6. His Lovely Head of Hair

8 & 8th—Chapter 6—His Lovely Head of Hair

By Marmalade Fever

Draco made his way into the loo adjoining his shared dormitory, still groggy from a restless night's sleep. Every time he'd thought he was about to drift off, he had heard one of the other beds creak. Although he, Weasley, and Potter had not interacted as much as might have been possible the day before, he wouldn't put it past one of them—namely the Weasel—to decide to enact some sort of revenge while he slept. He was the last one to rise, and the others had already left for breakfast.

He took his shower, cringing at the brown and curly, black and wily, and red and garish hairs that were littered about the drain. Weren't the House Elves supposed to clean up around here? He actually cast a cleaning spell on the bottoms of his feet as he'd gotten out.

After he'd gotten himself dressed, he towel-dried his hair, combed it, and then opened up the cabinet above the sink. His hand hovered over the objects there-in for a long moment, his eyebrows knitting together.

Of all the low-down, idiotic things to do. That vile Weasel had confiscated his hair gel.

His lovely head of hair would simply have to have to go au naturale. He carefully dried it a little more thoroughly and combed it into something a little less straight back, grumbled, and set off for the Great Hall.

Hermione had just raised her glass of pumpkin juice to her lips when Ron burst into sudden hysterical laughter, and she ended up swallowing wrong and coughing uselessly, the acidity in the juice not helping matters as her eyes watered. He instantly stopped laughing and patted her on the back. "You okay?" he asked. She nodded, though she could still feel the lingering scratchiness at the back of her throat.

"What was so funny?" Harry asked, pouring a goblet of water and setting it before Hermione.

Ron sniggered, his hand stopping its patting motion. He raised it, turning it this way and that like a magician before a magic trick, and then he reached into his pocket to reveal a clear plastic tube. "Nicked this from the cabinet above the sink this morning," he explained. He tossed it across the table to Harry, who caught it effortlessly.

"Hair gel?" he asked.

"Hair gel," Ron agreed. "From that posh place on Diagon Alley, too. Thing probably cost the git a galleon or so."

Harry leaned over to try to contain his laughter. "You stole Malfoy's hair gel?" He turned and surreptitiously stole a glance at the Slytherin table, Ron and Hermione's eyes following his lead.

Sure enough, Malfoy was seated two spaces down from the younger Greengrass, his hair drying into its natural state. It made him look different, Hermione realized. She equated it to the times she had seen Harry without his glasses. It was as if she were seeing a whole different person, Malfoy's brother perhaps. Without his hair slicked back in severely straight strands, his chin actually looked a little less pointed, as if his hair had been accentuating it all of these years.

She gulped ever-so-slightly. He looked… nice. There was a very soft curl to his hair that twisted gently around his ears and at the nape of his neck.

"Git looks like he's been dragged down a level, doesn't he?" Ron asked, grinning. "Knock that prince down to pauper one step at a time."

Harry snorted and then bent to read the tube of gel a little more closely. "If my aunt Petunia had known this existed, I bet she'd have slathered the whole thing over my head." He patted down his unruly bangs that only partially hid his scar.

"Well, I'm not about to give it back to him. Why not give it a try?" Ron suggested, turning back to his porridge.

Harry frowned. "Nah. That's all right." He scooted the tube back over to Ron. "I think I'd rather stay out of this. Speaking of which, clean my fingerprints off of it, would you?"

Ron looked puzzled. "Fingerprints?"

Hermione rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I'll explain it later. For now, though, I think you should hand that gel over to me."

"Why?"

"Because," she said, sitting up straight and adopting her best lecture voice, "I think you're being a right git. Malfoy's hardly provoked you, and he's vulnerable right now."

Ron snorted. "Vulnerable? Hermione, it's just hair gel. It's not exactly going to hurt him to go without it for awhile."

"And how would you feel, Ron, if your father had just been sentenced to the Kiss, you could only use your magic in-class, you didn't have any friends, and then someone turns around and steals your hair products?"

"He's got friends!"

Hermione looked at him skeptically. "You're sure about that?" She, Ron, and Harry all took another glance toward the Slytherin table, where Malfoy was eating and avoiding eye-contact with everyone around him.

"Okay," Ron conceded. "Maybe I can see your point… a little. But still, I'm not about to return it to him!"

"And I know you're not. That's why I'm going to return it for you." She stuck her hand out, and after a short battle of wills, Ron finally relented and handed it over to her.

Astoria Greengrass was staring at him, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It had started while he was eating his eggs, kept up as he drank his coffee, and continued as he patted his mouth dry, turned, and raised his right eyebrow as high as it would go. "Someone hex your eyes, Arse-toria?" he asked.

Her upper lip curled. "Do something different with your hair?" she asked, her tone far from innocent.

"Misplaced my hair gel."

"Hmm," she remarked. "I rather like it." With that, she flipped her hair and turned to her right, the girl beside her giggling.

Draco frowned slightly. If that was flirting, she needed to work on her technique. She wasn't bad looking—she had wheat-colored hair and softly-rounded features. She was a little on the young side, though. If he were going to do any dating this year, he'd probably choose someone from the seventh year, unless Padma Patil started appealing to him.

He didn't know Astoria very well. He'd been in the same year as her sister, Daphne—Daffodil or Daphne-Down-Dilly Greengrass, as he invariably called her—but he'd never developed much of an opinion on her other than that she was very good at acquiescing to Pansy's every beck and call, like a prettier version of Goyle.

Or Crabbe.

Suddenly his breakfast didn't seem so appetizing, the cream from his coffee curdling in his stomach.

