About twenty minutes after the most embarrassing moment of Harry’s life, his only consolation was that the twins were not laughing now.
“Now, as you know, Bill and I usually tell you off together, but this is his wedding day. So I’ve decided to use a replacement.” Charlie took a deep breath, and then smiled pleasantly. “You two have met Bessie the dragon, right?”
“Charlie,” Fred said in tones of deep apprehension, “Charlie, dragons are not people—”
“It was just a joke,” George added earnestly.
“It wasn’t funny,” Harry exclaimed.
They all looked at him in surprise. Harry had been maintaining a stony silence, but you could only sustain that so long before you exploded. When Hermione turned a sympathetic and understanding gaze on him, he thought he might explode anyway.
Charlie recovered first. “You’re right, it wasn’t. Do you realise that Draco is upstairs and he says he’ll never speak to Harry again and never come downstairs again and never—get out from under the bed again… He’s overwrought,” he said sternly, quelling the smirks swimming their way to the surface of the twins’ faces.
“He’ll never speak to Harry again? Looks like we did you a favour, eh?”
Harry looked coldly at Fred. “No. You didn’t.”
“Just because Harry’s lost his sense of humour somewhere,” George began, sounding aggrieved.
“Shut up bothering him!” Ron said, leaning across Hermione to give Harry a supportive punch in the shoulder. “Neither of you got molested by Malfoy, you wouldn’t think it was so funny then. Did he actually kiss you?” he asked, lowering his voice to what he must fondly imagine was a discreet whisper.
Harry glared at him. “No.”
“Love Potions are a very serious matter,” Hermione told the twins. “If it weren’t for Love Potions, You-Know-Who would never have been born.”
“Well, it wasn’t like Harry was going to have Malfoy’s evil love child,” George said, mouth quirking.
Harry was going to punch him in the face.
“Anyway, Love Potions work in relation to people’s attractiveness. Interesting to know that Malfoy’s probably a little bit that way inclined—” Fred said.
“Since the incident occurred within a few minutes of taking the damned Potion, it proves nothing of the sort!” Charlie shouted. “And what d’you mean, interesting?”
Harry had never seen the twins quail before anyone but Mrs Weasley, but Charlie had clearly inherited her shouting voice.
“Nothing, Charlie,” George whispered meekly.
“It doesn’t matter what we do to Malfoy,” Fred announced, braving Charlie’s dragon-reinforced wrath. “He deserves it all, after what he did to Bill. And we’re sorry Harry didn’t think it was funny—”
“Didn’t think it was funny!” Harry yelled.
“I don’t understand,” Charlie said slowly. “What did he do to Bill?”
Everyone went quiet. Harry uncurled his fists and fought down this new desire to murder the twins. Even the twins looked abashed.
“Charlie,” Bill said from the doorway, “we probably need to talk.” He cast a stern gaze over Harry, Ron, Hermione and especially the twins. “Alone.”
Charlie glanced at Bill, then nodded and left the room.
Once their restraining presence was removed, the twins burst into a barrage of laughing self-defence. Ron and Hermione began to talk loudly back. Harry sat and glared until someone said something he could not let pass.
“Look, Harry may be over-reacting slightly—” Hermione started.
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say! The only physical contact you’ve had with him was that time you punched him.”
Hermione gave him an odd look. “I never punched Malfoy, Harry. I slapped him once when we were thirteen and I was in a temper. That’s different,” she explained, as if Harry was a bit dim. “You’re the one who has punched him.”
Harry felt himself go unaccountably red. “Well, he deserved it!”
“That’s what we are trying to—” Fred chimed in.
“Shut up!” Harry said fiercely. It occurred to him that while they were sitting around squabbling like children, Bill and Charlie were discussing Malfoy, and he got up. “I’m going to go wash out my mouth with—something,” he said with dignity.
“Good luck finding something,” murmured Fred. “Apparently Malfoy had to be stopped from eating the soap whole.”
Harry slammed the door.
He ran up to Ron’s room and dug the Invisibility Cloak from the bottom of his trunk, shook it out and then threw it on.
Then he stopped by Fred and George’s room, and was not sure why he stopped. A good part of his intestines seemed to be twisted into a knot of burning embarrassment, cringing in on itself at the mere thought of ever seeing Malfoy again.
He knocked on the door.
“I said go away, Charles!” Malfoy shouted.
Malfoy had known Charlie all of four hours, why should he assume it was him? Harry didn’t have time for this, and didn’t have any idea what he would have said if Malfoy told him to come in.
He went down the stairs and climbed through a window, creeping to the back door where Charlie and Bill stood, red heads bowed together, in conference.
“—I liked him,” he heard Charlie say in a dazed way, and felt a sudden thrill of vindication. Now Charlie knew Harry was right, he would know to leave Malfoy alone.
“No, listen,” Bill said rapidly. “Do like him. He’s not so bad. He didn’t—he’s a kid. He had no idea what death meant, he was in completely over his head and when it all started to dawn on him he got more and more scared and tried to push it away and—it was a mess. He’s a mess. His head is stuffed full of all that pureblood crap, he worships his murderous father and he’s scared to death of both sides. But I—I kind of like him. He’s funny in an odd sort of way. He loves his rotten parents so much. He’s really sorry about what happened to me—”
“It doesn’t change what happened to you!”
“It doesn’t matter what happened to me. I wasn’t killed. I’m alive, and I’m married to someone I love more than anything. I will kill that werewolf if I ever get the chance, but I won’t blame a boy. I don’t know what I would have done at sixteen if someone had threatened my parents, and I was raised to know what right and wrong is.”
