Draco Malfoy and the Significant Rampaging Hedge

Chapter 3

It was the first Saturday of the month, and the fifth-year Hogwarts students filed past Filch on their way to Hogsmeade. Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny lagged at the back of the group, laughing and joking.

Draco Malfoy waited for them up the road, and with a spell he had memorized, he bewitched the hedge he was nonchalantly leaning on. The hedge began to shudder and shake. Fangs protruded from its razor-sharp leaves, its roots ripped themselves from the ground and it began to advance.

Draco discontinued its movement with a simple freezing charm that would wear off round about when Harry Potter would walk past. He grinned at his own magnificent brilliance and patted the hedge affectionately.

As the Gryffindors walked past, the freezing charm did not seem to have worn off, so Draco decided that he needed to do everything in his power to stop them.

"Oy Potter!" Draco took a deep breath. "Everybody thinks you're weird, you bespectacled scarhead, Weasley, you're brainless, you're poor and your mum is fat, Granger, you look like a beaver, you only got 98% in Transfiguration last year and you're a filthy mudblood, Ginny, umm, you have freckles and I don't like your shoes today."

They all stopped and turned round, amazed.

"Even for you, Malfoy, that was quite a long breath," said Ginny, impressed.

"Yes well," Draco replied, "I have very good lung capacity." He winked at her.

Stunned silence erupted, only broken when the hedge sprung to life.

It heaved itself forward; its once neatly topiared branches maniacally flailing towards the students. Harry pulled out his wand and blasted the hedge. However, the hedge only seemed more encouraged by this attack, and launched itself, at a quicker pace, towards them.

"DO SOMETHING HERMIONE!!!" shrieked Ron, who had recently misplaced his own wand, and was much too busy stumbling backwards to have done anything anyway.

With clean brilliance, Hermione quickly stunned the hedge. At the same moment, all four Gryffindors turned round just in time to see Draco speed off to Hogsmeade, cackling evilly.

"That boy has issues," said Hermione, putting her wand away.

"I'll give him issues," muttered Ron, causing many raised eyebrows turned in his direction.

Later, in the Three Broomsticks, Harry Ron and Hermione were still complaining about Draco Malfoy. Ron, with overeager malice, was miming what he would have done to Malfoy had he not been busy dealing with the hedge. It involved a lot of high-kicking and Hermione suspected he had been watching his dad's collection of muggle karate films again. She sighed and turned her attention to Harry, who was explaining in great detail to Ginny why Malfoy was such a prat.

"He's just so... so evil." Harry gesticulated wildly. "And he's spiteful and nasty to all Gryffindors. His father's a Death Eater, they're all in cohoots you know... He's just bad. All Slytherins are."

Ginny was faintly amused by all this, and decided to fight Malfoy's case for a bit.

"He can't help who his father is you know. And he can't be all bad; no one is. Besides, he's handsome and clever and funny. Definitely better than most Slytherins, right?"

Harry Potter gaped. "But... he's Malfoy!! And his hair looks stupid."

Ginny simply laughed breezily. Harry's conversation could be quite boring, but this was a subject that could interest her...

Draco walked back to Hogwarts with Blaise Zabini. He tried his best not to show his frustration, masking it cleverly by turning a nearby Hufflepuff girl's feet into stuffed beavers. Oddly, she didn't notice them until they startled her by singing the national anthem very loudly, in deep bass voices.

When he reached the Slytherin common room, he detached Pansy Parkinson from his arm, where she was making a nuisance of herself by drooling over his manly charms and brilliance. Not that Draco would have minded usually, of course, and Parkinson wasn't so bad if you squinted...

But he was a busy man. Pausing only briefly to give his dashing appearance a quick once over in the talking hallway mirror, (dazzling as usual, honey. I would eat you right up with a spoon if I had a mouth...) he turned into his room. Potter was proving difficult, and Draco was getting impatient. On the other hand, Potter's girlfriend was obviously impressed by his speech-making skills. He couldn't blame the poor girl, of course; few could resist his devilishly handsome face. He might give her a chance, if she was lucky...

Back in Hogsmeade, the last few students ambled back to Hogwarts. No one noticed a neatly trimmed hedge get up and bound off in the direction of the Forbidden Forest, topiary bouncing in the wind.