22

"Harry! Have you heard the news?" Harry blearily looked up from his breakfast to see the enormous brown hair of one of his best friends bounding towards him. It was first thing in the morning on Sunday and the hall was almost empty, with everyone but Harry and a few Hufflepuffs still in bed.

"News?" he mumbled as he tried (and failed) to scoop some egg onto his fork.

"Yes, Harry, the news! Why are you up so early anyway?" Hermione asked as she slammed a pile of books onto the table next to her and began spreading jam on a piece of toast.

"Not up early, love. 'M up late," Harry said through a mouth of pumpkin juice (which was laced with fire whiskey, but he felt no need to tell Hermione that).

"Up late? Honestly, Harry, what have you been doing all night? You better not have lost us any house points!" Hermione scolded, forgetting all about her news in the light of her friend breaking the rules.

"Nev got me an invite to a Puff party. Puff's party hard, 'Mione," Harry groaned, giving up on breakfast and letting his head fall to the table. He rummaged blindly in his pocket for a second before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with his wand.

"A what party?" Hermione asked, grabbing the cigarette from Harry's hand and stubbing it out on the table.

"Puff," Harry pouted, staring forlornly at the scorched mark on the table where his nicotine fix had been removed.

"Puff?"

"Puff!"

"Well if you aren't going to be sensible," Hermione huffed, turning away from him.

"Bu' I am being sensible, 'Mione! A Puff party! You know- the Hufflepuffs!" Harry gestured to the table across the hall where, sure enough, the few Hufflepuffs there were looking rather worse for wear, "Honestly, smartest witch of our age my ass," he muttered into the table where his head was still slouched.

"The Hufflepuffs... party?" Hermione asked with a bemused expression on her face.

"Yuh huh."

"Huh. Anyway, do you want to hear the news or not?" she asked.

"Yuh huh."

"Are you even listening to me, Harry?"

"Yuh huh."

"Fine. Find out from someone else then," Hermione huffed and, grabbing her books from the table, she stormed off out of the Great Hall, just as Draco Malfoy walked through the door.

Draco took in the scene with interest. There were four people left in the hall after Granger's dramatic exit. Three were Hufflepuffs who were all poking at their food with little interest; seemingly too busy trying to keep their eyes open. And the fourth was at the Gryffindor table, though who it was wasn't too clear as the boy was slumped face forward on the table, so all that could be seen was a head of messy black hair.

"Messy hair... Potter," Draco whispered to himself gleefully. Silently, he crept up behind the boy, his smirk widening when he heard the soft sounds of snoring. Quickly, before anyone else came into the hall (for the Hufflepuff's were quite clearly too out of it to notice anything around them, and so didn't count as witnesses), he muttered a spell and hurried away to his own table.

"Have fun meeting our guests like that, Potter," he mumbled to his breakfast, allowing a happy grin to grace his features for a second before his trademark sneer was back.

Thunk.

Groaning, Harry awoke to the sound of giggling and a sharp pain in his skull. Opening his eyes, he found himself still at the breakfast table with what appeared to be egg stuck to his face.

"Harry," a voice laughed from his left, "You're supposed to eat the food, you know? Not use it as a pillow." It was Ginny Weasley, he realised with a sigh. He didn't need hero worship this time of the morning.

"Ha bloody ha," he grumbled sitting up and looking around for the cause of the pain in his head. The hall had filled up considerably and an awful lot of people were looking at him in odd, and often amused, manners. Ignoring them all, he spotted a parcel next to him on the table.

"The owl wouldn't let any of us take it, but got bored of waiting for you to wake up, so it dropped it on your head," Neville, who was sitting on his right, explained.

"Huh," Harry mumbled. Ripping the brown paper off, he found, to his dismay, a book. He had been hoping that the package had contained sweets, though there was no logical reason for him to think so. Sighing, he read the title, which immediately made him sit up straight. Occlumency for Beginners. Was this from... Snape, he wondered incredulously.

He cast his eyes up to the almost empty staff table just in time to see the man in question incline his head slightly in Harry's direction, before he stood and left the hall.

"Well fuck me," he muttered.

"Not with that hair," a voice drawled from behind him and he turned to see Malfoy standing behind him without his usual bodyguards, but with an amused looking Blaise in tow. Harry was about to tell him to bugger off when he realised what the blonde had said.

"My hair? Oh fuck me, I didn't accidentally dye it again, did I?" he mumbled, hurriedly grabbing a spoon and peering at himself in the reflection. Sure enough, his hair was a different colour, but that wasn't the worst of his problems. His usually pitch black, messy hair was now green and silver, and slicked back to his head in a style that was all too reminiscent of a certain blonde. A certain blonde who was right now standing behind Harry.

"You fucking did what? You stupid wanker, you're worse than bloody Sirius!" he exploded, jumping up from his seat and glaring daggers at Malfoy.

"That's for my father, Potter," he hissed. Harry paused for a second, confused. Why did he always have to bring Lucy into absolutely everything? Snapping out of it, he stepped forward, pushing his face right into Malfoy's, causing the blonde's sneer to waver.

"That's right, little boy. I forgot Daddy couldn't fight his own battles. And how proud he'll be that you pranked Harry Potter. Of course, I bet he'd be prouder if you killed a few muggles, but-" Harry didn't get any further as Draco's fist shot up, colliding with Harry's mouth. Harry staggered backwards, hitting the table and touched his lip where Malfoy had hit him. His fingers came back with blood on them and he grinned, a small laugh escaping his lips. And then a bigger laugh slipped out, and in seconds Harry was in hysterics, blood dripping from his mouth as he doubled over in laughter. The crowd that had formed weren't sure whether or not they should be laughing as well; Harry, after all, looked ridiculous in fits of laughter, with green and silver slicked back hair, but he also looked disturbed, which made many students feel more than slightly uneasy.

"Finally, Malfoy! Finally you're fucking fighting back! It's about time, mate, I was beginning to despair of you!" Harry chortled when he had gotten control over himself once more, though a wide grin still sat on his face, splitting the cut on his lip wider.

"What's going on here?" The gruff voice of Mad-Eye Moody sailed across the crowd of students that had gathered around the pair.

"Oh, nothing much, Professor," Harry said innocently, turning his back on Malfoy to face Moody. The students parted for the ex-Auror, but Harry didn't notice this as the second he turned away, he felt something graze past his ear.

Bang!

Startled, Harry spun around just in time to see Malfoy disappear and a tiny, white ferret take his place. For a second, he just stared at the ferret, and the ferret stared back at Harry. But then what had happened clunked into place and Harry turned on Moody with a snarl.

"You have no fucking right, old man," he sneered, advancing on his professor, "I can fight my own battles, if you hadn't noticed. Turn the bastard back!" The last was yelled- an order, and the entire room fell silent, even Moody was too shocked to speak. Harry was shaking in anger even as a distant part of his mind told him that he was being irrational, that Moody had simply been trying to help. He quenched the voice though, his lack of sleep making him even easier to wind up than usual.

"Turn him back," he repeated in a low voice when Moody still hadn't moved. The ex-auror shivered and took a swig from his hip flask before raising his wand and performing the spell to turn Malfoy back into a human.

"My office tomorrow night, Potter," Moody grunted, already clunking his way out of the hall, "When you've calmed down a bit."