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Draco heard the footsteps, in some deep, deranged part of his mind. He heard the voices, they were talking, some sounded shocked, amazed, even scared. Draco could tell that he was lying face down, feet elevated at an awkward angle, he felt the heat radiating from something on the left side of his body. Was he in the hospital wing? Could be. Draco hardly remembered anything from last night.

After copying Hermione’s homework, he walked her back to the Gryffindor common room where, yet again, she refused to go out with him. After that, he didn’t remember anything. Maybe I’m drunk. Maybe I went to the kitchens and got drunk. That’s going to be a brutal hangover. And that wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Draco could count numerous occasions where he got pissed, went to the kitchens, got drunk and hurt himself, or found himself somewhere he knew he wasn’t supposed to be.

“Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Malfoy, get up. Will you please explain why you are here.” Who’s voice was that? He did something for that voice, she was important.

Draco tried to lift himself up, he got about an inch before he decided it was too much work and pulled his feet in instead. He groaned, and pushed his legs until they were straitened and his head was now oddly elevated. He rolled over and tried to open his eyes. There was a lot of light, like, a lot of light. Definitely too much to be in a Slytherine dorm.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Drawling came from over his head and Draco tried to open his eyes again. Another fail, he threw a protective arm over his face, shielding his eyes. “When you have finally woken up you can tell me what you are doing sleeping on a couch in the Gryffindor common room.” Gryffindor common room?

“Shit.” Draco got up all too fast and ended on the floor. It came up to meet him and the pain that sparked on impact was already subsiding. Draco rolled over to face the two professors standing with crossed arms and similar expressions of confusion.

“Mr. Malfoy, we do not accept language like that in our school, five points from Slytherine.” McGonagall said in a clipped voice, Draco noticed she was speaking rather fast and threw her teeth.

Memory came back kind of quickly, well quickly enough for Draco’s sleep weighed brain to process it.

After finishing homework for McGonagall, he walked Hermione back here, asked her out, and stayed here. It was definitely past midnight when they walked out of the library, it was past midnight when he left after detention. What day is it?

“The twenty-fourth, Mr. Malfoy, now what are you doing here?” Draco hadn’t realized he spoke the question.

“Is it Saturday?” Draco couldn’t think of what day the twenty-fourth was, he was sure yesterday was Friday.

“Thursday, actually, do you want a calendar, I have lots of pocket ones, you can choose what color.” Draco opened his eyes to look at who was talking. Dennis, was that his name. Dennis or Collin? They were brothers. Then what the annoying little pipsqueak said sunk in.

“Shit.” Draco stood up and nearly fell over again. He looked around the room. His eyes automatically found Hermione, she was standing in front of Harry and Ron, and both of them were smirking. “Shit, shit, shit-”

“Mr. Malfoy, you have said that quite enough, take another twenty points from Slytherine, five for each word.” McGonagall was still standing there, looking severe.

“Okay, ow, shit.” Draco looked around behind him. A big orange cat was moving in and out throw his legs, it didn’t hurt, ow was just a reflex.

“Another five.” McGonagall was getting on his nerves.

“Sorry, stupid cat.” Draco bent over to see he was still in his Slytherine robes, he guessed that was a good thing. He picked the cat up and on closer examination; he found that it was rather ugly. “I don’t know how I got here, I’m a sleep walker, when I was done detention I went straight to bed, didn’t bother to undress or anything, guess that’s good right? I sleep naked.” Draco could hear some of the older girls making comments on how Draco walking naked and asleep in their dorm would have been pure luck, he smiled innocently, he had meant to cause the whispering, even if he actually slept in boxers.

“Take another three nights of detention, Mr. Malfoy. You can join Ron, Harry and Hermione at midnight on the Astronomy tower.” Professor Snape drawled and left the room. He must of thought that was punishment. I’ll be in detention with Hermione! Draco’s silent cheers were hidden deep in his head, already forgetting about Harry and Ron.

Draco walked to the mirror in the room and put a hand through his hair. Sticking up at all angles, Draco bobbed his head forward and it all went flat like normal. Several girls sighed, having changed sides at the last minute to Dumbledore last year, Draco had been something of a mystery and completing his final year at Hogwarts has been the easiest yet.

11:57 pm

Draco ran through the halls. Up through more staircases than he could count and through the side cases that were narrower. A stitch burned in his lower stomach and it would at least take another four minutes of sprinting to get to the Astronomy tower, he didn’t know any short cuts when you got this high.
“Easy does it there lad, where you off to?” Draco whirled at the voice, a picture. The Scottish wizard had red hair and light blue eyes, just like all Scottish people, talk about stereotyping…

“Astronomy tower, any secret passage ways ‘round here?” in response the picture opened wide. Without calling thank you or using such blaspheme words, Draco hurled down the portrait.

Draco could hear voices and slowed to walk. He tried to calm his breathing and check his watch. 12:02, he knew that it was three minutes fast so he crouched down and waited until the clock said 12:03 and he knew it would be midnight.

