Harry did not think he had ever made a mistake so fundamental as that of comparing Draco Malfoy to Dudley.
He hadn’t thought much about the words he used trying to comfort Malfoy. Malfoy’s mother was dead and Harry was just desperately talking nonsense that could not possibly help. They were just words, and they didn’t make any difference. Narcissa Malfoy had asked Harry where she should go, and Harry had sent her to her death. Nobody could bring her back.
Malfoy did not sleep for a couple of nights. He sat around, speaking politely when he was spoken to, and looking ashen the whole time. Whenever someone spoke to him sympathetically he recoiled as if they had hit him. Perhaps the thing that distressed Mrs Weasley most was that he would not eat.
Then he did sleep, because he had to. He started to talk in a more normal way, even though he wasn’t insulting anyone so it wasn’t entirely normal, and he wasn’t entirely better.
He had made his wishes clear enough, so nobody talked about it at all. People talked about Quidditch, and Ron achieved a half hour of comparative normality by getting all worked up over the Chudley Cannons’ chances. It turned out Malfoy was a Tutshill Tornados fan. He called Ron delusional and everyone felt a little better.
It took Harry a while to notice something else.
It was just a small thing, subtle, nothing really noticeable in the midst of all the changes in Malfoy’s behaviour. Nobody but Harry noticed at all.
It was just that—Malfoy didn’t like Harry. He never had, and he never failed to show it, even when he wasn’t making a big ostentatious Schoolboy Nemesis display of himself. He always chose the seat furthest away from Harry, and sometimes went to sit on the carpet. He seldom addressed him in everyday conversation about passing the butter, if two groups were involved in something he chose the group Harry wasn’t in, he didn’t like him. It was as simple as that, and not something Harry’d had cause to think about before.
Only, now there was a change. Malfoy was not talking much, but when he was things like ‘pass the butter’ were addressed to Harry more often than to anyone else. Malfoy chose the seat nearest to Harry in any room, and, well, he made gestures.
It wasn’t a big deal: they weren’t big gestures. Harry brought Malfoy a cup of coffee six days after Narcissa Malfoy died. Malfoy was sitting at a table listlessly turning the pages of a book about dragonfire, which looked like everyone’s favoured method of destruction for the Gryffindor seal Horcrux, and Harry’d made tea for the others, and he’d thought that Malfoy could probably use some coffee.
Malfoy turned and said, “Thanks, Potter,” and took the cup in one hand, circling Harry’s wrist to steady the cup with the other. It was not something he would have done last week, and the cup hadn’t really been unsteady. Also, Malfoy’s light clasp on his wrist lasted an infinitesimal moment after he’d taken the cup.
Malfoy was doing things like that. Now and then he’d reach over and pluck Harry’s sleeve for his attention instead of barking out “Potter!” and possibly throwing something. Once when Harry was reading the paper and frowning Malfoy patted him on the shoulder as he passed.
That was odd in itself. Another odd thing was that clearly Malfoy was not being spontaneous. Harry saw him instinctively going for the chairs further away, and checking himself. He watched more closely and Malfoy looked tense and a bit self-conscious when he was making one of his little gestures, and he relaxed afterwards as if he had completed a task he’d set himself.
This latest float in Malfoy’s parade of weirdness left Harry at a loss at first, and then he remembered what he’d said when he’d been doing his best to comfort Malfoy—what he’d meant, what he’d promised Narcissa Malfoy and what he now owed her son—and he realised that this might be Malfoy’s way of letting Harry know that Malfoy accepted.
Malfoy was trying to make him his family.
When he realised that, he felt ill at the thought of how lonely and desperate Malfoy must be.
He’d known already that Dudley and Malfoy were different, but he hadn’t considered how very different their views on family were. He didn’t understand Malfoy’s position on family, or on much of anything, but it had suddenly become a matter of urgency to find out.
“Well, if you ask me,” Charlie began.
Harry hadn’t asked him anything. Charlie, in fact, didn’t actually know he was there. Harry had been thinking over the Malfoy problem, and come up with the thought that considering Malfoy had a marked lack of ability to take care of himself and alarming talent at wasting away like a romance heroine, a good start might be hauling Malfoy down to dinner.
Except now Malfoy and Charlie were talking, and Harry had, well—paused in his errand. So he could find out something that might help him work out what to do, it wasn’t just idle curiosity so it was all right.
Harry’s hand rested on the doorknob. The door was a little ajar and Harry held it in place rather than pushing it all the way open.
“It’s not like he has any proper family of his own,” Charlie said. “I mean, you saw Privy Drive or whatever, it was a nightmare, right?”
“Yes,” Malfoy answered, his tone neutral.
“Not that comes as any sort of surprise,” Charlie said. “I remember the letters Mum wrote me when she first saw him and—well, pretty much since then. Wandered around looking like an underfed kitten for too long, and in fact—Draco, you’re not to repeat this or laugh at him or anything, all right? Even if you get into a strop?”
“All right,” Malfoy agreed.
“The twins and Ron had to rescue him from there before the start of their second year. He clearly hadn’t been—they were keeping him locked up and not feeding him much of anything.” Charlie cleared his throat. “He’s well out of that. And of course Mum’s heart melted and trickled into her boots at the thought of, you know, the little Boy Who Lived being mistreated and everything. She’s done her best for him, Mum, but it’s not the same, and he has to know that. It’s like—” Charlie paused. “I’m not saying it’s brilliant to be yelled at by Mum or anything,” he said finally. “But she does it because we’re all comfortable. We know that she loves us, and she knows that we know, no matter what. Mum’s got her own children. It’s not the same.”
There was silence behind the door, as if Malfoy could not think of anything to say about mothers, or could think of too many things. After a moment Charlie went on, his voice a little rougher with sympathy he was trying to hide. Charlie was the worst at it, since he was the one who liked Malfoy the best.
“He hasn’t got anyone else,” Charlie said. “If you ask me, he meant it.”
Malfoy spoke abruptly, in the full sentences he’d seemed to be avoiding all week and a bleak flood of words he’d perhaps been trying to control all week. “I haven’t anyone. Not any more. And I have to—I can’t—” He stopped short, as if he had bitten his tongue to keep the words in, and then said in a sore sort of voice: “If you’re right, that’s one thing. But I won’t take pity.”
“Charlie!” Mrs Weasley called, coming up the stairs. “Draco—Harry, what on earth are you doing?”
She was staring at him. Harry let go of the doorknob as if it had burned him.
“Er,” he said. “Er. Coming down to lay the table for you!”
She beamed at him tenderly. “You’re always so thoughtful,” she said, and when Harry went by her and down the stairs she gave him a misty smile.
It’s not the same,, Charlie’s voice repeated in his head. Well, he’d always known that, really.
He’d promised Narcissa Malfoy, though, and that was why. It was not because he didn’t have anyone himself.
At dinner, Malfoy pulled a piece of bread into smaller pieces and drizzled them artistically over his food, creating an impressionistic painting that might have been secretly titled Snow Over Mountains of Snowy Peas: Draco Malfoy’s Entirely Unconvincing Rendition of a Person Eating Dinner.
