Unlikely Beginnings

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Chapter Five

\"I did not!\" Goyle complained, unusually daring to speak back to Malfoy.
He\'d gotten cuts on his hands for two, because Draco didn\'t want to touch
the aggressive, spiny plants. Never mind the whole five minutes it would
take to heal them as if they were never there to begin with, Draco still
wouldn\'t have placed his pinky finger in stabbing range of the plants.

\"Well, you certainly did something to it, making it all limp and dry like
that,\" Draco said, sounding final, and striding a little faster to get ahead
of the two large boys flanking him. \"Oi, Pussy, wait up!\"

A tall boy in front of him, with short cropped dark hair, but long enough to
look a bit messy, turned and looked a little annoyed at Draco before
stopping at the top of the stairs to wait for Malfoy. \"What, Draco?\" He
asked with a now clearly annoyed tone, and sounding bored. Adrian Pucey was
one of the only few Slytherins in the entire House to take any kind of testy
air with Draco.

\"When\'s the next practice?\" Draco asked. He had a begrudging respect for
Pucey, since he was their House Team captain. They had gathered the team,
sans Draco, and voted on a new captain the year before. Marcus Flint, being
the predecessor, graduated two years ago, and then the team was left captain
less, due to avoidance of the subject.

\"When Hufflepuff is done with the pitch tomorrow after lunch,\" Adrian
answered him. It was surprising to none that Draco was still on the team,
despite him being rather shoddy at Quidditch. No doubt, no one wanto to
upset the malicious silver blond by not automatically lifting him up to
captaincy, but no one wanted to see their team utterly fail under his shitty
tactics, either.

The team avoided the issue like the plague, until they finally had to do
something, feeling collectively leaderless and their old strategies dying
out as the other House Teams caught on to their game. In the meantime,
Adrian had stood in as captain, being the oldest player on the team. He was,
in fact, the oldest student in the entire school. He should have graduated
the year before, but due to one of Draco\'s numerous miscalculations on how
they should play the game, was hurt badly by a Bludger, and had to take his
NEWTs a day later, while still quite delirious from various healing potions.

The result: he had to retake his last year at Hogwarts. This had a large
effect on Pucey, once being an energetic Chaser, and popular student, was
now almost despondent and depressed, choosing to linger at the back of his
crowd. His crowd was Draco\'s crowd, and Draco often mistook him for a
friend. He was glad Draco wouldn\'t take shit from him, knowing full well he
was basically breezing through this entire year, and Malfoy would often ask
him how to do things. In private, of course.

Draco slapped him on the back and grinned, propelling him forward along his
side. \"So, Pussy,\" as his favored nickname for Adrian was making fun of his
last name, \"I\'ve got an idea for our match against Gryffindor.\"

\"What\'s that?\" Adrian asked morosely. What he really wanted was to get the
hell out of this school, and pick up a job, and try and forget his extended
year. And maybe win the House Cup, but that sure as shit stinks wasn\'t going
to happen with one of Draco\'s ideas; he had to give Malfoy credit for
putting thought into it, though.

\"Well, at practice, I was thinking we could switch players around, and see
how that goes.\" Oh, this spiel again. Draco seemed to think he would do well
with his lithe frame as a Beater. The rest of the team had a different idea
for him; he should stay seeker, because he was thin and agile, even if he
was shit.

\"Draco, were you even at the last practice?\" McDougall asked, not recalling
the session himself, but sure that Draco wasn\'t there, because he hadn\'t
been asked once to give him the Bludger bat, \'just to try\'.

\"Er, when was it?\" Draco asked, slightly affronted by the question. He
hadn\'t been to the pitch for quite some time, it seemed. \"Shit...\" he said
more to himself than out loud, but his entourage still heard him.

\"What?\" asked Goyle, who had stopped rubbing his hands, finding it made them
worse, but still treating them gently. Theodore Nott looked at him
questioningly, and Goyle lifted his hands into the light of the torch in a
sconce before the tapestry to their common room. Nott grimaced.

\"Nothing,\" Draco replied swiftly. \"I just forgot...\" He trailed off, a
slight crease to his brow. They\'d reached the Slytherin common room in the
dungeons, and Adrian was the first to the door, but even he was curious as
to what had made Draco pause, thinking.

\"Adrian, open the damn door!\" Pansy shrieked from the back of the crowd,
having received a few lewd glances at her chest. Attention was drawn from
Draco as the tapestry rolled itself up upon the requested password the snake
embroidered on it hissed out for, and they began to file into the room.

Draco stepped over the lowest brick of the wall that always stayed there,
and made his way silently down the steps, still trying to think of what he
had been doing. Blaise Zabini had come down the steps shortly behind Draco,
and separated from him to the left of the room, into the boy\'s dorms. He
came back out to find Draco sitting on his usually claimed couch, and sat
down in a chair opposite. \"Alright?\"

Draco looked up and frowned at Blaise before answering. He nodded, still
frowning, but seeming to come out of his thoughts and pulled a side table
into the space between them as Blaise scooted his chair closer. They were
paired for an assignment and had to get started on it.

\"So, where *were* you the other day?\" Blaise asked, laying out their papers.
It was for Arithmancy, which they did with Ravenclaw, so naturally they had
to get started so as not to be up staged by the other house.

\"Actually, youw, Iw, I\'m not quite sure,\" Draco responded. He and Blaise had
known each other before coming to Hogwarts, but had grown apart in their
years there. They still knew each other quite well, but Blaise seemed quiet
around Draco more often than not, and most people didn\'t even know they knew
each other as well as they did. At one point, they even had called each
other best friends.

\"I saw you later that night, and you seemed rather smug about something or
other,\" Blaise said, tossing a quill to Draco. Was it really that night?
Draco thought. It didn\'t seem so long ago, but it did. He hadn\'t actually
given thought to his first excursion with Potter since the second, and it
was only to plan in his mind for a potential third. Oh, and of course to
actually finish the deed.

\"Like I said, I don\'t remember,\" Draco sighed. \"NEWTs and all that,\" he
added distractedly, and he shifted in his chair. He lifted his tongue in
front of his teeth, feeling it around a canine as he watched a group of
first years blur out of focus. He might have guessed a minute had passed
when he heard a snapping sound, before realizing it was right in front of
his face, in the form of Blaise\'s fingers. \"What?\" he snapped, frowning at
the space where the first years had been sitting, and seeing no one there.
Maybe more than a minute?

Blaise looked taken aback by the sharp question when Draco turned to face
him, but looked at him curiously. In all the years he\'d known Draco, he
swore he\'d only seen him stare blankly into thin air a total of four times.
\"Everything going alright?\"

\"Quite. Let\'s finish this assignment, yes?\" Studiously turning his attention
back to their schoolwork, Draco started shuffling papers absently, not
really doing anything productive until Blaise started to read a question out
loud.

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