Author: John Sexton Genre: Harry Potter Slash Love your feedback via: sexton1980@yahoo.com.au Please donate, to keep Nifty alive! http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html =============================================== Chapter One – Failure to Communicate
Draco Malfoy stood perfectly still, while one of Madam Malkin's witches poked, prodded and punctured him with her confounded wand, pins and needles. The young pureblood wizard was being fitted, and refitted, with more robes – school robes and dress robes – and casual and formal trousers than he would ever need.
He was feeling restless, but he dared not move a muscle, Father would not approve...
"A Malfoy maintains his dignity in public, even under the most trying of circumstances!" One of his father's favourite aphorisms echoed in his head.
Draco scanned his watch surreptitiously; he had been standing on this bloody stool for nearly two hours now... standing and waiting... waiting patiently, just as Father had instructed, for "The Boy Who Lived" to make his appearance.
Lucius had told Draco that Harry Potter would be arriving for a fitting at one o'clock that afternoon; as a Governor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Father was privy to such information.
So there Draco was, in the back room of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, looking like some shop mannequin, waiting to make Harry Potter's casual acquaintance.
Draco didn't really understand why he was expected to befriend "The Boy Who Lived," especially since he had been forbidden to even utter Potter's name for as long as he could remember.
But, suddenly [with the news that Harry Potter would be attending Hogwarts this year] Draco had been charged with ensuring that he and Potter were on friendly terms before they embarked on the Hogwarts Express, next month.
However, it was now half-past-two and there was still no sign of the most famous boy-wizard who had ever lived. Draco was beginning to fear that Father had been mistaken and Potter was not coming, and that was not good news: Father did not like being wrong. Draco feared that Father would take his frustration out upon him.
Just then Draco heard Madam Malkin from out in the shop.
"Hogwarts, dear? Got the lot here... another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."
Draco started to get excited, it must be Potter, it had to be; but he was quickly disappointed when Malkin led the boy into the back of the shop.
One glance told Draco that this was not Harry Potter: the boy looked like a street urchin. He was wearing glasses that were clearly broken and poorly mended, and his clothes... Muggle clothes, no less!... were tattered and several sizes too big. And, as if that was not enough, the boy was quite obviously in need of a decent feed, and his thick black hair looked like a bird's nest, an abandoned bird's nest!
Draco could not remember ever having seen such a bereft creature before, surely this waif could not be going to Hogwarts. Then again, Draco had heard his father decry the Weasleys often enough.
They were a pure-blood family who were dirt-poor, all red hair and freckles, who bred like rats... and they all went to Hogwarts.
Father had already warned Draco that there would be one of their pack in his year. He sniggered to himself that the Weasleys probably had rats as their familiars.
The boy seemed to have been offended by Draco's smirk at that thought, and he wondered if maybe the boy had thought the snigger had been directed at him. The boy looked at Draco coolly before dropping his head, almost coyly.
Draco allowed his curiosity to win out over his aversion to this pauper standing next to him, and he decided to engage the boy in conversation.
"Hullo," he said, in his most condescending tone, "Hogwarts too?"
The boy replied in little more than a whisper, and Draco decided to put on a show. He prattled on about his parents and wands, and books, and brooms, and his knowledge of all things Hogwarts, ensuring that he remained aloof, all the while flaunting his aristocratic superiority over the boy.
Draco was almost amused that the boy seemed overawed by him, and he wondered if the urchin was actually a pure-blood. To Draco's surprise the brat insisted that he was... a little arrogantly, Draco thought.
The only other time the boy showed any spunk was when Draco insulted the great oaf who seemed to be the waif's chaperone. He bristled at Draco's slur, but Draco didn't really care; he was beginning to tire of the conversation, and was relieved when Malkin led the boy back out to the front of the shop.
"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," Draco simply dismissed the boy with a drawl.
Then Draco immediately began to wonder if Harry Potter was ever going to show up. He tried, once again, to imagine what "The Boy Who Lived" would look like.
