Its the red hair, Ginny remembered Draco telling her at Harrys birthday party, I can?t resist it.
Vaguely, Ginny heard Hermione say defensively, 'Well, so, maybe hes hiding how unhappy he is.'
Ron ignored her, and gently tugged at Ginnys sleeve. 'Don?t look over there,' he said. 'It?ll just upset you.'
'I?m not upset.' She dragged her eyes away from Draco and grabbed up her fork. 'I?m fine.' She jabbed the fork blindly at the plate in front of her, hardly able to see anything.
'Maybe thats why he got like that in Potions class,' Hermione added.
'No.' Harry put his fork down. 'I don?t think that was it.'
At the mention of Potions, Ginny glanced instinctively over at the staff table, but Snape was not there. Neither was Dumbledore. Her eyes fell instead on her brother Charlie, who was engaged in a lively conversation with Professor Lupin, using his fork to punctuate his remarks. The sight of Charlie made her smile. She had been thrilled that he had accepted the job as Care of Magical Creatures professor. As if he sensed her eyes on him, he looked up and waved.
'Are you eating off my plate, Ginny?' said a voice on her left. It was Neville. Ginny looked down and realized that she had, in fact, been jabbing her fork into Neville? roast turkey, and not her own.
'Oh dear — I?m so sorry — ' she spluttered.
'If you wanted some, you could have just asked,' said Neville, looking aggrieved.
'Not upset, eh?' said Ron into her ear.
Ginny let her fork fall. 'Don?t we have practice now?' she said hopefully, in Harrys direction, too embarrassed to look at Neville, and suspecting, irrationally, that somehow Draco was watching her from across the room.
Harry looked over at her and smiled. 'Yeah, we do,' he said, and Ginny got to her feet, grabbing up her broom, thankful for any excuse to get away. 'I?ll see you all down there,' she said, and fled.
Harry, Ron and Hermione trooped down to where the rest of the team waited at the entrance to the Quidditch pitch. Seamus, who had been made a Chaser just that year, was already there, standing next to Ginny and the third Chaser, Elizabeth Thomas, Deans younger sister. A little ways away stood the Creevey brothers, who, Hermione suspected, had been made Beaters primarily because they were brothers, and there was a certain superstition regarding the luckiness of having siblings team up as Beaters. They greeted Harry and the others with a cheerful waving of broomsticks.
Hermione dropped back towards the stands, content to watch, her copy of Quidditch Through the Ages on hand in case Harry needed it for reference material. Not that he ever did. He had been nervous about being made team captain, but he needn?t have been; he turned out to be as good at strategizing as he was at flying. Hermione suspected he kept an elaborate mental map of the Quidditch field in his head and referred to it at will.
'All right,' he was saying now, consulting some notes he had scribbled on a bit of parchment, 'I think this time we should work on coordinating better, and telegraphing our moves less. Seamus, you need to be quicker on the turns. Elizabeth, I?ve got an idea — '
'Actually, I?ve got an idea,' interrupted a drawling voice. 'Why don?t you all just bugger off, since you?ve got no business being here in the first place?'
It was Draco, of course, in green Quidditch robes, surrounded by the rest of his team. He was flanked by his Chasers: Blaise Zabini, Malcolm Baddock, and Graham Pritchard. Behind him, looking menacing, were the Beaters: Tess Hammond and Milicent Bulstrode, the largest and ugliest girls in school. Bringing up the rear was Dex Flint, a sharp-faced but handsome fifth-year who played as Keeper.
Draco reached out a lazy hand, took the parchment out of Harrys grip, looked at it with mild disinterest, and let it drop into the snow. ' We have the Quidditch pitch booked for practice right now,' he said, in a voice like syrup poured over broken glass. 'I know you Gryffindors aren?t the brightest lot, but I did at least think you could tell time properly.'
Harry didn?t change expression. 'We signed up for this practice last week,' he said flatly. 'Go and check the book.'
'Yes, I saw that,' said Draco, lazily twirling his broomstick. If he?d had a moustache, Hermione was sure he would have twirled that too. 'When Charlie handed me the book. See, Madam Hooch never would have trusted me to write in it myself, but your Weasley friend, well he just hasn?t been around that long, he doesn?t know. He didn?t even notice when I wrote right over your name. You know, you?ve got a very girly signature, Potter. You should work on that.'
'You dishonest creep,' said Elizabeth, her two pigtails trembling with rage.
'I?m a Slytherin,' said Draco, giving her a smile that would have melted solid steel, although it didn?t have much effect on Elizabeth. 'Its in the job description.'
'This trick won?t work more than once, Malfoy,' said Harry, his green eyes narrowed. 'Charlie won?t trust you again.'
'It only needs to work once.' Draco shook his head. 'Sometimes I wonder about you, Potter. Where were you when they were handing out brains?'
'I don?t know,' said Harry, his voice dripping acid. 'I?m afraid I accidentally got in line for 'shred of moral decencyinstead.'
'It must have been quite a long line,' said Draco. 'Apparently you were also too late for 'good looks?, 'fashion sense?, and 'witty repartee.?'
Ron started forward. Harry hauled him back by the collar of his robes. 'I think you?ve been spending too much time in that dungeon, Malfoy,' Ron spat, struggling to get free of Harrys grip. 'The lack of natural light must have rotted your brain.'
'Oh, right, because you lot live in a tower,' said Draco, his voice filled with heavy sarcasm. 'A great, big, pointy, thrusting tower. Just the right place for little boys who maybe feel a little….inadequate?
Overcompensating, are we?'
Harry hit him. Draco staggered rather theatrically back into the arms of his teammates, then straightened up and started for Harry, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he went.
Hermione closed her book and sighed, bored and irritated. Oh for goodnesssake, she thought. Not this again.
The door to Dumbledores office was closed. Charlie sighed. He had rushed over from lunch in an attempt to catch the Headmaster, but it appeared he had wasted his time. He had been trying to get to Dumbledore for several days in hopes of getting the Headmaster to agree to his suggestion that a small group of students, with parental permission of course, be allowed to study dragons. After all, Charlie thought irritably, what was the point of hiring someone with a specialty in dragons as a teacher if you weren?t going to let him teach anything about dragons?
'Dragons are vicious,' Snape had said at the last staff meeting. 'They are capricious. They like to set things on fire.'
'But thats what so great about them,' Charlie had replied cheerfully.
'I see nothing 'greatabout students being set on fire,' McGonagall had said in a freezing tone.
'That would depend on the student,' interjected Professor Sinistra, who taught Astronomy. Charlie privately rather thought that Professor Sinistra fancied him. She kept sidling up to him in corridors and admiring his dragonhide trousers.
Lupin had been on his side in the debate, but it hadn?t helped much.
Eventually McGonagall had agreed to allow Charlie to take the matter to the Headmaster. Which was easier said than done. It was very difficult to know where Dumbledore was going to be, except at mealtimes, when he flatly refused to discuss anything having to do with work.
Charlie was about to gather himself together and leave, when he heard voices emanating from the corridor
