Harry kept hold of Malfoy’s shirt as he turned to point his wand at Snape.
“Then you get the damn locket off,” he snarled.
“Or what?” Snape asked silkily. “You’ll Crucio me? I happen to be a Death Eater, Potter, which means my well-being is constantly under threat from people who are slightly more fearsome than you.”
“Yeah, you happen to be a Death Eater! D’you think I’m going to leave you with this locket so you can hand it over to Voldemort!”
Harry felt Malfoy flinch at the name, but between Harry and the wall he had nowhere to go.
“Use your brain, Potter,” Malfoy said in his ear. “I’ve been at his house two months. Why wouldn’t he have handed it over before?”
“Do not waste your breath, Draco. I had the doubtful privilege of teaching Potter for six years. He never listens.”
“You didn’t inspire me,” Harry said between his teeth. “Fine, then. You haven’t handed the locket over. Is that—is the locket insurance to keep Malfoy safe?”
The idea made him angrier. Snape hadn’t cared about Dumbledore, who had trusted him so completely. Snape had killed him at Voldemort’s bidding without hesitation. He cared about a worthless little rat like Malfoy, and hadn’t been able to spare any feeling for Dumbledore?
“The locket is insurance,” Snape answered slowly, and Harry could already taste the word Sectumsempra in his mouth. “We have a plan.”
“Planning to double-cross his side like you did ours?” Harry snarled.
“Like we’re going to tell you,” Malfoy burst out, and Harry looked back at him and made a fist around the worn cloth of his shirt.
“I think you’ll tell me,” he said, very low.
Malfoy tried to shove his hands away without success. “What is it about you, Potter? Is every moment not spent injuring me a moment wasted?”
Harry made a show of considering this. “Pretty much.”
Which was when his wand spun out of his hand and he left Malfoy, and spun around to find Snape standing at last. He had not picked up his wand.
“Silent and wandless magic,” he explained, looking like a bored vulture. “It’s the next logical step in what you have been taught, Potter. What did I say? You must learn to listen!”
Harry’d strangle him if he had to.
“I’m dying to listen, sir. Why not tell me your brilliant plan? After all, it can’t be that much of a secret if you told Malfoy.”
Malfoy made a small infuriated sound, but Snape appeared entirely unruffled. “I hate to point out the obvious, Potter, but with a student like you it is sometimes necessary. The fact I am hiding a fugitive from the Dark Lord might suggest to brighter minds than yours that I could be hiding something else.”
“And you think I’m going to tell him over our weekly tea and crumpets?” Harry demanded.
He knew Snape was lying. He just didn’t know why, and he felt like an animal at bay in this dingy little room, an ancient green lamp casting pale light on faded wallpaper, Snape standing over him like a vampire and Malfoy leaning against the wall as if being thrown against it was all part of their precious plan.
“I think your mind’s an open book! Particularly to the Dark Lord.”
“Whereas Malfoy—”
“Whereas Draco, unlike you, is very accomplished at Occlumency for his age.”
Harry stared at Malfoy, who looked like he might expire on the spot of smugness.
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly.
Malfoy stopped mid-preen and scowled. “Believe what you want,” he said in a sullen tone. It made Harry think, oddly, of how pleased Malfoy had looked at Dumbledore’s praise up on the Astronomy Tower.
Malfoy was weird.
“Believe this,” Harry said quietly. “I won’t leave without that locket.”
Snape and Malfoy exchanged a glance. Malfoy took a deep breath, but it was Snape who spoke.
“I do not want you to,” he said slowly. “I want you to take Draco, and the locket, with you.”
Harry stared at Snape in astonishment. Any words he had were too small, but after a moment, feeling like he was dropping a pebble into the ocean of stunned silence, he said: “What?”
“Draco is not safe here. Death Eaters may enter this house at any time they choose, and besides—concern for his well-being might distract me from my appointed task.”
