A/N: Thank you for the reviews. I recently read "The vixen and the Dragon" by Davesmom, and although it was a good story and very cute, I'm taking a different angle with this. I don't mean to make Draco fluffy in this; it's more of an introspective type of serenity. He thinks he's only talking to a fox, he would never say this stuff if he thought that anyone actually heard him.
Draco's Vixen
Chapter 2: The beginning of a beautiful friendship
Halloween night wasn't much out of the ordinary, his last one in no way out doing his first. How could you possibly out do a troll in the dungeons? Considering it would be difficult to get anything more dangerous in the dungeons than what already lies there. He looked around the feast, still disturbed by the poor souls who were clueless about what was happening beyond these walls. The Slytherins with Death Eater parents knew that tonight of all nights there would be a double attack on Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley. Voldemort had given up any thoughts on a plan at all, or if he had one, nobody really knew what it was. The great wizard was usually attacking on random now. This attack wasn't random though, what better night to plan an attack then on the biggest wizarding holiday of the year in the most populated areas.
Draco looked around the table; he had Crabbe and Goyle relentlessly eating on either side of him, Pansy staring at him from across the table, with Blaise next to her, staring at her. He sighed. He wasn't sure what Slytherin was lacking anymore, but it was lacking something. Being pureblood was nice, but it also led to being inbred. Half the population of Slytherin were severely lacking in intelligence, looks, wit, and power. They were only sorted into Slytherin because they were purebred and spoiled. The only one in the house that he would even consider his friend was Blaise but that was about it. Crabbe and Goyle were too stupid. Pansy was talented, but she was too clingy, her parents taught her at a young age to attach herself to money and power.
Blaise Zambini was intriguing in himself. He was only a couple away from the top of the class, and he was the third in the house. The slim boy with wavy chestnut hair had the delicate features of his French mother and the dark complexion of his Italian father. He, like Draco, was purebred, but not inbred. Blaise and Draco made friends their third year after sizing each other up for the first two years. It was a sort of alpha dog thing; they had to know where the other stood and how they measured up to each other. After a couple of tied duels, they stood at an impasse, and they became friends. Bored with his dinner he pushed it in front of him, and Crabbe and Goyle started stealing food from it. His cool grey eyes gazed over the hall again. Potter and his gang were chuckling about something or another, the Ravenclaws were reading the books they had tucked on their laps, the Hufflepuffs were gossiping like normal, and the rest of the Gryffindors seemed to be having the best time of them all. He looked over to spot the deep cascading hair of the Weasley girl toss around as she listened to something being told to her by the two girls on either side of her. For a moment, he thought he saw her glance at him while her head was turned in one direction for more than a fleeting moment. He shook his head and thought, 'Why the bloody hell would she even dare look at me? It's unnerving is what it is.' Draco suddenly perked up a bit when the dessert arrived, he always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and he filled his plate with anything he could get his hands on.
"You're going to rot your teeth out with all those sweets or become diabetic."
"Shut your gob, Zambini. If I wanted your opinion I would ask for it." He glared, putting some more pumpkin pie in his mouth.
"Yeah, leave him be Blaise. If my Draco wants to eat sweets, then let him." Blaise rolled his eyes and chuckled, smirking at Draco.
"For the last time Parkinson, I'm not yours." He pointed at Blaise with a fork, "And you better wipe that smirk off your face before I remove your lips for you."
Blaise leaned forward and rose to Draco's challenge, "You're just upset because Pansy already picked out the bridesmaids' dresses." Draco's eye widened in terror while Pansy pulled out a horrifying pink book with pictures and fabrics in it.
She opened the book to a spot and pointed to something, "Oh Draco, isn't it lovely? Ara and Paula will look wonderful in them." Draco shuddered and Blaise laughed.
