分卷阅读2（2 / 2）

“Tibsy, remember we need a birthday cake at the Hufflepuff table tonight.”

“I remember, Mister Malfoy,” the elf reassured him.

“Chocolate? Or was it carrot cake?” Draco asked, skimming his notes.

“Chocolate, Mister Malfoy.”

“Right. Thank you, Tibsy.”

Draco smiled and looked back down to the list of foods he had organized for today’s meals. He found himself asking questions just to have an excuse to speak. He had been less than enthusiastic when McGonagall had suggested he be in charge of organizing menus for the Great Hall. He had never really thought about it beforehand, but someone had to decide what they would be eating every day. And it was something to do. He had done nothing but sit around in his quarters, since he had finally finished the long, tedious process of becoming an Animagus.

He had agreed, simply because it meant he would be able to talk to someone, anyone, in his day to day life. He would see the headmaster for drinks occasionally, but he could tell the meetings were always more of a welfare check than anything else. She was a nice enough woman, but she wasn’t his friend.

Spending all his time around house elves made him feel as though maybe he was going a bit funny, as well, but there was no one to check for him. He was terribly concerned that he would develop one of their strange speech patterns and be none the wiser because they were the only living things he spoke to.

He sighed, checking off the items he had gone over with Tibsy. He was done for the day. The job didn’t take long. He would come to the kitchen around five each morning, eat and make sure that the house elves had gone over the list he had left for them the day before. They always sent a bit of what they had made to his room around meal times as well, which he appreciated. It wasn’t as though he could be walking back and forth across the castle all willy nilly throughout the day.

“I’ll be going then,” he said, pushing his chair back from the table.

“Will you be wanting to take a tea or a coffee, Mister Malfoy?” Tibsy asked, standing up in a hurry.

“Not today, thank you. Here’s tomorrow’s list, as well,” he added, pulling a piece of parchment from his bag.

The elf nodded and took the paper, tucking it into her pillowcase.

He walked over to the wall that lead to the hallway, glancing at the clock. It was only seven in the morning, and the number of people wandering around the halls would be few, the number wandering near the dungeons even fewer. Draco cast a disillusionment charm on himself and stepped out into the hallway. He hurried down the familiar path to his rooms, passing only five or six students in the process. They reacted to him about as much as they would have reacted to a breeze.

Eventually, he reached the old Slytherin dungeons. The dorms had been moved above ground in an attempt to keep the Slytherins less secluded from the rest of the student body, although living in the dungeons had never seemed to condemn the Hufflepuffs in anyway. Still, he understood the sentiment, after the war. Now the old Slytherin dungeons were in a state of apparent disuse. Draco and McGonagall were the only ones to know the password.

Draco stopped in front of the stone wall and murmured, “Sepultura.”

The bricks began to shift, opening a hole in the wall, which he walked through, listening to the bricks click shut behind him. The common room had changed quite a bit with Draco as its only inhabitant. There were fewer armchairs and many of the fixtures had followed the Slytherin dorms to their new home. Now the room was lined with books Draco had collected over the years. There was an area he had devoted to his potions equipment and on the opposite and of the room, a small dining table.

He made his way to the room that had always served as his bedroom, but now only housed one bed. He had taken the liberty of making his bed large, comically so, to compensate for the abundance of space he now had. He collapsed onto the bed with a huff, feeling his eyelids grow heavy. He had developed a semi-nocturnal sleep schedule, as nighttime was the only time he was really free to leave the castle without risk of being spotted, and once he was outside, he was fine. No one looked twice at a white wolf pacing along the edges of the Forbidden Forest, except perhaps Hagrid. Anyway, students didn’t much bother with roaming the corridors late at night anymore. The children entering the school now had grown up with stories of Hogwarts as a war zone, which he supposed just didn’t breed troublemakers like Harry Potter.