The Quidditch World Cup began with Weasleys, which was so typical of Draco’s life.
Father and Mr Weasley exchanged words about Mr Weasley’s extreme poverty while Draco tried to make out Hermione’s face in a blazing sea of redheads. Once located, she smiled at him. He smiled back, and when Father noticed and frowned Draco made a special effort to smile at Ginny too.
He refused to smile at Potter, no matter what the circumstances, and indeed once he got a look at the shamrock on Potter’s robes he quickly discarded his own. He’d support Bulgaria, he thought, and then thought it even more enthusiastically once the Veela came out to dance.
They were so pretty—so shiny—like women Snitches, and if he could just…
“Draco, sit down,” Mother instructed firmly.
The burning humiliation arrived a few moments later.
“And don’t worry,” Mother continued. “Look at your father.”
He looked at Father and was perfectly horrified to see him perform a shimmy of his own, presumably to match the Veela in a kind of mating dance.
Mother smiled serenely. “He’s always had a terrible weakness for blondes. Every-Flavour Bean?”
Draco looked around and was cheered to see that Potter and Weasley were not laughing themselves sick at his father’s expense, but rather making total prats of themselves trying to leap to the Veela. Poor, long-suffering Hermione had her hands full.
After that, with nothing but filthy Father-seducers and Potter-supported Irish peasantry on the field, Draco decided to be sternly neutral, and cheered indiscrimately for every foul. Once or twice he heard Weasley say “Can’t sodding believe he’s not in Slytherin’ but he was confident that Hermione was administering elbow jabs every time.
It was a good match, in that it wasn’t a satisfactory win for anyone. Draco was in rather a good mood until Death Eaters swept the pitch and made him upset his hot chocolate and step in his marshmallows and beat an undignified retreat to the woods.
They gave him a nasty turn when they first appeared, and by the time he reached the woods he was in a full-fledged temper. He didn’t think it was very clever to get drunk and make Muggles fly about the place. The stupid idiots could have caused pureblood children to get trampled. Nobody was as intelligent as Draco: that was his cross to bear.
He was very relieved indeed to see Hermione, and less pleased that she had Tweedledee and Tweedledum with her, though it cheered him up when Weasley fell over a tree root.
“With feet that size,” he drawled, “hard not to.”
“Oh, look who it is,” Weasley spat. “Your parents out there playing Death Eaters?”
“I’m sorry?” said Draco. “You’ll have to speak up, you’re so low down the income scale that I can’t hear you.”
“I said, are your parents out there in cloaks and masks!”
Weasley’s face was flushed with anger and he towered over Draco, which was mortifying and Draco wished his growth spurt would hurry up. Mother told him that all the Blacks were tall, even crazy Aunt Bellatrix who didn’t like sunlight.
“They’re certainly out there in cloaks,” Draco hedged. “Are your parents not able to afford cloaks? Mother gives to charity quite regularly—”
“Shut up, Malfoy!” Potter snarled.
Some days Draco felt that was all he heard, ever.
“Oh my God, that was so insensitive of me,” he declared in dramatically hushed tones. “Having people talk about their parents must be really hard for you.”
“Draco Malfoy!” exclaimed Hermione. “All of you stop it at once, we need to find the others, not stand around saying terrible things to each other! Ron, have you gone mad, we don’t even know where Ginny is—come on…”
“Hey,” Draco said. Potter banged his shoulder going past and he returned the shove with interest, but when Hermione turned he mustered up a smile for her. “Hey,” he said, more quietly. “Keep that big bushy head down, Granger.”
She ran back and gave him a hug. Someone was going to have to teach the girl to control these overwrought emotional displays, Draco almost suffocated in her hair.
As if having his father get drunk and play dress-up wasn’t humiliation enough to last Draco nicely all year, almost as soon as he got back to school he was assaulted by yet another brilliant addition to the teaching staff. He saw the paper talking about Weasley’s father, looked at the sort of thing they had to say about the World Cup rioters (Draco’s father) and he was angry and Potter said something about his mother and the next thing he knew, Professor WildMoodSwings had turned him into a ferret and played squash with him.
Not even the news that Professor Snape and Professor Flitwick had joined forces and stormed up to Dumbledore’s office like twin whirlwinds of fury cheered Draco up, but Madam Pomfrey let Terry stay in the infirmary once she had put the ointment on, and that helped a bit.
It did not help when Hermione sneaked in under the Invisibility Cloak and almost induced spasms in Draco’s already delicate frame.
“Hermione!” he exclaimed, looking frantically about for his shirt. “I’m not dressed!”
“I’m not all that interested,” Hermione said briskly, and then her eyes went wide when she looked properly, and saw the bruises dark against Draco’s shoulders and ribs. “Oh, Draco.”
She got up onto the bed along with Terry, and Draco did not reprimand her for indecent lusts because he felt too sick. Instead he curled up, concentrated on the fact Madam Pomfrey had said he’d be fine soon (that charlatan) and was not sure if the cool hand resting gently on his back was Terry’s or Hermione’s. He felt dimly grateful for it all the same.
“I do not like that man,” Hermione announced in the steely way that frightened younger students and made Draco proud. “He could have really hurt Draco.”
“I am really hurt,” Draco said piteously into his pillow. “I fear I may die.”
“Yes, yes, quite,” said Terry, who never understood the gravity of Draco’s many awful plights, nor appreciated the constant threats Hogwarts posed to his safety and wellbeing.
“Maybe it was because of your dad, but—he had no right. Maybe Professor McGonagall will talk to him…” Hermione’s anxious, bossy voice was rather soothing, Draco thought. As was the hand rubbing slow circles into his sore back, which by now he was fairly certain was Terry’s.
“No m’gonngull…” Draco mumbled sleepily. “Leave it to me. ‘m goin’ to plan a hor’ble revenge. Hor’ble revenge!”
“Is that so?” Terry asked.
“Muahahahahaha…mm,” said Draco decisively, and drifted into sleep with happy, cosy thoughts of mayhem.
Later, he was forced to tell Terry and Hermione that he would lock them in a dark, deep dungeon if they ever disclosed what he was like drugged to the community at large.
As if this was not pain enough and to spare, there was the entire Triwizard Tournament fiasco. At first Draco thought it was going to be cool. No people taunting him by playing stupid Quidditch, and they had World Cup stars and shiny Veelalike girls to brighten up the gloomy old pile. It seemed like nothing could go wrong.
Except of course it could. Of course, Potter had to cheat his way into the Tournament because he was a fame junkie, and instead of getting him help people gave him a super special extra-Champion spot in the Tournament. Which meant the whole school, in an exciting change of pace for everyone, was buzzing about Potter.
Sometimes Draco thought Potter plotted to give him migraines. If Draco had to get a new prescription and ended up with Butterbeer-bottle glasses he would not be held responsible for his actions.
