Draco followed by his friends walked towards the great hall. Everyone they walked past by glared at Draco weirdly. The moment they entered, the hall quietened and everyone in the hall looked towards Draco. Draco ignored them all as he was carrying a stack of books. He slowly walked towards the Gryffindor table.The Gryffindor students were watching him with vigilance as if he was their enemy. Draco stood next to Neville and dropped the stack of books in front of him, making him jump.
"Wh-What?" Neville stuttered looking at Draco.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked over to see what was going on.
"Catch." Draco said throwing something towards Neville.
Neville in panic was barely able to catch it, he sighed as he opened his hands to look at what it was and was surprised, it was a remembrall.
"Che, I wanted to give it to you on Christmas but I couldn"t finish the work on time." Draco said, "And this is an apology gift." Draco said patting the stack of book.
Neville"s eyes were still wide open, "Umm.. what is it?" he asked.
"It"s all the potion homework you will receive before your OWLs, if you manage to read all this you will pa.s.s your OWLs without any trouble." Draco said, "At least on the theoretical part, as for your practicals, you have to deal it by yourself."
"Why?" Neville asked getting confused as to why he was receiving gifts from Draco.
"Hmph! Can"t you see Draco is being kind." Pansy snorted, "Unlike someone who only knows how to blame others, Draco felt responsible for breaking your gift so he bought you a new one."
"From now on you forget what happened, right?" Daphne asked snorting as well.
"Yes." Neville replied quickly under the pressure of Daphne and Pansy.
Draco rolled his eyes and glanced at Hermione walking back to the Slytherin"s table.
Hermione excused herself from the Gryffindor"s table and followed Draco back to the Slytherin"s table.
Harry looked at Neville"s who was studying the books in front of him and sighed.
"Hypocrite!" Ron mumbled underneath his breath. "He was the one who broke it, so why is he acting like a savior now."
"We don"t know that, Ron." Harry said, "We can only speculate that the ball broke because of him, maybe the ball really break because of the fight as Hermione said."
"Don"t mention her, even after we became friends, she always supports Draco." Ron said,
"Okay! Don"t talk bad about her." Harry said, "Right now I only have two friends including you and Hermione, and I believe with all those rumors spreading around I am going to have a hard time making new ones."
Ron nodded and stayed quiet. Ever since Harry saw the Erised mirror that day, he kept going back to it every night especially after he received the invisibility cloak until one day, Dumbledore came over and explained it to him, that it was a wrong idea to carry just like Draco said, but he kept wanting to see them over and over again no matter what. After Dumbledore told him that he was going to move away from the mirror, he stopped going there. He was trying to move on from that when the news about Draco came out and for some reasons, he was dragged into the situation as well and today there was a separate article focused just on him being a potential Dark Lord. Harry felt sick at the thought of how people would compare him to someone who murdered his parents. Even his own friend Ron couldn"t understand him in this situation so he kept feeling down.
Today before coming to the hall he met Dumbledore again, who had a little chat with him. He explained how the news writer Rita Skeeter was as she had written articles about Dumbledore himself being a dark wizard. Harry felt calm knowing he wasn"t the only person but now he became curious about Draco. One thing Dumbledore said to him keep ringing in his head,
"One shouldn"t be punished for other"s deed." Harry kept repeating these words in his head again and again, even though Dumbledore didn"t specify Draco in general, Harry felt he was talking about Draco, from what he knew about Draco, he was arrogant, rude and very strong. Harry had people like Dudley in his life so compared to him, Draco was a saint. He started thinking about what went wrong and realized he was the one at fault. From the beginning, Draco extended a helping hand towards him but later on the train after he found about his parents, he distanced himself from Draco, painting him as the bad guy again and again. But as Hermione said back then, was he really a bad guy? or were they the ones that were bad.
As a fellow person who was suspected to be a dark lord, Harry felt more relatable to Draco than Ron. Even though he was receiving backlash for being suspected to become a dark lord, Draco was at the worst end of the story as he was more so in power than himself. Even in today"s article, the story painted Draco as being already capable of being a dark lord and not just a suspect, it said everything would depend on his choices. Even though Harry now knew how fake the story was since it was written about himself, he couldn"t help but recall the troll incident. Harry was confused whether Draco was a bad guy or not. From his background to inheriting the dark Black family, pointed him to be a bad guy but his behavior sometimes said otherwise. Harry sighed and started focusing on his breakfast.
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Hermione went over to the Slytherin"s table and sat down.
"Oh! I thought you wouldn"t talk to me." Draco teased looking at Hermione.
"Hmph! Good morning would be nicer." Hermione snorted.
"You know we could have gone together on the train but you didn"t even send an owl." Draco said
"I don"t own one and besides its really not that necessary since I would rather be in school, one day beforehand." Hermione said, "So are you okay?"
"Why is everyone asking me that?" Draco said rolling his eyes.
"Well, you changed from Malfoy to Black, which is causing a lot of controversies." Hermione said, "By the way, why did you do it?"
