Draco sat in the dark in his room, and because it was a dungeon, that was very dark indeed. He couldn't see anything, and that was just as well. All he kept seeing was that very handsome man coming out of Harry's bedroom and touching his face in an unmistakably intimate way. Well why not? His world was crashing down around him today. Why not this too? He'd be kicked out of Hogwarts and he wouldn't even have Harry to look forward to. Seeing Harry with that man had knocked the fight out of him just as if someone had taken a fist to his gut. It didn't matter anymore if he lost his teaching job. If Harry was lost, nothing really mattered.

He lifted the firewhiskey bottle to his lips and took another long swig. Dumbledore would find another potions master. Didn't he used to find a new Defense teacher year after year? How hard was a potions master to find? Anyone could do it. Look at Draco. If he could, certainly anyone could. Maybe even Hermione. In the last class all the first years did their own potions and did a fine job. Even Baskem. He finally did the Attitude Draught right. Wasn't it just a question of following directions in a book? Draco tested Baskem's draught on himself and he had a great change in attitude for an hour. He wished he had some when he went to Harry's rooms. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered him so much.

He leaned his head back against the cold stone, and drank another swig. This reminded him a lot of Azkaban. A lot of despair. Stone wall. Emptiness. Again he wondered why they bothered rescuing him if he were only going to end up there anyway. He raised the bottle. "Here's to the Dementors! At least they gave you your misery all at once."

There was a knock on his door. "Go away!" he yelled and took another drink.

"Professor Malfoy!" McGonagall's voice was muffled behind the potions cabinet covering the door. "Draco! Are you all right?"

"Oh that's right. It's Friday. She wants her student to tutor. I'm not coming today, Minerva! I'm calling in sick! That's something Muggles do, you know, when they don't want to go to work or to school. I'm calling in permanently sick!"

"Open this door!"

"I'm not at home. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please dial again-whatever the hell that means."

"Salazar Syltherin!" The door scraped open and McGonagall's silhouette was framed in the doorway's light.

"What the hell good is a password if everyone knows it?"

"Draco! Where are you? Lumos!" The torches lit instantly and Draco threw his arm over his eyes. He heard her footsteps approach until she stood right over him. "What a disgrace!"

He looked at himself sitting on the floor, bottle in one hand, the Chocolate Frog card of Harry in another. "I don't see anything disgraceful except for my dirty clothes on the floor. Shall I pick them up?" He started to get up, bracing himself against the wall.

"No. I mean you! What are you doing? Dumbledore said he'd support you. And then you didn't show up to the rest of your classes today. What's the matter with you?"

"Well let's see. I've been accused of sexual impropriety with a student and I don't even know which one."

"And Dumbledore said he'd take care of it."

"I don't take anyone's word at face value anymore. People you trust tend to lie."

She crouched down to look at him. He offered her the bottle but she waved it away impatiently. "Is something else bothering you, Draco?"

He glared at her. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, but he didn't want to leap out of the closet at this point. Not when he was on the verge of a sexual impropriety suit. He tucked the Chocolate Frog card away and shook his head instead and shrugged. "Isn't that enough?"

She straightened. Her hands were at her hips and she tisked her head at him. "What's to be done with you?"

"Just send me off to Azkaban. Everyone should have insisted on it in the first place."

"I suggest you give me that bottle and you take a long, hot bath."

He handed her the bottle and she took it in two fingers as if it were something unpleasant. "Okay. But I'm not taking a bath."

"Mr. Malfoy, I say you are. Now you can prepare yourself for it, or I shall."

His eyes widened. "Sexual impropriety is rampant here! Everywhere you look the teachers are falling into depravity."

"Draco…"

"All right, all right." He pushed back against the wall and got unsteadily to his feet. "You don't have to watch, you know."

"I'll be in your study." She walked primly out of his rooms as he staggered toward the bathroom. Maybe a bath was a good idea. Maybe he would drown.

* * *

Harry fumed for several minutes after Sorenson left him. The nerve! Just because the wanker was good-looking he thought he could get away with anything! He didn't even seem all that good-looking to Harry anymore. "Handsome is as handsome does," he muttered, thinking of the foppish Gilderoy Lockhart. Well Draco was fifty times more handsome than that prat. A hundred! No one made him feel like Draco did. He knew just how lucky he was that things turned out between them as they did.

