Stealing Harry - теперь когда вся версия есть на archive можно не заморачиваться с кусочничаньем, а тихонечко читать, не торопясь и в свое удовольствие
"Nymphadora made them," she said, just as Sirius bit into one. Sirius paused for a moment, apparently decided to go through with it, and bit the rest of the way. Snape eyed them with the suspicion of a man who's seen exactly how many ways the sandwich-maker in question could screw up a potion.
Despite the house-elves' best efforts, Draco was a small, thin child, which in his mind was a good thing: it meant he could squeeze himself into the shadows of the hallway pilaster-columns, behind flowerpots, through holes in the garden hedges. Smallness was essential to Draco's existence, because the smaller you were, the better you could hide from Narcissa.
Considered objectively -- and Draco did a lot of objective considering -- Narcissa was not a bad mother. She kept him reasonably well-fed, clean, and neatly dressed. He had two excellent if somewhat dull tutors. But he knew she wasn't like other mums. Other mums didn't scream in the hallways when something wasn't precisely as they wanted it. Other mums had people to tea. Other mums didn't curse their husband's name on a regular basis. Other mums took their own sons out to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade or to museums and libraries. He knew they did. He'd read books.
Draco never went out unless his tutors took him. He knew Narcissa did go out, because he saw her leaving and returning, but she never acknowledged him unless she could help it, or unless he'd done something wrong. Taking him on trips or to go shopping was utterly out of the question.
When he was younger, Draco occasionally did something wrong simply to make sure she still knew he existed. Usually he realised the foolhardiness of this about three minutes after he'd done it. It was one of the many reasons Draco had identified and prepared several hiding places in every room of the house, for when Narcissa began screaming.
He also had places into which he couldn't fit -- or, after a growth spurt in his ninth year, could no longer fit -- and he used those to hide his belongings. They were things he didn't want Narcissa to see, or anything she might take away from him. There was an envelope of newspaper clippings about nothing in particular, just interesting stories he'd saved; a funny-shaped bottle he'd nicked from the kitchen; a picture of his father he'd found while exploring the upper rooms one day, when he'd cajoled one of the house-elves into unlocking the door at the top of the stairs which led to the rest of the house.
The problem was the photograph, he thought, as he gazed down from the ceiling at Narcissa, who was tearing the kitchen apart. If she'd found any of the other things she would have been furious that he was bringing filthy rubbish into the house, but finding a photograph of Lucius had put her into a frothing rage.
Draco kept carefully out of view, not just of his mother but of the house-elves, so that they couldn't tell on him if she demanded to know where he was. He'd discovered the high cross-beams in the shadowy ceiling a while ago, and knew he couldn't be seen if he kept to the south end of the room.
Clearly this called for some fast thinking. She was going to ask the house-elves, and then she was going to find all the places he kept stuff. He couldn't let that happen. This wasn't childish caprice; this was defending his territory.
He slipped off the upper-beams and down onto the lower ones; from there he dangled by his fingers until he got a toe-hold on the edge of the hatch that passed between the kitchen and the dining room. He slipped through it, landing lightly, and made for the hallway, arriving there a split second before Narcissa did. She shrieked when she saw him, and the full wrath of his mother descended on his head.