The Menace

THE MIDNIGHT DUEL

“Do you remember back in first year, when you challenged me to a duel for insulting Pansy’s lip gloss?” 
The soles of Ron’s trainers were dirty. Draco could tell, because he had his feet propped on Draco’s bedside table. 
“Get your disgusting feet off my furniture,” he replied with a curled lip. His head was pounding. The fluorescent lights of the hospital rooms were murder on his sensitive eyes, and the sheets felt scratchy on his heated skin. He wished he could remember why he wasn’t in his own bed.
Ron carried on, unhindered. “You cheated,” he chuckled. “That evil cat of yours hurled herself at me before you’d even shot a spell off.”
“Oh, like you were hardly any better,” Draco rolled his eyes, which made his head pound. He prodded ineffectively at a sullied trainer with his smallest fingernail, sending a twinge down his torso. Smiling smugly, Ron removed it, shifting in his seat. “A giggling hex, please. Six older brothers and you couldn’t have thought of something more creative?”
“At least I managed a spell.” 
“They’ve sent you here to annoy me back to life,” Draco sighed dramatically, choosing diplomatically not to address that he would have cast a spell, had he not had Melinoe to defend his honor. “Why couldn’t it have been Pansy here, my beautiful fiancee, nearly widowed, she must be beside herself.” 
Ron’s grin slid off his face. “She was, actually, yeah,” he said, blue eyes going steady and grim. “We all were.” He reached out, as though to clasp Draco’s shoulder the way he’d seen him do with Harry after so many near-death escapes, but seemed to think better of it. 
 “Will you tell me what happened?” Draco asked softly, but Ron was already shaking his head. 
“The healers said it had to be gradual,” he reminded him. 
Draco made a displeased noise in his throat and glowered. His headache had migrated from the base of his skull to just above his left eye. It pounded with every beat of his heart. “Between me and a three headed dog, who would you rather face in a duel?”
Ron laughed. “You at eleven? I’d wipe the floor with your tiny, poncy self. Now?” He scoffed playfully. “I’ll take my chances with Fluffy.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“But Draco,” whined Vince, “we’re hungry.” His large cheek was creased from where he had slept on his books in History of Magic. Greg had fared no better, with a thin line of drool staining his white button-down. Luckily, Professor Binns didn’t seem to care if his students died of boredom and wouldn’t even notice if they came back to join him haunting the lectern. 
“We had lunch right before class,” muttered Draco, shaking him off. “If you keep wandering around the halls calling ‘Elf!’ we’re going to be late to our flying lessons.”
“Oh, let them carry on,” Blaise grinned, twin dimples in his dark cheeks. “They might just catch one eventually.” 
Draco snorted. Arm in arm with Pansy, she told Vince, “You need to know their names to summon them like that.”
“I don’t know any of the Manor elves’ names,” Draco mused. “They just appear.”
“They’ve been in your family for generations,” Millie countered, bringing up the rear of their group as they walked down the hall.  “They know you so well they can anticipate your needs. There are probably hundreds of house elves at Hogwarts, and they don’t know any of us.”
“Draco, I’m gonna faint,” Greg moaned. “Can’t you call them?”
“I don’t know their names, either,” Draco hissed. “Go bother Theo.”
“I don’t know how to do it either,” Thep said quickly, shooting a glare at Draco and raising his hands as Greg and Vince hopefully turned to him. “You’ll have to figure out a way to ask them to show you the kitchens. Leave a note.”
“Theo, don’t be cruel,” Blaise laughed. “They just figured out how to write their names!”  Draco joined him. Vince and Greg pouted, deep frowns etched on their chubby faces. Greg especially looked near tears–he had never dealt with hunger well. The whole group had lost count of the temper tantrums they had suffered because Greg was not properly fed and watered. 
Draco sighed. “We’ll have dinner after flying lessons,” he reminded them. “And then we can leave a note for the elves in the common room overnight. Maybe they’ll tell us where the kitchens are.” 
“We’ll pass out!” Vince griped, overwhelmed, as they descended the steps to the lawns. 
“They’re fading away as we speak!” Blaise joined, voice filled with mirth as he slung his arm around Draco’s shoulders. “Save them, Draco, save our friends from their untimely demise!”