Draco's reverie was broken by his mother's sudden appearance. She announced that it was time to return to the Manor. Draco was tired and relieved that the ordeal was over, even if it had been a failure.
As Draco slumped into the plush, dragon-kid-suede seat of the family limousine, he sighed from sheer exhaustion, as they raced through the Muggle traffic, out of Greater London and west across three counties, to the Malfoy estates. "Well, Draco, what did you make of the Potter boy, my dear?" Narcissa Malfoy cooed at her only child, the apple of her eye.
"He did not arrive, Mother. I do hope Father will not be too angry."
"But, Draco, he was seen entering Madam Malkin's by the de Voures. You could hardly have missed him, Darling. According to Elinor de Voures, he was accompanied by that oafish half-breed who haunts the grounds at Hogwarts."
Draco froze in terror; his mother glared at him.
"Draco, what have you done?" She drilled him with her eyes, in a no-nonsense gesture.
"That was Harry Potter?"
Draco tried to hide his emotions, but he was too distraught; for once he had simply exclaimed candidly, a most uncharacteristic lapse in decorum!
Without even waiting for a response, Draco dropped his head into his hands and moaned.
"Oh, no. Please, Merlin, no!"
Father was going to be furious!
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"Look into my eyes, Draco!"
Lucius Malfoy squeezed his son's narrow jaw in a painful grip, and twisted the boy's face up towards his brutal gaze.
"Open your eyes, now, Draco, or by Merlin's Sword—"
The tiny blond paled before his father's fury, but the fading colour barely registered against the boy's distinctive, milk-white complexion. Draco complied with Lucius's order; he opened his eyes and obediently peered into Malfoy Senior's stony, yet hypnotic, stare.
The boy winced in pain as his father raped his conscious mind for the information he desired. Once Lucius was finished, he flung Draco to the floor, where the child remained spreadeagled as he began to cry.
"I'm sorry, Father! I did not mean to... aghh!"
The boy winced at the stinging curse from his father's wand. He tried not to cry out in pain, because he knew that his father saw that as a sign of weakness.
"Father, please... I'm... I did not recognise him, Father!... aaa... aagghh!"
Despite Draco's resolve, he cried out once more, before he decided to try to reason with his father.
"I did not expect him to turn up in rags, looking like some street urchin."
Lucius sneered menacingly at the boy, who cowered beneath his threatening demeanour.
The pain was unbearable, and Draco decided to change tactics: he began to cry out in agony, in the hope that his father would have pity on him.
When that did not work, Draco decided that he should make one more appeal to reason and logic.
"You saw what he looked like, Father. How was I to know? You could have warned me... aaa... aagghh... no, Father, please... nooo! AH-AGGHH!"
Lucius glared at the boy, and Draco realised that he had gone too far, but the damage was done.
"Crucio!" Lucius cried angrily.
Three minutes later, a full three minutes later, Draco's screams could still be heard by the house elves, way down in the kitchens of Malfoy Manor. They cowered in fear, for themselves and for the tiny eleven-year-old at the mercy of the brutal Master of the house.
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Draco sat sulking in the back seat of the Malfoy limousine. In one short month his world had been turned upside-down. The young boy tensed as he reflected on his current predicament. He was in trouble with his father yet again, and all because of Harry Potter.
Draco had put on a last-minute tantrum, just as they were due to leave for London, and now they were running late... if he missed the Hogwarts Express... No! that was too ghastly to even contemplate.
"This really isn't fair, just not fair at all!" Draco consoled himself as they raced through the busy, London, Muggle traffic.
He had been repeatedly punished by his father, quite severely, for his failure at Diagon Alley last month.
Draco sunk back further into his seat; he scowled as he recalled that day, when all his dreams had come crashing at his feet. It had been the last day of July, one month and one day ago... and, since then, Draco had been dreading today.
The once exciting prospect of starting school had died over the last month. Draco did not want to go to Hogwarts any more, and he did not want to face Potter, after their disastrous encounter at Malkin's. He dreaded the thought of trying to befriend Potter, after treating him so badly in Diagon Alley. What if Potter rejected his offer of friendship?
