He slept badly that night even though he had a bed, his body still seized with that prickly, heated urge to action. He came downstairs late and found Ginny in the kitchen, watching a panful of bacon and eggs as if it might bite her.
She smiled up at him, her usual unclouded, uncomplicated grin. “Hi, Harry. Malfoy said all I had to do to keep this hot for you was shift it about a bit by—sort of joggling it.”
All of it was a bit brown and curly at the edges, but Harry was not one to quibble over a fry. He rescued the pan from Ginny’s inexpert hands and began helping himself.
“Mum and Dad didn’t come home,” Ginny said. “They Owled Charlie. I think they’re in some kind of love shack.” She looked equal parts conspiratorial and disturbed.
“Right,” Harry answered. “Um—Ginny, about last night—”
“It’s OK. Malfoy made this huge fry for me and Charlie as an apology, I think—saying it with bacon isn’t a bad idea.” Ginny looked reflective. “Also I accidentally poured hot grease on his pyjama bottoms. What a shame. The point is, I’m all right. Charlie and I had a talk and I’ve cooled down. Malfoy’s a git, he behaved like a git, colour me shocked.” She lifted one shoulder. “I do have a rotten temper, but I get over it fast. D’you think that evens things out?”
“I think you’re great.” Harry was so glad she was not still crying that he wanted to kiss her a ridiculous amount.
Ginny smiled wider. “Besides, he does live in the house with us. We can’t try to kill each other all day long.”
This was a very practical and sensible thing to say, but Harry also had a very clear recollection that Ginny had been able to keep up determined enmity towards Fleur for ages in the same house. He did not know how to say that Ginny seemed to get on better with boys—that she seemed awfully ready to be lenient towards Malfoy, who’d called her good-looking—without Ginny having a perfect right to pour hot grease down his trousers as well.
It wasn’t that he thought Ginny would ever get mixed up with Malfoy. Not exactly, not really. He trusted Ginny. She’d told him how she felt.
Charlie and she had had a talk, had they? He remembered her words, accusing in memory if not at the time, It’s always been Charlie. Everybody knows that who knows anything about me, and Malfoy’s whisper, almost against Ginny’s mouth. What if he knows nothing about you?
Ginny leaned up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She was gone before he had even breathed in the smell of flowers.
“I’ve got to get into the garden. We’re playing a game, we got Bessie up on the roof and Charlie’s blinding Malfoy.”
“What!”
Harry went to the window, almost dropping his plate, and looked out at the garden. It was another beautiful late-August day, the sunlight aged to perfection, and Charlie had his wandtip against Malfoy’s shut eyes and his hand on the back of his neck again.
“What game are you playing?” Harry demanded.
Ginny gave him an odd look. “Blind Man’s Buff.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to put a scarf over his eyes?”
Ginny’s look clearly said that Harry was very odd indeed.”Why? It’s called Blind Man, not Peeking Under His Scarf Because He’s a Dirty Cheater’s Buff. God, it’s not permanent! Is the scarves how Muggles play? Weird! You should tell Dad when he gets back.”
From his love shack with Mollywobbles, Harry thought, and wished his brain would die.
“Read your Owl, I’ll see you in a bit,” said Ginny, and rushed out into the sunlight.
Harry was confused for a moment, and then saw that she had left an envelope by his plate. The envelope was watermarked and sealed with wax, the writing on the front looked like a woman’s. He didn’t recognise it.
He broke it open one-handed, forking up the eggs as he did so.
Dear Harry,
I do hope that everything is going smoothly where you are. I cannot stop thinking about the ‘talk’ we had last time we saw each other. Same time, same place? If you can give me what I want, I think I will be able to give you more of what you want. I am sure we can come to an understanding.
Yours in anticipation, The Girl From the Alley
Harry stared at the Owl in blank astonishment until he realised what was going on. It was not a saucy letter from a deranged fan. It was a code.
It was Narcissa Malfoy, and he thought she was offering him Death Eater information in return for his continued protection of her son.
What was the matter with this family?
He shook his head, finished off his breakfast and stuffed the letter into his jeans pocket, heading out into the garden. The trees were veiling half of the place, low-lying branches whipping in the wind. He could hear a shriek, and laughter.
“I have to go, I’m meeting—” he began, and saw Malfoy stumbling towards him.
Malfoy narrowly avoided being brained by a branch, and stood framed by sunlight and foliage. The sun turned the ends of his hair dazzling white, and he was smiling a warm simple smile, as if he was happy.
This ordinary thing was as weird as all the ordinary things Malfoy had done yesterday. It held Harry for a moment, waiting for the moment when animosity returned and made Malfoy familiar again. Then he realised that the moment would not come because, of course, Malfoy could not see.
Harry moved without thinking, closer. Malfoy’s hand leaped out—Seeker reflexes, Harry thought in a detached sort of way—and closed around his arm. Malfoy laughed, a low warm sound of pleasure.
“Got you,” he said, in a voice to match the laugh.
His grip was tight. Harry tilted his head to see him better, squinting against the sun, but as he did so Malfoy’s face changed. His hold relaxed and he pushed more than touched, he gave a series of swift pushes up Harry’s arm and stopped at his shoulder.
“Potter?” he snapped. “What the hell are you playing at?”
He did not wait for Harry to respond, reaching up to touch Harry’s face. His fingers brushed Harry’s cheek and then he pulled Harry’s glasses off and threw them hard.
Harry could only see a sunlight-yellow blur when Malfoy snarled: “See how you like it.”
“Oi, who threw these glasses? A lens is bro—oh, I see.”
“It’s more than I do,” Malfoy said in his most disdainful tones. “Potter’s playing tricks again, he and your brothers think they’re terribly amusing, undo this damned spell!”
Charlie pressed the glasses into Harry’s hand and he slipped them on, saw again, though the world was changed and broken through one eye. Charlie, frowning and concerned, had cupped the back of Malfoy’s neck again.