Everyone looked at their food a lot. Charlie had seemed able to talk to Malfoy up in their room, but now he was just a solid uncomfortable presence on Malfoy’s left. Mr Weasley preserved the silence of someone who had nothing nice to say to a Malfoy, and nothing bad he could say to a bereaved son. Ron clearly felt he had shot his bolt with the Chudley Cannons.
Ginny, who had not been able to look Malfoy in the eye since it happened and could not seem to address a word directly to him that was not supremely awkward, glanced around in panic and took on talking duty. She began to relay the details of a letter from Dean Thomas she’d got via Pigwidgeon today.
“Dean Thomas?” Harry asked with dark suspicion.
“Yes,” Ginny answered, smiling at him brightly. “Well, Harry, we’re still friends, you know.”
“Didn’t know,” Harry said.
“If that Dean Thomas is trying to get around you again, trying to cozen his way back into your good graces by pretending he’s not after you, you shouldn’t trust him,” Ron warned. “Very interested in—that football thing, Dean. You can’t tell me that’s natural.”
Mr Weasley leaped on this chance to talk Muggles, and while Harry, Hermione and Ginny—who was equipped with knowledge learned from Dean—tried to explain football using pepper pots and a salad spoon, most of dinner went by comfortably enough.
Malfoy kept pulling apart his bread. Harry looked up from the pepper pot and blurted: “You should have some milk.”
It had sounded more natural in his head. Milk was healthy and—soothing, probably. People heated up milk when they wanted to go to sleep and it built healthy bones.
Malfoy stared at him as if Harry had lost his mind. “But I don’t like milk.”
“Right,” Harry said. “Never mind.”
“I could put some milk in my coffee,” Malfoy offered, in an experimental sort of way, but also with a blank air about him that implied he thought Harry was unforgivably crazy. “If it is required.”
“No. I mean fine. Whatever. Do whatever you want,” said Harry. “Don’t move that, Ginny, it’s not a player, it’s a goalpost.”
People were clearing up and washing up when Malfoy slipped a sensation into the remains of the conversation by remarking: “I quite like Thomas.”
Harry stared at him. “You do?”
Charlie glanced back at them, looking as if he wondered whether he should abandon the serving dishes on the floor and hurry back to Malfoy’s side. Malfoy kept his head bowed over his full plate.
“You do,” Harry inquired. “You do know he’s Muggleborn?”
“Yes,” Malfoy answered, with a strong suggestion of rolling his eyes about his voice. “Naturally, I know he’s a Mud—” he cut himself off sharply. “—leborn.”
“Oh,” Harry said. “A Muddleborn?”
He didn’t mean it badly, and for a wonder Malfoy didn’t take it that way. He looked up from his plate, light from the kitchen falling full on his drawn face, and a corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“I’m very enlightened about the Muddleborn,” he claimed.
“Oh, I see,” said Harry. “So—”
It was then that Hermione came to collect the impromptu goalposts and football players, and caught the tail end of their exchange. She took them to task for allowing prejudiced language to be a laughing matter, stopping at intervals to say “No, Mr Weasley, the equivalent of Man U wouldn’t be Wizards U, that’s not right at all.”
Malfoy made himself some coffee and put milk in it. It was a start.
Next morning Malfoy went off to the bathroom. It was normal enough for Malfoy to spend hours in the bathroom using Ginny’s hair things, but Harry happened to notice that there was no sound of the shower going. Maybe Malfoy was upset. Maybe Harry should do something.
Last time Harry had surprised Malfoy being upset in a bathroom, however, things had not gone well.
Harry twisted a page between his fingers, crumpled and tore it, and then looked up into Hermione’s appalled face. He escaped before she could get over the shock.
It was dark on the landing, the lights off, the morning overcast. There was not the slightest sound from the bathroom, but Malfoy had been in there for over an hour. Harry tried to think it over, doubted, wondered, gave it up and knocked on the door.
“Malfoy?” he said. “It’s, er, it’s me.”
There was no answer. Which meant there was no vicious snarl of “Go away!”, which Harry took as a promising sign. He frowned at the unhelpful blank face of the door, twisted the doorknob and shoved it open before he could change his mind.
Malfoy was huddled on the floor, knees drawn up, head buried in his arms, and Harry promptly changed his mind and wished he was anywhere else. It was too late now, though: had been too late since he’d promised Narcissa Malfoy to protect her son, and meant from Death Eaters and Aurors and random passersby who were deeply annoyed by him. Malfoy had ended up needing and Harry had ended up owing something else.
All the same, he meant to keep his word.
“Malfoy?” he said with extreme trepidation. “Are you okay?”
Malfoy’s wand was drawn and already in his hand, fingers tightly clenched around it. Harry did not think this was very promising at all.
“Malfoy,” he said, stopping a discreet distance from Malfoy and ready to draw his own wand at any minute. “What’re you doing?”
Malfoy lifted his head from his knees. His hair looked silver in the morning gloom, and his face looked ghastly, skin a greyish pale colour. He looked at Harry in a way so tranquil it looked desperate, and dropped his wand. Then he cupped his hands and said in a quiet, hoarse sort of way: “Call for water.” The trapped gleam of light on water reflected on the dim, small ceiling of the bathroom. “Call for food. Call for fire. Call for help.” The scarlet light was brighter than it had been in the Dursleys’ kitchen, a vivid lick of colour, growing brighter and brighter as Malfoy concentrated, as if it was a silent scream for help rather than a beacon. Then abruptly it extinguished between his palms. “And wait for me to find you,” he finished in an exhausted voice. He turned his face away, mouth twisting, and then added: “Only she won’t, will she? She won’t ever come to find me again.”
“I will,” said Harry.
He turned quickly to the sound behind him, and saw Ginny, clearly on the way down to the kitchen where Charlie was, and looking as if she devoutly wished she’d stayed up in her room. She gave Harry a brief agonised glance, and then her eyes slid over Malfoy, and she began to sidle around the horror of this situation on her way to the stairs.
Harry turned away and did not see the moment where her rush was diverted and some impulse other than embarrassment sent her flying past him, launching herself at Malfoy and collapsing beside him on the bathroom floor.
“Malfoy,” she said in a rush, voice muffled by putting her face against his shoulder. “Malfoy, I’m really sorry, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
Malfoy stared down at her bright head, looking extremely startled but also a little touched. He unclenched one of his hands, and smoothed her tumbled hair with fingers doing their best to be gentle.
“Thanks, Girl Weasley,” he said in an uneven sort of way. In an uneven sort of way, she laughed. Malfoy’s face sharpened with sudden resolve. “There’s one thing you can do for me,” he told her. “Will you?”
“Yes,” Ginny said at once.
“Potter—” Malfoy paused and looked up at him: Harry couldn’t quite read his expression. “He told me that my father tried to kill you. I said that I’d ask you about that, but—I didn’t. I don’t think—I didn’t want to know. Now I do. Will you tell me what happened?”
Ginny kept her head buried in Malfoy’s shoulder, and for a moment did not move or speak. Malfoy, moving stiffly as if he had been sitting too long on that cold bathroom floor, put his arm around her, held her to his side and did not press her, even though Harry saw the almost savagely impatient line of his mouth.
Slowly, Ginny said: “It was my first year at Hogwarts.”
