someday, somehow → d.malfoy [discontinued]

013

as it turned out, artemis had an identical timetable to the girl that had spoken the previous night.

the second of september also happened to be a friday—which meant artemis' first day of schooling at hogwarts was the shortest in what was to be her usual week. the first class time-slot of the day—eight-thirty to nine-thirty—was empty for artemis; so she opted to spend the hour walking around the castle in hopes of gaining a sense of direction. just before a terribly harsh bell echoed around the castle grounds to signal a change of class, she returned to the great hall, where she found blaise zabini looking bored as he scribbled a last few words onto a piece of parchment. he'd told her it was a letter to his mother.

she shared her first class (care of magical creatures with professor hagrid, at nine-thirty) with the other slytherin fourth years, as well as the gryffindors. as the bell went, blaise slipped his school robes overtop the dress pants and shirt he wore, and then walked with artemis to the class. the wet ground squelched repulsively underneath their once-clean dress shoes, and a biting wind snapped the hem of their robes from side to side violently. the care of magical creatures teacher, hagrid, was a giant of a man—at least twice artemis' height, and as wide as one of the crates that he stood beside, merrily bouncing on his heels as he animatedly chatted to the gryffindor students already there.

"eugh!" one of the girls squealed, rocketing away from one of the crates she had just been peering into.

"merlin, what has that oaf gotten in this time?" artemis—and blaise, next to her—slowed shortly as they saw draco approaching them, crabbe and goyle behind him.

"only just hatched," said the teacher (artemis raised her eyebrows as the tone of pride), "so you'll be able to raise 'em yourselves! thought we'd make a bit of a project out of it." he had a horrible sort of accent; difficult to decipher and impossibly rough.

"and why would we want to raise them?" draco piped coldly from beside artemis. "i mean, what do they do? what is the point of them?" it was a valid question, artemis thought. professor hagrid seemed stumped, as he stared into nothing, deep in thought. eventually he settled by not giving a definite answer to the awaiting students.

"that's next lesson, malfoy. you're just feeding 'em today." from behind her, artemis heard pansy scoff slightly. she hadn't noticed her arrive, and gave her an amused grin before turning back to the crates and the professor. "now, you'll want to try 'em on a few different things—i've never had 'em before, not sure what they'll go for—i got ant eggs and frog livers and a bit of grass snake. just try 'em out with a bit of each." feeding these creatures was, for lack of a better description, the most disgusting thing artemis had ever done in her entire life. crawling over one another like overgrown insects, the "blast-ended skrewts" looked gruesome—and they seemed to devour whatever the students threw into their crates. artemis even caught them munching on a used handkerchief that crabbe or goyle (artemis couldn't tell them apart) had chucked in as a joke. draco and pansy had eventually stepped away from the crates and begun watching the class—blatantly laughing at the struggling gryffindors and holding a gossiping conversation about the professor none to quietly.

"ah, some of 'em have got stings," professor hagrid said enthusiastically. artemis removed her hands from their nearness to the crates and took several steps backwards. "i reckon they're the males... the females have got sorta sucker things on their bellies. i think they might be to suck blood." it was all too much—his childish eagerness towards these skrewts, the squelching of fingers in heaps of food, the occasional fiery blast from a skrewt, the disgusted noises of the students. artemis wondered who in their right mind might introduce such a creature to a group of fourteen-year-old teenagers.

"well, i can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive," draco snapped sarcastically. along with the rest of the slytherins, artemis laughed. it was, she thought, an amusing and cleverly placed comment. he continued; "who wouldn't want pets that can burn, sting and bite all at once?" the joking mood was ruined, however, by a snarky comment from a bushy-haired gryffindor.

as she ate lunch, artemis could not forget the feeling of the frog livers she'd thrown to the blast-ended skrewts on her fingers. gingerly, she lifted her cutlery and finished eating. draco seemed to have the same train of thought—he barely touched his food, and looked somewhat disgusted by the end. his plate was left with a half-eaten lamb chop and three whole potatoes on it.