Hermione and her flow charts had always been an oasis of peace for him, and now at this critical time they let him down. Weasley and Potter had some violent lovers’ tiff and Hermione started carting Potter around with her to the library. The library!
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Draco said. “After all we’ve meant to each other. In our special place.”
“Would you hush, Harry’s very upset,” Hermione hissed.
Draco was sure that with the whole world at your feet, the loss of one Weasley was devastating. He cast a sour look over at Potter, who was mooching unhappily about the bookshelves, looking hurt and bewildered by the lack of Quidditch pitches and screaming fans in the library.
It was not just that he hated Potter, which of course he did, with a pure and holy hatred that would burn forevermore. It was that Potter was utterly impossible to study around.
Even though he wasn’t playing Quidditch this year, it felt like he was always storming in fresh off the pitch. He was always rumpled and breathing hard or talking too loudly, with no more manners in the library than Crookshanks would’ve had, if Hermione had decided to drag her cat along. He’d sit down with a book and it would be all of two minutes before he was doodling with his horrible scratchy quills, or sighing loudly, or humming to himself, or in some other restless stupid Potter way driving Draco to distraction.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you,” Draco remarked coldly on the third day of this torment. “Saboteur.”
Potter flattened his hair with malice aforethought. How could a person who wasn’t even very tall have elbows all over the table? It was too much for anyone to bear.
“What?”
“Look, I need to concentrate, so you have to stop!”
“You’re actually quite mad, aren’t you,” Potter said.
He gave Potter the Glasses Look, and Potter appeared unimpressed, so Draco gave it up and tried to focus his mind on Arithmancy. His mind was a clear, blank slate. His mind was a cool, serene ocean.
Potter began to tap against his teeth with the nib of his quill. If Draco sharpened his ruler he could stab Potter with it repeatedly before anyone had a chance to summon medical assistance. He heard Azkaban was lovely and peaceful this time of year.
He forbore, reached out and firmly drew Potter’s arm down to the table, then let go of Potter’s wrist.
“This? Must. Stop.”
“Look,” said Potter. “I’m not shouting in the library or anything, what am I supposed to do, drop dead?”
“Yes,” Draco replied instantly. “That would be super.”
“I’m really bored! This is—having Hermione as your best friend involves a lot of hanging around in the library, and I’m just not used to—”
“Hang on, hang on, who said you were Hermione’s best friend?”
Potter stared at him. “Well, you’re not. You’re Terry Boot’s best friend.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything. I have a lot of love to give.”
The blank incredulity of Potter’s stare made Draco realise that his competitive nature had led him too far astray. Again.
“Well,” Potter said, leaving the subject of Draco’s love pointedly aside, “I’m not weirdly built to enjoy all of this, like you and Hermione. It’s not easy for me.”
Easy for him, Potter said. Draco thought of the long nights in first year, reading in the dark when everyone else had gone to bed because they all seemed to have some sort of inner discipline he lacked, some motivating force that kept their eyes from straying to the clock or the Quidditch pitch or anywhere but the page. He thought about beating Potter to death with Hogwarts: A History.
“Obviously you ought to give up now, then, since everything should be easy for the wonderful and amazing Boy Who Lived. You can feel just as martyred as you like because your pet Weasley bit the hand that fed it, and now people in your school are actually asking you to read the nasty books, but you have no right to martyr me—”
“And it all comes back to you!” Potter shouted. “Why am I not surprised? And shut up talking about Ron that way!”
Hermione’s head turned and she began to hastily collect her books from the shelf she’d been lingering at.
“Look, Potter,” Draco snapped. “Here’s what you do. You try really hard to study and to keep quiet, focus all your energy on it until you’re really tired, and then if you’re still restless even though you’re exhausted, if you genuinely feel that you can’t stand it for a minute longer, go out and run around the stupid halls until you have to lie down on the stone, and then come back here and study some more! And now go away and leave me alone,” he said in calmer tones, opening a book and taking refuge behind it. “I hate you,” he added, to clarify matters. “I hate you, and I hate your face.”
Potter was silent for a change, though this minor miracle did them no good. Madam Pince was already bearing down on them, and Draco was chucked out of the library for the second time in his life. Like so many terrible things in Draco’s life, it was all Potter’s fault.
Something had to be done, and so Draco did it. He stayed up half the night re-writing his study schedule.
The next day when Potter was still there, Draco put up with his fidgets that filled the room.
He put up with the hair-flattening and the doodling and the table-tapping and the alarming number of elbows. He waited, still as a studying panther, for the moment when the clock hit five minutes to.
Then he put down his quill and said: “Potter, you are a constant disappointment to me and to everyone who grew up with the myth of the Boy Who Lived. Your relentless twitching is probably a sign of mental retardation, and I’m sure you only pass your classes because the teachers favour you. Stop humming, stop moving and if possible, stop breathing at once. You cheated to get into the Triwizard Tournament and I am glad you did because it will put you in terrible danger, but I imagine your ego is too massive for you to have even considered that. I hope that the Triwizard Cup feeds you to its young, and in conclusion, your parents are dead.”
Potter looked badly startled. “What the hell is the matter with—”
“Shush,” Draco commanded. “It is vital that I study. Vital!”
“But you—you-!”
“Spoke to you, yes, because I had to tell you off or combust, which would not have been productive. And you could have interrupted me earlier, but you didn’t, which is a shame for you because my next break isn’t for another hour.”
“Your next break. What are you talking about, Malfoy?” Potter demanded, fixing him with wild, staring, crazy eyes.
“It’s all in my study plan,” Draco informed him, reaching for that deeply important piece of parchment, his many-coloured plan. It was adorned with leaves and ravens, because even though Draco had made it at four in the morning there was no reason to do a shoddy job.
Potter took it, his face filled with a sort of absent horror. “I’m in your study plan. I’m in your study plan in red letters.”
“Yes,” said Draco. “I hate the colour red, and I hate you. My studies cannot be interrupted, and this was the only thing I could come up with at such short notice. Please be as quiet as you can, and perhaps I will go easy on you next hour.”
“Malfoy, you complete mental patient, I do not need you to go easy on me—”
Madam Pince stopped by their table and fixed them with eyes cold as winter.
“Give me a reason,” she breathed. “Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will.”
Potter opened his mouth like a fool, but Draco glared at him and he shut it. Then he opened it again right away, to give one of his unacceptably noisy sighs. Draco buried himself in his book and tried not to picture burying Potter in quicklime.
He could feel Potter’s eyes sliding around to rest on him more than usual: like Potter’s sighs and Potter’s humming, his gaze seemed to have an incredibly irritating physical presence all of its own. He caught Potter at it a few times and gave him the Glasses Look, and Potter just looked away from Draco to his watch, and then when Draco looked away, he looked back at Draco again! It was impossible to work under these conditions!
Draco broke after fifteen minutes. “What is it, Potter? What do you want?”
“Is it time for you to talk again yet?” Potter asked, and then at Draco’s outraged stare he said defensively: “I’m really bored!”