His thoughts were interrupted by a huge yawn. Suddenly, Harry felt incredibly tired. He stretched and looked at the window. The sun was setting and Draco would be here soon. Maybe if he just lay on the bed and napped a little he'd be pepped up for his arrival.

Harry lay down on top of the blankets in his clothes, closed his eyes, and didn't open them again until morning.

* * *

Draco listened to the recordings of music in the small rectangular box Hermione had given him. Sunk down in the water, the ear buds played, "…Ain't too proud to plead, baby, baby please don't leave me, girl…"

"Stop," he told the player morosely and yanked the ear buds out, hurling the object across the room. It was late and not once had Harry checked up on him. He guessed that this was it. So that was the new Occlumency teacher. From what Draco could see he was a real looker. No wonder Harry fell for him. Draco was too high maintenance what with the threat of Azkaban and all. Who wanted to be saddled with that? "I don't blame him," he tried to rationalize in his alcohol-muddled mind. "I wouldn't want to bother either."

He stayed until the water was cold and his toes wrinkled. Finally, he dragged himself from the bath and wrapped a towel around him. He scrubbed the wet away and got into his dressing gown. Peeking around the corner of his wide-open door he found McGonagall sitting very straight at his desk in his study. She looked up.

"Feeling better, Professor Malfoy?"

He belched. "Not much."

"I told you the headmaster is working on the problem-"

"Who accused me?"

"What?"

"Who accused me?"

"I…think that is for the headmaster-"

"Minerva! For God's sake!"

She sighed. "I don't want you to do anything rash, Draco. You are just to continue teaching as you have done-"

"WHO THE BLOODY HELL IS IT?"

She traced her finger along some handwritten lines in an old beat-up copy of Advanced Potion-making lying open on his desk. "I am told the complainant is Antonia Adams."

Draco leaned against the wall. "I knew it," he said in a deadly voice. "I'll strangle her."

"I don't think that will help your case."

"But I have to ask her-"

"You are not to talk to her!" she said, rising. "And most important, you are not to be seen alone with her."

One side of his mouth drew up. "Okay. Then I won't be seen alone with her."

"Draco. Let me make myself clear. There are at least a hundred ways you can make this worse for yourself and very few to make it better. The latter option involves you simply doing the job you were hired to do and nothing more. LET DUMBLEDORE HANDLE IT."

He looked at her a long span and then sunk into a chair. "Why, Minerva? Why would she do that to me?"

"She clearly doesn't like you."

"Yes, but why this? Was she bent on destroying my reputation? It was fragile enough."

"That may be so."

"Everybody hates me," he growled.

"That sounds a little rash, Draco. And not a little paranoid."

"But they do."

She shook her head. "I think you should get dressed and make an appearance at the feast."

"Why?"

"Because that is what is done, Mr. Malfoy. We keep our chins high and we show the world we are not afraid."

"Is that what we do? Well it sounds bloody stupid to me."

"Language, Mr. Malfoy."

He sighed. "Sorry."

"I'll wait while you dress," she said, sitting again.

There was no amount of glaring that was going to get rid of her. He turned back to his room and rummaged through his wardrobe for something to wear.

He went with her to the feast and noticed that Harry wasn't there. That was particularly painful. Obviously he'd lost track of time. Draco wanted nothing more than to fall into bed into Harry's comforting arms, but he supposed that was not to be. Ever again.

That night he slept alone, if one could call counting all the cobwebs above one's head sleeping. At least there were no classes and he was able to keep himself locked away in his study without anyone bothering him. Later, when hunger drove him out into the corridors toward the Great Hall, he ran into Harry at the doors. Harry looked tired, the same way he looked after a long night of lovemaking with Draco.

"Hey Draco. I'm sorry I didn't get to see you yesterday."

Draco shrugged, wanting to be anywhere but there.

"So what happened? I feel a little lost, like I missed something."

"Well, it was all going as I expected-terrible-when it got worse. But you needn't worry over that anymore."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"The impropriety suit is going ahead. Dumbledore is taking care of it."

"What? That's ridiculous!"

