Juggle Struggles
Draco narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate on his work. He was supposed to be writing an essay, but Felicia was bouncing on his bed, making a delighted, irritating noise each time she sailed up into the air.
At ten o'clock in the evening, Felicia was an enormous ball of energy. Draco had managed to read the chapter on rosesanas, so he knew a bit more about the creature he was caring for now. The book didn't say that rosesanas were nocturnal exactly, but it did advise caregivers not to let the babies sleep all day, or else they'd want to play all night. And sleeping all day was exactly what Draco had ignorantly permitted her to do! He wanted to pull his hair out over his carelessness!
Draco could just wring Hagrid's neck for his caregiving assignment!
"Felicia, stop that!" he snapped at her, finally having enough of it. "Or I'll put you in the crate!" It was an empty threat. Draco didn't believe that it was proper to use the crate unless he absolutely had to. Creatures shouldn't be caged up just because they were annoying.
Felicia plopped down onto the bed, pouting. Her ears dropped down low. "Moofsss!" Felicia crossed her arms over her pudgy body, unhappy that he had stopped her fun.
He didn't care. He had to get these assignments out of the way. The Astronomy professor had given him a report to write before the school week was up, and McGonagall wanted one herself, due in just two days.
That's before he needed to eat, sleep and prepare to teach his own bloody class!
Draco's eyes grew heavy. He rubbed at them, determined to finish his writing. He studied a lot about Transfigurations in his sixth year, so this was his easy class. He knew all he needed to know for this essay, but he was incredibly tired.
He unintentionally drifted to sleep, only knowing it when he felt something swat at his toes. He jerked awake.
"Felicia!" he instantly scolded. She recoiled immediately, looking as if she didn't understand why he was so upset with her.
Draco sighed and glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning. Miraculously, he had finished his Transfigurations essay (he didn't remember writing the last two paragraphs). He decided it was best to go to bed.
As Draco slipped into bed, a faint purring began, and then the weight of Felicia was on top of him, under his covers, crawling up his body. He opened his eyes to see Felicia nestling herself onto his chest. Her soft fur felt nice against his bare skin, and the vibration of her purring was calming.
He reached up to stroke her, and Felicia immediately batted at his fingers, so gently, it tickled him.
"We're not playing, Felicia," Draco firmly told her. "It's bedtime." He rubbed the tips of his fingers along her belly, having learned from the book that this was a good way to put baby rosesanas to sleep.
Felicia flipped onto her back so that he could continue, and before long, they both had fallen asleep.
Early in the morning, around 5, Felicia had awakened Draco up again. She was making annoying noises with her mouth right next to him.
Draco moaned, extremely exhausted from studying most of the night, and he rolled over in an attempt to go back to sleep. Pain shot through his shoulder as he did so. He sat up with a grunt, snatching the offending object. Felicia's blasted marble had gotten lost in the bed and Draco had found it in the worst way possible!
"Felicia," he said, holding it out to her. "Here."
Felicia wasn't interested though. Through his blurry, sleepy eyes, Draco could see that she was messily munching on the muffins that he had left out for her. Crumbs were flying everywhere, all over his bed.
Draco rubbed at his forehead, summoning up what little patience he had left. He couldn't wait until it was Granger's turn to care for Felicia. He desperately needed a break.
His F.E.R.R.E.T students were fascinated with Felicia, but she was a terrible distraction. The only one who wanted little to do with the rosesana was Hans. He didn't particularly care for creatures. He sat at his desk, watching everyone else enjoy Felicia's presence.
"Okay, I know she's wickedly adorable, but I need to begin the lesson," Draco spoke up sternly. "Return to your desks now— Felicia, you're going to play quietly in your corner or I'm going to have to put you out in the hall— in your crate."
Obviously, Felicia didn't want to spend the next hour in a box, so she sulkily made her way to the corner of the room— behind the students, so the sight of her wouldn't distract them— and played around with her marble.
"Eyes up here," Draco instructed his class, whose focus was still on the cute, fluffy beast. "I'm going to teach you about Gamp's Law. You'll appreciate this, I assure you. This is taught to seventh years, and I think it's silly they wait so late in the education to teach it since you're being taught the spells that go along with it. I personally wouldn't want you confused, wondering why your spells aren't working the way you've been taught they should. So I'll give you a head start. It's beneficial."
He set five objects on his desk. An egg, a glass of water, a bottle of butterbeer, an empty glass and a cup of sugar. He smiled, almost smugly, knowing this was going to give them a massive advantage over their peers.
"Have any of you heard of Gamp's Law?"
