We are the children of Paradise
On our own now since the fall
All the things that are worth having
Were never ours to keep
I’ve been alone so long
That I just don’t know what to do
And I don’t want to lose you
Ginny worked it out in her dreams, tossing her head on the pillow and trying to see through a tangle of hair and slumber. Someone was screaming, and it was Hermione, and it was then she realised it was real.
She threw herself out of bed before she had quite thrown herself out of sleep, and she did not feel fully aware until the moment when she burst into the seventh year dormitory.
Every bed was empty, covers lying rumpled and abandoned, except for the one in which Hermione was huddling, her mouth still open in that cry of panic.
Hermione was one of the people Ginny would have unhesitatingly counted on in a crisis, and she was so frightened that for a moment she had simply broken to pieces.
This cannot go on.
Ginny rushed over to the bed and clutched Hermione’s arms. Hermione blinked at her and hugged her in a convulsive movement, so Ginny felt enveloped by trembling limbs and frizzy hair. Hermione’s whisper came through the clenched teeth of returning control as her hands desperately clasped Ginny’s shoulders.
“Oh, Ginny, Ginny, I thought—I thought I might be the only one left in the castle—”
Nothing less could have scared Hermione like this.
“I’m here,” Ginny panted, determined. “You’re safe.”
The knob on the door turned and for a single terrible instant, they clung to each other. Then Ginny pushed Hermione back and strode towards the door. She did not even notice until she was halfway to the door that she had had her wand tightly clutched in her hand all this time, and when she did she only thought: Good. That will come in handy.
When the door opened and a shadowy figure moved towards her, her mind was empty of spells. She was still working on protective fury.
Ginny whirled her wand up and struck the figure on the face. It reeled back.
“What the hell… Ginny, why’d you do that?”
Ginny was poised for another attack, but at the injured demand she focused, and almost dropped her wand.
“Ron?”
“Yes,” Ron said reproachfully.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Ginny began, when she realised that Ron had just seen Hermione and all the emptiness around her and that as far as he was concerned the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
“Ron,” Hermione said in a ragged voice she obviously meant to sound normal and collected, “Ron, thank God.”
She pushed herself off the bed and ran to him, and he folded her in a swift, tight hug. They both held on, pressed up against each other, until Hermione mustered up enough self-control to lean back and ask shakily:
“Who else is…?”
“A lot of people,” Ron said, his hand pressed hard against her back, as if only spanning the firm space between her shoulder-blades could properly assure him of her presence. “When we heard the screams we looked around the room and—”
“Not Dean!” Ginny exclaimed, on another twist of panic. “Is Dean—”
Ron blinked. “No, he’s there, but Neville—” He swallowed. “Neville isn’t. Harry and Dean are checking out the rest of the boys’ dormitories, Harry said he would follow me up—”
Ginny felt a ferocious longing for the ordinary, for the safe world she had been born into. She wanted to go to Ron and ask if his reddened nose was all right, because she was sure she could at least fix a nose, but all this…
“How did you get here?” she asked, helplessly. “This is the girls’ dormitory.”
Ron’s jaw tightened and his hand flexed against Hermione’s back. Ginny saw that his fingernails were torn and the fingertips looked red.
“I grabbed hold of the chinks in the stone when the stairs went out from under me,” he explained. “I could hear you screaming. I had to come.”
Hermione extricated herself, trying to smooth back her hair. “That was nice, Ron, but what we really need to do is get organised,” she said, and Ginny saw the shift in her expression as she forced herself into briskness.
“Right,” Ginny said. “What can I do?”
There was another sound, and then the door slammed open and Ginny saw a Firebolt being thrown to the floor as someone stalked by her.
“Hermione? Are you all right?”
Ginny’s mind collapsed with relief as she looked at Harry. She should have known that he would come to save Hermione.
Hermione began to explain at once. Ron was looking at the Firebolt on the floor and muttering, “Why didn’t I think of that? Should have brought a broom.”
Harry might have thought to bring a broom, but he had not brought anything else. He was wearing neither glasses nor a pyjama top on this summery night, and when Ginny went up to him and leaned against him she felt the reassuring warmth of his skin on her naked wrist.
“Harry, we were so frightened,” she told him.
“Ginny, you almost broke my nose,” Ron exclaimed.
Ginny did not look at him, too busy clinging to safety. Harry looked every inch the boy hero now, with his black hair hanging rumpled in his face, his wide bare shoulders braced and his unfocused eyes narrowed and determined. Ginny held on with every ounce of strength she had left.
“What do we do now?”
Harry was at his best in times of crisis, Hermione noticed absently as she took the roll and tried not to think about the terrifying scarcity of people. It was only when he was forced into inactivity that he went stir-crazy. Now he was angry, and acting.
Sirius was having some kind of fit at fury at fate, even while he was attempting to console a crying second year. Harry was prowling around looking in control of the situation, which was much more effectively reassuring.
“Get your wands,” Hermione heard him say in his grim, sleep-scratchy voice. “If there’s something happening out there, we all need to be armed. We need to be able to fight: that’s the most important thing.”
“When do we go into the Great Hall?” Dennis Creevey asked nervously. He was looking badly traumatised and worried. His brother was nowhere to be seen, and he had a girlfriend in Hufflepuff. “Can’t I just go check—”
Harry wheeled on him.
“We all have people we’re worried about in other houses,” he snapped. “We can go when the roll call is done. Does everyone have their wands?”
Hermione finished the roll call, and tried not to let her sick panic show on her face. There were less than half the people who should be here. She was trying not to think about the exact figures, but her carefully trained memory refused to fail her now.
Seventy-eight people in Gryffindor at the start of the year, slowly draining over the year to sixty-four. And now there were… Hermione clamped down on the stupid panic that had made her so useless earlier, tried not to let herself think it but could not help it. Thirty students left. Thirty.
Ron had her hand in a bone-crushing grip. She pulled her fingers gently away.
“Honestly, I’m all right,” she assured him with a faint smile. She had to be calm now, she had to think and remain self-possessed.
Harry and Sirius went to check the dormitories one last time before they left for the Great Hall. Hermione was walking round the room with Ron, trying to dispense soothing Head Girl smiles at the younger people.
She and Ron were close by the portrait of the Fat Lady when they heard someone speak outside it, and saw the portrait begin to swing slowly inwards.
No more panic! Hermione ordered herself, and was right beside Ron when he placed himself in the entrance and pointed his wand.
“Who’s there?”
“Oh, put away the magic stick before you hurt yourself with it, Weasley,” sneered an instantly familiar voice.
Malfoy was still in his ridiculous all-white nightclub clothes, considerably rumpled, and even the faint light made the sweat on his cheeks and forehead gleam.
“What d’you want, Malfoy?” demanded Ron, eyeing him with concentrated hostility.
Hermione thought she had never seen Malfoy look quite so mean as at this moment, when he spat out his question as if he wanted it to be an insult.
“Has Harry been taken?”
“Like you care,” Ron exclaimed, but Hermione leaned into him with a warning pressure.
“No,” she said slowly. “No, he’s all right.”
Even in the shadows, she saw a certain tension going out of Malfoy’s frame. The curl to his mouth stopped looking quite so nasty.
“Good,” he responded, equally slowly. “Good. I—that’s good. I think…” He raised his chin and spoke even more deliberately as he took a few steps backward. “I think I’ll be going now. You don’t actually need to tell Harry I was here.”
Before Malfoy could leave or Hermione could work out what she thought of this, Harry pushed past them.
Well, that’s torn it, Hermione thought crossly.
Harry was squinting without his glasses, his face looking naked and strangely older, and he walked directly into Malfoy’s personal space even though Malfoy initially backed up a step. It was as if he had the right to take hold of Malfoy’s arm and stand inches apart even when Malfoy was tightly-drawn as a bowstring at the contact. Hermione leaned further into Ron and was too tired for any more alarm as she thought, So Harry’s realised, then. It was just one thing after another, and if Malfoy was planning to mess Harry around at this time of crisis she was planning to rip out his tongue and feed it to him.
“Draco,” Harry said, sounding calm and factual. “Thank God, I was going out of my mind. Why are you here?”
She saw the thin curl of Malfoy’s mouth again and hastily spoke to forestall him.
“He came to see if you were all right,” she announced, and she was going to think about that later, if she ever had the time again. Malfoy gave her a look as if she had just killed and eaten his owl.
“Really?” Harry demanded, blinking and incredulous.
