Not tiny (but still on the short side) Malfoy picked Pansy Parkinson up off her feet and twirled her around. Harry was kind of impressed: she was a little taller than he was. She laughed out loud as he did it, her pink frills whipping round them both as he executed another slow circle. He grinned cockily up at her and was obviously hugely pleased with himself.
Harry did not think it was fair that Malfoy had evidently had a better Yule Ball than he had.
The present Malfoy, taller and not currently twirling, got a firm grip on Harry’s elbow and steered him away from his former self, left small forever and at the dance forever like a plant pressed in a book. He drew Harry across the floor over to the table where the drinks were available, and he knelt down, gestured to Harry to do the same, and together they peered under the tablecloth.
Under the table were Fred and Angelina, rolling about enthusiastically.
“My, these immoral Gryffindors,” Malfoy said. “I call it shocking. Is that the evil twin, or the evil twin?”
“It’s Fred,” Harry muttered. “And he’s Ron’s brother, can we not see him snogging, please?”
Malfoy continued kneeling on the gleaming floor and looked overcome with smugness. “In just a minute, Potter,” he said. “What are we learning from this memory?”
“Um,” Harry said. “You’re a pervert?”
“Not when it comes to the Weasley twins I’m not,” said Malfoy. “Now, these two are engaging in Gryffindor preliminary mating rituals or whatever. Nobody’s really lifted the table cloth. Watch me coming towards the table.”
Smaller Malfoy was making his way determinedly through the crowds as Harry watched, looking pink from dancing and tugging at his high vicar’s collar. He was holding Pansy Parkinson’s hand and she was following in his wake like a helpless mass of frills caught in Hurricane Malfoy.
“I can’t believe they spiked the punch!” he was saying excitedly. “Let’s have some more.”
“Er, Draco. I don’t think it’s spiked,” Pansy told him.
Harry leaned against the drinks table and said: “It wasn’t, you know.”
“Shut up, learn and it was too,” Malfoy said.
Crabbe and Goyle, dressed in green so they looked like well-forested mountains, were already standing uneasily by the drinks table. Malfoy nodded to them as he got himself and Pansy some drinks.
“Now, don’t worry, Pansy,” he said grandly. “Even if you become intoxicated, I promise not to take advantage of you.”
Crabbe and Goyle both looked puzzled, and Pansy gave a despairing shrug. “He thinks the punch is spiked,” she said. “Er. You know how he gets when he has sugary things.”
Smaller Malfoy opened his mouth, clearly about to protest indignantly, and then a small sound caught his attention and he looked down at the end of the tablecloth, which was stirring slightly.
“If you people want something that’s really spiked,” said an unfamiliar voice, “follow me.”
Harry glanced at the face mostly obscured by Crabbe’s shoulder, and recognised Blaise Zabini. He didn’t ever really recall noticing Blaise Zabini at age fourteen, he’d just been a tall annoying part of Malfoy’s crowd who was less weedy than Theodore Nott.
He remembered Malfoy at Bill’s wedding, saying that he was no Blaise Zabini when it came to looks. Harry supposed Zabini was all right looking. Actually, he was taller and had a lot more poise than smaller Malfoy: Harry wondered for a moment why everyone always followed in Malfoy’s wake, and supposed that the Slytherins must choose a leader based on sheer obnoxiousness.
To prove his point, Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy all looked at smaller Malfoy. Malfoy tilted his head and said, “Why not?”
Zabini’s date, some redhaired girl Harry recognised vaguely as part of Pansy’s crowd, came to his side and the Slytherins all turned and headed for the doors of the Great Hall, Malfoy in the lead even though he couldn’t know where they were going.
“Now have we picked up anything from this?” asked present day Malfoy, being deliberately condescending while still on his knees. He looked strange sitting on the floor in his ratty jeans, with his backdrop the students in dress robes and all the glittering lights of the Yule Ball.
Harry exhaled. “No, but it’ll be much more fun for you to look superior and tell me.”
“I didn’t see Johnson and Weasley,” said Malfoy. “I did not know that they were there. I heard a rustle which, when I looked at this memory again years later, made me think that there might be someone under the table. I didn’t even think of that at the time, and until I looked just now I had no idea who they were. Yet subconsciously I knew who was in the room, who had left via which doors, who was left but not visible. So by getting into my brain anyone can find out things I don’t even know that I know. Things that I have no way of knowing that I know. Can you think of any other time in a Pensieve when you’ve received information that the person did not actually know they had?”
Harry thought through all the times he had seen inside Dumbledore’s Pensieve and came up with nothing, and then recalled Snape’s memory.
“Yeah, I did,” he said. “I heard a whole conversation that the person whose memory it was didn’t hear. There was information in there—important information that the person didn’t know.”
Like that Lupin was a werewolf. Snape only knew that later.
“Good, see, that’s an excellent example,” Malfoy said, his eyes gleaming. “I bet the person was close enough to make out some sounds, though. Sounds that his subconscious was able to put together to make a conversation when you approached them. There are the things that you know, and the things you realize later that you know, and the things you don’t know but which people can find out if they have access to your mind. Occlumency means you have to protect yourself on all these levels. You have to protect knowledge you have no way of knowing you have.”
Harry leaned forward, resting his arms against his knees, and said: “It’s a bit of a tall order, Malfoy.”
“Yes, Potter, learning is hard and life wasn’t meant to be easy. Go and sulk somewhere because the world’s not fair,” Malfoy sneered, mildly enough for Malfoy.
Harry shook his head, got to his feet and met Cedric Diggory’s eyes.
Cedric stood against the bright lights of the ball and looked right through him, grey eyes smiling at someone who was really there, Cho snuggled up to his side. Harry was startled to realise that they were the same height.
Harry was the same age, now, as Cedric had been when he died.
“Potter, you can’t adopt your usual method of tuning out while education happens to other people. You are the only student I am teaching.” Malfoy got to his feet as well, and when Harry pulled his gaze from Cedric’s face to Malfoy’s, Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “What were you looking at?”
“What’d you call him on your badges?” Harry asked, feeling tired suddenly. “The real Hogwarts champion.”
There was a small pool of silence in the midst of all the lights and noise of memory.
“Right,” Malfoy said at last. “D’you—let’s go then, my old self has left already and I think we’re done here.”
Harry turned his eyes away from Cedric, moving through the crowds with the bright assurance of someone with his whole life ahead of him, and said to distract himself from thoughts of death: “Did you really get drunk at the Yule Ball?”
“I was already drunk,” Malfoy told him. “Because the punch was spiked.”
“Right,” Harry said. “I forgot.”
When he’d been fourteen, he had not slipped off for spots of illicit drinking. He’d been too busy trying not to get turned into charred lumps by dragons. He looked around for his younger self, and saw himself looking small and rather cowed as Parvati Patil talked animatedly to a French boy and gave him filthy looks.
“See how—” Malfoy began.
“Yes, I can see it happening even though you couldn’t see it happening, human brain, fascinating and complex,” Harry said.
“Well, this is true, but actually what I was going to say was ‘see how pathetic you were, Potter?’ Oooh, girls, they have cooties,” Malfoy said. “‘I need to go sneak away outside with my best friend Weasley, maybe we can play a jolly game of conkers!’”
