Bond (Drarry)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

October 15 - October 21

Day 17, Thursday

Draco turned over his portkeys, idly examining them as Potter and his friends caught up. Dumbledore had given them both special portkeys keyed to their shared bedroom as well as their respective dorm rooms. That way they could easily move from one to the other without needing to walk all over the castle every time they left something behind at one of the three places they were going to be staying.

Draco glanced around the Gryffindor common room with curiosity. He'd been here before, the day that Potter had moved out, but hadn't stayed long enough to get a feel for the place. Now, though, he noticed the squashy chairs, the inevitable gold and red colour scheme, the excessive use of portraits as wall coverings. It wasn't bad. Even though it tended more towards comfort than elegance, it wasn't that bad. He could get used to it. Apparently, he would have to.

He pulled out his books. Not feeling terribly energetic, he opted to read Potions, which could always be counted on to keep him focussed. Thinking of studying Transfiguration right now made his head hurt. Abysmally difficult subject, taught by an abysmally humourless teacher. He'd be out like a light in minutes, and he didn't fancy falling asleep surrounded by Gryffindors.

Once more he was grateful to Snape for having played the return to their dorms in exactly the right way for his housemates. In his current state, he would not have wanted to be near Slytherins, with their unerring instinct for detecting weakness. Instead he'd been able to agree to returning to Gryffindor first with no damage to his image.

"Well don't spend all your time over there, Draco," Pansy had told him. "We'd like to see you too, whether Potter misses his little friends or not. Frankly we're all rather peeved that it's all about Poor Little Potty's emotional needs. So bloody typical of this place."

"I'll come by eventually," Draco had said. "I'll probably spend all of my time there studying, I'm so bloody far behind."

"Really? You're not going to do a little reconnaissance work for us over there - uncover dastardly Gryffindor plots for world domination and all that?"

"Please. They're Gryffindors. Their idea of a dastardly plot is 'let's work really hard and endanger our lives for no good reason'."

He glanced briefly at Potter, chatting animatedly with some third-years. About what, Draco had no idea, since he'd performed a silence spell as soon as basic courtesy could allow. It did feel a little odd to be sitting in the midst of a rather large welcoming party and not hear a thing, but it certainly beat making small talk with Potter's friends.

He buried himself into Potions. They were so bloody far behind that it was disheartening to think of even starting to catch up. Instead, he flipped over to the section on energy potions, even though they didn't need to know it right now. He and Potter were going to be taking some of the potions to help keep them awake in class tomorrow, even though they would only be attending about half the day. He may as well understand what it was he was going to be ingesting.

This lethargy was incredibly annoying. Who would've believed that resisting the damned curse would be so damaging? They'd been told, of course, and had read the material they'd been given about the spell, but it was rather different reading that "the patient might experience severe loss of energy for several days" and living it. He looked up and ended the silence spell as Potter touched his knee.

"What?"

"Seamus got liquorice melts, do you want one?" He held one out. Draco smiled - liquorice melts, only his favourite Honeydukes product.