Harry was quite pleased when the next Owl from Narcissa Malfoy arrived. It had been three days, and the atmosphere in the Burrow had become extremely unpleasant.
Not only was Malfoy ostentatiously not talking to him, he’d obviously gone tattling to everyone else. Charlie was looking at Harry a bit coldly, Mrs Weasley kept giving Malfoy second helpings because of his poor endangered mother, and though they were trapped in the same room going over books together all day, Malfoy refused to acknowledge Harry’s presence by so much as a glance.
Even Ginny was being far too nice to Malfoy, though she’d come to Harry and told him she was sure he was doing the right thing. She kept smiling at him and sitting beside him and having conversations with him: Harry thought her lack of discrimination around boys was getting completely out of hand.
He was glad to be out of the house, and doing something useful, even if it meant consorting with Narcissa Malfoy.
Any even vaguely positive feelings waking in Harry were crushed when he got to the alley near Diagon, and saw that Narcissa had chosen to show up again in her guise of Malfoy. Harry was very tired of Polyjuice, and even more tired of seeing Malfoy’s stupid face all the stupid time.
Not that it wasn’t easy to see this wasn’t the real Malfoy. This one wore robes and a calm, pleasant expression.
“Harry, dear,” said Narcissa, with a sweet, false smile. “What a nice surprise.”
“Don’t call me Harry. Just give me some information I can use.”
Narcissa’s maliciously flirtatious smile looked all wrong on Malfoy’s face. Harry felt this whole Polyjuice business was giving him vertigo, and he looked away at the dirty bricks and stagnant puddles of the alleyway.
Narcissa spoke very softly in Malfoy’s voice.
“First give me what I want.”
Harry reached into his pocket and took out the proof Narcissa wanted. He avoided looking at her, and at the pictures: he knew what was in them. He’d taken them from the wedding album himself: Malfoy with the baby Veela in his lap, Malfoy with a wine glass and smiling at something Charlie had just said, Malfoy with Ginny twirling under his arm.
Proof that Malfoy was alive and not missing any significant bits.
Narcissa was silent for so long that Harry looked over at her, and actually seeing maternal fondness on Malfoy’s face could’ve been pretty comical, if it hadn’t made him feel inexplicably grouchy and left out.
“He looks happy,” she said quietly after a moment.
“I don’t know,” Harry told her, and heard how ungracious he sounded. “Sometimes. He’s never particularly happy with me.”
Narcissa did not even seem to hear him, turning the three photographs in her grasp over and over again. “Who’s the girl he’s dancing with?” she asked in an absent sort of way, smiling down at her son’s picture.
“Ginny Weasley,” Harry said curtly.
Narcissa looked a little ill. “I should have guessed by the hair. Draco’s not—involved with her, is he?”
“I’m involved with her,” Harry snapped, and then remembered that was a lie.
“I shouldn’t imagine that would matter,” Narcissa murmured, giving him a dismissive glance that made her look, to Harry’s eyes, like a precise replica of her son after all.
He wanted to say that he trusted Ginny—but she no longer had any obligation to be faithful to him—or that Ginny would never let Malfoy touch her—but she let him touch her all the time.
He thought of what Hermione’d told him, said: “I’m better-looking than Malfoy,” and promptly wanted to die.
Narcissa started to laugh. “And you have such quick wit. No wonder you were only able to woo a Weasley.”
“Could we,” said Harry. “Can I just have the information?”
“The new orphanage the Ministry has set up, for children orphaned by the Dark Lord—the Dark Lord has his eye on it. He’s a little strange about children, and about orphanages, and the Ministry are using it as rather effective propaganda for their position as caring, concerned government who will save us all.” Narcissa examined Malfoy’s hands as if she had forgotten she was in a boy’s body, and was checking her nail polish. “Anyway,” she said lazily. “Children in danger. Go to it. Isn’t that the sort of thing that makes all your well-meaning hearts just flutter? Don’t you want to rush to the rescue?”
“Maybe in a minute,” Harry said. “Anything a bit more useful? Like—where one might find Voldemort?”
Narcissa jumped violently but did not blush afterwards, so instead of the rush of satisfaction that always resulted from getting to the real Malfoy, Harry felt bad about upsetting a girl.
“No,” she answered. “Oddly enough, I do not often have the man who spoke my son’s death warrant around for tea. I suppose,” she said after a pause, “I could ask Bella.”
For a moment Harry was at a total loss as to who Bella might be, and then he remembered how Voldemort had addressed Bellatrix Lestrange.
Cute, he thought. Bella and Cissy, the two sisters who accomplished Sirius’ death together.
“Fine. Go ask Bella,” Harry said between his teeth. “I wouldn’t mind seeing her, either.”
Narcissa looked at him for a moment. “She told me you couldn’t hold the Cruciatus,” she said at length. “My son thought he could kill someone as well.”
“Your son was trying to kill the greatest wizard of our time.”
“Unless you succeed, you’ll be remembered as the one who tried to kill the greatest wizard of our time,” Narcissa remarked, curling her lip. “History is written by the victors. I suggest you do succeed.”
“Thanks,” Harry said. “That’s really helpful.”
Narcissa shrugged, as if conversations about life and death rather bored her, then produced a little sack from her pocket and threw it. Harry caught it automatically, and it clinked in his hands.
“What—”
“I won’t have my son living on the Weasleys’ charity, no matter what your relatives allow,” Narcissa said coolly. “Give that to their blowsy matriarch. With my compliments.”
Harry wanted to bring her head on a platter to Mrs Weasley with his compliments, but he settled for holding the sack out in her direction. “She wouldn’t take it.”
“Then give it to Draco,” Narcissa said. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything except to help him in some way. I—”
She flung up her hands, her frustration a flying shape on the air, and again Harry felt as if he was looking at the real Malfoy. Though usually after that gesture Malfoy made another ruder one, or glared and stormed.
“Can’t I see him?” she asked. “Would that put him in more danger?”
“Might put you in more danger.”
Harry looked at her as she spoke, Malfoy’s grey eyes intent for once on Harry’s face, and wondered why he did not really want her to die. She deserved it, she’d made sure Sirius went to his death, but she looked so desperate now and Malfoy had looked so desperate before.