There it was again. Concern for Malfoy, when he had lifted the wand with nothing but revulsion and sent Dumbledore flying over the battlements…
Harry’s voice shook. “D’you think I care if he’s safe?”
“Be a funny thing to think, since you tried to kill me a few months ago.”
“I didn’t—” Harry began, and Malfoy was bridling and ready to retort when Snape interrupted, his voice overriding them both.
“Where Draco goes, the locket goes. If you have the locket, you have the chance of using all the powers of the Aurors and the Order in order to detach or destroy it. If you choose to let your only chance slip through your fingers—then you are a greater fool than even I had supposed.”
Harry looked at the harsh lines of Snape’s face. There was no clue in the sunken cheeks or the thin lips, skinned back from yellowed teeth. There was just Snape, always hateful and now so unquestionably worthy of hatred, staring down at him with black unfathomable eyes.
“This is a trap,” Harry said.
“Of course,” Snape whispered. “Once you enter the adult world, Potter, every choice is a trap. Your choice now is—do you consider the bait worth taking?”
Harry hesitated, and thought unaccountably of Narcissa Malfoy. He had promised her to—well, to guard Malfoy.
He would have done it, too! He would have been glad to keep his word, if Malfoy had come to him with his locket, instead of crawling back to Snape like the Dark Arts-loving little toad he was. Malfoy had not lifted the wand against Dumbledore, and his overwhelming hatred for Snape, who had been able to lift his, made all of Harry’s other hatreds seem small in comparison.
He thought of Narcissa Malfoy and her drawn expression as she spoke of her son, and wondered why these people all seemed to care so much about Malfoy’s life, while they thought so little of anyone else’s.
Malfoy had thought Dumbledore’s life meant something, Harry reminded himself, and then catching the cold look on Malfoy’s face he felt the last traces of the pity he had felt for Malfoy all summer vanish. He should have come to Harry on his knees, but he had gone to Snape. He didn’t deserve help.
Harry had promised, though.
In the end, Snape was right. There was nothing on earth that would have stopped Harry taking the locket Dumbledore had suffered for on the last night of his life, no matter what conditions were attached to it.
“All right, then,” he said heavily. “Come on, Malfoy.”
Malfoy, instead of looking triumphant, looked terrified. That cheered Harry up.
“I—right,” he snapped, looking away from Harry. Harry turned towards him expectantly, and saw that his eyes were fastened on Snape. His face looked wide open and hungry. “I’ll be off then… sir,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
“Yes, he’s a real prince,” Harry sneered, and had the satisfaction of seeing Snape’s eyes glitter furiously in his direction.
Malfoy did not seem to have heard. He kept looking at Snape. “I won’t let you down again, sir,” he promised. He made a move towards Snape, one hand outstretched, but Snape did not see it and Malfoy let his hand fall.
Harry watched uncomprehending as Snape’s head swung back towards Malfoy and he saw his hand fall. He did not know what the suddenly uncertain expression on Snape’s face meant.
His harsh voice seemed to creak for a moment. “You never let me down, Draco.”
“This is all really touching,” Harry said loudly, “but can we go?”
He was pleased to see the dull blush rise in Snape’s face and the murderous glint in Malfoy’s eyes. He wondered what Malfoy had meant when he said he would not let Snape down. Did he plan to go through with killing someone this time?
They left Snape standing in that small shabby room, his head bowed. He did not even look around to see Malfoy go, and for a moment Harry wondered whether he had guessed wrong and Snape did not care about Malfoy at all. Maybe Malfoy was just another pawn in this plan.
The thought lent him a remnant of his old pity for Malfoy, but when he glanced at him Malfoy’s pale face was turned towards Snape with a desolate look, as if Harry was a poor exchange for a Death Eater.
“What’s the matter, Malfoy?” Harry whispered. “Want to go back and give him a kiss goodbye?”