Draco had told everyone that Potter was a shameless attention whore, so anxious for love after the tragic demise of his parents that he would prostitute himself for the media and take any attention anyone was willing to offer him, and here was the proof. With nobody to see it but Hermione, who seemed blissfully unaware of aught but Arithmancy in the world.
Life was so very unfair.
By the fifth day, Draco’s insults had to become more creative. He’d always thought he had a bottomless pit of insults available for Potter, but he’d never thought about being trapped with Potter in an endless cycle of dusty library days.
“Your hair is like a wasteland after war, with no survivors, thorns where fields should be and despair all around. Know that,” was probably going too far.
“Right,” said Potter. “Why don’t you play Quidditch anymore?”
“Time’s up!” Draco announced.
“No it’s not,” Potter replied, trying to lord it over Draco just because he had a silly Muggle contraption watch thing. “I remember—you asked if I played Quidditch, in the robe shop. You said you wanted a racing broom.”
Potter was deliberately reminding Draco of the first time they had met so Draco would remember how it was the first of many times Potter had been so very clearly unimpressed by him. Potter’s ploys to make Draco feel small were pathetically transparent, really.
Draco dug his quill spitefully hard into the parchment and it broke. “I liked Quidditch when I was very young,” he said. “But now I have put away childish things. I need to study: it’s pathetic that you have so few friends your only choice now is to be somewhere you hate with someone you hate. What’s it like to be so pathetic even Weasley’s dropped you?”
Draco saw Potter flinch. That one had stung. “Your mother and father didn’t look all that happy together at the World Cup,” Potter said, cold and deliberate. “Are they both disappointed in you, or is it that only one of them has seen the light?”
Draco was moving to hit Potter in his stupid fat head when Madam Pince bore down on them like the wrath of God and threw them out on their ears for the second time that week. Draco and Potter glared at each other and then Draco stalked away to his common room, where he could, of course, study all he wanted. Only the library was his place.
His, and Potter’d taken enough away from him. If Potter would just stop existing everything would be fine, and Draco would never have had to sit through Potter winning the Quidditch Cup, seeing his stupid Firebolt cut through the air and knowing, even if he took it up again right away, even if he practised and practised, there was no way on earth that he would ever compare.
One of the reasons Draco was a Ravenclaw was that he did not like to be outclassed. It was stupid that Potter could always manage to make him feel it, and make him feel it was personal.
Apparently, the only thing Potter liked more than judging and dismissing people was having some excuse to act instead of think. That was the only reason Draco could come up with for Potter continually shutting books he hadn’t read and pestering him.
“What d’you know about dragons?”
Draco didn’t even bother to give him the Look at this point, but he felt it was implied. “Big scaly fiery monsters of death,” he said. “Are you still involved in your dragon smuggling ring? If you have made Hermione your moll, there will be serious consequences!”
Potter made a funny sound. “I don’t even know how to talk to you.”
“Don’t talk to me,” Draco said. “Because I hate you.”
Five minutes to every hour in the library became an odd sort of truce, loath though Draco was to admit it, a truce Draco was forced into because if he got thrown out of the library three times in one year he was pretty sure his housemates would lose all respect for him.
Still, that was no excuse for the time Potter said: “Fancy the Chudley Cannons’ chances this year?”
Draco should have looked reproving and paid attention to his book, but instead he found himself saying, “Either you are mad, or you are stupid, or quite probably you are both. The Tutshill Tornados are going to win this year, they have the best record and the best training and their Seeker is the best in the field. Besides, the Cannons’ Keeper’s wife is having a baby.”
“So what? Maybe he likes babies.”
“Maybe he’ll be up nights all season,” Draco pointed out, and then saw the looks Terry and Hermione were giving him and hastily hid his face in his book. “I hate Quidditch and I hate you and I hate Quidditch,” he said flatly. “Go away.”
“Only you don’t,” Terry said that evening, while Draco was absorbed in creating something that would finally humiliate Potter to the dust.
“I don’t what?” Draco asked. “Is the other guy called Digby?”
“Diggory,” said Cho, who, like several others, was craning from their spots around the fire to see what Draco was doing. “Cedric Diggory. Draco, I don’t think that’s really very kind.”
“You don’t hate Quidditch!” Terry said loudly. “I’ve seen the magazines under your bed.”
“Terry Boot!” Anthony exclaimed. “You should be ashamed! Draco has a right to his privacy.”
Draco did not dare lift his face and meet Cho’s eyes. He hated all his dormitory mates so very, very much.
“The Quidditch magazines, Anthony,” Terry said in his best weary way. “You could try out, you know, Draco. If you wanted.”
“I’d like flying with you,” Cho put in. “You’ve got the build for a Chaser.”
“I don’t want to,” Draco said coldly, and did not mention that if he’d wanted any spot—which he didn’t, he was much too busy with his studies—he would’ve wanted hers.
He straightened up and pressed the badge, and POTTER STINKS leaped out against the blue walls.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Potter said angrily the next day, having the temerity to look betrayed and the gall to obviously, deliberately shove into Draco as he was sitting down.
Draco’s ink bottle was upset and his shoulder hurt, and Potter glared at him in an unacceptably righteous and aggrieved manner.
“No problem,” Draco said icily. “I’m just a big fan of Whatshisface.”
Unexpectedly, Potter’s mouth twitched. “Cedric Diggory.”
“Sure, him,” Draco said dismissively. “Big fan. I just know he’s going to win the Tournament!”
“Probably,” Potter muttered.
That single word jarred so much with everything Draco knew about Potter that Draco put his book down and stared openly. Potter looked intently at his book, which was clearly nothing but a foolish pretence, but after a moment Draco decided to let it be. He had no idea what to do with it, so he lifted his book back up to his face, still watching Potter warily in case he exploded, and then relaxing when he was safely behind his book once more.
Draco realised that the entire Potter issue had gotten out of hand when library started overlapping into life, as on the occasion of Anthony’s glorious surprise party.
He and Terry had been utterly silent on the subject of Anthony’s birthday this year, leaving Anthony wandering about crestfallen. Stupid Corner had hammed it up ridiculously but fortunately Anthony hadn’t suspected, and Kevin Entwistle had been creepily, disturbingly quiet like he always was.
Everything went exactly to plan. Anthony slouched dispiritedly down the steps to the common room, everyone held position, and as soon as his feet hit the last step they released the strange air-filled balloons.
“Happy Muggle birthday!”
“What? Ahh! What?” said Anthony. “Mother doesn’t like me to be subjected to shocks like this. What have you done?”
“We know you miss your mum and the Muggle world,” Mandy said, giving him a hug. “So we brought the Muggle world to you. See, we’re all dressed up, and look at all the Muggle things Terry’s dad got us!”
“The cake was baked in an oven,” Draco announced with satisfaction, from his place against the sofa back. “I watched the house elves do it myself.”
