dumbledore said dryly as Draco unlocked the handcuffs.
Draco privately suspected that what he had was the strength of his burning rage, but he smirked and said: “Free the Ravenclaw One,” for the last time, before heading off to his dormitory and a lovely twenty-hour nap.
He awoke to a world gone mad for Quidditch. Apparently nothing on earth, let alone Draco’s signal victory over the forces of oppression, was as important as Potter taking the House Cup from Slytherin by winning every single one of his games.
It took Draco all of four minutes to come up with a brilliant plan.
“You’re mad,” Terry said flatly.
“I wish you would stop saying that,” Draco said. “It’ll give me a complex.”
“I wish you’d stop being mad,” Terry told him. “We’re not helping you. We’re not enabling you.”
Draco looked appealingly at Anthony, who gave him a serene smile. “Mother wouldn’t like it.”
Several weeks later, Draco went to Crabbe and Goyle, who were his true friends and never questioned him and anyway had much broader shoulders to stand on. They told him his plan was brilliant. They knew how to properly appreciate his very great genius.
And when he stood on Crabbe’s shoulders and saw Potter tremble on his broom for one moment, he knew that he had finally and comprehensively won.
Then Potter raised his wand and sent a ghost stag to run them down, and Draco was crushed by the entire weight of Crabbe’s body and humiliated in front of the entire school.
Not only that, but Hermione did not exactly come rushing in with the womanly sympathy, either. “I can’t believe you’d try to sabotage Harry’s game!”
“I can’t believe nobody cares that he can make ghost stags!” Draco shouted, batting away Terry’s cold cloth. “He’s not learning that in normal lessons, you know. This means private tutorials! That’s cheating, that is!”
“You were cheating as well, Draco,” Terry said, persisting in his cold-cloth activities. “And you were cheating in a very silly way, too. Try to think like a Ravenclaw.”
Draco’s triumphs always ended like this, and it was always all Potter’s fault.
As far as Draco was concerned, anyone after Potter’s blood was welcome at Hogwarts. Sirius Black was a relative, as well. Possibly wanting Potter dead was part of Draco’s genetic heritage. Draco regarded it all rather in the light of a Christmas present.
Another Christmas present was that Potter and Weasley finally did what Draco had been expecting them to, and threw away a pearl greater than all their tribe. They fell out with Hermione, using the completely implausible excuses of cats and rats and brooms and whatever else they said to conceal the fact that Hermione’s intelligence obviously made them feel small.
Hermione and Draco studied together for five days after the Great Schism before she broke down and wept on him. He tried not to die of terror.
“I always thought that they’d change their minds about being friends with me,” she said in a low voice, twisting her inky hands together. “I always thought they’d remember all the reasons they had—not to like me.” She swallowed and looked up, her eyes round and wet. “I never had any friends until I came to Hogwarts.”
Draco wondered exactly how insensitive it would be to tell Hermione that emotional displays made him feel all panicky and dizzy.
Hermione laughed, a sharp bark of a laugh, and began to ruffle through their notes. “I waited for them to get annoyed with me, and for you to—I know the way you were brought up. I know you’re supposed to hate the Muggleborn.”
“Well, I do,” Draco said automatically, and then was amazed and relieved when Hermione laughed a bit more normally. “I mean… I was just using you for your notes,” he said, and it was all true but there were other things that were true as well, and Hermione laughed again and leaned against him and sniffled as if she’d heard them, too.
Draco patted her on the back and said: “You’re weeping onto our schoolwork, woman. If you were in Ravenclaw you would learn more respect for your studies than this.”
He gave her a very severe look over his glasses and she choked laughing. Madam Pince gave them that Mr. Malfoy You Are My Least Favourite Ravenclaw Ever look, but Draco accepted her undying librarianly hatred in a good cause.
Potter and Weasley’s total lack of ability to appreciate Hermione meant she was always around, and Draco was fairly certain that Anthony developed a little bit of a crush on her. Actually, once they’d all seen her flow charts, he was fairly certain Padma Patil had developed a little bit of a crush on her. Ravenclaws knew how to value a scholarly woman.
