Fandom: Harry Potter

Title: The Sorting of Draco Malfoy (an Alternate Universe Tale)

by zelgadis greywood

zelgadisgreywood@chez-vrolet.net

Rated:R for violence

Disclaimer: I don't own 'em.

Warning: contains violence.

pairings: None, yet.

archive: Sure, if you want to.



The Sorting of Draco Malfoy
by zelgadis greywood

-Prologue-
-Four Years Ago-

Draco Malfoy marched up to the stool and sat down, placing the Sorting Hat upon his head.

~I'll be in Slytherin,~ he thought, cheerfully.

"No... I don't think so..." the hat's voice said in his ear. "Your family were all in Slytherin, this is true. But I don't think I'm going to put you there. It's time to break the cycle once and for all. No more Malfoy abuse... from anyone."

"Father will skin me alive if I'm not sorted into Slytherin."

"The friends you will make as your new House teaches you the lessons in kindness your father sought to keep from you will not allow you to be hurt. Now, let me see... you need to learn kindness, and compassion... yes... Merlin knows you could certainly use a little of both yourself... so... I'd better place you in... Hufflepuff!"

The room swayed, and tilted to the left as the floor suddenly came up and hit him.



-Chapter One-

Draco sat on his bed and looked, sadly, at the picture of Cedric Diggory he'd hung up on the wall by his bed.

The two of them had been great friends, and he had come to see Cedric as the brother he'd never had.

"Gryffindor won the Quidditch match today," he told the poster. "You'd have been proud of us, though. We did our best. They were just a little better than we were."

He sat there for a moment longer, then decided he'd best stop putting off studying and headed for the library.

"Hey, pretty boy,"

Draco stopped. Blocking his way, and looking rather nasty, were Crabbe and Goyle, two Slytherins who had been his friends until he'd been sorted into Hufflepuff.

They always seemed determined to punish him for being sorted into 'the wrong house', something he was sure was his father's idea.

Last time, they had force-fed him a puking pasty during a testing period, hoping to flunk him out of school. The teachers had allowed him to make up the test, however, and he'd passed.

"You know," he'd told the professor as Crabbe and Goyle had passed, "if I hadn't had that little bit of extra time, I might not have done so well."

Crabbe and Goyle had scowled, darkly, upon hearing this.

But today, they looked like they planned to do more than just making him a little sick.

Crabbe grabbed him, and spun him around, holding him tightly by the shoulders while Goyle smirked at him. "Just learned about a nice little bone-breaker curse and figured we'd try it out."

"Ossia Fragmenta!" Goyle hissed as he waved his wand at Draco's right kneecap.

Draco suddenly sagged with a howl of agony as the bones in that kneecap splintered, some shards poking through the skin.

Crabbe smiled. "Good one, Goyle. Break his ankles next."

Draco screamed as Goyle shattered first his left ankle then his right. Now Crabbe's grip on him was the only thing holding him up. Crabbe wasn't taking any of the weight off his broken ankles either.

His arms were next, Goyle working methodically down from the shoulders to the tips of his fingers.

"Break his neck," Crabbe laughed, gleefully, tilting Draco's chin back. "Go on!"

Crabbe raised his wand, too into what he was doing, too drunk with the adrenaline of the violent spell, to care about the consequences of his actions.

"Expelliarmus!"

Crabbe flew back several feet and came to rest under a rather disapproving portrait.

"Shameful behavior," the portrait clucked. "Attacking a fellow student like that. In my day, you'd have been chucked out in no time."

"Indeed, Sophia," a woman in a portrait across the way agreed. "I, for one, would not be surprised to see this boy in Azkaban for this. I think that the bonebreaker curse should be considered an Unforgivable. Don't you."

"Quite so, Lady Mondegreen," Sophia nodded. "It's quite disgusting if you ask me."

"Help is on the way, Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore's voice said in Draco's ear. "It's lucky for you that I was on my way to the library to see if Madam Pince might have a catalog of socks."

Draco stared at the Headmaster, not really sure he'd heard him. His hearing was a bit funny right now, and seemed to be focused mainly, on the blood rushing through the nearby veins, though he was pretty sure Dumbledore had said something about socks.

Through the haze of his pain, he felt his shattered body being lifted onto a stretcher that he hadn't heard Dumbledore conjure.

Draco was in a little dinghy being pulled downstream by a blue and white tugboat that spouted lemon-scented steam, while several pairs of argyle socks hang over the railing.

The captain pulled the boat into port, and he disembarked, and found a comfortable bench to rest on, before he had to help unload the cargo.

A dock worker came and sat by him. He was wearing a headband, like the other workers, though this one was embroidered with a bolt of lightning. The dockworker stopped to stroke his pet lion, and then sat on the bench beside him.

Draco didn't mind the fact that the other young man did not speak. He was just happy to have a little company. He hoped his bench mate would not mind being a pillow. His muscles were sore, his joints ached horribly, and he needed a nice long nap.

Curling up with his head on the boy's lap, he drifted off to sleep.



-Chapter Two-

"...horrible thing." Madam Pomfrey was saying, as Draco slowly became aware of his surroundings. "Nasty business that bone breaker curse. Why it's not listed as one of the unforgivables I'll never know. Any idea who attacked him?"

"The persons responsible are already on their way to Azkaban, Poppy," Dumbledore assured her. "I have no intention of allowing such persons to remain at this school."

Draco breathed a sigh of relief. His right arm still ached, and he knew it was still mending. The rest of him felt, fine, however. Remarkably so considering why he was in the hospital wing in the first place.