Malfoy stared up at him in defiant silence. Hermione looked at the tensed muscles of Harry’s arms and back and was sure for one terrified instant that she was going to witness something as horrifying as Harry taking Malfoy into his arms, making sure that he was there, holding on or… God, she thought with the sudden stupid desire to laugh. It will strike Ron blind.
Malfoy was still tense and glaring, and he fought back against Harry’s simple grip on his arm and refused with strained silent outrage to move an inch further in.
“Thanks,” Harry said, almost under his breath.
“Go to hell,” Malfoy snarled, casting a vicious look at Ron and Hermione. “We’ve taken roll call and the others are in the Great Hall with Blaise watching them. I wouldn’t have left them for—”
“I know. Neither would I,” Harry said. “How many of your people were taken?”
“We’ve got twenty-seven left,” Malfoy told him bleakly. “There’s nobody left in my year but me, Blaise and Morag.”
There was a pause. “Not Pansy,” Harry said. Malfoy was silent. “Draco, I’m sorry.”
Hermione was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable here in the threshold, watching them outlined in the light so they almost looked like a drama of shadow play, intruding on emotions she had no part in. She was not, however, planning to let Malfoy distract Harry much longer.
“We’ve got no time to be sorry,” Malfoy said harshly.
Harry hesitated, then gave a curt nod. “We’ve got thirty-one left,” he said, which surprised Hermione. She hadn’t known he’d been counting.
Malfoy stared, and rubbed the back of one free hand against his eyes. “Then we can presume it’s much the same all around the school,” he said. “Nobody can stay in the dormitories.”
“No, of course not,” Harry said. “If we all slept in the Great Hall with guards, I thought—”
“It’s an idea,” Draco returned. “Look—I have to get back.”
“Me too,” said Harry. “We’ll be down soon.” He let go of Malfoy’s arm, and before Malfoy dropped it Hermione saw the red mark of fingers on the pale skin above Malfoy’s elbow. Harry hesitated. “Draco. I’m glad you’re safe.”
Malfoy looked at him, eyes narrowed. Hermione thought it was definitely an indicator of character that when Malfoy had no reason for making another kind of expression, his face returned to a faintly nasty look.
Finally he nodded. “Go put some clothes on, Harry. Or else the Hufflepuffs might molest you.”
How typical of Malfoy to be making tasteless jokes at a time like this. Harry grinned and turned away when Malfoy did, and Hermione looked at Harry coming towards them and Malfoy retreating with relief.
Harry still looked tired and grim, but a little eased.
“Come on. Let’s go,” he said.
Even the night sky in the Great Hall was overcast and starless. Students were crying quietly in the shadows, and they were all huddled together so closely they looked as if they were all one house. They were so diminished they could practically only make up one house, Harry realised savagely.
The only bright spot in the entire night was just after they were all assembled, when Pansy and Zacharias Smith came stumbling in, in a state of panic and undress.
Pansy took in the remnant of her house with panic draining out of her face and being replaced with something like despair. She went up to Draco, and even at a time like this Harry saw what a natural pair they were with a pang.
She stood, barefoot with the straps of her dress pushed down to her elbows and the top of her bra showing, and stared at Draco with uncertainty as if she did not know if she was permitted to reach out publicly. She put out one hand and Draco crushed her against his chest. Harry saw his hand curl almost too tight around her neck, and Pansy’s half-startled, half-pained expression.
“Don’t ever do anything like that to me again,” he said brusquely, and then pushed her away and turned his back on her, facing the other Slytherins.
Pansy folded her arms over her chest, breathing deeply. Harry saw Zabini go up to her and put his arm around her, leaning his forehead against hers, and she smiled.
In spite of the incredibly petty and irrational jealousy, he was glad she was safe.
So many were not. Dennis Creevey had not been able to find his girlfriend, and the double loss had left him white and shaken. He clung to Harry’s side almost as tenaciously as Ginny, and Harry took him by the shoulder.
“What’s happened to them?” he whispered. Harry was not going to be stupid and useless enough to say, I don’t know.
“They’re not dead,” he said fiercely. “And we’re going to get them back.”
“I know you are,” answered Ginny, who had gone totally to pieces.
Harry wished she wouldn’t: when he had come into the Gryffindor girls’ dormitories she had been standing combatively, wand raised, and he had felt a leap of hope in his chest that she would be another ally to count on. He supposed she was only strong in that first flash of panic.
He felt embarrassed and as if he was giving her the wrong idea by letting her cling to him, but he could hardly shove her away. He stood with his arm awkwardly around her and looked beseechingly at Hermione.
“Poor Dean,” Hermione said in a discreetly audible undertone to Ron. “He was still good friends with—” she swallowed and went on “—Parvati, he looks shattered.”
Ginny’s head came up off Harry’s shoulder. She looked towards Dean, and so did Harry. Hermione was right, Dean looked alone and frightened. Harry wondered what on earth he could say to him.
“Excuse me, Harry,” Ginny said in an extremely determined voice, and set off in Dean’s direction. Harry saw the smile break over Dean’s face as she came.
He moved over to Hermione and spoke in her ear.
“You’re a genius,” he murmured, wondering how she could have known appealing to Ginny’s sympathy would work.
A smile flickered over Hermione’s face. “Only compared to you two,” she said, pressing Ron’s arm. They nudged her on both sides.
People were calming down a little now, still afraid but ready to listen to reason. Lupin was on the floor with five eleven year olds from different houses apparently all trying to climb onto his lap, and dispensing chocolate as if he had set up a stall. He had snapped at Sirius until Sirius became cooler, and stopped saying things like ‘Give the children knives.’
Now Sirius came over to Harry and gave him a swift clumsy hug, sideways so they could pretend they were used to gestures of physical affection. Sirius held on fiercely all the same, and Harry leaned his head down on Sirius’ shoulder so he could pretend he wasn’t as tall as Sirius, he was still thirteen and Sirius was going to be his salvation.
“Did I mention ‘thank God you’re all right?’” Sirius asked roughly.
“Nah. Thought you might’ve considered it implicit in ‘here, Harry, you take a knife at least’,” Harry said, giving him a sidelong grin.
“Thank God you’re all right,” said Sirius, ruffling his hair and letting him go.
Ruffling Harry’s hair was kind of like pouring water on the ocean, but he appreciated the gesture. He started to explain his idea about sleeping with guards in the Great Hall to Sirius, and Sirius became immediately enthused.
So when Dumbledore appeared, his hat floppy, with a bobble on it and yet clearly still a wizard’s hat, Harry thought they were all in a mood to listen and plan. He refused to let himself panic. They were going to fight this.
Dumbledore’s face was grave and lined under the floppy hat. Harry had never seen him look so old and sorrowful before.
“I have loved this school, and believed in every student in it,” he said.
Harry almost smiled when he felt Hermione stiffen beside him, and saw Draco’s chin lift in the crowd of Slytherins, and realised that Dumbledore was using the past tense.
“It has lasted for hundreds of years, and it grieves me very much that I have lived to see this day. Still, we have to face facts. Hogwarts is no longer secure. We have no idea what is piercing our defences, and we are being decimated.”
An eleven year old girl began to sob, quietly, into Lupin’s chest. Harry was frozen with disbelief.
“Students with magical families will be allowed to go home, unless they are considered in particular danger. Their families have at least as good a chance of protecting them as we do, and they will no longer live in a place which seems to be Voldemort’s main target. Those with Muggle families, no families or those at especial risk will be sent off with teachers or members of the Order, and every effort will be made to keep them safe—”
They had all known Dumbledore was serious as soon as he started speaking. It was only as he went on, detailing plans in his new, dull voice, that they all began to realise this was actually happening.
Hogwarts, introduction and monument to magic, Harry’s only certain refuge, was disintegrating. He looked around for the murmurs of dissent, but everyone was far too awed by Dumbledore to question him. Everyone only looked more scared that Dumbledore could consider this necessary, and even the Slytherins who did not admire Dumbledore like the others only looked mutinous. Sirius looked uncertain, as did the other teachers. Lupin had never been one for open defiance.
Nobody was going to speak. Nobody was going to protest.
“You can’t do this!” Harry exclaimed, and everyone turned and stared.
He tried not to pay attention to them, walking forward and concentrating only on Dumbledore.
“We’re going to just give up?” he demanded. “You want me to walk away?”
“My dear Harry,” Dumbledore said, blinking but not looking surprised, “if you have another suggestion to offer, I am sure we would all be delighted to hear it.”