"Because I am a pureblood and I hate muggle-born wizards, so I wanted to destroy them by becoming the next dark lord," Draco said with a straight face gaining him three kicks underneath the table from Pansy, Daphne, and Hermione.
"It"s already bad! stop joking about this stuff." Daphne said,
Draco rubbed his leg, "I don"t care, besides we are at the Slytherin"s table. Even if I wanted to become a dark lord, I don"t think they will have any problem with it."
"Stop joking all the time." Hermione said, "Be serious."
"Sigh! Well, my mother is from the Black family and due to the last successor of the Black family being in Azkaban, I took on the role to continue the Black family. I can"t bear to see a n.o.ble family end like that especially when I have the chance." Draco said, "And besides if I let it go that"s like losing a lot of money."
Draco"s last sentence caused all of them to roll their eyes,
"I heard you were having new siblings?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah! I forgot to ask you about that." Daphne added.
"Yes, it"s twins." Draco said smiling.
"Twins?" Daphne asked looking excited, "I wonder how Draco"s smaller siblings would be like."
"I hope at least not arrogant as him." Theodore added.
"If it"s a boy then I am sure, my father is going to turn him into someone more annoying than me." Draco said sighing. To gain power Draco had already sacrificed his future siblings future.
"More annoying than you?" Theodore said weirdly imagining someone more stuck up and arrogant than Draco.
"By the way, do you not really care about all those rumors?" Hermione asked, "Harry is having a hard time dealing with it."
"Hmph! Do you consider me as weak as Potter?" Draco snorted, "The rumors only openly circulated now, but I have been hearing those rumors soon after I started gaining my fame. Besides Potter"s situation isn"t worse than mine either, he just has to deal with emotional stuff but I have to tread carefully every time. This time I inherited a family which had strong beliefs in dark magic and blood purity, as far as I know, some people would try to monitor everything I do." Draco said taking out a couple of letters from his robe.
"What is this?" Theodore asked opening one of the letters.
"Death threats, I received today." Draco said making everyone shocked, they quickly took the remaining letter and started reading it getting horrified by the content of the letter.
"Well, there are some who want to join me in my quest to kill all the mud-bloods," Draco said waving a letter in his hand.
Hermione who wanted to help Harry by getting advice"s from Draco was shocked to see his situation was worse than Harry"s.
"How dare they." Pansy angrily said.
"You don"t seem worried about it!" Hermione said.
Draco shrugged his shoulders, "Most of these death threats are from muggle-born wizards who are afraid of me turning into a dark lord so they want to scare me away from the dark path and I am sure some of them are serious, there are many people with a lot of hatred against Dark lords or just dark-wizard in general that they will be willing to do crazy stuff to stop another one from rising."
"How can they do that? You haven"t even done anything bad instead you have always helped all of them." Daphne said in disbelief.
"Well wizards are like that, superst.i.tious fools, one day they respect you but the very next day if some unexpected rumors about you spread they will start to hate you." Theodore sad sighing
"Superst.i.tious?" Hermione asked
"Here"s the thing, in the muggle world people believe in different stuff which isn"t true, don"t they? Like ghost and stuff." Draco said to which Hermione nodded in response, "But in the wizarding world ghosts exist openly, the superst.i.tion of muggle world is a normal every day in the life of wizards, so this causes a weird change of reaction, superst.i.tion of wizarding world is like a taboo because we all know nothing happens due to coincidence."
Hermione nodded trying to understand Draco.
"What he means is, even small rumors are enough to cause a huge change in the wizarding world," Theodore explained.
"So are you going to be okay?" Pansy asked with a worried voice
"Well I am in Hogwarts, so no one can touch me here and outside I am protected by the Malfoy family." Draco said, "Besides these people aren"t dark wizards, they wouldn"t be daring enough to kill me outside."
Everyone nodded and the atmosphere got kinda heavy, "Sigh! Let"s talk about something else." Draco said rolling his eyes in annoyance.
"Oh yeah! I heard Professor Snape is refereeing in the Hufflepuff vs Gryffindor match." Blaise said.
"Yeah, Flint was talking about it." Pansy added.
"Well, it doesn"t matter to us, who wins or loses." Theodore said yawning, everyone was agreeing with him while on the other side Hermione was now completely worried.
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Over the next days, Draco was busy with his own things. He had now started practicing swords from the book, even though it was hard doing it by himself he was still pulling through. Draco wasn"t practicing any hard movements but just normal stances and swinging. Along with that, he was busy reading the books from the Black family and experimenting with the weird Dark magic items.
Right now he was studying a book on making a portkey. The plan of him building a mansion was changing due to the fact that he couldn"t be bothered taking care of two houses, so he had this other idea of making a portkey in his suitcase joining it to the Black family house, so he could come and go out of Hogwarts whenever he pleased. This idea seemed more plausible than wasting a lot of material in building a house when he already has one.