Even though he would much rather eat every meal in his office or his rooms, he had been told when he accepted the post at Hogwarts that two meals had to be eaten in the Great Hall with everyone else.  So it was with a grumble that Draco reluctantly left his room to head to the Great Hall.

As a student, the Great Hall was something of a wonder, but as an adult whose past made walking through the throng of students, most of which were children of those whose lives he tried to make miserable while in school, or during that last year, it was painful.  He could swear that he could feel glares and hear snickers as he walked by and up to the professors table.  Sitting at the end, he began to fill a plate methodically, only intending to sit there and pretend until someone left and then he'd leave soon after.

He wasn't paying attention to anyone around him, no conversation would reach his ears.  Draco simply didn't want to be here.  He was assaulted by memories from the past every time he walked out of his office or his classroom through the halls. 

But still he was slightly proud of himself because he hadn't lost his temper at anyone in a very long time, preferring to keep civil so that he could keep his job. Otherwise he'd simply find himself back at his now empty manor, drinking away each day and waking up to a very sarcastic house-elf that would thrive on making him miserable before fetching him a hangover potion.

So here he was, trying his best to be civil, and attempting to eat something at least so he wouldn't hear anything from anyone how he needed to eat more.  No one needed to know that after his last class of the day, he tended to just want to drink his supper and pass out all weekend. Hopefully nothing would happen.

Meals in the Great Hall weren't just wonderous to Mairead: they were sacred.  Hogwarts was the first place Mairead had ever been where meals were hearty, tasty and reliable.  As a first year, she remembered gorging herself almost every meal, convinced that at any moment she'd be removed and the food would vanish.  Though, over the years, the desperate gorging had subsided, the general feeling of belonging and security had not.  It was uncommon for the young Gryffindor to miss a meal and positively rare for her to miss it by choice. 

But today ... today her plans included activities that made eating a secondary priority. 

Mairead didn't have any familial connections to the wizarding world and, in extension, the wizarding wars that caused by Voldemort and his followers.  But, she'd had her share of run ins with purists since her introduction to the magical world[1]  She'd been labeled as a mudblood before she'd even wrapped her fingers around a wand.  Most of her History of Magic classes bored her to death but she had taken special interest in tales of Death Eaters.  She knew the stories.  She remembered reading about how Death Eaters hadn't spared muggles - even caravan parks, including those used by Travelers - even though they didn't even know of their existence[2]. 

She'd heard the rumors about Malfoy.  She'd taken those rumors to the library.  With an almost unheard of level of academic persistence, Mairead had looked up everything she could about their potions professor.  She'd come to the conclusion that she did not like the man.  Sure, the rumors were often mixed with speculations about if and how Malfoy may have changed and the validity of peoples' ability to change.  It didn't matter.  Mairead didn't care if he'd changed. 

Sitting at Gryffindor table and pretending to be preoccupied with eating her soup, Mairead held her wand under her table and pointed it towards the small, velvet bag she'd stashed behind the professor's table earlier in the day.  She murmured a levitation charm to her spoon and continued to stir the liquid, trying to cool it down.  Behind the teacher's chairs, a small glass vial drifted out of the bag and, keeping no more than an inch off the floor, floated between the chair legs before settling underneath Malfoy's seat.  Another quick incantation tugged the stopper silently out of the mouth of the vial and Mairead took a bite of soup, while slipping her wand quietly back in her bag at her feet. 

Mairead slid her now free hand between her knees under the table and crossed her fingers.  She hadn't perfected the potion by any means - but she'd decided it didn't need to be perfect.  The bright green smoke drifted up out of the vial and up the back of Malfoy's chair until it hovered in the air a few feet above and behind his head.  It swirled and coalesced.  The final shape looked more like a crude jack-o-lantern sticking out its tongue but Mairead was confident it would serve it's purpose. 

She took another bite of soup and waited to see how long it would be before someone noticed. 