“I need to go,” said Harry, taking a small vindictive pleasure in the thought of how Malfoy would feel if he knew about Mrs Malfoy’s letter, and he went without another word.
After too long with the son, the mother was not much of an improvement. Harry found Narcissa Malfoy in the alley off Diagon Alley, just where he had seen her last. She was a hooded and cloaked figure but she did not look like a Death Eater, on account of it being all pale blue satin.
“Not exactly inconspicuous,” Harry said by way of greeting.
She pushed the hood back, her silvery hair spilling over her shoulders. Harry was relieved to see she did not look like Malfoy again, he’d had about enough for one day.
“I always think inconspicuous people have something to hide,” she said, her voice cool and precise as a teacher’s. “Why in the world would anyone not want to be noticed?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Would you? Really?” asked Narcissa, smirking.
Looking at her with her son’s expression on her face, not intent on Quidditch or hexing Malfoy or murdering Snape, he saw what Mrs Weasley had meant. Mrs Malfoy was extremely beautiful for a mother, but past enormous blue eyes and a rose-petal mouth he recognised the pale narrow face that had come to her son stripped of her glamour.
She bowed her gleaming head to her gloves, which unbuttoned at the wrist. “I notice that neither you or Severus is dead,” she said. “I’m glad about Severus.”
“I’m touched,” Harry told her. “I left with your son instead of his life.”
Narcissa dropped her glove. It lay, crumpled and forlorn and small, making Harry think of a child’s hand upturned in supplication. Or perhaps that was the naked look on her face, the almost anguished hope.
“Draco?” she cried, and Harry heard how loud that cry should have been, if she had not needed to be secret. “Draco. He’s safe.”
Harry realised that Narcissa had thought Malfoy might already be dead, his body lying undiscovered in some remote place like his uncle’s had once. He hated her. She had turned Sirius in to her husband, to her sister, to die. He thought of Malfoy dead and alone somewhere because he hadn’t wanted to kill, all the same, and shared a moment of sick horror with her.
“He’s fine,” he said, more warmly than he’d intended to. “He’s quite safe, he’s—well, I have him somewhere safe.”
She kept watching him silently, reminding him of Malfoy again. She looked as if she was empty of all feeling but hunger, and when Harry realised he was remembering the kitchen incident he was embarrassed enough to keep talking in order to distract her from the fact he was going red.
“He’s wearing Muggle clothes about the place and fixing clocks, so I’m not sure exactly how much he’s fulfilling all your hopes as your only heir, but he isn’t dead. He made breakfast this morning and dinner last night, his cooking really isn’t bad—he’s making himself useful, at least. He says he won’t clean, though.”
“No,” Narcissa Malfoy said, her voice so very, very calm it almost fell into hysteria. “You should—see his room at home.”
She grabbed Harry then, her pale hands twisted into the material of his shirt. He was quite a bit taller than she was now.
“Thank you,” he said, her voice so intense that if he had closed his eyes he would have thought it was Bellatrix speaking. “Protect him. I’ll give you anything you want.”
Women didn’t grab Harry in alleyways and promise to fulfil his every desire all that often, but if he had ever pictured it he would not have imagined feeling quite this uncomfortable.
“I said I would.”
“Yes, but mean it! Swear it. He’s yours to protect. Promise me.”
She clung onto his shirt like a drowning woman, and Harry looked down into her blue eyes.
“I promise,” he said at last. “He’s mine.”
Narcissa stepped back, letting go, her face putting up all its layers of calm and beauty. The calm was as different from her son as the beauty, it occurred to Harry. Malfoy tried, but he was really bad at hiding stuff. Narcissa Malfoy would smile her sweetest and put a knife in your back.
She reached inside her cloak, and pulled out parchment. “Plans of the next three attacks planned,” she said. “Two Muggle towns and the Finnigan family. Save them, lay a trap, do as you choose.”
“If I tore them up, it’d all be the same to you.”
Her eyes were sweet melting blue from sheer habit, and she was cold. “Of course it would,” she answered. “I would burn the world down to see my son safe, and think it a very small price to pay. Go to your own kind for sentimental and all-embracing compassion.”
Harry had a sudden stupid impulse to refuse anything from her hand. And doom Seamus and his whole family? He shook his head sharply and reached out, taking the papers and holding them safe against his chest.
“If you fail to keep him safe, I will kill you,” Narcissa informed him quietly.
He looked at her, and she had that desperate look in her eyes again. She stepped forward and caught his hands in hers, and she felt fragile against him, her eyes cornflower blue, and he knew exactly what she was but it did not seem right to push her away. He stared helplessly down at her, feeling a bit like a rabbit in a trap.
“If they come for him and you cannot protect him—tell him what I did. Tell him I would have done anything for him.” She stared up at Harry, and he thought she was as unable to see him as Malfoy had been this morning. “My Draco,” she said in a soft voice. “Oh, my darling.”
She kissed Harry twice, to the left and then the right of his mouth. He did not dare move a muscle, in case he found himself actually touching the lips of Malfoy’s mother with his own. Then mercifully, she stepped back.
“Tell him,” she commanded again. She made her way to the mouth of the alley, walking carefully, a society lady caught in her high heels and a distasteful spot. “Your glasses are broken,” she added over her shoulder, and departed.
“Your glasses are broken,” was the first thing Hermione said when she saw him, at which point Harry’s patience abruptly ran out.
“My glasses are broken,” he agreed. “And we are wasting time. We have all the books that might be helpful here, don’t we?” he said, casting his eyes over the heaped table.
Ron nodded, looking a little wan after twenty-four hours in the library. Mind you, a night of sleeping virtuously with Hermione on the library floor might have a lot to do with that.