“What were you doing that was so cool,” Harry inquired. “Besides being drunk on sugar?”
“The punch was spiked, I keep telling you!” Malfoy exclaimed. “Wait. Where are you going?”
Harry walked across the gleaming marble floor. He did not want to think about how he was beginning to understand what he had to do to shield his mind, and how impossibly huge the task would be. He did not want to think about Cedric Diggory, who had been the first but not the last to die.
He pushed through the doors of the Great Hall and down into the dungeons, where Slytherins would naturally head, but nothing in the memory of the Great Hall had faded so Malfoy had to be quite close still—and he saw the chink of light from an ajar door.
“Potter, seriously, don’t go in there,” Malfoy commanded, as Harry went in there.
Inside was Pansy Parkinson, shyly undoing the front of her dress robes to show her bra. Harry immediately clapped his hands over his eyes.
“Oh my God!”
“I told you,” Malfoy pointed out. “Also don’t you dare look at her.”
It was a fine time for Malfoy to be getting modest and protective, when Pansy was showing her bra to a crowd of Slytherins, all of whom were giggling. Harry risked a look: fourteen year old girl still in her bra, and Blaise Zabini passed her a large bottle.
Pansy took it and tipped it up, then surfaced wiping her mouth. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”
Zabini looked pleased to be asked. “Professor Hagrid’s hovel.”
Everyone giggled. Zabini looked even more coolly and immensely pleased with himself.
“Good one,” younger Malfoy said, smirking, and Pansy came up to him and gave him the bottle.
He took it and slung his arm around Pansy’s bare shoulders, then glanced anxiously but very swiftly into her face. Pansy smiled and leaned against him. Younger Malfoy tipped up the bottle and almost immediately came up choking and grimacing.
He gasped for air and choked out, “Smooth.”
“Really smooth,” Harry said.
Malfoy leaned against the wall, watching his younger self with eyes full of perverse disturbing narcissism, and gave Harry the finger.
“I can’t believe Professor Hagrid took an actual woman to the dance,” younger Malfoy was saying. “I was expecting a griffin called Melinda.” He passed the bottle to the redhaired girl Harry didn’t know and began to do a little dance, shaping his hands over the enormous bulky wings Pansy did not, in fact, have. “All ri’, Melinder?” he asked in an unexpectedly good impression of Hagrid’s accent. “No, no, I don’t mind your big chompin’ teeth at all. ‘S a matter o’ fact, I like ‘em. And if you get a bit peckish, feel free to help yourself t’snacks any time. Wait, those aren’t snacks, they’re my students! Oh well, same diff’rence, righ’?”
Harry was indignant all right, but he was a bit intrigued by the way the other Slytherins all started laughing properly now, instead of giggling a bit furtively.
Pansy was laughing and leaning against him, and younger Malfoy kept glancing at her bra. He tried to conceal it with a quick impression of Flitwick cutting a rug on the dance floor.
She shrieked when he spun her in and out, doing Flitwick’s tiny rapid steps, and he said in a high voice: “They say it’s what you do with it that counts!” and all the Slytherins laughed and laughed.
Except Zabini, who did smile, but who did not look best pleased.
Pansy shrieked with laughter, and when Malfoy spun her out and then back in again she leaned against him, young and drunk, half in and half out of a dress that looked like a stupid pink birthday cake, and kissed him clumsily on the mouth.
“All right, Potter,” Malfoy said abruptly. “That’s enough. I’m teaching you, that doesn’t mean you get to see my first snog. Come on.”
He grabbed Harry’s arm more viciously than was necessary, which served as a helpful reminder that Malfoy was not all little imitations and getting drunk on sugar. Harry scowled at him and felt a bit better as the world dissolved around them and the Slytherins’ laughter faded away.
Once they were back in Malfoy’s room—the twins’ room, Harry reminded himself sharply, the twins’ room, Malfoy was an invader—he found that he had lost his scowl in the gap between memory and reality. He and Malfoy stood there looking at each other over the bowl of the Pensieve.
“The Flitwick impression,” Harry said slowly. “It wasn’t bad.”
“It was genius,” Malfoy informed him, but he looked vaguely startled.
If the silence continued, someone was going to snap. At the other person. Just because that was easier.
“So,” Harry said. “Um. Zabini doesn’t like you much, does he?”
Of course even something as innocent as that apparently made Malfoy’s eyes narrow, since Malfoy was always bound and determined to be unpleasant. “What d’you mean?” he said in a clipped voice.
“Well,” Harry said. “Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? He wanted everyone to pay attention to him, and everyone was looking at you.”
“What?” Malfoy asked, his voice still sharp. “Potter, everyone’s been saying it for years but I think it bears repeating: you’re crazy. Zabini’s my friend. You’re the one who doesn’t like me. Leave it alone.”
He twitched and then shrugged as if he was trying to shake Harry off him, and Harry remembered something he had said a few weeks ago, in the kitchen: I’m done with you.
“The lesson was—fine,” Malfoy said curtly when he was at the door. “You may not be quite as irredeemably stupid as Professor Snape always feared. Or possibly I’m just a very, very gifted teacher.”
“Come on,” Harry said. “We need to get through a dozen more books today.”
One book down, which left eleven to go, and then he could go to bed and wake up all ready for another day of God help him books and God help him lessons with Malfoy.
God really help him, because he was beginning to look forward to the lessons a little bit. At least something happened during the lessons, at least he was accomplishing something, and he and Malfoy hardly tried to kill each other at all.
So far he’d seen Madam Malkin’s shop, the Quidditch World Cup, and now the Yule Ball. It was funny how things looked different, seen from outside and over the distance of several years.
“Book number three. And I think I want to kill myself,” Ron said. “Don’t try to stop me, Hermione.”
“Don’t mess up my books,” Hermione said absently, and then actually wrenched herself from her world of text to say severely, “That isn’t funny, either.”
Ron scrubbed a hand through his hair and it stood up as if he was a redheaded porcupine. “It was a little bit.”
All this reading was just making Hermione glow with serene inner light, Harry thought, while he and Ron were definitely feeling the strain. As for Malfoy, he was—worried about his mother, and apparently so temperamental he fell apart at the first sign of stress, and he looked like hell.
He glanced over at Malfoy, who appeared to be pulling his own hair to keep awake, and who had violet shadows under his eyes.
Malfoy younger didn’t have any shadows under his eyes. He didn’t look so wretched, either. He just stood there half-smiling and looking nervous and pleased while Pansy Parkinson curved her mouth towards his own.
Well, life was not exactly spectacular for Harry right now either, Harry thought with sudden annoyance at himself, and flipped another page. And he’d had a crap Yule Ball, as well.
Ron went for a sandwich after a few hours and took Hermione with him by force, because by force was the only way she could be removed from the study room these days. Harry kept reading for approximately three seconds after they were gone, and then he drummed his fingers on the table, shut his book and said: “So, who was—”
“If you get to ask me a question I get to ask you one,” Malfoy said sharply. “You’re invading my privacy enough already. It’s only fair.”