Harry saw to his growing panic that people looked at Harry as if he might have another suggestion to offer, some sort of solution and salvation. It only made him angrier.
“No, but we can’t do this!” he almost shouted. “If we all split apart, we’ll be decimated. It took us long enough to start working together—you want us to form an army if all you’re teaching us to do is run?”
Dumbledore’s blue eyes were dim. “I do not want you to be an army,” he said at last. “You are all children. I want you to survive.”
“I don’t want to be a child. I’m not a child,” Harry snarled. “I want to fight.”
“I want to fight with him,” Ron put in loyally, and then looked down when Dumbledore glanced at him.
“I think Harry is right,” Draco struck in. “Showing an enemy weakness can’t be considered a clever tactic.”
Harry’s heart was starting to beat faster with hope, when he saw the quiet sadness on Dumbledore’s face had not changed.
“None of you can decide the fate of Hogwarts. That is my responsibility,” he said. “I will not have my students placed in this danger, which none of us seem able to recognise, let alone defeat.”
Harry’s hands curled involuntarily into fists. He felt like this was a personal challenge.
“People are being taken outside Hogwarts too,” he said loudly. “We’ll still be—”
“On nothing like the same scale!” Dumbledore told him with an authoritative lift in his voice. “I believe this is the best action to take, for all of your protection. It grieves me that some of you disagree and that I must say goodbye to you all, but that cannot change a decision I have made for your welfare.
“The day after tomorrow, you will all be sent away. Hogwarts will be shut down.”
Harry sat up with Hermione and Ron until the small hours of the morning, crowded into a small corner of the Great Hall. Ron was with Harry, upset and determined to fight, but Hermione kept rubbing uneasily at her elbows while she tried to sit still with folded arms.
“The younger ones shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Perhaps Dumbledore has a point—”
“We could stay, though,” Ron told her violently.
“We faced a lot when we were that age,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t want to run.”
Hermione’s face fell as they both looked at her. “I just keep thinking about not doing the NEWTs,” she admitted thinly. “It’s so stupid, I know, after all this, but… I wish I could have done them.”
Eventually Ron nodded off, still sitting up against the wall, and Hermione gave Harry an apologetic look and curled up against him. He looked at her head against Ron’s chest and hated a world where Hermione could not even do her NEWTs.
There was no way he was getting to sleep. He was simmering with outrage.
He levered himself up on one elbow and looked around the Great Hall. Ginny was asleep, with Dean’s head in her lap. Dennis Creevey looked as if he had cried himself to sleep. Lupin had been one of the first to go to sleep, curling up on the floor with the simple ease of one used to being exhausted to the point of sleeping anywhere. Sirius was on his back and snoring.
Draco, Pansy, Zabini and—Harry thought—a couple of sixth-year Slytherins were missing.
Harry felt a flash of fear and grabbed for his pocket. As he’d shrugged on a shirt over his pyjama bottoms, he had snatched up the Marauder’s Map.
Irrationally, Harry had never quite been able to forgive the Map for the time he and Ron had watched it for four nights, taking turns to sleep, and then it had showed them nothing unusual on the night Hufflepuff lost three people. He did not use it often these days.
It came in useful now to assure him that the Slytherins were still in Hogwarts and presumably safe, having run off to do—something in the Runes classroom. Harry was sure it was none of his business.
Harry almost had a heart attack when he realised that Draco’s name was not actually among those in the Runes classroom. He searched the Map frantically until he saw his name, alone in the corridor with the one-eyed witch.
The corridor with the one-eyed witch, which led to Hogsmeade. What was Draco doing?
Harry struggled out of the sleeping bag Dumbledore had conjured, cursing. What if Draco had some sort of fondly-imagined-to-be-cunning scheme like running away and starting an underground guerrilla group? What if he planned to live in the secret corridor on a stash of Butterbeer, lying in wait for the enemy of Hogwarts to show himself?
It was a distinct letdown to find Draco nowhere near the statue of the one-eyed witch, sitting down against the wall and morosely nursing a bottle of tequila.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked, squinting at Draco irritably. He scratched his neck, feeling the scrape of stubble under his fingers and wishing he was asleep, about to wake up and find Neville and Seamus back and everything normal, and nothing awaiting him but a shave and a companionable breakfast.
Draco raised his eyebrows. “I was looking for some privacy, actually,” he said in a detached tone. “Well, alas for that lost dream.” He gestured with the tequila bottle, which looked over-large and about to fall from the thin line of his hand and wrist. “Are you going to sit down?”
Harry wearily did so, leaning against the wall and carefully not touching Draco at all. He did not want to do anything to upset the delicate truce that seemed to be in place, the only good thing to have come from this attack.
“Are you going to drink all that?”
“Why?” Draco inquired. “D’you want some?”
Harry was about to tell Draco not to be so stupid. “Yeah, all right,” he said tiredly. What harm could it do? What else could possibly happen, when Hogwarts was being closed and they were being shipped off like children?
Draco snickered softly and passed it over. Harry tipped up the bottle and saw the amber liquid slosh against the glass as it rose, then felt it burn in his mouth. He coughed for a moment, and then passed it back.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
“Professor Black’s private stash,” Draco answered promptly. “Teach him to have unlocked drinks cabinets around impressionable youths. The others have another. Tell me, will you try to protect me when he comes to kill me? If it got right down to it, who would you choose?”
Harry stared stonily at the wall. “I would try to get between you.”
“As the pacifist said when they asked him what he’d do if a soldier was raping his sister,” Draco remarked in an amused tone.
Harry was looking at the wall, trying not to think about Hogwarts collapsing. It was a bastion against Voldemort they should not sacrifice, especially not at the whim of one man. He was ready to fight Dumbledore, if he could only figure out how.
Panic and anger had been driving him all night, and had now melded together to form buzzing energy just underneath his skin. He wanted to fight, he wanted to—something. He was angry at Dumbledore, and the world.
Draco coughed, smirked and shifted the bottle from hand to hand, then tilted it up and drank some more. Harry looked at the smooth motion of his throat as he swallowed.
He was angry with Draco too, because Draco was not helping matters. It complicated everything that he thought he would feel better if he was sure he and Draco were together on this, if he could lean over and press his mouth against the curve of Draco’s lips.
“I’m weak, that’s the problem,” Draco said conversationally, as if they had been talking.
Harry frowned. “What?”
“I’m weak,” Draco repeated, the curl of his mouth unpleasant. “I always knew that. I can pretend I’m able to do what my father would want for only so long. I’m able to be clever in little ways that make no difference. I can make them band together but I can’t save them. I tried to learn strategy, persuade everyone, but what good was it?”
His look of spite was inverted, as if he felt so frustrated he wanted to bully himself.
“A lot of Slytherins wouldn’t be with us without you,” Harry pointed out, confused enough to be mild.
“What good is that, now everyone’s being shipped back to their families?” His face was sharp with fury and Harry thrilled to it just a little, as if they were two thrumming strings on a musical instrument. “I needed this place! It was all useless. I’m nothing like you, Harry the hero—”
He spat out the word with his old hatred, and Harry’s restless nerves were stung.
“I’m not a hero,” he snapped. “What have you seen me achieve lately?”
“You’re not afraid,” Draco snapped back. “I saw you in there. You’re not afraid, you’re in control without trying to be, because you’re made like that. Harry the hero, precious perfect Potter—”
“Shut up, Draco!” Harry snarled.
“I’m not like that. My father always knew it. You knew it, that time on the train—”
“When we were eleven—”
“My father didn’t need approval. My father never needed anyone.” Draco looked furiously at the wall, and it was only because Harry understood the fury that he restrained himself from saying something sharp on the subject of Lucius Malfoy.
He knew what it was like to want the perfect father.
“How much of that tequila did you drink, Draco?” he asked.
“Far too much,” Draco said, gesturing with the bottle and with grave conviction. Harry leaned over and looked into Draco’s eyes. The pupils were dilated, rings around them so slim that he would not have been able to make out the colour if he had not known already.
It was so like Draco to insist on wandering off and becoming bitterly drunk on his own, clutching his dignity jealously to himself.
“Well… what are you trying to say?” he asked absently, reaching over to try and pry Draco’s fingers gently from the bottle.
Draco equally gently, but quite firmly, resisted this attempt.
“I am saying that you act like an idiot,” he announced.
“So you’re not actually saying anything very new, then,” Harry observed.