The six students shook their heads.
"By now, you should know that Transfiguration is the altering and conjuring of an object. There are rules to each branch of magic of course, and Gamp's Law is one concerning Transfiguration."
Draco duplicated the egg. "You can create additional food, provided that you already have some in your possession—" He pointed at the first egg with his wand. "—but that copy is only as good as its original source." Draco cast a spell so that the original egg would turn black and rot. The copied egg then turned black without Draco interfering.
"Wow! That's pretty neat!" Nathaniel exclaimed. "You'd never go hungry!"
"So long as the source is protected," Emily noted. She wrote this down on a piece of parchment.
"Can you protect the source?" Hans wondered. "With spells, I mean?"
"Somewhat," Draco answered. "It takes a knowledgeable, crafty wizard to do it, and the protection will only last as long as the wizard's spell, but yes, it's possible."
"Can you copy the copy?" Jessica wondered.
"Yes, but it's still linked to the source.
"The next rule to the law is that you can conjure up a resource, but only if you know its location of existence first. Watch me fill this empty glass with water." He held it up, filling the glass with the magic of his wand. Draco, a master at Transfigurations, could do this without a wand, but he felt it was better to use his wand for the demonstration.
"I love that!" Henry exclaimed.
"But you see this glass?" Draco held up the glass that originally had water in it. It was now empty. "I took the water from this glass and conjured it up into the empty one."
"So you can't make water out of nothing?"
"You can pull it from the sky, the lake, a river or a collection, but you must first have a source."
"The sky?" Jessica asked. "Do you mean like from the clouds?"
Draco nodded. "Or rain. Magic makes collecting water simple for us, and since we can duplicate water tanks that are already full of water—"
"You never run out of water," Hans said with wide eyes, finding this information fascinating. "Wow! This is a life changer!"
"For kids like yourself who have grown up without magic, yes, this is quite life-changing," Draco agreed. "For me, because natural resources have always been in surplus, no. This is why I feel you should know early on. Most young wizards don't realize that there is a source for their resources. Until seventh-year Transfigurations, they really do believe it's magically occurring from thin air, and of course, since they're blessed with magic being in their lives, they take this all for granted."
"Did you, Professor?" Madeline asked curiously. "Did you take this magic for granted?"
Draco looked down at the table and set his palms on it, leaning over it. "Of course. I can't imagine anyone born into this world not being spoiled by it. As Mr Larson stated: you could never go hungry or thirsty— if you know the proper spells."
"I wonder if you can do it for petrol…" Emily mused.
"If it has a patent on it no, which brings me to my final example for the day. I can't duplicate Butterbeer, as it's a product with a patent. You can't duplicate the clothing you've bought, nor books, but you can work around it, if you alter it just enough to make a new product…"
He vanished half the water out of the glass and added the cup of sugar, stirring it with a spell. Then he filled the remainder of the glass with Butterbeer and duplicated it, glass and all.
"It may not taste so great—" He took a sip, making a face at the excessive amount of sweetness the drink he made had. The kids laughed. "—but you can now make a copy of it."
"What about animals?" Nathaniel asked. "Or humans? Can I make a copy of myself?"
"It is heavily advised not to duplicate live creatures. It's possible to do, yes, but it is extremely dangerous. Lethal if done incorrectly, and you need a license to do it, obtained only after mastering Transfigurations in Hogwarts and then going off for further training through the Ministry."
Draco then gave them their first F.E.R.R.E.T assignment, wanting them to write an essay about the first thing they'd like to conjure when they learned the summoning spell, and why.
"Your assignment is due in a week," he reminded them when the lesson was over as they stood up to leave. He followed them out, having his own class to get to. Defense Against the Dark Arts. Thankfully, that was an easy class for him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw a small body slip into a closet up the hall. At this time in the morning, everyone should be on their way to their first class of the day—not hiding in closets.
Quietly, Draco walked up the hall to the closet, debating if he should just let the student be, knowing this would cause tardiness for his own class, but the only thing interesting (if he'd call it that) in this area of Hogwarts was his F.E.R.R.E.T class, which meant that someone was spying on him.
Draco wasted no time when he approached the closed door, he swung it open. "Caught!" he said. "Twenty points from—" He stopped himself when he saw Fleesled standing there with crossed arms over his chest, scowling over his predicament. He was the last person for Draco to have suspected been spying on him.
"Care to explain yourself?" Draco asked, gripping his forearm and pulling him out into the open. He narrowed his eyes at the black eye the boy sported, now visible in the light of the corridor. "How'd you get that?"