Charlie did not seem to know what to say. It was a shame Harry couldn’t speak, because he could have said plenty. Malfoy was not stupid enough to think plotting murder was right.
As for everything else… so Malfoy hadn’t been in an easy situation. Who was? Dumbledore had told them all what to do years ago—when the time came to choose between what was right, and what was easy.
“I don’t want to leave him here alone,” Bill said softly. “The others hate him like poison. It’s frightening, the way school has changed. When we were in school everyone was still just happy You-Know-Who was gone, but once people stopped being simply glad they were safe they remembered whose parents were on whose side. I think the split got worse after all the dangers at Hogwarts, and after basilisks and escaped murderers I can’t blame anyone for getting scared, but the way Ron and Ginny talk…
“The Gryffindors and the Slytherins are at each others’ throats. It’s not like Quidditch rivalry. It’s like… another war’s coming, and everyone’s already chosen a side. It doesn’t matter that they’re all children and none of them had any chance to choose, they just know that they hate each other and anyone who’s not like them is an enemy. I bet Malfoy was a little horror to them, but he’s all alone and scared. I don’t like bullying. I don’t want anyone made miserable in this house.”
Charlie seemed thoughtful. “That explains the way young Harry looks at him. Kind of like Norbert looked at Sammy right before he rolled him over and ripped out his—”
“Charlie, dragons are not people.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that he wants Draco to show his underbelly,” Charlie mumbled.
“I’m worried about Harry, too. He hasn’t got any parents, and all this Chosen One stuff—I like him, but he has never had anything solid to fall back on. He just feels his way to what’s right, and so he thinks that his feelings are always right. He’s angry and grieving and—He won’t mean to be cruel, but he might be.”
Harry clenched his hands under the sweep of the Invisibility Cloak. Where did Bill get off, talking about him that way? Bill hardly knew him. He would never be cruel to anyone, not even Malfoy. No matter how much Malfoy might deserve it.
“Look after Draco,” Bill said. “Look after him for as long as you can stay.”
“Bill, I promise.” Charlie grinned crookedly. “As for how long I can stay… I’ve got something to tell you all. We’d better find Mum.”
“Fired?” Mrs Weasley said blankly. “Fired? Oh, Charlie! How?”
Charlie had asked for a family meeting, and Harry and Hermione had been included. So had Fleur, of course.
Fleur looked as if she never wanted to be included in another one.
“The usual way,” said Charlie, still grinning that determined, crooked grin. “I told them I couldn’t do the job they wanted me to do, and so—they fired me. They want to use the dragons in the war, Mum. They wanted me to put them under Imperius.”
“Oh, Charlie,” said Mrs Weasley. “Isn’t that illegal? Couldn’t you—”
“Rufus Scrimgeour passed a law saying it was legal to use it on animals, for the good of the wizarding world. Dragons can be used as flying steeds and weapons, he says they’ll be invaluable for the war effort, and I do see his point—”
“If you see his point, then couldn’t you try and keep—”
“Mum. No. I love them, you see,” Charlie said. “I love them. They trust me. There has to be life after the war, that’s why we’re fighting it, and I want something to go back to once the war is over. I could never go back if I betrayed them now.”
“You were doing so well—”
Charlie reached out and took his mother’s fingers gently between his large, scarred hands. “I’m still doing fine.”
Fred and George cleared their throats on a single note of nervousness. “Charlie,” George said. “If you, ah, if you need any money—”
“I’ve got savings. What d’you think I was spending my money on in the wilds of Roumania?”
“The usual,” Fred said, straight-faced. “Cards, drink, loose women—”
Mrs Weasley looked horrified. Charlie threw back his head and laughed.
“It’s all true, I’ve seen it,” George whispered conspiratorially to Ginny and Harry. “He plays a mean game of Exploding Snap. Card sharp that he is.”
“And they make Firewhiskey in Roumania,” Fred continued. “You know Charlie can’t resist a bottle with a dragon on it.”
Charlie stretched lazily in his chair, easier now he had told his big secret. “I absolutely dare you to find any loose women in my past.”
“I’m sure a girl like Bessie doesn’t come cheap,” George grinned.
“She says she loves me,” Charlie said. “What can I say? And oh, yeah… thanks for reminding me. Boys, we have an appointment with Bessie—and we mustn’t keep the lady waiting.”
He hauled Fred and George away by their robe collars. Bill went upstairs with the avowed purpose of getting Draco downstairs for the last of the party.
“Zat is done, then,” Fleur announced with satisfaction. “Come, Ron. Let me ‘ave a dance with my new leetle brother.”
She put her hand on Ron’s shoulder and stared up at him with melting blue eyes. Ron gulped in a way that did not seem particularly fraternal.
“Come and dance with me, Hermione,” Harry said quickly.
The dance floor was full, but it made way for the bride no matter what redhead she had in tow. Harry was glad that Hermione let him linger on the outskirts of the crowd and pretend to dance by waggling his legs vaguely around.
She patted his arm sympathetically, which turned out not to be about the dancing. “Don’t let Malfoy get under your skin.”
“Actually, the problem was not getting Malfoy all over my skin.”
Hermione snorted. “That was just silly. You know what I mean, Harry. Don’t let him distract you from what has to be done.”
The song changed to a slow Celestina Warbeck song. Hermione looped her arms casually around Harry’s neck, and Harry wondered whether Ron was asphyxiating somewhere in the crowd.
