Harry woke early. He’d had a restless night, tossing and turning on the camp bed, still thrumming with the desire to kill Snape and terribly aware that a Horcrux was in the house. In the house, between Fred or George’s sheets, so maddeningly close.
Having Ginny pressed up against him as soon as he walked out the door did nothing to help his general sense of frustration.
“Sorry, Harry,” she said, and quickly stepped back. She was combing her long hair with her fingers, Harry saw: it was twisted around her hands like a hundred rings.
“You’re up early.”
Her chin went up. “I’m damned if I’m letting Malfoy see me in my nightie.”
Apparently, this meant she had to do her hair right as well, in order to make it clear that she was the kind of person who always went down to the breakfast table ready for the day and barely noticed the existence of any Malfoys. Harry did not understand girls.
He understood the awesome stubbornness of Ginny, though, and he stood aside as she combed the house for a comb and explained that she’d been up all night with Hermione anyway.
“Every book in the house had to be examined in case it contained the clue to getting Malfoy’s necklace off. Couldn’t wait till morning. Couldn’t even wait till I was asleep. But I have had an idea.”
“Yeah?” said Harry, hope briefly replacing longing.
She looked up at him, eyes shining. “Yeah. So, we’ve got to cast spells on Malfoy to get the thing off. So, we should use any spell that might possibly work, no matter what. So, if I should accidentally turn Malfoy’s nose into a jelly baby, that’d be a complete accident and all in the cause of righteousness.”
Harry grinned. It all seemed ordinary for a moment, as if they were still going together, as if he could lean down, kiss her, and be warm and safe and normal.
But the Burrow wasn’t his home, even if he was living there. He couldn’t have a home, not yet.
He could only have a base.
He left her rummaging, put his head around the door of Ginny’s room and asked Hermione if she had found anything.
“No,” she said, dark circles under her eyes. “But, Harry, I’m sure I can—”
He went and sat on her bed. “I’m sure you could use some sleep. You’re reminding me a bit of Dobby—will you fling yourself from the topmost tower if you don’t get your work done?”
“I have not the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Hermione yawned, looking like a blurred photo of herself, smudgy around the eyes and frizzy about the hair, “but the systematic abuse inflicted on house elves by the wizarding world is textbook and no laughing matter: victims are always implicated in the crimes committed against them, all the house elves in the world are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome—”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Harry said, capturing the book from her hands. She made a futile grab at the air.
“Get some sleep,” he continued. “Or you can’t come to the Hollow.”
“The answers could be in that book,” Hermione mumbled. “Research is key.”
Hermione vulnerable did not happen all that often. Harry resisted the urge to tuck her up. Instead, he bore the book away with him. He’d have carried the whole pile, but it was enormous and he hadn’t had much sleep himself.
Of course, there was another stop to make before Harry could go downstairs. Harry had been aware of that since he got up and deliberately left Ron asleep. He’d have to go get Malfoy, who wouldn’t want to venture down into Weasley territory, take him downstairs with him and lay some ground rules about manners in the Burrow. He’d brought Malfoy here, Malfoy was his responsibility, and the least he could do for the Weasleys was make sure Malfoy was the best guest it was possible for Malfoy to be.
Fred and George’s room was empty, aside from the boxes of tricks and a neatly made bed, all of which seemed to be mocking Harry in their own special inanimate way. He wasn’t staying. That wasn’t part of the plan. He’s got the Horcrux and he could be anywhere…
Harry went storming down the stairs into the kitchen, and then stopped at the threshold as if someone had hit him with a Petrifying curse.
Draco Malfoy was laying the table and chattering to Mrs Weasley like a happy sparrow.
“—no, I agree, she has far more range than cheap manufactured bands like Wyrd Sisters, who don’t even write their own lyrics—”
“I knew they didn’t,” Mrs Weasley exclaimed. “I always said that!”
“You can just tell, can’t you? I love Celestina Warbeck,” Malfoy said earnestly.
“Oh, do you, Malfoy,” Harry asked from the doorway.
Malfoy dropped a fork and scowled at the table. Harry was quickly recovering from astonishment now: it all made perfect sense. Of course, Malfoy was doing his usual stuff, crawling to Snape or Umbridge or anyone who seemed willing to favour him. He’d seen Mrs Weasley give into Bill and targeted her like a carrion bird.