1.	Delving deep into site history.
2.	Drawing from the movie references

Frank Sellaphix was engaged a veritable symposium about a hotly contested question on a recent History of Magic quiz. Nearly everyone had got it wrong, which had prompted Professor Greyfriar to assign blame to his poor teaching and award everyone the points. However, Ravenclaw would not be satisfied with free credit, not when the actual fact of it was still up for debate.

"But that doesn't make any sense! Look, here - it says she was raised from the dead. Vampires aren't dead and an inferius isn't that same person brought to life it's just --"

Someone interrupted Frank which annoyed him. But then, the interruptor was interrupted by a second interruptor who pointed at the head table.

It took Frank a moment to find whatever anomaly was more important than grades but when he did, he clamped his hand over his mouth and hunched down on the seat. There was a grinning jack-o-lantern hovering over the head of none other than the controversial professor Malfoy.  Frank tore his eyes away to scan the room, looking for whoever might be doing it. There were loads of people who didn't like Malfoy, he'd even heard people say they outright hated him.

Heads turned. Elbows jabbed arms. Ribs. Whispers. Giggles. Guffaws. Fingers pointed. Hogwarts students collectively tried to hold their laughter. Savoring the sight. Awaiting the possibility of something more.

Seated at the Slytherin table. Meredith looked up from her conversation. Twisted to see over her shoulder. Scanned the scene. A sea of heads pointed at the staff table. Not Professor Greyfriar giving a speech. Not Professor Storm delivering a glacial stare. Not Professor Honeysuckle hysterically weeping at the marriage announcements in the paper. There was something rising behind Professor Malfoy. A crude face.

A long overdue prank!

"Oh my." Meredith said aloud. Stuck between her prefectly duty and her delight.

So caught up in his own want to be back in the privacy of his rooms, Draco didn't register the noise at first.  He took a drink of his water and happened to look up as he was setting the goblet back down onto the table.  Laughter.

When he finally focused on the noise, he realized that the laughter was accompanied by staring children, some of them pointing towards where he was sitting.  He looked around as subtly as he could but there was nothing out of the ordinary in front of him.  Turning slowly, he looked behind his chair and there was something behind him.  Whatever it was had moved when he looked, but he did catch a sickly green trail of smoke, but he couldn't quite make out what the shape was.

The spoiled brat he was in his youth reared it's ugly head deep in his mind, but his outward appearance hadn't changed at all, minus a tinge of red around the cheeks.  No, he was not embarrassed, he was angry.

In the public eye he was used to it.  The taunts, the glares, the hateful words, even the occasional parent would pull their child out of his sight as he walked by.  It had been happening for as long as he could remember and quite frankly those things didn't even phase him anymore.  But here, he had thought he would escape the stigmatism of the tattoo on his left arm.  He was a professor here, a master of the art of potion-brewing. 

But it seemed, even though he was out of the public eye while he was here, his past was coming back to haunt him.

Zeta was one of the students who couldn't or didn't bother to hold in a snicker. She didn't take Potions, so she hadn't had the opportunity or desire to 'get to know' Draco Malfoy and 'give him a chance' as some of the other well-meaning Hufflepuff had advocated. After all, Professor Greyfriar trusted him enough to hire him, right? But Draco Malfoy was still a Malfoy. Zeta had grown up in a magical-muggle family. She just didn't have sympathy for rich boys who felt bad about that time they killed Dumbledore. Maybe Zeta ought to be more understanding, but not today. Today it was hilarious.

"Oh my god, who's doing it?" she asked gleefully in hushed tones. No one in Hufflepuff had the sauce for it. She checked over at Ravenclaw - honestly no. Slytherin had some nasty people like Allura and Kari but they'd never do it, never prank a fellow Slytherin. That left Gryffindor. Zeta turned in her seat so scan down the table.