Anthony looked touched and delighted, as well he should, by all their wonderful gifts. Not least of which included Mandy wearing jeans, a teakettle with a real plug attached, a picture that stayed still no matter how long you watched it, and a T-shirt Terry’s dad had had specially made with ‘EXCUSED FROM LIFE’ on it.
The party was in full swing and Draco was wearing Anthony’s amulet when Hermione skipped in and Potter shambled in after her. He was invading Draco’s turf now, it was too much!
“What is he doing here?” he hissed at Hermione, who only smiled and gave him a hug.
“I wanted to give Anthony his present,” she said, as if that explained Potter’s invasion of Draco’s sanctuary. “Hi. You look funny in jeans.”
“Funny debonair?” Draco asked, waggling his eyebrows.
She laughed and behind her, Potter dared to snort. Draco hadn’t been addressing him, actually. He’d know when Draco was addressing him from Draco’s sneer of hatred.
Hermione, false friend that she was, abandoned Draco and left him lumbered with Potter, who was looking around with an air of vague alarm, as if he totally failed to recognise the people he’d been going to class with for four years. He was also giving Draco strange sidelong glances.
“You’re asthmatic?” he said after a moment, gesturing to the amulet.
“Don’t call me names when you’re in my common room, Potter.”
At that point Anthony, bless his heart, saw Draco’s predicament and came to rescue him. Which was lucky, since Potter’s lips were twitching again, clearly as he thought up another mocking name.
Potter went back to looking vague. “Happy birthday, Alan.”
“What?” said Anthony.
“Unbelievable,” said Draco.
“Hi, Harry,” said Cho, who was too nice for her own good.
Potter crushed birthday cake against his chest, the clumsy fool, and Draco took umbrage at seeing him spoil the cake that Draco had personally supervised.
He also took umbrage at the way Potter looked at him when Draco sang ‘Happy Weird Muggle Birthday To You’ to Anthony, puzzled and a little cross, as if Draco were—jigsaw pieces that had stuck together, or something. He wasn’t, and he took offence.
He blew energetically into the amulet as he’d seen Anthony doing, and wished for the air demon to come and suffocate Potter to death, but nothing happened except for Potter calling Mandy Melanie, and generally acting like a huge dolt. Which was normal enough that Draco let it be normal, and did his Flitwick impression when Cho asked. He wasn’t letting the side down, or anything. He still had his Potter Stinks badge on his funny Muggle shirt.
That was the last day Potter had anything to do with Draco’s normal life, anyway. He fought a dragon like a big stupid show-off and Weasley was apparently so overcome by Potter’s manly, dragon-defeating ways that all was forgiven. Which meant the library almost-truce of dire necessity was off. Over and done with.
Draco said he wasn’t wearing any SPEW badges unless Hermione wore his Potter Stinks badges, and proceeded to corner a reporter and feed her a story about Potter’s tragic, hopeless love for Hermione. Potter’d had his chance on the bloody train in first year, and he’d made it clear exactly what he thought of Draco then.
With the scourge of Potter removed from his studies, it had obviously been foolish of Draco to hope his life would get better.
“Ask a girl to the Yule Ball! I… is it legal to force us to submit ourselves to this kind of humiliation? I don’t even know any girls!”
Hermione put down her quill and gave him an outraged look. Sometimes Draco wished she had a better sense of humour, particularly at times when it would have saved him from being eviscerated with the sharp edge of her tongue.
“Any girls who aren’t taken,” he said much more quietly, and slyly flicked his eyes to where Viktor Krum was lurking about, pretending he could read.
He had been doing this for a while. On the whole, Draco approved. Krum was rich and famous and a pureblood, which was precisely what Hermione deserved and meant if they had babies they’d be practically pureblood and genius athletes. Though if Krum tried anything fast with a youthful, innocent lady Draco had a plan of dire vengeance just waiting to unfold into Krum’s world of pain.
Meanwhile, Draco was trying to work out some way to get the attention of that Slytherin girl, Pansy Parkinson, some way which didn’t involve throwing things at her. He liked the sneer on that one.
“I’m not taken,” Hermione mumbled, and rubbed her wrists as if they were sore from writing and holding heavy books. Draco looked at her sharply, because he knew Hermione had arcane powers and her wrists were never sore from writing and holding heavy books, and Hermione blushed. “I just thought I’d wait a bit longer,” she said, her voice sinking further. “In case Ron’s getting ready to ask me.”
“WEASLEY?” Draco shouted at the top of his voice, and was promptly thrown out of the library. He saw Pansy Parkinson sniggering at him and crossed her off his list: unfortunately, this left him with a list of nobody.
“I am embarrassed even to know you,” Hermione told him sternly as they went down the corridor trying to manage armfuls of books.
“Weasley?” Draco asked. “Hermione, Hermione, I thought better of you than this! Potter was the one I was afraid of, at least he’s better-looking and has some money, but Weasley?”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Hermione told him, and Draco looked at the severe line of her mouth and realised that this was one of the times that Hermione had entirely and irrevocably made up her mind.
Weasley. God in Heaven!
At least the menfolk of Hogwarts were not the only ones writhing in humiliation, however. Hermione’s anxious waiting for Weasley to ask her to the ball suggested this, and Draco eavesdropped on some older Ravenclaw girls to confirm it.
Fortunately Draco sitting alone with a book did not arouse suspicion, since Terry was sitting with Anthony and Corner trying to console them over their terrible ordeal asking out Fleur Delacour. They’d both done it at once and she’d made them cry: on the whole, Draco liked her a lot.
“Bloody Beauxbatons lot,” Marietta Edgecombe sighed, toasting her slippers by the fire. “French hussies everywhere, ensnaring all the decent Ravenclaw boys. I can’t believe they sit with us, it’s like Dumbledore is deliberately trying to ruin our Yule Ball. I can’t believe we’re going to have to go looking for boys outside our house.”
“Fleur is awfully popular,” Cho said, hugging her knees. Her face was just peeping up from a red woollen comforter, dark hair shining against the material. Draco liked the effect: she looked cute as a button.
“Ha, like you have to worry about going looking,” Marietta laughed. “Cedric’s been asking to, ah-ha, talk to you about Quidditch, for days.”
The dusky red flush in Cho’s cheeks matched her comforter. “He’s nice-looking,” she allowed in a shy sort of way.
“And then of course Harry Potter’s been mooning over you all year,” Marietta went on. “Spoiled for choice if you want Triwizard Champions, really.”
“I don’t, of course I don’t!” Cho exclaimed. “They both seem really sweet, and—well, obviously I’m flattered, but it would be nice to go with someone I actually know.”
Marietta murmured agreement and both girls stared into the fire and looked depressed at the thought of French hussies.
Cho smiled a tiny bit. “Of course, I could get to know Cedric.”
“Not Harry?” Marietta asked. “Well, Cedric is better-looking.”