"Ah, I see our Mr. Malfoy is finally awake," Dumbledore smiled as MadamPomfrey fussed over him, checking each bone and joint, making sure he was healing properly. "You'll be happy to know, Draco, that Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle have been properly dealt with. Also, Mr. Potter came by to see you earlier. He, Mr. Weasley, and Miss Granger all wish you a speedy recovery."

Draco smiled. "I think I can manage that." he told the Headmaster.

"Excellent," Dumbledore beamed. "then I will look forward to seeing you play on Thursday. Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor. With Harry as seeker on Gryffindor's team, and you as one of Hufflepuff's best chasers, I won't know which team to root for."

"Then root for both teams, and make sure to bring plenty of cough drops," Draco smiled. "I'm sure they'll be enough good plays on both sides to keep you cheering non-stop."

"I heard you in the stands cheering for Slytherin the other day." Dumbledore noted.

"It was a good play," Draco replied. "One of the few where they didn't cheat. I felt they deserved it. Crabbe..." he shuddered at the memory of what Crabbe and Goyle had done to him. The pain in his bones hadn't been what hurt him the worst about it. "Headmaster. Crabbe and Goyle were my friends until I came here. I'm still the same person I was, aren't I? Why do they hate me now?"

"Because you're not the same person you were," Dumbledore smiled. "You've matured, grown up. You were able to put your bitterness behind you, to grow up and become a good person. They couldn't do that. They are angry at you for being able to do what they could not. Do you understand me, Draco?"

Draco thought about it, then nodded.

"Rest for now, Draco," Dumbleore said as he crossed to the door and opened it quietly. "Everything is going to be all right."



-Chapter 3-

"You know, it's been a lot nicer here since that Crabbe and Goyle got sent off," Ron Weasley remarked as he ate a bit of shepherd's pie.

Harry, whose mouth was currently full, nodded politely and swallowed the bit of chicken he'd been working on. "I'm really glad Draco's all right. Those goons hurt him really badly."

"He wanted to be in Slytherin, too," Hermione recalled the day they'd first met Draco. "Remember? Imagine what things would have been like for him if he'd had to live in the same House with them?"

"But, they only beat him up because he's in Hufflepuff." Ginny reminded them. "If he'd been sorted into Slytherin, they'd never have beaten him up."

"I'm still glad he's not," Harry admitted. "I bet he'd have been a real creep if that had happened. The Hufflepuffs had their hands full with him the first two years. Remember?"

The bell rang and they began to make their way to their next class.

"I think the worst time was when he was determined to prove to us all that Snape wore a wig. Remember?" Ron asked, as.

He did a comically bad impression of Draco trying to prove that Snape was wearing a wig, and reached back to grab Ginny's hair in mimicry of Draco. He gave the hair a tug.

"Mr. Weasley," Snape growled, pulling his hair out of Ron's grip.

Ron stared at Snape with an 'oh-my-god-I'm-in-for-it-now' expression.

"My hair was not a wig when Mr. Malfoy checked it, and it still is not a wig today. Five points from Gryffindor for being a pain in the backside."

He looked over at the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, a rather severe but pretty young woman who looked as though she were an elegantly sculpted ice-statue, and quickly amended, "and twenty points for Mr. Weasley for his sense of humor" before walking off.



-Chapter 4-

"He's got it bad," Ron shook his head as he watched Snape's departure. "Stupid ol' git's head over heels and he won't even admit it."

"Bloody idiot if you ask me," Seamus put in. "He's this close" he made what Hermione recognized as the the classic Maxwell Smart "missed it by that much" gesture with his thumb and forefinger, to being happy for the first time in his life and he can't even talk to her."

"Well, at least he's taking better care of his hair," Ron remarked. "In fact, his entire appearance has been improving ever since Miss Mondegreen(1) came to work here."

"She's certainly a good influence on him." Hermione agreed. "I hope she'll be here next year, too. Who knows. By then, she might even manage to make him smile."



-Chapter 5-

"Good afternoon, class," Professor Mondegreen told the Hufflepuffs as they sat at their desks. "Mr. Malfoy, it is good to see you back in class. I wish to have a word with you once class is over. "

She sat on the edge of her desk and cleared her throat to get the students' attention.

"Now, as you know, werewolves are a horribly mistreated race, and up to now, dealing with them has almost always been fatal to the unfortunate person who has the misfortune of being cursed. There is, of course, the Wolfsbane potion, but that only works if it is taken before the transformation. Now, can anyone name any of the ways in which a werewolf might be dealt with that will keep you safe, but will not do harm to the werewolf?"

"Don't go out with him when there's a full moon?" one student offered.

"Good," Professor Mondegreen nodded. "But what if you encounter him out in the open during the full moon?"

"I read somewhere that if you say a werewolf's true name, that you can change him back into a man."

"That only works if the werewolf is calm. And there aren't too many wizards who can calm a werewolf."

"My father swears that garlic or Valerian will get rid of a werewolf."

Professor Mondegreen smiled. "The smell of garlic or Valerian will get rid of anyone." she told the class, who laughed appreciatively.



-Chapter 6-

"Professor Mondegreen," Draco asked, as class was letting out. "Do you like Professor Snape?"

"Well," Professor Mondegreen smiled. "I like the other Professors well enough. And he is one of the other Professors. So, yes. I like him." She smiled, when Draco opened his mouth to speak. "But that's not really what you want to know, is it?"

"No. Not really," Draco admitted.

"You want to know if I'm in love with Professor Snape." Professor Mondegreen thought about it, then smiled. "You know what," she grinned, "I think I am. In fact, I'm thinking of asking him to accompany me to Hogsmeade this weekend. Do you think he'll go?"

"I bet he will," Draco replied. "But it might make him happier if you accepted an offer from him. Maybe I can get him to ask you?"

"That would be better." Professor Mondegreen agreed.


END PART 6