Memoirs of a Serpent's Son

Memoirs of a Serpent’s Son

--Age 12 – part 2

Halloween

I was hoping that this Halloween would be a good one. I started the day very optimistic. I planned to frighten some unknowing first years with horror stories about the curses on the castle. Then steal some sweets from the more oblivious students. Eat lunch. Then perhaps get in some Potter-taunting if time allowed it and I felt confident enough.

But things just don’t like to go my way anymore do they?

Potter was nowhere to be seen for most of the day. I know, I said he’d only be part of my schedule if I had the time, but come one. I always have the time to bother Potter. I was actually looking forward to messing with him today. It’s Halloween. What wizard doesn’t appreciate this holiday?

But Potter is nowhere. Never where I need him.

I mean want him.

Oh just never mind.

I went to dinner quite displeased, to say the least. My so-called ‘friends’ thought I was mad, looking over at the Gryffindor table every few minutes. I shot them all dirty looks and Pansy immediately came to my defense, telling them all to sod off because I probably had some “devilish prank in the works for those nosy Gryffindors”. That’s what she said.

I gave her a dirty look too but her head was turned.

I left after that. And half the Slytherin table followed me. Bloody sheep. I wasn’t in the mood to be social. I just wanted to get back to my room and lie in bed for a while, perhaps plotting how I could adequately make Potter pay for screwing up my perfectly planned day. But nothing goes the way I want it to, remember?

There was a hold up. A crowd of students was huddled in front of what looked, from my perspective, like a wall. I pushed my way through and got to the forefront, which is when I saw what they were staring at. It was a wall.

But the writing on the wall said “The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware.”

And Filch’s stupid cat was hanging frozen over a pool of water. Potter and his ruddy friends were standing there in front of the scene looking much like my house-elf when I caught him in the hall.

I couldn’t help it. A smile spread quickly across my face. Perhaps this was why Father had me read all those useless books. I had read one or two about Salazar Slytherin and his history with Hogwarts. I’d read about the mythical Chamber of Secrets. My eyes flit from the words, to the cat, to Potter. The look on his face was scared and confused.

I commit that face to memory. I will never forget it.

Then I couldn’t help myself. I said it out loud, for the entire crowd to hear. I told them that the mudbloods would be next. It was true. That’s what the Chamber of Secrets was for.

Pity that Potter didn’t think too long on that. He’s not as quick as people think he is.

Dumbledore came along after that and sent us all off, but kept Potter and his precious friends. They always get to stay with him. Always.

I hate how Weasel and the mudblood can be so close to him all the time. It’s as though they are all attached at the hip. It totally ruined what should have been a victorious moment.

Again, Potter kills everything.

I can’t let him get away with this…

******

Quidditch match –Gryffindor vs. Slytherin

I have no way of explaining what I feel right now. There are no words yet devised for the emotions I am feeling. None. The only thing I can do is recount the day’s events as clearly and accurately as I can and then, maybe, something will come to me.

It was my first match against Potter and his Golden Gryffindor Team. My first chance to prove to the entire school that Potter is not perfect; that I am and always was a better Quidditch player than he will ever be. It was my first chance to face off with him in the air since last year.

But the match was not right. There was something wrong.

We got into the air and played. Slytherin moved so much faster than the Gryffindors did. It was beautiful, really. All these green, silver and black images soaring around the pitch, leaving the Gryffindor players in a dizzy state of shock. They couldn’t follow us. Not even for a moment. I didn’t have much to do until I saw the Snitch so I watched from further above the game –which I have to say is the best way to watch a Quidditch match –along with Potter.

But Potter kept diving and zooming around. Once or twice it looked like he was trying to evade a bludger, but otherwise I couldn’t tell what had him in such a panic. I mimicked him once or twice just to see if he had seen the snitch but there was nothing. I laughed at him and made some comment about his scar or something. I can’t remember that well. It’s all a blur right now.

Then I realized that he was being followed by a rogue bludger. The reason I hadn’t noticed it before was that the Weasel twins were trying to protect him from it and kept beating it away. I sat frozen in my spot for a few minutes, staring at Potter and he flew his fastest in zigzags and feinting every so often to throw it off his track.

I could hear roars from the stands for a few minutes and comments about the standings of the match, before everything went quiet and all I could hear was my own heartbeat. I strained my ears against it, hoping to hear the snitch instead, but my eyes were trained on Potter. I couldn’t look away. It was both sickening and amusing all in one.