Malfoy’s expression went from desolation to rage as if someone had flicked a switch. Harry had to stumble backwards over the threshold of Snape’s house to avoid Malfoy’s sudden swing. As he ducked, he went for his wand, and he found himself in the grimy darkness of Spinner’s End going wand to wand with Malfoy.
Malfoy watched him through narrowed, calculating eyes. “Come on, Potter. Try to kill me—again.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you!” Harry exclaimed. “I didn’t know what that spell would do!”
He was assailed with the memory of the sick disbelief he had felt when Malfoy fell and he had wanted to take it back and known it was too late. He almost wanted to drop his wand, but he wasn’t that stupid.
“Thought it might perhaps conjure me a little bouquet of flowers, did you?”
“Look, I wasn’t the one trying to cast an Unforgivable!”
“I wasn’t the one spying on people!”
“I wasn’t the one—” Harry was stopped by the thought of Malfoy crying, and the vague feeling that it would be low to bring that up. He saw Malfoy see him falter, and for an instant he thought Malfoy understood.
Then Malfoy’s mouth curled. “I wasn’t the one who kindled a red-hot romance days after cutting someone open, either.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Harry asked furiously, a tiny strange part of his brain noticing that Malfoy had actually said ‘red-hot romance’ and thus had probably helped Rita Skeeter with some of her articles in fourth year.
“I was just stating a fact.” Malfoy looked innocent. “Mind you, anyone in possession of said facts might draw a few conclusions.”
“Like what?”
“Such as… you might like hurting people a little bit more than is healthy. That’s all.”
“Take that back!” Harry yelled. “Or I’ll—”
“Prove my point for me?” Malfoy asked, smirking.
Harry nobly restrained himself from beating Malfoy’s stupid face into a pulp, and shoved his wand into a sleeve. Then he faced Malfoy, who had not even lowered his.
“I’m not a killer,” Harry told him. “Any more than you are.”
Malfoy, enormous freak that he was, actually looked insulted. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean… I saw you, that night at the Astronomy Tower,” Harry said slowly. “I mean… I know you didn’t want to do it.”
Malfoy lowered his wand, which was acknowledgement enough of what Harry knew already. Malfoy’s stupidity infuriated him again.
“You didn’t want the kind of life Death Eaters have, and you went to Snape? What’s the matter with you? Pick a side!”
“I have, Potter. Not yours.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t want to kill Dumbledore,” Malfoy admitted reluctantly, and put his wand away. “Might’ve been quite happy to kill you.”
Malfoy’s cold drawl sounded very convincing to anyone who hadn’t actually been paralysed and at his mercy.
“I don’t think so,” Harry answered contemptuously, and turned his back on him. Let Malfoy trail after him for a while. He’d use the Portkey when he was good and ready.
Malfoy did follow him. He had no choice, though when Harry glanced back he gave him such a filthy look that any fond illusions about him learning his place were dispelled.
“You said you weren’t a killer,” Malfoy said softly, after a pause.
It sounded promising. “Yeah,” Harry responded.
“So you won’t be able to kill the Dark Lord, then?” Malfoy asked brightly. “I thought that was sort of the point. Wow, I’m lucky not to be on your side.”
The effort of not punching him in the head and then once he was down punching every other inch of him was too great to allow Harry to form words as well. They trudged on silently through the cold dark night, and Malfoy didn’t even have the decency to keep trailing in his wake but drew level with him.
Harry spared a sidelong glare for the check cloth of Malfoy’s shoulder. “I bet your daddy would be really proud, seeing you in Muggle clothes.”
“It isn’t what you look like that counts, it’s what you are.”
“That’s lucky!” Harry exclaimed, in a passable imitation of Malfoy’s bright voice. “Since you look like shit. Had to wear them as part of this plan, or was it just so you could run Snape’s errands for him?”
“Shut up making fun of him!”
Harry was so tired of hearing people defend Snape, when he’d always known he wasn’t to be trusted and now there was proof, and Malfoy was still too stupid to stop!
