Please Be There If I Remember

Chapter Seven: Anger

Breakfast at Hogwarts was so much worse than supper. Not because of the food—if anything the food was better than it had been last night—but it was because Draco could barely keep his eyes open long enough to enjoy it. His three friends were looking on with amused smiles at his grumbling like they had to deal with this every morning, and if he could take a guess, they probably did.

"Hey Pansy," he whispered to the girl who was sitting at his right, talking to one of the Slytherin boys and flitting her eyelashes seductively. She turned to him a little bit concerned.

"Ya? What is it Draco?"

"Do I drink coffee?"

She gazed at him quizzically then burst into laughter at his panicked face. She had to calm herself and ignored the boy she had been talking to earlier as he tried to get her attention.

"Sorry, sorry, not funny. Um ya, I think so. Not quite sure actually, just take what you want."

"But I don't know what that is," he hissed back.

Pansy shook her head and sighed out through her nose. "Actually, you don't have breakfast that often, just coffee. But when you do, you usually have toast with butter on it. Not exactly healthy if you ask me," she whispered back to him with a sly smile.

He rolled his eyes at her playfully and decided that today, he was going to change that. He grabbed a bagel and smeared this brown-looking sludge stuff onto it. Beside him Pansy wrinkled her squished-up nose.

"Ew, what is that? It looks deeply unappetizing."

"Not sure," he answered back, "it seems to be something called Nutella."

"Never heard of it. I wouldn't trust that if I were you. I think it's muggle." She spat out the word like it didn't even deserve to belong on her tongue.

"What's wrong with that?" Draco asked, furrowing his brows.

Pansy glared at him inquisitively. "What do you mean 'what's wrong with that?' Everything, that's what."

"But why?" Draco asked back, not sure what she was talking about. Just because someone didn't have magic didn't mean they were...lesser somehow. Did it?

"But Draco...we've known this our whole lives. Muggles are bad, they burned people who they thought were us at the stake! You shouldn't even be holding that jar of...well whatever the hell it is!" She huffed, suddenly angry for reasons he did not understand. "I'm going to class. See you later."

She went to leave, only to come back because she forgot her bag, to then leave the hall again, angry and embarrassed. Draco watched her, confused. Pansy's demeanour had changed so suddenly that he barely even had time to react before she was yelling at him and leaving the table with the stance of frustration on her. Had he said something wrong? Something that he had promised not to talk about before he got his memory wiped?

He went back to the bagel and licked the Nutella off his fingers. Even if it was muggle, it was still delicious.

Not for the first time since he woke up in this new place, he felt G—Harry Potter's eyes on him and had to fight an eternal war within himself not to look up and stare right back at him.

~*''*~

Draco never thought he would wish for his memory to be wiped again, but here he was sitting in Mr. Binns' class with the inane urge to smash his head across the desk to do just that. The first class he went to had been Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, and Draco had to endure a lot of sneering at innocent people from his house. It's not like that poor Justin kid had accidentally slipped in that puddle of water only to land on Millicent on purpose!