And of course, he was being silent now because he knew that this whole winning ways carry-on would cut no ice with Harry.
“Harry, dear,” said Mrs Weasley. “You’re up early, you must be hungry.”
Harry didn’t know whether it was natural or a habit formed from raising seven, but Mrs Weasley’s standard greeting of ‘you are breathing, so I’d better feed you’ had always appealed to him intensely.
He felt the edge go off his appetite when he saw Malfoy wander away from the table and closer to Mrs Weasley, eyeing Harry as if Harry was the intruder here, as if Harry’d forced him to stop talking. Mrs Weasley wouldn’t be so keen to chat about Celestina Warbeck with Malfoy if Harry’d made it clear that her eldest son had been crippled because of him.
He took a violent, petty satisfaction—for Ron, and all the things Malfoy had ever said to him—in the fact that Malfoy looked like the Weasleys’ poor relation. In daylight, the faded check shirt and jeans didn’t even fit well, and wherever the comb Ginny was searching for was, it obviously wasn’t in Fred and George’s room.
Malfoy lurked with his bad hair behind Mrs Weasley, who gave him an absent smile.
“Draco was just telling me how you two used to play Quidditch together.”
“We played Quidditch against each other,” Harry corrected.
Mrs Weasley looked puzzled, as if she couldn’t really see the difference. Malfoy looked over at Harry’s face and brightened up.
“It was ripping fun,” he drawled.
Harry thought about Quidditch as he hadn’t in a while, as suddenly present and all over him as the weather when you stepped outside. He remembered the wind in his hair and the gleam of the Snitch and the blood-pounding triumph of that Quidditch Cup in third year.
It hadn’t even seemed important last year. Now it was like Ginny: part of the life he couldn’t have.
“You’re good at Quidditch, aren’t you, Harry?” asked Mrs Weasley. “Did you win most matches against Draco?”
Harry smiled and watched Malfoy scowl. “Don’t really remember… about how many would you say, Malfoy?”
Malfoy did not look away even as he murmured thanks for a cup of coffee from Mrs Weasley. He didn’t speak.
“Roughly?” Harry pursued.
Malfoy was saved, which he did not deserve to be, by the advent of Ginny and Bill. Bill was ruining the effect of Ginny’s entrance by asking her why she was up and dressed so early. Ginny’s efforts to shoot him a Speaking Look were completely useless, as Bill had noticed the usual couple of wedding presents delivered this morning and was homing in.
“Doesn’t Phlegm—Fleur—mind you opening presents without her?” Ginny asked.
“Not really,” Bill said. “Says if she sees another Time Toaster she’ll top herself. Morning, Mum. Morning, Draco.”
Mrs Weasley smiled adoringly: Malfoy waved his coffee cup in a tentative-looking gesture and attempted a smile, attention immediately diverted from the fact that Harry had always won and would have kept on winning, if only Malfoy hadn’t decided to stop playing.
”… Time Toaster… a set of teacups that sings ‘won’t you be my guest’, oh, and that hasn’t been done before…”
Harry gave Ginny a vindicated glance, but she was looking at the teacups she’d fancied so much in the shop. Harry would not be overly surprised if a mysterious present disappearance occurred.
“And a letter from Charlie!” Bill said, waving it in the air as if it was a trophy.
He looked set to open it at once, but then Ron came in and tried to grab it, and Bill was forced to fend him off with the toasting fork. Harry saw Malfoy draw slightly closer to Mrs Weasley on Ron’s arrival.
Bill was reading out his own summary of the Owl. “La la la I am Charlie and I made all my brothers play Dragons, Tamers and Crispy Fried People Snacks for years but I can’t seem to make time for family, la la la dragons breeding fascinating I am Charlie and I have no love life, la la la I promise to be back before the day. He’d better be back on the day. I don’t even know if Percy’s coming, and as for the twins, no power under God—”
Fred and George had been very urgent in their claim to be Bill’s best men, and had said ‘two are better than one’ and ‘buttonholes’ with a distinct air of menace. Bill was now threatening to elope.
“Are the twins coming here?” Malfoy asked sharply.
Everybody looked at him.
“This is their home,” Ron informed him.
Bill blinked at something, and then looked around for some reason at Ron, Ginny and Harry.