Draco still did not understand why it was so important that he win Harry Potter's trust and confidence. To be sure, Draco knew that his father considered it an imperative... but Potter had been the cause of the Dark Lord's demise, after all.
Father had always forbidden Draco to even mention Potter's name. For as far back as Draco could remember "Harry Potter" had been akin to a curse... and yet, now... now he was to offer the bearer of this accursed name his hand in friendship. It was all very confusing.
Certainly Lucius Malfoy had returned to the side of the Light – publicly, at least – when The Dark Lord had succumbed to the baby Potter. But Draco knew where his father's true sentiments lay, at least as far as Muggles and pure-bloods were concerned.
To say that Draco was perplexed would have been an understatement. Never-the-less, he assumed that this was simply another of Father's ploys: public support for Potter would certainly go a long way towards allaying suspicion of the Malfoys' allegiance to the Dark Lord.
But Lucius had never spelled this out for Draco; he had barely alluded to it... and his father's will was not to be questioned, much less denied. So Potter was to be a friend, and ultimately an ally, and that was that!
The thought of yet another Cruciatus curse threw Draco into a short convulsion, and his entire body shuddered with the echoes of the last time his father had used the Unforgivable on him.
Draco was sure that Father would have cursed him this morning, except that then he would almost certainly have missed the Hogwarts Express.
The tantrum had been the result of Draco's failure to convince his parents that he was too sick to attend school today. He had hoped that, if he had not taken the train today, he could not be blamed for failing to secure Potter's friendship and loyalty.
But that had proven to be a foolish ploy, and his feigned illness soon degenerated into a full-blown temper tantrum, in a last ditched attempt to forestall his inevitable and imminent fate, an encounter with "The Boy Who Lived."
Now, the very thought of missing the train filled Draco with even more fear and loathing; and the prospect of his certain punishment, should that happen, was almost more than he could bear to contemplate.
Draco knew he was in serious trouble when they arrived at platform nine and three quarters; the Hogwarts Express was starting to pull away from the station!
He barely had time to scramble onto the last carriage, as it slowly picked up speed, while his father was forced to chase after him with his trunk and pet owl.
It was a most undignified exhibition, and one for which he was sure his father would make him pay dearly, when he returned to the Manor for the Yuletide break.
To top it off, Draco had no idea where Potter was on the train, and, furthermore, "The Boy Who Lived" had probably already settled into a full carriage, and would, no doubt, be making new friends right at that very moment.
Draco's task was looking more daunting with each passing second.
Eventually Draco summoned the courage to search the train for his quarry. He decided to drag Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle along for show, as he was sure he'd need every asset possible to impress the Potter boy.
Draco's relief, at finally locating Potter, in a near-empty compartment, was immediately dampened by the sight of one ugly-looking redhead in Potter's company. Draco could not believe his luck: of all the people Potter had to hook up with – a Weasley! Surely this was some sort of sick conspiracy to make Draco's life a misery.
Before Draco knew it, Potter had point-blank refused his offer of friendship; then they were insulting each other and threatening to come to blows.
The final ignominy came when Goyle ran screaming from the carriage with Weasley's rat attached to his finger. Well, it had been attached to his finger, until Goyle flung it against the window, just before Draco and Crabbe made a hasty retreat behind him, back to their own compartment.
Draco began the remainder of the train ride north imagining the horrible fate that awaited his arrival back home at the Manor, come Yuletide. He interspersed these waking nightmares with the firm conviction that he was going to hate Hogwarts, and, in particular, one Harry Potter.
A derisive snort broke his rigid scowl only briefly, when he realised that he had been dead right about Weasley's familiar, but not even a bitter smile creased his lips with the thought.
As the Hogwarts Express hurtled towards Scotland, Draco sat petulantly in the corner of his compartment. He worried about the next great hurdle in his encounter with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... the Sorting.
