Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of JKR. But we all knew that. Check out the dramioneldws community on livejournal for new drabbles to vote on every Thursday. This is from Week 1; "library" was the prompt. I'd love feedback, and especially welcome constructive criticism.
The burnt parchment crunches under his feet.
Granger would have a fit, he thinks, as he surveys the damage around him. He still half-expects to see her, at her table near the back--books stacked high all around, her bushy hair waving as she scribbles too-long essays.
Amycus and Alecto have begun to purge the library, row by row. Madam Pince had protested--and ended in the infirmary for her troubles.
He is in detention for "insufficient enthusiasm" with the Cruciatus Curse. The Carrows relish punishing him; Alecto's eyes glitter with obscene joy as she orders him to clear away the debris--without magic. He had always thought that the Dark Lord's return would restore his family's prominence. Instead, his father is wandless and disgraced; his ancestral home is now a barracks, overrun with half-breed filth. Blaise Zabini prances around Hogwarts as Head Boy, while he, scion of two ancient families, shovels garbage like a Muggle drudge.
In the Muggle Studies section, he notices one small book, wedged between the shelf and the wall--the only one to escape the Carrows' destruction. He picks it up and brushes the ash off the front cover.
67 Ingenious Innovations by Meritorious Muggle-borns
February 7, 1993
He is in the library, hard at work on his History of Magic essay. His father had been particularly displeased with his first year examination results:
"This is your heritage, Draco, and yet an upstart girl of no wizarding family has bested you by a full fifteen points! I shall scarcely be able hold my head up at the next Governor's meeting...I trust you will give a better showing next year."
He's studied hard, all year, but Granger is always better. He hopes she will be the next Mudblood found Petrified, and tells her so often, when Potter and Weasley aren't around. He tells her it's about time someone sweeps away the filth, that her sort are leeches and parasites, that she doesn't belong here. She usually sniffs haughtily and turns away, but today...he smirks as he remembers the flicker of hurt and uncertainty in her eyes.
Crack!
Granger slaps a book down on top of his parchment scroll, glares at him, and then flounces away--as much as a small girl can flounce while carrying an over-stuffed satchel.
67 Ingenious Innovations by Meritorious Muggle-borns
He snorts as he reads the title, but he does flip through the pages. The Wizarding Wireless Network. The Knight Bus. The Weird Sisters. Lies, all of it. He knows, because his father has told him so, that Mudbloods have never contributed one thing to their world.
After he finishes his essay, he shoves the little book behind the shelf, so that no other decent purebloods can be led astray by such falsehoods.
He gently tucks the book in his pocket and picks up the shovel again.
He reads it straight through that night, and wonders if Granger would have come up with the sixty-eighth.