He looked into her concerned eyes. “I’m not distracted. He’s part of it all. It’s not just that he has the locket around his neck—though you don’t know how angry I am that he’s keeping what Dumbledore died for from me… It’s that he and Snape have some sort of plan, and I have no idea what it is. Last time Malfoy had a plan and Snape was involved—”
Hermione shivered. “So you—”
Across the tent, Harry saw that Bill had managed to get Malfoy down. Malfoy had a spoon and was doing a Celestina Warbeck impression in a very obvious attempt to woo back Charlie.
It was working. Charlie’s mouth was curving as Harry watched, any attempt at wariness slipping away. Charlie Weasley was a very stupid man who should go back to Roumania.
Malfoy saw Harry and abruptly stopped doing his impression. Blood leaped in his cheeks so fast that it reminded Harry of wounds opening, red and painful. He looked away and Charlie leaned towards him, whispered something.
Harry whispered in Hermione’s ear. “I want to know what’s going on inside Malfoy’s head.”
Hermione sighed . “Harry, last year we thought you were crazy when it came to Malfoy. Didn’t you wonder why? We’ve always been behind you before, and that year things were more serious than ever, but we couldn’t take it seriously because…” She took a deep breath. “You were acting as if it was personal. You were always talking about him, we couldn’t get you to stop, and we could not help thinking that—you were being unreasonable. I even thought that you might be acting like that because—well, because Malfoy was bothering you less, and you… missed the attention.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Harry said flatly. “Let go of me.”
Hermione held on. “Harry, I’m trying to explain something! I didn’t believe you before, and you were right. I’ll trust you now. You say Malfoy’s up to something again, I’ll believe you.”
“He’s up to something.”
Harry looked down at her, trying to see if she felt any regret about saying those ridiculous things to him, and he saw her eyes shining as they always did when she had a plan.
“Then we know what we have to do, don’t we? We have to find a way to make Veritaserum.”
Later when Bill and Fleur told them all goodbye, Bill looped an arm around Malfoy’s thin shoulders and pulled him in for a casual hug. Malfoy stood very still for a moment, not even attempting to hug him back, and then he put one hand lightly on Bill’s shoulder in return.
When Bill stepped away Malfoy let him go at once, but he kept his hand curled as if he was trying to hold the memory. There was something odd about the shape of his mouth.
“You take care of yourself, Draco,” said Bill.
Malfoy caught Harry looking and his mouth fell into its usual sneer shape. The effect was spoiled when he coloured and looked away, and his curled hand went up to touch the locket Dumbledore died for.
Fine. Malfoy could ignore him for whatever stupid reason he thought he had. Harry didn’t give a damn, he’d have him talking soon enough.
“No need to worry, Bill,” Harry said in a clear voice. “I can take care of Malfoy.”
The next day Harry and Hermione went to Hogwarts.
The Restricted Section would have the instructions for making Veritaserum somewhere, and there might be a spell to unlock the chain from Malfoy’s neck. They needed books.
Faced with the prospect of intensive research, Ron threw himself body and soul into cleaning up after the wedding. It did look like Mrs Weasley was going to need the help, what with Ginny folding up her handmade decorations with the air of a mother smoothing her baby’s blankets, and Charlie being slowed down by Malfoy.
“I don’t believe you were never taught any cleaning charms,” Harry heard Charlie say as they came down the stairs, his deep voice thrumming with amusement.
“I know them for clothes and things,” Malfoy said defensively. “But I’ve never cleaned house. That’s menial labour.”
“That’s typical of you, Malfoy,” Harry snapped.
Malfoy continued to pull decorations from the ceiling and hand them to Charlie, bright ribbons unravelling in his hands. Only the pink flush creeping up from his neck indicated that he had heard Harry at all.
Harry had not slept well, horrific visions of the near miss with Malfoy appearing every time he shut his eyes, and he was in no mood to be treated like part of the scenery.
“We’re leaving now, but we’ll be back in a couple of days,” he pursued, standing at the foot of Malfoy’s stepladder and speaking loudly. Malfoy was bound to say that it was a pity he couldn’t stay away longer.
The tips of Malfoy’s ears were dyed pink now, but he gave the appearance of being utterly absorbed in clearing decorations.
“We should go, Harry,” Hermione said.
Harry knocked against Malfoy’s stepladder as he went.
Hogwarts felt cold without students in it. Without students it was not a school, and there was no reason to be here, and nothing to make it home, nothing to make it anything but a cold castle with secret rooms and ghosts wandering the corridors.
Professor McGonagall’s hair was greyer than it had ever been before. She welcomed Harry and Hermione almost absently, obviously busy, but she became more focused when she heard Hermione’s carefully worded explanations.
“Draco Malfoy with some kind of dark artefact locked around his neck? I can’t think of any spell… It’s quite common to guard an object, but guarding it by bonding it to a living person would be very dangerous. Which is interesting in itself, of course.”
“How d’you mean?” Harry asked sharply.
McGonagall frowned. “There are hundreds of easier ways to keep this thing safe which would not endanger Mr. Malfoy. Whoever bound it to him did it with a very specific purpose in mind, and risked his life for the sake of that purpose. You-Know-Who would not hesitate to cut off a boy’s head and take something he wanted.”
“Would that work?”
God, he had left Malfoy!
“It probably would,” McGonagall answered. “So Mr Malfoy and—whoever is helping him—they meant him to come to our side all along. You should take that into consideration.”
“They meant him to come to me,” Harry said.
Hermione’s voice was grim. “And we are going to find out why.”
Madam Pince was not in the library and Hermione gave a speculative look to the librarian’s desk. When Harry suggested that she sit down and spin around in the chair, she looked at him as if he had suggested she engage in lewd activity with a duck.