He got hit by the bludger. Hard. His arm whipped around and lolled strangely, as though it was broken. I opened my mouth to say something, but my head couldn’t decide whether I was going to taunt him or to ask him if he was alright. I frowned at myself. Why should I care if Potter is ok? I don’t, is the point. He hates me, I hate him. It’s our agreement. Silent agreement. I shut my mouth. Then he was flying at me. Straight at me.

He was flying straight for me and I was frozen, staring in confusion, unaware of what he was doing. And then he flew right past me. He flew past and caught something in his other hand.

He’d caught the snitch because it was hovering at my ear and I hadn’t heard it. I hadn’t heard it because I was too busy listening to my own heartbeat.

I’d lost the match because I was too busy watching Potter dance with the bludger.

My father scolded me after that. He punished me too. Again, I don’t want to go into the punishment. Malfoys don’t talk negatively about their kin. I have to keep reminding myself of that after every time…

I have to get back at Potter for that. I have to.

Flint tried to say something to me after the game but I hexed him. I hexed him and told him that he’d better learn when to keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay Captain. The rest of my teammates sided with me and Flint just silently agreed.

I almost felt bad for hexing him. He really didn’t deserve it. But there’s no time for worrying about that.

I have to get back at Potter and that’s going to require planning…. Or at least sleep.
*****

This is not turning out to be my year. I remember having said something about this year being better for me. I lied. Or at least, I should have held my tongue. Or quill. Whatever. Point is: this is not my year.

Potions’ class is usually my favourite because Snape favours me so blatantly that I get to sit back and snicker while he picks on Potter. It’s usually rather relaxing and quite satisfying on my end. But not today.

We were brewing Swelling Solutions and mine was going quite well. No surprise there, I am the best student in that class. Apart from the mudblood but I’ve decided she doesn’t qualify as a student anymore, being a mudblood and all.

Then something quite unexpected happened. Someone –not that I have much doubt as to who this someone was –threw a firecracker into Goyle’s potion. Needless to say, it exploded. It exploded and I got a face-full of Swelling Solution. My nose started to swell up immediately because –somehow –Goyle’s potion was being properly brewed for once.

MY NOSE. My nose and my FACE.

HONESTLY that’s just LOW. Why would you ruin something so perfect?? My looks are half of my charm!! It’s just a CRIME against BEAUTY to deface something as magnificent as a Malfoy. It’s punishable by death!! At least it should be.

Luckily, Snape is always prepared and administered Deflating Draught right afterwards so the swelling has gone down. I still think I look different though. Pansy has been so keen to assure me that I look as handsome as ever. I gave her one of my best fake smiles for that. She practically melted in her robes, right there in front of me.

Potter seemed to look rather pleased with himself though. He’s not as good at pretending as he thinks he is. His expression betrays him too often. I should know; I’m a master of pretending. I can see right through his feigned innocence.

He can get away with making a fool of me in front of the school, but I CANNOT let him get away with threatening permanent damage to my FACE.

Just wait.

*****
Dueling Club

More attacks, and all, throughout the school so Dumbledore thought it would be a good idea for Lockhart, our oh-so-talented Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, to start a Dueling club to teach students how to properly defend themselves.

Yeah, that’s a great plan. Put the most useless wizard I’ve ever met, next to Longbottom, in charge of Student Safety. Great work, old man.

Nevertheless, I showed up. Snape turned out to be his ‘helper’. I’d prefer learning defense from Snape any day; he’s clearly a much more powerful wizard than that bumbling blonde buffoon.

He faced off with Snape first, to show us all the traditional form of Duels and Snape knocked him off his feet before he could even get a proper hold on his wand. Thankfully, the entire room cheered him. Well at least all the boys present. It was the first time I think I’d ever seen Potter cheer for Snape. He was standing across the room with his friends and the mudblood was agonizing over whether or not Lockhart was ok or not. Foolish girl.

Anyway, we got paired up afterwards to work in pairs. Snape happily paired me with Potter, though I don’t know why. I didn’t mind though. It gave me a chance to legitimately knock him off his feet and wipe that precious smirk off his scarred face.

We had it out, hexing and jinxing one another while the rest of the students started to watch. I have to admit, it was exhilarating. I hit him first. I jinxed him and watched him suffer from it. It was almost as satisfying as throwing him to the ground with my bare hands would have been. Though maybe not...

