“Oh. It’s you again. Have you ever thought about the general lack of style incorporated into the traditional prison robes?”
“Malfoy. I see you’re feeling better.”
“Yes. I—expect it was you who got them to give me handkerchiefs and medicine.”
*warily* “Yes.”
“Very like you, Potter. Very—boy scout. Fair treatment for the helpless prisoners.”
*mirthless laugh* “Oh, yes? You haven’t heard the stories, then? You disappoint me, Malfoy. I would’ve thought that you’d be well up on the campfire gossip.”
“What are you talking…”
“About what the Boy Who Lived had turned into.”
*snapped* “I never believed that rubbish.”
*softly* “You should have.”
*pause*
*calmly, conversationally* “Millicent Bulstrode. She was taken prisoner in the seventh month, second year of the war. When we found her someone else had the unlocking words for our spelled perimeters, and she looked—”
“I did it.”
“As if she’d been ripped apart by wild animals.”
“That was me. By myself. Hermione and I were sent out on a reconnoitring mission. We picked her up and we needed those spells quickly. Things weren’t going well. So I sent Hermione outside, and I did what I had to do.”
“The right thing.”
“It seemed like the right thing at the time.”
“How about now?”
“Eventually right and wrong no longer matter.”
“How very charming. How about good and evil?”
“They matter… You begin to wonder if one exists.”
“What a fabulously cheery state of mind. I wonder which one you could possibly doubt. No, hang on, I don’t. Nobody could see Camden Fudge’s moustache and doubt the existence of evil.”
“His what?”
“His moustache. I clocked it at my trial. My God, it was horrible. He waxes it, Potter, have you noticed that? He curls up the ends into pointy tips and waxes it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. He looks like a sea lion.”
“I meant—”
*patiently* “I know, Potter. So why’d you send in the stuff, then?”
“It’s what I would have done—once.”
“Spare me the maudlin oh-the-lost-days-of-my-youth, oh innocence, alas if I had but known bit, would you? You would not have. You would have enchanted the handkerchiefs to turn my nose red and blue.”
“I would not have.”
“You would so.”
“I would not. I would have felt sorry for you. You were such a pathetic object. You would have done something awful once. I was a nice boy.”
“It was all a front.”
“It was not a front.”
“It was a Machiavellian plot.”
“I was eleven when I first met you.”
“All right, so you didn’t know it was a front.”
“How could I not know that?”
“How could you grow up into a decent, moral and well-adjusted lad with your upbringing? You were locked up in a cupboard, beaten around, starved and neglected. You were made to climb up chimneys and get soot in your lungs and then they used rat poison to flush it out.”
“That didn’t—”
“Let me have my dream.”
“You’re weird.”
“So are you. You didn’t want to be like them, did you? You didn’t want to be anything like them. You wanted to be just like all the new friends you made, and you wanted to protect them as well. And then you danced with death every year until you were fourteen, and after that you breathed death just like the rest of us. You never got the slightest chance of a normal childhood, and you bottled it all up, you walked on the edge until there was no choice but to fall and nobody to catch you anymore.”
“And you?”
*smugly* “I was an aggressive and randomly cruel child, and so I grew up—”
“Perfectly normal?”
“Into an aggressive and randomly cruel man. But at least I know who I am. I’ve always known that.”
“Have you been thinking about my psyche a lot?”
“Off and on.”
“Really.” “I’m stuck in here, I’ve been thinking about almost everything. Have you ever wondered if alligator or elephant meat would be tastier?”
*absently* “Elephant. Meat eating animals taste bad.”
“You’re a fund of scary trivia, Potter. Who’d have thought it. I shall make a note in my diary.”
“You keep a diary.”
“Certainly. Very much approved of. Very therapeutic.”
“I’d… like to see it.”
“Well, it’s riveting, I can assure you. ‘Dear Diary, today I a) traced patterns onto the stone of my cell walls and imagined I was living in a herd of giraffes, b) obsessed over my collection of bad memories, c) obsessed about what prison food is doing to my waistline, d) thought the giraffes were giving me suspicious looks, e) decided that the giraffes were in a conspiracy against me and f) realised I was slipping slowly into madness.’”
“Your cell is too small for giraffes.”
“I think you miss my point.”
“Giraffes are extremely tall animals.”
“All right. Fine. I will read you an extract of my diary. I hope this will make you happy.”
