Harry didn’t sleep that night until the sky dawned pale September grey, but Ron and Hermione stayed with him.
When he woke up they were still there, Ron having clearly thrown himself sideways on his own bed, and Hermione curled up like a gigantic cat on Harry’s pillow. Harry’d somehow managed to fall asleep with his forehead resting on the bedpost.
It was still really early so he hadn’t slept long, but he felt quieter after the sleep, wrenching guilty grief turned into feeling simply tired, and sorry, and a little hollow.
He didn’t want to wake the others, so he crept out as quietly as he could. The Burrow was quiet in the early morning, the wooden stairs looking a worn silver in the cool light, and Harry was planning on a cup of tea and trying not to think very much.
Malfoy was already in the kitchen. Harry—wasn’t entirely displeased.
It was pretty embarrassing, that he’d cried and everything, but Malfoy had helped. He’d been really good about the whole thing, actually.
Harry glanced cautiously over at Malfoy, who was rubbing his eyes and making himself coffee and looking generally cross, and felt startled and grateful.
“Hey,” he said, quietly. “You’re up early.”
Malfoy looked up from his coffee for the single moment it took to shoot Harry a death glare, and then looked instantly back.
“Well, you see,” he drawled, “In this house people tamper with my food and drink. I have to sneak down early in order to eat. Next time, you know, it might be poison.”
He said the word poison with a certain savage satisfaction and Harry flinched, then saw Malfoy catch the movement out of the corner of his eye and smirk.
Harry opened a cupboard door so he would have something to do with his hands, and he wouldn’t hit Malfoy.
“Look, I said I was sorry about that.”
“Gosh,” Malfoy said, his voice full of awe. “Did you really? You’re such a big man, Potter. Of course that makes it all better.”
Malfoy did not have quite the most hateful expression Harry had ever seen on his face. The effect was a bit spoiled by the fact that Malfoy’s face was still sleep-flushed and pillow-creased, but he was doing his best.
It didn’t make any sense. Malfoy hadn’t been hateful last night.
“I thought,” Harry said evenly, holding on hard to the cupboard door lest he be tempted to strangle Malfoy, “that everything was okay—”
Malfoy threw his coffee cup at him.
If Harry hadn’t been dodging Bludgers for six years it would have got him. As it was Malfoy was at extremely close range, he had a split second to get out of the way, and he had to throw himself on the floor so it wouldn’t hit him.
He was on his feet and furious the next minute.
“What the hell is the matter with—”
“What the hell is the matter with you, Potter?” Malfoy demanded. “You unbelievably arrogant—”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you—”
“Shut up!” Malfoy ordered. “You just—you’re just dying to believe everybody likes you, aren’t you? Everything’s going to be okay, everything you do is perfectly justified, people really enjoy being drugged and eviscerated—”
“I said I was sorry about that as well! And it’s not like you didn’t try to cast Cruciatus at me.”
“I didn’t do anything this time!” Malfoy shouted, his face flushing even more. “I didn’t do a single bloody thing. You shook my hand, and then you drugged me, and now you think that everything’s all right?”
“Well, no,” Harry bit out. “By now I’ve picked up on your subtle hints that everything’s not all right.”
“And on what evidence did you think everything was all right?” Malfoy proceeded, apparently deaf with rage. “You had a pathetic little breakdown—”
“The hell with you, Malfoy, like you don’t weep in the loos!”
Malfoy heard that one, but apparently only gathered from it that the insult had stung. “A pathetic little breakdown,” he repeated, eyes glittering. “Over an old man who—who I planned to kill, for whose death I am partly responsible, and I was supposed to do what, exactly? I’m not weak, I’m not one of your devoted little followers. I’m still angry. I still hate you. If you’d been having your pathetic breakdown over something else—if you’d accidentally got hold of a girl you couldn’t drop and pick up at will and she’d chucked you—I’d have loved it. I’d have laughed in your face.”
“Right,” Harry said in a tight voice. His hands were clenched in fists at his side. “Yeah. You’ve made it all very clear, Malfoy. Thanks.”
Malfoy wavered, looking torn between more yelling, actually hitting Harry and storming off. He chose secret option four, which was turning his back on Harry and getting himself another cup of coffee.
“There were a lot of reasons for me to give you the Veritaserum,” Harry said to Malfoy’s stiffly held shoulders. “I need that Horcrux, your father the Death Eater—no, wait a minute, sorry, your father the other Death Eater—has escaped from Azkaban, you’ve told me that you have a secret plan, you stole my hair—”
He had very little hope that Malfoy was going to listen to reason, but he didn’t get the chance to finish, because Mrs Weasley cut him off by coming down the stairs. She was wrapped in her purple quilted dressing gown and smiling around bemusedly.
“Harry, dear,” she said. “Draco, I heard a noise—”
Malfoy turned around and, even though his mouth was still pinched with fury, gave her puppy dog eyes. “I spilled it,” he said. “I picked up the cup and it was too hot.”
Mrs Weasley made a sympathetic sound and turned Malfoy’s hands over in her own to check that he was all right. Malfoy shot Harry a venomous little glance over her head.