“I didn’t say not Harry,” Cho said. “Only I know Cedric a little more, and besides, Draco hates him, he’d be awful about it for days.”
“Ohhh, awfully worried about what Draco Malfoy thinks of you, aren’t you?” Marietta murmured in a lower voice.
Draco leaned in to catch the last bit, and the movement caught Cho’s eye. She went bright red. “Shut up he’s right behind you,” she whispered, sounding horrified, and then Marietta and Cho burst into that indecipherable girlish rush of whispers and giggles which no man could hope to make sense of.
Draco had heard enough, anyway. He unleashed the full force of his outrage on the boys’ dormitory.
“So not content with taking our dignity, not content with taking our land, Harry Potter is now trying to take our women!”
“What land?” asked Terry.
“What dignity?” asked Anthony, grinning at him.
“Would you all please focus?” Draco demanded. “Cho Chang—our Cho—is being hunted down by that ruthless predator, Potter! Oh, he thinks he can just have everything he wants, doesn’t he? The nerve of him! A Ravenclaw—I honestly don’t think he can read, I really don’t. This makes me terribly, terribly angry.”
“We’re getting that,” Corner said, rolling his eyes in that stupid Corner way he had. “Why don’t you just ask Cho yourself? She’s pretty fit.”
“And Cho, bless her heart, she’s too soft-hearted to see that Potter is a—what did you say?” Draco stared at him. Then he slid his glasses down his nose to give him the Look, and when Corner did not flinch he pushed his glasses back up and studied him again. “Hmm,” he said. “Interesting idea.”
“I think it’s a stupid idea,” Terry spoke up sharply.
Draco deflated at speed. “You’re right. What was I thinking, she’s really attractive and she’s older and all the precious Triwizard champions are after her, just another thing Potter can have that we less favoured mortals—”
“Shut up!” Terry very nearly yelled, and Draco stood stricken.
Terry looked peculiar and Draco thought he might be angry, which was weird and wrong. With anyone else Draco would have attacked as the best form of defence, but he felt sort of frozen in disbelief. This was the way their dorm worked: Kevin Entwistle was creepily quiet, Corner was a swaggering pretty boy, Anthony forbade everyone to do everything and Terry, no matter what the circumstances, was never, ever angry with Draco.
“That’s not what I meant,” Terry said quietly after a minute, and Draco relaxed. “Cho likes you: most people do, you—with the impressions and everything, you make people laugh. Everyone knows who Draco Malfoy is, and she said she’d rather go with someone she knew. I just didn’t know you fancied her.”
The relief of it all made Draco beam at him, instantly mollified. He pictured Cho, flushed by firelight and wrapped in her red comforter, and then he pictured Potter’s face when he saw that Draco had what he wanted.
His wooing campaign started the next day. His plan of action involved abandoning the library for the common room, which would also give Krum time alone with Hermione to wean her off unfortunate Weasley notions. After all, Draco had to use the advantage of being in the same house for all it was worth, since Digby was far too good-looking and Potter was far too famous.
He sat beside Cho around the table, looking at her squinting at her Arithmancy homework, her nose scrunched up in distress.
“I’ll do your homework for you,” he offered.
Cho looked scandalised. “Draco, no you won’t!” Draco had a moment to fully appreciate how terrible he was at this whole girls lark, and how much he wished he’d been Sorted into Slytherin and made more cunning, when Cho raised an eyebrow. “I can’t believe you said that,” she went on, shaking her head. “Have you no shame?”
Draco noted that she was smiling just a tiny bit, showing a dimple, and he smiled quickly back. “Not much.”
Cho smiled some more and Draco felt warmed by it, and even more warmed when she said thoughtfully: “If you wanted… you could help me with it. You’re really smart, aren’t you?”
Draco slid his glasses down his nose, looked at her, and then smiled instead of sneering. He was rather self-consciously hoping that it was sexy.
He looked at Cho smiling back at him and said: “I’m brilliant.”
The next day, he carried her books to class. About halfway through the day, he ordered a first year to carry them instead, but Cho got that half-amused, half-scandalised look again and Draco decided to keep doing it himself.
At dinner a very good-looking bloke from the Hufflepuff table was glaring at him. Draco glared back.
“So there he is,” he said. “My rival, Cedric Digby.”
“His name is Diggory, Draco,” Terry said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve got his name on your badge. Read your badge.”
As far as Draco was concerned, his badge said Potter Stinks and that was all that mattered. That, and the fact Cho had heard him calling Cedric his rival, and smiled about it a bit.
Since he was getting into this wooing thing, he debated writing poetry that compared her to the Triwizard Cup, but the mockery this idea generated was so intense he gave up and sat around sulking about being a tortured and misunderstood artiste.
Then he went downstairs and told Cho that his favourite Quidditch team were the Tutshill Tornados.
She looked up with a smile from her homework. “Really? Me too.”
And then it was easy to slip into the chair beside her and discuss the Tornados’ excellent chance at winning this year, and the dead cert that was them getting into the finals, and Cho threw down her quill and ink went all over her homework.
“You really do like Quidditch,” Cho said, sounding pleased about it.
“I like your voice,” Draco said, and wished the floor would open up and drop him into the Slytherin dungeons where Crabbe and Goyle would shield him from mocking eyes forevermore. Since this didn’t happen, he went on desperately: “It’s—exotic.”
“It’s Scottish,” Cho told him. “Oliver Wood had the exact same accent.”
“Well,” Draco said. “Well… it’s cuter on you.”
Cho smiled and bit her lip to hide it. Draco drummed his fingers on the table and then realised they were now covered with ink, and was extremely vexed.
“D’you need a tissue?”
“Er—no, I am Malfoy of the Black Hand, feared throughout the Spanish main. Look, Cho, d’you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?”
“Yes!” said Cho. “Wait. What?”
“Hogsmeade. There are shops.”
Cho waved this enticement aside. “I—I know that, but—we’re not going to Hogsmeade again until after the Yule Ball.” Cho stopped and looked mortified. “N-not that I’m, that I’m hinting anything—I—oh my God.”
She abruptly put her face in her hands. This conversation was spiralling into madness.
“I want you to go to the Yule Ball with me!” Draco exclaimed.
Cho relaxed considerably. “Oh thank God. I mean, yes. I mean…” She stopped, and lifted her red face from her hands, caught his eye, and then looked away again.
“I wanted to work up to the Yule Ball,” Draco confessed, because she looked uncertain and she had such long eyelashes. “I hear that I’ve got a lot of competition for you and your cute voice.”
“Well,” said Cho, and looked pleased.
After a moment, Draco said thoughtfully: “I’d hold your hand, only mine are an inky ruin.”
“You could go wash them,” Cho offered in a discreet whisper. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”
“Right, then. Mind you are. My people have ways of finding you.”