“I don’t care about that,” said Narcissa.
“Malfoy does,” Harry told her. “He—Voldemort threatened you as well, last year. Malfoy’s terrified for you. I can’t—I won’t take you into any more danger.”
Narcissa only looked at him, sharp longing for her son written all over her son’s borrowed face, and when she stepped towards him Harry thought she might be about to draw her wand and demand to be taken to her precious little Draco. Instead, she reached up and touched his face, Malfoy’s fingers resting lightly on the curve of Harry’s cheekbone.
“Thank you for watching out for my son,” she said, almost warmly.
Harry thought of the kitchen at the Burrow. He took a step backwards and hit the brick wall.
“Don’t kiss me.”
“Don’t worry,” Narcissa replied, stepping back and staring at him. “You really are an extraordinarily arrogant young man. I do hope at least some of your confidence in yourself is justified.”
“These meetings of ours are so uplifting,” Harry informed her. He felt tired.
She smirked at him as if she was really Malfoy, tossed her head like a girl, and left him in an alleyway wondering how to protect an orphanage full of children and what to do with the bag of Galleons in his hand.
In the end, he walked into the living room that had somehow become Hermione’s stern hall of study, and threw it down on the table in front of Malfoy. Malfoy looked directly at him for the first time in three days.
He looked at Harry, he looked at the bag, and he looked as if he was doing a slow boil.
Then he slammed the heavy book shut on his own hand, and looked deliberately away.
“Passing out money to everyone today, Harry?” Ron asked.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Harry said, and flopped into the chair beside Ron’s. They both looked at a codex, and then exchanged looks of quiet desperation.
A stack of book hid half Hermione’s face from them, but the half they could see looked happy. She was drawing up another plan and whistling happily to herself, possibly from demonic glee at the misery she was about to inflict on them.
Yesterday Ron had floated the idea that Hermione was a magical illusion created by their teachers to make them feel desperate and inadequate.
“Are you done with that plan yet?” Malfoy asked absently. “I could use a look.”
“In a minute,” Hermione said, appearing gratified.
“Oh my God, don’t encourage her,” Ron muttered. He and Harry grinned at each other, but then Ron glanced back at Malfoy and—didn’t look displeased that he was being polite to Hermione.
Malfoy caught Ron’s eye, clearly mindful of their bargain, and then looked back at Hermione.
“Ah—by the way, Granger,” he said slowly. “Could I—borrow a pen? I read about them in Muggle Studies.”
Hermione looked a little startled but still gratified, and she leaned over the table and passed Malfoy a biro. Malfoy accepted it: their fingers did not touch.
Malfoy bent his head over his book again, toying idly with his new pen. He made almost as many notes as Hermione did, his face set as he worked towards his goal, and Harry thought he knew how Malfoy’d looked when he was fixing the Cabinet now.
“You took Muggle Studies?” asked Ron.
“‘Course,” Malfoy replied. “My father always said know your enemy.”
Ron and Hermione both stopped looking at Malfoy as if he might one day, in another universe, conceivably be tolerable. Malfoy hunched over his book, his shoulders looking spiky with defensiveness.
He still had not touched the Galleons.
They continued to study, air thick with the tension of resumed hostilities, and the day slipped away like all the days before. Malfoy didn’t go to dinner with the rest of them again and it occurred to Harry that this was probably how Malfoy’s looks had taken their dramatic downward turn last year. Apparently at the least provocation he entirely forgot details like food or sleep.
Charlie came in with a plate for Malfoy when the rest of them were going to dinner.
“Would you do that for m—” Hermione began, and then Ron put his hand over her mouth, took her arm in his free hand and pulled her firmly towards the dinner table.
“Malfoy may be set on killing himself,” he said. “That’s his business. I won’t let you do it.”
Hermione went obligingly in to dinner, unusually quiet and a little pink.
When they got back, Malfoy had hardly touched his food.
“You have to eat,” Harry snapped. “And you’re not to sleep in here like you did last night.”
Malfoy looked at Hermione and said: “We need more books.”
“Harry and I can go get them tomorrow,” Hermione offered, and then hesitated. “Maybe you can rest once we’re done with this lot.”
Malfoy looked surprised, and then he smiled awkwardly, as if a smile directed at Hermione would not fit comfortably on his face. “I,” he said. “All right.”
He nicked another biro off her that night. Harry could not believe Malfoy’s idea of playing nice was kleptomania.
The next morning they had a lovely change from Malfoy Unpleasantness when they segued into Mrs Weasley Unpleasantness. She had not argued with Ron, but she was extremely vocal on the subject of Ginny going back to school.
“I won’t do it! I want to stay and help.”
“You’re not helping, you’re going back to school and staying out of trouble—you’re our baby—”
“I’m not a baby! And I will help, as soon as Harry’s worked out what we’re going to do—I will help—Harry needs support—”
“He’s got support—he doesn’t need two of my children—”
“You should go back to school, Ginny,” Harry said wretchedly, guilt pressing down on him until the words came out. Mrs Weasley’d done so much for him, he had to say something.
Everyone else, who’d had their heads bowed over their plates so they could butter toast and avoid the storm, looked at him with interest.
“I mean—I don’t—”
Ginny stared at him and looked as if she was about to cry.
Harry prayed for an interruption of any kind at all, and was incredulous when Charlie marched into the room with an Owl clutched in his fist.
“I got it!” he said. “I got the job! McGonagall’s taken me on as Hagrid’s assistant!”
Ginny’s expression of misery wavered and then, as she looked at Charlie, disappeared. She threw back her shoulders, turned her back on Harry and threw herself into Charlie’s arms.
“Of course you did,” she said.
Charlie laughed, radiant and incredulous, kissed her cheek and spun her off her feet. Once he’d put Ginny down Malfoy was at his side, glowing the same way Ginny was at Charlie’s delight. For a dreadful instant Harry thought Charlie was going to grab him and kiss him too, but Charlie’s face changed, presumably as he calmed down a bit, and he didn’t touch Malfoy at all.
“Hagrid’s assistant?” Malfoy drawled. “It’s a scandal, Charles. You should be ruling him with an iron fist.”