“Also,” he continued. “I have a surprise for you.”
Mrs Weasley straightened up and beamed. “For me?”
“Yeah,” said Malfoy, smiling at her properly. “Wait here. I’ll go get it.”
He turned and bounded up the stairs with not another look at Harry. Mrs Weasley continued to beam.
“It’s amazing what a beneficial effect a real home is having on that boy,” she said, and then patted Harry on the arm. “Can I whip you up some scones?”
Malfoy took long enough getting whatever the surprise was. Harry suspected he was waiting for more people to get up so he’d have a proper audience to show off for.
His plan was clearly working, since Ginny came down next. She got herself a cup of tea in silence, and then came quietly to stand behind Harry. Harry looked down at her and realised she seemed nervous.
“Mum said you were—a bit upset last night,” she said at last.
“I’m fine, really,” Harry told her.
“Well,” Ginny said. “You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?”
“Sure, yeah,” Harry answered, and then looked down at her anxious, pretty face. “Thanks,” he said, speaking lower.
He wanted to put his arm around her, a bit, but it didn’t matter what she said, he’d made up his mind: he couldn’t afford any distractions and he didn’t want to endanger her. There’d be time for that stuff, later.
He looked up from his awkward contemplation of his own cup of tea when Malfoy came down the stairs at last. He was proudly carrying the Weasley clock.
“All done,” he announced, and presented it to Mrs Weasley with a flourish.
“Hey, Malfoy,” Ginny said in an impressed way, wandering over for a closer look. “It’s really pretty!”
Malfoy put his arm around her. “It’s not meant to be pretty, woman,” he said loftily. “It’s a very tricky and intricate little piece of magical design geared towards every eventuality! The fact it’s so aesthetically pleasing is beside the point.”
Ginny elbowed him. “Sure,” she said. “Next make me some jewelry.”
The clock was much prettier now, with things that looked like filigree work, and the clock hands pointing at several things at once. There were places like Home and Work and School on one filigreed tier, and then in the next there were descriptions like Safe and Danger as well as Mortal Peril. The last set, in a gleaming circle around the clock face, said things like Working, Cooking and Battling Evil. Most of the clock hands said Home, Asleep and Safe. Percy’s said Work, Mild Discomfort and Working Too Hard.
Harry wasn’t much interested in filigree or Percy’s overachieving. He was mainly looking at the clock hands and experiencing a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
There was an extra clock hand. It was labelled ‘Harry Potter.’
“I can put Fleur on it, too,” Malfoy was saying, looking gratified as Ginny and Mrs Weasley admired the clock. “Only I need something personal of hers to do it. Like a lock of her hair.”
He gave Harry a look of complete and enormous hatred. Harry winced and Malfoy smirked to himself.
He’d felt peaceful, he’d been all right, until he’d walked into the kitchen and found Malfoy, and now he was angry (because Malfoy was a prat) and guilty (because damn it, he’d been wrong, against all odds Malfoy’d been doing something nice).
He sat down to the breakfast table with his stomach a tense, angry knot.
His day was not improved by receiving another Owl from Narcissa Malfoy.
Harry was extremely glad when Narcissa turned in the alleyway and put her hood back, and he saw she was wearing her own face for a change. He’d had a surfeit of Malfoy for the moment.
Not that Mrs Malfoy was much better, since she had the same trick of haughtily tilting her chin as Malfoy did, and was currently doing it and staring disdainfully up at Harry.
“How is he?” she asked at once. “I heard you let him go to the scene of a fire. Suspended thirty feet in the air above an uncontrollable blaze is not my usual definition of ‘safe and protected.’”
It was starting to rain, a chill drizzle that seemed to be settling in for the long haul. Narcissa put up her hood again and Harry crossed his arms against the cold, leaned against the damp wall and tried to ignore the fat drops of water trickling at intervals down his neck.
“He helped save a lot of people.”
“If anything happens to him,” Narcissa went on, apparently supremely indifferent to the lives of orphaned children, “I will hold you personally responsible.”
“Oh, I’m really scared,” Harry said.
Narcissa’s cornflower-blue eyes narrowed under the hood, into small gleaming slits in the shadows. “You promised,” she reminded him in a dangerous voice. “He’s your responsibility. You swore.”
“I remember.”
“You,” Narcissa remarked, “had better. Now, to business. The Dark Lord has freed Lucius from prison. He has sent word for me to come to him. Should I go?”
Harry did not really feel qualified to make decisions about the Malfoys’ marriage. The chances were good that Narcissa Malfoy liked pure evil in a man.
“Er,” he said. “Er. If you… want to?”
“To clarify,” Narcissa Malfoy said. “I am not Molly Weasley, writing to my local agony aunt pleading for relationship advice. If I go to Lucius, I will be very much in the Dark Lord’s eye and it will be much more difficult to get away. On the other hand, currently I keep very much out of the way of the Death Eaters, and my sister Bellatrix is my main source of information. As your informant, which course of action would you prefer for me to take—going to Lucius, which means better information less often, or not, which means second-hand information on a more regular basis?”