“Wh—oh, fine,” Harry said. “Even though all I was going to ask was who was the redhaired girl with Zabini. She looked familiar.”
Harry shifted uncomfortably and fixed his gaze on the window behind Malfoy’s head. There was no call for Malfoy to stare at him like that.
“Oh, she looked familiar, did she?” Malfoy said. “Probably because she’s been in class with you six years. Honestly, Potter, do you live in some kind of bubble?”
“No,” Harry snapped. “It was just a question, sorry I asked—”
“Her name is Daphne Greengrass,” Malfoy informed him in exaggeratedly kindly tones. “Zabini’s first name is Blaise. My name is Draco—”
“I know your name!”
“I’m honoured and touched,” said Malfoy. “D’you know any Slytherin girls’ names?”
“I know Pansy Parkinson,” Harry answered, glaring while Malfoy smirked.
Malfoy’s smirk softened suddenly, becoming something almost like a real smile. “Well. She is the best of them.”
“I know—Millicent Bulstrode.”
“And the rest is embarrassed and shameful silence,” Malfoy remarked at length. “You’re such a freak, Potter. I swear to God.”
“Forget it,” said Harry, and opened his book, and concentrated on the text and not on seething. Bloody Slytherins, they insulted you if you tried to take an interest, they insulted you for any reason at all.
“My turn now,” Malfoy said with great satisfaction. “That was the deal.”
“Wh—fine,” Harry said, slamming his book shut. Malfoy propped his chin on his fist and regarded him with wide, curious, childlike eyes, which he was clearly doing with intent to infuriate. “Fine, ask me something as burningly important as Daffy Greengrass’ stupid name. Knock yourself out.”
“I believe the deal was that I could ask any question I wanted,” Malfoy disagreed, and then looked even more wide-eyed. “Or aren’t you a man of your word, Potter?”
“I actually don’t have words to express how irritating you are,” Harry said.
Malfoy looked bizarrely complimented. He continued to sit quietly for a while, with his innocent stare and his malicious little brain obviously working overtime, and then he said: “When you saw all that stuff in the Pensieve about the Dark Lord. I mean, obviously I heard it, because of the enchanted coins Snape so kindly popped in there—” he smirked briefly, and then paused. “The Dark Lord,” he said. “What was he like, when he was human? I mean, he must have changed, there must have been a reason my f—people thought it was a good idea to…” He glared at Harry suddenly as if it was Harry’s fault he was having problems expressing his thoughts, and said lamely, “I just wondered what he was like.”
Harry blinked. “Well,” he said. “Er.”
Malfoy did not appear seem to be actively mocking him. Harry had no idea how to deal with this entirely unprecedented situation.
“Well, he—looked different, for one thing,” Harry said slowly. “I suppose that some people might’ve been more likely to listen to him and follow him because he was really good-looking—”
Malfoy cut Harry off with an incredulous snort of laughter.
“Pardon?”
“I was just trying to answer your stupid question,” Harry snapped.
Malfoy was doing a very half-hearted job of hiding his smirk with one hand. “Mmm, oh yes, yes you did,” he assured Harry. “I think that’s fascinating—I really, I really do.” He looked at Harry an instant longer and then cracked up. “Would you,” he said, sniggering. “Would you describe yourself and the Dark Lord as star-crossed?”
Harry felt himself go red. “Stop laughing, Malfoy—I—it’s not funny, for God’s sake, nothing about Voldemort is—”
Malfoy was still laughing into his palm. “D’you, d’you think that if you and he had met under different circumstances, you could have made it work?”
Entirely against his own will, Harry’s mouth twitched. “Malfoy, I can’t believe you’re—”
“Ron, if you get crumbs on the library books I’ll—tell Madam Pince you did it,” Hermione said as they came in, Ron armed with a sandwich that appeared to be a mountain between two slices of bread. She stopped on the threshold and looked quizzically from Harry’s face to Malfoy’s. “Something funny?” she asked doubtfully.
“Nothing at all!” gasped Malfoy, and put his head in his hands and howled.
Harry almost knocked his chair backwards getting up. “I’m going to get a sandwich too,” he muttered. “It was my fault for asking about that stupid Daffy’s name anyway—”
“Do you mean Daphne Greengrass?” Hermione asked. “What about her?”
Malfoy lifted his flushed face from his arms and drawled, “Actually, she prefers to be called Queenie. It’s a sweet little nickname.”
“It’s a Slytherin little nickname,” Harry said.
“Well,” Malfoy replied, looking proud. “That too.”
Harry gave up and left the room.
He really wished he had not when he stepped into the kitchen just as Mrs Weasley said: “It’s not too late, Ginny. Arthur can run you up in the car anytime you like, you’ll only have missed a day of school—”
“No,” Ginny said flatly. “I won’t go anywhere. Harry needs my help—”
“He hasn’t asked for your help!” Mrs Weasley snapped. “What can you do to help him? You’re not doing anything, you’re just sitting around here when you could be learning to defend yourself better, be protected by Professor McGonagall and—”
“I don’t want to be protected!” Ginny snapped. “I want to fight!”
Harry saw Mrs Weasley’s face go pale at the thought. They were standing staring at each other across the kitchen table, eyes on a level, both bursts of red hair lit by sunlight, and Harry realized for the first time, looking at their set expressions, that Ginny and her mother looked an awful lot alike.
Feeling acutely uncomfortable, he tried to walk backwards and get out of the kitchen as fast as possible, and then his back hit the doorframe and both of them turned and fixed him with steely eyes.
Harry did not know what he had done to deserve the wrath of the Weasley women falling upon him.
“Harry,” Ginny said, advancing on him. “Don’t you think I should stay?”
“Don’t you think she should go somewhere safe?” Mrs Weasley asked.
“Hogwarts safe?” Ginny demanded. “You must be joking. I would’ve been killed in my first year if not for Harry! Death Eaters got in last year!”
“Because of Malfoy,” Harry said. “Who’s here. And Voldemort won’t be targeting Hogwarts anymore, not without me and Dumbledore there. There are a lot of teachers there who will be doing their best to protect the students and no reason for you to be in danger—I—I think you should go.”
“There!” said Mrs Weasley, panting. “There! Ginny, don’t you see, you have to—Bill’s already been almost killed and we never see Percy, I don’t know what could be happening to him… and Ron’s always going to stand by Harry and—and you’re my little girl and I just want you to be safe!”
“I don’t care about being safe!” Ginny exploded. “I’ll always stand by Harry, too.”
She stood staring them both down, hands in fists at her sides, hair curling back from her flushed, defiant face, and then abruptly she burst into tears.
“Oh my God,” said Harry.
Ginny determinedly fended off her mother’s attempts at comfort, and sobbed and rubbed her arm vigorously across her face as if she could wipe her expression away and be self-possessed underneath.
“I thought,” she said. “When you broke up with me, I thought you were just trying to be noble, I thought you’d see in time, if I stuck by you—I mean, You-Know-Who didn’t come after me because I was your best friend’s sister, Lucius Malfoy came after me because I was Dad’s daughter! You’ve never put me in any danger before, and if you did now, it would just be the same danger Ron and Hermione are facing. Because they love you. And I love you! And if you could just trust me, the way you trust them—”
She put her face in her hands for a brief, short burst of crying, and then stopped herself by twisting her lips fiercely together.