Charlie stopped hesitating and beamed at him. “Was that a very Slytherin form of congratulations?”
Malfoy shrugged.
Charlie adjusted his arm around Ginny, keeping her close. “I asked if I could live at home and come in part time,” he said slowly, looking from her face to Malfoy’s. “I thought maybe people could use me around here.”
“What, I don’t get a bedroom to myself again?” Malfoy demanded, smiling, as Ginny shrieked and kissed Charlie four times in rapid succession. “I suppose that’s all right,” he conceded. “Ah—Granger’s going off to the library tomorrow, which means I won’t have to study,” he went on cautiously.
“Tell you what,” Charlie said, still beaming. “Let’s celebrate. I’m taking you two out on the Muggle town.”
“Oooh, Mum, can I?” Ginny asked. “Oh, thank God, Charlie, I’ve been so bored cooped up here—Mum, please say yes, you know Charlie’ll look after me. The Muggle world! Malfoy, have you seen the Muggle world? Mum, can I change some money—just a little money—and buy things? Dad would love an iron to add to his collection!”
The stormy atmosphere was all changed while two Weasleys ran around in transports of enormous redheaded joy, but Harry knew matters with Ginny were not resolved. He was not looking forward to that conversation.
“If Ginny wants to do something,” Hermione said a little waspishly on leaving the breakfast table, “why doesn’t she—”
“Ah, Hermione, it’s not in the genes,” Ron told her. “Our wild Weasley blood—it’s for running free with dragons and Quidditch bats and things, not for reading. Ginny almost exploded just studying for her OWLs.”
“Well you read, Ron. Sometimes,” Hermione said.
“‘S different,” Ron explained. “You caught and trained me young.”
Harry saw the look that flashed between Ron and Hermione before Hermione was steeped in the joy and Ron the misery of reading, and it made him feel odd and unhappy. They hadn’t even kissed and he’d gone out with Ginny and he knew she was the one, but it still made him feel jealous.
It was probably the idea of Ginny practically alone with Malfoy all day that had him on edge. It made him want to lock people up.
When Harry returned to the Burrow laden with more horrible books, he and Hermione walked into the sound of muffled music, lights and laughter. Charlie tried to bar their way to the kitchen and then saw who they were and laughed.
“Thought you were Mum,” he said. “We’re playing the racy Celestina Warbeck songs.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Hermione.
“When she went off the rails and had her affair with the Minister for Magic. They’re her most popular songs—some of them have been translated into Muggle,” Charlie explained. “They upset Mum. She feels they’re beneath Celestina.”
“You had fun, then,” Hermione asked, laughing, but Harry had already seen Malfoy and Ginny over Charlie’s shoulder. He pushed past Charlie and into the bright light of the kitchen.
‘If I said you had a beautiful broomstick Would you hold it against me? If I swore you were a Veela Would you ride me like a centaur tonight?’
Harry had seen people wearing Muggle clothes his whole life, and never actually understood that they were obscene. He was used to people wrapped from neck to ankle in robes, sometimes overlaid with Weasley jumpers.
He was not used to Ginny in a summer dress, twirling under Malfoy’s arm. He couldn’t see Malfoy’s face, but he heard him laughing: when Ginny stepped in she slid both hands to rest on Malfoy’s back. Malfoy was still wearing the battered jeans from Snape’s house, but the shirt he was wearing was as new as Ginny’s dress: it was too tight, they both looked—this had to stop.
Ginny caught sight of Harry, smiled and twirled again.
“Look what Malfoy bought me!” she yelled over the music. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
Malfoy bent Ginny backwards over his arm and she yelped, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. Harry could see too much skin: Ginny’s knees and Malfoy’s back and everything was all horrible and wrong.
Malfoy looked at him deliberately for the first time in days, and it was a deliberate look. His smile was glittering with a kind of wild malice his mother would have kept caged.
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” he asked.
The urge to fall on Malfoy screamed in Harry’s veins, but hurting Malfoy in front of witnesses was even more likely to make them fall at Malfoy’s feet and all over his side.
Ginny tossed her curly hair over one bare, pale shoulder, letting go of Malfoy’s shirt now that he’d righted her. Instead of taking a hasty step away and slapping his face for taking liberties, as Harry would have preferred, she put her hand on his waist where there was a strip of skin showing.
Before Harry actually had an embolism, Mrs Weasley came in past Charlie and turned off the music, and while Harry glared and Ginny twirled and Malfoy smirked, she began earnestly saying that Celestina had been going through a bad time when she made this album and the lyrics were not really appropriate for young people.
Seeing Harry wretched apparently made Malfoy feel much better about his life: colour Harry absolutely shocked. He was almost grinning while Mrs Weasley fought Charlie and Ginny for the Celestina Warbeck album, Harry leaned against the kitchen surfaces and glared, and in the midst of chaos Malfoy made himself a cup of coffee.
“Do you dedicate your whole life to annoying me,” Harry said finally, curling his lip, “or is it just a malicious little hobby?”
Malfoy looked thoughtful, and then smiled. “Hobby. But I may go pro any day now.” He stirred his coffee, being deliberately noisy about it, and everything about him annoyed Harry so much he thought he might die. “While I know you enjoy the illusion that you are the shining centre of the universe, annoying you was just a side benefit.”
“Oh yeah, what other reason could you have for buying Ginny—”
Malfoy’s eyes and smile looked alive with malice at this point, sparkling like the sun on water, and if he said anything about the way Ginny looked in her dress Harry was going to hit him in the head with a kettle.
“These people put a roof over my head, and I’m not stupid enough to offer them money,” said Malfoy. “Ginny doesn’t have a lot of nice things.”
“I,” said Harry. “She always looks nice.”
“She doesn’t have butterfly clasps and things like the other girls at school. Probably why she likes being pretty so much.”
“She’s not vain,” Harry snapped.
“I wasn’t insulting her,” Malfoy snapped back. “You’ll know when I’m insulting someone, because I’ll be talking about you. Don’t blame me because you don’t notice simple things about your own girlfriend.”
“Oh, pardon me for not having your quick eye for accessories, Malfoy.”