“I couldn’t! It’s odd enough that we are allowed in the Restricted Section.”
“I don’t think we are allowed,” Harry said. “It’s just that we are old enough not to care if we’re allowed to do something.”
Hermione walked into the Restricted Section with her chin up and drew a chained book from a shelf. “I don’t recall that you ever cared if something was allowed,” she said, smiling.
“I don’t recall that making Polyjuice Potion when we were twelve was my idea.”
Hermione opened a book and it gave an unearthly shriek that made Harry jump back and clutch at the nearest shelf. Hermione smiled a serene smile and whispered, “Hush” as if it was her scary book baby. Astonishingly, it quieted under her stroking hand.
“Oh God, Hermione! I don’t believe it!”
“I know,” Hermione said in a hushed voice. “I’ve never seen such detailed runes.”
“That’s not what I meant. I think it might be bound with human skin.”
“Hmm,” Hermione responded, in a happy world where she had detailed runes for friends. Harry looked at her face and reflected that Ron would’ve given anything for her to look like that at him.
Harry didn’t see why she shouldn’t. Ron was bound with human skin, too.
He selected a less alarming looking book and sat himself down with it, resisting the impulse to go home to Malfoy and bite the stupid thing off his stupid neck. He started turning pages.
Hours later his head was aching and Hermione’s gentle humming was grating on his last nerve. He muttered something about getting some air and left the library. He wondered vaguely where the staff were.
There were noises rising from below. He walked down towards the Great Hall and found McGonagall on the staircase.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—” he said. “Can I take something from the Headmaster’s—from your office?”
McGonagall’s eyes softened. “A keepsake?”
Harry hesitated. “Not… exactly.”
They went upstairs. McGonagall had not changed the office much, not like she would’ve done if Dumbledore had become Minister of Magic and she’d moved in. Everything was kept just as it had been, as if he would return any moment, when he would never return again.
Harry went over to the Sorting Hat and thrust his hand inside it, searching, and felt his hand brush against metal. He closed his hand around the hilt of Godric Gryffindor’s sword and drew it out.
McGonagall’s voice was like a whip. “What are you planning to do with that?”
The sword seemed different, now. Then he had grasped it with both hands and flailed: now he held the hilt in one hand, testing the weight of the blade against the strength of his arm. It had a nice balance.
It had potential.
“I’m not sure yet,” Harry said. “It might come in handy.”
McGonagall drew a deep breath. “You can have it.”
She bowed her head and he looked at the picture of Dumbledore, still gently sleeping in his frame and unavailable to give answers or protection. He nodded and made to leave the office.
“Harry,” McGonagall said, and her use of his name was rare enough to turn his head. “I’m trusting you with it.”
Her eyes were steady, and he found he was able to meet them. She stood there calmly, not seeming crushed by the absence of the headmaster or the phoenix, and for a moment it was all right if Dumbledore’s sleep could not be broken.
“You can trust me.”
He walked with her, back down the staircases until they were in the Great Hall and it occurred to him that all the noise in the castle was coming from the dungeons.
McGonagall answered his questioning glance. “The dungeons are the most easily defended part of the castle, and we do not have enough staff to protect four separate groups of children. Besides, there really aren’t going to be enough students to keep to the house system.”
Harry held the sword of Gryffindor behind his neck, leaning against the steel, and heard himself laugh oddly. It was McGonagall’s turn to give him a questioning look.
“The bloody Hat was right,” Harry said. “Houses, unite.”
He went back to Hermione in the library. The pages of a book were nipping at Hermione’s fingers and she was laughing softly, indulgently, as if the book was a playful kitten. Harry continued to look bleakly at page after page.
They slept in the library. Neither of them wanted to go up to the Gryffindor, and Harry was damned if he was going to sleep in the new all-purpose-but-still-Slytherin-tainted dorms.
“We could go see if there are any beds left in Ravenclaw,” Harry whispered as they made pillows out of robes. “Ever thought about what would have happened if you’d been Sorted into Ravenclaw after all? You would probably still be in school.”
“Probably,” Hermione conceded. “But you and Ron would either have died because you didn’t research, or failed out of school because you didn’t study.”
Her tone indicated that these fates were about equally dire. Harry smiled and shut his eyes.
He did not smile when he opened his eyes and was faced with another row of books. He and Hermione researched all that day, and the next. Ron appeared the morning after that.
“The house is very, very clean,” he said, touching Hermione’s back in an embarrassed half-hug. “I thought you two could use a spare pair of eyes. And if I stayed, I’d have ended up giving in and playing chess with Malfoy.”
“He asked you?” Harry said.
“Twice,” Ron answered. “My legend must’ve reached the dungeons. About time, too.”
“Everything’s in the dungeons now.”
Ron frowned and Hermione filled him in. He was reliably horrified. “Turning people into Slytherins against their will! I call it outrageous. What if there were more Weasleys to come, we were born for Gryffindor. Sorting Hat’s never hesitated on a Weasley for four generations.”
“I can’t even claim one generation,” Hermione mused. “Harry reminded me I was almost a Ravenclaw a few days ago. What about you, Harry? Did the Hat hesitate?”
Harry hesitated. “Nah.”
“‘Course not,” Ron said. “And you’re OK too, Hermione. Ravenclaw’s all right, everyone knows that.”
Harry flipped through another book on necklaces. A stern footnote unrolled before his eyes, telling him that he was a boy and shouldn’t be so interested in jewellery.
“Malfoy wouldn’t have minded being a Ravenclaw,” he said absently. “He told me once.”