“Why should I? Tell me, what’s it like being, oh, what’s the right word—Snape’s house elf?”
To his surprise, Malfoy smiled brilliantly.
“Funny you should mention house elves,” he said, and tapped the locket gleaming at his throat. “Want to know how I got this?”
“Yeah…”
Malfoy lowered his voice, eyes shining conspiratorially as if they were sharing a rather risque joke. “Last year, I noticed this funny little house elf wandering around the place making googly eyes at me. He seemed to be spying on me sort of awkwardly—almost like he wanted to get caught, but when I questioned him he could only say… in what seemed to be the greatest pain, poor thing… that he was utterly forbidden by his master to have any sort of communication with me at all.
“I watched him quite carefully after that, and then—would you believe it? He just dropped this one day. It was the purest accident, I’m sure he just picked it up from whatever house he was serving in before Hogwarts. At first I kept it because I thought there might be a message inside, but of course that would have been against his master’s rules. I described this little incident to my mother, and as it turned out, she thought she recognised my description of the elf as a creature that used to serve her family! So I decided that the locket was meant to be a present. And I kept it.”
Malfoy did up a button of his shirt to hide the locket, his voice still low and his eyes still sparkling.
“It’s so lucky that whoever Kreacher’s new master is decided to set him on me,” he went on. “Otherwise I would never have had this beautiful locket, and we might never have come to this wonderful understanding. And that would have been a shame, wouldn’t it, Potter?”
The sight of his maliciously knowing smile was making Harry physically sick at this point. He fished inside his jeans for the Portkey.
“Better grab hold of me quick,” he advised Malfoy. “It’d be a shame if you were left to sleep on the streets.”
Malfoy was idiotic enough to look a question at him, and Harry felt the pull of the Portkey, dragging him back to the Burrow, a second before Malfoy gave an alarmed shout and grabbed hold of his elbow. He spun away, smiling at the desperation of Malfoy’s bruising grip.
Then they were standing outside the Burrow.
Malfoy looked up at the tall, lopsided house with emotions diametrically different to those Harry had felt the first time he saw the Burrow chasing themselves over his face. Harry glowered at him on the Weasleys’ behalf.
Malfoy swallowed. “Potter,” he said, “tell me this is where your family live.”
“Closest thing I’ve got,” Harry returned. “This is the Weasleys’ place.”
“Potter, no. Potter, I implore you to reconsider! Take me to your Muggles. I’ll be good.”
“You almost deserve each other,” Harry said, having a pleasurable private vision of Dudley using Malfoy as target practise and then being hexed until he fell over. “But I turned seventeen two weeks ago.”
“Gosh, Potter, did you? You should have told me. I would have sent a gift!”
“They won’t have me back,” Harry went on, ignoring him. “I live here now.”
He noticed that Malfoy’s face was taut and upset. “I can’t live here!”
“Why not?” Harry asked coldly. “You were living with Snape. The Weasleys are brilliant.”
“Oh, brilliant,” Malfoy agreed. “Those twins certainly didn’t try to murder one of my housemates.”
“They didn’t try to murder anyone! That—with Montague, it was just because he was trying to take house points—”
“A marvellous reason to starve someone slowly to death—”
“They thought he’d pop out sooner or later!”
“And when he didn’t, they went running to the teachers to give them the information to help him, did they? You seem remarkably well-informed, Potter, did you go and volunteer information to try and save Montague’s life? Or did you think, like your precious Weasleys, that he deserved to die because he was a Slytherin, and he’d taken your house points?”
We forced him head-first into that Vanishing Cabinet on the first floor… I dunno where we sent him.
Harry saw, against the friendly, funny background of the leaning house and the wild grass of the Weasleys’ front garden, that Malfoy’s thin shoulders were actually shaking. He felt a little shaken himself once Malfoy had stopped speaking: it was that ridiculous pity, that kept dying and then briefly resurrecting at the most inopportune moments.