Draco was smiling and Cho was smiling, and as Draco made his way to the loos he looked back and saw her pick up her ink bottle and start to blot, smiling more broadly now she thought he couldn’t see, and he almost tripped over a chair.
The next days brought more beautiful tidings on the mountains.
“Wangoballwime?” Draco gasped, and had to put his head down on the Ravenclaw table at dinner. “He didn’t. He didn’t say that. It’s too good, I can’t take it.”
Cho hit Draco’s shoulder with her fist. “Stop it. I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Don’t be awful to Harry, please. He looked so embarrassed, and I thought his eyes were going to drop out of his head when I said I was going with you.”
“You told him that?” said Draco. “Right. Come here, beautiful.”
Cho laughed and rather to Draco’s surprise, did not object, so he ended up with his arm around Cho Chang. He wasn’t exactly used to having an armful of pretty dark girl warm against his side, but he felt that he could become used to it quite quickly.
“Promise,” Cho said in his ear, and Draco promised because girls apparently had powers.
His promise in no way precluded him from enacting, with the varied range of Potter expressions he’d thought up (sad, sad, so sad, and crying for his dead mother) all the versions of ‘Wangoballwime?’ he could think of for the boys that night. Eventually they asked him to stop cackling and go to bed.
He continued carrying Cho’s books to her classes. She seemed to like it, and he’d always thought girls would have strange requirements like that.
As he walked her up to her Divinations lesson, talking idly about the Wronski Feint, he planned to kiss her. Oh yes, it would be a glorious and spectacular kiss, possibly on the dance floor at the Yule Ball, surrounded by chandeliers and rustling gowns and punch bowls, it would be fantastic. She would be utterly enraptured.
He gave her her books and an absent smile, still plotting the astonishingly wonderful kiss to be, and Cho moved in and knocked against him.
“Careful, you’ll spill your books,” Draco said.
“Er. Yes. Silly me,” Cho mumbled.
Draco wandered down the spiral stairs happily musing on chandeliers and his shining brilliance, when it occurred to him forcibly that he was the stupidest man who had ever lived. He raced back up the few steps and found Cho still standing there, and when she saw him her dark eyes lit up. He stood in the shadowy stairwell and saw chandeliers already.
“Terribly sorry,” he said. “Please forget the last two minutes of our lives.”
He wanted to add that he was new at this, but he was afraid he was making it excruciatingly clear already, so he stepped onto the step above hers so he could feel tall and manly (instead of the same height as she was, when would the growth spurt come, when?), threaded his fingers through her black hair and brought her mouth to his. Cho’s mouth opened soft under his, warm, as if she was happy to be kissed, and her free hand came up to touch his face. He felt her Quidditch-callused fingertips graze his cheek.
He stepped back, and her dark eyes and wet lips shone in the low light.
“See you later,” he murmured, and was horribly late for Transfigurations. Potter glared at him as he came in and he just smiled, not even wanting to taunt him, feeling his whole body thrumming with satisfaction.
It was like that at the Yule Ball. Cho stood beside him, glowing in the circle of his arm, as they watched the Champions dance, and he didn’t care if other people were in the spotlight. Though he was glad he and Terry had done Hermione’s teeth and hair before the ball.
“She looks really nice,” Cho whispered as Krum and Hermione floated across the floor. Somewhere, Draco thought that he could hear the faint chomping sounds of Weasley eating his heart out. “Don’t you think so?”
“Suppose,” answered Draco, who might be new to this girl thing but was not a born fool. “You look brilliant. I like your hair and I like your nose and I like your eyelashes. Good job, Chang. You should be on the arm of a Champion.”
“I like it here,” Cho said, and leaned against him comfortably.
She lifted her arms and twirled as he turned her, laughing, and they danced well together. Other people, people his father would’ve considered more important, had wanted her, but she’d chosen him. She liked him best.
It was a novel feeling, like the feel of her smooth hair when he tucked it behind her ears, and her laugh when he kissed her on the dance floor, just as he’d planned. He danced with her and he fetched drinks and then he danced some more: she clasped her hands round the back of his neck.
“I like your dress robes,” she said. “You look like a very debonair vicar.”
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to call me debonair,” Draco told her. “And I mean that.”
She put her lips to his ear. “D’you, um. Want to go someplace more private?”
Draco heard later that Potter and Weasley’s dates ran away from them and left them pouting and alone, and that Weasley managed to upset Hermione into the bargain. He heard Anthony got dizzy from all the spinning and vomited on Mandy’s dress, and that Terry and Crabbe and Goyle all bonded over not having dates.
He did not actually see any of this, because he spent the later half of the Yule Ball night alone in his dormitory with Cho Chang. The curtains were drawn and there was blue-tinged light all around, and Cho panted out, “I don’t want to go all the way,” and Draco wanted to ask which way they were supposed to be going, but he had a misty sort of notion and he hoped that he would be able to figure the rest out while convincing her that he’d known all along.
The lots of snogging was excellent, and then Cho removed the top bit of her robes, and Draco froze.
“Er, Draco,” Cho said. “You look a bit… Should I put them away?”
“No!” Draco answered sharply. He was quite, quite sure about that, they were extremely easy on the eyes. He was just a little bit terrified of doing the wrong thing, and it occurred to him that if he did all the girls in Hogwarts would be laughing at him tomorrow.
It occurred to him again that attack was the best form of defence, and he was tempted for a wild instant to tell Cho that these breasts were not up to the usual standard presented to him and he dismissed them with scorn.
Then Cho reached up and clumsily pressed their palms together, interlocking their fingers after a brief fumbling moment, and he saw her lip tremble and remembered she had chosen him. He felt like he could love her for that.
“Draco,” she whispered. “Do you have any idea what to do?”
“Well,” Draco said. “Well—no.”
He paused and then reached out with his free hand, traced her collar bone and let his fingers slide down a golden curve, spilling taut into a cup of black lace. The lace was threaded through with pink ribbon, and the ribbon trembled and the curve of her breast swelled slightly, meeting the hesitant curve of his palm.
He glanced up at her when she sucked in a sharp breath, and smiled.
“But I am a Ravenclaw,” he added. “And I love to learn.”
A little later, she laughed because his hair was tickling her stomach, and he tried to push it back but she reached down and fluffed it up again, and really Draco would have objected if Cho had not been offering up such a wide expanse of golden skin for him. Since she was, she was welcome to take any personal liberties she liked. So his hair feathered against her skin, and his glasses touched the smooth spot just under her belly button—
“Cold,” she said, and then wriggled and laughed a little, which Draco took as encouragement.
She pulled him up to kiss him a significant amount of time later, the material of his robes crumpling and sliding against her damp skin. She had been very pretty in her robes but she was spectacular out of them, and when she pushed at his clothes Draco indulged in the brief prayerful hope that his growth spurt would come right this minute. Or some muscles, perhaps. Or a tan. Anything, really, anything would do, for once he was abandoning his Malfoy right to be choosy.