Unbelievably, the corner of Malfoy’s mouth went up a fraction, and then he went still, looked horrified at himself and fixed his usual chilly glare on Harry. Harry resumed his own glare, feeling a little shaken.
“C’mon, Draco, this day’s not over yet,” said Charlie, striding over and putting his hand on the small of Malfoy’s back.
Malfoy turned to him at once and with obvious relief, face softening into a real smile, and then Ginny joined him. She had the Celestina Warbeck album tucked down the front of her dress and she was glowing, as she had when she’d wheedled Mrs Weasley for the Pygmy Puff. If she wanted stuff, she could’ve told Harry: he would’ve bought it for her.
“Let’s get brooms,” Malfoy suggested. “I hear you’re rather good at Quidditch.”
Charlie grinned. “Oh, I get by.”
“First a race on foot and then a broom race,” Ginny proposed. “Harry,” she said, and hesitated, looking still-hurt and a little shy. “You can come too.”
“He’s a busy boy,” Malfoy remarked pleasantly. “He should probably help Granger unshrink those books. Or maybe he could go upstairs and play with his Sword of Gryffindor.”
“I’ll come race,” Harry said, glaring. “I’ll help Hermione in a minute—you can borrow my broom,” he added to Ginny.
If Ginny liked things, a Firebolt was really a lot cooler than a stupid dress.
“Oh, thanks,” said Ginny.
They all went out into the evening air and Ginny shivered once she was three steps away from the comforting warmth of the kitchen. Harry took off his cloak and settled it around her, fingers lingering against the chilly flesh of her bare shoulders, and she smiled at him properly.
“So a race,” she said. “What does the winner get?”
Harry didn’t quite understand, but he understood Malfoy’s sudden sharp smile in the corner of his eye, and the sudden look of challenge on his face when Harry turned to him.
“The winner,” Malfoy said slowly, “gets to win.”
Harry suddenly remembered being ten years old. It was so vivid he could see the dustbins and gravel of the schoolyard in his primary school, hear the sound of Dudley and his gang in pursuit, back before Hogwarts and everything, before Harry won at anything, when he could run so fast that he could fly before he could really fly.
“You’re on,” he said.
Charlie’s voice was quiet and sure, an anchor back to the Burrow and the present day. “First to the end of the field where we throw the gnomes,” he said. “Ready. Set. Go!”
Harry went, far past the sound of Ginny’s surprised squeak, wind in his hair and his ears. He hadn’t run in years: he was startled at the sudden pleasure of it, like seeing the face of someone you’d loved once but almost forgotten, clean night air all around him and bloody Malfoy overtaking him, what was going on?
He caught the edge of Malfoy’s smirk as Malfoy passed and surged forward on annoyance alone: running full out, almost expecting Malfoy to trip him up (it would’ve been so like Malfoy) but Malfoy didn’t. He just kept running, and Harry kept running, while Harry’s lungs screamed for air and he heard Malfoy panting beside him and then heard a thump as Malfoy threw himself against the fence of the gnomes field, an instant before Harry did so himself.
Harry flung himself down on the ground and breathed in deep merciful lungfuls of air, before looking up at Malfoy. Malfoy was leaning against the fence, face shining with sweat, eyes wide.
“I won,” he said, sounding blank with surprise.
“Yeah,” Harry said, his throat feeling raw with the effort of getting air in as fast as possible. “I was rusty,” he added, and then wished he could take it back. He sounded like a sore loser, like a bloody Slytherin.
Malfoy didn’t appear to notice. “I won,” he repeated. “It’s probably—this summer. I never ran before, but that night at the Astronomy Tower Professor Snape grabbed me and he told me—”
“‘Run, Draco,’” Harry said, Malfoy’s first name strange in his mouth. “I was there.”
“You were just everywhere that night,” Malfoy remarked, mouth twisting, with less rancour than Harry might have expected. “Anyway,” he continued, still in that disbelieving tone. “When I was living with Professor Snape. There wasn’t much to do but I was allowed outside in the Muggle world, on all their—very grey streets, and I kept thinking about him saying ‘Run, Draco‘ and I’d run and—I wasn’t rusty. That’s probably why.”
“Right,” said Harry, and stared at him. Malfoy continued to look stunned and continued not to gloat, to a point where Harry’s expectations and reality felt like they would never meet again. “You’re a much better winner than you are a loser,” Harry said at last.
“Well,” said Malfoy, looking as much at a loss as Harry felt. “It’s not like you ever had the chance to find that out before.”
At that point Ginny and Charlie came up, clearly just pretending still to be running.
“I tripped,” Ginny explained. “Charlie stopped to help me up. Chivalry apparently being dead in everyone but my brother.”
“She always trips so she has a reason that she didn’t win,” Charlie said, grinning affectionately at her. Ginny punched him in the arm.
“Charlie, I won,” Malfoy announced, starting to sound pleased instead of shocked. “I won, Potter was humiliatingly defeated, you should have seen it—”
“You won by a couple of inches,” Harry said.
“More like a yard,” Malfoy asserted. “More like a mile. Potter’s totally out of condition, it was really sad to see him wheezing like an elderly carthorse.”
“Excuse me?”
Malfoy shrugged, grinning slyly at Charlie as if Harry couldn’t see him, as if Harry wasn’t right here. “I felt bad for you, Potter,” he said in a faux sympathetic tone. “Honestly.”
“I have to go,” Harry declared, standing up. “Hermione’s waiting for me and honestly, I have better things to do.”
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me on my triumph?” inquired Malfoy.
Charlie was grinning and trying to hide it. Harry didn’t—the atmosphere seemed wrong for snapping at Malfoy, but it was Malfoy so he certainly wasn’t going to grin too. He settled for rolling his eyes.
He was reading with Hermione and trying to follow her plan when he heard the whistle of brooms going by the window, and the sound of Ginny’s abrupt scream.
He was at the window before he had time to think, and that meant he was in time to see Malfoy bank and catch Ginny as she fell, to see Ginny put a trusting hand against Malfoy’s chest and curl her hand into his shirt, while she shook her free fist at Charlie and yelled: “Knocking your own sister off her broom!”