“Come and sit by me, Draco,” he said.
Malfoy came, performing a sideways manoeuvre round the table to get to Bill while avoiding the others, like some kind of sneering two-faced crab. Ginny began industriously removing all forms of breakfast from in front of Malfoy.
“Oi, I was eating that!” Bill protested, whisking at least seven pieces of toast from her hands. “Charlie’s coming here too,” he added to Malfoy, waving the precious Owl. “He’s the eldest next to me.”
“Oh. I—didn’t know there were more of you,” Malfoy said, looking vaguely horrified. He paused, picking at a piece of toast Bill had put on his plate, and glanced up at Ron and Ginny. Then he looked back at Bill. “Is he like you?”
Surely even Bill would see through that obvious flattery, but he just grinned.
“He’s a bit like me. Less handsome.”
“And, er…” Malfoy, the posh git, seemed to be trying to make conversation. Like he was a welcome guest, Harry didn’t think. “Why are they all coming?”
“Because—”
Bill’s explanation was forestalled by the back door opening. Harry reached for his wand when he saw Malfoy’s stunned expression.
Then he actually looked around, and saw why Malfoy looked as if he had been struck between the eyes with a plank. A golden vision stood outlined against the sunlight, her hair a shining sheet over her shoulders, the light chasing itself jealously over every curve of her face.
“Bill!” Fleur cried. “They ‘ave let me off work early!”
She seemed to fly rather than walk from the doorstep to the point where she precipitated herself into Bill’s lap. Harry entertained the notion that she was exercising some kind of arcane Veela power when she started exercising some Veela tongue, and he hastily looked away.
Malfoy, rude bastard that he was, was still staring.
“They said that I was utterly utterly ‘opeless, and no use to them at all, and I should go on my ‘oneymoon and stop drawing wedding dresses on their account books!”
“You must be on the fast track to promotion, love,” said Bill, and kissed her again. He drew her against him to the sound of her languorous happy sigh, and addressed Malfoy. “I’m going to get married in four days, you see.”
Fleur leaned over and kissed Ron briefly in greeting, and then tugged Harry’s head down. Whenever the wedding was mentioned she started dispensing kisses. She leaned over to Bill’s other side and gave Malfoy an inquiring look.
“You are not a Weasley,” she observed.
“No,” Malfoy said, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a little smile. “But you can kiss me if you like. I remember you from the Triwizard Tournament, everyone thought you were really—”
Malfoy stopped and stared hard at his fork, the tips of his ears going pink. Fleur looked pleased.
“He’s Draco Malfoy,” Harry said loudly. “He was the one who let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.”
Fleur went white. She looked at Bill’s face, and then kissed him hard.
Malfoy was white as well, and silent now. Harry was glad. What right did he have to act like he was a friend of the family? He didn’t deserve to be treated decently: Mrs Weasley and Bill didn’t know him. Malfoy should be crawling.
Breakfast was mostly a silent meal after that. Malfoy kept looking cowed, eyes on his plate, and Fleur and Bill engaged in one of their sessions of intense whispering. Ron and Ginny engaged in a small game of moving anything on the table they thought Malfoy might be about to reach for.
Mrs Weasley kept coming to the table bearing muffins and scones with shaking hands, her clock tucked under her arm. She no longer looked as if she wanted to talk to Malfoy about Quidditch or Celestina Warbeck.
Malfoy broke the silence.
He said abruptly: “Your clock is stupid.”
What sounded like a snarl rose from Ron. “Malfoy, if you dare—”
“No, I meant—” Malfoy was still white, but he lifted his eyes from his plate at last and looked from Ron to Mrs Weasley, entirely passing Harry over. “I meant, all the hands point to mortal peril. You wouldn’t know if that meant generalised mortal peril, or Run, the Death Eaters are in your back garden!”
“Run, the Death Eaters are in our kitchen?” Harry suggested.
Malfoy’s mouth twisted, but he did not look at him. “I could—I’m good at messing around with things,” he said. “I think I could make it more accurate.”
Good at messing around with things. Like the Vanishing Cabinet that brought the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. Harry wanted to punch him an incredible amount.
“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” Bill said in a loud voice. He leaned forward, apparently accidentally nudging Fleur.