“Then we’re taking it back with us,” Harry said. “Look,” he said, forestalling Hermione’s protests, “I wasted my time in Godric’s Hollow! I’ve wasted my time here! I’m done, all right? Dumbledore stayed here his whole life and he died, I have to get out there and find these things. I know where one of them is! We’re going back there, we’re going to force Veritaserum down Malfoy’s throat and we’re going to get that thing off him and crush it. Then I’m going into Voldemort’s headquarters if necessary, and I’m going to cut his snake into bloody ribbons. And I’ll find out where he has that Hufflepuff thing and I’ll destroy that too, but I’m sure there is no Horcrux in the library and so we’re not staying here another second.”
“Oooh, thanks, Harry,” Hermione said. “I forgot about the Hufflepuff Cup, there are some very interesting books on the subject—”
She went and fetched three more enormous tomes. Ron viewed them fatalistically.
“Harry, take us home,” he said. “Don’t leave me in this horrible place again. I miss Mum’s home cooking.”
“Malfoy’s home cooking,” Harry corrected him.
“Oh good, Hermione, we’re going to talk about Malfoy,” Ron said. “I know I’ve missed talking about Malfoy since yesterday.”
Harry tossed a book at him. Hermione caught it and glared at him, her eyes telling him that Ron’s skull might be replaceable but eighteenth century first editions were not.
“I mean it, though,” Harry went on. “Malfoy’s doing the cooking. Your parents have, um, gone off to a love shack or something.”
“You lie, Harry Potter,” Ron said with conviction. “You lie, or you’ve gone mental. We shouldn’t go home, we should go to St Mungo’s. Harry needs his crazy medicine.”
“We should probably go and save everyone from Malfoy’s cooking, just in case,” Hermione said, and with a wistful expression on her face she began to Shrink all the books. “I can cook,” she added proudly. “My mother taught me all of the essentials. I didn’t want to mention it before, because it would do the house elves no good at all to lower their self esteem, but the food in Hogwarts is not ideal for the upkeep of dental hygiene.”
She began to pack away the tiny books, her fingers lingering on them as if to say that it wouldn’t be long before they were together again.
“Miss Granger!” said Madam Pince. “I am surprised at you! Stealing books from my library! The penalties for that are—”
“Sorry,” Harry said loudly. “Excuse me. D’you know what Voldemort will do if he takes over?”
“Please say You-Know-Who in my library,” said Madam Pince stiffly. “I do not think you have washed your hands today, Mr Weasley—”
“He’ll use them to kill people!” Harry shouted. Everyone stared at him, and he took a deep breath. “He’ll use them to kill people, to make himself more powerful, and you won’t be able to tell him not to take them. And I,” he drew his wand slowly, deliberately, and tapped the cover of the nearest book. “I’d rather burn them all than let that happen.”
Madam Pince went very still.
“So I’m going to take these books,” Harry said, watching Madam Pince’s eyes follow his wand as if she was hypnotised. “We’ll return them when we’re done.”
“Yes,” Madam Pince answered mechanically. “Of course. Anything for the war effort.”
Harry put his wand away. “Thanks. Um, I’ll see you at the Burrow later?” he said to Ron and Hermione. “I have something to give Professor McGonagall.”
Ron nodded, packing away his tiny books. Hermione was too absorbed in telling Madam Pince that she was so sorry, and she would never let anything happen to the books.
He went down to the dungeons, and saw Firenze through the open door, carrying new beds about the Slytherins’ old common room as Madam Hooch shouted instructions. He met McGonagall at the door to what he presumed were the girls’ dormitories.
When he gave her the battle plans, she looked equal parts grateful and horrified. “Mr Potter,” she said in a hushed voice. “Where did you get these?”
Harry looked up at her, and knew that if he said they came from Narcissa Malfoy, the information might not be believed. Seamus might not be saved. “I don’t have to tell you,” he said slowly. “I’m not a student here anymore.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her with the plans in her hands. The Bloody Baron stood covered in silver blood in front of the door to the common room, as if barring the way. Harry walked through him, past the cold, and then out of Hogwarts once more.
As soon as he was past the Hogwarts grounds, he Apparated. One day he should get a Licence, he thought to himself. It had been a long day, with Malfoys and Hogwarts and threatening libraries and withholding information, one of those days when he tried not to think about what he had to do.
He could not think about what a huge undertaking this was. He had to hold on to the grim determination to do it, no matter what.
The sun was low in the sky when he approached the gates of the Burrow, but he thought he could catch maybe a quiet half hour in the garden. He loved the Burrow, but it was noisy a lot, and if he could maybe rest for a bit in the sunlight of the garden…
Sunlight in the garden. Malfoy was probably still angry for no reason, or for the simple reason that the stupid idiot was impossible to please.
Harry’s scowl died at birth when he saw Ginny leaning against the gate, obviously waiting for him to come home. She had changed since this morning, she was all in black with a cloak, but when she saw him she smiled an enormous, beautiful smile.
“Harry?” she said, and then she ran to him and put her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He really shouldn’t, he had promised himself he would not, but she was so close and so warm, and he thought of days in sunlight by the lake. He thought of Malfoy, and all the stupid things he had said. He looked down at Ginny’s soft brown eyes and for a moment all he wanted was warmth and to prove to Malfoy how utterly wrong he had been.
That moment was all it took for Ginny to pull him down into a slow kiss. Her mouth opened, curving against his, slipping her tongue languorously into his mouth. He opened his eyes for a second at the slide of her lips against his, the easy push of her hips against his and her long breath inwards. It was different, this kiss, to their usual kisses. She was kissing with her whole body, her breasts crushed against his chest, her fingers combing through his hair.
He knew why when he looked down at her shining eyes and her kiss-wet mouth, and she whispered into his mouth: “I want you.”
“Um,” Harry said. “Er. Is that a good idea, I mean, we’re not together any—”
Yes! his entire body howled at him. Yes, it’s a brilliant idea, the girl’s a genius, what are you doing? The rush of blood away from his head was making him feel a bit dizzy.