“Nobody meant for him to get hurt,” he insisted.
“Funny how your side,” Malfoy practically spat the word, “have such good intentions, and keep almost killing people. A minute inside that house, and I expect there would be a terribly unfortunate incident involving a peckish Weasley and my still-beating heart.”
“Look, if we’re talking about intentions, then at least none of us intended to kill anyone! Can you say the same, Malfoy?”
“I’m not giving you any guarantees you’d be safe in my house.”
Perhaps it was that Malfoy tacitly accepted Harry’s point, and his own guilt. Harry had been waiting for a bit of humility, and he tried to make his voice slightly less harsh.
“Malfoy. You’re not going to get hurt. I promised to keep you safe.”
Malfoy’s shoulders went down a little, like the hackles of a dog reconsidering savagery. He did say, “Oh, Potter, you’re so heroic. Will you hold my hand?” but Harry decided to ignore this as background noise as long as Malfoy followed him when he unlatched the gate, and walked towards the Burrow. He saw there were lights on in the kitchen, which put paid to any plan of smuggling Malfoy into the attic and feeding him occasionally.
“Oh dear,” Malfoy said dramatically. “I can smell Weasley from here.”
Pity was brutally murdered by fury in about the same split second it took Harry to open the door and shove Malfoy up hard against the door frame.
“There’s another reason for bringing you here,” he snarled into Malfoy’s face. Malfoy pressed his lips together, obviously trying to look composed, but he felt Malfoy’s heart speed up under his clenched fists. “Remember Fenrir?” he whispered, and saw Malfoy’s lashes snap back, his eyes going wide. “Yeah, the one you let into our school. Remember that body you tripped over? That was Bill Weasley.”
The tension running through Malfoy’s body, suggesting he was just about to fight back, all drained out of him. “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh,” Harry said roughly. “Time to face some consequences, Malfoy.”
He grasped Malfoy’s shirt tighter and shoved him through the door and into the Weasleys’ kitchen.
They were all up, Ron with bed hair so extreme he looked almost as untidy as Harry always did, Hermione with her dressing gown buttoned up wrong, Ginny with a sweet, sleepy colour in her cheeks. Mr and Mrs Weasley holding hands and looking agitated. Bill, who was here preparing for the wedding and submitting to Mrs Weasley’s frighteningly intent coddling.
They were all up, and staring at Malfoy, who was blinking at them like a rabbit in the headlights. Harry left the door and went to his side.
Hermione, before she had assimilated the situation, started to say: “Harry, thank God, we were so wor—” and then went very quiet. Ron and Ginny seemed to be having synchronised embolisms.
“I can explain,” Harry told them all quickly, and then saw that they were all staring at Bill.
He looked at Malfoy, and saw that they were following his gaze. Malfoy seemed rooted to the spot but shaking violently, like a tree in a storm, and as his eyes grew wider and wider they all seemed to be looking at Bill through new eyes.
Harry had only thought of scoring one off Malfoy. It had not occurred to him what a horrible, selfish thing he might be doing to Bill.
The warm, cosy light in the Weasleys’ kitchen seemed all of a sudden far too bright. Everyone was silently staring at Bill, drinking in the scars as if they were fresh. The one that had almost taken his eye and left his eyelid sagging and pulled out of shape. The one where Fenrir had gouged a hole in his cheek that quivered livid as his cheek muscle worked. The rips and tears, the fretwork of pain, inscribed over and dominating and reshaping all of his features. Most of all there was the huge scar that crossed white over the side of his mouth, trembling and turning every expression into a hideous grimace as it did now when, under all their eyes, he tried valiantly to smile.
Malfoy broke the terrible, observing trance when he made a small uncontrollable sound and then turned tail and fled.
Harry would have pursued but it was clear that Malfoy was not going far. Outside, they could all hear—Bill could hear—the unmistakable and wretched sound of someone vomiting.