When she pushed his dress robes off to his waist, Cho didn’t actually seem to care that he was skinny—she loved him for his mind, he thought smugly, Ravenclaw girls were the best ever—and she pressed her hands along his ribs, covered over his shoulder blades as if she was worried he’d be cold, and held them there as he kissed her, carefully, lips pressed dry together because she was not really dressed in his bed but Mother said gentlemen didn’t presume.
Then she arched against him, and he completely and utterly humiliated himself.
He froze, supremely embarrassed and with his dress robes ruined, trying to think of some way to blame her, but she held him closer and said, “I like you, I really like you,” and he kissed her cheek and her neck with enormous gratitude.
It was cold so he drew his blankets over both of them and got a look at her on his white pillows instead of his blue sheets. She wore them both well.
“I wasn’t even sure you fancied me,” she said in a low, pleased way. She liked compliments: Draco thought they were pretty good himself.
“Be sure,” he said, and kissed her again. Their stomachs stuck together a bit and she rolled over on his arm while she was trying to get to sleep, and then it took him ages because her breath was whuffling against his ear. He slept pretty well, all the same.
“I didn’t mean to stay here all night,” she whispered, sitting bolt upright at some indescribably early hour of the morning. “Oh my God, I am so embarrassed!”
Draco tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes. “Don’t be,” he said. “Not like you’re here with Kevin Entwistle.”
“Draco, you’re terrible.” She put a hand up to her mouth to hide her smile. “I. Quick. Where are my robes? I have to go—”
“No, stay,” Draco said dramatically. “I am Malfoy of the Black Hand. Stay and be my captive!”
She laughed again and kissed him with messy, laughing morning breath. Then she escaped despite his protests that he wished to keep her as his ship’s woman, and Draco heard her small horrified sound and poked his head out through the curtains to see that all his housemates had just witnessed the exodus of a crumpled Cho Chang from his bed.
“Well,” Corner said after a pause. “I copped off with Ginny Weasley, anyway.”
“You lucky, lucky bastard. How was she? How was it? Tell me everything,” said Anthony, whose mother would not have approved.
“Do not,” Draco said with hauteur, “talk about my girlfriend that way.” Then he grasped the curtains, lowered his voice and said: “It was fantastic. I am king of everything.”
Draco and Cho did go to Hogsmeade together, though that involved a lot of shopping with her friends. Draco understood that girls liked to congregate together for a good mass giggle, and amused himself by spending money on himself and her, nobly not thinking that if he’d known friends were invited he could have brought his.
Eventually she said goodbye to them, though, and they went to a place called Madam Puddifoot’s that was cramped and over-decorated, but served really, really nice coffee. Draco ordered extra foam and sprinkles and chocolate buttons and a shot of espresso in his, and then said they would like some little pink cakes to be romantic.
Girls liked that kind of thing, he thought, and held Cho’s hand over the table.
“I love this place,” she said, smiling at him, and he leaned forward with extreme care because of the foam, and kissed pink sugar icing off her lips.
“Interesting, raspberry,” he remarked analytically. “Can we kiss lemon next?”
She laughed and they kissed raspberry, lemon and strange blue flavour before they left the shop holding gloved hands.
“I liked the Yule Ball,” Cho told him shyly.
Draco assumed this was a lead-in to talking dirty, which he had been thinking about and making a few notes on, but this was a public street and she’d caught him off guard, so he stood there and wondered if just calling her baby would count.
“I like dancing and lights, and romantic things,” Cho went on, and Draco abruptly stopped rehearsing calling her a naughty, naughty girl in his head. “I wish we had the Yule Ball every year.”
“We can have the Yule Ball any day you like,” Draco told her. “Because I say so. Watch.” He used Cho’s hand to spin her around down the path, humming his favourite Celestina Warbeck song energetically as he did so.
She put her free hand over her mouth. “You’re crazy!”
“No, I’m very spontaneous and romantic,” Draco informed her. He was also on a quest to show her he was the best boyfriend ever, so much better than Potter or Digby would have been.
Also receiving more sexual favours would be nice.
It was also nice that she was laughing and looked interested in nobody and nothing but him, which was the way he decided he liked his women, and even dancing on cold streets was a little fun. Other people were looking—admiring his brilliant girlfriend, no doubt—and Draco swayed her and dipped her and laughed when she shrieked, his hands on her hips and his name on her lips.
They passed Potter, Weasley and Hermione as they went by. Hermione looked touched and Potter looked like he wanted to bite.
Four years, and finally Potter’s opinion seemed unimportant compared to some things.
Draco took off his gloves so he could take Cho’s face in his hands, and she copied him, and they kissed at the end of the street in the freezing cold, with her making a soft sound, moving into his body heat and pushing Quidditch-rough fingers under his shirt.
“You’re like a Firebolt of girlfriends,” Draco told her. “Which is not to imply that you’re fast, not at all,” he added hurriedly.
People living sadder and darker lives than Draco were wandering about prattling about dragon eggs and Krum’s slightly too busy hands and so on, but Draco resolutely did not care, and went a whole week once without insulting anyone.
Naturally, it was Potter who broke what could have turned into an Malfoy record. Draco realised he was getting behind in his revision and went to the library, where there was so much revision to do that he nodded off on his books.
That was quite a normal event, as was Hermione shaking him out of it.
It was not normal for the nodding off and the being shaken out of it to have three hours of precious study time in between them, nor was it normal for Potter to be calmly reading in the chair beside him.
“You should have told me he was asleep, I couldn’t see from the table across,” Hermione scolded.
“He looked tired,” said Potter.
“How long have you people been here?” Draco demanded.
Potter did not answer, but fortunately Hermione was there to tell him the dreadful truth. “Almost three hours.”
“While I’ve been… I kept trying and trying to tell you people that he was mentally disturbed, but would you listen, no,” Draco muttered. “Everyone knows to wake me when I’m asleep, everybody does!”
“You fall asleep in the library often? I think you study too hard.”
“I think that’s probably the first thought about studying you have ever had,” Draco observed, and looked at the blurry bit on his essay that would have to be re-done, and that meant he had drooled while Potter was there to watch him sleep. Oh, vile.
Draco realised he was peering at the notes more closely than he usually had to, and fixed Potter with a steely, accusing glare.
“Did you steal my glasses?”
“No!” said Potter. “They’re right there,” he added, gesturing to the desk.
They were indeed right there, but Potter needn’t think that was getting him off the hook. Draco snatched them up and, vision fully restored, gave Potter a look that demanded explanations.
“I just thought you’d be more comfortable,” Potter said, looking at the table. “Look, I’m just here to find out how to breathe underwater, I didn’t know I was supposed to wake you, I’m not in the library all that often!” His eyes left the table and darted briefly to Draco. “You haven’t been either, lately.”
“You were looking for me?” Draco asked. “How precious.”
Potter knew he’d been with Cho and he was jealous. Ha, he could covet Draco’s girlfriend all he liked, but she would never, never be his!