Malfoy jumped and Harry was almost frightened by his face, but of course Ginny couldn’t see it. He kept gently smoothing her hair. “You were eleven,” Malfoy said, his voice only shaking once. “Oh—I see. Go on.” He lifted his eyes to Harry again. “Could you give us a moment,” he said.
“Right,” Harry said. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Thanks, Potter,” said Malfoy.
Harry backed out of the room, leaving them on the bathroom floor together. He paused, considering listening—just so he could know, for Malfoy’s own good—but instead, he went back to the living room where Ron and Hermione were studying, and he opened a book.
He waited until he heard Ginny talking to Charlie downstairs, and the clear sound of her laughing. Ron saw him get up as soon as he heard her and smiled at him knowingly: Harry shrugged, and they both let him go.
Malfoy wasn’t in the bathroom, and wasn’t in his room. Harry looked all around the house, and the gardens, and he came to the decision that if Malfoy had run off somewhere dangerous he had to be fetched back so he could damn well be endangered here. Then he heard the noise from the attics, and took the flights of stairs two at a time.
The door was locked, so Harry forced it, and was immediately hit with spectral flesh and chains.
He shouted, Malfoy fractionally lowered his wand, and the ghoul shrieked and fled into a different corner of the attic. Harry was left with the wind knocked out of him and his temper up.
“Malfoy,” he said, trying to keep his voice measured, “Are you hexing the Weasleys’ ghoul?”
“I don’t blame you for being surprised,” Malfoy told him, his eyes alight. “Quite a departure for my family, isn’t it? When we usually try to murder the Weasleys’ children!”
Oh, good.
“Malfoy,” Harry said, still trying to be careful, “It’s, um, it’s all right. Ginny knows it wasn’t your—”
“I’ve grasped the situation, Potter. I almost killed Ron Weasley. My father almost killed Ginny Weasley. I can tell the difference.”
It was pitch black up there in the attics. The light from the stairwell was all Harry had to see by: it was lucky Malfoy’s hair was pale, so he could track his movements around the attic. He was moving restlessly, and when he came closer Harry saw the flash of his eyes.
“I understand—” he began resolutely.
“Oh I’m sure you do, Potter,” Malfoy replied. “Your father was a real let-down, wasn’t he? Professor Snape told me how pathetic he was.”
Harry stilled and looked at the cruel curve of Malfoy’s mouth.
“What?”
“He tortured Professor Snape like a cat with a mouse, and then he lost his courage at the last minute before he finished him off,” Malfoy went on breathlessly. “But maybe it doesn’t compare, after all, you didn’t know your father. But—forgive me if I’m wrong—you did know dear old Sirius Black, didn’t you?”
“Shut your stupid mouth, Malfoy.”
“Poor Cousin Sirius,” Malfoy said, licking his lips and sneering. “Only Black who was ever in Gryffindor, you know. Of course, that makes sense: he was the only member of the family who was spectacularly dim.”
Harry abruptly went from trying to look away from Malfoy and control himself, fight down the rush of rage, to being carried away by it and glad about that. The hell with Malfoy, anyway: the hell with any stupid ideas about trying ridiculously and awkwardly to build something that should be organic anyway, something that should be easy.
“Aunt Bella told me all about him!” Malfoy shouted. “He went down because he was too arrogant and stupid to pay attention, didn’t he? He went down laughing like an idiot. Sounds like a true Gryffindor!”
Harry punched him in the face.
Malfoy snarled, dragging the cut in his mouth open further, and laughed as blood spilled down his chin. He threw himself at Harry and caught him in the stomach. Harry cracked his head going down and Malfoy’s face above him went blurry for a moment, voice sounding indistinct in his ears as if he was hearing sound underwater. Malfoy, the scrappy little bastard who had gotten in a lick at George Weasley with Harry and George both on him, hit Harry scientifically in the stomach and then elbowed him in the throat.
“And what was he up to before that?” Malfoy snarled. “I heard he was drinking himself to death and throwing tantrums. What a hero, Potter. You want to grow up to be just like him?”
Harry grabbed a handful of Malfoy’s hair and pulled it. Some of the hair came away in his hand as Malfoy screamed and Harry got the elbow off his throat with a shove, punched Malfoy in the face again and rolled him, getting an elbow in his stomach as Malfoy yelped and fought back, a fist missing Harry’s eye by an inch.
“What about your hero?” Harry rasped. “What about the guy still crawling to Voldemort after Voldemort tried to get his son killed? What about the guy who targets people through their children, the one who tries to murder little girls? You want to grow up to be just like him, Malfoy?”
Malfoy punched him properly in the face this time: Harry felt his lip cut open against his teeth. Blood filled his mouth and he swallowed it down, struggling to pin Malfoy down and let the bastard have it.
“Shut up!” Malfoy panted. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Take it back and I will!” Harry shouted. “My father wasn’t a murderer! My father wasn’t a coward!”
“That’s not what I hear,” Malfoy shouted back.
They rolled and hit the wall. Harry almost got Malfoy up against it, crushed between the wall and Harry, and he did get a few good blows in. All he could hear was the clanking of the ghoul’s chains somewhere in the distance, the harsh sound of Malfoy breathing and the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Then Malfoy twisted, slippery little bastard that he was, and threw Harry backwards, enough to get away from the wall. Harry grabbed the locket to bring Malfoy with him and the chain tightened around Malfoy’s neck so he choked. Malfoy tried to spit in Harry’s face. Harry used his free hand to punch Malfoy in the stomach, locked one leg around Malfoy’s and hit him again, hardly noticing when Malfoy swung and caught him in the eye. He was going to win this and he was going to make Malfoy shut his foul, lying mouth.
Malfoy was hitting him everywhere he could reach, hair flying and eyes wild, face flushed with fury. Harry thought for a confused moment that the eruption of the Weasleys into the attic was just the ghoul, and tried to hit Malfoy again.
“Harry!” Hermione shouted. “Malfoy! Stop at once!”
Ron and Charlie rushed at them and Charlie grabbed Malfoy by the back of his shirt. Ron locked an arm around Harry’s neck and dragged him backwards across the attic floor. Hermione rushed to help Ron, sticking her wand into the side of Harry’s neck.
“Don’t move, Harry,” she said. “Really, I mean it. I don’t know what you could have been thinking!”
Malfoy fought Charlie while Charlie tried to get a hold on his wrists: he only stilled when Ginny assisted her brother by trying to leap on Malfoy’s back. She didn’t quite make it, but Malfoy stopped moving and Ginny kept a tenacious hold on the shoulder of his shirt.
Mrs Weasley was weeping. “Harry, really, at a time like this, I don’t know how you could—”
Harry didn’t listen at first, glaring at Malfoy, who was glaring back. His shirt was torn and Harry saw the livid red mark where the chain had wrapped around his throat.
Then Mrs Weasley’s words seeped in, and he remembered Malfoy’s mother, and began to feel a little cold.
“Maybe Harry was provoked, Molly,” Mr Weasley put in.
“He was,” Malfoy said unexpectedly. Mr Weasley swung around and stared at him, and Malfoy shrugged, wincing as he did so. “I provoked him. I meant to do it,” he went on, with a cold, studied politeness. “Sorry for disturbing all of you.”