“Get off me,” Draco laughed. Twenty brooms awaited them on the lawn. It was a clear, beautiful day for flying, and Draco looked upon them eagerly. It had only been a few weeks since their last pickup Quidditch game at the Manor. Their teams were always divided the same: he and Blaise against one another as Seeker, Vince and Greg a Beater for each team, and an eager Theo and a reluctant Pansy acted as Chasers while Millie played Keeper for both teams with alacrity. He and Pansy were always together, despite her definitive spot as least enthusiastic player and his as the most. He couldn’t let his best friend and future life partner languish on the losing side, after all. 
He looked forward to Quidditch at Hogwarts, though he despaired at the thought of waiting a full year to participate.  He was nearly jumping out of his shoes by the time the Gryffindors arrived, a raucous clump of red that moved across the lawns as one. 
And the day just got worse from there. 

*

“My best girls!” Draco cried when he encountered Pansy and Melinoe sitting together in the Slytherin common room. Melinoe flicked her long tail at him languidly. Pansy was dedicatedly applying a second layer of lip gloss over an open copy of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. It did not appear to have been read, as various other instruments for personal beautification sat atop its open pages. 
“How do I look?” Pansy asked, turning her face to him. She had covered her lips in what appeared to be a thick layer of slime. “I have to look intimidatingly beautiful, it’s our first class with the Ravenclaws. If I can’t outsmart them, I’ve got to out-pretty them.” 
Draco laughed. “Ah, Pansy, no Ravenclaw would ever compare to you.” He flopped down onto the couch beside her dramatically, picking up one of her many small bottles. He shook the flesh-colored contents, which slid viscously within its glass. “This all looks so complicated.” 
She giggled, snatching the bottle back and stowing her various instruments of deception in her bag. “I could show you how to do it sometime.” 
Draco made a face. “Why would I? I can do whatever this does myself.”
“Yes, but it’s fun, Draco.” 
He shrugged. As though disclosing a well-guarded secret, he leaned in and said conspiratorially, “Pans, I am astonishingly handsome as it is. Any more than this and the poor, humble masses will not know what to do. We must protect them from themselves.”
She nodded seriously as she stood. “Between the two of us, our good looks may sabotage any intellectual upper hand the Ravenclaws think they have.”
“We truly do work smarter,” Draco agreed, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they sauntered out of the common room together. Melinoe jumped from the couch and padded behind them, a small, silent shadow.  
They were just past the Great Hall and  up the stairs when Draco heard the unmistakable voice of his most turbulent acquaintance at the base of the staircase. “Keep walking, Pans,” he muttered, tightening his arm around her and walking faster. “Best not to associate with riff raff.” 
“Draco!” Potter called again, hurrying up the stairs. His lackey Weasley was only a few steps behind. 
“Not now, Potter,” Draco called insouciantly over his shoulder. “If you’d like to congratulate me for my good deeds like you did yesterday, I’m afraid it won’t be necessary.” 
“Draco, wait–” they had made it to the first-floor landing, all three of them. Harry reached out and grabbed Draco’s wrist. Pansy slapped his hand away. 
“Don’t touch him,” she hissed. Melinoe lingered close to the wall in the shadows behind them. “He clearly doesn’t want to speak to you.” 
“What’ve you done to your lips?” Weasley tactlessly asked Pansy, catching up to them. “Have you been cursed?”
“Pansy is gorgeous,” Draco sneered. “Not that you would know what true beauty looks like, Weasley. Or class, for that matter.” 
Ron’s ears flushed an ugly red. They clashed with his garish hair. “You can’t talk to me like that, Malfoy,” he snarled. Potter put a hand out to stop him.
“Ron,” Potter warned, but Draco had already stepped up to him.
“So what if I do? What will you do about it?” Draco sneered. “I have more magic in my pinky finger than the whole lot of you Weasley siblings combined.” 
“Prove it!” Ron snapped, furious. His neck and cheeks had flushed to match his ears. The effect made him look like his blood was boiling from within. “I challenge you to a Wizard’s Duel!”   
Draco laughed through his nose, a startled, inelegant sound. “Fine,” he drawled, and he could feel the dimple in his cheek as he smiled nastily.  “Tonight, in the trophy room. Midnight alright?” He had begun walking away even before he finished his question, not caring one way or another whether midnight did, in fact, work within Ronald Weasley’s busy schedule. 