“I don’t need this,” Potter said crossly, because he had the soul of a grizzly bear. “I preferred you asleep.”
He was so creepy. He’d really get on with Kevin Entwistle.
“Let’s see what you have there,” Draco suggested, on a quest to be as annoying and intrusive as possible so he wouldn’t have to think about the drooling. He whipped a piece of paper out from Potter’s elbow and said: “What you’ll miss the most… Did they take your Firebolt away?”
“I don’t think so,” Potter said, looking very alarmed.
“Could they mean people?”
Potter went pale, and Draco remembered sharply that this was not a crossword puzzle with Terry in the Ravenclaw common room, this was Potter, and the truce was long gone. And he wasn’t something for Potter to condescendingly figure out and judge as unworthy again: he didn’t need Potter or his father’s approval, he had Cho now.
“Wow,” he said brightly. “It’s a real shame you’re in the Tournament, because you’d be totally safe otherwise. Nobody’s going to miss you the most.”
He waited with a sneer in the wings for Potter to tell him that his entire fan club would be diving into lakes for him, and saw Potter’s face go dark and furious.
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” he said, his chair screeching back as he got up and started slamming his books together. “I don’t need you to—I thought you’d only asked Cho to be a bastard, but—”
“I really like her,” Draco snapped.
“I know! I saw you two together at the ball and Hogsmeade and—but you’re still a bastard, Malfoy, and just when people think they can tolerate you, you—”
Draco almost shouted at him. “I don’t want to be tolerated!”
Thrown out of the library, four times in one year.
“You’re a rebel,” Cho told him, huddling with him against the cold as they watched the lake anxiously for developments.
“Mmm, bad to the bone,” Draco said against her ear. “Kind of hoping that excites you—hey, there’s Digby with his dad! He’s first by miles—True Hogwarts champion! Go, Digby!”
“Diggory,” Terry and Cho chorused in unison.
“If you like,” Draco allowed generously.
It was shaping up to be a pretty good year, what with excellent investigative journalists who were beetles and listened to every word Draco chose to make up about Potter, nobody flaunting Quidditch in Draco’s face, and Cho.
Which meant naturally that everything had to go very, very wrong in the most dramatic way possible. They were all sitting in the stands getting very bored watching the fuzzy hedges and eating candied nuts, Marietta was flirting with Terry and having a notable lack of success and Anthony was trying to seduce away Draco’s woman by showing her how to work his amulet.
Then there were sparks and people were saying something about disappearances, and everyone was talking loudly and then in the confusion there Potter was, hunched over and…
“God!” said Cho. “God, no, Cedric…”
She turned and put her cold face against Draco’s and Draco numbly stroked her back and thought: Dead, someone’s actually dead. Cedric Diggory’s dead.
Draco could remember his name now that he was dead.
He still felt numb in the common room, when everyone else was whispering You-Know-Who and Cho turned to him, her face tear-damp in the firelight, and said: “I might’ve gone with him to the Ball… we could’ve… and now he’s…”
“Shhh,” said Draco, “I know,” even though he didn’t at all. He pushed back her ruffled black hair and kissed her as she cried, because she was his and nobody should be allowed to hurt her. She kept crying and the kiss was drowned.
Cho cried again at the Leaving Feast when that old man Dumbledore finally made a decent speech, if you counted the rampant Potter favouritism, and said the Dark Lord had risen. Which his father had always said he wanted, and which would show Potter, but Cedric dying had made Cho cry, and Anthony was being very quiet, and Terry looked sick as well. At the Gryffindor table, Hermione had obviously been crying too.
At the Gryffindor table as well was Potter, looking dreadful, his face white as a bone and his eyes empty. He saw Potter look at Cho and him, as he wiped the tears away from Cho’s cheeks with his thumbs, but then Potter looked away without changing expression. He leaned his forehead against Cho’s and sort of wished the Dark Lord hadn’t bothered.
He felt awful and itchy on the train ride home, waiting to see his father and know what he thought of all this, trying not to think about death—death in his school, in his place, affecting his people—and he thought it might make him feel an enormous amount better to go taunt Potter about all this. Since Potter was supposed to have conquered the Dark Lord, wasn’t he, couldn’t he do anything right?
He couldn’t leave Cho, though. She was upset and she was his responsibility. He wished they could sit with Terry and the others, or maybe go find Crabbe and Goyle, but she wanted to be with her friends. Draco would’ve wanted to be with his friends if he was upset, so he moodily bought himself an obscene amount of chocolate and let Cho take as much as she liked.
When that hussy Marietta tried to nick some as well, he gave her an arctic look over his glasses. There was such a thing as pushing a man too far.
He sat with Cho for the whole train ride, his cheek pressed against her hair, the window a little steamy with their breath and her muffled crying. He was quiet mostly because his terrible brain kept coming up with inappropriate jokes and comments like they’d be all right even if the Dark Lord had risen. He heard Marietta and Padma mention the words ‘his father’ and ‘Death Eater’ when he went out to get more chocolate, but he refrained from tearing a strip off them because Cho would be upset. She was very loyal to her friends, it was one of the things he liked best about her, and besides what else could you expect from a Ravenclaw who was so lost to all propriety that she’d gone to the Ball with Weasley, anyway?
When he positively couldn’t bear it any longer, he went outside the carriage and told a passing first year that she was the least promising Ravenclaw he’d ever seen and he expected she would get a Troll mark in all of her future exams. The cheeky brat told him she was in Gryffindor, as if it was something to be proud of.
He went back in and Cho leaned against his chest, her steady breath against his shirt collar. He kept a firm arm around her while the train jolted to its destination, and when they left the train he was holding her hand.
He saw her parents hurry towards her when they caught sight of her tear-stained face, and he saw the way her parents looked at his father. The Changs were respectable pureblood wizards, and they didn’t seem to want to look at his father’s face, or be able to whisk their daughter away from his father’s son fast enough. He looked after her as she went, pressed against her mother’s side, and raised a hand to wave goodbye, but she didn’t look back.
Then Draco looked at his father.
“Pretty girl,” Father said, and there was an edge to his voice that was trying to be triumph but didn’t quite convince Draco. “At least you’re getting something good from that house, hmm?” He waited for the eager cue Draco would’ve given him once, and when Draco stared at him silently he went on all the same. “Exciting things have been happening, Draco. Lots of opportunities for a smart boy are coming up…”
Draco almost warmed to the flattery, but he had to wonder why it was coming now and never before. He kept looking at his father and kept silent, examining his face as if he were one of Terry’s puzzles.
He found he had nothing to say, apart from the absurd thought he would not permit himself to utter in front of Father, which was, “Your Dark Lord made my girlfriend cry.”
So he adjusted his blue-and-bronze scarf, continued to say nothing, and dragged his chest by himself all the way down the long platform. He followed his father because there seemed to be no other choice.