Harry cleared his throat. “Well. Don’t you have any, sort of, more personal reasons—”
“My personal life is absolutely none of your business,” Narcissa told him in a cutting voice. “This is our business.” She tipped back her hood a little, so her hair was still covered but Harry could see her face better, pale and calm. Her mouth curved around a whisper. “This is a trade. You guard my son and, in return, I provide you with whatever service you desire. Choose.”
“Go to Voldemort, then,” Harry ordered. “I want a map of his headquarters and any details about the activities there. That’s what’s most important.”
The air was cold and his voice sounded cold in his own ears, giving commands to Narcissa Malfoy. He was doing what he had to: this was war.
“As you wish,” replied Narcissa. “Provided you are open to negotiation about the price.”
“The—price.”
Narcissa pushed her hood off all the way, blue satin sliding away from her smooth golden hair. She tipped her head back so she could look Harry full in the face, and moved forward two steps.
“The price,” she echoed. “If I go to the Dark Lord, if I infiltrate his inner circle and betray his location. Then can I see my son?”
She put a hand, quite gently, on Harry’s chest. She was close enough that the rain and the chill of the air were both blotted out, made irrelevant, by the warmth of her body.
“If I deliver the location,” she said in a low, throaty voice. “If I do anything else you want. When can I see my son?”
Harry looked down at her, and thought about Malfoy making that stupid clock hand, thought of Malfoy last night.
He thought about the Veritaserum, about asking Malfoy, “What do you want?” and Malfoy’s helpless response, “My mother.”
“You can see him now,” Harry told her abruptly, stepping to one side away from Narcissa Malfoy and the wall. He caught her wrist as he went, and once he had a hold on her he Apparated.
They appeared on the grass outside the Burrow. Harry looked at Narcissa, expecting some kind of comment or a look at the dilapidated state of the house at least, but she was silent, her breath coming fast. He could not see her face because as they had Apparated she’d put up her hood again and was holding the material close in one hand.
Harry held open the gate for her. “Come in, then.”
She went in, down the crazy paving and into the house, and did not speak a word until the door was closed behind them. Then she took off her cloak with carefully controlled motions, nodded coolly to a staring Mrs Weasley, and asked Harry in a very calm voice: “Where is he?”
Harry was saved from the necessity of answering her by the advent of Malfoy himself, coming down the stairs with several large books in his arms.
“Granger says,” he began, and then he stopped for an instant, and stared.
Harry had to look away from Narcissa’s face, from the sudden violent blaze of what was clearly a very private emotion. She put out her hands and she said in a thin voice, “Draco.”
“Mother!”
Malfoy threw his books precipitately in the air and himself down the remaining steps. There was a split second more of hesitation when Malfoy was face to face with his mother and looked briefly taken aback that he was decidedly taller than she, and then it didn’t matter. She was in his arms, Malfoy lifted her off her feet and laughed a little hysterically into her hair.
“Mother,” he said, again, his voice catching. “Oh, Mother, Mother.”
Narcissa stroked his hair, slid an arm up around his shoulders. “Come, my darling,” she said, still in that thin voice, balanced on the very edge of control. “Let’s walk in the garden. You can tell me everything, now.”
They went out, Malfoy’s arm still locked around his mother. The door shut with a final sound behind them.
Harry might’ve sort of loitered about the place with a book, going from the kitchen to the study to the corridor as others came and went. In case—well, in case Malfoy wanted to come by and say everything was okay. Then things would be sorted out.
Malfoy came in a little after dinnertime, when the sky was just starting to look darker, as if someone had dribbled a little blue ink in and stirred. He leaned against the wall and looked at Harry. His face was a little tired.
He waited a few minutes, and then spoke.
“I’m trying to decide whether or not to punch you in the head.”
“Beg pardon?” said Harry.
Malfoy’s thin mouth worked a little, and did not quite form a sneer. “I get it that this was some sort of clumsy idiot apology,” he said coldly. “But you had no right to bring her here. I don’t care if it made you feel better. I don’t care if it made me feel better. What if someone had seen her coming here? You had no right to endanger my mother any more than you already have.”
Harry opened his mouth and found he had nothing to say.
He’d told Narcissa Malfoy himself that it was too dangerous, last time. Only she hadn’t cared, she was Malfoy’s mother and she would have sacrificed anything for him, and Harry hadn’t known how to say no.
He’d wanted to give Malfoy something that Malfoy would like.
He wanted to ask what it was like to throw yourself down the stairs at your mother, to have her hold you, to be that sure.
He didn’t say anything. Malfoy didn’t hit him.
Malfoy stayed leaning against the wall for a few minutes more of silence, and then his eyes narrowed. He pushed off from the wall, and pulled the Horcrux out from his collar.
“I’m going to get this off,” he said. “I’ve almost worked it out. And once I have, you’re never allowed to go near my mother. Not ever again.”
Paying Malfoy back was not going according to plan.
Harry stayed with the books—Malfoy’d better almost have the Horcrux worked out, Harry had nothing and all of his brain cells were staging a revolt—until he heard the shouting.
Malfoy’s mood had obviously not improved.
