✓ | RECKLESS AND BRAVE | Draco Malfoy

38 | LATIBULE

Draco smirked at her, propping his cheek up with a fist. Make me.

Tessa flushed at that, words failing her once again as she bit her lip in slight panic. She glanced around wildly for a moment, unsure of what to do or say before she looked back at him — and noted the way something flickered in his eyes that were trained on her mouth and the way she chewed her bottom lip. He brought those silver eyes of his back up to her and —

"Tessa, come on! We're going to be late to class," Hermione said as she yanked the girl up to her feet and out the Great Hall.

ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ

     After a rather long Herbology class of collecting bubotuber pus, it was finally time for Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins. Tessa and the others walked down toward Hagrid's hut at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid himself was standing outside, a hand on his boarhound, Fang. There were several open wooden crates on the ground with an odd rattling noise that sounded like minor explosions.

     "Mornin'!" Hagrid said, grinning at the four of them. "Be'er wait fer the Slytherins, they won' want ter miss this — Blast-Ended Skrewts!"

     "Come again?" Ron said.

     Hagrid pointed down into the crates as Lavender Brown squealed and jumped backward. The Skrewts looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters with legs sticking out in odd places and no visible heads. There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, and smelled like rotting fish. Every now and then, sparks would fly out of the end of one of them.

    "On'y jus' hatched," Hagrid said proudly, "so yeh'll be able ter raise 'em yerselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a project of it!"

     "And why would we want to raise them?" came the drawl of Draco Malfoy, signaling the arrival of the Slytherins.

     Ron's nostrils slightly flared as both him and Hermione turned to give Tessa a look. She rolled her eyes and said in an irritated voice, "I'm not his keeper — don't look at me like that."

     But nonetheless, she did throw a glance over her shoulder to Draco who caught her gaze and looked momentarily shocked. He cleared his throat and rephrased his question, "I mean, what do they do? What is the point of them?"

     Hagrid looked stumped for a second as he thought really hard. He said gruffly after a while, "Tha's next lesson, Malfoy. Yer jus' feedin' 'em today. Now, yeh'll wan' ter try 'em on a few diff'rent things — I've never had 'em before, not sure what they'll go fer — I got ant eggs an' frog livers an' a bit o' grass snake — just try 'em out with a bit of each."

     "First pus and now this," Seamus muttered under his breath, and Tessa couldn't help but to laugh quietly with Harry at that.

     They got to work shortly — trying to toss frog livers inside the crate, but the skrewts didn't seem to have any sort of mouth.

     "Ouch!" Dean exclaimed. "It got me! Its end exploded!" He angrily showed Hagrid a burn on his hand.

     "Ah, yeah, that can happen when they blast off," Hagrid said with a nod.

     Rhea Huang let out a squeal, jumping backwards to point. "Hagrid, what's that pointy thing on it?"

     "Ah, some of 'em have got stings," Hagrid said enthusiastically as Lavender quickly withdrew her hand. "I reckon they're the males . . . The females've got sorta sucker things on their bellies . . . I think they might be ter suck blood."

     "Well, I can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive," Draco said sarcastically. "Who wouldn't want pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once?"