Whenever they passed Potter and Weasley in the halls, Draco slipped an arm around Hermione’s shoulders, smirked pointedly in their direction and began to use words they could never understand like ‘lexicon.’
Those were good times, despite the fact Potter sicced a ghost stag on him. Draco took his revenge with more Sirius Black jokes.
Certainly, you had to give the man props for making sure Potter couldn’t go to Hogsmeade. Once Hermione unwisely let that slip, Draco made sure to mention in every class he shared with Potter just how delicious Butterbeer was, just how much he was looking forward to Zonko’s, and just how terrible it would be to be kept away from Hogsmeade as if you were a scared child.
“Did you see his horrible scarred face?” he asked, almost skipping with glee as he, Anthony and Terry explored every inch of Hogsmeade.
Terry sighed. “I don’t see why you need a nemesis at thirteen, Draco. You’ve got to control these operatic instincts.”
“After three years, it would be nice if we could stop talking about Potter,” Anthony said. “We could talk about this house instead! It’s called the Shrieking Shack because it’s haunted, you know.”
Draco surveyed the place and was unimpressed. “Surprised your mother will let you near it, then.”
“Oh, my mother thinks ghosts are a very interesting psychic phenomenon,” answered Anthony, who often babbled on meaninglessly like that for hours.
At that point Draco saw Weasley all alone, and insisted they go over to pay his disrespects.
“Wandered up here all by your lonesome to see a house, Weasley? Bet you’d love to live there. Is it true your whole family sleep in one room, or does poor little Ginny get some privacy in return for putting up with you louts?”
“Shut up about my sister,” Weasley said, going an alarming shade of puce.
Weasley was so easy. Draco had high hopes of inducing cardiac arrest before he turned seventeen.
“Tell me,” he said chattily, “how long do you think it’ll be before you drive her away, too?”
At that point, there was a soft noise like the spirits of the damned all rushing for Draco at once, and then he was badly startled by an arcane fall of mud from hell. All over his hair.
“It’s ghosts!” said Anthony, looking unacceptably pleased. “Proper poltergeist activity! My mum’ll be thrilled, she doesn’t think Peeves is a good example of his kind at all.”
“Fleh,” Draco protested feebly, trying to speak through dribbling mud. “Where did it come from? Terry!”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Terry said at once, trying to scrub Draco’s face clean. “I’m, I’m pretty sure it came from the left! No, right! No, left!”
“Terry! This is no time to panic!” Draco yelped, another lot of mud going all over his new winter cloak. He spun to the right and then the left, and Terry tried to follow him and tripped over something.
Potter’s disembodied head appeared out of thin air.
“ARGH!” Draco screamed.
“Ah,” said Anthony, reaching forward and taking something silvery out of the air, revealing Potter’s whole, unghostly form. “An Invisibility Cloak.”
“I knew that,” Draco said quickly, and tried to slow down his speeding heart.
Anthony examined the Cloak. “Fascinating to get an opportunity to study one up close. They’re really rare, have you read Truttlehorn’s thesis on them?”
“Er,” Potter replied, looking around rather wildly. “Er. No.”
While he was looking around and Anthony was looking at the Cloak and everyone else was looking surprised, Draco’s heartrate slowed and terror began to crystallise into cold fury.
“Well, well, Potter,” he said. “You turned my hair brown. Prepare to die!”
With that, he stooped, scooped up a handful of mud, and threw it at Potter as hard as he could. Potter just stood looking at him for a moment, mud sliding down his cheeks. Then he smiled.
“Right then, Malfoy,” he said. “It’s on.”
With that, everyone was diving for mud except for Anthony, who was clutching the Cloak and saying something about his mother and physical exertion. Draco didn’t really hear on account of the ringing in his ears, and after a moment on account of all the flying mud. Weasley was big, and Terry was clever, and neither of them were as fast as Potter. Or as Draco.