“I would thank you for the lovely encounter,” Draco said loftily, “but the pleasure was all yours. Ta, Potter.” He glared at Potter as he shouldered past, arm in arm with Pansy. “Come along, Pans.” 
They strode, straight backed, down the corridor and around the corner. Draco could hear Weasley and Potter whispering urgently as they left. Pansy’s face vacillated between anger and a wobbly sort of hurt, and Draco was positively fuming. 
“I need to duck into the loo,” Pansy said. 
“Pans, that idiot doesn’t know the first thing about what he’s talking about,” he declared. He deflated under her scathing glower. “You might want to wash off some of that, though, yeah.”  
“Stay out here, will you?” she asked in front of the girl’s toilets. “I’ll just be a moment.” 
“No bother,” Draco said airily, scooping up Artemis. “We’ll be fashionably late.”
Pansy nodded and disappeared behind the door. Draco contented himself with bouncing Melinoe on his shoulder, who began to wriggle discontentedly after ten seconds of such treatment. He thought about the conversation he and Weasley had had, and knew that Potter would most likely be his chosen Weasel’s second. Draco could ask Pansy to be his–certainly she was more sharp-witted than Greg or Vince. They had their charms, of course, but in more of a lumbering sort of way than a dancing duelist. 
Draco had moved onto swaying, and was in his mind running through the spells he could use against Weasley, which were a dishearteningly paltry few, when he heard Pansy shriek from behind the door. 
Melinoe lept from Draco’s arms, who threw the old door open. Standing in front of a row of chipped sinks, Pansy was bedraggled, soaked and enraged, her feet in a large puddle of water. The wailing ghost of a plain-looking girl in pigtails floated above an open stall. The flaking wooden stall door hung off its hinges.  
“Um, hello,” Draco said, looking between the two girls. “Have I interrupted something?”
“You’re just like awful Olive Hornby!” the ghost wailed. “ ‘Poor, miserable, moaning Myrtle! So plain looking and boring, who would want to be friends with her?’ ”
“I just said I didn’t want your commentary!” Pansy howled. Draco had only ever seen her yell like that with her mother. “I don’t care who you’re friends with! You’ve ruined my hair!” 
Myrtle sent what was, judging by the size of the puddle around Pansy, a second jet of water splashing out of the toilet onto Pansy’s head. With verve, she hurled herself headfirst into the U-bend, sobbing loudly as she departed.
Pansy clutched at her sopping hair and screamed, her voice echoing in the vaulted bathroom ceiling. “Good acoustics,”  Draco noted. 
“I hate this!” Pansy yelled. “I hate this day, everyone is horrible, we haven’t even really started yet and everyone in this bloody school hates me. Draco, I can’t handle it. I have toilet water all over me!” 
“Let’s get out of here before she throws more on you,” he suggested hastily, eyeing Myrtle’s stall. Pansy complied, looking near tears herself. 
“Nobody can see me like this,” she said, sniffling. “This is horrible.”
“Come on, let’s go back to the dorms,” he said, ushering her onwards. He would have put an arm around her, but his goodwill only went so far. His nose wrinkled at the smell wafting off her. ”I’ll go to Defense myself. I’ll tell Quirrell you had a stomach ache and couldn’t come. He’s so strange, I doubt he would say anything.” 
“You had better destroy Weasley in that duel tonight,” she sniffed. 
“I will defend you always, darling,” Draco assured her playfully. She gave him a wobbly, watery smile for his efforts. “Weasley won’t stand a chance.”

~*~

Draco sat in the common room with his arm around Pansy, who was huddled at his side. Her head was tucked onto his shoulder, and her hair smelled of the roses from her shampoo, thrice-washed after its dousing. The fire crackled merrily in the fireplace, changing the greenish glow from the lake golden. Melinoe lay sprawled before it on the rug, languid and purring. Draco and Pansy had brought blankets from their beds, and Draco had positively buried Pansy in fabric. He had brought over some of the chocolate he had meticulously hidden from Mother’s care package for her. She ate it contentedly, cheered, while Draco commented on Blaise and Theo’s game of Wizard’s Chess, commanding them to move their pieces around the board at random. 
“Bishop to E4!” he demanded of Blaise.
