Later that evening, in their dormitory, Draco and Harry were changing into their pyjamas when suddenly Draco jumped up in shock.
'A rat!' he said with disgust. 'There's a filthy rat on my bed!'
Aries looked over at Draco's bed. Sure enough, a very fat rat lazed there as though he owned it.
'Don't worry, Draco,' he said. 'I'll take care of it.' He levelled his wand directly at the vermin. 'Extermino,' he said. The rat shrieked and then expired.
'NO!' Ron shouted. 'You killed my rat!'
'You mean you're the one who put the vermin on my bed?' Draco glared at the red-haired boy. 'It's bad enough having to share a room, but under no circumstances will I permit you to tamper with my bed.'
'It's his pet, you idiot!' Seamus shot back. 'Your fool of a cousin just killed his pet.'
'Oh,' Harry said casually. 'Sorry.'
'You murderer!' Ron roared. 'Scabbers has been in my family for ten years!'
'Don't be stupid,' Draco retorted. 'Rats don't live that long.'
'He has too!' Ron insisted. 'My mum said he wandered into our garden just a couple of days after You-Know-Who vanished. The poor thing was all bloody, too. My brother nursed him back to health, and now he's dead.'
Ten years? Harry thought. A couple of days after the Dark Lord vanished? A rat? Could it possibly be? He looked at the rat suspiciously. It was hard to tell, but he supposed it did look a bit like the pictures he had seen of Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form. There was only one way to know for sure.
'You know, Ron, I really am sorry,' Harry said, putting a bit more effort into this apology than he had into the first. 'I didn't know he was your pet. Here, let me offer you some compensation for your loss.' He opened his trunk and got out his gold.
'You disgust me,' Ron spat. 'You think that just because you're rich you can come in here and murder decent people's pets, and that your gold will make it all better. Well, it won't!'
'I'll give you ten Galleons,' Harry offered.
'Weren't you listening to him?' Seamus said. 'Ron doesn't want your bloody Galleons!'
Harry noticed how Ron looked longingly at the gold in his hand.
'Fifteen, then,' Harry said. 'I really am sorry, Ron. Won't you please let me show it?'
'All right,' Ron said grouchily. 'But you have to clean up the mess you made. His guts are all over Malfoy's bed.'
'No problem,' Harry said, and handed over the gold. He Conjured a small box and levitated the rat's corpse inside. He closed the box and placed it in his trunk.
'Don't forget to clean off my bed,' Draco said.
'Right.' Harry cupped his hands to his mouth. 'I need the on-duty Gryffindor Tower elf,' he called out. 'There's a mess in the first-year boys' dormitory.'
A house-elf appeared instantly. He bowed low to Harry.
'How may I serve young master?' he asked.
'Master Draco's bed is soiled,' Harry said crisply. 'Please change it.'
'Yes, Master,' the elf replied eagerly, and promptly removed Draco's bedclothes and replaced them with clean ones.
'Thank you,' Harry said graciously, and the elf bowed before disappearing with a pop.
'That was cheating,' Ron growled. 'I didn't think about getting a house elf to do it.'
Draco laughed. 'Well, surely you didn't expect Aries to clean it himself!' Harry joined in his cousin's laughter, but Ron and Seamus only glared at them sullenly. Draco's features twisted into a mask of horror. 'You did, didn't you?'
Ron shrugged. 'That was always the rule in our house. If you make a mess, you have to clean it up.'
'Same with us,' said Seamus. Both boys looked at Dean Thomas expectantly, who held up his hands and shook his head.
'Keep me out of this one,' he said. 'My mum and stepdad are Muggles. We had the same rule, but I don't know how things work here.'
Harry nodded in approval. 'It takes a good fellow to recognise that he doesn't know something. Keep up that attitude, and you'll do just fine in our world.'
'Better than these cretins, anyway,' Draco said, gesturing toward Ron and Seamus. 'If your mum made you clean up your own messes, what work was there for the house elf to do?'
'We don't have a house elf,' Ron mumbled.
'Neither do we,' Seamus said proudly. 'We do our own chores, divided up fairly between everyone. Me mam says that only stuck-up toffs keep house-elves.'
Harry shrugged. 'Maybe, but at least we never had to do chores.'
'You really didn't have to do anything like that?' Dean asked curiously.
'Well, there was that one time Granny asked us to help her cut vegetables at the chateau,' Harry said fairly.
'But that was because she said it would help us take our minds off the funeral,' Draco pointed out. 'Otherwise she would have had Roquefort do it.'
Ron and Seamus snorted in disgust and pulled their bed curtains tight.
'So, I bet you're glad to be out of the Muggle world,' Harry said to Dean. 'How did your family take it when they found out you were a wizard?'
Dean shrugged. 'All right, I suppose. It was a bit of a surprise for them.' He smiled. 'My stepdad thought it was pretty cool, though.'
'He didn't think you were a...freak?' Harry probed tentatively.
Dean shook his head. 'Of course not.'
'Well, that's all right, then,' Harry replied uncertainly.
'I shouldn't want to live in the Muggle world,' Draco yawned as he climbed into his clean bed. 'I mean, there are some good parts, like pizza and kebabs and sports cars. But I think it would get very tiresome to have to put up with all those explosions and gunfights every day.'
Dean stifled what might have been a chuckle. And with that, the boys dimmed their lights and went to sleep.
.....
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