He could hear Terry laughing, which didn’t suit his idea of a battle to the death, and Father would be horrified at anything so childish and silly, and Draco wanted to win more than anything. When Potter got him full in the face with mud and he went blind, he staggered, remembered accurately where Potter had been standing, lunged and pulled him down by his collar into the biggest mud puddle, just about avoiding it himself.
Potter surfaced laughing and shaking mud out of his shaggy black hair like a dog, and Draco would have pointed and laughed if Potter hadn’t been holding a fistful of mud tightly as he might’ve held the Snitch, waiting for the moment to let it fly.
He let it fly in Draco’s face and Draco was fairly certain he swallowed some. He hoped Father would sue Potter when Draco died of mud poisoning, but before his tragic death Draco planned to get a few more hits in. He lunged at Potter and caught him in the stomach, and he had Potter on his back and was shoving mud down his collar when Weasley interfered, Terry jumped on Weasley, and everyone was almost killed in the muddy crush.
Despite Potter’s cowardly fleeing behind a bush at one point, and Draco’s masterly strategy of retreating behind a tree to regroup at another, victory was practically certain when Anthony spoiled sport.
“Uh. Not that all of this vigorous exercise hasn’t been appalling to watch and everything, but it’s time to go or we’ll be in trouble. Lots of trouble. All of us… Terry, drag him if you have to.”
Draco declined to be ignominously dragged home and went back to Hogwarts with an ill grace. Potter and Weasley followed, each group putting enough space between the other to make it clear that while walking in the same direction, they were certainly not walking together.
Terry kept laughing as if it had all been fun: Draco was merely smiling because of the greatness of his almost-completed victory, and a little breathless. Terry and Weasley yelled a few insults at each other that almost sounded friendly, which meant Terry would get a talking-to once they reached their dormitory.
Professor Snape found them all coming up the Hogwarts stairs.
“Ah,” he said. “Mr Potter… why, how strange. Here you are in the company of other students who were all in Hogsmeade, when I know very well that you are not allowed to be in Hogsmeade. Would you like to get clean before you see the headmaster or after?”
Draco hoped he could be like Professor Snape when he grew up, even if he wasn’t a Slytherin.
“We met Harry coming back to Hogwarts and we all had a fight,” Weasley lied promptly.
“Yes,” chimed in Terry, to Draco’s incredulous disgust. “A friendly fight.”
Snape raised his eyebrows. “Is that your story as well, Mr Malfoy?” he asked, and when Draco looked up at him he saw Snape knew Potter was their common enemy, and he opened his mouth happily to drop Potter in the soup.
Then he caught Terry’s reproachful eye, and saw Potter trying to clean the mud off his glasses so he could see Snape properly. Potter didn’t look exactly like the calm triumphant hero with mud all over him and his eyes anxious and peering, and Potter’d laughed through the mud, and all of Draco’s friends were staring at him…
“Yes,” Draco muttered, casting venomous glances all round. “Something like that.”
When Professor Snape stalked away, Draco got the distinct feeling he’d disappointed him, which made him feel almost as wretched as the idea he’d let Potter get off scot free.
Once he was gone, horrible Potter smirked at Draco. He was always smirking and sneering, though this smirk was—more hesitant than before. “Sorry for turning your hair brown.”
“Sorry for beating you into the ground,” Draco scoffed, and swept away with the others while Potter protested vehemently that he had won, which anyone could see was absurd.
You could not go encouraging someone like Potter, of course, it only added to his incredible temerity, because the next day he actually came up to Draco after class and actually spoke to him.
“Malfoy, I was thinking—”
“Don’t try to impress me,” Draco sneered. “I’m a Ravenclaw. We think every day.”
“—about what you said in Transfigurations class earlier this year. About Sirius Black, and how you’d want revenge.” Potter looked at him, uncertainly, and Draco didn’t know why Potter was asking him this now. “What did you mean?”