He hit me back and so it went on until they stopped us. We really had it out and it honestly released a lot of my frustration. My eyes were sparkling, Pansy told me later. She said it was the most exciting thing she’d seen: me hexing Potter the way I had. I figured she was just laying flattery on me because it’s what she did best : suck up. But I didn’t mind.

The two professors had us both practice our ‘disarming’ charms in front of the class and standing on the stage –or whatever you want to call it. I can still feel the tingling feeling running through my limbs. Our eyes locked and neither looked away, not even for a moment. The hardest part was bowing to him. We both had to nod our heads in respect, and I bet it took him every ounce of determination to nod his head to me. I didn’t let him out of my sight though. I’m emphasizing this because of how intense the moment was. As though nothing else mattered and only one of us would make it out of that Duel.

Snape whispered to me what to do and I cast my spell before Lockhart had finished the countdown. I cast a snake.

Then the weirdest thing happened and I could not say that I would ever have expected it.

The snake slithered and turned to face some Hufflepuff kid named Justin. It was not what I wanted it to do, but I didn’t really have control over it I suppose. It looked like it was going to attack him and then Potter stepped up. There was a strange look in his eyes and he, very calmly, started speaking to the snake.

But he wasn’t speaking any words that normal wizards could understand. He was speaking Parseltongue.

Harry Bloody Potter is a Parselmouth and no one bothered to tell me.

I don’t know what he said, but the words stuck in me. It’s like they infiltrated my body and glued themselves to every fiber of my soul. I have this secret yearning to hear him do it again, but I don’t know why, and I won’t admit it if anyone asks. What bothers me more though, is not that Potter was trying to stop the snake –which everyone else misinterpreted to mean he was egging it on, the idiots –or that he can speak Parseltongue, but that there was only one other recorded incidence of this in history as far as I know.

Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth too.

******

Justin got attacked. As did the resident Gryffindor Ghost. That kind of amuses me because you’d think a ghost couldn’t be petrified, but apparently I was wrong.

Father told me little about the Chamber of Secrets and who has opened it. He said it was not my concern but to keep my head down. Pity. I don’t ever walk but with my head held high. He should know that.

In any case, I’ve been trying to figure out who it is. I desperately want to know. But the whole school is under this false impression that I cannot shake out of them and that aggravates me more than anything else likely could.

They all think that it’s Potter.

How is that logical??

Saint Potter cannot be the heir of Slytherin. There’s no way. He loves mudbloods too much. Just look at the likes of people he consorts with. Weasel and the mudblood. He’s a Gryffindor too, and no Gryffindor can be Slytherin’s heir. Never. No self-respecting Slytherin would allow it, and Potter doesn’t even like Slytherin.

He’s not the heir, and I know that. I know it for a fact. I can’t explain why but any person that rejects me, in their right and sane mind, cannot be the heir of Slytherin. The Malfoys have been in Slytherin since forever and no Slytherin disrespects that. Not ever.

Our family has been tied, in the past, to the Slytherin line and there is no way that Father would not know if it was Potter. No way he wouldn’t tell me either. Not a chance.

I just can’t believe the whole school can be populated by such fools.

Crabbe and Goyle keep asking me about it too. It’s as though they think that I’m withholding information from them, or am some all-knowing being or something. Which is nice in itself, because they’ll believe anything I tell them, but it annoys me to no end when they continuously question me about what information I have and make me feel like an idiot when I have nothing to tell them.

Thankfully they don’t remember anything past Tuesday, so if I ever make a mistake, they forget it quickly enough to wipe my record of it.

But I need to find some kind of proof that Potter isn’t the heir. Perhaps if Granger gets petrified or killed, they’ll know it couldn’t be him.

Yes…. I hope she gets hit next so that the school will become aware of what fools they are.

-----IIIII-----

A/N: I had fun with this one, though I’m trying to keep Draco’s reactions to Harry still mainly suggestive and discreet, because of his age and all. He will indeed come to a proper realization later soon enough, but for now he remains pleasantly in denial. Thanks to CiraArana for the suggestion about sexual maturity! That’s what I was thinking too, so I think that’s what I’ll go with ^^ I hope you enjoyed this! More to come soon! Reviews are love!

Next chapter we'll see the beginnings of Draco's unraveling hahaha if you can call it that just now X_X