There seemed to be no answer to this, unless you counted everyone staring at both of them as if they thought Harry and Malfoy were both irredeemably insane as an answer.
“It was my fault,” Ginny announced suddenly. “I upset Malfoy.”
“No, you didn’t,” Malfoy snarled.
“I shouldn’t have hit him,” Harry said.
Charlie, alone of them all, looked like he wanted to laugh. “So it was everyone’s fault,” he said. “You’re a pack of culprits.”
“Oh, be quiet, Charles,” Malfoy muttered.
There was a total silence. Even the ghoul seemed to have wrapped his chains around himself and started sulking.
“Oh, honestly,” Hermione said at length. “I’ve a good mind not to heal either of you, but, Harry, that looks like it’s going to be a nasty black eye—” She lifted her wand from the side of his neck, and said: “Somebody help Malfoy. Not Ginny, you know you’re useless at healing charms—”
“I’ve been practising!” Ginny protested vehemently.
“I can do it,” Charlie said. “My specialty is burns, of course, but I’m okay with all healing charms. C’mere, you.”
Hermione began to murmur healing charms, her intent face close to Harry’s and her air completely businesslike until Harry flinched and she apologised all over herself. Malfoy’s eyes travelled from Ginny to Charlie.
“You try,” he suggested to Ginny, and then with suicidal recklessness in the presence of Ginny’s father: “You know you can do what you like with me.”
Ginny burst out laughing. Mr Weasley looked like he wished he had been struck deaf before he heard a Malfoy addressing his child in that way. Malfoy winked at Ginny, and then listened with unusual patience to her telling him that he should not have provoked Harry. Ginny pulled off most of the healing charms perfectly.
Guilt and adrenaline kept Harry up that night. He knew they’d all been right to stop him, he wished he hadn’t started it, but that didn’t change the fact that his blood was coursing restlessly in his veins and he wished he had something to do.
He went to make himself a cup of tea, and found Malfoy in the kitchen making coffee.
“Kettle’s boiled,” Malfoy told him.
“Um,” Harry said. “Right.”
Malfoy arched an eyebrow at him as if Harry was behaving oddly: as if nothing had happened earlier, and maybe, Harry thought slowly, as Malfoy regarded it, nothing really had. He felt slightly better as he realised that neither of them had crossed that unforgivable line. Harry had not mentioned Narcissa, and Malfoy had not mentioned Dumbledore.
He made himself tea so he could think before he said anything else.
Malfoy’d been angry so he’d run off at the mouth: nothing new there. And yet, and still. He didn’t think Malfoy enjoyed being hurt. He’d never seen Malfoy initiate a fistfight in his life. He just talked and talked and threw spells when he felt he’d been insulted beyond the possibility of remedy. He didn’t like being hurt, and yet he never could shut himself up, which meant he wanted—attention or something. Malfoy wanted to be somebody’s priority.
Harry would’ve thought that seeing into someone’s mind would have made them easy to work out. Apparently this was not the case, though without that Malfoy might have been utterly bloody impossible.
“About what Ginny told you,” Harry began.
“I’m thinking about that,” Malfoy told him. “I’m trying to come up with a plan. When I’m done working at my plan—” he paused, and looked around the kitchen as if a diversion at this embarrassing moment would have been very welcome, but none came, so he took a deep breath and said: “Will you help me with it?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Yeah. I will.”
Malfoy finished stirring sugar into his coffee. “All right, then.” He lifted the cup to his lips, and between the rim of the cup and the small cut Ginny had missed at the corner of Malfoy’s mouth Harry was almost sure he caught a smile.
He gestured to it as he made tea. “Ginny hasn’t quite managed those healing charms.”
“Well, she may not be Granger,” Malfoy admitted. “Granger’s talented,” he went on reluctantly, and then his half-hidden smile leaped out again between cup and lip. “For a Muddleborn.”
Harry laughed. It was ridiculous, he and Malfoy had been doing their level best to kill each other a couple of hours ago, and now they were back to that sort-of not-unpleasant place where they’d shaken hands. Maybe, it was possible that—
“Smarter than you,” he said. “Or me.”
“Well, obviously smarter than you,” Malfoy remarked loftily. “You’re practically a Muddleborn yourself.”
“You said that a lot down in the Slytherin dungeons, didn’t you?” Harry asked. “I can just tell.
Probably my Chosen One powers.”
He watched for another smile and got it.
“Do you really get on with Dean Thomas?” he asked suddenly.
“Well,” Malfoy said. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration. We had a conversation once. Do you know how to sort through someone’s thoughts?”
Harry blinked and felt somewhat at a loss.
“Er,” he said. “No?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Potter,” Malfoy informed him with satisfaction. “What were the chances of you stumbling into a memory of Professor Snape’s that involved your father and his friends?”
“How d’you know that?”
“He told me all about it this summer, you invading someone’s privacy, imagine my surprise, let’s move on,” Malfoy said, waving a hand and almost hitting his own coffee cup. “Subconsciously you wanted something that would be of interest to you, so you got that scene. You need to be able to do that consciously, so you can look into the snake’s mind. While keeping yours shielded.”
Harry remembered the sensation of his fangs sinking into Mr Weasley’s skin, and almost knocked over his tea. “I think I’m fine without looking into the snake’s mind, Malfoy, thanks.”
“No you won’t, Potter, you dimwit,” Malfoy said with his well-known tact and charm. “What if you say ‘Come, Nagini’ when what the Dark Lord usually says is ‘Daddy loves you, Snugglefangs’? Then where will you be?”
“Not experiencing the terrible mental image I currently am,” Harry said, grinning. “Which will be nice.”
“Don’t try to distract me with unexpected wit,” Malfoy said. “Come to the Pensieve and try to pick out the memory where I talked to Thomas.”
“Isn’t the Pensieve in with Charlie?” Harry inquired.
“I moved it to the study in case we talked tonight,” Malfoy said. “Come on, you.”
Harry came after Malfoy, still absently clutching his cup of tea. “So—you, er, planned this?”
“It’s true, I’m a plotter,” Malfoy said. “I scheme and I connive. Don’t feel bad because your kind is strategy retarded.”
It was impossible to understand anyone who could boast about scheming, but it seemed to be up to Harry to try.
“Speaking of planning,” he said, suddenly and a little too loudly. Malfoy turned on the stairs and looked at him inquiringly, and Harry found it much harder to proceed than he would’ve with Malfoy’s back turned. “It’s just,” he said. “I don’t have any plans to hit you again. I mean, I won’t do it.”
Malfoy looked like he was going to speak, checked himself, hesitated and then said: “Well, that’s excellent news. Can I still hit you?”
“Wh—oh, for God’s sake, Malfoy,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. “C’mon.”
They went up to the study where Hermione’s books lay in heaps on the table, and the Pensieve looked distinctly out of place. There was a ray of moonlight shining on it like a spotlight falling on an actor isolated from the rest of the cast. Malfoy went and leaned his coffee cup on the edge, which rather spoiled the whole picture.
“Don’t tip coffee in your thoughts,” Harry warned.