“I miss you,” Ginny said. “Harry. I miss you so much. I want to—I really want to. Please take me inside and—”
“Aren’t your Mum and Dad back yet?” Harry asked weakly.
She smiled. “No.”
“Um…”
The sun was in his eyes, turning her into nothing but a red-gold haze and another slow, squirming kiss. They surfaced when they were breathless and he took a breath against her flushed, dewy cheek, then kissed below her ear.
“Oh,” Ginny exclaimed, the noise low and half-hushed against his hair. She pressed every inch of her body against him and whispered, “Please.”
“Well—well, we should… talk, anyway,” Harry said helplessly. “Find somewhere private to—talk.”
“Yes,” Ginny whispered. “Inside.”
They went inside. Ginny was still pressed up against him, in the circle of his arm with her breast soft against his chest, when they went into the kitchen and found Ron and Malfoy playing chess.
Harry wondered frantically how they were supposed to get past them.
This worry disappeared at about the same time that Ginny detached herself from him, cried out: “Draco,” and hurled herself into Malfoy’s lap.
“What the-!” Ron shouted.
Harry had a sudden blinding revelation of how stupid he had been. He had taken someone past the wards around the Burrow, trusting that it was Ginny just because she’d—just because she’d… and it had to be Mrs Malfoy.
This idea collapsed abruptly at about the time Ginny put her arms around Malfoy’s neck and tried to slip him the tongue.
Malfoy went pink and made a valiant attempt to stand up. “Is nobody safe from Love Potions in this godforsaken house for a single moment?” he demanded. “Get her off me! Is this your really twisted idea of another joke, Potter, or are the twins back? I said get off, Weasley!”
Despite his best efforts, Ginny managed to press another kiss on his mouth. “Draco, you idiot!” she said. “We thought you were dead, I was so worried… It’s me, Draco.”
“Who?” asked Malfoy desperately.
Ginny looked at him with love. “It’s me,” she said again, tenderly. “It’s Pansy.”
Malfoy stared at her for a moment, and then he gave a strangled sort of exclamation. He put his hand up and touched her face, studying Ginny’s pretty features searching for someone else. He kept looking at her until she calmed a little under his gaze, staring back at him as if she never wanted to look at anything else again, and then she nodded once.
Malfoy took hold of both her shoulders and pushed her back, until she was sitting on the kitchen table. Then he took her face in one hand again, fingers brushing over her cheek, pale against her heated skin.
“I didn’t think any of you would look for me,” he whispered, and kissed her.
She moaned and clung around his neck, kissing him back. Malfoy had his other hand on the table, supporting them both as she clung and he kissed her, again and again, as if he did not need air, as her long red hair spilled onto and obscured the chessboard.
“Urgh!” Ron exploded, recovering his voice. “Urgh, what are you doing? Stop that at once!”
Neither of them paid an instant’s attention to him. Malfoy was the one slipping the tongue now, intent on the kiss, on the kiss-wet mouth Harry had thought was Ginny’s.
“Harry, stop staring like an idiot and help me make them stop!”
There was a piercing scream from behind them and everyone stopped what they were doing to look at the white, shocked face of the real Ginny.
“I’m blind,” she announced at last. “What is happening? Who are you?”
Pansy kept hold of Malfoy as if he might disappear again if she did not. “I’m Pansy Parkinson,” she said, smiling and shining, obviously not caring if a thousand Gryffindors felt personally violated.
“Why do you look like me?” Ginny demanded, through her teeth.
Pansy addressed Malfoy, explaining to him with the air of one who knew there were other people in the room but who was of the opinion they did not matter. “Well, you know how Millicent’s always had a thing for Zabini,” she said calmly.
Malfoy snorted. “Yeah, good luck there.”
“And he fancies Weasley a bit, so she got hold of some of her hair and mixed up a Polyjuice Potion, but then… well, you know…” Malfoy nodded. “So when I heard someone had seen you at the Weasley wedding—I bought it,” Pansy finished triumphantly. “Got a good price, too,” she added on a self-congratulatory note.
“That’s my girl,” Malfoy said, brushing a lock of hair from her face. He looked so happy. There were happy, cuddling Slytherins in the Weasleys’ kitchen.
“Oh stop, I can’t look,” Ron said pathetically.
Pansy and Malfoy exchanged a mutually delighted look. Then: “Pansy and I are going to take a walk,” Malfoy announced, and he put an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side, as she had nestled against Harry’s approximately five minutes before.
She looked so exactly like Ginny. He wanted to shout at her for that filthy, unnecessary impersonation and simultaneously strangle Malfoy for touching her.
“You’re not to leave the Burrow grounds,” Harry said, his voice scratching. “It mightn’t be safe.”
Malfoy gave him an odd glance, but only a glance. “All right,” he responded to the assembly at large and in a distant sort of way. Then, attached at the hip and possibly other places, he and Pansy went out into the front garden.
Charlie, Hermione and Mrs Weasley came in soon afterwards. Harry was already feeling too awful even to contemplate Mrs Weasley’s cheery glow.
“Where’s Draco?” Charlie asked, looking at Harry for some reason.
“Off with his girlfriend,” Ron said instantly. “She just arrived here, out of nowhere I might add, and she looked like Ginny, and they upset the chessboard—”
“I didn’t know Draco had a girlfriend,” Charlie said.
“How lovely,” remarked Mrs Weasley, and she meandered in a vague and yet quite fast sort of way to the windows, where she looked admiringly out at her own front garden. “Oh he does,” she said with obvious approval. “I’m so glad there are nice girls in the school who aren’t focused on looks. She’s got beautiful hair.”
“She’s Polyjuiced into me!” Ginny said in a dangerous tone.
“Well, you’ve got beautiful hair, my dear,” Mrs Weasley soothed her. “She Polyjuiced herself to get to Draco? I do think that’s romantic.”