The boy thought of his father's reaction to news of his failure to secure Potter's friendship, and shuddered. He sat back in the carriage, sheltered from the brutality of his dilemma by the hulking frames of Goyle and Crabbe, and was suddenly thankful for their dumb presence.
Draco then proceeded to try to imagine Father's reaction to news that he had not been sorted into Slytherin House. But, that deliberation bore no consideration, whatsoever, and it left little doubt where Potter stood in the scale of things like house loyalty and family honour.
The young blond wizard knew he would be punished for his failure with Potter, more severely than he wanted to contemplate; but not being sorted into Slytherin was too dreadful to permit, even as a remote possibility.
The only intrusion into Draco's solitude was that noisome hag Parkinson. Actually, she wasn't all that bad... not really; just the same, Draco only indulged the girl to placate his mother, who would never forgive him if he insulted Pansy or her family. So Draco nodded and smiled at her, whenever she inflicted herself upon him, which was far too often for his liking, and otherwise reflected upon his immediate predicament.
Despite the fact that he was feeling like shit, Draco resolved to take his destiny into his own hands. He was a Malfoy, for Merlin's sake! ... he thought about that for some considerable time... he could not help but notice, already, that it meant something in this world of Hogwarts.
Draco had already been recognised, by students whose identity he did not know. From what Father had said, the Sorting Hat would not dare to even try to place a Malfoy anywhere but in Slytherin... Lucius Malfoy was on the School's Board of Governors, after all!
Draco realised, there and then, that he was above petty issues like friendship with Potter, he was a Malfoy, and the most important part of being a Malfoy was acting like a Malfoy. He decided to take the next comment that Parkinson made, regardless of how harebrained or girly it was, and use it to exercise his Malfoy air, a persona that would ensure that the Sorting Hat would never doubt for one second that he was Slytherin to the core. He was going to wear his best Slytherin mask, and show the world, and Harry Potter and his freckled friend, that they were of no concern to a Malfoy; both of them were beneath him.
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Hogwarts was an amazing place, even for one so privileged as Draco Malfoy; it was truly awe-inspiring. As expected, Draco was sorted into silver and green. The Sorting Hat barely touched his head before it cried "Slytherin!" He grinned with elation and strode proudly towards the Slytherin table in the Great Hall.
Draco sat between Crabbe and Goyle, who had already been sorted into the house of snakes. He oozed confidence and pride as he gazed around the Slytherin table. The anxiety that had, only moments before, been nagging at his ego was quickly banished. He readily forgot that he had ever doubted he would be sorted into his family's house.
However, despite Draco's resolution on the train, he was still obsessed... No! He was not obsessed, he was curious... that's all... curious... yes, curious about Potter.
Of course Draco would die rather than admit he was stung by Potter's rejection of his offer of friendship. But, regardless of his father's inevitable anger with his failure, Draco's pride had been injured, and he blamed the redhead for it all.
It had been Weasley's scoffing, at his overture to Potter, that had derailed the whole encounter. Draco's angry response still echoed in his own head...
"Think my name's funny, do you?"
That was when it had all fallen apart, and Potter's reaction to Draco's attack on Weasley had been the final blow.
"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks."
It had not been the words, so much as the look on Potter's face, that had crushed Draco. It had been a repetition of his response to Draco's putdown of that great oaf of a gamekeeper, back at Malkin's, the previous month.
"I think he's brilliant," had been Potter's retort, back then.
The big difference was that, earlier today, on the Hogwarts Express, it had been a very public rejection of Draco's hand offered in friendship; it had been a declaration of war.
Draco glared across the Great Hall at Potter, who was still waiting to be sorted. The blond scowled as he stared at the dark-haired boy.
"he really is an arrogant prick," thought Draco.
He comforted himself with the knowledge that he'd made that assessment of Potter, in Diagon Alley, even before he had known that he was the famous Boy Who Lived. And he'd been proven right in the end.