Malfoy looked rather intrigued by the idea, but then seemed to think better of it, and put his cup on the table, drew his wand and made a gesture indicating that Harry should go first. Harry put his cup beside Malfoy’s, and drew his own wand.
“Concentrate,” Malfoy advised. “Dean Thomas.”
Harry shrugged, shut his eyes, and slid his wand into the silvery lake of thoughts, and as he did so he fixed his mind on the friendly, somewhat withdrawn face of Dean Thomas.
When he opened his eyes he was standing on the tree-covered slope of ground that led down to the lake at Hogwarts, sunlight dappling the grass through the branches. It was summer at Hogwarts, and Malfoy was standing beside him looking surprised and rather pleased.
“Got it on your first try. Ladies and gentlemen, he can be taught!”
Harry was about to point out that only Professor Snape had ever said he was unteachable when Dean Thomas, apparently in a state of great agitation, walked right through them.
It was an odd feeling, leaving Harry with the distinct impression it should have been painful, and so he was somewhat distracted while Dean kicked at the ground, and then was called sharply to attention when Dean spoke, and said: “Oh, to hell with Harry Potter!”
“What?” said Harry.
“I beg your pardon,” drawled a familiar voice from the slope, “but isn’t that my usual line?”
Another Malfoy stirred from the shadows under the trees. Harry had got used to thinking of the Malfoy in the Pensieve as little Malfoy, but this Malfoy was pretty nearly as tall as the one beside him. Aside from the school robes, the only way Harry could tell them apart was that the Malfoy beside him, though he hadn’t been looking well since the news about Narcissa came, did not have the look the other Malfoy wore, the look of prolonged strain starting to seriously tell on someone’s health. The other Malfoy was almost grey in the face, and had dark shadows under his eyes.
Harry’d remembered him looking bad, but he hadn’t remembered him looking quite this bad. But he didn’t think he’d looked at Malfoy properly, now he came to think of it, after the—after he’d found Malfoy crying in the bathroom.
“Can I,” Harry began, and then said it anyway: “Why were you out here alone? I mean, I would’ve thought—the Room of Requirement, or your friends—”
He glanced at Malfoy, whose face was turned away a little towards the image of his past self, pale profile untouched by the light of last summer. He glanced at Harry before he spoke, mouth making an indecisive shape, and then said: “Because I was just out of the hospital, and I couldn’t bear everyone fussing around. I wanted to go somewhere and be quiet and not move very much because—because I felt like if I did, the new scar would split open.”
“Oh,” Harry said, his voice hoarse in his own ears.
“Don’t worry about it, Potter,” Malfoy said. “Just pay attention to what’s going on.”
Dean looked very startled, and said: “Malfoy!”
“Thomas!” Malfoy mimicked him, and sat up. He winced as he did so, going even more ashy pale for a moment, and Harry put out his hand and closed it around the other Malfoy’s arm.
“What do you want?” Dean asked, getting over his surprise and starting to eye Malfoy with suspicion.
“Nothing,” Malfoy said, narrowing his eyes at him. “I heard you say the only sensible words I’ve heard from a Gryffindor, so I thought I’d speak. Obviously, I shouldn’t have expected politeness from—”
Before Malfoy could say ‘a Mudblood’ Dean, always the calmest in the dormitory, said mildly enough: “All right, I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just in a foul mood.”
“Because of Potter?” Malfoy asked, cautiously lying back down. “Welcome to my world.”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Look. I’m—I’ve been—a lot of people were wondering. About that. What did he do to you? Parvati talked to Madam Pomfrey and she said that you were covered in blood—”
“Yeah,” Malfoy answered shortly. “I was.”
“It’s not like you’re a little friend of all the world, Malfoy,” Dean said, bridling. “It’s just—from what Madam Pomfrey—would you have died?”
Malfoy pressed his lips together for a moment, and then answered, in a voice trying and failing to be curt: “That’s what they tell me.”
The Malfoy beside Harry remained silent, but the muscles of his arm went tense under Harry’s palm. Dean bit his lip.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” he said. “I don’t—I don’t know what to think of Harry, to tell you the truth.”
“Personally, not his biggest fan,” Malfoy said. “Try not to expire of shock.”
Dean almost grinned, and then looked at the ground and scowled. “Maybe it’d be a nice change, talking to someone who isn’t a big fan of Harry’s.”
Harry didn’t know what Dean was doing. All right, so Malfoy, Malfoy and he’d always been at daggers drawn, and all right, just then Malfoy might’ve had the right to say anything about Harry he liked. But Dean hardly knew Malfoy, and they’d always got on pretty well: he didn’t know what he was on about.
“I always thought Harry and I were pretty friendly,” Dean said abruptly. “I mean, he’s kind of—withdrawn, sometimes—”
“Full of himself,” Malfoy supplied, looking at Dean as if eager to encourage these novel Gryffindor sentiments. “Struts about the school like he owns it—”
“I don’t,” Harry said vehemently.
“Shhh,” the other Malfoy whispered.
“I didn’t think that,” Dean said. “Not a bad guy, you know, just kind of—one track. Insular. A bit hard to be real friends with, but I thought we sort of were, anyway, and when he and Seamus had a blow-up last year I tried to get Seamus to make peace. I thought, you know, he thought we were friendly. I didn’t think—you know Ginny Weasley?”
“Small, red hair, shrill?” Malfoy shrugged. “Sure.”
“She’s not shrill,” Dean said, scowling harder. “Shut your mouth about her. We used to go out.” He paused, and seemed to consider what he was doing, and then apparently his indignation knew no bounds and not even house divides, because he went on in a rush: “She chucked me, and yesterday Harry grabbed her and snogged her right in front of me. Right in front of everyone. And now they’re going out, and he—if it had been Seamus, or even Neville or Ron—”
“That might’ve been a little weird,” Malfoy put in, and he and Dean both made a little face.
“Well, but you know what I mean! We’d just broken up,” Dean said. “I thought he was a friend. And I—when I saw them together, I broke a glass in my hand. He saw me do it. And he just grinned. And he kept grinning that night, and never acted like he’d done anything, or asked me if I was okay about it. Any of the others would’ve asked, or at least—I’m not stupid, I know she chucked me, and I know she’d always kind of had a crush on him, and I know none of us are old enough to be serious about things. But—but I really liked her, you know? And he could’ve told me he liked her. Or at least not rubbed my face in it. None of the others would have done something like that. He came in late enough last night, and I just looked at my hand where it was cut up from the glass, and I wanted to punch him in the face.” He stopped, took a deep breath and mumbled: “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Possibly because I think it would be excellent if you had punched Potter in the face,” Malfoy said. “Please do. Feel free. Anytime. At dinner tonight, if you like.”
Dean laughed, sort of awkwardly. “Nah. I don’t want her to know I’m feeling sore about it. There’s no—you have a sort of feeling about not losing dignity in front of them, even if they’ve already chucked you.”
“Yeah,” Malfoy said. “I know.”
Dean looked disconcerted. “Um.” He looked wildly off into the distance. “Um. If you don’t mind my asking, Malfoy. Those rumours true?”