“She’s always been senseless about Malfoy,” observed Hermione, who liked romance as much as the next person but who disliked Pansy Parkinson more than anyone else in the room.
“He’s never shown much interest in her,” Harry said. He coughed at Ron’s stare. “Well, apart from just now, obviously.”
Ginny went to get herself a glass of water, as if she could wash Pansy’s identical mouth clean if she just drank enough. Ron looked puzzled.
“What are you talking about, Harry? They’ve been going out for years, haven’t they? They—went to the Yule Ball together and stuff.”
“And you and Padma Patil are such a happy couple.” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Boys. They never know anything. Well, in case anyone’s interested, Malfoy and Pansy have been going out since fourth year, but it’s sort of on-again, off-again. They were official for most of fifth year, but in sixth year Malfoy stopped seeing her and apart from a few rumours, mostly kept to himself. She went out with Theodore Nott a couple of times, but nobody thought she was over Malfoy, and now…”
“How do you know all this, Hermione?” Ron asked. “Is there a daily newsletter we’re not getting?”
There was the sound of another glass of water being filled. “Everybody knows this, Ron,” Ginny called from her position at the sink.
“All the girls know,” Ron insisted. “You’re communicating secretly. Probably in the girls’ loos.”
Mrs Weasley looked sharply around at her youngest son, and he went suddenly quiet on the subject of ladies’ bathrooms but kept on laying out his theory of a spy network that insured girls would always know everything and keep their knowledge secret for purposes of their own.
Harry thought of secrecy, and was amazed at how stupid he was being. Of course. Malfoy was not going to keep secrets from his girl, not when he was off his head with joy because she had come searching for him. Harry had to hear what they were saying to each other.
While everyone was talking at once, he left quietly and went to get his Invisibility Cloak. Then he crept out a window, and towards the place in the front garden where Pansy sat on the fence, and Malfoy leaned with his arms crossed against her knees, and his head bowed over her lap. Harry walked softly and stood about a foot from them, trying to breathe quietly.
Pansy, still wearing Ginny’s face, was caressing Malfoy’s hair, the fine blond strands slipping through Ginny’s fingers.
Malfoy was talking to her in a hoarse tumble of words, as if he had been talking a long time and would keep talking until he could only croak, and only then would he feel relieved. “—and I kept trying not to think about it, and then he was there, Fenrir Greyback, really there and he wasn’t a name I could use, he was a killer and he likes—he wanted…” Harry stared at Malfoy’s back as a shudder coursed through him. “He wouldn’t care what side you were on, if the flesh was young. And I told myself not to think about it, I didn’t let myself think that he might be there, and then he was there and it was all my fault!”
“Draco,” Pansy murmured.
“No,” Malfoy said urgently. “Don’t. Don’t forgive me, not without thinking about it. I let a werewolf into our school. You know how we talked about Lupin, about how Dumbledore—about how he put the whole school at risk. Lupin wasn’t like that. Dumbledore didn’t do that. I did that. And he could have killed you, he would’ve loved to kill you. What would you have thought of me, if he’d gotten into our common room and he’d ripped them all to shreds, the first years, everyone, and you were lying among their bodies still alive when he tore your throat out and at the same time he—”
“Stop it! I understand,” Pansy said in a thin voice. She paused for a moment, her stolen face troubled, and then spoke again. “Draco. In those circumstances, it would hardly have mattered if I forgave you or not. But it didn’t happen, did it? You didn’t mean for it to happen, and it didn’t. And I do forgive you.” She looked down at him with a world of love in Ginny’s eyes, and added: “It’s not like you doing something stupid is a great surprise.”
Malfoy laughed, a rough sound that hitched in his throat. “I’m trying to make up for it now,” he said. “I really am. Professor Snape’s helping me.”
“Draco, forgive me, but isn’t Professor Snape on the same side as Fenrir Greyback? I’m not saying that he eats children, though in the past he has looked tempted to bite off Longbottom’s stupid fat head and spit it out. I’m not saying it’s the wrong side either, but I thought—”
“The Dark Lord sent me off to fail,” Malfoy told her flatly. “So he could kill me and my mother, so he could punish my father that way. Because he likes to see us suffer. Dumbledore wouldn’t have cared much if we did, but he wants us to.”
“So…” Pansy hesitated. “I’m with you,” she said at last. “No matter what, but… What are you going to do?”
“We have a plan,” Malfoy answered, and Harry tensed. “I can’t tell you,” Malfoy said, and Harry believed for a frustrated instant that Malfoy was being perverse on purpose. He lifted his face for a moment, and pressed his forehead against Pansy’s. “Last year, I never told you. I never told Crabbe or Goyle, even though I got them to help. It was—I kept realising how big it was, how serious it was, and I didn’t want you in that kind of trouble. I wanted all of you safe. I think I was right. If any of you had been out of the dungeons that night, I… Could you kill someone?”
“If I had to,” Pansy returned without a second thought, and Harry thought Malfoy might be doing that thing where men picked women who reminded them of their mothers.
“Someone helpless,” Malfoy said in a low voice. “Could you kill someone helpless?”
Pansy did pause then. “If they were threatening my family. If they were threatening you,” she said eventually. “Yes. I think I could.”
Malfoy dropped his face from contact with hers, and hung his head. His voice was almost too low to be heard.
“I couldn’t,” he told her. “Maybe I should have, to keep my mother safe. To keep myself safe, he even promised he’d get my father out, I should have done it for them but… I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the guts to do it.”
Pansy let out a long dismayed breath, not quite a sigh. “Draco,” she said. “Oh, Draco.”
Tell him that it wouldn’t have been brave to kill Dumbledore, Harry demanded of her silently. Tell him he did the right thing!
She lifted his face with a finger, and dropped a kiss on his lips. Harry watched the uncertain smile blossom on his face.