Bill was still smiling that brave, grotesque smile. “It’s OK,” he told his mother. “It’s OK, it’s not important. I don’t blame him—”
Harry felt so guilty he wanted to die. After all the Weasleys had done for him, he had used what had happened to Bill just to make Malfoy squirm.
Mrs Weasley’s hands were trembling. “I’m glad you’re safe, Harry,” she said, and made him feel more guilty still.
He was trying to find some words to explain when he saw that all of their eyes had fixed on a point beyond his shoulder, and he turned to see Malfoy had returned. He was standing uncertainly on the threshold, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and his expression indicated that he wanted to be sick again.
Harry wondered why he had come back. His gaze was fixed on the floor, and he seemed to be searching for words.
He kept swallowing, as if hoping some would come up. Eventually, he said to the floor:
“Can I talk to you, Weasley?” He looked up as if struck anew with the realisation he was in a den of Weasleys, and cast a wild look around the table which fixed on Bill. “I mean—” There was a terrible pause in which Malfoy obviously tried to search for a word that described Bill without mentioning scars. “I mean you,” he said at last. He looked like a skull by the time he got the words out, and he looked more than ever like he was going to be sick again, but he added: “Please.”
Bill got up, slowly. “OK,” he said, obviously quite at sea. “If you like.”
Harry was at sea himself. He crushed the urge to grab Malfoy and demand what he was planning to do before he hurt Bill again, and instead, hardly knowing why, he let Bill go with Malfoy into the darkness of the front garden.
He wanted to hear what Malfoy had to say, but now everyone was looking expectantly at him.
“Who’s your friend, Harry?” asked Mrs Weasley, and Harry gaped at her before he remembered that she had only seen Malfoy twice, both times briefly, and last time must have been before fourth year.
She could only remember a pale little runt skulking behind his father, and it probably did not occur to her to compare that image to this tall boy in costume jewellery Harry had brought home.
“What the hell, Harry?” asked Ginny, and turned to her mother. “That was Malfoy,” she explained rapidly. “Lucius Malfoy’s son, the son of the man who gave me that book, the boy who let the werewolf into Hogwarts—”
“Oh!” said Mrs Weasley.
“Wait,” Harry begged, and was incredibly grateful when Ginny stopped talking at once and fixed him with a gaze that said: I’m trusting you, Harry, so make this good. “He has a Horcrux sealed around his neck,” he explained rapidly. “We need it: we need to remove it and destroy it. I didn’t know where else to bring him. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” said Hermione, in a suddenly keen voice. Ron relaxed, and Ginny gave him the smile that made his chest ache, a smile that said she’d had faith in him and it had been rewarded.
He looked away, and was caught by Malfoy’s silhouette in the darkened garden. He could hear the low, halting tones of Malfoy’s voice, different tones than he had ever heard Malfoy use before, but he could not hear what Malfoy was saying. He was furiously curious again.
Everyone at the table was talking at once, and Harry forced himself not to ask them to keep it down.
He was still straining to hear when Malfoy and Bill returned.
Malfoy still looked miserably sick and unsure, but he was holding his head up now. Bill, wearing a smile still pulled down on one side yet fitting far more comfortably on his face than the one he had worn before, had his hand on Malfoy’s shoulder as they walked in side by side.
“Mum,” he said. “Draco’s in a bit of a mess. Can he stay here for a while?”
Mrs Weasley started the flutter of consternation she often raised around Bill these days, full of murmured endearments and—this time—a vague comment about Fred and George’s room, and amounting to one thing: that right now, she could deny her eldest son nothing.
That was settled, then, and Harry supposed he should be relieved. Instead, he found himself watching Malfoy, still unsure of what had happened. If Malfoy was sorry, surely he would have said so to Harry. Harry had been quite prepared to… Harry would’ve…
The look creeping onto Malfoy’s face unsettled him. He looked like—like a newly lit lamp, brightness still flickering uncertainly, and he was staring at Bill with dazed gratitude.