“You act like an idiot or worse, and I try to be strong but I fail like I constantly do, and I’m weak and ridiculous but there it is. You don’t even need to—I don’t even want you to let me try.” Draco was looking steadily at the stone, his voice brittle with anger as he went on: “The embarrassing truth of the matter is that I don’t… do well without you.”
Draco’s face and voice were filled with so much resentment that it took Harry a while to understand what he was saying.
“Oh,” he said.
Draco scowled. “I told you I was weak. And I’ll have you know this is probably the fear talking.”
“Or the tequila,” Harry reminded him.
“Oh, don’t try to make me feel better.”
Harry wondered if Draco actually thought an alcohol problem would be better for him than the capacity to feel affection for other people, and then told himself that he should stop asking silly questions.
He also noticed that Draco was slurring a bit.
Draco squinted. “And don’t think for a minute, Potter, that—that—”
“What?” Harry asked after a pause.
He glanced back at Draco, and saw that he had slumped against the wall. His head was tilted in Harry’s direction, eyes shut and lips parted.
Harry put an arm around him to stop him from falling sideways. He sighed, the exasperated sound heard by no-one in the corridor.
“You stupid bastard,” he said, touched and reassured and still thrumming with restless anger. “I can’t do without you either.”
Harry caught a few hours of sleep against the wall, and then went off in the grey hours of the morning to dispose of the tequila bottle. Sirius caught him creeping down the staircase.
“Harry!” he said, and then looked at the bottle.
Harry followed his eyes. “Er,” he said. “I can explain…”
“No need,” Sirius told him. “It’s been a stressful night, but Harry, all you had to do was ask. My drinks cabinet is your drinks cabinet—what else are godfathers for?”
“Not this” was all Harry seemed able to come up with. He stared, mouth opening and shutting, and Sirius looked him over critically.
“I must say,” he remarked approvingly, “you look very steady on your feet for a man who’s consumed this much tequila. Chip off the old block, really.” He blinked. “Not that any of us ever participated in underage drinking of any kind. Don’t tell Remus I said that.”
“All right,” Harry said uncertainly.
Sirius reached out and took the bottle from him, giving him a conspiratorial wink. “It’ll be our little secret.”
They both walked away looking very relieved, and Harry found the others to instrument the plan he had come up with staring at the wall earlier.
“I want everyone left in the Young Order, everyone left who attended the meetings in Draco’s room, and anyone else you think might be helpful,” he told Hermione, who was awake and planning in the time it took Ron to snort and roll over. “If we’re leaving, we’re leaving with all the information we can share.”
“Right,” Hermione said briskly. “Where do we meet?”
“Draco’s room again,” Harry replied. “Come to think of it, I’d better go tell him about that now.”
He got to his feet and back to the corridor before Draco woke up. When he shook Draco’s shoulder Draco tried to blink, found his eyelids were glued together, prised them open and made a piteous plea for death.
“Can’t kill you, too busy,” Harry told him. “Having a meeting in your room. Come on.”
“And I was not informed?” Draco demanded. “I am not even dressed for the occasion!”
“See, you’re feeling better already,” Harry said encouragingly.
“I feel abominable,” Draco informed him. “And anything I may have said last night I entirely disclaim, and blame on the vile tequila gods.”
“Right… so we’re not talking—?”
Draco made a swift dismissive gesture. “We’re all right,” he conceded. “I am willing to let whatever I may have said stand. On the distinct understanding that I do not remember it, and it did not happen.”
Harry resigned himself to his fate. “You have issues, Draco.”
“More than the Daily Prophet, quite possibly. Is that the point?” Draco gave him a piercing and imperious stare.
“No,” said Harry. “I want you to help me drag my Somnasieve to your room.”
Draco considered this. “I need to get changed first.”
“Don’t spend ages on your hair.”
The stone basin was not exactly portable, but he was not bringing already scared students into a dead teacher’s office. He gritted his teeth and pushed as Draco tried to pull it. Draco had moaned at length about not using a Levitas charm, but Harry was afraid they might spill some of the precious silvery stuff inside.
“I’m not really made for a lifestyle of toil,” Draco remarked after they had it down one corridor. “Can’t we fetch Weasley? His long history of peasant forebears might come in handy about now.”
“Shut up about Ron, you inbred weakling,” Harry returned.
“Is that the best you can do? I’m disappointed,” Draco told him. “Months now under my expert tutelage, and you consider this adequate banter—”
Harry put his shoulder to the basin and almost caught Draco off guard. Draco sneered at him and helped drag it along.
“You’re one to talk,” Harry said with an effort. “Every time you really get angry, you sound all of eight years old. Don’t talk to me, you’re mean, and your mother smells of sick goat.”
“Now you question my repartee,” Draco complained as they dragged the Somnasieve through the deserted Slytherin common room. He deliberately did not look around it, as if refusing to believe there would be a last time to do so. “Will you leave me with nothing?”
Once they had the Somnasieve installed in the centre of Draco’s room, Harry collapsed against the wall. Draco, impelled by vanity apparently stronger than exhaustion, went to the mirror and checked his reflection.
“I thought there were more important things than hair,” Harry remarked.
Draco brushed some strands into a more artistically pleasing fashion, and undid a strategic button. “There are, I suppose,” he answered, sounding not entirely convinced. “But this is no time to be falling apart. This is the crisis point, and I refuse to show people I am crumbling under pressure.”
Harry nodded, agreeing with the sentiment if not the excessive grooming.
“If we weren’t all in so much trouble, I would have stayed angry with you,” Draco went on.
Harry folded his arms over his chest. “Is that so?”
“Hey Potter! I am rubber and you are glue.” Draco shrugged. “Clearly, I am a towering inferno of rage.”
The door opened and Pansy, wearing a strangely bright pink jumper over her black dress, came in.
“You’re also the last word in maturity, I see,” she remarked.
“It’s a private joke,” Draco said in a peeved voice.
“It’s a playground insult, Draco,” she told him, and made a wide sweeping gesture that alarmed Harry and made him think of large, vehement birds. “Look! Here he is. Harry Potter, in your very own room. You don’t need to resort to hatred notes any more.”
Draco leaned against his dresser and looked mortally offended.
“My hatred notes were works of genius.”
“Hi, non-Slytherin here,” Harry said. “I don’t know what a hatred note is.”
Draco blinked at him. “My notes,” he said. “Long notes, some of them, and some breathtakingly succinct in their venom. Detailing my opinion of your personal appearance, behaviour, odour, destination in the afterlife and ancestry. Notes of brilliantly expressed hatred, Harry, come on, surely you remember?”
He looked scandalised. Harry rumpled his hair and looked back apologetically.
“That’s really strange, Draco. And I don’t think I got them.”
Draco turned his head and levelled a silently accusing look at Pansy.
She held up her hands defensively. “We had to. Draco, you were insane, you were a man possessed. Some of those notes were very scary, we had to think of the house points—”
Draco’s tone was menacing. “Pansy, what did you do with them?”
“Well…” Pansy said, her voice small. “Well, we—threw them away.”
“My painstakingly crafted hatred notes,” Draco said. “My little works of art. Some of those took hours. You will pay for this, you unprincipled dabbler in Hufflepuffs.”
Pansy smirked.
Harry was a bit hurt. “You hated me that much?”
Draco gave up leaning against the dresser and went over to him, patting him on the arm.
“Then, Harry, then,” he assured him. “Since you wisely placed yourself under my supervision, you have been coming on by leaps and bounds. You’re really quite tolerable now.”
“Thanks,” Harry said dryly. He gave Draco a sidelong glance. “If I’d got them, I would’ve answered them, you know.” He considered. “Well, I might have tipped a potion on your head or something.”
Draco gave a mollified sniff. “I like to feel appreciated.”
Pansy, tugging at the garish pink sleeves of her jumper rather than the extremely short skirt of her dress, wandered over to Draco’s bed and plumped herself down on it.
“I take it you two are getting on again,” she said. “When only last night you said—”
“Stop dwelling in the past, woman,” Draco commanded.
Pansy rolled her eyes. “At least the hatred notes were consistent. Nice basin, by the way. Very retro.”
At that point the door opened again and Blaise Zabini wandered in, wearing all black and more obviously suffering from a hangover than the other two alcoholics in the room.
He gave Harry a revolted look. “Not again,” he said faintly, and went to sit with Pansy on the bed. Once there, he eyed the Somnasieve. “I take it we’re all in for a viewing of—”
He was interrupted by Ron’s entry, moving carefully in case the Slytherin germs battened down on him. He relaxed slightly when he saw Harry.