"Yeah, well. Welcome to my world. Want to get out of my way? I'm hungry." He pushed open the door and didn't wait for Harry. He strode quickly down the aisle and settled in his place as fast as he could, but even though he'd been hungry before, suddenly none of the food looked good to him. He pushed some food around on his plate long enough to satisfy the curious eyes-hold his chin up, as McGonagall said, and then he jumped from his place and left the hall.

He made it halfway to the staircase when Harry caught up to him. "Draco! Where are you going?"

"I've got a lot of stuff to do."

"Well…can't it wait? I haven't seen you and you must be feeling-"

"You know you've got a lot to do, too, what with that Occlumency training."

Harry's face reddened and he looked at his feet. "Oh. Yeah…"

Well that said it more than anything else Draco could have asked. He nodded silently to himself. "So I gotta go. See you round, Potter."

"Draco?" Harry followed a few steps and then stopped.

Draco looked back once but Harry seemed to have given up. His nose felt prickly and his eyes burned. No! he told himself. I will not cry. When it's over it's over.

He turned the corner and nearly ran into Antonia Adams. They stopped and stared at one another a long time. Then Draco realized they were alone, precisely what McGonagall warned him against. He decided he didn't care. He wanted to know what the hell it was all about and he sent his thoughts into her mind and took a staggering step back when he discovered he couldn't get through. "What?" he said aloud. She was occluding her mind! "How are you doing that?"

She blinked at him. "Doing what?"

He grabbed her arm. He meant to give it a twist in emphasis, but she wrenched her arm away out of his grip. He stared at her open-mouthed as she stomped away from him, looking back only once over her shoulder and casting back, "You'll be sorry for that."

Draco leaned against the wall, looking down the corridor even long after she disappeared. For one thing, how did she have the strength to shake him loose? And for another, how was she able to occlude her mind as well as an adult witch?

"Something not right here." It nagged at the back of his mind. Too much strength. Occluding her mind. Attitude Draught. She deliberately spilled it, didn't want to take it. Too much strength…

"Shit!" He ran after her, turned a corner and ran again. She surely had to be here somewhere. But she wasn't in that corridor. She was already gone. "Poly Juice," he said to the empty corridor. "She's taking Poly Juice potion. Who the hell is she?"

He stood for a moment thinking before he ran in the opposite direction toward the library.

"Madam Pince! Are you there?"

She came around the corner, an angry look on her already pinched expression. "There is no need to shout, Professor! Even on a Saturday it is still a library."

"You're in charge of school records, aren't you? I want to see the file on Antonia Adams."

Pince didn't move. She nervously straightened the collar over her robes.

Draco raised his shoulders. "Uh…please?"

"I am afraid, Professor Malfoy, that I am not allowed to let you see the file in question."

"And why the h-and why not?"

She lowered her eyes. "As you know, there is a suit pending concerning that little girl and yourself…Professor."

"Well…can you get the file and just read the information to me-"

"I am afraid that would also be inappropriate, Professor."

He stared at her. "You're really not going to let me see it, are you?"

She shook her head.

He took a breath to say something but then thought better of it. "I see." He clenched his hands so hard they whitened. "Very well. Thanks." He turned on his heel and left the library, furious.

Standing in the corridor seething wasn't getting him very far but it felt good. And it also gave him time to think. He still had some Attitude Draught from Friday's class. If he grabbed some he might be able to feed it to Adams without her knowing it and then he'd see what was up.

He raced back to his dungeon and rummaged in the cabinet. Labeled sloppily (he'd have to knock points off of Baskem's score) he found the bottle and tucked it into his pocket. Now all he had to do was find a way to slip her the potion and watch it work. Maybe he could get help from the other Slytherins. But then he had to stop and think. Would the Slytherins band together against him and side with Adams, or was it more worth it to them to side with him? It was a tough call. Siding with him was the decidedly uncertain bet, though he was an adult and might prevail. On the other hand, he was Draco Malfoy, hated and esteemed at the same time. It was hard to say, and in today's climate, even harder for Draco to determine. But he had to take the chance.

He headed for Slytherin.


On to Chapter Eight
"Malfoy Maladjusted"

Back to Chapter Six
"Teacher Interrupted"

Chapter Index

Mystwriter's Story Page