Now was the time for acting.  Mairead glanced up at her neighbor who was whispering across the table to his companion.  Leaning over her bowl, Mairead peered up and down the table with subtle curiosity.  Over acting with exuberant eagerness would be as suspicious as no reaction; she had to maintain her usual cool, collected, laissez faire attitude. 

Yep.  Yep.  Go through all the motions.  Find three or four people actively gesturing towards the professor's table and then look in that direction.  Briefly scan in the wrong direction - but not for too long.  It shouldn't be too hard to miss the wavering green form hovering over the Potions professor's blonde head.  The sardonic snort, however, required no acting skills at all - though, unlike her other fellow students - it wasn't actually directed at the professor.  It was directed at the sickly green, smokey face.  Luckily, it was a fine distinction that was nearly impossible to recognize from the outside. 

 So...this attempt had definitely not been one of her finer ones.  When she'd finally achieved a potion that produced something that was, at least, passable as the Dark Mark, she'd assumed she'd mastered it and had made the one she'd used today.  Patience and practice had never been her strongest suit but, now, she'd wished she'd exercised just a bit more of both. 

Ah well ... hindsight and all.  It really would only take a handful of astute onlookers to consider the resemblance for the rumors to start percolating.  Sometimes, doubt was better than certainty.  And, next time would turn out better.  Mairead had every intention of ensuring there was a next time. 

As the gestures and laughter got more noticeable, Draco finally had enough and looked around fast enough that he almost fell out of his chair, but he'd gotten enough of a glimpse of it to know that whatever it was, it looked roughly like a Dark Mark...

In his mind he was coming up with all kinds of brutal detention when he found out who was responsible.  He'd tried so very hard to forget that time in his life, yet it still seemed to pop up at the most inconvenient times.  Like now, when he was holding onto the last shred of his temper to keep it from lashing out and making a mess of things.

Draco tried to ignore it, the whispers, the laughter, but it was all too much.  He stood up so fast that his chair fell backwards and landed on the floor with a loud noise.  Although it probably sounded louder to him, since his head was pounding with anger.  All of the lessons on manners and how to behave he'd received while growing up were being put to the test to keep his temper in check at least until he left the Hall.

And in his anger, he'd forgotten there was a door that was much closer than the double ones at the end of the Hall.  He could of been out of there and headed back to his rooms sooner, but instead, he stalked down the steps from the platform which the professor's table rested on, and reminiscent of a previous Potions Professor, walked down through the middle of the Hall with his robe swirling around his feet as he walked.

He was super focused 0n the doors to the Great Hall, so much that he wasn't paying attention to anything else in the room.  He just needed to get out of there.... and in a hurry.  Before he did something that he would regret... and get him fired from his position.

There were days when she interacted more with her fellow Hufflepuffs at mealtime, looking lively and enjoying the banter that often abounded when everyone came together, but today was not one of those days. Today she had her food off to one side slightly, half ignored as she took the occasional bite while reading a book on herbology. She didn't really register the tittering and outright laughter at first as her focus was wholly on the tome in front of her, but it was hard to miss as more and more students reacted to something. She looked up, blinking in confusion before her gaze followed the looks and fingers of the other students, at her own house table and at the others. What she saw had her eyes going wide and an 'o' forming upon her lips before she snapped her mouth shut, her own lips twitching at Professor Malfoy's predicament.

Of course, she was immediately contrite when he fumbled and flailed, trying to see what had everyone laughing at him. That part was funny to see, she'd be lying if she said otherwise, but she couldn't help but feel bad for him as he stormed out of the hall between the long length of the tables. He certainly didn't have the best past by any means, but what a humiliating thing... and in front of the entire school!

He left!

"Mere!" Zeta caught sight of Meredith Misslethorpe two tables over and made no attempt to be stealthy as she broke the poorly enforced rule about table-switching at dinner. Zeta and Meredith were in different houses, but by sixth year it was all one big mish-mash. Not quite allies, not quite enemies, Zeta and Meredith got along when they had a mutual interest.

Zeta slid into seat next to the other girl.