“Draco,” Fleur said, and hesitated. “Bill and I would be vairy glad if you came to our wedding.”
Malfoy’s face softened a fraction. “Thank you, I would be very glad to come. Are your relatives travelling over from France for the wedding?”
Fleur brightened. “My sister Gabrielle is coming tomorrow! I am so relieved, for we meant to be married earlier in the summer, but with one zing and another—” Fleur’s hand indicated her fiance’s mutilation and Dumbledore’s death in one dismissive wave. “So I ‘ad to change all my plans, and I feared Gabrielle would not make it. You will admire her, I theenk, you Eenglish boys. She is much more beautiful than I am.”
Bill kissed Fleur again and stroked her hair. She looked pleased with herself, and regarded Malfoy with kinder eyes.
“I doubt it,” said Malfoy—laying it on thick as usual, Harry noticed. “One of my friends wrote love poetry about you in fourth year.”
The mad urge to know whether it was Crabbe or Goyle did not mean that Harry was about to enter into civil conversation with Malfoy.
“Yes, Fleur used to be very attractive,” Bill sighed. “Shame about her putting on all that weight.”
Fleur gave a giggle of delighted outrage and gave Bill another kiss. Harry was never going to understand women.
“I’d be delighted if you would help with the clock,” Mrs Weasley announced suddenly, and pressed it into Malfoy’s hands. He barely caught it in time, and looked up at her with an odd expression on his face. “Thank you, Draco,” she added. “Have a scone.”
“Gabrielle is fourteen now. My grandmuzzer says the Veela strain runs strong in us,” Fleur went on happily. “I ‘ope our leetle girl will be as beautiful as Gabrielle.”
“What little girl?” Bill asked, his voice going all faint.
“The little girl we are going to ‘ave! Bill and I want ‘undreds and ‘undreds of children,” Fleur continued, as Mrs Weasley beamed and Bill went a little bit green. “All ze girls will look like me—and all ze boys will look like me too.”
“That’s a beautiful dream,” Malfoy said, smirking.
They launched into talk of the wedding, Fleur and Mrs Weasley and Bill and Draco Malfoy , it was stupid, as if he was like them when he hated everything they stood for and always had.
“I know what you’re doing,” Harry snarled after breakfast.
Malfoy had gone to get himself a last cup of coffee, and Harry left the table and cornered him against the work surfaces.
“Getting a cup of coffee? Sharp of you, Potter.”
“Shut up, Malfoy. I mean—what you’re doing with the Weasleys. Mrs Weasley and Bill are too nice to see what a little rat you are, and you’re using that to your advantage.”
“I’m their guest—”
“You’re not their guest! I took the locket, and I had to take you with it. You’re in the way—and you’re so pathetic that they feel sorry for you. Well, I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“Good,” Malfoy said in a hard voice. He was looking at him now, his pale face pinched with fury.
Harry pushed his advantage. “Think Mrs Weasley would like you so much if she knew all you’ve said about her to Ron?” he asked in a low voice. “Want me to tell her you think she’s fat, or her house smells, or they all sleep in the same bed? They’re being kind because that’s the kind of person they are, but I know the kind of person you are. And I know you’re up to something.”
Even that small victory slipped out of his hands. Malfoy looked away from him, his face smoothing out into its accustomed sneer.
“Really, Potter? You find me in the house of the man who killed Dumbledore with the a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul around my neck, and somehow you guess I’m up to something? That’s amazing, that is. I suppose it’s some kind of awesome power that belongs to the Chosen One?”
“Malfoy, I swear I’ll—”
At that moment, Hermione came down and Malfoy escaped back to Bill and Mrs Weasley, sticking close by them like the coward he was.
It didn’t matter, Harry reminded himself, still glaring. Now Hermione was down, they should go back to the Hollow.
The first time they had been to Godric’s Hollow, they had gone with high hopes and Hermione with an even higher stack of books. Harry had hardly noticed the details of the house in his headlong rush to find something that would be useful, in order to touch his parents’ gravestones and sense something. This was where it had all began: this was his only idea.
Hope had faded now, and all they could do was hopelessly list all the details they had learned already. Hermione had not even brought any books with her this time.
The ruins of Godric’s Hollow had been left alone, avoided either because his parents’ deaths had left lingering superstition about it or because they wished to preserve the place where Voldemort had been—for such a short time—vanquished.