“Hermione’ll be along with the rest of them in a minute,” he said. “I see some people have already—”
That was when he looked round and saw that the other three people in the room were all Slytherins, beside it being very definitely a Slytherin room. His eyes moved from edge to edge, eloquently beseeching Harry.
Slytherins everywhere! Save us, someone, anyone! Besieged, overwhelmed, going to catch something!
Harry gave him a reassuring smile.
Ron’s expression became pained. Poor, poor Harry, already infected. Every man for himself!
“Oh dear,” said Pansy. “The freckled wonder lacks the mental capacity to finish his sentences.”
“Don’t push me, Parkinson,” Ron snapped, giving her a prim look that indicated, with a wealth of expression, what Mrs Weasley would have thought of her dress. “I really don’t know how Zacharias could.”
Pansy put a hand to her jumper. “Oh, well, Weasley,” she said sweetly, “when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much, and aren’t sharing a bed with the pigs like some poverty-stricken folk do—”
Harry and Ron were both glaring at her when Hermione came in, ushering in about a dozen people. Ron cheered up at this influx of non-Slytherins and Harry took the opportunity to give Draco, who had been smirking, a reproachful look. Draco gave him a small mock-apologetic grin.
Padma Patil had one hand on her hip and her eyes narrowed.
“I’m here because my sister was taken,” she informed Draco icily. “I refuse to be at all affiliated with a subversive group that was your brainchild. I still don’t trust you an inch.”
Draco raised his eyebrows.
“You’re beautiful when you’re suspicious,” he told her in what appeared to be a spirit of pure mischief.
Padma huffed and Harry leaned in slightly. “Do you try to be aggravating?”
“Yes,” Draco whispered back. “But it also comes naturally.”
After an extended period of settling-down, Hermione stood up and addressed them all.
“These are the dreams Harry has when his scar hurts,” she said in a serious voice. More than a few people looked automatically at Harry’s forehead, and Draco shifted his shoulder slightly in front of Harry’s. “We think they must provide some clues—particularly because Professor McGonagall was killed on the night she saw them. She may have come to some conclusion about them that meant she had to die, and if we find out what it was we may be that much closer to the identity of the spy.”
“If this is so crucial,” Zacharias Smith put in, “why have we not seen it before?”
“Because the Ministry prevents the public viewing of thoughts,” Harry said. Draco gave Zacharias a disdainful look.
“Then we’re breaking the law—?” asked Susan Bones, who was looking even more scared now Hannah had been taken.
Harry tried to muster up an awkwardly reassuring smile. “No, this is a private sharing of my thoughts. It’s like…” He searched for any analogy other than the one Lupin had used, and was terrified someone would look at him and realise he was thinking about sex. “Um. Well, let’s just watch it…”
“See what conclusions we come to,” Hermione added, with what Harry thought was a more effective reassuring smile at Susan.
Zabini yawned, looking bored. “A special insight into Potter’s mind. I’m sure it will be thrilling.”
“Leave it out, Zabini,” Harry snapped. “I don’t have time for you.”
He noticed that everyone was fairly quiet after that, so he walked forward and put his wand in the silvery liquid. He stepped back to the wall beside Draco, and kept his face carefully impassive.
Everyone leaned forward to see his dreams.
Harry kept his face stoic. He remembered it all. Draco, Ron, Hermione, blood, chimeras, griffons, basilisks and books. There were no surprises here.
Draco in Snape’s robes moved through the shimmering silver liquid, backing Harry up against a wall. Harry hoped they would not see that, despite Draco’s very predatory behaviour, the look on dream Harry’s face did not exactly suggest being threatened.
“Well, well,” said Zabini in a delighted voice.
Harry gritted his teeth and waited, watched as the lake dream appeared and his stomach curled up and cowered in humiliation.
It had not looked like this when he was actually having the dream, Harry blinking and confused and wet in the lake, with no evidence that he was actually wearing clothes.
“My, my,” said horrible and accursed Zabini, and a few others like Smith and Pansy were curling their lips in agreement.
Harry held himself firm for the worst part. Hermione and Ron both went by, and in the real world they gave him concerned looks as they did. Hermione had leaned forward at the earlier point when she was searching through books with an intent look on her face and Harry remembered Professor McGonagall mentioning the book Hermione was reading, but it did not call any particular book to his mind, and Hermione did not speak.
Then Draco was there in the water, speaking, but the rush of horror in his ears made Harry briefly unable to hear him.
“Fetch the popcorn someone,” Zabini appealed to the others. “This is a much better show than I’d anticipated.”
“Who do you trust?” asked dream Draco, and swam backwards.
There was a gleam of moonlight on the slick wet muscles of his chest. Harry was sure that Zabini was going to start cat-calling.
“The dreams are mixed with bits and pieces of real life,” Draco said in real life, astonishingly different when dry, fully clothed and faintly flushed. “This bit must be from when Harry and I went swimming in the lake.”
“But you’re—” Pansy began.
“What was that, Pansy?” Draco inquired coldly.
“Um, I said, er, did you?” Pansy asked.
“Yes,” Draco lied smoothly. “And obviously we were both wearing bathing suits, Blaise, I can hear you.”
“Shame about you,” Zabini said shamelessly.
That awkward moment passed. The flashes of violence from Harry’s dreams, from when Voldemort was feeling particularly murderous, were harder to bear. Harry saw Susan’s eyes fill with tears, and the others watching him as if nobody could have dreams like that and remain normal. Perhaps they were right.
As earlier and more innocuous dreams began to appear in the Sieve, Draco leaned over to Harry and spoke in a soft, vexed way.
“You might have warned me.”
Harry tried not to notice the pink colour he glimpsed first at the base of Draco’s throat, cupped by the open collar of his shirt, and rising along his neck.
“How would you have liked me to put it?”
He refused to think about wet hair like dimmed and tangled silver in the moonlight, or the very unfair fact that he had no idea whether the details of Draco’s body as shown in the dream were accurate. Quidditch teams had showers, after all, and it only made sense that the teams save on water and have common showers. It was patently unjust that he could have drawn correct pictures of Fred and George’s anatomy—oh, bad thoughts, bad thoughts—and remain unsure of the exact curve of Draco’s naked thigh.
Harry was relieved when the dreams ended, and he had to pay complete attention. This was a war, and there was no other choice.
Hermione did speak now, leaning forward over her knees, her pose reminding Harry of a sharply angled question mark.
“That book I picked out of the pile,” she said.
Harry remembered that she had picked out one in the dream, but only remembered that it had not been ‘Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.’
“Yes?” he asked tensely, and everyone leaned towards Hermione when he added, “Professor McGonagall mentioned that too.”
“It’s called ‘The Most Ancient Forms of Magic,’” Hermione said, her voice certain. “I read that book in first year. Remember, I showed you both that passage about Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Memory dawned on Harry, the familiarity of that large, old tome in Hermione’s small hands. He must have taken that from real life too, but why had Professor McGonagall especially noticed it?
“The spy has the Philosopher’s Stone?” asked Terry Boot, his eyes widening.
“No, he can’t have. It was destroyed,” Harry said absently.
“That book has a lot about old magics in it,” Hermione said, her brow furrowed. “I can re-read it.”
“How many copies does the library have?” Draco demanded.
“What a fantastic clue. Let us all become juvenile detectives,” Zabini proposed dryly.
“Do you have any great insights? No? Then belt up, Zabini,” Harry ordered.
Zabini subsided, but Harry’s snap silenced the welter of suggestions. Everyone looked as if they were thinking hard, but fear and unhappiness were battling for pre-eminence on most faces already.
“What does it matter? Hogwarts is finished anyway,” said Michael Corner.
Harry wheeled on him. “And the spy could be sent off with a group of helpless people!” he snarled.
“Surely not,” said Padma Patil, her eyes cold. “Presumably the spy is closely linked with You-Know-Who, and that would suggest he belongs to one of the old pureblood families. He’ll be sent home, and good riddance.”
Everyone followed her gaze to Draco, who sneered at her.
“Fine!” exclaimed Harry. “Let’s see the proof. Oh, you don’t have any? Well then it’s lucky, isn’t it,” he said with savage sarcasm, “that a spy has never been known to come from an unexpected place? I’m so glad you’ll risk other people meeting your sister’s fate on the basis of random speculation.”
Padma flinched. After Sirius’ appointment as a teacher, everyone had learned the story of Peter Pettigrew. She had the good sense to change her tack.
“What about your dreams?” she pursued. “You said they were clues. Malfoy was all over them! Are you telling me that Professor McGonagall didn’t comment on that?”