“I hadn’t realised you cared.”
“I am interested to see if you can manage a different facial expression. It’s so tedious to try and differentiate between bloody miserable, brooding and morose.” *rustle of papers* “Ahem. This is an extract from last week. ‘Dear Diary. Potter came to visit today. Not really sure why, and do not particularly care. However, I vow this. If he comes again, and he wears that revolting shade of brown, I will kill myself.’”
“You didn’t—”
“Kill myself? No, but I’m not sure that mouldy green is a good enough reason for me to live. Honestly, Potter, your dress sense is a weapon in the hands of the Dementors.”
“Shut up.”
“Aha. It’s intentional, isn’t it? You’re all in league to drive me to despair. I’m on to you.”
“You’re insane.”
“So you simply hired a Dementor as your personal shop assistant? Bad mistake, Potter. Evil leeches on despair. Also, blind.”
“You’re insane. I remember this.”
“You remember hiring the Dementor?”
“I remember this! This is how you were with the men. In our camp. There’d be a military strategy meeting, and we’d all realise how hopeless it was, or the kind of thing we’d have to do… and you wouldn’t ever shut up.”
“Sounds like me.”
“You made a cocked hat out of a plan for storage facilities once. You did imitations of people. You did an imitation of me. I wanted to kill you. But… you made the men laugh. I wished I could do that, after… the truce ended. You were—a good leader.”
“I was on a lethal cocktail of drugs.”
“It’s a shame you didn’t know who to follow. It’s a shame you weren’t—a good man.”
“Good was always more your bag than mine, Potter. As for following—I never blindly followed anyone. I made my own choices. And I don’t need your judgement of them. I’ve heard enough judgements.”
”… Okay.”
“Thank you. In return, I do not plan to bring up Millicent again. After this time. You sent Granger out?”
“Yes?”
*mildly curious* “Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“In love with her?”
“No.”
*cheerfully* “Shame. That was my bet in the stakes on ‘Why Potter the War Hero is Oh, So Alone.’”
“What money would you pay the bet with? Who’d demand payment?”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
“I don’t believe you people laid bets about that kind of thing.”
“Potter. We didn’t talk battle plans and the slaughter of innocents all day long. That was usually concluded well before lunch. Then we talked about sex until the cows came home and once the cows were home, we looked speculatively at them. That’s what wartime’s all about.”
“What, bestiality?”
“Aren’t you funny. People mused on sex an awful lot. And your name is hardly the first that comes to mind when one thinks of sex, but eventually we got around to you. There was a bit of conjecture on why your name had never been linked up with anyone’s. I thought being moony about your best friend’s girl but too desperately heroic to take her afterwards would be just your style.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. There was a war on for five years. I didn’t have time to think about romance.”
“Very weird and stunted of you, Potter. Oh, well. It was just a bit of discussion around lunch one day. By dinner we were on to polling the camp about which one of the other side everyone’d want to do if they were kidnapped by the enemy and had to sleep their way out.”
“We never had any discussions like that!”
“I bet they had them behind your back. Actually, Granger’s name came up quite often in those replies. She and some leather outfit and a whip featured largely in several of my officers’ fantasies.”
“Is that so.”
“I chose the Patil twins.”
“Naturally.”
“If I’d had to go through such a terrible ordeal. And of course, I would have simply lain back and thought of my country.”
“Of course.”
“It would have been dreadful, but I would have borne it bravely.”
“I have no doubt.”
“‘My body you may have, but my immortal soul you cannot hold!’ I would have said. ‘Though you may try to make me submit with your evil wiles, Indian flexibility, serpentine dances and large variety of sherbet sex play, it belongs to my cause.’”
“I can see you thought this out at length.”
“Best to be prepared, I thought.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Did the, um, Patil twins ever show any interest in belly dancing or any sort of lewd sherbet consumption?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Pity.”
“Parvati came to see me, a few weeks ago.”
“Why do you get a Patil twin, and all I get is you?”
“Clearly she was drawn to me by my boyish good looks. Seems she wasn’t drawn here.”
“I’m sorry, I was so busy howling with derisive laughter after ‘boyish good looks’ that I couldn’t hear the rest of what you were saying. Go ahead, you were about to tell me about Parvati Patil. Let me guess. She popped over to say she was your new neighbour, and wanted to know if she could borrow a cup of sherbet.”
