His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 25: Draco dislikes losing (really, Malfoy?)

"How'd you get Snape to let you off?" Malfoy asked in a furious whisper during the next Potions class. Tensions were running high with the Quidditch cup on the line, and Ron was watching Malfoy narrowly.

"How do you think?" Harry whispered back. "By lying."

"It's too bad he can't use potions on students. A bit of veritaserum and you'd be hung up by your heels where you belong, and I wouldn't have to bother beating you at Quidditch."

"In your dreams. Why are you so hung up on cheating, anyway?"

"It's called being cunning, Potter."

"How would you like it if I bribed you with a big bowl of clotted cream to throw the match?"

If Draco'd been in his cat form, his whiskers would have twitched.

"I can get my own cream, thank you," Draco said haughtily, and went back to his potion.

Harry snorted.

#

"I've known for ages," Harry said to Professor Lupin during Dementor practice. "Hermione told me at Christmas. It doesn't matter. I mean, it matters, but-"

"It's quite all right, Harry. I understand. Did Professor Snape say anything else?"

"Not really. I don't understand why not."

"Sometimes it's best for the old to leave children to find their own way, without the burdens of the past."

Harry thought that was a load of rubbish, but was too polite to say so.

#

Professor McGonnegall and Professor Snape had a tense conversation and Harry ended up out of Potions lessons for the duration of the lead-up to the Cup match in Quidditch. Harry didn't complain, as it meant he had time for more sleep (and more nightmares).

Winning the Cup was glorious. Neither Draco nor Snape could look at him for a week. They both pretended he didn't exist, and it was the most perfect, restful week had ever had.

Topped off by a kitten dropping on his head as he walked between classes in a classic example of death from above, raking at his eyes with tiny claws. Harry wrestled it off him and ducked into an alcove, shoving his glasses up his nose and holding the struggling cat up and away from him.

"Would you stop? Someone'll hear!"

The kitten scratched him one more time, then ceased moving. Harry was very tempted to shake him, but set the tiny beast down on the stones and adjusted his glasses instead.

"Look, Malfoy, it was a good game, alright? You almost beat me."

The kitten puffed up fury and growled at him.

"Alright, it was a terrible game, but if you assume cheating is alright then that was some good cheating." Harry sat down cross-legged on the floor, so as not to loom. "Professor Snape says the only redeeming quality of Quidditch is as war by other means. So, you lost this battle. There's always next year, if you don't get in trouble for clawing my eyes out."

A flicker of magic, and Draco was adjusting his robes and leaning against the wall, casual as if he hadn't been trying to maim Harry a few seconds ago.

"No need to be condescending, Potter."

"I wasn't trying to be condescending," Harry said, standing and tucking his hands into his pockets.

"You manage it without trying, believe me."

"I don't see what you're so angry about. You won on Buckbeak."

"No, my father won. I... have not yet lost."

"What's that mean?"

"It means I may call upon you to lend me that unfairly convenient invisibility cloak, one of these days."

"...are you saying you'll help?"

"I dislike losing. Good day, Potter."

Tiny little evil animal. Huge, huge ego.

#

Being able to turn into a kitten may have made him the laughingstock of his dorm room and drawn far too much professorial attention, but it was excellent for sneaking. He was below the eye level of all the portraits, and he was far from the only cat in the castle.

Not that he was in the castle, right at the moment. The weather was good, the trees were beginning to leaf out, and being a cat made it much easier to avoid thinking about his father's latest letter. He didn't know what his father was thinking, reminding him that only the strong could expect to learn powerful magic.

Draco pounced savagely on a rustle in the long grass, felt fur under his paws, and let instinct guide him as he bit down hard. Another vole. He sniffed it, then batted at it with a paw. Dead. Good, he thought. He wasn't weak. He was a predator.

Draco sniffed it again, on the off chance it would come back to life and entertain him. The vole remained stubbornly dead.

He batted at it with a paw, causing it to roll interestingly.

It wasn't as if he was going to eat it, he had his standards, but....

He batted at it with the other paw, and the chase was on.