He met the others in the hall, and they all went downstairs together to find Lupin and Tonks talking with Mr and Mrs Weasley, while Charlie tried to calm Malfoy down.
“It’s an insult!” Malfoy said as Harry came in. “How dare they?”
“Well, he is a Death Eater, and they have Harry’s testimony that he did indeed murder Dumbledore,” Lupin murmured to Mr Weasley.
Harry closed the door behind him and said: “What’s going on?”
Lupin turned and smiled at them all in swift acknowledgement. “The Order is—in the midst of a rather violent disagreement about whether we can trust Snape and his information.”
“Those imbeciles!” went on Malfoy, sounding disturbingly like Snape. “After all he’s done for them—after all he went through this summer, after—none of you saw him. None of you understand.”
“Well, Draco, we’re speaking for him,” Tonks said. “Don’t get your knickers in a bunch. Remus has been arguing for him all day. We just need Molly and Arthur to come in case there’s a vote.”
“And me,” said Charlie, suddenly. “I know I’ve never been to a meeting, but I belong to the Order. I’ve Owled from Roumania, I’ve let Bill use my vote before. So I have one. I can come and help.”
Malfoy stopped shouting and leaned back against Charlie’s hand on his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said in a lower voice.
Charlie and Malfoy were standing at the kitchen table, under the brightest light in the room and with the new and improved Weasley clock ticking over their heads. Malfoy gave the distinct impression that he’d just been hitting the table with his fist. Charlie had one knee up on a chair, and he was leaning against the knee with his free arm. Something about his stance struck Harry: he was standing beside Malfoy but, in leaning forward, he’d also been able to put himself and his big, squared shoulders between Malfoy and the rest of the room.
Malfoy looked tired and furious, but a little comforted.
“I didn’t know you knew Snape,” Tonks put in, sounding vaguely surprised.
“Well—he taught me,” Charlie said. “He was pretty okay, as a teacher. Got very shirty when you didn’t pay attention to the instructions, but—Draco trusts him. So I do, too.”
“I trust him as well,” said Lupin earnestly to Mr and Mrs Weasley. “I and Snape have been alone in a sea of Death Eaters for much too long. I have been given unique opportunities to observe his behaviour in the vipers’ nest, as it were, and in every instance possible he has tried to slow down the Death Eaters and control the number of kills. There are reasons I trusted him enough to come with him and give information to Harry: there is every reason to believe the man is on our side.”
Mrs Weasley already had her cloak on, but she was fiddling with the buttons, looking doubtful. Mr Weasley was giving Malfoy a decidedly cool look.
“Shacklebolt and Moody,” Mr Weasley said at length, “are both very sound men. Dumbledore placed the utmost confidence in both of them.”
“My father says that Kingsley Shacklebolt has been corrupted by Muggle politics and it’s turned him into an attack dog,” Malfoy began, and Mr Weasley wheeled on him.
“You will not dare parrot Lucius Malfoy in my home,” he snarled. “And as for corruption—”
“Dad!” said Charlie.
“Arthur!” said Lupin. “We’re wandering from the point! Lucius Malfoy is not on trial here. We’re discussing Snape, and the fact the Order seems willing to spit in his face and refuse to trust information that may very well win us the war. We need to go now.”
“And we’ll go, Remus,” said Mr Weasley. “But I may well side with Kingsley on this one.”
Charlie, with a look backwards at Malfoy, went to get his cloak. Malfoy was white-lipped, and he hadn’t spoken since Mr Weasley turned on him. Harry did know that the words ‘my father says’ were more or less Malfoy’s version of Harry saying ‘Er.’ He hadn’t meant to say it, not in front of this crowd. He wasn’t stupid.
“I’ll go, too,” Harry announced.
Everyone turned to look at him.
Harry took a deep breath. “What I said about him killing—about Snape, that’s part of the issue. So I should go, too.”
“All right,” said Lupin.
“Oh great,” said Malfoy, and sat down, apparently too full of hatred to support himself on his own two feet a moment longer.
“Can Ron and Hermione come?” Harry asked.
“No,” Lupin answered at once. “We will not be taken seriously if we have a gang of teenagers in tow. You may come, though, but Harry—your animosity towards Snape, it’s not unjustified. I admit that. And you should be allowed to say your piece, but I honestly believe—”
“Let Harry make up his own mind,” Mrs Weasley put in firmly.
Harry looked at the adults in their cloaks, looked back at Ron and Hermione behind him, and Ginny advancing a few steps towards Malfoy, who was sitting at the table alone with his head in his hands.
“I’ll make up my own mind,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Harry realised he had never seen the Order of the Phoenix assembled before.
There were more than forty of them arraigned in the drawing room, around a large age-stained black table that had clearly been enchanted larger, since it almost filled the room. Still some Order members were standing up, saying their piece pressed up against the mouldy green curtains.
And at the top of the table, where Dumbledore must once have sat, in a place now not a position of honour but reminiscent of the dock, was Snape. His black eyes were snapping like lit coals.
“I will not defend myself,” he snarled. “I refuse to be put on trial. I never was: there was only one man I answered to, only one man who had the right to judge me. I will give you information. The choice whether or not to act on it is yours. I am not answerable to this order for anything!”