Harry just wanted to die. He’d never expected a girl to confess love in front of her mum, and he didn’t like seeing Ginny cry, he didn’t want to hurt her anymore than he clearly already had. He’d just—he’d broken up with her because he had to, that was all.
“Ron and Hermione have been—we’ve all been relying on each other since we were eleven,” he said. “I mean, that’s important. This is important, too, I can’t think about romantic stuff right now—”
“Because it’s not as important,” Ginny said in a low voice.
“No,” Harry said. “No it’s not.”
“Friendship’s that important, though,” Ginny went on shakily. “Ron and Hermione are that important to you, they’re essential to you. And romantic stuff,” she repeated his words with a scathing intonation, “That can be essential too. Bill needs Fleur, Tonks needs Lupin but when things got serious you didn’t need me, you wanted to put me off as if I was—as if we were a game, something stupid to do in peacetime like—like Quidditch!”
“You’re important to me,” Harry said, wincing. “You are. Only.”
He did not want Ginny in danger, and he did not want Ginny along for any battles. She thought of them in a romantic way, in a way that meant she hadn’t been there when Dumbledore fell off the tower or when Ron and Hermione had stood by him in the Shrieking Shack, when they were thirteen, and said that if anyone wanted to kill Harry they would have to kill them too. She didn’t quite understand and that made her not take things seriously, made her careless sometimes, like when she’d almost got hit last year. She thought it was all going to be courage and heroic action—of course she did, Harry thought loyally, she was brave—but right now all they could do was stare helplessly at mouldy old books, and Ginny had never once offered to help.
“You know what? The hell with both of you,” Ginny said. She’d stopped crying, by now, and crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “I’m going to stay here and I’m going to help, and neither of you can stop me!”
Harry had not noticed when the door to the Burrow was eased open, and the slight embarrassed cough was what brought him to the awareness that in the kitchen entrance, with early September sunlight soft around them, stood Lupin and Tonks.
“Ah—bad time?” asked Lupin.
“I—excuse me,” Ginny said abruptly, and rushed out, banging the door behind her.
Harry was overcome with inexpressible relief to see Lupin, always more grey and tired every time he saw him, but smiling, looking quietly happy with his body angled towards but not touching Tonks’, and hers doing the same.
Lupin was the last part of the past left, the last friend of his parents, the only one who had always been loyal and lived. And Harry was feeling bruised and tired from what Ginny had said and the weight of all these tasks, and now Lupin was here. He’d told Harry that he would have wanted to write, if he could have.
“Hi,” Harry said.
“Good to see you, Harry,” said Lupin. “Are you keeping well?”
“Doing all right,” Harry lied awkwardly. “I—come in.”
“I’ll make us all a cup of tea,” offered Mrs Weasley, smoothing out her agitated expression like an ironed shirt and remembering her duties as hostess.
Lupin went to sit in a chair by the empty fire, looking extremely relieved to be resting and looking pretty much the definition of ‘run ragged.’ Tonks sat crosslegged on the hearth, her pink head leaning slightly in Lupin’s direction, one of her restless hands with chewed, painted fingernails playing with the patch on Lupin’s left elbow. He saw her doing it and they shared a small smile.
“Actually, I don’t like tea much,” Tonks said. “I drank buckets of it last year because I was—oh God, I’m embarrassing—pining like an idiot for some guy, but could I get a coffee?”
Since the arrival of Malfoy the kitchen permanently smelled like coffee anyway, so Tonks must know her chances were pretty good.
Mrs Weasley fixed them all tea and Tonks made her own coffee, bustling around the kitchen and upsetting the sugar. She took it black with four sugars like Malfoy did.
“Um, Ginny seemed a little upset,” Tonks whispered once she sat down again, in what she might have fondly imagined to be a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll just—I’ll just go see if she’s OK, shall I?”
Clutching her coffee cup and leaning briefly against Lupin once she had stood up, hip to shoulder, she marched off on her errand of mercy. Harry moved his chair closer to Lupin’s.
“It’s really good to see you,” he said. “How’s, um—”
“Spying among the werewolves” sounded terrible, as did “working for Fenrir Greyback.” Probably because it was terrible, and Harry wished he could say something that would help or at least not be impossibly awkward.
Lupin smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Harry. You’ve got enough on your plate, and you’re handling it very well. One Horcrux in the Burrow and a plan to get another—Hermione Owled me all about the plan to kill Nagini. I came as soon as I could to give you all the information I have.”
Harry felt a brief twinge of disappointment that Lupin had not simply wanted to see him, but that was swallowed with the warm promise of possibly being able to do something for a change.
“Right,” he said, leaning forward.
“I don’t know where Voldemort’s headquarters are, but he certainly is working from one base and he has been for some time,” Lupin said, leaning forward, eyes intent. “It’s mentioned quite a bit among the Death Eaters—pointedly letting us know that things are being kept from the werewolves, that they are not being fully admitted into the fold. I do know that every full moon, Voldemort comes to us to gloat over his pack of werewolves, guide them towards what he wants them to do and—gives them victims. He doesn’t take Nagini with him. She’s left behind at the headquarters, left to her own devices and as unprotected as she ever is. I’ll try to find out where Voldemort is based, and then, you’ll know the time to strike.”
Harry’s hand clenched, thinking of the sword under his bed upstairs.
“A Metamorphmagus? That’s brilliant,” said Malfoy. “There hasn’t been a Metamorphmagus in the Black family since Elladora Black, and she was born in 1850. My Great Aunt Walburga’s diary records the strain as having died out. Can you—”
He and Tonks came through the door, looking very pleased about something. Standing side by side, Harry could see they had the same sort of distinctive pallor, but they didn’t have another feature in common, just a general air of vitality and a habit of making hand gestures as they talked. Since they were both talking and in a state of obvious excitement, it looked a bit like they were playing a game of Pat A Cake.
“Remus, look who’s here,” Tonks said. “And staying with the Weasleys—so that must mean—” She tried again. “It’s my cousin Draco! Aunt Cissy was Mum’s favourite sister, you know, before she… well. Isn’t this great? Of course I know who he is, but I’d never met him before.”
“But, Nymphadora Tonks, you were a Beater, weren’t you?” Draco asked. “It’s in the team records, taken off the team for dropping your bat on the audience one too many times—”
“You were in Slytherin?” Harry demanded.
Tonks blinked at him and smiled cheerfully. “Oh, yeah. My mum’s old house, natch. I mean, no offence, Harry, but who’d want to be in any other house? They’re crap, really. Nobody else has won the Quidditch Cup seven years in a row!”
She and Malfoy did a small air punch at each other. Harry wondered why Lupin did not immediately tell Tonks that it could never work between them.
He also wondered why Tonks was being such an idiot, although the fact she was a Slytherin might explain that. Malfoy was clearly desperate to batten onto anything like family, but did she honestly imagine that he would do anything but sneer and call her Dad a Mudblood if he was in his usual state of perfect aristocratic security?
