Draco had been making a particularly difficult strategic decision, and she had gone and fallen asleep.
Typical.
And he had so wanted to see how she would react to his wonderfully innovative move.
Oh well...
He sighed and lay back on his bed. It was starting to get light again, which meant that Madam Pomfrey would be back soon. Draco wondered if she would try to make him put that horrible purple stuff on his face again. He really didn't want to.
"Good morning!" Madam Pomfrey said a few minutes later as she came bustling into the room.
Hoping for the best - which meant no foul-smelling purple stuff - Draco mumbled a good morning and sat up to let Madam Pomfrey examine him.
"Well, I think you're well enough to leave now, Mr. Malfoy," she told him after a minute.
Draco blinked. He hadn't been expecting that.
"Oh," he said.
"Your robes are over there," said Madam Pomfrey, starting to open all the curtains on the many windows. "You may want to hurry, I told Professor McGonagall you would be able to attend your Transfiguration lesson."
"Oh," Draco said again , this time in a slightly less than friendly tone. Trust McGonagall to want him back at school the moment he got out of hospital.
He sighed and picked up his robes, glancing wistfully at the unfinished chess game before pulling the curtain around his bed and getting changed.
When Draco left the hospital wing Granger was still asleep. As he descended the stone steps to the empty Slytherin common room and then to his dormitory, he wondered if they'd ever get to finish the game, so he could prove once and for all that he was better than her.
Ah well. If not at chess, he was sure he would beat her at something else.
He'd have a longer life span, for one thing.
This thought cheered him up considerably, much more than the burnt cake he took out of the parcel he found on his bed. Father must have needed the House Elves for something; they usually sent him better stuff than this. The Quidditch tickets almost made up for it, though; Falmouth Falcons vs. Chudley Cannons, the last day of the Christmas holidays. The Cannons were by far the weakest team in the League, and the Falcons, at least as far as Draco was concerned, the best and strongest. The match would be bloody, it always was where the Falcons were concerned.
Which was precisely why Draco liked them so much.
Also contained in the parcel was a note from his father.
Don't forget.
Draco snorted. As if he would forget something as important as the spell.
He folded and pocketed the note, then picked up his copy of "Quidditch Through the Ages" and headed back to the common room. It was still empty. This suited Draco fine; he got the best armchair - although he usually did anyway - and he didn't yet have to suffer Pansy embarrassing him by hugging him. She always hugged him when he came back from the hospital wing. He had given up telling her not to, even though hugging was a decidedly un-Malfoy thing to do. He had never seen his father hug or be hugged by anyone, and Draco always tried to do things the way his father would. That way his father wouldn't be disappointed in him for being un-Malfoy-like. On the pretty rare occasions when Father was disappointed he did things that were... painful. Especially since Lord Voldemort had returned.
But that was life. Draco's life, anyway.
And apart from that, he quite liked it.
As he had predicted, Pansy hugged him the moment she saw him. He practically had to prise her off his arm so he could ascend to the Great Hall with some dignity. He noted that Granger wasn't there - she was probably still asleep, apart from being confined to the hospital wing - and Potter and Weasley were glaring at him from across the room. Draco smirked back as he sat down, eagerly awaiting the breakfast that was sure to be much better than hospital wing porridge.
"So what happened to Granger?" Pansy asked, eyes lighting up in anticipation of the horrible details.
Draco grinned. "She only went and tried to top herself!"
At that, the whole group erupted in laughter and didn't stop for at least a minute, only interrupted by Pansy's "A pity she didn't succeed!"
"But why did she do it?" Blaise wondered when they had calmed down a little. "She's got everything! Teacher's pet, friends with famous Potter..."
"And don't forget she got to shag Draco!" said Pansy, sounding a bit jealous.
"Stupid Gryffindors," said Millicent.
"Well," Draco said, grinning, "She obviously realized that a quick fumble with me was the best thing that would ever happen to her, so there was really no point in staying alive, right?"
They laughed again.
The lie was funnier than the truth, right? Draco thought.
Well, yes, of course it was. Who wanted to know about Granger's grandmother, anyway? She had undoubtedly been a Muggle and therefore not remotely interesting to Draco or any of his friends.
And as for her mother and her teacher...! Draco shuddered at the thought of his own mother and one of his teachers. It gave him a disturbing mental image. Not that it would ever happen, of course, Father would kill her if she ever did anything like that. Draco was thankful for that small mercy.
However, when Transfiguration started a short while later Draco wished McGonagall were having an affair with Father. Or at least had even a smidgen of respect for him! That way she might not be going on about his non-existent essay right now...
"I was in hospital, Professor!" he told her.
"That is no excuse, Mr. Malfoy. You were well enough to receive visitors and to play chess, I gather. A short essay should have been well within your power."
"But-"
"You will hand in the essay tomorrow, and it will encompass three rolls of parchment instead of the one roll it would have been otherwise."
Draco sighed, exasperated. He had to pick a Beater tonight! Slytherin's first match wasn't until after Christmas, but if Draco wanted them to have a chance he needed to start training, not be stuck writing essays!
It was all very frustrating.
Fortunately the Beater selecting went better than it had last time.
Most of the hopefuls were still hopeless, and Draco honestly thought one of them had died when she fell off her broom, but he finally managed to find a fourth-year named Joshua Fizzlewinch who seemed reasonably competent. Though he did have a bloody stupid name.
However, by the time Draco got back to the common room it was already 10 o'clock and he hadn't even started on the bloody essay yet.
He trudged through the stone corridors to his dormitory, damp broom in hand, and had just sat on his bed to change his shoes when what looked like one of the school owls flew through the half open window and landed in front of him. Curious, Draco knelt down and untied the note from the owl's leg.
It was from Granger.
Malfoy,
do you want to come up and finish our chess game tomorrow?
I've done all my homework and I'm terribly bored.
Hermione
P.S. If you tell anyone I sent you this note I'll put you under Imperio and make you beg Dumbledore to let you transfer into Hufflepuff
Draco grinned.
Well, well, well... That certainly wasn't something he would have expected from a mortal enemy.
Thinking about Granger being bored to tears without him made Draco feel a lot better as he returned to the common room and began to work on his essay. If only McGonagall knew that her star pupil was practically begging to spend time with him! The look on her face would be priceless.
Still, the interruption by Pansy and Blaise in order to do the spell was welcome. The ritual was the same as before: crystal, blood, infirmo. It had to be repeated every thirty-three days, seventeen times in all. At certain times other things would be required; ingredients, a sacrifice, a chant or two, but right now the spell wasn't advanced enough for those things. Then, when the spell was finished, Lord Voldemort would come and blow the castle to smithereens, destroying the "good" side's main stronghold and probably killing a bunch of their strongest fighters in the process.
Draco couldn't wait. He had never seen a really big explosion before, and this one promised to be spectacular.
Draco returned to his essay and wrote for another hour before he felt he had a result that would seem perfect even to McGonagall, and would therefore wash that unnerving smile off her face.
Even Granger wouldn't have done much better, he thought.
And speaking of Granger...
Draco took a spare piece of parchment and scribbled two words on it before tying it to the leg of Mars, his owl.
Granger,
yes.
D.M.