Charlie shouted an apology into the wind and Harry watched as Malfoy said something into Ginny’s ear. He watched Malfoy smile and Ginny smile, and Malfoy tuck Ginny’s brief skirt more securely around her pale thighs. Ginny rested against him and let him do it.
Races be damned. Harry should’ve turned Malfoy into the authorities and he would have done it, too, if it hadn’t been for that Horcrux.
The next day a Pensieve arrived for Harry, carried by several disgruntled-looking owls. They left it in the middle of the breakfast table and everyone sat around and stared at it, except for Charlie, who was so excited about going into work Harry didn’t think he’d spotted the enormous stone basin.
“That’s funny,” said Harry, “I didn’t order a great big basin for my thoughts. And by funny I mean suspicious, and by suspicious I mean I suspect Malfoy.”
Malfoy looked like he had slept on a book the night before on account of sleeping on a book the night before, but he smirked as he buttered his toast.
“Oh it came,” he said, as if only now observing a great big Pensieve beside the jam. “How nice.”
“How—why did you order me a Pensieve?” Harry demanded.
Malfoy stared. “Be reasonable, Potter. I couldn’t possibly order a Pensieve using my own name. I’m a fugitive from justice.”
“Why did you order a Pensieve at all?” Harry asked, holding his last shred of patience between his clenched teeth.
“Because you need one,” Malfoy answered readily. “See, from what Professor Snape told me, you have no organic understanding of Occlumency. He did, so he really didn’t have any idea how to teach you—particularly since you couldn’t be bothered working at it.”
Harry looked at him balefully and Malfoy raised his eyebrows and continued on.
“I caught on fast,” he added, sounding almost obscenely smug. “But my Aunt Bella said she’d had trouble learning at first, and given your violent tendencies, I thought your minds might work in somewhat the same way.”
He said ‘Aunt Bella’ with deliberate malice and an almost affectionate tone: as if he was perfectly aware of how much it must sting to hear himself compared to the woman who had killed Sirius, even if it wasn’t true, even if it was only Malfoy saying it when Malfoy’s opinion didn’t count.
“Get to the point,” Harry advised him, “or get ready for some violence.”
Malfoy put down his knife and leaned forward. “You’ve got to be shown how thoughts work,” he said, almost seriously. “You’ve got to be shown how minds work, and then you can understand better how to barricade them, and why it’s so important.”
There was a silence, broken by Ron’s embarrassed cough. Harry looked away.
“I’m off, wish me luck,” Charlie said, wandering about the place and spilling tea on his tie.
“Good luck,” said Ginny, with a smile and a kiss on the cheek.
“Mind you’re home for tea and don’t let that incompetent feed you to its beast minions,” said Malfoy.
“Thank you, Draco, you say the sweetest things,” said Charlie, reaching out as if he was going to ruffle Malfoy’s hair but not quite doing so. “Maybe if I get home while it’s light, we could fly some more. Have you people seen this kid fly?” he asked conversationally, not looking at the expressive faces around the table. “He’s really good. Needs to study his rule book more carefully, but really good.”
“I have a very good theoretical knowledge of rules,” Malfoy informed Charlie, looking extremely pleased with himself. “Charles could have played for England,” he told the members of Charlie’s immediate family, and then made it clear why he was saying anything at all. “I’ve never seen anybody fly so well,” he added, with an awed look up at Charlie and then a small, sideways sneer in Harry’s direction. “It was amazing.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie, looking slightly flustered. “Um. I have to go.”
Malfoy waved goodbye and Ron shouted out ‘Good luck!’ and Mrs Weasley and Ginny accompanied Charlie to the door. Once Charlie was gone, Malfoy looked solemn again: tired, pale, picking his toast to pieces in his hands instead of eating it, and focused on his task.
“We’ll start after breakfast,” he said.
“Uh,” said Harry. “Well. I used Dumbledore’s, too. Why are you asking?”
Malfoy and Harry were sitting crosslegged in front of the Pensieve, which had been installed in Charlie and Malfoy’s—the twins’—room, beside the desk with the clock Malfoy was mangling on it. They were glaring at each other. Harry didn’t know why Malfoy was glaring, other than his generally sour outlook on the world.
Harry was glaring because Malfoy had said “Aside from your illicit peek into Professor Snape’s Pensieve, have you seen inside anyone else’s Pensieve?” as if he was asking something perfectly filthy, and Harry saw no need for that sort of thing.
“When did you see Dumbledore’s?” asked Malfoy, apparently able to say the name of the man who had been murdered for him without a trace of remorse.
“Once in fourth year, and a lot of times in sixth,” Harry said. “He was showing me Tom Riddle—Voldemort, you know—his past, a lot of things about his past so I understood about Horcruxes and Voldemort and… Malfoy,” he interrupted himself. “How did you know about Horcruxes?”
Malfoy looked disconcerted, then smirked. “Professor Snape dropped one of our enchanted coins in Dumbledore’s room. We heard everything he said, all year. There were things he never told you, you know. He had a lot of secrets. What would you give to hear one of them?”
Harry looked out the window and away from Malfoy’s horrible face, and thought with savage satisfaction of Hermione’s Veritaserum, which would be ready in little more than a week. Then Malfoy would tell him anything Harry wanted to know.
“I wouldn’t trust a word out of your mouth.”
“Suit yourself,” Malfoy said brightly. “That poor, poor man. I mean Dumbledore,” he clarified, lingering over the name until Harry winced. “He showed you it a lot of things. He always thought too highly of you, didn’t he, and he overestimated you again when he thought viewings of the Pensieve would let something of the mysteries of the human mind seep into your thick head.”
“I see you belong to the Professor Snape school of teaching which involves making your students beat themselves to death with their textbooks to get away from you,” Harry said wearily. “Look, Malfoy, I seriously doubt you have much to teach me—”
“Don’t you dare get up!” Malfoy snapped. “You need to learn this, you’ve needed to learn this since fifth year, and unlike your precious Dumbledore, I don’t intend to put up with your sulking. If I can sit and teach you while you’re trying to kill my mother, you can sit down, shut up and learn!”
There was a moment in which Harry’s overwhelming desire to hit Malfoy upside the head warred with the knowledge that this was their best opportunity to get rid of Nagini.
“Did you know you have a relative called Phineas Nigellus Black?” Harry asked, giving up.