Harry hesitated.
“She did?” breathed Ron, sounding partially convinced.
“Maybe it’s his charm. Has anybody thought of that?” asked Zabini, lazily but just a touch ferociously.
He and Pansy were leaning forward, obviously looking for a fight. Draco was tense beside Harry.
“Maybe it is Malfoy,” Hermione said, and Harry looked at her in horror.
If she thought this was the way to defuse the situation, he had always given her credit for much more intelligence than she actually possessed.
“Maybe it is, but we can’t be sure. We have to look at the dreams from all angles and gather as many suspects as we can, or we run the risk of letting the spy slip through the net. We have to remember the dreams and watch those placed in the groups with us with them in mind, just in case. Blaming anyone exclusively is counter-productive at this point,” Hermione said, and finished by giving Padma a reproving look.
Terry Boot looked pleased.
“I always said that girl should be a Ravenclaw,” he murmured approvingly to Michael Corner, and smiled warmly over at Draco.
If Ravenclaws were so great, the stupid Head Boy could have thought up a defence for Draco himself. Moreover, that grateful smile Draco was directing at said Ravenclaw was a smile that could have been devoted far more appropriately to more useful Gryffindors.
“Well, we’ve seen them,” Ron said practically. “Anyone think up anything else, they should tell us. For now, we have to get ready—Dumbledore has said that today is going to be our last outing to Hogsmeade. Anyone who needs magical supplies gets them now or never.”
There was an immediate bustle for the door.
“Quick,” Draco said to Pansy. “Where are the younger ones? They’re going to have to make me a list of what they need.”
Harry was getting Draco the parchment out of his desk, and when he looked up he saw that Pansy had gone to talk to the younger ones, and he, Draco and Zabini were the only ones left in the room. Draco was sitting in his chair and Zabini was leaning over him.
“Well, goodbye,” Zabini said. “I’ll see you later.”
“See you around,” Draco told him, and then Zabini stooped down. Draco tilted his face up to his, blank of expression.
Their lips met in a soft, perfunctory and very definite kiss. Harry stood staring.
Zabini left the room.
“What was—” Harry began, and then realised his voice had been climbing. “No. I’ll go.”
“Harry, wait,” Draco said. When Harry turned around he looked tired, and Harry felt guilty and furious.
“I know I don’t have any right,” Harry began. “I’ll—I need to go.”
Draco’s voice was very sharp. “I didn’t sleep with him, Harry!”
Harry held onto the door frame. He studied his fingers clenched tight around it, and saw the knuckles become less white. “Oh.”
“Not for you,” Draco went on, voice deliberately unpleasant. “For him. I don’t use my friends. I don’t use people I respect.”
Why would you need to use anyone, Draco? Draco had slept with him before. What was different about last night?
Harry had a more pressing question. “Then why—?” he said, and gestured helplessly.
Draco’s lip curled. “We did—things,” he said, and it was warped how an innocent, unspecific word like that made jealousy snarl in the back of Harry’s brain. Draco shrugged. “I owed him that much today, if he wanted it.”
Oh yes, poor Zabini, Harry thought. Positively martyred by all that Draco kissing.
“Are we still talking?” Draco asked cautiously.
Draco had not even had to offer up this much. Harry had no right, absolutely no right. And Draco had not slept with the bastard.
Harry let the corner of his mouth turn up. “Yeah.”
Harry remembered what Draco had said, and told the first and second year Gryffindors that he would get them anything they wanted from Hogsmeade. He had simply not expected them to want so much.
He eyed the lists sceptically. He was pretty sure some of these children were Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, trying to get in on a good deal. He bet that nobody was trying this out with Draco.
Of course, that might be because Draco had a habit of referring to the younger students outside his house as insignificant maggots.
“It’s because you’re the big hero,” Ron said, rueful and just a little bit resentful after all this time. He looked almost jealously at Harry’s big stupid list. “Nobody asked me to get them anything. I could be trusted with getting some sweets, you know.”
“‘Course you could,” said Harry. “Tell you what, you can help me with my list.”
“No, mate, you’re on your own,” Ron said. “I don’t actually want to get the midgets’ sweets. But it’d be nice to be asked.”
Harry shoved back a bit at the jostling crowd, sure they were going to make his lists drop. He had never seen everyone who could so anxious to rush into Hogsmeade, as if it would sell them some remedy for all this.
He almost ended up shoving Pansy backwards, and stopped himself just in time.
She stood in front of him smiling appealingly up at him, and he felt very afraid.
“Hi Harry,” she said in a melting sort of voice.
Harry took a smart step backwards.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Potter,” she said in a bored voice. “Really, everyone isn’t dying to get into your heroic little trousers. I’ve never gone for speccy men, personally. It’s just—you’d say that we’re friends, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d call you sworn enemies by reason of house loyalty,” Ron put in.
She glared and then returned her winning gaze to Harry.
He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yeah, we’re friends.”
“I’d call us acquaintances who tolerate each other, actually,” Pansy informed him, “but I was hoping you’d say that. Because I want you to do me a favour.”
“Forget it!” Ron said crushingly. “You can’t trick Harry into—”
“What do you want me to do, Pansy?” Harry asked.
Ron looked at him sadly, as if he were letting the side down.
Pansy looked up at him through her lashes, and then batted them.
“I’ll love you forever,” she promised him insinuatingly.
“That’s nice,” Harry said. “What do you want?”
“Some chocolate,” Pansy answered quickly. “Look, Professor Lupin found me with a bottle of tequila that I did a kindness to by liberating and—for some reason he thought I’d already disposed of another, and Draco says he has too many things on his list to buy me chocolate and I’ve explained to Madam Pomfrey that it’s a medical necessity but she won’t listen!”
Harry made a small face. “I’m sorry, Pansy. I’ve promised too many people already.”
Pansy made a distraught sound and people turned to see who was stabbing her to the heart. She clung to his arm and stared tragically into his face.
It occurred to Harry that the reason many of the Slytherins came off as melodramatic villains was because they were a house of drama queens.
“Harry! I thought you liked saving people from dire and life-threatening situations!”
“Ahem,” said Ron.
“Can’t you find it in your heart to save a damsel in—look, Weasel, have you got an insect in your throat or something?” Pansy demanded.
Ron stopped his gentle, suggestive coughing.
“I was simply pointing out,” he commented with great hauteur, “that I, like some other people in this conversation but not like others, am going to Hogsmeade.”
Pansy favoured him with a beaming smile.
“So you are,” she said. “Well, Weasel, if you will do this for me, I will—I will try to like you for… about a week.”
Ron blinked. “Excuse me? I don’t think that’s fair.”
Pansy blinked. “Would you like money—”
“No!” Ron thundered. “I’m just saying that you offered Harry more than you offered me. Which is just typical, story of my life, thanks very much, and then you try to insult me—”
“For possibly the first time in my life, I wasn’t—”
“By offering me money—”
“You insecure little freak—”
Harry looked back and forth, feeling a bit like he was at a tennis match with people lobbing little balls of crazy.
Pansy stopped and put a hand on her hip.
“Ah,” she said. “I see where this is going.”
Ron looked mollified. “Well, good then. Equal treatment, that’s all I’m—”
“I am willing to have sex with you,” Pansy declared, and then made a face. “Marginally willing.”
Harry jumped, and Ron made a creditable effort to fly without his broom. He clutched Harry’s arm fearfully, as if Harry would protect him, and cast a hunted look around for Hermione.
“You Slytherins are disgusting,” Ron hissed, after assuring himself that no girlfriend was about to bear down on him with terrible vengeance.
He was scarlet to the roots of his hair. Pansy was smirking.
“I think it was a very generous offer,” she remarked, and then sighed dramatically. “All right then, Weasley. If you will buy me chocolate, I will love you—in a few years.”
“In a few years?” Ron echoed.
She shrugged. “I feel I’ll need to work up to it.”
“In a few years,” Ron informed her, “I hope that I will be living blissfully in a world free of Slytherins, and that—I’m sorry to say it—scarlet women like you will be living on the other side of the ocean.”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Pansy snapped, “but if you buy me chocolate then I will love you very much from the other side of the ocean. Please, Weasley, please!”
Her voice was becoming frighteningly shrill.
“Fine, then,” Ron mumbled, and she produced a roll of parchment from her shirt and shoved at him.
Then she turned and left without a thank you, to call a throaty hello to Zacharias Smith, who was looking with interest at her partially unbuttoned shirt.