“My bishop is nowhere near there,” Blaise argued, swatting Draco’s hand as he reached for the board anyway.  Draco pouted and poked at Theo’s King with his pinky finger. The King shook a tiny disgruntled fist at him. 
“Draco, do you even know how to play chess?” Theo asked. 
“My father always said it was a gateway to strategic thinking.” Draco squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. ”He said I could be the youngest ever Magical Grandmaster if I tried.”
“Well, you’re pants at it to me,” observed Theo, cleanly taking Blaise’s rook with his Queen.  
Pansy snorted. “You’d better wipe the floor with Weasley,” she grumbled into his chest. It was nearly half-past eleven. “We can’t have you beat by a blood traitor.”  
“I never would be,” Draco insisted. “Ronald Weasley wouldn’t recognize a good spell if it wore a tutu and danced the Can-Can in front of him.”
“Will you be dueling Ron Weasley?” asked Blaise with interest. Theo’s calculating blue gaze flitted between them and the chessboard, trying to strategize and listen at the same time. “Can I watch? I could be your second.” 
“I don’t need a second,” replied Draco loftily. “I’ll hardly even need a wand. Trust me, this will be so easy it will be boring. I couldn’t bear to let down my adoring fans with such a terrible performance.”  
Blaise’s eyes narrowed. “Are you nervous?” he purred, a Cheshire grin curling across his features. “Is that why you don’t want me to come?” 
Draco spluttered and batted Blaise’s knight off the board. It stuck him in the palm with its toothpick-sized sword, protesting as it faltered and stumbled upright. “I’ll be perfectly capable alone.”
“I’ll come too,” Theo offered. “If you want, I can bribe Vince and Greg with some of that chocolate you hide to come as well. I know you keep it in the wall above your headboard.”
 “How do you know that?” Draco asked, mystified. “I keep my curtains shut.”
Theo smiled at Draco smugly. “I didn’t, until now,” he replied. “Though I had my suspicions.” Draco could see Blaise attempting to covertly move some of Theo’s pieces on the board behind Theo’s back, but they were fighting against him valiantly. “Our beds are right next to one another. I heard you snacking the other night.” 
Draco scowled. “I’ll figure out Muffliato and I’ll suffocate you under a pillow if you take my chocolate, Theo.” Theo snickered as he turned back to Blaise, who sulkily threw one of his pawns to a spot at random, meddling interrupted. 
“I’m not going,” Pansy interjected, snuggling deeper into the blankets. “I’ve had a horrible day. I just want Draco to tell me how he beat him after it’s done.” 
Draco gestured to Pansy in a way that suggested she was the pinnacle of humanity. “Why can’t you be supportive of me like Pansy is?” he whined. “If you’re counting on my demise, you’re sorely mistaken.” 
“I am supportive,” argued Theo. “I just also know Potter will be there, and you’re always weird around him.” 
“I’m not weird around him!” Draco glowered. “I won’t save you from the peacocks next time you visit the Manor.” 
“Starey,” Blaise nodded, as though Draco hadn’t spoken. “There’s a weird amount of staring between those two.”
“Even at breakfast,” said Theo.
“Especially at breakfast,” Blaise agreed. 
 “He’s the one who starts it!” Draco protested, and swept to his feet. “You’ll make me miss being fashionably late and slip into being unfashionably late, and I can’t have that. Toodles,” he called as he began walking, Melinoe trotting from the fire to his side. 
“Bye, Draco,” he heard Pansy yawn as Blaise and Theo scrambled up behind him. “If you let Weasley beat you, I’m disowning you as my best friend and will tell everyone I never knew you.” 
“If Weasley beats me, I’ll throw myself off the Astronomy Tower,” muttered Draco to Blaise and Theo, who snickered. “I’d have to kill all the witnesses and then myself. It would be a bloodbath.”
“Cheer up,” Blaise said. “The worst either of you can do is, what, summon bubbles? Make sparklers? How will we even know who wins?” 
“Weasley does have all those older brothers,” Theo mused. “They must’ve taught him something.”
“I will win,” Draco said emphatically. “And it won’t be bubbles.” 
Theo, Draco and Blaise continued bickering good-naturedly up the stairs to the third floor trophy room. The moonlight streaked the halls from the tall windows as they walked, and their chatter stilled as they approached the room, their footfalls seeming louder for the darkness and the quiet. 