“Yes,” Malfoy said warily. “Why?”
Keeping his temper was almost worth it to see Malfoy look annoyed when Harry smiled an innocent smile. “No reason.”
They had another lovely moment of silent hateful staring. Then Malfoy breathed out hard through his nose.
“Clearly,” he said, “you need to go through this step by step. So come on.”
“Where’re we going?” Harry asked.
“Step by step,” Malfoy repeated, not answering Harry’s question at all. He drew his wand, placed at his temple and thought for a moment. Then he put his wand into the bowl, and it filled with a silvery liquid. He looked down at it, thoughtfully, said: “That’ll do,” put his wand in the Pensieve and tugged Harry’s sleeve.
There was a moment of blurry, stomach-turning confusion, and then they were on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, standing directly outside Madam Malkin’s robe shop.
“We’re looking at a memory of you going shopping?” Harry asked. “Wow, Malfoy, I knew you were kind of prissy, but this is going a bit far even for you.”
Malfoy let go of Harry’s sleeve and crossed his arms across his chest. “This is the first time we met,” he informed him.
“I’m really touched,” Harry said. “And I mean that. Why are we here, Malfoy? I know what happened here. If you don’t recall, I was there.”
Diagon Alley was familiar and bustling, from this year or six years ago or a hundred years ago, always the same. Malfoy still had his arms crossed over his chest, and for a moment Harry reflected that he was probably cold in that ridiculous T-shirt and served him right, until he realized they were not really outside.
“I know you were there,” Malfoy snapped at him. “D’you really think I’d let you see any of my memories that you didn’t already know about? God, Potter. They’re private.”
“Like I’d really want to see them anyway,” Harry muttered.
For a moment Malfoy looked at him as if he was going to punch him, and Harry braced himself for a fist-fight before he and Malfoy had ever actually even met. Then he remembered Nagini, and Hermione’s plan.
“So what were you planning to teach me?” Harry asked heroically.
“Well,” Malfoy began, and stopped. “All right,” he said in a slightly less combative tone. “D’you see the lamps and things in the windows there?”
“Yes,” Harry said uncertainly.
“Right,” Malfoy said, sounding encouraged, as if he’d expected Harry to be so dim he couldn’t actually see things. “Well, d’you see, I’m all the way up the alley there.”
He pointed and Harry squinted and made out three blond heads, one considerably closer to the ground than the others.
“Okay,” he said doubtfully. “So what?”
“This is my memory, Potter,” Malfoy reminded him. “I can’t possibly see those lamps yet, and yet we can see them now. But I knew they were there, and I could see some shapes that reminded me of them, and when I did get close enough to them I saw that they were there. So people looking at my memory of this moment see what I remember, which isn’t the same as seeing what I saw. D’you see how different a memory is than an experience—how different your mind makes something, as opposed to what really is?”
He made a sort of lamp or brain-shaped gesture with both hands, as if that would make Harry understand better. Harry chewed his lip.
“I think so,” he said.
Malfoy looked very relieved. “Good! Once you understand that the mind is very complex—not yours, Potter, obviously, but most people’s—you’ll understand that to protect your mind, you have to form many levels of defence.”
“It has to be sort of a strategy,” Harry said slowly.
Malfoy nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s exactly—oh, how adorable.”
He did not appear to be referring to the human brain or lamps, so Harry looked where he was looking, and saw that Lucius, Narcissa and eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy were approaching the robe shop. The sight of Lucius Malfoy set Harry’s teeth on edge. Both the Malfoy parents looked a little bored.
“I don’t see why I can’t keep having you homeschool me, Mother,” said eleven-year-old Malfoy, in a childish drawl that wasn’t quite as cool as it meant to be, particularly since Malfoy’s voice hadn’t broken yet. “I’m sure you know as much as any old teachers.”
“Your mother will have better things to do with her time, Draco,” Lucius Malfoy remarked crushingly.
Little Malfoy looked conscious of the rebuke, but persisted. “Yes, but I don’t want to learn with other children,” he said. “I’m not used to them.”
“Think of Crabbe and Goyle,” Narcissa murmured.
“They’re for holidays, not class,” Malfoy informed her severely. “I’ll be distracted from my lessons,” he continued, watching his mother’s face to see the effect of his dark predictions.
Harry didn’t remember Malfoy ever being this young. It seemed unlikely.
“You’ll get along marvellously with the other children,” Narcissa told him distractedly. “Lucius, we’re going to be late for our three o’clock lunch. If I pick up Draco’s wand and you get his books and he gets his robes pinned by himself—”
“By myself?” exclaimed little titchy Malfoy.
“Certainly, by yourself,” Lucius Malfoy said. “Your mother’s quite right.”
“I’ll meet you outside,” Narcissa murmured to him. She reached out as if she was going to touch tiny Malfoy’s hair, but her fingers stopped short and her hand fell back to her side. Tiny Malfoy looked up at her and then squared his shoulders.
“I expect I can go in by myself,” he said. “After all, it’s only a tradeswoman.”
Lucius Malfoy nodded sharply to his son, and then strode away with his wife in his wake. Malfoy went slowly into the robe shop, and normal-sized Malfoy and Harry followed him.
“Did you notice how you can hear everyone’s conversations on the street though I wasn’t paying attention to them at the time?” Malfoy asked. “You can piece things out of the subconscious that someone doesn’t even realise they know.”
“Er—yeah,” said Harry. “I did notice that… very thing. So, um, so it’s important to defend the subconscious as well,” he guessed in a vain attempt to hide the fact he’d been quite absorbed by the Malfoys’ inter-family dynamic.
“Half a point to Gryffindor,” Malfoy told him, looking grudgingly impressed.
“Why half a point? What else should I have picked up on?”
“Oh—nothing,” said Malfoy. “I just don’t like Gryffindor.”
Harry snorted and watched tiny Malfoy being high-handed with Madam Malkin. She could’ve murdered him and hid his eleven year old corpse in one of her capacious wardrobes and saved the world a lot of trouble.
Malfoy was swathed in robes and looked floppy and unimpressed with the world from his vantage point on a stool when the door opened again, and tiny Harry came in. Ron had been right all along: eleven year olds were freakish midgets. Harry didn’t recall ever being that small, or that pale and sort of waifish looking.