Draco put his books into his bag carefully, one by one. Clearly, the mud incident had misled Potter and he thought that Draco’d been condoning his above-the-law attitude to school life: clearly, Potter thought Draco was, he didn’t know, another secret fan.
“Why, Potter. I thought everyone knew something like that. The details of precious Potter’s life are public domain and everything, or don’t you keep up with your press cuttings?”
Potter’s lips set in a hard line. “Stop talking like such an idiot, Malfoy.”
“Oh, I’m an idiot, am I?” Draco snapped. “At least I know pertinent facts, like that Sirius Black was best friends with your dad and that he was the one who gave him to the Dark Lord. Everyone knows that, and now that you know, maybe you’ll be a bit cautious around Weasley, eh? That lot are blood traitors already. You sure you can trust him?”
Potter was white as paper and actually looked a little intimidating, not that Draco would ever have been scared of Potter in a million years. It was just that he was late for Muggle Studies.
“You’re lying,” he said in a thin voice. “You’re making up a rotten lie just to get me angry or something, aren’t you? I don’t know why I bothered to talk to you.”
“Why don’t you check with Professor McGonagall or Professor Lupin?” Draco demanded. “Everyone knows. It’s a pity you didn’t go to them, I doubt you’d accuse them of lying—”
Just Draco Malfoy, who told lies and whose hand people didn’t take on trains. Just perfect.
“Why don’t you just shut up,” said Potter, slamming out of the classroom.
Draco told Hermione all about Potter’s disgraceful and indefensible behaviour, and after a mere hour long rant he saw her lip start to tremble. He knew from long experience that she could listen for three hours as long as she had studying to look at, and came to the conclusion that all the extra classes were really getting on top of her. He sent her off to get Hogwarts: A History as a special treat, even though he knew he would just end up having to save her from herself and take it away again.
“Only one chapter,” he said indulgently as he heard her come back to the table. “You know all that ‘Draco, I wouldn’t keep reading it if I was addicted‘ stuff doesn’t work with me.”
“I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” said Potter.
Draco pulled off the amazing double withering-look-over-glasses and sneer in record time.
“Of course not, Potter. You don’t read books, do you? You’re more concerned with the pretty pictures.”
“Just because I don’t lurk in the library like a creepy little animal in its lair—” Potter stopped. “Wait. I didn’t—I’m not here looking for a fight.”
“Are you here looking for a book?” Draco suggested brightly. “That is what people usually do in the library. I realise you may be unfamiliar with this whole concept, but people do not lurk in here. They go in here to look at these ingenious contraptions called books“—he illustrated his point with generous use of air quotes, and also several more withering looks over his glasses—“which they, wait for it, read. This in turn helps them with their studies—”
“I have no idea how the Ravenclaws resist killing you in your sleep,” said Potter.
“I’m so sorry,” Draco said. “Was I going too fast for you? Should I use smaller words?”
“I’m here to talk about Sirius Black!” Potter hissed.
Mandy Brocklehurst at the next table looked up at this and whispered, “Oh my God, where?” Potter ignored her because he was a self-centred, oblivious git.
“I asked Professor Lupin and you were right,” Potter said slowly, as if this was some kind of big admission, as if Draco wasn’t a Ravenclaw and thus almost always right. Of course, Potter didn’t have the decency to apologise or anything like that, apologies were clearly for lowly mortals, but he frowned and said: “It was all true. He killed one of my parents’ friends, too.”
Draco had no idea what to say, but he raised both eyebrows and he hoped it looked scathing. Did Potter have no friends to talk to? Draco failed to see how he could have made his epic hatred more clear.
“Ron says—I mean—what would you do? If you were me.”
Run screaming to a hairdresser was Draco’s first thought, and he should have said it, but for some unfathomable reason he said: “If it were my parents? I’d want revenge.”
He looked up: Potter was leaning against Hermione’s chair beside Draco, his brow furrowed. He saw Draco looking and said, slowly: “Yeah. That’s… yeah.”