Pansy kept droning on and Draco fled, not wanting to hear anymore. 'Anyways,' he thought, 'it was getting awful stuffy in there.' Draco ran down to his room to gather up his broom, deciding that it was stuffy in the whole damn school. He walked out the main doors and flew to the highest tower to enjoy the breeze. He leaned back on the sloped circular roof and enjoyed looking at the stars. He sighed. Those stars, unfortunately purebred families liked to name their children after those stars, he being one of them. It wasn't easy growing up being named after the failed and slain dragons of mythology, but he supposed it was better than what he could have been named. His parents could have been cruel and named him Camelopardalis or something instead. He scoffed, as if his parents would really name him after a giraffe.
To the left he saw flashes of light. He looked in the direction of Hogsmeade sadly. There wasn't anything for him to do; he couldn't join his father, and he couldn't turn against his father. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and slowly being pressed to death. He turned away from the lights; he turned away from what his father wanted him to do. He picked up his broom and floated back down to the ground, pulling himself together enough to walk around the castle corridors, broom in hand. He didn't want to morbidly have a chuckle in the common room about what was presently going on, so he wandered.
"…. me alone. I don't have anything." A thud could be heard. "Oww, I told you I don't have anything. I've got a few knuts and that's about it." Draco rounded to corner to find Crabbe and Goyle pushing a first year Ravenclaw against the wall.
Draco rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the two large Slytherins. "My dear boys," he drawled and slinked up to the duo, laying his arms on their shoulders and slumping between them, "how many times do I have to tell you? You need to bully the third years and up. First and second years never have any money. It's the ones that are old enough to go to Hogsmeade that you need to bother." He smirked at the young boy while the two lummoxes stopped to think about it. "Now why don't you be a good lad and give us what you do have before these two forget what I said and go after you anyway?"
The young boy handed over his measly nine knuts and ran off. Draco pocketed the money and looked over at the two in front of him. "Why'd you take off so quick from dinner?" Crabbe asked while he reached his beefy hand up to scratch the back of his head.
"I left. That's all you need to know."
"But we supposed to make sure that everyone sees us while the attack is going on" Goyle said, frowning at him.
"I realize that, but I couldn't listen to that silly bint continue talking about me, and Zambini wasn't making it any easier as it was, and you two were just nauseating to watch as well. I had to get out of there, if only for my sanity." He rolled his eyes and started to walk towards the dungeons. "Come along, it's getting late as it is, and I don't want to have another prefect to come along and start yelling at me till my ears bleed. We've got to rest up for the match tomorrow."
The following days match, Slytherin versus Gryffindor didn't end exactly the way Draco had imagined it. Gryffindor had won, much to his chagrin, 470 - 420. The good news is that the Slytherin team only lost by 50, which means that Gryffindor is slipping and Slytherin is strengthening. Crabbe and Goyle had filled out over the years and had become terrors with bats. The chasers still lacked, but with Crabbe and Goyle keeping everyone out of the way, it hadn't mattered much. The deadly duo knocked one of the Gryffindor chasers out, and left the older Weasel with a broken wrist. The only thing that held any resistance to them was the Weasley chit. She was hell on a broom. She had skill; she could probably out fly Potter. It was true that her seeker skill weren't up to par, but her chaser skills were the best that he'd seen. The match had lasted most of the day and the students wandered up to the warmth of the castle for dinner.
The evening feast was loud and rambunctious to say the least. Everyone was cheering, congratulating the Gryffindors and clapping Potter on the back. The little Weasley was still beaming with joy, but receiving none of the limelight. All Potter did was catch the damn snitch, the little redhead helped to score the other 320 points that won the house the game. She sat, talking amongst her little friends, being ignored by the rest of the house.
That evening, before curfew, Draco wandered back down to the Quidditch pitch to recount the day's game. He always went after every game to replay what he could remember about the game. He sat in one of the higher seats and sat in the bitter cold thinking. He had sat for most of 20 minutes staring at the sky before he spotted a small dot moving frantically on the pitch. He climbed down the stairs as not to disrupt the over excited being. He pulled out his wand at the bottom of the stairs and slowly crept up to the entrance. He jumped around the corner and saw the same fox running and jumping around, not even paying attention to him. "Damn it fox, your going to get yourself killed one of these days."