Brilliant defence from Snape, Harry thought. He might work up from the Order condemning him to the Order getting him Kissed if he kept going like this.
“Severus,” Lupin said from the door. “If your information is not used to help us, then Dumbledore died for nothing. Isn’t that so?”
Snape’s greasy head swung to the door, where his glittering eyes moved from Lupin to Tonks to the Weasleys, to rest finally and balefully on Harry.
“Don’t call me Severus, you wretched, craven excuse for a werewolf. I’m in no mood for your politic grovelling—”
“God help us, he’s not making things sodding easy for himself, is he,” Charlie whispered. “How long has he been like this?”
“Since about ten in the morning,” Tonks whispered back, though she didn’t look at Charlie. Her eyes had been fixed coldly on Snape since he started railing against Lupin.
Snape was making it very easy for everyone to hate him, Harry thought. Harry’d never had any trouble with that one, himself. Just seeing Snape here made him think of Dumbledore flying over the battlements, of the years of hatred that lay between Snape and him, between Snape and his father.
“It might be an idea to be more politic yourself,” Lupin said sharply. “Whatever happened to using any means to accomplish your ends?”
“That’s just it, Lupin,” said Kingsley Shacklebolt from the other end of the table. “We have no possible way of knowing what Snape’s desired end might be. We do know that he is most accomplished at deception.”
Snape seemed to reach some sort of rage plateau, and said in a chilly voice: “A spy who is accomplished at deception. Imagine that.”
“Ah, but whose spy?” Moody roared, his eyeball swivelling in all directions, as if he expected Death Eaters hanging from the chandeliers. “Seems to me it makes sense a spy for our side would’ve killed the other side’s leader!”
Snape began to deliver his opinion of Moody’s mental prowess. The table erupted in chaos. Everyone looked frightened, Harry thought, too frightened to accept Snape or turn him away, on the verge of sheer panic. This was the real Dumbledore’s Army, and it was dissolving without him.
Harry stepped forward and said, “I’d like to—I’d like to say something.”
“Oh, good God,” snarled Snape. “Yes! I admit it. I killed Dumbledore. If I had to do it again, I would. I killed him. Now send the brat away.”
Harry recognised a few of the faces turned towards him now: Dedalus Diggle, Hestia Jones, but most of them were strangers, and now as he moved forward there was a rustling sound as everyone turned to him and stared, and started whispering.
“—the Chosen One—” said a woman three times Harry’s age.
God, they were desperate. Dumbledore was gone and Harry was all they had left.
He could do anything he liked with them, he realised as he stopped near Kingsley Shacklebolt, at the opposite end of the table to Snape. He could pay Snape back for every horrible thing he’d ever done, for last night when he’d said that Harry was responsible for Dumbledore’s death, when he wasn’t, when Snape was—
Malfoy’s voice in his head said, He did it to himself.
Harry didn’t want it to be true, not any of it, but it was.
“Snape did kill Dumbledore,” he said. “I saw him. And, uh, given that I don’t think the Death Eaters will be popping along to offer their testimony anytime soon, that makes me the only witness you have.”
A few people gave little laughs. Snape gave Harry a look of boundless hatred.
Harry set his teeth and went on. “I was also the only one who saw Dumbledore taking a Potion that he thought would help us get a weapon against Voldemort. It was—it was really bad. He was sick already.”
“We know that, Harry,” Hestia Jones put in. “We have heard Madam Pomfrey’s testimony on Dumbledore’s condition, and insofar as it goes, it fully supports Professor Snape’s story.”
She nodded pleasantly to Snape and Snape looked a little bit less like a cornered, maddened animal.
“We have also heard Snape’s testimony that he made an Unbreakable Vow promising to kill Dumbledore at the request of Narcissa Malfoy!” pointed out Dedalus Diggle, adding somewhat unnecessarily, “A known sympathiser with the Death Eaters!”
Harry could have mentioned that Narcissa Malfoy was currently a spy for Harry, but—well, Peter Pettigrew had been in the Order last time. He wasn’t going to put Malfoy’s mother in any more danger.
“Something you don’t know,” Harry said loudly, “was how it was in that cave. You all knew Dumbledore. You all knew what he was—how he was—the only wizard Voldemort ever feared. He took that Potion. He insisted on taking the Potion so I wouldn’t have to, even though I wanted to. And it left him on his knees, crying and—”
There was a lump in his throat and the Order of the Phoenix’s interested faces blurred before his eyes. He bit down hard on his lip. Snape wasn’t worth this.
He went on anyway. “He was crying and begging. At—near the end he asked me to kill him, and I told him—I would’ve said anything—I told him that the next drink of the Potion would. None of you were there so you can’t know how strong that Potion was, how badly off Dumbledore was when we got back to Hogwarts.”
Harry took a deep breath. “I believe Snape.”
There was immediate uproar. Snape was staring at Harry in the same way as all the others were: in total shock.
“In the light of this new evidence,” Lupin said quietly, “I believe we can now put this question to the vote. All those in favour of accepting Snape’s services to the Order?”