Hermione raised her eyebrows. “Fascinating as that is, I think I have a recipe for Veritaserum here… Foxglove gathered under the full moon, oh, what…”
She made the list for Veritaserum ingredients. That was their only success that day, though Ron manfully admired books covered with human skin and even one book that had a rolling, yellowed eye set in the front.
Sharing the girl’s interests. Ron might be getting cunning in his old age.
“Your sword is cool,” he added to Harry with genuine enthusiasm.
Hermione frowned. “I’ve been meaning to ask why you have a sword in the library. Shouldn’t you drop it back to the Burrow at some point? It’s not exactly inconspicuous.”
Harry seized the chance with both hands and was out the door before she could change her mind. Research was deeply important to him, but if he hurried he could be in the Burrow before dinner. God knew what Malfoy had been getting up to in their absence.
He stopped on the threshold of the Burrow’s back door, arrested by the sight of Malfoy leaning against Mrs Weasley’s oven and adding pepper to a pan full of sauce. He was humming a Wyrd Sisters song to himself.
Harry leaned against the doorframe and frowned. It was very odd, seeing Malfoy acting like a normal person. He more or less existed in Harry’s mind as a constant irritating presence, sneering and jeering and plotting dark things. It seemed strange that he could just stand about, running a hand through his hair and frowning at dinner.
Even the terminally annoying had to eat, Harry supposed. He put down his bag of clothes and Malfoy spun at the sound. His eyes went wide.
“What are you doing with that?” he demanded.
Harry stared. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”
“Pardon me if the sight of a maniac holding a dirty great sword has me a little off balance!”
Harry followed Malfoy’s fixed gaze to look at the sword clasped in Harry’s hand. “Ah.”
“Yes, ah. You enormous freak,” Malfoy added, eyes narrowing. “Not happy cutting people up with your wand anymore? Want to get up close and personal with the victims?”
Harry lost his hold on patience and got a proper grip on his sword instead. “Maybe.”
He took a few steps, swinging the sword with elaborate carelessness. Malfoy backed up against the oven, staring at the sword. Funny how he couldn’t ignore Harry now. He turned the blade, watched it glitter under the light, and then looked at Malfoy’s eyes. They were glittering too.
“What is going on here?”
Harry looked around at Charlie for the split second it took for Malfoy to lunge at him and take hold of the blade. Harry swung his attention back to its original focus, who was gripping an actual sword in his hands and staring at him with glittering eyes suddenly up close.
“What’s the matter with you, Malfoy?” he snarled. “I was just messing around.”
“Can you two stop it?” Charlie asked. “Not fighting. I begin to see that may be sort of your default condition, but in the Burrow fighting in the kitchen is not permitted. There are sharp things here, children. I see Harry has brought an extra sharp thing of his very own.”
Charlie’s amused tone defused the situation, more or less. The moment of tension slipped by, and Malfoy let go of the sword. Harry propped it against the wall.
“See how happy we can be, when we all learn to get along,” Charlie said, still sounding amused. “What’s all this?” he asked, his crooked smile becoming warmer and definitely directed at Malfoy.
Malfoy’s mouth turned up at the corner. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “All this and he can cook, too.”
“Actually, I’m still wondering why there’s a great big sword in the kitchen, but the food looks excellent.” Charlie’s glance included Harry in the general atmosphere of goodwill, but his eyes soon turned back to Malfoy. “Mum and Dad have gone out for some soppy romantic dinner because the wedding made them think of their youth, and Ginny and I were desperate before Draco revealed his secret skills.”
Malfoy always got smug and shiny when people praised him. “Mother taught me when I was small. Mostly to try and keep me out of trouble.”
Harry found himself at a loss to deal with this information. Fortunately at that point Ginny entered the room.
“Malfoy, is it time to eat yet?” she asked. “I’m starvi—Harry!” She ran up to him and kissed him on the cheek: he shut his eyes for a moment and smelled flowers. “I’m glad you’re back. Malfoy is making us dinner, can you believe it?”
“Not… really,” Harry said slowly and honestly.
“Is there enough for Harry?” Ginny asked anxiously. “Because if not, and you know I’m fond of you and everything, Harry, but you can make yourself a sandwich. I’m used to someone being around who can cook. I get fractious if I miss meals. I can’t believe Charlie’s been eating jerky by a campfire for seven years.”
“Does a body good,” Charlie claimed. “Anyway, little sister, why can’t you cook?”
Malfoy laughed, and then moved to grab the pasta and sieve it. Charlie went for some plates and Ginny swooped towards the sauce.
“Because I have six greedy brothers and learning to cook would have doomed me to a lifetime of female bondage, that’s why,” she said. “Of course, now Malfoy is the only one who can feed me and I have to be polite to him, so there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Is there enough for Harry or what?”
“Yes,” Malfoy said.
The kitchen was the same as it had always been, a rough round table, cheerful yellow lights, moving red-haired pictures on every available surface. Everyone sat around the table and Charlie dished out pasta and Ginny made Harry set the table to make it clear she wasn’t in female bondage. People made jokes and ate a lot.
The strangeness of it made Harry want to scream. Hadn’t anybody noticed that this was Malfoy?
“This is really good,” said Charlie. “Any chance you’d be willing to come to Roumania and cook for a camp full of dragon tamers?”
“I want my own tent,” Malfoy answered. “You snore.”
“How do you know that?”
“Charles and I are sharing a room, Potter,” Malfoy informed him. “Where did you think Mrs Weasley was keeping her next to eldest son, in the shed?”
“Dad would have a fit, I’d mess up his ekeltricity,” Charlie said. “So, Harry, d’you always come back with weaponry or is this a special occasion?”
