Snow was falling on Christmas day in soft flurrying waves, last night's heavy snowstorm had subsided and when the sun finally made it's presence known in an hour, it would be a beautiful day at Hogwarts. Silence pervaded Hogwarts the only sounds came from the kitchen where house elves were already bustling about frantically. All of the students still slept soundly, except for Draco Malfoy.
Draco lay in his four-poster and tried, unsuccessfully, to cover his ears with his pillow. The loud snores of Goyle, which he had become so use to that they generally helped put him to sleep, had awoken him much earlier than he would have liked. Draco was never one to pass up a few extra hours of sleep in the morning. But it was becoming steadily apparent that this was not going to be one of those mornings. With a disgruntled groan, Draco tossed his pillow to one side and sat up. Pushing the dark green draperies out of the way, he felt in his pocket for his wand. Aiming was a bit tricky since it was still dark in the room, the house elves had yet to light the fires, Draco finally was able to focus his eyes on Goyle's massive hulk. Unfortunately for Goyle, he never took the time to close his curtains.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Draco hissed.
He waited a moment for a reaction from Goyle but there was only silence. With a self-satisfied sigh, Draco settled back amongst his silver and green bedding. Now he could get back to sleep and hopefully return to the dream that he had been so rudely removed from. He could feel himself losing touch with reality as sleep began to overcome him and the library started to flicker indistinctly in his mind as his consciousness gave away. He knew where he was going, and who would be waiting, he only hoped that she would still be in the same state of attire, or lack there of, that she had been in before he had woken up.
There was a sudden strangling sound followed immediately by a long, low wheezing. Draco growled and sat up again.
"Only Goyle could snore through a full body-bind." He grumbled.
Getting to his feet, Draco started to sweep menacingly towards the unwittingly form that was Goyle. The stone dungeon that served as the fifth-year Slytherin boy's dorm was suddenly awash with flickering fire light. Momentarily distracted Draco glanced at the fire that was now boisterously burning in the grate that had been cold only moments before. The house elves were obviously beginning to make their rounds. Draco stopped and sighed with defeat. There was no point now.
After muttering the counter spell under his breath, Draco turned away from Goyle and looked, for the first time, to the foot of his bed where a large pile of brightly wrapped presents were waiting for him. He felt momentarily surprised by this, Lucius probably wanted to kill him, not send him gifts. But then, Draco supposed, Lucius had probably not informed anyone that his son had left the flock. It might look suspicious to others if Christmas came and went with Lucius ignoring his son.
Warily, he poked one package with the tip of his wand. It seemed fine to touch, so Draco scooped up all the packages from home and dumped them into the fireplace. Taking Lucius' last letter to heart, Draco thought it best to not open anything that his father might have had a hand in. Draco had never figured out what the foul smelling powder had been, but his finger tips were red and blistered for several days and Draco imagined that it was supposed to do much more than that to the recipient, but Draco was after all Lucius' son.
He stood before the fire and watched the presents go up in flames. Turning back to his bed, he surveyed the much smaller remaining pile of presents. Going along with Lucius would have been so much easier than all of this. Dumbledore had assured him that he would be absolutely safe here at Hogwarts. But Draco knew Lucius better than anyone else, and he doubted greatly that this was the end of it. And all of his reasons for not following his father and thus Voldemort, crumbled before the overwhelming odds of his imminent death. All of his reasons except for one, fell before the Dark Lord, all except for the brown eyes of one girl that would look upon him with nothing but loathing if he ever allowed the dark mark to be branded onto his arm.