The fox stopped and stared at him with the look of a deer caught in headlights of oncoming traffic. The fox flattened itself to the ground, trying to decide if it should run or not.
Draco pocketed his wand and showed the fox his hands were empty. "Look. See, nothing. I'm not going to hurt you." He sighed, "Mind if I share the pitch with you though?" He smirked at the fox.
The fox backed up offering him room on the pitch; it stood a little higher but kept its ears at alert swerving at every noise.
"Thank you ever so much." Draco rolled his eyes, and sat on the cold ground, pulling his knees up to rest his arms and chin on them. "You've completely lost it now Draco, your talking to a god damned fox!"
The fox shirked away a bit farther.
"No offence intended. It's just that, it's not quite normal to talk to a crazy forest animal."
The fox pulled its ears back and growled at him.
"Okay, Okay. Your not crazy, your just real tame." The fox stopped growling and held its head up.
He chuckled and shook his head, "Well, damned if you're not a weird little thing. You go around watching sunsets, and playing on a Quidditch pitch. That's not normal for a little fox. You really should be more afraid of people."
Just to try his patience, he assumed, the fox stepped closer, holding its head up.
"Is that to tell me that your not afraid little fox? You are a bloody Gryffindor; jump right into the well with out looking, always leaping before you look." He raised an eyebrow at the fox.
The little bright red fox yipped and gave a jump in the air, just to prove him true.
"Damnable little thing," he muttered and leaned back crossing his arms beneath his head. "I suppose you're an easy enough thing to talk to though. It's not as if your going to go blab all my secrets now are you?" He inquired to the fox with a raised questioning eyebrow.
The fox laid down a few meters away from him and tilted its head and Draco looked back up to the sky.
"Did you see the game up here today?" he looked at the tiny creature, "You probably wouldn't know what Quidditch was if it gnawed your leg off."
The fox tilted its head the other way.
"Well anyways, today was a spectacular game. My team lost, but it was still a great game. That Weasley chit, she was fantastic, I've yet to see a better chaser. She was an all right seeker, but she's a damn good chaser, she flies like a seeker. Potter still caught me up on the snitch though. Maybe he just wants it more; I mean he has a lot of shit to deal with the Dark Lord and all. I suppose my heart's just not into the game as it used to be." He sighed.
The fox stayed low to the ground and crept up to Draco, slowly getting closer and closer to him.
"I mean when you have most of the people you know trying to persuade you into something that you don't want to do, you tell me if you could keep your mind on a silly little game." He started to speak faster and louder, losing the little bit of self-restraint that he kept. "The Death Eaters. I mean what kind of a silly name is that. They eat death? They can't force me into it. Well actually, they could, it's as easy as the Imperius curse, but that wears off, and I can fight it a bit. They would rather have me go into it willingly. Voldemort can go to hell, he's half dead already." Draco trailed off, looking up into the stars as if they had all the answers in the world.
The fox had squirmed its way up within his reaching and whimpered a bit, letting Draco know that it was still there.
Draco looked over at it, "Oi, your still here eh? Thought I would have scared you off by now." Draco pulled his left arm out from under his head and offered his had to the fox to smell.
The fox smelled his hand and sneezed, but stood up and swished its tail once.
"So, you've taken a fancy to me, is that it?"
The fox licked his palm.
"Would you let me pet you?"
The fox hesitated but rubbed his head against Draco's outstretched hand.
The Slytherin sat up and started to rub the young fox's head. "You are by far the most trusting wild creature I've yet to find."
The fox yipped its agreement, and leaned in to his touch.
He exchanged no other words with the fox that night, and the fox never moved any closer than arm range. The two sat in companionable silence as the moon rose higher into the sky. The early November chill was the only thing that made Draco leave to seek the warmth of the castle. He nodded his farewell to the fox as his feet crunched on the frosty grass.
A/N: Next up, CHRISTMAS! And my little plot devise and inspiration for this fic. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, I keep all the reviews. :: huggles her reviewers :: And big huggles to Colleeny and Kari, my betas, even though they haven't beta-ed this yet, cause I'm impatient.