"Don't make a lot of friends with your deceased mother being a werewolf," Fleesled muttered. His lip began to tremble and his eyes turned red before he looked away.
Draco could understand why his peers were acting the way they were. Draco had done the same to Potter after the Gryffindor had gotten his father locked up— it was the sole reason Draco was forced to take the Mark, and at the time, revenge was all he was in control of, but he also understood what Fleesled was feeling too. It wasn't his fault that his mother had been a monster.
"Who did this to you?" Draco asked, rather harshly.
"It doesn't matter," the boy grumbled. "I can't defend myself against them. All that'll happen is you'll take away points, and then they'll just attack me worse next time. So if you'll just spare me your pity, I'd rather be on my way to the useless Herbology lesson that I'm supposed to be at in ten minutes."
"You think Herbology is useless?"
"Against several attacks a day by students who out-best me by four years? Sure."
So fifth years were attacking first years. Draco frowned. A sickness dropped into the pit of his gut. He had been guilty of doing that too.
Was there ever going to be a day when his past didn't haunt him?
"Why were you outside my classroom?"
Fleesled avoided eye contact, seemingly ashamed of spying on him. "You taught that Mud—ggleborn some neat info. Stuff that the other professors didn't. And so… Well, I thought, maybe, you'd say something that I could use against…" He shrugged, helpless. "I was hoping anyway. It's all I've got in this hellacious world."
Draco conjured up something then, having an idea. A green apple. "Herbology isn't useless," he stated firmly, holding the apple out for the boy to take.
"Bit old for poisoned apples, aren't you, sir?"
Draco chuckled. "This is a Guardian Apple. Eat one of these, every day, and anyone who attacks you will have their spells reflected onto them. Obviously, it doesn't work for the darker, sinister curses, but it comes in handy for the typical school bully. Learned this way too late in my education, but a valuable Herbology defence nonetheless."
Fleesled's eyes lit up with hope, but he still lacked a smile. He took the apple, just the same. "Thank you," he said cautiously. "Why are you helping me?"
"For the Effort in the Retreat and Respect of EveryoneTreatment."
"This F.E.R.R.E.T thing, it's a theme for this year, isn't it?"
Draco forced a smile. "Appears so."
"I hear it's a way to insult you."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Those Gyffindors, they think they're so witty! I'm going to turn it against them."
"How?"
"By being FullyExceptional and Rivetingly wicked at my job, ReceivingEyebrow-lifts Throughout the year— that's the goal anyway. To prove everyone wrong."
The class, while useful, was named after "him" as a joke, but Draco intended to make the name into something good, something that no one would laugh at when they heard it.
"You're welcome to join if you want. You don't have to hide in the hall to listen."
Fleesled scowled. Draco knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn't want to be surrounded by Muggleborns.
"You know, those kids in my class are going to be amazing spell casters— better than everyone in your year. I've met a lot of Muggleborns, they're quite intelligent, and it couldn't hurt to have one as a friend— especially since no one with wizard blood is even interested in being your friend. Take it from me, having no friends is pretty lousy."
Fleesled didn't say anything, stubbornly having difficulties making a decision.
"If anything, their families weren't attacked by your mum who was under Greyback's orders," Draco added quietly. He turned away to leave the boy to his thoughts, but not before adding:
"If you want to learn what I've got to teach, you'll have to actually come into my class. Else, when I catch you again— and yes, I will catch you— I'll be deducting points, and you'll have to write another four feet of lines. Your housemates won't like this at all."
With a grin, Draco said no more, knowing that his Slytherin threats would have an impact on Fleesled.
"Oh, you've finally joined us, Mr Malfoy," the professor announced as soon as he entered the DADA classroom. Everyone was crowded around something, but Draco couldn't see what it was through the bodies.
"If you can identify the beast we are learning about today, I will not dock any points from Slytherin for your tardiness."
The Slytherins were glaring at him, and the Gryffindors were naturally wanting him to fail the "quiz". Draco's eyes fell down to his feet, uncomfortable with the negative attention he was getting.
When the group made a gap so that he could see the creature, Draco's face scrunched up in disgust. The creature had the body of an odd-shaped piglet with long legs, and it didn't look like it was in great shape. It was starved, almost tortured, and its skin was in the process of falling off. Draco almost felt bad for it, but he knew what this was, and it deserved no pity.
"That's a demonic creature known as the Nogtail," he answered simply, having no feelings whatsoever for his correct answer. Points didn't matter at all to him anymore. All he cared about was graduating from school and making sure the F.E.R.R.E.T class was a massive success so that everyone would stop looking at him as if he was a demon himself.