“You’re late,” Weasley said testily as they entered the trophy room. Crystal cases lined the walls, glimmering in the moonlight, and the items of silver, gold and bronze gleamed from within.  Weasley had brought half of Gryffindor house with him, not just Potter beside him but also Granger and Neville, who looked abashed to be there at all.  
“No, you’re just early,” Draco replied. He stepped away from Melinoe, who had been determinedly weaving herself through his legs. “I see you’ve brought an even bigger audience than I have. Neville, are you here to defend my honor?” 
“Hullo, Draco,” Neville said nervously. “Just got locked out, actually.”
“Draco, this is a horrible idea,” Hermione began, as Weasley asked, “Your girlfriend didn’t want to join?” His freckled nose was wrinkled in distaste. “Is that why you’ve brought these two instead?”
“Pansy is my fiancee, not my girlfriend,” Draco corrected, which elicited a strange sound from both Granger and Potter. “And no, she was tired of you and your asinine repartee.”
“You think you’re so clever,” fumed Weasley. Draco could picture smoke pouring from his reddened ears. “We’ll see who’s laughing after this. Harry, remember what I told you?”
“Right,” Potter said, shoving his glasses into place on his nose. “Er, face one another and bow.”
“You can’t mediate.” Blaise crossed his arms. He looked amused, and it made Draco want to laugh and smack him all at once. “You’re Weasley’s second. Theo, you mediate. You know how a duel is supposed to go.”
Theo shrugged. “Ten steps apart,” he waved at both Draco and Weasley. Draco backed away the ten steps, and Weasley did the same, neither taking their eyes off one another.
“Draco, be sure to strike before the countdown finishes,” Blaise called faux-helpfully. “He’s a Gryffindor, he’ll never see it coming.” 
Draco had, in fact, been planning on striking before the countdown finished. He glared at the boy who was no longer his friend and certainly not his second. “I’ll set the peacocks on you.” 
Blaise grinned, looking delighted. “I never liked the Manor anyway.” At the same time Theo spoke over him, intoning seriously, “Bow to your partners.”
Weasley hardley inclined his head, while Draco bowed elaborately. Blaise groaned. “I wish I had peanuts to throw,” he confided loudly to Theo. 
“I should have left you in Slytherin,” Draco scolded. “I should have had Greg and Vince tie you up for chocolate.” 
“Draco, focus,” admonished Theo, who threw up his hands when Draco glowered at him. “This is your duel!”
   “Do your countdown,” ground Weasley from ten paces away, looking murderous. Theo eyed him dismissively, in a way that suggested that if he was doing anything, it was most certainly not because Weasley had told him so, and then did the countdown. 
Weasley bested him at the draw, firing off a giggling hex before Draco had time to finish incanting the Jellylegs Jinx Tonks had taught him. Draco ducked to the side just in time and shot sparkles into Weasley’s face. Weasley stumbled back, blinking, as Draco righted himself. He would have cast Jellylegs next, but instead, a snarling streak of black careened past him and into his opponent. 
Melinoe pinned Weasley to the ground. No longer a small black cat, she was now the size and shape of a panther, with shining black fur and wide, angry, luminous blue eyes. Her fangs gleamed as she snarled. Weasley whimpered beneath her. 
“Ah, yes,” Draco drawled. “I forgot to warn you. My cat is quite protective.” 
“You cheat!” Potter yelled, running up to Draco and grabbing him by his shoulders, fists in the fabric. “Let him go!”
“I didn’t cheat,” Draco shrugged, trying to act like he didn’t care that the Chosen One looked liable to punch him in the face. “Melinoe was my second.” 
“I thought that was if you die, though,” Hermione said, brow furrowed, while Blaise looked offended. “I’m your second!”
“We never agreed to that,” Draco told Blaise, shaking Potter off him and walking over to a still fallen, still horrified Weasley. He put a hand on Melinoe’s back, and her long tail swished back and forth angrily once more, her paws pressed into Weasley’s chest, before she stepped off him. “Anyway, you’re being boring. Good night, losers. Come, Theo, Blaise.” 
Draco swept away in what he hoped was a spot-on impression of Hogwarts’ most esteemed Professor Snape, but the way that Blaise was snickering at him indicated he may have missed the mark.