Malfoy’s face changed suddenly, lips curling back from his teeth, and for a moment Harry thought he’d just realised he’d been consorting amiably with a half-blood and was about to spit in her coffee.
“You,” he said instead to Lupin, and took two sharp steps back. Whenever Malfoy turned pale he looked almost grey.
Harry looked at Lupin to see if Lupin was doing anything in particular, but Lupin was just sitting there, watching Malfoy with eyes in which the pupils were large and black, the irises narrow strips of colour around them.
“What’s he doing here?” Malfoy demanded, his voice getting higher. “He eats people!”
Tonks stepped smartly away from Malfoy and then almost dashed towards Lupin and tumbled against his chair, as if she was rushing to cover his ears. Lupin leaned his head briefly against her arm.
“I,” he said. “There are reasons besides simply being a werewolf that make me—not fit to be with you.”
“Shut up, you silly idiot,” Tonks snapped. “Don’t you think I know what you have to do? I’m not a child. I’m an Auror. I know, and it doesn’t change anything.”
Malfoy had his back pressed against the doorframe. He was shaking.
“You know?” he demanded. “He—him—I saw him, at a meeting. He’s the worst of the lot besides Greyback. He has Professor Snape brew him a Wolfsbane Potion so that he’s conscious throughout the whole thing. Because he wants to be aware of what he’s doing when the Dark Lord throws his—” Malfoy’s mouth worked. “Throws the people he’s displeased with,” he continued in a low tone. “To the wolves.”
Lupin’s eyes were hollow and grey as the empty grate.
“That’s true,” he said quietly. “If I am conscious, I can differentiate between consuming the ones Voldemort is throwing to the wolves alive, and those which he has killed already.”
How brave, Harry thought. How impossibly, terrifyingly brave, to take the Potion knowing that he would remember everything, to choose the Potion as the lesser of two evils even though Lupin knew he would be aware through everything and have to do all that—eat people, Malfoy had said with a look of white horror, he eats people—knowing that if he showed even a hint of hesitation, everyone would turn against him. This was the task Dumbledore had given Lupin, this was what he was still doing now Dumbledore was gone.
How brave.
And still, Harry could not repress thoughts of a seething pack of werewolves, the wild eyes and fangs Harry had only seen once stretching on to infinity, and Voldemort throwing screaming people and sagging corpses down to them. He thought of the circle of Death Eaters who had surrounded him once, and about how it would be if snarling and the sounds of tearing flesh were combined with the sound of Voldemort laughing.
Harry hated himself for it, but he would not have wanted to go near Lupin, just for that moment.
“Leave him alone,” he ordered Malfoy. “He has to take the Potion. He doesn’t want to kill anyone.”
Malfoy was clearly not listening, since he was busy looking even paler and being on the point of panic. Harry wondered for a moment if he might faint, but instead he bolted. They all heard him crashing upstairs in the silence.
“Can young Malfoy really be trusted with the information that I am a spy?” Lupin asked.
“I—we think so,” Harry said. “He’s not going back to Voldemort: wants to save his own skin.” He bit his lip, and added: “He’s apologised for some things. Not enough, but still.”
“So there’s absolutely no chance he might pass the information on to Professor Snape, who was apparently been acting as his protector all summer?” Lupin’s voice made Harry feel as if he was back at school and thirteen years old again.
“I’m sorry,” Harry muttered. “I’ll ask him not to. I just, it’s not fair for anyone to judge you like that.”
“It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me,” Lupin said. “What matters is that we get the job done and we do not take any unnecessary risks. You have to remember that, Harry. An incautious word could cost you your life, or the life of someone you love. This is your first war. If you have another, God forbid, you will know from experience that there is never any excuse to drop your guard.”
“Sorry, Professor,” mumbled Harry, and then felt like an idiot.
Tonks was still leaning against Lupin’s chair, touching his hair with slow, loving hands, so unlike the abrupt clumsy way she touched everything else. It occurred to Harry that so much of Lupin’s hair had gone grey that it looked brindled now. Like a wolf’s.
He was grateful to Tonks, even if she was a Slytherin.
“I can’t stay,” Lupin said after a moment. “I have to account for every minute to Greyback.” He hesitated, and then said: “It was good to see you, Harry. Stay well.” He added, quietly: “Please.”
He stood up and Harry looked at him for a moment, then Lupin went up to him and put his arm around Harry for a moment, and it was easy not to think of bodies being ripped apart by sharp teeth, or at least it was doable. Lupin smelled like books and tea and clothes, worn by sun and time.
He stepped away and took Tonks’ hand. “Thank you for having us, Molly.”
“Wotcher, Harry,” said Tonks, and winked as they went.
Lupin paused at the door to say: “I’ll let you know as soon as I have any information. And after that, Harry—good luck.”
Soon after Tonks and Lupin had left, Charlie arrived and Mrs Weasley put dinner on the table, and Harry was spared having to go to the study again. He knocked elbows with Malfoy trying to get the plates down from the high shelf.
“Lay off Lupin,” Harry snapped.
“Just get out of my way,” Malfoy snarled. “Or—no, fine, take the plates. Be my guest, Potter, and be about your menial business.”
He threw up his hands and left Harry with the plates, wandering over to where Ginny was sitting in the summer dress he’d bought for her, looking at her knees.
“Can’t make it to the kitchen table under your own speed, Girl Weasley?” he asked, with the potential for malice behind his light voice.
Ginny did not seem to take offence, though. She looked up at Malfoy and then over his shoulder, did not quite meet Harry’s eyes, and after a moment she held out her hands.
“No,” she said definitely, and smiled up at him. “Can’t walk. You’ll have to carry me.”
Malfoy’s voice sounded suddenly more relaxed, and considerably more amused. “All right, then,” he said, and he put his hands on Ginny’s waist and lifted her, against his hip, off the draining board. She rested her arms comfortably on his shoulder and Malfoy carried her as if she weighed nothing. Harry listened to the low murmur of Malfoy’s voice and Ginny laughing, and almost broke a glass in his hand.
Malfoy was stronger than he looked, the skinny wretch. He put Ginny down in her chair and then smoothed her napkin in her lap while Ginny smiled and Mrs Weasley beamed at his beautiful manners.
Harry cut his steak into tiny pieces of rage.
“Harry,” Ron said. “Mate. I think it’s dead already.”
“Is nobody going to ask me how my first day went?” Charlie inquired pathetically.
“How did your first day go, sweetheart?” Malfoy asked promptly, the corners of his mouth tilted towards a smile.
Charlie tossed a breadroll at him and Malfoy caught it.
“Since you asked, it went brilliantly,” Charlie said. “Apparently nobody signed up for Care of Magical Creatures NEWTS—uh, again—but then a few girls decided they would change their minds. I promised to protect them from Hagrid.”
“You’re so manly, Charles,” said Malfoy, buttering the previously-airborne bread roll.
“God help us, my brother’s the new Professor Firenze,” Ron announced.
“He’s a very interesting chap,” Charlie said energetically, letting all innuendo fly blithely over his head. “He’s promised to give a lecture about centaurs to my new sixth years, providing I make it clear that he is in no way a creature to be taken care of.”