“Er, it’s the Sword of Gryffindor.” This made Malfoy smirk for some reason, and Harry spoke in defence of his house. “It’s cooler than a locket.”
“Godric Gryffindor needed a great big sword for his symbol,” Malfoy said reflectively. “D’you think he was compensating for something? Out of historical interest.”
“I don’t think anything!”
Malfoy helped himself to more pasta. “I always suspected that, Potter, but I never imagined you’d come right out and admit it.”
I would just feel better, Harry thought, if you were sitting at another table at the opposite end of the room, and possibly doing a nasty imitation of me. Malfoy remained in place, and remained impersonal.
“I remember that sword,” Ginny put in. “Harry killed a basilisk with it. He was rescuing me at the time, he was the manliest twelve year old ever.”
She gave him a smile that was equal parts cheeky and affectionate. It would’ve been nice if Malfoy hadn’t also been in his line of vision, and rolling his eyes.
“Yes,” said Malfoy, “but what has he done for you lately?” Ginny actually laughed. When they were finished dinner, Charlie began collecting the plates.
“I do not clean,” Malfoy reminded him.
“Nor do I,” Ginny said. “Must fight against female bondage. Exploding Snap?”
Charlie accepted his fate philosophically. “I’ll wash if you dry, Harry,” he offered, going towards the sink as Ginny set off in search of cards.
Harry stayed at the table, and caught Malfoy’s wrist when he tried to rise. In the yellow light, Malfoy’s hair looked almost like an ordinary colour. He deliberately caught Malfoy’s left arm to see him flinch, and dispel this façade of normality.
“Why are you behaving like this?”
“Why are you grabbing me?” Malfoy demanded icily. “I was just talking. All right? I do not find your and the Weasley twins’ practical jokes very funny, but it’s only humiliation, I’m used to it at this point. I’m not a child anymore, I’m done with embarrassing myself. I’m done with you.”
“When were you doing—what are you talking about?”
Malfoy subjected him to a long, thoughtful gaze. Then he kicked him hard in the shin, pulled his wrist free and walked out of the room without looking back.
He caught Ginny coming down the stairs in her nightdress, bounding down easily towards the game of Exploding Snap with Malfoy.
“Whatever happened to not letting Malfoy see you in your nightie?” Harry asked. “Come to that, what happened to hating Malfoy?”
He thought he was crabbier than he should’ve been because she looked nice in her nightie. Her curly hair was lifting fuzzily where she had brushed it, and the scoop neck and the short frilled sleeves showed a lot of pale skin and golden freckles. Bloody Malfoy was going to be looking at her, and the sight of her made Harry feel tired and grouchy.
Ginny’s lip curled. “Nothing happened. He’s still a worm, but—Charlie’s my favourite brother, you know.”
“I thought Ron was your favourite brother!”
Ginny stared at him. “No,” she said definitely. “It’s always been Charlie. Everybody knows that who knows anything about me. Charlie always had time to play with me when I was little, I’ve missed him, and if he wants me to be polite to Malfoy, I can do it. Besides…” Ginny shrugged, her expression suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s different, not liking someone you hardly know, and not liking someone who’s cooked for you and made jokes and things. It seems a bit more—real, now, if I hex Malfoy.” She grinned. “Not that I won’t, if he pesters me too much.”
“Weasley!” shouted Malfoy from the sitting room. “At your earliest convenience. Exploding Snap waits for no man.”
Ginny shrugged expressively and—this was the part Harry really noticed—went in at once. Harry followed her, feeling more strongly than ever that Malfoy needed watching. If he wasn’t stealing Horcruxes, he was making an attempt on other people’s women.
Other people’s women were kneeling by the fire, facing Malfoy. The firelight grabbed Ginny’s hair in bright handfuls and made her beautiful.
The fire made Malfoy look like someone sitting by the fire, but something caught and held Harry’s attention. He was in pyjamas. It was outrageous that he dared to act like belonged here. In front of Ginny, too!
Charlie was at his ease on the sofa, but Harry noted that Charlie hadn’t decided to wander about the house in his nightclothes. Charlie was smiling at the conversation, though, so Harry decided to glare at him as well.
“I know you’re cheating, Malfoy. Once I figure out how anyone can cheat at Exploding Snap, and why anyone would be pathetic enough to cheat at Exploding Snap, you will pay.”
“You Gryffindors are such terrible losers,” Malfoy remarked, persisting in deliberate and malicious pyjama wearing.
“It’s just that we get so much less practise than Slytherins,” Harry put in.
Malfoy glared, but even that reassuring familiar thing was ruined when Charlie started to laugh and Malfoy’s eyes flicked to him as if Harry could not possibly hold his interest.
“What is it, Charles?”
“You two are funny,” Charlie informed him. Malfoy’s gaze turned baleful.
“Well, you’re half right,” he muttered, and then slammed his hand down. “Snap!”
Cards blew up in Ginny’s surprised face. Malfoy grinned like a pyjama-wearing lunatic.
“Winnah and still champion! The kingdom of Snap and all its exploding provinces are mine, all mine!”
“I know you’re cheating, and when I find out how I am going to beat you down.”
“Baby, maybe I’m just this good.”
Malfoy preened before Ginny’s narrowed eyes, shoulders and elbows sharp against the thin white material of the pyjamas. He was practically wriggling with glee, and for a finale he stretched back on the hearthrug and shut his eyes as she began to shuffle the cards with unnecessary vigour. He put one hand behind his head and the pyjama top lifted: and there was another unacceptable thing, worse than seeing his face at the same table as Harry’s. Harry had never been forced to contemplate Malfoy’s stomach before.