“I didn’t think any of you would ever want anything to do with me again,” he confessed. “I thought—either you would hate me for bringing Fenrir to school, or you would hate me because I couldn’t do what the Dark Lord wanted. I thought—well, I mean, I knew none of you were there for that reason, but I’ve made a mess of everything. The Dark Lord wants to kill me and Father can’t be pleased with me. I don’t see any good way out of this for me, and—I wouldn’t have blamed you. I remember telling you about the Dark Lord’s plan for me on the train, when I still thought I could do it. When I thought it would be an honour. You seemed pretty impressed by it.”
“Silly fool,” Pansy said. “I wasn’t impressed by it. I was impressed by you.”
Malfoy laughed then, a little unsteadily. His face was growing brighter by the minute.
“This isn’t fair to you, of course,” he remarked. “You’re not thinking straight. You are in thrall to my fatal fascination, and making the worst mistake of your life.”
“Probably so.”
She agreed with the air of one humouring a child, and he laughed, tangled his fingers in her copper curls, and pulled her down for a long, slow kiss. Harry was completely humiliated to recognise it, and recognise that there was a difference: Malfoy was in charge of this one. He kissed her slowly, taking his time, savouring it. Between their slowly moving mouths Harry saw flashes of teeth and tongue. Malfoy parted from her with a last light set of his teeth into her lower lip.
“This is so weird,” he murmured, touching her hair and gesturing to her face.
Pansy looked wicked. “You think this is weird,” she said. “Guess what I had to do to get in. I expected the Burrow to be warded, I know some wards detect Polyjuice Potion, but almost all wards let people in if a member of the family invites them. So there I was, looking like Ginny Weasley, and there Potter was striding towards me doing his dour hero face—”
“Mm,” Malfoy nodded and set his mouth in a stern line, opening his eyes wide and fixing them very intensely on nothing. Harry was outraged when Pansy laughed in recognition.
“See, I didn’t know they split up,” she confided.
Malfoy’s mouth fell open. “You didn’t-!”
“I did. I snogged Potter thoroughly and I begged him to take me to bed. I wasn’t taking any chances on getting in to see you.”
Malfoy hid his face in his hands and muttered something about having already eaten the soap.
“Pardon?” Pansy said.
“Nothing,” Malfoy decided. “There but for the grace of Charles Weasley go I.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. I talk a lot of nonsense.”
“I did know that,” Pansy said, looking amused by him, looking love at him.
“At least I don’t do reckless things like you. Where would you have been, my girl, if I wasn’t there and you were stuck in the Weasley household having promised Potter filthy carnal pleasures?”
Pansy frowned. “Suppose I would’ve had to give them to him,” she concluded.
“I am shocked, shocked and betrayed.”
“Well, I would’ve been envied by hundreds of women,” Pansy mused. “Also, I could’ve sold the story to the Daily Prophet. Wonder what it would’ve been called?”
“How the Boy Who Lived Loves,” Malfoy suggested. “How the Chosen One Gave Me One.”
Pansy started to cackle. Malfoy maintained a straight face for about five seconds and then cracked up. Harry hated them both, but Malfoy the most. Possibly hatred was too weak a word.
“Pity he never played Chaser,” Malfoy said, falling about the place.
“Why?”
“Because—oh, God—because then they’d ask you if he gets it through the hoop every time!”
“That’s a dreadful thing to say. You’re a terrible human being.”
Malfoy made a very bad attempt at looking solemn. “Pansy, it is only because I respect you as a woman that I didn’t attempt a play on words using the word ‘Snitch’ and the term ‘sna—”
Pansy hit him in the arm. “I take your point. No, Draco, please don’t make a joke about me taking Harry Potter’s point first. Please.”
“You have been soiled by Potter’s touch. You are dead to me, woman. We can never be intimate again,” said Malfoy, and kissed her three times in rapid succession. Once Pansy was out of breath, he said: “So Crabbe and Goyle—?”
“Have been worried sick,” Pansy told him. “And I doubt it’s because of your fatal fascination.”
“God forbid,” Malfoy said absently, at this point apparently unable to stop smiling. “And Zabini?”
“Well…” Pansy’s face fell, and the brightness of Malfoy’s face dimmed a fraction as he looked at her and saw his answer. “It’s just that—you know how close his mother is to your Aunt Bellatrix—”
“Yes. Of course. It’s OK,” Malfoy said. “Really, it is. Until about half an hour ago I was all alone in the world except for the kindness of Weasleys. I’m so ridiculously glad to see you, I’m making a show of myself.”
“I like the show,” Pansy said. “It’s the show of a lifetime. I want to buy tickets. Only—Draco, I assume since you’re not telling me much now, and you wouldn’t tell me much then, and last time you cut yourself off, that means we’re not exactly…”
Malfoy said, with difficulty, “I—No. Pansy, I can’t. And—it wasn’t only because of the going slowly insane from stress. I wanted to sort some things out. I want—I want to be fair to you.”
“I know that,” Pansy said. “Of course, I want to trap you into matrimony. I must have babies!” They laughed again, but Harry saw her clinging to him a little. “You’re my friend,” she said. “You know that. And maybe after all this is over, if you think you have things sorted out…”
“Maybe,” Malfoy breathed. “I’ll probably die in some completely shameful way, though.” He paused, smiled and added: “Oh Pansy, it will be so mortifying.”
“If you die,” Pansy said, choking back either laughter or tears, “it’s all off. You’ll have to go back to your ghost girlfriend, d’you know she came into the Slytherin dungeons looking for you?”
“I will never know love like that again,” Malfoy announced.
Then he kissed her and she looked at him, and kissing and looking were what they had been doing all this time but now it seemed edged with desperation.
“I’ll have to go home soon,” Pansy whispered. “Mum and Dad would kill me if they knew where I was.”