“An educational lecture in Care of Magical Creatures,” Malfoy remarked wistfully. “It’s like a dream, it’s too beautiful to be real.”
“I’m sure you’re wonderful, darling,” Mrs Weasley said, beaming. “And a teacher—well, it’s a nice settled job, isn’t it, not like flying around Roumania on great big fiery animals. A steady job in England and you can start thinking about getting married, Charlie—”
“I’m not going to get married, Mum,” Charlie said, going brilliant red.
“Well,” Mrs Weasley allowed. “You’re young yet, but Bill met Fleur when he was younger than you are now. Ah, Fleur,” Mrs Weasley sighed. “She promised to write to me the moment she suspected—well!”
“Mum,” Charlie and Ron exclaimed in direst agony.
Hermione began to talk loudly about her research in an effort to drag everyone’s mind away from Mrs Weasley’s contemplation of ‘undreds and ‘undreds of grandbabies.
“I hear I missed Lupin and Tonks,” Charlie said. “That’s a pity. If you’re so keen to get people married off, Mum, ask him when he’s going to pop the question. My guess’d be approximately two seconds after all this is over.”
Hermione and Mrs Weasley smiled in a soppy sort of way. Malfoy made an awful face.
“What, my cousin?” he said. “Marry someone who eats people?”
“Give it a rest, Malfoy!” Harry barked.
Malfoy’s gaze homed in on him like a bird that had spotted its prey and was coming down on it out of a clear sky.
“I will not. You didn’t see it,” he pursued. “They’re—they’re a lot of baying animals and he’s just standing there laughing and they threw someone down and you could hear the sounds of them eating her—”
Ron abruptly put down his fork.
Harry stood up and slammed his fist down on the table. The knives and forks jumped like silver fish in the air and then landed with a clatter.
“Yeah?” he demanded. “Well, you chose to go there and he didn’t, all right? So I think we all know who should be judged in that situation!”
“I’m going to my room,” Malfoy said, pushing his chair back so it hit the wall. “I need to work on my clock.”
He stormed out and everyone looked at their plates. Harry didn’t want—he couldn’t let anyone talk like that about Lupin. Harry might’ve felt an instant’s quailing, but he knew Lupin was a good person, and he didn’t see why Malfoy always had to come out with the occasional terrible thoughts nobody else would say.
He looked at the mangled bits of steak on his plate, and negotiated them over the dangerous seas of his peas.
“I also read—many interesting books today,” Ron said, into the total silence.
“Did you?” Charlie asked.
“Oh yes,” Ron said valiantly. “There were… many.”
“They sound interesting,” said Charlie.
There was a crash from the stairs and Charlie stood up fast. “I think Draco’s fallen down the—”
Malfoy burst into the room. “Potter!” he exclaimed. “Charlie, I—anyone! Quick, we have to do something—”
They all stared at him and Malfoy looked desperately around for some signs of comprehension. When none came, he swept his hair back from his forehead, bit his lip and plunged into explanation.
“The clock,” he said. “I was—it’s half done, it’s got the older half of the family on it, it’s working, I’m certain it’s working, and it’s—I made it to be specific. Your brother Percy is in mortal peril. I’m sure.”
Mrs Weasley made a terrible sound, stifled against her palm. Mr Weasley rose from his chair like the wrath of God.
“If this is your idea of a joke, Draco Malfoy—”
“It’s not a joke!” Malfoy shouted. “Somebody do something!”
Everyone looked at each other. Harry saw Hermione reach for Ron’s hand and squeeze it tight: he saw Ginny’s eyes suddenly fix pleadingly on him. He saw nobody had the faintest idea what to do.
“The orphanage,” he said suddenly. Everyone stared at him and he went on. “Mr Weasley, remember, I told you, I told you that the new place for war orphans was in Voldemort’s eye and you said Scrimgeour had appointed guards. What if—”
“Of course,” Mr Weasley said breathlessly. “Of course, of course—right, now, Molly, get Fred and George, everyone else—Ginny, perhaps you should stay with your m—”
“I will not,” Ginny said ferociously. “Where’s this orphanage? Where is it?”
“You can’t Apparate,” Charlie reminded her.
“I’ll manage,” she said shortly.
“No,” Charlie said. “I’ll take you. Hang on a minute, just let me get something—”
He left the table, his chair flying across the floor. All of the others looked at each other and then Harry got up too.
“C’mon,” he said. “We need to get outside the Burrow wards.”
They all marched outside into the gathering night, Ron and Hermione still holding hands. Ron was trembling a little. Mr Weasley was trembling a lot more.
“The orphanage is on the outskirts of Hogsmeade,” he said in a low voice.
“Right. Okay, everyone, together,” said Harry, and tried not to think any thoughts about the fact that he wasn’t all that skilled at Apparating.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, and opened them on the roar of fire and the screams of children.
The Hogsmeade orphanage was a big white building which might have looked more welcoming not swathed in flames. Harry stared wildly around at the witches and wizards running around, and at the white faces of his own group.
“Hey,” he said, and grabbed someone’s arm.
It turned out to be Oliver Wood.
“Harry?” he said, apparently perfectly ready to accept his presence at the site of fiery disaster. “D’you know any water charms?”
“Uh,” Harry said. “One, but, I’m not really—Look, d’you know where Percy Weasley is?”
“Percy went in there,” Oliver replied, gesturing to the orphanage. “A few people did when they heard the children screaming, it was brave, but they had to know the kids can’t get out. Everyone was watching the teachers and the nurse and things, the whole place was staffed with Aurors, but they must’ve got one of the kids under the Imperius curse and—we think the kid just went up to the second floor and dropped a lighted match on her dress. She was too young to know how to use a wand, even—and there are the three floors above with the kids all trapped in them, we’ve only been able to get a few out. Some people are trying to do weather charms and until then all we have are pails and a few water charms so grab a pail, everyone, for God’s sake, I can’t—”
Ron strode forward and lifted all burly six feet of Oliver off the ground, then dropped him abruptly. “Are you trying to tell me,” he said, his voice wobbling all over the place, “that my brother—that my brother’s—”
“I don’t know,” Wood yelled at him. “I haven’t had time to see who got out, some people Apparated right into fires and we heard them burn!”
Ron turned his back on all of them and they heard him be sick. Harry watched his best friend’s back convulsing.
“Give me that pail,” he said to Wood, and snatched it and threw it in the air. “Wingardium Leviosa!” he shouted, and it flew up and poured itself, high in the air, over the flames.
“Uh, that’s a good idea, Harry,” Wood said, looking embarrassed for him. “We’ve been doing it for a while now.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
“You lot!” shouted Kingsley Shacklebolt, striding up to him as his eyes swept over them all. “Has anyone seen Auror Tonks? Are any of you Slytherins?”
“Me,” Malfoy said, raising a hand. “Is there something I can—”
“Water charms, go,” Shacklebolt said, pointing in the direction of a witch who Harry realised after a moment was Professor Sprout.
Malfoy went like a homing pigeon, and Hermione said: “I’m not a Slytherin, but I’m good at—”
“Well then for God’s sake go, girl,” snapped Shacklebolt. “Anyone who thinks they might be able to do anything remotely useful, do it at once!”