“Aye,” said Charlie, holding up his hand at once.
Snape looked at Charlie as if he had no idea who he was.
Harry folded his arms and looked out over the Order. Hestia Jones had raised her hand only a moment after Charlie: hands were going up all over the room. Even Dedalus Diggle had lifted his hand and, after some time, first Mrs and then Mr Weasley.
He was vaguely triumphant and more than a little panicked: all these people were counting on him, he did believe Snape, he hated Snape and he’d had to stand up for him, he didn’t know what to do with all this.
Snape was reinstated as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and after the vote was done people crowded around Harry and thanked him for coming, asked him how things were getting on.
Charlie made his way through the throng to get to Snape, and Harry edged towards them.
“Bilius Weasley, is it?” Snape asked, looking perfectly blank and like he wanted nothing more than to crawl back to his dungeon and stew in his own hateful juices for a year.
“Charlie. Younger brother.”
Snape’s lip curled. “I do find it so difficult to pick out any particular Weasley from the enormous crowd.”
Charlie’d looked like he was about to offer Snape his hand, but evidently he reconsidered. He folded his arms over his deep chest and regarded Snape thoughtfully for a few minutes.
“Glad the vote went our way,” he said at last. “D’you want to come back to the house and see Draco? He talks about you all the time.”
Snape looked very taken aback, then glared at Harry for some reason—not that Snape ever needed a reason—and said stiffly: “I must be about my duties. The Dark Lord will need an explanation for my absence today.”
His eyes swept the room, clearly plotting his swiftest mode of escape, and then Harry stepped deliberately into his line of vision.
“Before you go,” he said.
Snape looked down his nose at him. “If you are looking for humble thanks, O magnanimous Chosen One, I must warn you that you are about to be disappointed.”
“I don’t want your thanks,” Harry said flatly. “I don’t want anything from you but your help with this war. And now we’ve got it sorted that we’re on the same side, you can tell me your little plan and unlock the damn Horcrux from Malfoy’s neck.”
Snape’s whole aspect changed. He put his hunched tensed shoulders back and a sudden smile spread over his face, cruel and very pleased with himself.
“The same side, Potter?” he asked softly. “Why, whatever gave you that idea?”
Harry gritted his teeth. “You were Dumbledore’s man—”
“Oh, I was. But Dumbledore’s dead now,” Snape said, with only a momentary tightening of his lips against his yellowed teeth, “And if you think I cherish any warm feelings whatsoever for this bunch of vigilantes and devotees to the cult of the Chosen One, you are sorely mistaken. I certainly will not surrender my Horcrux, or tell you any of my plans. I am on my own side now. I do not owe anybody a thing.”
God, he hated Snape. He shouldn’t have spoken for him, they didn’t need his help.
“So—what?” Harry demanded. “Want to elbow Voldemort aside and be the next Dark Lord?”
“Perhaps,” Snape answered at once, sneering. “Though I was not the one holding court just now. Perhaps I should be asking you the same question.”
“I helped you,” Harry snarled. “I was just trying to do the right thing.”
“Your father said that to me once,” Snape said coldly. “I don’t trust your motives for a second. Any more than I trusted his.”
He spun and left the room in a flurry of black, like an unkindness of ravens all making for the door at once. Harry watched him go and regretted speaking for him, regretted all of it, regretted not telling the Order to hex Snape and shut him up somewhere, so he wouldn’t be wandering around weaving his secret little schemes and getting in Harry’s way.
He’d had to tell the truth, though.
Lupin couldn’t stay long since he had his own duties to return to, like Snape, and when he left Harry went with him. He’d had enough of Dedalus Diggle shaking his hands and the pressing weight of all those eyes on him, expectant, almost pleading. He intended to leave all the Weasleys to it: Mr Weasley was deep in conversation with Shacklebolt, Mrs Weasley with Moody, and a girl Harry vaguely remembered as one of Tonks’ friends had Charlie cornered.
Charlie escaped as courteously as he could, though, and followed Harry out the door.
Lupin dropped them off at the Burrow. Harry had been, kind of, a little, expecting Malfoy to be in the kitchen. Since he was so worried about Snape and everything.
Only the kitchen was empty, and Harry certainly wasn’t about to chase Malfoy over the house. He was going to—he’d make himself a cup of tea and then he’d go to the study and crack another book.
He had the kettle on and he was searching for the milk when Malfoy popped his head around the kitchen door.
“Hi,” he said, which was an unusually innocuous thing for Malfoy to say. He was breathing a little quickly, and from what Harry could see, in his pyjamas. They were blue.
“Hi,” Harry said cautiously.
“So, Charlie told me what you did,” Malfoy went on, leaning against the doorframe and still not opening the door all the way, his eyes on the floor rather than on Harry.
Harry obviously could not read any expression in Malfoy’s lowered eyelids, so he was left without a clue on how to proceed.
“Yes,” he said. “Well. Er.”
Malfoy lifted his eyes from the floor to the door by which he was standing, which he examined with apparent interest for a moment, and then he looked properly at Harry and, somewhat hesitantly, he smiled.