Draco opened the passage door and stepped out, he was now in the Astronomy tower. He watched the expressions of the others. He went in order from the closest to him, to the furthest. Ron glared, Harry’s mouth was open at his amazing timing, Hermione looked unimpressed, bordering on nonchalant and…

“Drakie! I knew you’d be in detention, your always in detention, what did you do now?” Pansy Parkinson had her arms wrapped around Draco’s neck and she was staring at him with eyes full of lust.

“Pansy, oh, wow, hi, I saw you after school…” Draco felt like a complete moron, he didn’t know what to say when your crazy ex-girlfriend was always hanging off you.

“Yeah, you saw me.”

“Alright, everyone, you can tell each other what your in for while you work, clean up the broken parts and sort them, push all the telescopes downstairs, you break it you buy it, play fair, this should only take you one detention, but Professor Snape has given you three, I expect the place to be perfection, this is where you’ll have to dance on graduation, make it count.” Madam Hooch, the flying instructor, barked at the five students. “And before I forget, Blaise Zabini will be joining you shortly, he gets out of the hospital tonight.”

Draco laughed at that. He laughed loud. Madam Hooch left and Draco continued laughing.

“What?” Harry and Ron asked in perfect unison.

“It’s just that Blaise is only in the hospital because he broke his arm to avoid detention.” Draco looked at Hermione for the next part. “He was caught after curfew roaming the halls last night.”

“This’ll be fun, move a bunch of equipment around so that we can dance, suddenly I wish Dumbledore was back.”

“Ron, Dumbledore wouldn’t have done this for you okay, he’s off destroying Horcruxes so we don’t have to.”

What Hermione said rang in Draco’s ears. He remembered the night when he had his wand pointed at Dumbledore, the words on his tongue. Dumbledore had offered freedom, Draco had refused, and refused, and refused, only until he heard the sounds of his Aunt, the werewolf, and the other Death Eaters, did he accept. He sent wordless curses down the stairs at them, only hitting a few in the blind madness. He remembered Snape shouting the death spell at him and moving backwards into the wall of he Astronomy tower, Dumbledore had blocked the spell with his hand, his hand. The black thing protruding from the robes, it had fingers but it looked shriveled and burnt. The spell had hit the hand and Dumbledore’s hand fell off, but he was fine.

Draco snorted at the thought. Oh, yeah, it’s all cool, of course. Dumbledore lost his hand, but that’s cool, yeah, no big deal. He’ll just go off looking for Horcruxes without a hand, but that’s cool. He’ll leave McGonagall in charge of the school, that’s cool too. Yeah, whatever.

“Hey,” Draco turned around to look in Blaise’s eyes and couldn’t help but think of last night. That was the closest he had ever got to Hermione while she let him do it, that was cool too. Great, now I’ll be saying cool for the rest of the night.

“Hey, nice cast.” Draco nodded and went back to his Dumbledore’s-the-coolest-person-in-the-world thoughts, but none came.

An hour later they were done. All six or them still had another two days of detention. But they all knew who was in for what. Blaise, Draco and Hermione kept the details about last night to themselves. They were, on different levels, very embarrassed. Blaise being caught, Hermione for being there, Draco for waking up on the Gryffindor couch, well only he and Hermione knew about that.

“Right, okay, this is absolutely fantastic,” Harry was sitting there, knees tucked in, arms playing awkwardly at his sides. “Three Slytherine, Four Gryffindor,”

“Three Gryffindor, moron, you blind? Honestly, what do you want to do, get in a fight? ‘Cause if you do I call being Iron Man.”

“What does an iron man do?” Pansy looked around with big eyes.

“How do you even know Iron Man, thought you were totally one hundred percent wizard.” Hermione scowled at him from the corner.

Totally ignoring Hermione, Draco looked straight at Pansy. “Iron Man kicks ass.” She laughed her little girly laugh and went back to pretending to be stupider than he knew she was.

“I wanna… I don’t know what I want to do.” Ron looked at towards his out stretched legs. “Slytherine’s make it impossible to wanna do anything.”

“Watchit, Gryffindor,” Pansy practically snarled. Then she looked at Blaise, “hey, you’ve been awfully quiet, what do you wanna do?” She was so sweet to him, why don’t they just hook up? Draco’s thoughts drifted down away from what was going on.

“I want to go swimming,” Blaise was staring at his interlocked fingers and Draco knew that he was still feeling incredibly guilty for that sick trick he played with Hermione.

“That’s a good idea,” What the other Slytherine boy said finally washed up in Draco’s head and he realized that it really was I good idea.

“It wasn’t an idea-” he started again, but Draco cut him off.

“Yeah, we’ll all meet up here, get lectured again for being such bad kids, climb out the window and go to the lake,” Draco was pacing and from the corner of his vision, he saw Blaise shaking his head.

“With one tiny flaw, we’re in the tallest tower of Hogwarts!” Blaise practically shouted.

Draco’s turn to shake his head. ‘We can scale the building, no prob, but with what is the question.

Hermione’s turn. “I don’t know Draco, or haven’t you been learning magic for the past seven years of your life.” she had the same snarl Pansy had, what a shame.

“Then it’s agreed, we all go for a swim.”