Ron was already looking around and trying to make it very clear to everyone around him that he had a very important list, too, a list which had been entrusted to him by a public in need of Ron Weasley. He lowered his voice and spoke to Harry in an agitated tone.
“I’m holding br—er, bosom parchment!” He flushed red and made a comprehensive gesture. “Bosom parchment! What, I cannot believe it, Slytherins are so disgraceful, can you believe it, Harry? Doesn’t it worry anyone that a quarter of our school are sunk in blackest evil and—and sexual depravity?”
Harry suppressed the thought that he personally considered it a great shame Slytherins were not being more sexually depraved.
“I’d worry more about Hermione’s reaction to you buying another girl chocolate,” he said mildly.
He, Ron and Hermione spent hours collecting what the younger students and they themselves would need from Hogsmeade. Hermione tried desperately to buy out the bookshop, holding the volumes as if she would never see another magical book again. Harry spent an inordinately long time in the sweetshop, trying to find the special treats of everyone on the list as the shop emptied at an alarming rate.
When he saw Draco across the street, diving into the bookshop Hermione had already raided, he realised that all the sweets would be gone by the time he got there. He hoped that Draco would not be devoured by tiny Slytherins in a feeding frenzy.
He did not see Draco again until they were coming back to school, and being mobbed. At the time he was smiling across at Pansy, who gave him a blank look and pushed him out of her way.
“Who wants you?” she demanded. “Where’s Ron Weasley?”
Draco placed the back of his hand dramatically against his forehead as Harry came up to him.
“Spurned for a Weasley,” he said. “Feeling faint with the shock. Be kind and support me until we find a couch for me to swoon upon.”
Small creatures were leaping on the bundle of sweets in Harry’s arms with starved sounds. He presumed that they were students and the house elves had not chosen this moment to stage the mass rebellion Hermione was always urging them on to.
“And here’s me caught without my smelling salts,” Harry replied, grinning. “Um. Hey. I got you something.”
Draco tilted his head back, startled, and then gave Harry that slow brilliant smile he so rarely used.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “Um, it’s in my pocket…”
“Harry Potter, is that a line?” Draco looked distinctly amused and Harry felt himself go red.
“No,” he answered, shifting his burdens to the crook of one arm and reaching in the back pocket of his jeans.
He produced the last handful of blood-flavoured lollipops—the younger students must be absolutely desperate for sweets—and presented it to Draco. Draco looked at them for a moment, smile stretching to almost become a laugh, and then took them.
He was still watching Harry from under his eyelashes when he put all but one of the lollipops in his back pocket, and absently unwrapped the remaining lollipop. Harry watched him slide the glistening red sweet between his lips and curl his tongue around it, and then he winked companionably at Harry.
“Who says you’re not a hero, Harry?” he inquired. “Thanks.”
He wandered off to distribute more largesse to the young Slytherins.
Lollipops were filthy, perverse objects, and should not be allowed. It wasn’t decent. It wasn’t right.
Harry went to the Gryffindor rooms to find Hermione on her hands and knees and almost in tears in front of the fire, trying to fit all the books she could into her luggage. He patted her on the back and assured her that he and Ron would be glad to carry the surplus.
She gave him a watery smile and mercifully refrained from one of those short, sharp bursts of tears that always caught he and Ron by surprise and horrified them.
He put an arm around her as she sniffed and smoothed the jackets of her books, and it occurred to them that they were all so busy with the impending fact of departure that nobody had protested it since last night.
Harry stormed up to Dumbledore’s office as soon as he could leave Hermione. It took him a while glaring at the stupid face of the knocker until he remembered Dumbledore’s current password.
“Lime lollipops,” he said. Everybody was so fixated by lollipops all of a sudden.
He came whirling into Dumbledore’s office and Dumbledore looked up from his desk with an air of mild inquiry.
“Harry,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, I’m rather busy—”
“You shouldn’t do this,” Harry burst out. “There’s no way their families can protect them. We should try something else, we should set up guards in the Great Hall—”
Dumbledore blinked over his half-moon glasses.
“We set up guards around the school with no effect,” he said, gently and reasonably. “Many students were so afraid they stayed awake: it did no good. Voldemort seems to be concentrating on you children, and I want you placed out of the line of fire.”
Harry slammed his hands down on the desk.
“I want to be in the line of fire!” he shouted. “This is my fight!”
“It is not, Harry.” Harry had very seen Dumbledore so perfectly solemn. “You have not yet left school, and thus you are under my jurisdiction. I will not see you hurt. How would you even propose to fight this fight?”
“I—I don’t know,” Harry stammered out. “Somehow. I want to do something. I’ll never do my NEWTs and properly leave school if we do this anyway, so I’m grown up. I can leave school now and join the Order of the Phoenix, I want to—”
The round office, the large grand desk, all the books and toys and the Sorting Hat and the gleaming phoenix, all blurred into a haze of anger in front of Harry’s eyes. Dumbledore was supposed to be helping him.
“You have just said,” Dumbledore said gently, “that you have no idea what to do. Is that correct?”
Harry stood and trembled with anger. “Yes,” he said, feeling the weight of Dumbledore’s hopeful, baseless expectation that he might have an answer.
Dumbledore sighed, a tired old sound. “Let me protect you to the best of my ability until you would reach the last of your school days. It is not much more than a month, and then you may join the numbers attending the Aurors’ training camp in the summer. Safety may be hoped, there, to be in numbers, and I will not have to bear the responsibility for more students being hurt.”
The idea of forced inactivity for any amount of time rankled with Harry, but Dumbledore’s idea was a good idea. He could fight soon in that case, and Dumbledore had always been kind to him. It was little enough to ask.
“You and Ron and Hermione are of course considered as in particular danger,” Dumbledore continued, sharp eyes noticing Harry’s hesitation. “You will be placed under the special protection of two teachers I trust completely: Professor Lupin and Professor Black. Moreover, you will adopt the precaution of travelling and acting simply as Muggles. I think I can promise you absolute safety for the next month.”
Harry hesitated some more. He did not want to be absolutely safe if others were not, but Ron and Hermione being safe was a tempting offer. The thought of either of them being taken made him feel very sick.
“They’re in danger because they’re my friends,” he stated flatly. “There’s someone else…”
“Young Draco Malfoy,” Dumbledore said at once, and made a weak attempt to twinkle at him. “I’m sure his inclusion could be arranged.”
“Well,” said Harry.
“Thank you for your co-operation, Harry. It’s taken a weight off my mind.” Dumbledore touched his forehead as he spoke, and it occurred to Harry that Dumbledore must have a lot of other weights on his mind if this was how he looked when he was relieved.
He faltered for another moment beside Dumbledore’s desk, and then decided.
“Fine,” he said between gritted teeth. “But I still think we should keep Hogwarts open, I think we should fight now. I’ll show you that I can fight sooner or later. I will.”
Dumbledore picked up his quill to write what was apparently an open letter to all parents whose children were being returned to them.
“Harry,” he said earnestly, “I hope so.”
Harry was back in the Gryffindor common room, packing with Hermione, when the door banged open to the squawked protest of the Fat Lady.
Draco stood in the threshold, his face icy with rage.
“You complete bastard,” he said. “You’re coming to talk to me now. Or I’ll break your neck here.”
“I don’t know what you can possibly be angry about,” Harry said, following Draco into the Potions classroom.
Draco slammed the door with a cataclysmic sound behind them and wheeled to face Harry. His face was a tight mask of fury.
“You don’t know,” he repeated. “All right then, let me refresh your memory. Did you ask Dumbledore to separate me from the Slytherins, from everything I’ve worked to keep together for two years? Did you do that?”
Harry understood and tried not to lose his temper, which was lurking too close to the surface as it was.
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
Draco looked like he wanted to hit him. “Living as Muggles? With no way to communicate with them or offer them a refuge?”
Harry might not have thought this all the way through.
“Yes, but look, Draco, you had to trust them at some time or another. You can tell your mother to let them into your house, I’m sure she will, and you have to understand. You’re in danger because you’re one of my best friends. You need to be—”
“I know all that!” Draco spat. “I’m a Slytherin. I considered all the risks to myself. I did not consent to being taken away from the Slytherins when they most need a leader. You go to Dumbledore, because he won’t listen to me, you go to him and you tell him that I can go home—”
Draco’s intentions were good. That, and the slight shake in his voice when he made his savage demand, made Harry want to comply with him. Fix it, and assure Draco that it was just a mistake made out of concern.