It was still vaguely in the shape of a house, yellow broken bricks piled up on a foundation with grass growing as thick on them as it grew on his parents’ graves. The sight of the ruins stirred no memories in Harry’s mind. There was nothing.
There was just nothing. In the late July sun Godric’s Hollow lay, a little green scoop in the earth. The ruins looked as if some old house had simply tumbled down and been covered by the blanket of grass. That was what Harry would have thought if he had just stumbled upon it instead of being directed by Hagrid, that was what rambling Muggles must think.
It seemed impossible that this was the place, that the Dark Mark had hung in the air against this particular bright patch of sky, that somewhere—perhaps here, or here—his mother had shouted “Take me, kill me instead-.” Harry walked over every inch in and around the ruins, so he was sure he walked over the spot where it had happened, where his father and mother had stood.
Every spot felt the same to him. He kept walking.
The sun slipped down in the sky, bringing clouds and dew with the sunset. It was a warm night, and Ron and Hermione did not suggest they go back. They never did that.
Harry never slept much in Godric’s Hollow, but he watched them sleep, Hermione’s head against Ron’s chest, his long nose just touching her hair. His parents must have watched him sleep here, when he was a baby, and promised themselves they would do anything to protect him.
“Maybe we should dig it all up,” he said suddenly the next day. “Maybe we should tear it all up and see if, if for some reason someone buried something under the foundations—”
“Harry, how would Voldemort have the chance to put something under the foundations?”
Hermione looked at him as if he was crazy. She didn’t see that Harry wanted to take his revenge on the whole place, for being nothing, for giving him nothing. Somewhere here he had had parents, and a nursery, and it could have been Neville who had his life and he could have been safe. Maybe he would still live in the house that had stood here. Maybe he would have spent every summer night here.
He wondered briefly why Ron and Hermione kept coming even though they knew it was pointless, but he knew why.
They did not complain on the second night either, even though Harry had sat around frowning into space for most of the day. Harry knew he should thank them for everything, but he could not seem to stop looking for what he knew was not there long enough to do it.
Ron held Hermione while she slept, and he had held her while she cried at—the funeral, but Harry did not think they were together. A part of him wanted to tell them to stop wasting time, but the rest of him wanted this, them, his friends, to remain the same as they had always been. This was hardly the time for messing around.
On the morning of the third day he went alone to his parents’ graves. They were small, blurred stones. If he had not known they were there, he might have passed them as well.
James Potter, said the stones. Lily Potter. But they themselves did not speak, and it seemed wrong that in this place where they had died their famous deaths and proved that they loved him, they remained silent. Voldemort’s wand and Snape’s memories had given him more than this.
Where were they? Where was—something, the something he had come here hoping to find, he had kept returning for long after all sense told him nothing was here for this whole long summer of frustration.
The stones, grey uneven shapes in the long grass, had no answers. He seized handfuls of grass, pulling up the earth as well, and hurled them at the stones and still there was nothing. There were no answers in Godric’s Hollow.
Ron and Hermione were leaning against each other when he came back. Hermione looked up at him apologetically.
“Harry,” she said. “It’s Bill and Fleur’s wedding tomorrow.”
“Yeah. We should go back. We… we don’t need to come here again.”
They looked set to protest, but then they saw Harry’s face and shut up. Harry was even more grateful for that, and for the way they acted as if they had to pack up all the nothing they had brought with them, and gave him a few more minutes.
He looked around at Godric’s Hollow, grass turning as yellow as the bricks around them. It was a pretty little place, a place to picnic. There were no answers, no Horcruxes, no hope.
Hope, appallingly, was hanging around Draco Malfoy’s neck, and he had left it to go chasing dreams. He should go back and—and Imperius Malfoy, or wring his scrawny neck, or do anything to get that Horcrux and bring him to his knees with a confession of his and Snape’s little plot. God alone knew what he was doing left unwatched in the Burrow, and that was Harry’s home now—or almost.
“There’s just nothing!” he said, and was surprised to find himself almost yelling. “How can there be—just nothing? How can it all be gone?”
“It’s not,” Ron blurted. He went red when Harry looked at him. “I don’t—I mean, I know it sounds soppy, but—”
Hermione squeezed his arm. “There is something left,” she said in a small voice. “There’s you, Harry.”