Malfoy looked up from the grass and Harry saw his mouth curve in the sort of way it had before he launched a snake at Harry. “Actually,” he answered decisively, looking up at Dean as if defying him, or something, at least. “Actually, they are.”
“Ah,” said Dean.
Just then, a distraction came in the form of a laughing couple, talking and obviously oblivious to everything else. Harry did not let go of Malfoy, but he turned his head to watch his former self go by.
He was laughing, hair rumpled but looking as if he didn’t care about that, and Ginny was glowing and beautiful under his arm. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her look so happy in ages. As Harry watched, Ginny laughed again as if Harry had said something hilarious, and Harry leaned down and kissed her. They stayed locked together for a moment, and then proceeded on towards the lake.
Harry looked back from the sight of Ginny’s curls in the sunlight, with a sinking heart, back to the mismatched pair in the shade. They were staring bitterly after Harry and Ginny of the past.
“Well, I can’t stay here all day long,” Malfoy said. “I can’t afford to waste any more time. I’ve got—somewhere I need to be, and something I need to do.”
“Right,” Dean answered. “Um. It was—surprisingly all right talking to you, Malfoy.”
That shocked Malfoy’s rare crooked smile out of him. “Same here, Thomas,” he said, a sliver of warmth in his cool voice. He got up, a little shakily, and for a moment he put his hand against his chest and fear closed up his face like a slammed door. Then he shook it off and made his way up the slope.
“All right,” Malfoy said. “Now you know about how Thomas and I had our little talk. And you know how to choose the thought you want. Shall we go?”
They went, and left Dean staring at the place where Harry and Ginny had been.
Harry took out his wand and rested it against the edge of the Pensieve for a moment. “Did you do that just to make me feel rotten?” he demanded.
“No,” Malfoy answered, voice sharp at once. “No, I didn’t. Though I thought it might be useful for you to know how you lose people. You do want to win this, don’t you, Potter?”
“That’s not what I feel rotten about!” Harry shouted, and slammed his hand on the edge of the Pensieve. The surface of Malfoy’s thoughts shuddered. “I mean. I would’ve—I didn’t think of Dean, all right?”
“All right,” Malfoy said, smiling faintly. “I didn’t think you had. You’re not malicious for no reason.”
“Thank you for that ringing endorsement, Malfoy,” Harry said, and subsided all the same. That might well be the only positive thing he ever got out of Malfoy, after all. “And I didn’t,” he stopped. “I think I tried not to look at you, or think about what’d—I told myself that everyone was talking about me and Ginny, all right?”
“Well, a lot of them were,” Malfoy said fairly. “I heard some girl called Romilda Vane tried to throw herself off the battlements of the castle.” He looked at Harry and his mouth made another indecisive shape, and then closed on a sudden resolution. “Don’t fret about it too much, Potter,” he said. “You were just being an insensitive prat and casting stupid Dark spells. I was the one plotting to set Death Eaters and werewolves loose on the school.”
Well, Harry knew that, but he’d always assumed—he’d always thought of himself as behaving better than Malfoy, at least.
“I thought about the talk with Thomas, you know,” Malfoy said suddenly, stowing away his wand and moving away from the Pensieve. “He seemed—nice enough, enough like all the other boys I knew. I thought about it up on the tower, when I didn’t—” He looked over at Harry, and Harry nodded to show he understood. Malfoy laughed a short laugh and rested back against the wall of the study, by the window. “So you see. You being an insensitive prat worked out well in one way.”
“Oh well, in that case,” said Harry, and then threw up his hands and put away his wand. “Thanks, Malfoy.”
“I wanted you to see the memory for another reason,” Malfoy told him with a nasty abruptness that jarred with his tone before and brought Harry’s head up. “If we’re going to do this—”
He cut off the sentence as if he had bit his tongue, and Harry thought perhaps Malfoy’s new manner only meant that he felt they should—talk about this agreement, awkward though it might be. Malfoy did talk an awful lot, for a boy.
“We are,” Harry said shortly, and hoped that would settle that.
“No,” Malfoy said, his voice going a little thin and impatient. “I meant, I thought if we were, you should know. In case you were going to be stupid about it, in which case I’d rather not be bothered—”
“I should know what?” Harry asked blankly.
Malfoy spoke through his teeth. “That the rumours were true.”
Hermione had mentioned rumours, and now Dean had: Harry had remembered there were rumours, but he hadn’t seen any immediate prospect of finding out what they were. Hermione would’ve wondered why he wanted to know, and—well, now Malfoy seemed prepared to tell him.
“You see,” Harry said. “The thing is. I don’t know what the rumours are.”
There was a silence. Malfoy’s jaw was set and his eyes were fixed on some entirely uninteresting spot on the wall. He bowed his head and the moonlight from the window made it look white.
In a nasty voice and without looking up at Harry at all, Malfoy said flatly: “The rumours that I was mad about Blaise Zabini.”
“That you were what!” said Harry.
Malfoy said nothing at all.
“With—Zabini who’s a—” Harry hadn’t heard the rumours. And if he had heard the rumours, he would have laughed at them, and been completely sure they weren’t true. Only Malfoy had just said that they were, and now Harry should be—supportive, or something. “Right,” Harry said weakly.
“If you’re going to be a bastard about this, Potter—” Malfoy had his arms crossed defensively over his chest, and it was the thought of what he’d said, hesitating to move in case the new scar split open, that made Harry want to be better at this.
“No,” he said hastily. “No, I’m not, it’s fine, it’s absolutely, it’s—fine, good, I don’t mind at all. Only, uh, I didn’t know you were—uh—”
He had a sudden vivid recollection of Malfoy slipping Pansy Parkinson the tongue on the Weasleys’ dinner table. Malfoy hadn’t seemed that way at all, just then.
“Well,” Malfoy said in a voice entirely shut down as regarded expression. “I might not be.”
Harry resisted the urge to start throwing things at Malfoy until he started making some small amount of sense. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t really know what you’re saying at all here, Malfoy—”
Malfoy kept his eyes fixed on the floor and Harry tried to listen to him and not to think of Fred and George talking about how the Potion probably meant Malfoy was that way, or the look on Hermione’s face when she mentioned the rumours, or the way Malfoy had snapped at Harry when he’d said Zabini didn’t like Malfoy. What a Godawful situation.
“I broke up with Pansy at the end of fifth year,” Malfoy said in a hard, rapid voice. “I wanted to be free enough to—I was going to the Dark Lord as soon as I could. I wanted my father out of that place. Besides, it was—it was like this. She’s the only girl I’ve ever thought about—in a serious way. She’s still the only girl. Only I did think, on top of all the other reasons, that perhaps there was something more—I didn’t think of that, you know,” he said sharply.
“I know!” Harry said in a horrified way. “I mean! I’m sure you didn’t!”
“So then there was the summer, and after that there was the Cabinet,” Malfoy went on relentlessly, as if he was setting his teeth and ripping off an enormous bandage. “And it didn’t take long to get over myself and realise—what was really going on with the Dark Lord, what I’d let myself in for, what I’d let M-mother in for, and I panicked like an idiot. And then—I don’t want you to think that Blaise is a bastard.”