Clearly, Malfoy had smiled while in Harry’s presence before, though smirking was more his thing. It was just Harry couldn’t remember when, exactly, and it certainly hadn’t been directed at him. Malfoy’s smile was a little lopsided, the left corner of his mouth higher than the other: there was a tiny dimple in his left cheek.
“Thanks, Potter,” said Malfoy, and then stepped back and shut the door.
It was stupid, but Harry found himself smiling as he made the cup of tea.
Tea made, he went up and told Ron and Hermione the whole thing. Hermione patted his arm and told him he’d been very mature.
“Will Snape go back to teaching?” Ron asked. “Oh, Harry, mate. Dozens of teeny midget Gryffindors will curse your name.”
“I think he’s too busy being a Death Eater,” Harry said.
“Oh, well,” said Ron. “That’s all right then.”
Eventually Hermione went up to tell Ginny the news, besides which all of them were yawning and fancied an early night. None of them had got much sleep last night, after all.
Harry was planning on a bit of a sleep-in, but it didn’t work out that way. He was drifting through deep dreamless sleep, and then suddenly he’d got tangled in his sheets and fallen out of bed, his scar throbbing, the whole world a sudden twist of agony.
Voldemort was pleased about something, then. God damn it. God damn him. Harry fought his way out of the sheets and lay on his back for a few silent, furious minutes, heart thudding too fast in his chest, staring up at the ceiling.
There was nothing he could do about it. Not yet.
He unclenched his fists, got up and got dressed. It was seven in the morning, and he wasn’t getting back to sleep, so he crept out so as not to wake Ron and washed his sweaty face in the bathroom. His scar stung a little from the cold water.
He went downstairs and was mildly surprised to find Malfoy there already, fully dressed and making his inevitable coffee.
“Don’t you sleep?” he asked, putting on the kettle.
“Morning to you too, Potter,” Malfoy said. “No, I creep about of nights. Sometimes just to cackle to myself in the stilly watches. Sometimes, of course, I do my hair nicely and then I go out and have myself a good time.”
“Course you do.”
Malfoy’s eyes looked bruised and his face was white, and Harry doubted if he’d had any sleep at all, but given that Malfoy actually and astonishingly seemed ready to be civil Harry was not about to ruin things by pointing this out.
“One day I’ll have to change my ways,” Malfoy said with a dramatic sigh. “But for now I’m young, and life is all about hard drinking, fast brooms and loose witches. D’you fancy pancakes? I think I do.”
“Um, yeah,” Harry said. “That’d be nice. Thanks.”
Once Malfoy was occupied with finding flour and eggs, and thus had a legitimate reason to be looking at cupboards and away from Harry, he said: “Actually sometimes this—” he tapped the inside of his left arm, “It keeps me up at nights, sometimes. It was particularly bad last night and—I don’t want Charles to know.”
Harry remembered the inflamed skin around the Dark Mark, the one time he’d seen Malfoy’s. As if Malfoy didn’t waltz about forgetting food and rest enough on his own.
“I won’t tell him,” he offered after a minute. “But I think that you’re just making up stories to hide the truth about your hard-drinking lifestyle.”
Malfoy looked up from the mixing bowl to slant a bit of an incredulous grin over at Harry, which Harry thought was a bit much: Malfoy couldn’t possibly have believed he was entirely humourless.
“Have you given thought to that?” he inquired after a moment.
“Er. Hard drinking?” Harry said. “Not really, to tell you the truth.”
“Not hard drinking per se,” Malfoy corrected him. “Just the incredible amount we’re all going to be able to get away with once all this is over.”
“How d’you mean?”
The garden was filled with mist, Harry saw: it was going to be another grey day. He might be all right with staying inside reading, as it looked like there were going to be tea and pancakes.
“Well, all this war, it’s very stressful. And traumatic. Especially for impressionable young people. It would only be natural that after our stern, grim times of travail and obviously the great triumph, people should fall into wild ways. Go off the rails. Dance,” Malfoy went on, showing every sign of satisfaction, “with the devil a little.”
Harry hoisted himself up to sit on the draining board. “Maybe people will just want a quiet life.”
Malfoy looked quite stern. “No, Potter. That wouldn’t be very dramatic at all.”
“Sort of the point of a quiet life, yeah,” Harry said dryly.
“No, no, no! What I think will happen is that—well, Charles, he’ll lose a lot of money betting on dragon races, and he’ll have to earn his living by taking Bessie, running away to the circus and calling himself the Amazing Charleston. Pansy, now, she’ll be driven to seek out authority figures, and that’ll mean a wild love affair with Professor Firenze. A fine figure of a centaur, certainly, but when he loves and he rides away what will Pansy do? Single-parent families can be very hard on a colt.”
“Malfoy,” Harry said, not really trying to suppress a laugh, “Can you hear yourself when you talk?”
“I myself,” Malfoy proceeded relentlessly, “will of course take to liquor. Nervous system shattered, you know. But artistically shattered. There’ll be lots of crystal decanters and me vaguely forgetting what year it is. Not to mention the times I get out on windowsills and declare that I’m the Minister for Magic. I’d rather that than Granger, who I predict will take her fascination with house elves to the next level. If you know what I’m saying, and I think you do. On the other hand, there are more pleasant paths to choose, like that of Parvati and Padma Patil. I feel that they may well open a house of exotic pleasures.”