She had both her arms around his neck now, really clinging, her forehead pressed against his again. He swung her off the fence into his arms and Harry saw her face as he turned her one last time, Ginny’s face wearing such a look of pain, and he thought: what was it about Malfoy, stupid bratty Malfoy, that made Snape and Narcissa and now this girl Harry hardly knew love him so much? So achingly, stupidly much.
“Am I your illicit lover?” Malfoy whispered teasingly, and then saw her face too. He stopped teasing and kissed her again, mouths still brushing as they whispered to each other.
“Draco,” she whispered.
“I want you to get out,” Malfoy said in a low voice, coming out uneven and interrupted by kisses. “I want you and Crabbe and Goyle out. I don’t want you in danger, you don’t have anything to make up for. I want you to take them and run. I want you safe.”
He touched Ginny’s face again, eyes narrowed as if he was squinting past it, and he looked sure. He knew who she was.
“I want you safe,” Malfoy said again in a thin, ferocious voice, as if saying it could make it so. “I want you safe.”
Malfoy kissed her again and Harry watched the slide of his mouth on hers and thought he’d worked out what Malfoy had. He had them, these people that he loved, and it was sort of terrible. Because Malfoy’s father could be—all that he was, and Pansy could have turned her back on him forever, and it would not have made any difference to Malfoy. Harry had never thought about Malfoy in connection with love before, but it was so obvious.
Pansy was making soft, low sounds and moving, and Malfoy stood kissing the lips Harry had kissed less than an hour ago, lips that didn’t belong to Pansy, but he knew who he was holding and who he wanted to keep safe. Harry looked at him, at his intent face as he kissed her, and at his hands. He had one hand around Pansy’s arm, tight enough to bruise, and the other hand clenched tight in her hair and he seemed sure, he seemed insistent, as if once he had you he would hold on with teeth and claws and love, and he would never let go.
The sun was setting, sinking in air turned red, and the light made Pansy’s borrowed hair crimson and Malfoy’s pale hand in her hair even paler, and soon she would have to go.
Harry stayed.
Malfoy did not stay downstairs once Pansy had gone. He went up without dinner, muttering something vague about clocks. Hermione patted Harry’s hand in an abstracted yet comforting fashion.
“Only two weeks until full moon,” she said. “Then we can pick the foxglove—I think we’re going to have to buy the pixie eggs in Diagon Alley, though… Still. Two weeks, maybe three, and we’ll have our Veritaserum.”
“Your what?” asked Ginny, who was playing Exploding Snap on the carpet with Charlie.
Harry pictured her sitting with Malfoy the night before, and when Hermione opened her mouth to reply he said: “It’s not important.”
He avoided Hermione’s reproachful gaze and started to read another book about ways of unlocking chains. He spent ten minutes staring at a passage about how to unlock magical chastity belts before he realised, and then thought that perhaps he should go to bed.
He was in the camp bed all of two minutes before he realised that the stupid scratchy sheets were not stupid and scratchy, it was just him again, itching for something to do. Something was bothering him, something particular, niggling at the back of his mind and speaking in Malfoy’s voice.
I do not find your and the Weasley twins’ practical jokes very funny
Potter’s playing tricks again, he and your brothers think they’re terribly amusing
Is this your really twisted idea of another joke, Potter, or are the twins back?
God! Harry bolted out of bed, found a T-shirt and almost ran to Charlie and Malfoy’s room. Then he banged on the door.
Malfoy opened the door, heavy-eyed and red-mouthed and not looking like someone who was conscientiously mending clocks. “What?” he bit out.
“I didn’t know about that Love Potion,” Harry said in a rush. “How could you think that?”
Malfoy blinked, pulled himself together and managed a sleepy sneer. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m insane,” he suggested in an eerily calm sort of way. “I keep having hallucinations about you pulling pranks on me. One of them involved a lot of mud and your enormous floaty head.”
“All right. Yes. I did that, but you deserved it—”
Malfoy’s lip curled. “Oh, I always deserve it. I wonder how your type would vent all their raging aggression if people like me didn’t come around and deserve it.”
“My type?” Harry demanded. “The type who plays pranks? What d’you call dressing up in Dementor robes at a Quidditch match?”
“Cheating,” Malfoy said, as if Harry was a little dense. “Also, I thought it would be funny.”
“The mud throwing was meant to be funny! Dementors aren’t funny.”
“Attacking ghosts aren’t a laugh a minute!”
“I wasn’t attacking you!” Harry shouted.
“Guess what, I wasn’t actually a Dementor!” Malfoy yelled.
Harry pushed his hair roughly out of his eyes, trying to occupy his hands so he would not throttle Malfoy. “Well, fine, what part of your vast experience of my type made you think that I’d find it hilarious to be molested in a kitchen?”
“Molested, pfft! If you think that was being molested, you need to find someone who does it properly. I bet you found all those pathetic, stupid things I was saying funny—”
Harry was still amazed and insulted by Malfoy making a funny scornful sound about Harry’s trauma, but he did his best. “You’re worried about something you said? I don’t even remember what you said!”
Malfoy was entirely awake by now, colour rising in his cheeks and eyes wide. He tensed and Harry, staring angrily into his cold eyes, actually saw something in there snap.
“I’m not worried,” Malfoy snarled. “I’m furious! They turned me into a cringing, whining little crawler to all things Potter for a joke and it makes me feel actually sick to think of the things I said. Oh, you must hate me, Harry!” he said in a savage falsetto. “Oh, all the things I’ve done! Can you forgive me? What have you got to forgive me for?”
“Where to start?” Harry said. “But I did, I did forgive you!” So there, Malfoy.
Malfoy’s shoulders bunched as if he was about to leap. “I don’t want your forgiveness,” he said in a dangerous voice. “I don’t want the patronising scraps you throw to those who fall into line. I don’t want you to tell me everything’s going to be all right. You don’t hate me? Well, I hate you!”