“God,” Malfoy said. “Were you… I don’t remember you actually looking underfed.”
Harry lifted a shoulder uncomfortably. Tiny Harry looked apprehensively about the dark shop, longingly at the door which Hagrid stood behind, and then ventured forward into the back. He had knock knees and his glasses were too big for his pinched little face. Harry would’ve felt sorry for him on the street and not wanted to meet his eyes—he didn’t think of those days much. They didn’t matter now.
Only someone should be taking care of that child, a voice in Harry’s mind said.
He looked away from other Harry’s small face and back at Malfoy. Malfoy was a weird looking little kid, he decided: it was lucky his face had become less pointed as he grew older.
He looked a bit like an inquisitive chihuahua.
He had his head tilted to one side and was regarding little Harry thoughtfully. Harry saw him square his shoulders again under the heaps of material, and clearly begin biding his time.
Once small Harry had become less small by means of a stool, small Malfoy picked his moment to strike. “Hullo,” he said in a drawl that was clearly hopeful. “Hogwarts too?”
Little Harry cast him rather a panicked look. “Yes?”
Actually, Harry refused to believe his voice had ever sounded like that.
Malfoy’s current voice, which had broken but which retained its quality of piercing drawl, said: “See how we can see the light behind my head, which obviously I am entirely unable to see? Layers of the mind, Potter. Remember. Of course, you couldn’t go to Timbuctoo while still in my memory. After leaving the shop you might be able to go a few streets before the memory fades and you with it and out of it. The mind does have limits, but probably not the ones you think.”
Harry was listening to tiny Malfoy talk about bullying his parents. It occurred to him for the first time that Lucius Malfoy was not the type who could possibly be bullied.
“Look at you,” he mumbled. “Talking about smuggling in brooms… you were a little horror.”
“Yes, I had such a fine smuggled broom,” Malfoy said sharply. “No, wait—only one first year had a broom, and holy favouritism, that was you. I was clearly—grandstanding a little bit, and don’t start on lying Slytherins with me, Potter, pay attention to the lesson.”
Harry blinked and said, “Grandstanding—because I was Harry Potter, d’you mean?”
“Yes,” said Malfoy. “As the first ever eleven year old Legilimens, I read your mind. Fear me, my powers are awesome: I will defeat you and the Dark Lord and reign in glory forever.” He scowled and leaned back against the wall. “Could you actually drop your hobby of judging me for just ten minutes and try to focus?”
Tiny Malfoy chewed on his equally tiny lower lip and offered what he clearly considered to be a brilliant conversational gambit: “Play Quidditch at all?”
“No,” said small Harry in a mortified deadpan tone.
Little Malfoy looked daunted but chattered onwards about how his father said it would be a crime if he wasn’t picked for the house team. Malfoy was a little liar, Harry noticed, but it wasn’t like Harry was going to judge Malfoy for pretending his father was proud of him. What the hell did Malfoy think of him, anyway.
“Oh my God, I am so cute,” wailed Malfoy, apparently able to contain his perverted child-molesting narcissism no longer. “So cute. I don’t know why you had to be so freaking rude, Potter, you social offence.”
“I didn’t know what you were talking about,” Harry exclaimed, stung. “I had no idea what to say.”
“Mmm,” said small Harry in response to one of small Malfoy’s hopeful questions. His face looked shut down: Harry supposed he could see why it might’ve looked like a brush-off, particularly since small Harry had no subtlety and was looking at Malfoy with unconcealed distaste.
Little Malfoy, Harry noticed a bit guiltily, was looking distinctly taken aback. He looked about the robe shop slightly desperately, as if searching for inspiration, and perked up when his eyes lit on the window.
“I say!” he exclaimed. “Look at that man!”
“That’s Hagrid,” said small Harry, brightening. He had knowledge to impart, Harry thought with a sort of proprietory fondness. It was sweet. Not that small Malfoy appreciated it, of course, since he immediately started drawling about servants setting fire to their beds.
Malfoy, unabashedly partisan at this point, was cooing at his youthful counterpart.
“That’s an astute little judge of character,” he remarked. “Had my lapses now and then,” he added, casting a baleful look at Harry, “but on the whole, very sound.”
“Where are your parents?” asked little Malfoy chattily.
Midget Harry gave him a stony look and said: “They’re dead.”
Midget Malfoy’s eyes widened fractionally, and then he said blankly, “Oh. Sorry.”
“Such sweet sympathy,” Harry commented. “Warms my heart.”
“Oh, what was I supposed to say,” Malfoy snapped. “I was eleven years old and not used to other children and you go around dropping non sequitors like that into the conversation.”
“Well, what was I supposed to say?” Harry demanded. “They were dead.”
“I don’t think there was any need to be so surly about it,” Malfoy remarked peevishly.
Small Harry was at the edge of his stool furthest from small Malfoy, who was looking extremely discouraged and annoyed. Both of them looked relieved when Madam Malkin said Harry was done, and tiny Harry fairly launched himself from the stool.
Harry hadn’t been aware that Malfoy had made a little face at him.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” small Malfoy drawled on like a trooper.
Small Harry disappeared behind the door at speed. Small Malfoy waited until his mother came to fetch him, and then he got off the stool and said: “Are you sure I can’t be homeschooled?”
“I’m sure,” Narcissa Malfoy said, casting a tender look at her son’s head which he was too short to see.
“Even if people hate me on sight?” demanded small Malfoy. “Fine, Mother.”
Harry looked at Malfoy, and caught him staring wistfully at his mother. He snapped out of it in a second and caught Harry looking, and narrowed his eyes.
“The lesson ends here,” Malfoy said, and took hold of Harry’s jumper sleeve again. Harry let him pull him in his wake, mostly because staying in Malfoy’s memory without Malfoy would be a little awkward and pointless, and they strode through Diagon Alley. “See how the streets get mistier and less detailed,” Malfoy said, talking like a teacher again. “See the limits of memory and observation fade until finally the memory is unable to—”
He was cut off by their sudden presence in the twins’ room, which led to Malfoy letting go of Harry’s sleeve and both of them assuming positions on opposite sides of the Pensieve.