Draco's scowl turned to a vindictive sneer as he realised that Potter was nervous; it was written all over the prat's face. Draco didn't care why Potter was worried, he was just happy to see the git jump when he was summoned to the Sorting Stool by McGonagall.
A buzz of excitement filled the Great Hall at the sound of Potter's name, and whispers could be heard from every corner of the massive chamber.
Draco couldn't be sure, but he could swear that Potter was shaking as he made his way up onto the podium to sit on the stool. Unlike Draco's sorting, the hat actually settled down onto Potter's head, so far down that it covered his eyes.
The whispers from the students, and some of the staff, intensified across all five tables, as the hat seemed to take forever to make a decision. It even looked as if Potter was talking to the hat, his mouth certainly seemed to be moving.
Finally the hall reverberated with the hat's pronouncement, and the Gryffindor table erupted.
With that, Draco's one last hope of avoiding Father's wrath had been dashed. Draco's hatred of Potter was now official, it had just been cemented into centuries of rivalry between their two school houses.
Draco had been secretly clinging to a faint hope that, if Potter had been sorted into Slytherin, they might have been able to patch up their differences. But Gryffindor and Slytherin were bitter enemies and, to make matters worse, Weasley was an absolute certainty to be sorted into Gryffindor: the whole Weasley tribe were as much Gryffindors as Malfoys were Slytherins.
So that was it then: Potter had been destined to be Draco's enemy all along! Draco felt a little relieved, as this reality sank in. Despite his own bitter resentment, he now had an excuse to placate Father, or, at least, to assuage his ire. No Slytherin had ever befriended a Gryffindor, so Draco reasoned that Father could hardly blame him for failing to secure Potter's friendship.
Draco looked up at the staff table, to try to catch Professor Severus Snape's eye; the Potions Master was a friend of Father's, and Draco hoped that Snape would acknowledge him, or at least recognise him.
To Draco's great disappointment, the Head of Slytherin was not looking towards his own house; he was talking to a funny little man in a strange turban. But, even more disturbing for Draco, Snape was looking past the little man, and staring at the Gryffindor table... he was glaring at Harry Potter!
This confused Draco: on the one hand he was annoyed that his new head of house was more interested in Potter than his own Slytherins; on the other hand Draco was pleased to see the look of disgust on Snape's face... distaste for "The Boy Who Lived."
The sound of Weasley's name snapped Draco out of his reverie, and he immediately scowled up at the Sorting Stool, just as the redhead sat down.
To Draco's utter disgust the hat seemed to take even less time to decide on "Gryffindor!" than it had taken to sort him into Slytherin. He curled his lips into a vicious sneer, when Weasley and Potter slapped each other on the back, as Weasley flopped down next to Potter to enjoy the feast.
When Draco looked back up at the staff table, he found Snape looking at him; however, it was not a look of pleasant recognition.
Draco smiled at Father's old friend, but the gesture wasn't reciprocated. The Head of Slytherin's black eyes locked onto Draco's cool silver orbs, and the young wizard felt uncomfortable under Snape's glare. It was clear that Snape was not happy, and Draco could not help but feel that Snape's anger was directed at him.
Snape's eyes darted quickly from Draco, back across the Great Hall, to the Gryffindor table and Harry Potter.
Draco made the connection in an instant, and realised that Snape had shared Father's expectations; furthermore, Snape was aware that Draco had failed to secure Potter's friendship.
Before Draco had time to dwell on this too deeply, the headmaster got to his feet to address the students.
"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"
While most of the students clapped and cheered, Draco shook his head in a meld of disbelief and disgust.
Father had often spoken, in quite derisive terms, of Dumbledore. Draco clearly remembered Lucius saying that the old fool was the worst thing that had ever happened to Hogwarts. The crazy old man's performance had just confirmed that Father was right.
Draco sat back and sulked, only occasionally picking at his food. This year was rapidly descending into a nightmare. Draco was, more than ever, convinced that he was going to hate Hogwarts; he already despised Weasley, Dumbledore and, last but by no means least, Harry Bloody Potter!
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