Hermione went after Malfoy at once, though she kept hold of Ron’s hand until both their arms were stretched at full length and she had to let go.
“What’s all this about Slytherins?” Harry asked in a low voice.
“They’re supposed to be better at water charms,” Mr Weasley answered. “We Gryffindors are better with fire, but of course there’s—there’s plenty of fire here—Kingsley,” he said, his voice breaking. “Can you tell me what has happened to my son?”
“Which son?” Shacklebolt asked.
“Percy!” Mr Weasley all but shouted.
“Brave lad,” Shacklebolt said. “He got four children trapped on the third staircase out. Neat a piece of wandwork as I’ve ever seen.”
Ron wheeled on him. “Is he all right?”
Shacklebolt stared at him. “Well of course not,” he answered. “You’re not going to come out of a burning building all right.”
Harry put his hand on Ron’s arm and steadied it. Ron trembled like a wet, scared dog.
“Nasty burns the boy’s got,” Shacklebolt went on. “He’s with the mediwitch out on the orphanage lawn.”
Kingsley Shacklebolt was left in the dust as everyone went running for the lawn before the words were out of his mouth. They charged through the crowds and tumbled out onto the lawn together, where they found Percy lying on the ground being attended by a mediwitch who made a disapproving sound when Mr Weasley all but bodily flung himself onto his son.
“Percy!”
Percy, who looked strangely young and more like Ron than he ever had before with his glasses off and his calm stripped by pain, flinched and tried to focus. “Dad?” he said painfully. “Ron?”
“Yeah,” Ron said, kneeling down beside him.
“‘M glad you’re here,” Percy said vaguely.
There was a scream that sounded like Mrs Weasley and Harry turned to see Mrs Weasley, flanked by Charlie and Ginny, and then coming from another direction Fred and George, who were pounding across the lawn wearing pyjamas, slippers and their flashy dragonhide jackets.
George was half in and half out of his.
“Percy!” Mrs Weasley cried, and threw herself onto her knees. Harry saw her tears fall and gleam in the orange light, on Percy’s white face. “Oh Percy, Percy, my boy, my little boy—”
“Mum,” Percy said faintly. “I’m sorry I brought the Minister to Christmas, it was just—the job was all I had left and I wanted… I’m sorry, Mum, it was a rotten thing to do, and I thought I was going to—when the fire rose and I thought I wasn’t going to—”
“Oh no, Percy, don’t, oh, my brave boy,” sobbed Mrs Weasley, on her knees and wringing her hands.
“I’m sorry, son,” Mr Weasley said. “I’m sorry, I should never have said you were only promoted to—you’re good at your job, Percy, we’ve always been so proud of you—”
Ginny, crying and snorting against her hand and in urgent need of a tissue, was at Percy’s head and stroking his hair. “I—I’m sorry,” she gulped out, “that I threw po-po-potatoes at you!”
Fred and George, pale and clinging to each other, the scale on their dragonhide jackets catching firelight, looked down at Percy for a long time. There was a long, vivid burn down Percy’s ribs, that the mediwitch was trying valiantly to spread ointment on while Mrs Weasley looked in danger of joggling her elbow at any moment.
“Had us worried for a minute there, Perce,” George said at last.
Percy squinted up at them, and then almost smiled, though the smile turned into a grimace of pain even as it was born. “Who are you,” he asked, “and what have you done with my brothers?”
Harry stepped backwards a little, to let them all have their time together, as Charlie knelt down and took Percy’s free hand. There was a dark bundle under Charlie’s arm.
“All right, Percy?” he asked quietly.
“All right, Charlie,” Percy whispered back. “Those kids—”
“Don’t worry about a thing, Perce,” Charlie said. “I’ve got it all under control. You sit tight.” He got up and turned to Harry. “C’mon.”
Harry glanced at Charlie, and then back at the others to see Ginny stoop, plant a quick kiss on Percy’s forehead, and race after them.
“Me too,” she said breathlessly. “Give me a broom. I’m going to help too.”
“A broom,” Harry said, and Charlie tossed him his Firebolt. He turned it over, the worn wood scraping familiar against his callused palms. “A broom,” he repeated, and thought.
“We thought, if we could fly up and aim the pails of water better, or catch a kid at a window—” Ginny told Harry.
Charlie was striding restlessly on ahead.
“I’ve got two extra brooms. We need two more people who can fly really well—where’s Draco?”
“Doing water charms with Professor Sprout,” Harry answered, and as they all moved towards that group he remembered and added: “And there’s Oliver Wood somewhere around here too.”
“Wood? Fine. I remember him, dedicated little Keeper that one,” Charlie said absently.
They approached the group, where Hermione had her sleeves rolled up and at least seven pails of water in the air at once, and several more pails headed in the direction of the well.
“Draco!” Charlie shouted. “Catch!”
Malfoy turned and caught the broom as his pail fell out of the air and landed on its side on the ground, water trickling onto the dry earth.
“What’re we doing?”
“We’re getting those children out,” Harry said shortly.
By pure good luck, Kingsley Shacklebolt dragged Wood past them at that point. When Charlie threw the broom at him, Wood caught it like a lifeline.
Shacklebolt stared at both of them. “Fly a broom up there?” he demanded. “Are you people mad? Has it escaped your attention that brooms are made of wood, and therefore highly combustible! You can’t outfly fire!”
Wood stared at him. “You’re talking to Charlie Weasley, you know,” he informed Shacklebolt severely. “He could’ve played for England.”
“Seems I’ve been out of the country too long,” Charlie remarked. “Right, let’s—”
“Wait,” said Harry. “Look, there are a lot of kids there. If we each get one and fly them down individually, it won’t be fast enough, we won’t be able to save as many. In the Muggle world we have something called a chain—it’s for pails of water, but—look, here’s my plan.”
They all stood in a tight circle and listened for a few moments, head bowed together, and to Harry’s extreme surprise even Malfoy did not utter a word of dissent.
Charlie swung himself into the air as soon as Harry finished speaking. “All right then, gentlemen. Ladies,” he said, climbing as he spoke. “On your brooms.”
They rose into the air.
This close the fire seemed like a living thing, a hissing moving wall of flame, and the screams were almost lost against the roar of the flames. Either that, or they were growing fainter.
Harry hovered about the fifth floor windows, scanning for movement, and below him Charlie dove downward, plunging through the air like an eagle with sheer power behind him, flying like Krum did, power with muscle behind it dictating every move. He scooped a kid off a window sill and went down like a bullet in Malfoy’s direction, then let the kid go.
She fell, for an endless moment, outlined against night and fire. Then Malfoy cut through the sky and caught her against his chest, skimmed down until it was safe to pass her to Oliver Wood, their man near the ground.
When Harry saw the first one safe, he knew it was going to work.
Fire hot on his face, he made out a slumped little shape on the floor within one of the windows. He flew inside, the heat a pulsing presence that filled the whole room and made his chest scream for clean air, and he hovered over the hot floor and put out his hand, met wood that seemed on the point of crackling, and then found a child. He lifted the boy up in his arms and shot out the window, the wind roaring past his ears loud as the fire at the speed he was going.