Well, everyone wanted revenge and they were done here. Harry Potter needn’t think that Draco was forgiving like Hermione, that he could be won with a troll fight or a mud fight or a beckon from the hero. Draco didn’t make things easy for people and he didn’t hand out second chances and he certainly wasn’t planning to make exceptions and crawl for Potter like everyone else did, so he’d be charmed if Potter could go away before anyone saw them and thought something filthy, like that they were having a civil conversation.
He gave Potter a look over his glasses, but Potter did not appear to get the hint. Draco breathed out hard through his nose.
“Run along,” he clarified, and then saw Hermione coming towards them with a book in her hands. Draco saw the look on her face, and thought he might as well get something out of this very strange encounter. “Potter! Get your fool Weasley to let the rat business go. Hermione misses you pathetic wretches.”
Potter blinked at him and Draco took it as agreement.
Then he decided to make himself very clear. “Afterwards you should go find Sirius Black. Personally, I hope he kills you a lot.”
He smirked and Potter’s face went even darker, with fury that was almost like surprise, because really, why shouldn’t everyone in the world be on Harry Potter’s side? He glowered murderously down at Draco for a moment and then stormed away.
Draco was pleased things were clear.
Sirius Black did not kill Harry Potter. He managed to evade capture by Dementors, the Ministry and even Professor Snape, but he couldn’t use his near-miraculous powers to do a tiny little thing like killing Potter. No wonder Potter was strutting about smirking even more than usual, glorying in his amazing powers of not dying and winning the Quidditch Cup by beating people who were frankly not very good.
In the midst of a rant on that topic, Draco got a very dirty look from Cho, and immediately backtracked. “And you,” he said hastily. “People who were not very good and you, but you were having an off day. You probably felt sick. You did look directly at Potter’s face, which I for one feel was unwise.”
“You’re horrible,” Cho said, but she smiled and looked slightly mollified.
He winked. “I’m lovely.”
Actually, he thought that Cho could really have used some advice on her turns and her focus, but he never paid all that much attention to Quidditch, anyway, it wasn’t like he was stupid Potter. He was much too engrossed in his studies to notice anything about Quidditch at all.
Besides, Cho always laughed at his jokes and was extremely pretty, which were two things Draco deeply approved of.
It was utterly typical that Draco had to lie to girls so they wouldn’t hurt him, and Potter and Weasley could waltz back into Hermione’s good graces with nary a word about how they’d cavalierly dropped her. Apparently she’d wept in Weasley’s arms, and then the stupid rat hadn’t been dead after all, and then the rat was dead again or at least Hermione refused to talk about it. Hermione’s confused explanation made Draco jumpy about Inferi rats for days.
“You’ll notice I’m not dead yet,” Potter took the trouble to inform him on the train home. Apparently that little library conversation had rankled: who knew why, since Draco had been openly hoping for Potter’s death since first year.
“I live in hope,” Draco returned. “Maybe next year.”
Once home, he found out that Hermione’s enormous study load had finally defeated her: an Owl came congratulating Draco for coming first overall in his year. He sat with the letter, loving even mad Dumbledore’s signature for a moment, one hand pressed against his glasses, and then he went to his father as he’d pictured doing and gave him the letter.
He was all prepared to smiled modestly and murmur, “Knowledge is power.”
He could taste the words on his tongue when Father smiled and said, “Well done, Draco.” He was just about to utter them when Father continued: “And I hear that Potter won the Quidditch Cup this year. You used to be rather good at Quidditch, didn’t you? What happened—couldn’t face the competition?”
Draco looked at him and lost his grip on words. He just left, and walked through the halls of his home, and thought of all that stupid effort, and all of the stupid coldness between him and Father that he’d thought might just go away, and how stupidly stupid he’d been, never to realise that he was never quite going to be good enough.
Could’ve been worse. He could’ve never realised.
The only thing which redeemed that summer was looking forward to the Quidditch World Cup.