Harry wanted to say that he had never really thought about Blaise Zabini at all, and would have been delighted never to have thought about him at all, ever again, but Malfoy had been throwing down hard words about himself as if throwing stones down at the earth, and now he was making his first appeal for understanding.
“I’m sure Zabini’s—a Slytherin—” he said, since that was about the sum of what he knew about Zabini. Aside from the fact that his mother was reportedly a scary femme fatale, and that he’d said he didn’t fancy Ginny but according to Pansy Parkinson he did—and what was that about, now—and that Malfoy’d said he was the best-looking guy at Hogwarts—and well, Harry was getting an unpleasantly clear idea on what that was about, now.
Incredibly, this seemed to be the right response. “Yes, that’s just it,” Malfoy said, not lifting his eyes off the floor for a single moment. “He’s a Slytherin, and he’s like a Slytherin. Like we are. It’s not as bad as it’s going to sound. D’you remember what you said about Blaise not liking me, because of—I always had Crabbe and Goyle, of course, and I had Pansy too. And Nott never liked Blaise much, I don’t know why, and the point is that maybe, for once in your life, you had a point. Blaise always wanted to be—bigger in Slytherin than he was. Than he should’ve been, I suppose, since he had everything it took to be popular. Anyway. I don’t think he liked it. I don’t think I would have liked it. And he saw that I was—that I was all over the place, and he took the chance to—I think he liked having some power over me. And he did and that was that, I don’t want to discuss it but I was being stupid about everything last year. He chucked me. That’s all it was. I had time to think about that, over the summer.”
Harry wished Death Eaters would launch an attack so this conversation could be over.
“I’m sure that wasn’t all it—” he began hopelessly.
“Please stop,” Malfoy snapped. “This is absolutely the most mortifying moment of my life, all right? So stop making it worse. That was it. And it was different from how it was with Pansy, and that was probably just because I was in one of the worst states I’d ever been in, but I owed it to her at least to work out—well, to work it out. But I was a little occupied, and I’ve been a little occupied ever since, and it just doesn’t seem like a very urgent matter just now since there’s a war on and my mother’s been murdered and I might die at any moment. So I don’t know. But I thought you should know what there is to know, since I have no idea how you were brought up—except that you were dragged up by negligent Muggles, of course—and so there it is. Now you know.”
“I don’t have a problem with it!” Harry said instantly. “It’s fine! Fine! Whether—or not! It’s up to you, completely up to you, doesn’t make any difference to me, none at all. Can we never talk about this again?”
“Oh God, please,” Malfoy answered at once and in a tone of deep thanksgiving. He looked up and his face relaxed: and they both laughed awkwardly, so Harry thought on the whole he had not made a complete mess of it.
“Well, I had heard the rumours, of course,” Hermione said. “But I didn’t want to spread reports about it, because even someone like Malfoy doesn’t deserve to be teased.”
She seemed to feel that was all that needed to be said on the subject, and returned placidly to reading her book in the morning sunlight. Harry had been expecting a bit more in the way of a reaction, or failing that, advice.
“I had no idea,” Ron said.
“Thank you!” Harry said. “Neither did I! No idea!”
“Oh, well,” said Ron philosophically. “Not like I’m going to get all weird about it, is it, since my own brother’s that way.”
“I—what?” Harry asked, wishing people told him things. “Which one? It’s Percy, isn’t it?”
“It is not,” Ron said. “I’ll have you know that Penelope Clearwater stuck with Percy through everything, and given the war, I expect they’ll be the next lot to get engaged. Fred and George are already saying dark things about being best men.”
Harry suppressed the urge to ask in a somewhat distrait manner whether it was Fred or George. On the whole, he suspected George.
“It’s Charlie, of course,” Ron said. “We’ve all known for years. Except Mum,” he added, worrying at his lower lip. “She’s still expecting him to bring home a nice girl one of these days. But it’s never been an issue, really, since he pretty much went right from school to Roumania, and he hasn’t been back often—except for now, of course. Maybe he’s met someone up at school.”
“I heard that there’s a new boy waiting tables at the Hog’s Head,” Hermione put in helpfully.
Before Hermione could be carried away by matchmaking fervour, Harry felt there was an urgent point that needed to be made.
“Sorry,” he said. “But if Malfoy’s… Well, and if Charlie’s—should they really be sharing a room? I mean, Malfoy’s confused, and—”
He was stopped short by the look in Ron’s blue eyes.
“Harry,” Ron said, in quite a different and colder voice. “I want you to shut up for a moment and think about what you just suggested about my brother. Are you actually implying he’d take advantage of someone who’s eight years younger than he is and confused? Someone who would’ve been his student if he hadn’t gone off his head and got expelled? You’re my mate, and I want to be quite clear on this. Are you suggesting that my brother Charlie would make a move on someone who’s just lost his mum?”
“No,” Harry answered. “I—no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“All right then,” Ron said, calming down at once and looking like his usual steady, friendly self. “Anyway,” he said, relaxing further and making a face. “Are you implying that my brother would fancy Malfoy? Yeeeuch. I hope Charlie has better taste.”
“I really don’t know how he got involved with Blaise Zabini,” Hermione said, propping her chin on her hand and looking slightly dreamy. “Blaise Zabini’s very handsome.” She straightened up in her chair after a moment, and said: “Speaking purely objectively, of course.”
“Yeeuch,” Ron and Harry said in unison.
“I never liked him,” Harry added.
“Harry,” Hermione said. “I had to tell you his name in fourth year.”
“After that, I mean,” Harry returned, and retreated to his book.
It was a nice Saturday morning, the sun out even though it looked cold outside. Harry wondered where Malfoy was. If he was upset in the bathroom or the attic, someone should probably go and fetch him.
“Tea,” Harry said after a carefully measured period of time. Hermione made a vague noise that seemed more like she was purring to her books than responding to him.
Harry went and checked the bathroom, and then Malfoy’s room, and then went down to the kitchen. As he was going, he saw that Ginny, Charlie and Malfoy were all sitting together on one sofa in the sitting room, and he diverted his course and went in there instead.
“Hi, Potter,” Malfoy said, glancing around. The other two muttered greetings, but Ginny did not lift her head from Malfoy’s shoulder, and Malfoy soon returned his gaze to where hers was fixed—namely, at a blank wall.
“What’re you doing?” Harry inquired, advancing cautiously in case they had lost their minds en masse.
He came over and leaned on the back of the sofa: Malfoy tipped his head back to give him an amiable if upside down look, which confirmed Harry in the opinion that last night, aside from Blaise Zabini related awkwardness, had gone rather well.
“Playing a game,” Malfoy returned serenely. “It’s a good game.”
Ginny spoke in the same serene voice. “That’s where our television would be if we had one.”
“And it would play Top of the Pops,” Malfoy said in a happy way.
“Every day,” Ginny further elucidated. “All day.”
“I don’t know why I’m sitting here,” Charlie said, glancing good-humouredly back at Harry. “I don’t want a television at all.”
“Hush, Charles, don’t talk like that about the television!” Malfoy chided. “You didn’t see it. You don’t know how it was.”
Harry couldn’t help laughing: Malfoy was too ridiculous. “I’m sorry to break it to you. Top of the Pops doesn’t play all the time.”
At this point, Ginny did look around at him, her face eager. “What does it play, Harry?”