But this was war.
“If they have to be constantly under your eye at this stage they can’t be relied on! It’s best to know that now,” he told him. “And do you think I could bear the responsibility of you being taken because of me without doing anything to try and prevent it?”
Draco moved forward, surging as if he was bent on hitting him immediately, but he stopped short and controlled himself with an obvious effort.
“Harry the hero,” he spat. “Other people are responsible for things too, you know. It isn’t just you and the army of light you were sent to lead and protect, I have responsibilities, I took them on, and how dare you step in smugly and try to take them away from me!”
It was always dark and cold in the dungeons, and now at night it was darker and colder than ever. Faint moonlight from one of the small windows was all Harry could see by, and Draco looked almost ghostly in that light. Harry shivered in the cold and met Draco’s chilly gaze squarely.
“I’m sorry if you are upset, Draco,” he said in a hard voice that was as even as he could manage. “Has it occurred to you that if you are a target and you insist on staying with the other Slytherins, you will make them targets too? You can’t take the younger ones from their parents. You are offering the older ones a choice and a place to stay. And that’s all you can really offer them, and the best way to keep you and them safe is the way I chose!”
Draco was held taut with his anger, almost vibrating with it.
“I can’t leave them. I put everything I am into this, I can’t—”
“You said it was useless last night,” Harry interrupted fiercely. “I know what it meant to you, but Hogwarts is being shut down. Last night, you said—”
Draco’s hands were curled into fists.
“I thought we agreed that we were going to forget everything we said last night,” he said in a thin, cold voice.
Harry stared at him, blinking in slow realisation and feeling anger well up slow and hot at the sheer manipulativeness of him.
“I never agreed to anything like that,” he replied. “I know nothing’s turning out the way you want it to, Draco, and I know you’re afraid—”
“I’m not afraid!”
“I can’t ask Dumbledore to change things when I think I made the right decision. And I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I won’t take back anything I said last night.”
Draco was moving restlessly, eyes gleaming like a hunted and terrified animal who wanted to go for his throat.
“I swear, if you don’t stop I’ll—”
Harry had heard too many threats from Draco now. He was so sick of all this power Draco had over him, the power to be angry with him, to remove his presence and friendship. He was not going to be threatened because he had told the truth.
“What will you do, Draco?” he demanded furiously. “What can you do, if I want to say—”
Draco moved forward sharply, took his face in both hands and kissed him hard.
Harry had never actually kissed a boy, apart from that one brief chaste kiss with Draco before. It was violently different from kissing a girl, with Draco’s teeth pressing hard through his lip, and no softness of breasts and hips between them. Draco was just there, his ribs pressed against Harry’s with nothing but thin layers of cloth and skin between them. Harry was angry and restless with it and he felt as if he could feel the thunder of Draco’s blood against the rush of his own.
Draco pulled his mouth but not his body away, still standing against Harry and with his teeth a whisper of potential pain almost touching Harry’s lower lip.
“Feels different, doesn’t it?” Draco said in a low voice. “Feels strange, you’re not entirely comfortable with it, you don’t know what to do—”
“Yes,” Harry admitted, the breath hitching in his chest and pressing it harder against Draco’s.
Draco laughed low in his throat and stepped back.
“I told you,” he went on, in harsh tones. “You had a ridiculous little crush, and now you see that it was misplaced fantasy and you were absolutely wrong, and—”
Harry grabbed him and shoved him against the nearest wall. He held him pressed against the wall with his own body, aware of the cold stone and the thin warm barrier of Draco’s flesh and bones. Draco was held too hard against him, too close and strange and dangerous.
He curved his hand around the back of Draco’s neck.
“I didn’t say stop,” he told him roughly, and pressed their mouths together again.
Draco’s mouth slid open for him, hot and slick. It was a viciously hungry kiss with tongues and teeth, biting and licking as he tried to push harder against Draco and Draco tried to arch into him, the bones of their shoulders and hips pressed too hard against each other and it still wasn’t enough. Harry made a jagged sound that hurt the back of his throat and opened his mouth further, loved the feel of his teeth scraping against the corner of Draco’s lip even as he tried to drink in the small demanding sounds Draco was making.
Harry was aware of a jar breaking, in one of the uncontrollable bursts of magic that had not happened to him since he was a child. He and Draco let their mouths separate for a startled instant and Draco blinked at him in something like awe or surprise. His pale hair was glittering with a dusting of glass.
“God, Harry,” he said, but his breath was a hot presence against Harry’s cheek, his eyes were heavy-lidded with lust and his lips were red and wet, and Harry was not going to stop now.
Draco saw the look of determination on his face, must have, because his eyelids fell even further. His eyes looked black under silver fringes as he leaned forward and tore Harry’s glasses off, throwing them onto some desk or other with a clatter.
Harry had both his hands in Draco’s shirt, fists pressed against his chest, and this close the glasses made no difference. He saw the trembling curve of Draco’s lower lip with perfect clarity.
He kissed him again and it was better without the glasses, another filthy demanding kiss with his eyelashes brushing against Draco’s, cheeks sliding against each other while their mouths opened hotly again and again. Harry slid one hand around to Draco’s back, not caring that the surface of the stone was grazing it, wanting the feel of the muscles of Draco’s back moving fluid under his palm, the only obstruction a thin layer of cloth that was clinging to Draco’s back already.
He could feel the space, the instant of heat between the buttons of Draco’s shirt, with his other hand. He knew in a minute he was going to tear the buttons off to get closer somehow and he could feel himself going slow, hot red with the idea of it, with all of this, as he buried his face in the long wet curve of Draco’s throat. Draco made a desperate sound when Harry’s lips opened at the place beside his ear, and he moaned and pressed his head back against the wall when Harry slid his mouth in a trail down his throat. Halfway down he let his teeth scrape against the skin, and Draco’s moan went uneven.
Draco’s hands curled ferociously tight at the ends of Harry’s T-shirt and then he was in motion, a wild stumbling instinctive rush of motion that Harry went with and didn’t care where he was falling or about the slam of the desk against his back because he had Draco’s mouth again. He had Draco on top of him, kissing hot and frantic as his hands moved and his hips moved, locked onto Harry’s and still moving. Harry heard them both moaning and his arm tightened around Draco’s neck, he pulled his mouth down harder to crush mouths and moans together. Draco’s hands were under his T-shirt now, fingers climbing ribs and clawing at skin, pushing the T-shirt up, and Harry moaned and arched up and let him.
Draco slid the T-shirt up to Harry’s collarbone and slid his body down between Harry’s open legs. Harry closed his eyes and still cried out when he felt the edge of Draco’s teeth against the curve of his ribs, testing and tasting and making Harry arch helplessly up again. His mouth travelled up, hot and with teeth and leaving a cool shivery sore path along Harry’s chest. Harry called out again, an incoherent approximation of Draco’s name, when his teeth closed on Harry’s nipple. The scrape and slide was very painful for an instant, and Harry clenched his teeth and made muffled sounds that meant he was begging for more.
When Draco twisted back up towards his mouth, they both made sharp pleading sounds at every twist. The damp material of Draco’s shirt was all that was between their chests and their hips locked again as Draco breathed hard and ragged against him, starting to move even before their lips met.
“Harry,” Draco murmured, breath short and voice thick with hunger.
“Yeah,” Harry murmured back, dazed with the painfully good movement and the close promise of Draco’s mouth.
“Just tell me it was stupid,” Draco said, looking at Harry’s mouth as if he was hypnotised. “Tell me you didn’t mean it, and then we can—we can—”
The way Draco could not even say it was like Draco pleading for it, and Harry moved against him and thought, God yes, whatever you want, because Draco wanted this and it would be so easy and so good, so…
Harry didn’t know much about it, but he knew that you didn’t lie to people you loved. Not about something like this.
He remembered the soft slurred tone of Draco’s voice when he was pleading for something else.
I don’t even want you to let me try. I don’t… do well without you.
“I did mean it,” Harry almost groaned against Draco’s lips, still moving under him. “I do mean it,” he added, softer and in a breath against the swollen line of Draco’s lower lip, feeling the beginning press of another kiss. “I…”
Draco went still. He looked down at Harry with wide, wild eyes that hardly seemed to see him.
“No you don’t,” he snarled. “Stop.”
He was off Harry and bolting out the door in what seemed like the same motion. Harry was still lying on the desk, trying to piece his mind back together and get his breath back. He did not even seem able to pull down his shirt, and he thought with sudden despair that he was never going to find his glasses.