“Sustain itself,” Malfoy finished. “There. D’you think you managed to learn anything at all?”
He stepped backwards until he was leaning against the wall and scowled as he had in the shadows of the robe shop, listening to a much younger Harry’s monosyllabic replies.
Harry leaned forward, arms against his knees, and said honestly, “I think I did. It went… considerably better than all my lessons with Professor Snape.”
Malfoy looked startled and gratified. Harry was oddly reminded of Malfoy winning that race and looking so pleased with himself.
He looked around the bedroom, at the pieces of mended clock, and thought of Hermione brewing Veritaserum and Malfoy stealing some of Harry’s hair for purposes unknown and how small they’d been, and how seriously they’d taken themselves.
“Look,” said Harry. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that you were trying to—make nice, or something, in your weird way. I wasn’t all that used to social situations and I just thought you were a brat and actually I think I was right, but I didn’t know I was right at the time, and I was a little… abrupt. So there.”
“You’re still abrupt,” Malfoy pointed out.
“Obviously now,” Harry said. “You’ve done stuff to deserve it now. You hadn’t then. So.”
“All right,” Malfoy said.
They regarded each other warily, with narrowed eyes but less hostility than usual, and eventually Malfoy’s eyes narrowed back into the normal amount of hostility.
“I can’t hang around here all day,” he said, rising. “We’ll have another lesson tomorrow. For now I have to work on saving my mother. You remember—the one whose life you’re holding hostage. Tell me, Potter,” he continued, opening the door of his room, “Is it sheer jealousy that motivates you? You have no parents, so you try to murder other people’s?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He just slammed the door.
“I wonder where Malfoy is,” Hermione said thoughtfully, lifting her head from her book that afternoon.
Late August sunlight was oozing through the curtains, reminding Harry that there was a world out there away from this cage of useless uninformative information. He felt irritated at the very thought of Malfoy.
Hermione probably missed him because he was the only one pretending interest in the study plan, or possibly because he had stolen all her pens and she needed them back.
“Maybe he’s with Ginny,” he suggested dully.
Maybe he’s touching her thighs some more, he thought but did not say because Ron would have had an embolism, and anyway it would have been besmirching Ginny’s good name. She couldn’t help it if she fell off her broom, or if Malfoy bought stupid clothes.
Harry turned a page and Hermione’s head went up at the clean sound of it ripping.
“Oh honestly,” she began, “is this about Ginny and Malfoy again? I told you he’s not her type.”
“Who’s not whose type?” asked Malfoy, coming in at exactly the wrong moment with a book in his hand and Charlie grinning at his back. “Hail the conquering teacher. He made a lesson plan, a real lesson plan, and he’s going to make Hagrid follow it. Aren’t you, Professor?”
“Do not call me that,” Charlie requested. “You are making me feel old.”
Malfoy took a chair, apparently so he could tip back his head and laugh up at Charlie in comfort.
“If I wasn’t so very expelled, you’d be teaching me in four days,” he went on. “Professor.”
“I said stop, Draco—” Charlie began, when Ron interrupted to ask Charlie how his day had gone.
Clearly Charlie wasn’t all that upset with Malfoy, since he stayed leaning against the back of Malfoy’s chair, Malfoy’s uncut hair touching Charlie’s folded arms, as he talked in a happy way about his lesson plan. It seemed to include extraordinary amounts of dragons.
“Oh,” he said when he was done, “what was all that about types?”
“Nothing,” Harry answered quickly. “I don’t even believe people have types.”
“I do,” Malfoy said, clearly just wanting to contradict Harry and further make his life a misery, as was Malfoy’s sacred calling. “Look around you, Potter. Look at Granger.”
Everybody looked intently at Hermione. She looked rather flustered.
“She goes for the physical, outdoors type,” said Malfoy. “Big shoulders, not her rivals in the academic world, but not incompetents. She doesn’t fancy Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs. She wants whoever she’s with to have power but not the same kind of power she does. That’s why she asked that idiot Mc… Idiot—”
“McLaggen,” said Ron, bristling at the thought of him.
“If you like,” Malfoy said agreeably. “She asked him to the Christmas party instead of Zacharias Smith, the far more sensible choice. She’s a complete sucker for the obvious—Gryffindor—type,” he said, dwelling on every word for the malicious pleasure of seeing Ron go red.
He sank back against his chair, and enjoyed the effect.
Hermione went pink and hit back. “What about your type, Malfoy—those rumours true?”
Malfoy’s mouth went thin. “None of your business, Granger.”
The atmosphere suddenly chilly in the stifling room, people looking at their books as if they were interested in them while Harry wondered what those rumours could possibly be. He hadn’t heard any rumours. Since he’d been trying to keep an eye on Malfoy all throughout sixth year, he would have thought that Hermione might have mentioned any rumours.
“Um,” said Charlie, making a valiant effort to restore amity. “But, uh, but Harry says he doesn’t believe in types. Can you have a type if you don’t believe in it?”
“Oh yes,” Malfoy returned, back to being the teacher’s pet even though this wasn’t a classroom and Charlie wasn’t his teacher. “Of course. Let’s examine his girlfriends.”
Malfoy had been doing quite enough examining of Harry’s girlfriend as it was, thank you.
“Cho and Ginny don’t have anything in common,” Harry said flatly, and knew that he was going red and Malfoy was smirking. “They didn’t even look alike.”
“Naturally, it’s all about looks,” Malfoy sneered. “Of course they’re alike, are you blind? Both of them the centre of their little social whirl, both of them popular and playing for it. Always the ones to make their circle laugh, always with someone on their arms. Chang is a little more sensitive and attached to her friends and Ginny is braver, but… please. They both even played Quidditch. It’s so obvious.”
“He makes compelling points,” Charlie said, grinning.
Harry glared at him and then returned his glare to Malfoy where it belonged, and was so richly deserved.
“I don’t even know what you think you’re saying,” he began.
Malfoy grinned and spun the locket between his hands, flashing gold in the shadow between his throat and chin, as if he was flipping a coin over and over in his palms.
“I’m saying you like the mouthy show-off type,” he said. “And you don’t even know it.”