“Well,” Harry said. “Well, the news and things.”
Ginny returned to resting her head against Malfoy’s shoulder and contemplating the glories of imaginary television, and there was a moment of quiet before Malfoy apparently registered what Harry had said. “The news!” he said in a thunderstruck tone.
“Yes,” Harry answered, looking down at Malfoy’s ruffled blond head and wondering what madness was going on inside it now.
“And we have to read the papers to get our news,” Malfoy said in a voice of deep bitterness.
They all laughed and Malfoy and Ginny started to earnestly discuss the news as aired on television. Harry looked down at Malfoy’s hair and thought for a bit about Malfoy’s wrist-touching shoulder-patting business. They’d sorted out all that last night, he thought. Maybe some sort of reciprocal gesture was in order. He didn’t think he could’ve managed anything if Malfoy was actually looking at him.
He nerved himself, reached out and patted Malfoy on the head a couple of times. He felt a bit weird about it, and patted a little harder than he’d intended to.
“Ow,” Malfoy exclaimed in an ominous sort of way, and twisted around. “What the hell, Potter? I wasn’t even doing anything, why did you feel the urge to thump me on my head?”
Harry stepped back from the sofa and said: “My hand slipped.”
It had been a stupid idea: he saw that now.
“What d’you mean, your—” Malfoy said, staring at him with his cold grey eyes wide and affronted, and then he looked at Harry properly and his face changed. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, all right.” He turned back around at once, and spoke to Ginny. “We should probably get back to lessons.”
“Lessons?” Harry asked.
Malfoy stood up, and then gave Ginny his hand and pulled her up beside him. She smiled up at him.
“Malfoy’s not going to be reading with you guys any more,” she said. “He’s going to keep me company instead, and thank God, because I thought I was going to die of boredom.”
“Malfoy’s not—”
Malfoy nodded. “I like the Horcrux where it is,” he said. “And there’s no reason for me to try and get it off any more, is there?”
Harry hesitated. “Well, I suppose—” He’d almost forgotten the fact that he’d said he would let Malfoy’s mother off spying if Malfoy got the Horcrux off. Malfoy was right, in a way: she was utterly beyond all their reach now, and Harry couldn’t find it in him to tell Malfoy off just now.
“Ginny’s missing out on sixth year and she should learn some things,” Malfoy said. “I’m going to teach her.”
“Malfoy’s completely awful at Charms, but luckily I’m good at most of them,” Ginny went on. “And he’s completely awful at Care of Magical Creatures, but Charlie’s going to teach me that.”
“I’m not awful,” Malfoy said, offended. “I had substandard teachers. And a lack of inspiration in regard to the subject.”
“He’s going to teach me to make Polyjuice!” Ginny went on triumphantly. “I’m going to transform myself into Phlegm and go out and wow the neighbours.”
“The neighbours aren’t very close,” Charlie reminded her.
Ginny said with determination: “I can walk.”
They went off with their arms linked comfortably together. As Malfoy went by Harry he hit him twice, pretty hard, on the shoulder. Harry winced and then grinned a bit ruefully after him, but he didn’t look back. He lifted Ginny up and twirled her as they went along, and Harry didn’t see Malfoy’s face, but he saw Ginny’s, and was a bit surprised by how happy she looked.
“She’s a sweet kid, my sister,” Charlie said, as if he’d caught Harry’s puzzled look. “I know she must seem a bit boyish and stuff. We brought her up in a rough and tumble way amongst our lot, but she really wants to be kind to people. She wrote me all about reaching out to—and I quote—some misfit called Luna Lovegood at school, and I was overcome with cold horror at how condescending she might be coming off.”
“She didn’t,” Harry said. “I never thought she was.”
“I’m glad,” Charlie answered absently, looking after them. “She does try her best, even if she doesn’t know how to and she forgets it all when she has a temper on her. She’s really thrilled she seems to be helping Malfoy.”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and met Harry’s blank look with a patient one.
“I’m just telling you, there’s no need to be jealous of Draco,” he explained. “He’s not at all her style. She feels bad for him, and she wants to help. Don’t hassle him just because my little sister has a good heart.”
“You’re very concerned about Malfoy,” Harry remarked.
The tips of Charlie’s ears went brilliant red. He got up, gave Harry a look that reminded him of the way Ron had looked at him earlier, and he said: “Yeah. I am,” and slammed the door going upstairs.
Harry knew Ron well enough to know that his ears only went red when someone had hit home.
Charlie’d explained Ginny’s behaviour well enough, and Harry thought it was probably true. She had been kind to Luna, he thought, she was kind, he’d never really thought about it but he was certain she was.
It took Hermione to explain Malfoy’s behaviour to him.
Malfoy preserved an appearance of normality most of the time now, but he was usually quiet enough, and looked tired. Whenever Ginny came into the room he lit up and danced with her and talked to her and made her laugh. If it hadn’t been for the Blaise Zabini talk, Harry would really have assumed that Malfoy had simply fallen for her and was being really obvious about throwing himself at her feet.
He somehow got Harry to half-mutter another Muggle song for them, and they danced in the kitchen a couple of days after the Blaise Zabini Talk. Malfoy spun Ginny, smiled against her ear, and then whispered something to her that made her go off into a peal of laughter.
If it was so funny, Harry didn’t see why Malfoy couldn’t tell everyone.
Hermione came down for dinner and while she was getting out the water glasses, she looked over at Malfoy sparkling determinedly at Ginny while they made the table, and she looked a little sad.
“What?” Harry asked.
“I feel bad for Malfoy,” said Hermione, reluctantly. “Ginny said to me that she’d told him—about what his father had done.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “I knew that.”
Hermione looked up into his face and shook her head, the girl who’d known just what Cho was thinking and what advice to give Ginny to get Harry, even smarter about this subject than she usually was. “Well, Harry, don’t you see,” she said quietly. “Lucius Malfoy tried to kill two women. Ginny was the one who lived. Malfoy will do anything she wants him to.”
Harry felt like he had when he realised Malfoy was lonely enough to accept his offer.
On the whole, he liked it best when Ginny was off somewhere and Malfoy did not have to put himself out to please her. Three days after the Blaise Zabini Talk, Malfoy and Harry were alone and Malfoy was drawing a diagram to convince him that they should use dragon fire to destroy the seal Horcrux.
“It can melt sheet metal at four hundred yards! Also, if we use a Norwegian Ridgeback—”
“All right,” Harry said. “We’ll try it. The day after tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Malfoy said. “All right.” He stopped, looking somewhat at a loss, and then his face fell into the strained look he wore too often these days.
“What’re you thinking about,” Harry asked.
“Professor Snape,” Malfoy answered. “I wish—I wish I knew he was all right. I need to talk to him. But he’ll come when he can.”
It was the weirdest thing in the world, someone missing Professor Snape. This whole business was the weirdest thing in the world. Harry reached out all the same, and hit Malfoy twice in rapid and quite hard succession. For a moment he thought Malfoy’d forgotten and he’d just hit him again, but then the corner of Malfoy’s mouth came up.
“Um. It’ll be all right,” said Harry.
Malfoy smiled properly. “If you say so, Potter.”