Once out and in the clear, the nearest flier was Malfoy, who banked sharply and flew under him. He let the boy go, plummeting through the air, and Malfoy caught him neatly, grinned and slanted his broom down within reach of Wood.
Back went Harry, flying so close to Charlie going the other way that he thought for a moment they would collide, up to the topmost window and in through it again, flying through rooms tumbling down with fire, and he found another child and brought her out. She was heavy, one of the older ones here: Harry would have guessed she was nine.
When he flew out the combined weight impeded the swift cuts his Firebolt could always make through the air: he was afraid he was being clumsy, but he went sliding down on a hot current of fire-warmed air just the same, and met Ginny coming down. He braced his arms to throw the child to her.
Ginny flung up her hands as if she was defending herself, and looked at him with a suddenly white face.
“No, Harry!” she burst out. “I can’t! I’ll drop her!”
There was no time to argue with her and nothing else to do: Harry wasted more time flying down to her and bundling the child into her arms, then flew off without another word. He tried not to pass to Ginny in future: not her fault, he thought absently, she wasn’t as good a flier as the others or as used to the seriousness of holding someone else’s life in her hands.
Not her fault, and there was no time to think any more about it.
The roof of the house almost fell in on Harry after he’d saved his seventh child, after he did not know how long zooming through rooms collapsing in on themselves with the heat. He heard the creaking and the crackle of flames and he made for the dim light of an open window with more urgency than he had ever gone for any Snitch, and exploded out with the crash of burning rafters behind him.
Curving through the licking flames rising like a moving maze from the charred ruins of the roof, he saw Malfoy in a heat haze coming towards him.
“Wood says you got everyone on the top floor out!” Malfoy shouted on a note of savage triumph, and Harry grinned at him. He grinned back, hair lightning-white in the glow of the fires. “Last check on the third floor and we’re done!”
“See you down there,” Harry yelled, and twisted his broom around. He heard Malfoy shout behind him and heard him follow fast behind him, hurtling through the air side by side.
They did find one child left alive on the third floor, curled up beside a window with his mouth turned towards the air. When Charlie hurtled out of the window with the little boy clutched to his chest and Malfoy flew to him instead of trying to catch the child, Harry thought for a moment they had been a second, two seconds too late, but when they got the boy down to the mediwizards they got air into him and his chest rose as the orphanage finally fell in scorching ruins on the lawn.
Now there was no longer anyone in there, putting the fire out was easy enough. Kingsley Shacklebolt Transfigured it into a harmless mass of stone, cold to the touch, and all the light in the night was put out like a candle.
They were all left, singed and laughing in a breathless half-hysterical way, on the lawn. Children covered in soot were wandering around looking distinctly shell-shocked and the few who had been conscious when thrown through the air were all being Obliviated, save one sandy-haired little boy who kept following Charlie around asking him to do it again.
Harry wandered around, feeling a little dizzy and dazed from the change from deathly heat to night chill, from children screaming to silence, from all the adrenaline racing in his system with nowhere to go and nothing to do. He was panting and almost laughing with every breath.
Mrs Weasley sat on the lawn with Percy’s head in her lap, stroking his hair fondly. He kept protesting that he could get up now, and she serenely forbade it.
Ginny fell asleep curled up beside Percy, with her head on his knee because the mediwitch had lost her patience and said if anyone went near Percy’s burned chest and arms again she was going to choke a bitch.
Malfoy tipped a pail of water over himself.
“I think my hair got singed,” he said, pushing wet fair locks off his face. “Clearly, I’m ruined forever. Which is just what I deserve for flying with a bunch of Gryffindors.”
Charlie picked up the pail and made a feint with it at Malfoy’s head, and Malfoy dodged, laughing. He was still pale with fright or strained nerves or something, but there was the same air of exuberance lingering about him as Harry felt: when he laughed, it sounded dizzy and manic and real.
“I didn’t mean you, Charles. As far as I am concerned you are the One True Gryffindor, the reason the whole house was invented,” he drawled, pushing his wet collar off his neck. There was a black scorch mark inside, and there was a pink strip across the left side of his throat. The locket glittered cold in the night, golden and untouchable, and Malfoy turned his head and asked, “Why was Wood even here? Does he live in Hogsmeade?”
“Nah,” said Charlie, “but his current girlfriend does. Madam Rosmerta,” he explained, and Harry and Malfoy both stared at him. Charlie shrugged. “Don’t ask me, it’s a mystery,” he said. “His only love is Quidditch, but the women go wild for Wood.” He looked at both their faces and spared them from any further comment. “C’mon. Let’s all go home. I’m sure Mum wants to make sure that Percy, having escaped the fire, will definitely die from an overdose of chicken soup.”
Astonishingly, it was the twins who helped Percy up and supported him, propped up between them. Percy looked back and forth at their faces, peering suspiciously at them and wincing when one of them clapped him on the back.
Percy coughed and said: “Seriously, who are you people? And George, don’t hit my burns, that’s very irresponsible of you.”
“I’m not George,” George said. “I’m Fred.”
“You’re George, Fred would have hit harder,” Percy disagreed in a prim, feeble voice. “Just because I don’t have my glasses does not mean you can take me for a complete fool.”
Stumbling to the Burrow with the dawn throwing streamers of light up over the horizon, Ginny almost walking into the gate, Harry still felt lightheaded and exhilarated. The feeling was only a little dulled by the way everyone settled around Percy as if afraid that he might be taken away from them again. Ron and Hermione were still holding hands so Hermione was drawn in too, and Harry realised he was on the outside looking in, with only Malfoy for company.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow at him, as if this sudden moment of fellow feeling was just as bizarre and unacceptable to him as it was to Harry.
“I’m going to go read,” he said to Charlie, who nodded. Nobody else paid him any attention, and so Harry thought that following Malfoy upstairs might be the most tactful thing to do.
Malfoy did not comment on Harry’s tactful move, he just threw himself down on his chair and started flicking through his notes. Harry looked down at his own considerably less copious notes, and saw something very odd scribbled in the margins.
Tom and Harry Riddle-Potter. The Lords Dark-Potter. The Lords Potter-Dark. Mr. and Mr. Potter-Voldemort.
“Malfoy,” Harry said. “You think you’re funny, but really, really, you’re not.”
Malfoy threw back his head and laughed. “Can’t imagine what you mean,” he said brightly. “Is there something on your notes you didn’t write? Or to put it more accurately, that you don’t remember writing? The subconscious plays funny tricks, Potter, have you not learned from our lessons? Don’t try to fight it, Potter. The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.”
“You have your reasons, of which reason knows nothing,” Harry grumbled. “Look, Malfoy—you can’t tell anyone about Lupin, okay? He came here to help us, and—you can’t tell Snape.”
Malfoy looked at him for a long moment. “I won’t put your werewolf in any danger,” he said at last. “You have my word. He was here about the plan to kill that snake,” Malfoy went on, musingly. “He won’t know where it’s kept. Only the inner circle were allowed in the Dark Lord’s lair, but… Give me a few days. I think I may have a plan.”