“Leave the sherbet, Malfoy. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“She wanted to borrow a cup of quick shag?”
“She didn’t want to borrow anything! They come around, every now and then, members of the squad. To check if it’s true, and I really am cracking up.”
“You could just leave a note outside the door. ‘To whom it may concern: This day being Tuesday, I am feeling wistful, confused, slightly overweight and oddly ambivalent about dairy products.’”
“I don’t think she’ll be coming back.”
“Did you use harsh words to that delectable little houri, Potter? Shame on you.”
“I drew my wand on her.”
“Privacy is all well and good, but really—”
“I was having… one of those dreams. When you’re back there. I was crawling through the… God, the mud when it was slick and red with blood, and—my hand fell on tattered flesh, and then I looked up and then—”
“Stop.”
“There she was. She looked so frightened.”
*quick breath* “Ah. You were still in your pyjamas. I see. Poor girl.”
“Even if I try to reach out to someone, I end up hurting them. It’s like—all the way through the war I tried to make myself a weapon, and now it’s over. And when I touch someone I cut them.”
“You’re not cutting anyone.”
“I slept with someone once.”
“Um. Are you sure you want to tell m—”
“I don’t know who she was. I don’t even remember her face. It was last year, when it finally began to look as if I was going to win this war, when it looked as if one day there was going to be hope. There was a victory party, and she was there, and she danced and smiled and seemed alive. So I took her home. And I wanted to be normal, and I wanted to be happy like everyone else.” *strained breathing* “I woke up after one of those dreams. I thought there was a skull pressed against my cheek, I thought there was cold bone under my hands. I screamed the place down, I went for my wand and she went running and I knew… I knew…”
“Potter! Are you all right?”
“I—yeah. No. It was just like that with Parvati.”
*suddenly airy* “Without the sex.”
*wearily* “Yes, Malfoy. Without the sex.”
“Such a shame.”
“If she ever comes around again, I am so telling her about the sherbet.”
“Do. It may intrigue and tantalise her. Give me your hand, Potter.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to marry you. Idiot. Put your hand through the bars.”
…
“Now what?”
“The alarm didn’t go off. They have to give me my handkerchiefs one by one, you know, so I wouldn’t knot them into a noose. And give me my medication in a spoon, in case I broke the bottle against the bars and slashed my wrists with it.”
“Stop it!”
“You’re allowed a razor, that’s regulation, but nothing dangerous and not provided by our good and merciful government goes through these bars without an alarm going off. You’re not a weapon, Potter.”
“Were you always this literal?”
*creak of unburdened bedsprings* “I find it saves time.” *brush of skin* “You see, Potter? I’m not cut.”
“Oh, well. You. That’s different.”
“I have just the same skin as anyone else. Overlooking the pearlescent lustre.”
“That’s true. You can be cut, of course. If we’d caught you before the war was over, I would have made you bleed. Don’t think you would have been any different from the others.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t have been happy to kill the Boy Who Lived.”
“Don’t call me that!” *quick standing, pained gasp* “Does this hurt?”
“No! Why don’t you like that name, hmm? Are we all grown up?”
“How about this?” *small sound*
*quick standing, low snarl* “Still no. Like what you’ve grown up into?”
“Some days it’s fun.” *another small sound, another pained gasp* “You’re too stubborn, Malfoy. That was always your problem.”
*two steps backward, voice still pained* “One among many. We’re even for the medicine now, Potter.”
“You never considered anything as other than a commercial transaction, did you.”
“I’m more honest with myself than most. That’s all.”
”… I didn’t mean to hurt you. Let me look.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“I—proved you wrong, didn’t I.”
*savagely* “You would think that. You’re too stubborn, Potter. That was always your problem. Fine. Look. The skin’s not broken. You didn’t cut me.”
*tiredly* “Good. Why are those bars set to alarm?”
“All the bars are set that way.”
“So you’re not up for the broken bottle, or the noose, or the razor.”
“Maybe I should be the one asking that question. Let’s face it, if we were playing sane wizard, wacky thinks-he’s-a-pineapple wizard…”
“I—”
“Nobody’s alarmed your bars, Potter. What have you got between the dreams and your wand, your razor, a knife? Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn—”
“I’ll still be here next week.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Perhaps.”
*quick steps to the door*