Harry did not know if he was going to be enough, but they left Godric’s Hollow for the last time all leaning against each other.
When they returned to the Burrow, they found it transformed. Mrs Weasley and Fleur were in trees Harry did not actually remember being in the front garden before, hanging lace all over them so the trees looked like they were getting married.
“‘Arry!” Fleur exclaimed, leaping down from a tree and giving the impression of a dryad appearing to humans. “Ron, ‘Ermione, how nice it is to see you, we ‘ave been worried—”
“There was no need to worry,” Ron said, blushing furiously as she took his hands.
“—Eef you were all gone, the seating at tables would be ruined. Gabrielle and my muzzer are ‘ere, zey luckily found a nice bed and breakfast, only now all ze wedding guests are trying to stay zere. My muzzer says several people try to share ‘er bed every night, and she is not sure they are all making a mistake, but zat is her way, she is very ‘umorous.”
Harry did not particularly care how humorous Mrs Delacour was. “Where’s Malfoy?”
“Who is—oh, Draco,” Fleur said. “I theenk—let me see, he was trying to calm Bill down, Bill says zat Charlie is not ‘ere yet and the twins are coming and we must instantly go to a Muggle place called Las Vegas. I did not pay very close attention. Ginny and Gabrielle are in ze back garden. Gabrielle would love to talk to you, she ‘as been dying to see ‘Arry Potter again—”
“Charlie says he won’t be here until tomorrow!” Bill roared, striding out into the garden. “He’s cutting it entirely too fine. I am the only older brother he has, you know, and he knows Fred and George are planning something—I know they’re planning something—they were born planning something—”
“I theenk he has wedding nerves,” Fleur confided sagely.
“Wasn’t Malfoy with you?” Harry asked.
Bill looked quizzical. “I must have put him down somewhere. It’s good to see you three, but Harry, could you—”
“I’m very tired,” Harry said. “I think I’m going to go grab a kip so I can get up really early and help do—stuff—”
“That would be very ‘elpful, ‘Arry,” Fleur beamed, but Harry was already walking purposefully towards the Burrow.
There was a terrifyingly enormous cake taking up most of the kitchen, and such a tangled mess of streamers in the hall that he immediately recognised Ginny’s more-is-more approach to decorating. He went up the stairs as quickly as he could, in case Gabrielle Delacour showed up and delayed him asking for his autograph.
Fred and George’s door was closed. Harry paused, thinking he should just shove it open and catch Malfoy unawares, but finally he rapped on the door.
“Come in!” Malfoy practically carolled. He’d obviously been having a fine old time of it while Harry stood by his parents’ graves.
Malfoy was standing at the desk by the small window, his back to the light. He was stooped over Mrs Weasley’s clock and did not look up as the door opened.
“I’m sure Charles will arrive first thing tomorrow,” he drawled, sounding typically unbothered about anything that didn’t concern himself. “Anyway, come look at this, I really think I’ve cracked it—”
The afternoon sun was too bright, making his hair hurt Harry’s eyes. It was in Malfoy’s face when he glanced up and saw Harry. A smile froze and then slid away from Malfoy’s mouth.
“I’m back,” said Harry.
“I’m thrilled,” Malfoy snapped. A sneer came easily to him, as if it was far more familiar than the shy smile.
“What have you been doing while I was gone?”
“Evil things. Kicking puppies, stealing lollipops, telling the Dark Lord that Ginny Weasley doesn’t want to wear a golden flower in her hair. General evil.”
Malfoy looked bored and returned his gaze to the clock. It looked a mess, and so did Malfoy. Not only was he all rumpled, but he was still wearing that cheap shirt, rolled up past the elbows as if Malfoy was working on a car rather than a clock.
“Hey,” Harry said. “Excuse me?”
“Potter, if you’re looking for your daily fix of attention, there are ladies dying to swoon all over your scarred self in the back garden. I’m busy.”
“Yeah, you’re busy,” Harry sneered, striding forward and grabbing Malfoy’s wrist. A cog fell out of his hand and his gaze snapped back up to Harry’s face. “You’re busy hiding—”
He stopped. The words dried up in his mouth.