Harry went for his wand at the same instant Malfoy did, he could have sworn he did, but for some reason Malfoy was ready first. He pointed the wand, didn’t speak: and Harry felt his skin rip apart into a cut on his face.
“Spell’s familiar, isn’t it?” Malfoy inquired, chest rising and falling hard. “Snape taught me how to control it, but you don’t know how, do you? All you know is how to rip a bloody great hole in someone!”
Harry realised that he didn’t actually want to hurt Malfoy too badly. He didn’t want anything like the sickening remorse of last time, he didn’t want—as he hadn’t wanted on the Quidditch pitch in fifth year—the clinical distance of wands. He simply wanted to get his hands on Malfoy and make him sorry.
“The hell with it,” he said, then threw his wand down and hit Malfoy in the mouth.
Malfoy’s head snapped back, blood vivid in the corner of his mouth, and then he straightened, breathing harder than ever and now bleeding. Harry felt the slide of blood down his own face as Malfoy lifted his wand hand to his mouth, touching his knuckles to the cut and then licking the drop of blood off his hand.
“Fine,” he said, sneering bloodily. He opened his hand and let the wand tumble to the floor. “Let’s see how good you are when George Weasley isn’t sitting on top of me!”
Harry didn’t get a chance to retort because Malfoy’s fist connected with his already bloody cheekbone, going for a weak point as the little bastard always did. When Harry reeled back Malfoy threw himself bodily at him, catching him full in the chest with a bony shoulder.
Harry got a blow to the head when he hit the ground, and landed with Malfoy on top of him and Malfoy grabbed his shirt to keep him in place as he swung a leg over, sitting astride his chest. Harry’s vision was blurry for a moment, and then the vague brightness coalesced into Malfoy’s narrow-eyed face with the light behind it.
“I hate you,” Malfoy panted, and spat a mouthful of blood on Harry’s face.
Harry grabbed Malfoy’s swinging locket and twisted it into a choke chain, pulling Malfoy’s head forward and then throwing him down and punching him in the stomach. He avoided Malfoy’s next swing as he rolled over onto him in a tangle of legs and fury, and felt his mouth curl.
“I don’t hate you,” he said. “You’re not even worth hating.” He heard steps on the stairs then, fought down panic over getting caught and frustration over being stopped, and scrambled to his feet, pushing Malfoy as he did so, his cut knuckles scraping against Malfoy’s jeans. “Why don’t you stay down,” he added.
Malfoy sat up at once, his eyes glittering, and hissed: “Dumbledore was a stupid old man.”
Harry did not know what he was doing except for raging during a few white-hot instants, but in them he must have pulled Malfoy to his feet and thrown him against the wall because the next thing he knew, really knew, was Malfoy’s face close to his and Malfoy’s chain wrapped around Harry’s hand tight enough to break. Only it wouldn’t break, it was the enchanted locket, the one Dumbledore had died for, the one that even cutting into Harry’s palm was completely out of reach because Malfoy was keeping it from him.
“Say that again,” Harry snarled into Malfoy’s face, wrapping the chain tighter around his wrist and pulling that face closer.
Malfoy shoved him with both hands, even though Harry’s hold on the chain meant Malfoy had to go with him when he fell back.
“He was a stupid old man,” he shouted obligingly, and the muffled gasp and drum of feet on the stairs might as well have been in another world for all that Harry cared when Malfoy was inches away, his mouth deliberately shaping every unforgivable word. “He was so stupid for all his cunning,” Malfoy went on, eyes as bright as if he had fever. “He never told anyone what was happening, he stole House Cups and he hired werewolves and school was always full of dangers and he never gave us any answers. He was a stupid, blind old man and I was afraid of him and I never liked him and I thought it would be easy!”
The whispers and calls below and the sound of more feet on the stairs had little meaning except for the fact that Harry was now going to have to kill Malfoy in front of witnesses.
“He was a great man!” Harry shouted.
“He was a bloody terrible headmaster!” Malfoy shouted back. “He had no right to keep everything from us, to hire half-giants to terrorise us, to treat the whole school like it was the setting for a little game. He was stupid and now he’s dead and I still think about the stupid things he said about Mudbloods, he was stupid and I hated him and I hate knowing that in spite of all the stupid things I hated him for he didn’t deserve to die!”
“He wouldn’t have if you hadn’t let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.”
“I know that!” Malfoy screamed in his face. “I know that and I’m sorry. I’m sorry he’s dead. I never thought about what death was and now I think about it all the time and I almost killed Weasley too, fine, I did and I’m sorry about that as well!”
He shouted this in the direction of the stairs and when he looked Harry was able to look too, and see Ron at the top of the stairs with Hermione holding him back and Ginny trying to wrestle her mother back down the stairs before she really saw anything. Ron looked badly startled and as if he wished Malfoy would leave him out of this.
Harry twisted the chain and Malfoy’s eyes snapped back to his.
“I’m sorry about Weasley, and I’m sorry about Katie Bell,” Malfoy continued remorselessly, his voice rough from screaming. “I wanted revenge and I didn’t think killing would be like that and that doesn’t make up for anything. I know what I’ve done, and I know I can’t apologise for it and you certainly can’t forgive me for it, you patronising bastard.”
He pushed his face closer to Harry’s so the chain actually went slack around Harry’s hand, and Malfoy put up his own hand, untangling it from around Harry’s fingers, as he went on speaking.
“I don’t know why you think I should apologise to you,” he said. “I don’t know what I did to make you so angry. But whatever it was, Potter, whatever terrible thing I did to you, I just wish I’d done it harder, and longer, and worse!”
He whirled away, breaking from the hold Harry had on him, fingernails scraping Harry’s palm as he pulled the chain free. Then he stormed into his room and slammed the door shut with an almighty crash.
Harry became abruptly aware again of all the people staring at him on the stairs.