"He's gonna quit now, do you think? Imagine, Draco Malfoy bullied out of Hogwarts. Poetic."

The Headmaster of Hogwarts himself had been so deep in conversation with a colleague, and so skilled he was filtering out youthful tomfoolery, that Knox Greyfriar only really keyed in when someone said just loud enough, "is that meant to be a Dark Mark." The crashing of chairs or the dropping of plates, that was easy to ignore. It wasn't as if there was a troll in the dungeon. But Dark Mark wasn't a phrase so breezily uttered.

Knox turned round to see the back of Draco Malfoy leaving out the main doors in a grand exit. Another turn of the head, and Knox could see the cause. His healthy complexion waxed pallid. He got to his feet and walked fully around the table to get a proper look before waving his wand and casting a spell to dissipate the smokey shape.

Then he looked round over the Great Hall, the students all a-titter at the scandal of a prank well and sorely landed.

"A gesture in truly rancid taste," he declared to the room at large, and in no uncertain disapproving tone. "There are better ways to lodge dissent that doesn't broadcast a hateful sigil without context or consideration."

He paused then, wondering if he should go on with a lecture. As he scanned the tables, no one jumped out as singularly capable or culpable. Someone coughed awkwardly. Someone dropped a fork. Knox sighed and turned back to his colleague with a weary shrug. They'd sort it out in due time.

Terra Williams was running late, as usual getting caught up into reading. She turned the corner to enter the Great Hall, only to tumble as a firm chest rammed into her.

"OOPH!" she let out a grunt as she fell towards the fall. "Professor Mal-!" she said when she recognized the figure. Seeing his complexion and fast pace, plus the laughter in the great hall, she could easily figure what happened. Pranking the Professors, really?

"Mind helping a lady up, Professor?"

Draco was so wrapped up in trying to get out of the Hall before losing his temper on a bunch of kids when he ran smack into someone.  And while he had been grown up for quite a while now, when he heard her question, his mother's training kicked in and he immediately offered her his hand.  It was instinctual.

Although, once she had stood up, he released her hand quickly.  "Move." he said quietly, as she was currently standing in front of him after he helped her up.  He didn't want to make a scene right here where all the students and professors could see.   He really just wanted to get back to his rooms and drown himself in Firewhiskey or Scotch, whichever bottle was closer to the chair he passed out in.

"Please." he added, knowing on some level he should still be polite, she wasn't the one who put the stupid symbol in the air above him.  It had to of been a student... He really wanted to find out who had done it and punish them accordingly, but in a last ditch effort to regain some of his dignity, he stood up straight, moved to the side of the woman in front of him and with a fixed gait, walked past her and down towards his rooms.

Terra gave the professor a light curtsy before stepping to the side. She inspected the room from the doors, but there were too many children, too much laughter to figure out who did it. Even some of the Professors were cracking a smile. She stepped back from the door with a grimace and straightened her robes, dusting them off. She saw the blonde head of the Wizard rushing to his rooms and frowned.

She stepped into the Hall and walked up to the table, taking a seat near the Headmaster. "What was that about, may I ask?"

"Haha!" Meredith shook her head. "Funny Zee.. funny. A Slytherin would never let that happen." She smirked but it was all front. They both took charms defense and transfiguration together. Big popular classes but they got thrown together on the regular. Merry admired Zeta's drawings. A little jealous. But she would not swap their lives. Zeta had a hot head and that was only fun to wind up when it was directed elsewhere.

"Do you want him to quit?" Asked Meredith. "He is an ok potions teacher." She glanced either side for people listening. "We have had better." Shrugged.

Professor Greyfriar condemned it all. Meredith looked up and down the table prefectly for guilty faces. Most were looking at the other houses. Weighing up whether to defend or laugh too.

"I thought he was coming back then. But it's Madam Williams." Meredith nodded at the pale haired witch. Walking between the tables. "Maybe he will take his meals in his rooms next term."