Malfoy was trying to pull his wrist back, but the strength had apparently gone out of him though he was taut with distress. Harry was easily able to keep hold of Malfoy’s wrist, and turn it over.
There on the inside of Malfoy’s left arm, against white skin that looked like it had never seen the sun, was the Dark Mark.
Malfoy was watching him now, his attention captured as surely as his arm. His eyes were huge, his mouth was trembling and he was scarcely breathing.
Harry found words, spoken low. “I thought so,” he said. “I told everyone so, when you flinched away from Madam Malkin, but they all said he wouldn’t let a sixteen year old into his inner circle. I thought maybe you didn’t have it after you couldn’t do it—maybe you had to earn it—but you have it. You swore to him. You are a Death Eater. Nothing you do can change that.”
“Let go of me,” Malfoy said, his voice thin and brittle.
Harry didn’t. He had seen the Dark Mark before, a flash Snape had displayed to the room, but he had never seen one close up before. He stared at it, caught between disgust and fascination. What would make someone take this willingly, what kind of person would wear it proudly?
The enormous black skull was almost silly, like a skull on a pirate flag, but the serpent poking obscenely between its bared teeth was not. The whole thing on Malfoy’s skin looked unreal, like a picture in black and white. Harry stared at the Mark.
“Why did you do it?”
“Don’t do that!” Malfoy shouted, recoiling, and Harry realised he had spoken Parseltongue.
The inclination to hiss curled thick around his tongue, wanting to get out, maybe wanting to frighten Malfoy a little bit more, but he cleared his throat and spoke in English.
“What’s the matter, Malfoy? Remind you of someone?” Malfoy only stared at him, his eyes filled with Harry’s face. “You realise that you’re branded. Like cattle. You belong to Voldemort.”
“That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
“What, your idea?”
“No,” Malfoy said between his teeth. “His idea. I thought like you were thinking at the time, I thought it was part of being in his inner circle, and that is the way he tries to sell it. But it’s not like that. It’s not an honour. He wanted to remind me that I was in his power, that my whole family were going to be punished. He wanted to be able to call to me, no matter where I went or what I did. This was—I was part of his revenge against my father, and that’s why he gave it to me. That’s the only reason why.”
Harry recalled suddenly how Snape had once described the Dark Mark. Every Death Eater had the sign burnt into him by the Dark Lord. It was… his means of summoning us to him.
He hadn’t sounded like he enjoyed having the Dark Mark. He hadn’t sounded honoured, but like a dog in a choke chain.
The skin all around the Dark Mark, Harry saw, was a tiny livid outline of pink. The colour of a recent burn, but Malfoy had taken this a year ago.
“He still calls to you, doesn’t he? For fun. Does it hurt?”
Malfoy’s mouth was pulled out of shape by some emotion, and did not form properly into the savage sneer he no doubt intended.
“What do you think?”
“I think you deserve it,” Harry said breathlessly. “You promised to hurt people, you wanted to hurt people. You became Voldemort’s animal when all he wanted was to whip you. Think you might have made a mistake now, Malfoy?”
Malfoy should have said yes. He should have admitted Harry was right.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe if I hadn’t taken that, I wouldn’t have received this. It seems like I have the whip hand of someone now.”
His nasty little smile left Harry in no doubt of who he meant, and though his free hand only brushed his open shirt collar Harry was also in no doubt of what he was indicating. There were two buttons on his shirt undone, the faded collar drooping in on itself but the locket easy enough to see. It lay against Malfoy’s skin, a taunting gleaming gold in the hollow of his throat. Harry looked and Malfoy breathed out, quickly, a breath that was almost a jeering laugh.
Harry wanted to speak Parseltongue again and see him shudder, but instead he expressed desire and fury plainly enough.
“Give it to me, Malfoy.”
“I wish I could,” Malfoy breathed. “I wouldn’t, not ever, not for anything. D’you think I’m stupid?”
Harry released his arm, fingers tingling from how hard he had been holding it. He glanced down and saw that there was a pink circle around Malfoy’s wrist now, to go with the burnt background of Voldemort’s sign. He looked at Malfoy, who stood staring back at him with short breath and cold fury, and then deliberately let his eyes fall back to Malfoy’s arm.
“Yeah, actually,” he said. “From what I can see, you’re completely stupid.”