Vincent Crabbe's death had been a shock for Draco, to put it lightly. He had never seen his friend so… confident? He'd been disobeying Draco's orders, treating him like a coward, acting completely reckless, shouting out Unforgivables like he was popping candies into his mouth. And then, in an accident of Crabbe's own creation, the oaf had died.

But what had really bothered him, about a week after the fact, was that he actually didn't mind that Crabbe had died. At first he'd thought of their mock friendship, years of loyal body-guardedry—if that were a word—the boy he'd watched grow up in the dank dormitory they'd shared together for six years. He'd even thought of that one time in second year when Crabbe's hair had inexplicably started turning red.

But after that one week, he'd realized something vitally important. He really only had been mock friends with the other boy. They'd never truly been chums. And the way Crabbe'd been acting during the final battle, it was as if he were watching a complete stranger rather than one of his so-called best mates.

A wave of anxiety ran through him as he realized how truly alone he was this year. He had no friends. Not really. The other Slytherins, for the most part, were ignoring him, as if they blamed him for the results of the Final Battle. They seemed to know that his reign was over. He'd been knocked off his high-horse, as the saying went, and now he was down in the mud with everyone else.

So far, the longest conversation he'd maintained since leaving his mother the day before yesterday had been with Hermione Granger—muddiest of them all.

The thought of her sent his eyes wandering up front to the staff table, where Professor Trelawney was adding a little brandy to her own morning coffee, Professor McGonagall watching her sternly, as if about to object.

Surely, the woman was an absolute fraud. She'd hardly even sounded convincing while delivering her prophecy. He'd heard a real prophecy once. His grandmother Malfoy had predicted a muggle crisis involving something called a Y2K Bug. But, as it was only 1998, he had yet to find out if the insect would attack or not.

Casually, his eyes wandered over to the Gryffindor table, where the object of the false prophecy was currently buttering a piece of toast. Beside her, Weasley was upset over something.

Hermione took her usual seat at the front of the Arithmancy classroom, took out her books, quill and ink, and then started rereading Gulliver's Travels while she waited. The Isle of Lilliput was being described as the door to the classroom opened. Looking up, she wasn't entirely surprised to see that it was her new Grief Counseling, House Unification, and Tolerance partner. Hannah had suggested that they all call it GC-HUT, but Hermione was still undecided.

Malfoy glanced at her briefly before he started toward one of the seats in the back.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Er, Malfoy?" she asked.

He turned. "What now?" Hermione fished through her book bag, pulled out the tube of hair gel, and showed it to him before giving it a gentle toss in his direction. It went remarkably off-course, but he managed to catch it anyway.

"I thought you might like to have that back," she said simply. She turned back around and went back to her book. All was silent for about two minutes.

"That's it, then?" he asked. "You're just going to return it to me? No explanation? No apology for your kleptomaniac boyfriend? Not even a pity frown?"

She turned back to face him. "I don't owe you anything. I got you your stupid hair product back, so maybe you should be grateful."

"Oh, yes. Thank you ever so much, Granger. The return of half a tube of goo solves all of life's problems. I am forever in your debt."

"Well, glad we've got that cleared up, then." They lapsed into a tense silent as they waited for the class to start.

Professor Vector started the class in her usual way by writing a number chart on the board, allowing them a few minutes to work on it, and asking if anyone knew the solution. Hermione had just finished calculating and was about to raise her hand when Vector said something that made Hermione drop her quill in shock. "Yes, Mr. Malfoy?"

Hermione swung around in her seat. She had never been second to finish a number chart. Never! "The property of five in relation to the system of elements is equal to the amount of magides present in any given gram of dried bat wing."

Hermione looked furiously down at her parchment. Merlin help her, he was right!

"Very good, Mr. Malfoy! Ten points to Slytherin. Now, I want you all to turn in your books to page 327…."

Hermione was only half paying attention as she opened her copy of Numbers and Properties: An Advanced Guide to Arithmancy. It wasn't the end of the world. She had gotten the answer, too. But someone had beaten her to it, and that someone had been Malfoy, of all people. Ordinarily, he would only give answers in Arithmancy if Vector called on him, and even then he usually had some minor part of the answer missing due to sheer laziness.

The nine other members of the class were busy taking notes, the one Hufflepuff writing furiously, looking half-crazed.

The strangest urge to see if Malfoy was being equally studious came over her, but she forced herself to bite it back, instead focusing on Professor Vector's diagram.

"Excuse me, Professor?"

Vector stopped in mid-sentence, looking over Hermione's head. "Yes?"

"It says here that the X should be placed next to the two, not the four."

Vector looked as surprised as Hermione felt. "Oh, yes, so it should. Another five points to Slytherin." As the teacher erased and rewrote, Hermione stole a quick look over her shoulder. Malfoy looked up from his notes, which were incredibly lengthy already, and he sent her a smug smirk, his left eyebrow raised.

She wasn't entirely sure what to make of this new development, but the next time Vector asked a question, she had her hand in the air so quickly that her elbow popped.

"Yes, Miss Granger?" The woman looked startled, and Hermione rattled out the answer in one breath, earning five points for Gryffindor.

By the time class ended, Hermione was actually frazzled. She replaced her books in a daze, her hair falling into her face. Malfoy had to walk past her desk on the way out, and he paused beside her. "You want to be careful, there, Granger. You could get whip-lash raising your hand so fast. And you might want to have someone look at that elbow—quite loud."

She didn't answer. All she knew was that she was going to be on her guard from now on. Studying would be a priority. Beating Draco Malfoy would be her prerogative.

A.N.: I had some major writers' block while writing this chapter. Never try to write something based entirely on the line "Ron steals hair gel." It may get you into trouble.