“Maybe you should give up now,” Malfoy went on, voice sounding as if he wore a sly smile. “There are plenty of women in the world who would be my slaves forever without losing a bet.”
“I am not going to lose, and there are not!”
Malfoy stretched. Harry looked back at his face. “There are at least two or three,” he argued. “I may not be flashy and redheaded, but I like to think I have a certain aristocratic allure.”
“I like to think of you as deformed in the face,” Harry said. Ginny threw back her head and laughed.
Outside, the garden moved. Harry’s hand flew to his wand.
“Put that away, Potter!” Malfoy sat up sharply.
Charlie reached up and put his hand on Harry’s arm. “Calm down,” he said, “It’s only Bessie.”
It took Harry a minute to calm down, something inside him ready to hurl itself at a throat. He’d thought for a minute that—he shook his head, and left his position leaning against the sofa to get closer to the hearthrug where Malfoy and Ginny sat, safe and laughing in the warm light.
“Only Bessie,” Ginny scoffed. “When is Bessie going home?”
“She’ll pine for me,” Charlie explained pathetically.
Malfoy saw Harry coming and got to his feet without comment, going to sit on the other side of the room with Charlie. He slid onto the arm of the sofa, close enough that he could have rested his chin on Charlie’s head.
“We love Bessie,” he put in.
Charlie cast a warmly grateful glance upwards, which landed at about Malfoy’s throat area. It lingered there and Harry tensed, following Charlie’s gaze with his own, sliding down smooth white skin to snag on the sudden glitter of a gold chain. If Charlie asked—were there no pyjamas that buttoned to the neck?
Charlie did not ask, and Ginny broke the apprehensive silence with a snort. Harry started.
“Oh, we love Bessie now, do we?” she asked. “I wonder where all this love was when we had to muck out the garden. Bessie almost drowned our chickens!”
“I’ve told and told you people,” Malfoy said, sounding vexed. “I will not clean. Come on, Weasley, shall we have another round? Then we can all sit back and watch you cry.”
If Harry hadn’t still felt disturbed, he would not have said it.
“I’ve never seen her cry.”
He regretted it for an instant, and then the sharp feeling eased when Malfoy fixed him with a familiar look, as if the only thing he wanted in all the world was to murder Harry on the spot.
“Really? I’ve seen her cry,” he drawled, and Harry remembered all that business with the Valentines. “I made her cry.”
“Well,” Ginny’s voice broke in on the stare, “I’d like to see you do it again!”
Harry looked at her flushed face, aggressive in her own defence as she always was, and was sorry at once. He looked back at Malfoy, who was looking at Ginny and whose face was pale. He looked briefly humiliated, and then savage, and Harry realised belatedly that he must assume Harry had told Ginny all about the crying in the bathroom.
I didn’t, he wanted to say. I never mentioned it to a soul.
Malfoy moved towards Ginny and the movement reminded Harry of… that incident in the kitchen, Malfoy moving with intent. Like a predator.
He still looked savage. “All right,” he whispered. “I’ll do it again.”
He sat on the hearthrug again, leaning towards Ginny. She leaned forward and faced him down, unafraid, and it struck Harry again that they looked like—something together. There was blood rising in Ginny’s cheeks and fire in her curling hair, and she made Malfoy look like a pale, polished thing by contrast.
Malfoy spoke conversationally, only their proximity making it seem intimate. “It must be hard, playing a part all the time.”
“Malfoy, stop talking complete rubbish,” Ginny responded instantly. “You don’t know anything about me—but if you must know, it was just that I was a little shy with Harry for—”
“Which is why you never tried out for Quidditch?”
Ginny frowned. “What’s Quidditch got to—”
“So, third year. Wood’s going mental, Potter’s falling off his broom because of Dementors, the whole team looks ready to kidnap stray Hufflepuffs who have quick hands, and you’re in second year. Which is old enough to try out for and become a replacement Seeker for the Quidditch team. I know when I was in second year you couldn’t have kept me away from try-outs with a knife. But despite the fact you know they want a substitute, and you know you’re decent at Quidditch, you don’t try out. Because you’re just not that interested.”
“I like—”
“I’m sure you like it now,” Malfoy drawled. “Anyone would like being the belle of the team, the life and soul of the party, with all your little impressions—which are odd, because you don’t do those at home when you’re really comfortable. I do them—I don’t even think about them, I always have—but they don’t quite come naturally to you. Don’t get me wrong,” Malfoy said, leaning in still closer, “I believe you. You were shy because you liked Potter, and because you were mother’s only little girl and school came as a bit of a culture shock. And you always knew you could do better, you could really make an impression on him, and then along came an older boy who was interested in you. Maybe someone advised you to act a bit more naturally around Potter.”
The quiver of Ginny’s lips, acknowledging a hit, curled Malfoy’s mouth into a smirk. Harry was distracted by the realisation that apparently Malfoy had known about Michael Corner before he had.
He kept talking, an almost friendly voice coming out of that smirking mouth. “So you planned to, but, well—it’s easy to improve on nature, isn’t it? You were a bit carried away because you’d had your growth spurt and the boys were looking, and the attention went to your head and you overdid it. Besides, you knew Potter well enough by then. You knew he hardly notices people until he does, and when he does he goes to town. All you had to do was try a little more, be a little brighter, and you’d have his attention. You told a joke and people laughed not only at the joke but because you were good-looking, so you told a lot more jokes. You played Quidditch because you might as well, and acting up there got you more attention. All very understandable, of course—and none of it fooled me for a minute.”
There was a small scathing edge to his sympathetic tones now.