Malfoy really shouldn’t get all involved and try to talk with his hands while he was making pancakes. There was flour on his face.
“Parvati and Padma haven’t even been traumatised,” Harry pointed out.
“I just like to think of them opening a house of exotic pleasures,” Malfoy said. “Don’t spoil my dreams.”
Harry wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t laughing at this stage. “I’m not sure I want to know this,” he said, “but what about me?”
Malfoy put the first pancake on. “Your downfall will obviously be the loose women.” He shook his head sadly. “We could all see it coming. The hysterical stalking fans. You, a bitter jaded youth. Them, stealing items of your clothing and possibly your pets. You’ll make some terrible, shameful mistakes, Potter. And retribution will surely follow when Professor Trelawney files that paternity suit.”
“Malfoy, are you sure you haven’t already taken to hard liquor?”
Harry was a little curious about everyone else, especially since Malfoy had now run out of Divination teachers with whom people could have illicit offspring, but at that point Ginny came down the stairs.
She gave them a very funny look.
“Morning,” Harry said.
“Morning, Girl Weasley, my bird of paradise,” said Malfoy. “Come to me and cheer my lonely heart.”
Ginny went over to him and peered into the pan, giving up on the funny looks and looking disappointed instead.
“I was hoping for eggs,” she said. “Can there be eggs?”
“To prove my eternal devotion,” Malfoy said, “there will be eggs. Do you want my eternal devotion scrambled or fried?”
Ginny decided on fried, and then Hermione came down with damp hair and a roll of parchment.
“I’ve been thinking that we need to vary our study routine,” she announced. “We need to give some thought to the other Horcruxes. And maybe,” she stopped and frowned, “Maybe make a pie chart.”
Ron came down next to find them all writing on the parchment in turns and between forkfuls of pancake.
“So,” he said. “Just to clarify. We’re not going to have to read any more of those books right now, and there are pancakes? This is a beautiful, glorious day.”
Harry conceded, “It’s not bad.”
By about eleven, the parchment had a lot of scribbling on it, but the headings were still the part that caught the eye.
Written in Hermione’s firm clear hand were the words Ring and Book, both crossed out, and then Locket, Cup, Snake and Ravenclaw or Gryffindor Object.
Unfortunately, none of those were crossed out, but at least they had plans for the locket and the snake.
Malfoy was frowning at the last item.
“How can we have no idea what it is?” he said. “I don’t know anything about Ravenclaws. They could have millions of Ravenclaw relics stashed away, they probably do, I know Mandy Brocklehurst is mad about archaeology. There has to be some other clue to what the object is. Why did you go to Godric’s Hollow at all?”
The segue from rambling to a direct question caught Harry somewhat off guard. He looked up and met Malfoy’s eyes.
“Well,” he said. “I sort of felt like I should go there.”
“You sort of felt like you should go there,” Malfoy repeated, in an accurate imitation of Harry’s voice, and then laughed to take the sting out of it. “Yes, Potter, but these hunches, they’re usually based on something, aren’t they? Come on. I’m trying to have a little faith in you, here.”
“Is Malfoy feeling all right?” Ron asked in an undertone.
Harry thought. “Well,” he said. “Voldemort left the ring in the ruins of the Gaunt House, after he killed his uncle. And when he came to kill—my parents and me, he thought that would be a big, important murder. Like when he killed his family.”
“And Godric’s Hollow is, of course, associated with Gryffindor,” Hermione put in thoughtfully. “Yes. It would seem like an ideal place to put another Horcrux. Esepcially if he had a Gryffindor one. And he wouldn’t exactly have got the opportunity to ward it about with spells, now would he?”
They all looked at each other with dawning hope.
“See, I told you you had a reason, Potter.”
“Uh. That’s great, and everything,” Ron said. “Good work, everyone. But we did go to Godric’s Hollow already and we didn’t find anything. We looked for days. I’m just pointing this out.”
Depression settled over the table like the mist on the garden.
“Only,” Hermione said, and her voice suddenly rose with excitement. “Something was taken out of Godric’s Hollow the night Harry’s—that night, you know. Voldemort’s wand. Someone took it away that night, and gave it back to him. That must’ve been a Death Eater. They could’ve taken the Horcrux as well.”
“Which means that You-Know-Who has it again,” Ginny said, looking briefly pleased to have something to contribute, and then biting her lip when she realised what she’d actually said.
“Well,” Harry said slowly. “Well, someone took something else out that night. Our people got to Godric’s Hollow first, because they took me. And—they might have taken something else with me. It’s possible.”
He looked around the table, Hermione concentrating fiercely, Ron frowning to make out someone else’s handwriting, Ginny looking excited and Malfoy kind of—pleasanter than usual, smiling at him a little, flour still on his face. Harry felt torn: he’d wanted something he could do, some action he could take instead of all this endless reading.
Only he’d promised himself that he would never go back to Privet Drive again.