“Not really fair to go out with other boys for as long as you did when you still wanted someone else, but it was so easy to throw them away when you were done. Because no matter what you told yourself, you didn’t care like other girls cared about the boys they were seeing. It was all part of new, improved Ginny Weasley, who could drop them and pick another up anytime. Ginny Weasley, larger than life, throwing around her precious Bat Bogey Hexes—”
“You deserved it!” Ginny exclaimed, her voice uneven but fierce.
“Did Smith deserve it? He was just asking you a question. Come to that, I heard that you drove your broom into his stand because he was talking. Not that I haven’t seen Gryffindors react to words with violence before, but was that always your style, Weasley? Wasn’t all that a bit larger than life?”
Ginny leaped to her feet and he followed her, more slowly, as if it was natural that they should stand up at this point. “Shut up!”
He leaned into her space, eyes glittering, as if he was about to pull her in for a particularly nasty kiss. “So you weren’t shy and silent, Mother’s smothered little girl, anymore. You did get Potter’s attention, and once you noticed that you dropped Thomas for an even lamer reason than the one you dropped Corner for. You got the boy, and you got the attention. Everyone believed the act. But are you sure—sure—that you didn’t try too hard? What if he knows nothing about you? The real you. Are you afraid that he wouldn’t even want to know?”
“Here’s something you should know, Malfoy,” Ginny said, her voice trembling, her hands balled into fists. “You’re full of shit!”
She hit him, a good hard right, and then spun on her heel and dashed out into the hall. Harry saw her eyes shining with tears as she went, and then heard nothing but the angry crash of her feet up the stairs.
Malfoy’s nose was bleeding. “A Slytherin word and a Gryffindor blow,” he said, a bit indistinctly. “That’s usually how it goes, all right.”
He sneered in Harry’s direction and Harry ran at him, slamming his back into the mantelpiece. He was close enough so the blood didn’t even look like blood, just a bright splash of colour on Malfoy’s triumphant face.
A hand closed on Harry’s shoulder. “Back off,” Charlie said evenly. He added to Malfoy in mild tones: “Lucky she hit you, or I’d have had to. That might’ve spoiled your aristocratic allure. Tip your head back.”
Charlie pulled Harry backwards with little apparent effort. He continued to look at Malfoy with an unacceptable lack of anger. Malfoy obediently tipped his head back.
“It is lucky she hit me,” he said, still rather muffled. “I was expecting my nose to explode full of sharp bat shapes.”
“Is it true she did that to a kid asking her a question?” Charlie asked, then shook his head. “She’s always had a wicked temper on her. I’ll have to have a word. She can hit you if she likes, since you seem bent on deserving it, but she can’t go around inflicting bodily harm on everyone. She’ll attract the wrong sort of boys, and then muggins here will have to show them how to treat a lady by feeding them to dragons.”
He fished around in his dragonhide trousers and produced a handkerchief.
“Mop up the blood with that, I’ll fix it in a few minutes. For now, think about what you’ve done.”
“He’s not going to get the chance to think, because I’m going to kill him!”
“Look, Potter, I broke your nose for you once. I’d be thrilled to do it again.”
Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. “You lot are making me feel my age,” he remarked in piteous tones. “Look. Harry, you said something that made Draco furious. I don’t know why and I don’t want to know, because the amount of stupidity I’m seeing now is hurting my brain and I have a feeling there may be years of back stupidity behind this. Draco, just because you’re furious doesn’t mean you can run your fool mouth off at my baby sister. If you do that again, I shall put you into Bessie’s trough and tell everyone you ran away to America. Ginny cannot hit every idiot she meets or she’ll develop arthritis at seventeen. All of you have behaved in a retarded manner, and all I wanted to do was relax after a nice dinner.”
It was a mystery how Malfoy managed to look playful with his head tipped back and his nose streaming blood.
“Thank you for the lecture, Grandpa,” he said. “How old are you, anyway?”
Charlie regarded him ruefully. “You are the worst of the lot. You are a devil child who should have been drowned at birth,” he said, and while Harry agreed with every word the tone was all wrong. “And I’m twenty-four. Come here.”
Malfoy went. Charlie got out his wand and murmured, “Episky.” Harry did not recall that Tonks had felt it necessary to clasp the back of his neck like that when she’d healed him.
“Potter, why are you so stupid?” Malfoy asked in a clearer voice, rubbing away the last of the blood. “Your girl is upset.”
“And whose fault is that?” Harry snarled.
Malfoy, not before time, took a step away from Charlie. “What does it matter? If you’re so concerned, why are you still here with us and not up there with her?”
Harry hesitated. He was not planning on obeying Malfoy’s damn orders, let alone that he had no idea how to comfort a crying girl, but he was concerned about Ginny. He wanted to prove it by giving her Malfoy’s head on a plate, that was all.
“Nobody stupid is allowed to speak to anyone else stupid tonight,” Charlie said while he was still hesitating. “Draco, go to our room and fix that clock. Harry, go and—”
“Play with your Sword of Gryffindor,” Malfoy murmured.
“What did I say to you, Draco?” Malfoy smirked unrepentantly and Charlie continued. “Just—go, Harry. I’m going up to comfort my sister.”
Charlie made sure Malfoy went up before him. Harry went into the kitchen, feeling the desire to hurt Malfoy still prickling under his skin, as if his blood had literally been heated, too hot for his body to contain and burning for release. He picked up the sword and thought of killing the basilisk, thought of Horcruxes, and then realised what he had taken the sword for.
Once he had worked out how to get to the damn snake, he would use it to kill Nagini.