The next night Harry found Malfoy climbing out of a window.
Malfoy squawked when Harry came in and almost lost his grip on the window frame. Harry rushed forward but by then Malfoy had already recovered himself, knee up on the sill, and was regarding him with a look more resigned than annoyed.
“Charles is spending the night at Hogwarts with a little girl who got hurt because of your gigantically brilliant professor,” he said, with a sneer. “I did think I might have one night to myself.”
“Don’t talk about Hagrid that way,” Harry said automatically. “And where d’you think you’re going?”
Malfoy did not answer for a moment, and then he said: “Out to see my friends.”
“You’re not doing anything of the sort,” Harry told him. “Get back in here. Don’t be stupid. Do you think that Voldemort’s not looking for you, too?”
Malfoy looked mulish. “We’re going to a Muggle place.”
“No you’re not,” Harry said. “Because you’re not going anywhere.”
Malfoy’s mouth took on a peculiarly ugly twist. “Yes, I am.”
“No,” Harry answered. “You’re not.”
For a moment he was pretty sure that Malfoy was going to hex him and drop out the window, and he steeled himself to duck and draw his wand. Then Malfoy shook his head and said: “How would you feel, if they were your friends?”
“I,” Harry said. That was different. Harry’s friends were different.
“I like my friends quite as much as you like yours,” Malfoy announced combatively. “And if you were stuck with my lot, and then if—I want to be around people who understand me,” he said, his voice almost vicious as he went on. “I want to be with people who like me.”
“Look, Malfoy,” Harry said. “I see, I do, but—”
“And I might’ve forgot to mention,” Malfoy said with a lot more firmness than Harry would’ve assumed someone could attain, half in and half out a window, “I’m going. I may do some things, Potter, but I won’t take orders from you.”
Harry recognised this unyielding look on his face, but he’d never before been pledged not to turn away or turn violent. He was, now. He didn’t think any of his friends had ever looked at him with this much defiance on their faces. He felt a bit uncertain about what to do.
“What would you do?” Malfoy demanded.
“I’d go,” Harry answered at once, and came to a decision. “And I’m going now. Wait there.”
“What?” Malfoy said. “Wait. No. I don’t want you to come.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Harry said. “Too bad for us. I’ve got an invisibility cloak and that will help. This is the best you’re going to do, Malfoy. I’m not letting you go alone.”
Malfoy did not say a word, and then when Harry’d almost closed the door on himself he heard him yell: “Get a move on, then!”
Harry got out his Invisibility Cloak, thought about writing a note for Ron and Hermione, assumed that ‘gone to a Muggle hang-out with Slytherins’ would just be taken as proof of insanity, and grabbed the Cloak and ran back in case Malfoy’d decided to slip away. Malfoy was still waiting on the window sill, though he was looking imperious and impatient about it.
“Come on, then,” he said, and dropped from view.
Harry came out the window, landing on his feet beside Malfoy, and Malfoy glanced to make sure he was there and then made for a small flowerpot in the middle of the Burrow’s garden.
“Portkey,” he said. “Easier than Apparating.”
“How long have you been planning this?” Harry asked.
Malfoy just smirked.
Harry muttered: “Schemer,” remembering how Malfoy had spoken about it the night of the Blaise Zabini talk, and was rewarded with rather preening grin from Malfoy. “Be polite,” Malfoy said, suddenly. “Even if—they don’t like you much. And Crabbe actually thinks you’re a psycho.”
“What?” Harry said. “Why?”
He hadn’t been aware that Crabbe really formed opinions independent of Malfoy. He didn’t, now he came to think of it, recall Crabbe saying a single notable word the whole time they’d been at Hogwarts together.
“Crabbe’s protective,” Malfoy said, sounding a bit anxious but mostly annoyed. “And he came to visit me in hospital, all right? I don’t think your boyish charm is going to win him over anytime soon.”
Harry was going to snap at him, but then Malfoy caught the flowerpot in one hand and Harry’s elbow with the other, and in the whirl of colour he remembered the trip to the Pensieve, and how Malfoy had looked catching his chest as he got up.
“Crabbe’s protective,” Harry repeated. “So what does Goyle do?”
“So Potter,” Malfoy said in a conversational tone, “the bushy-haired one, she’s clever and female, so that’s what she brings to the team: but what does the other one do? Surely you built him for a purpose?”
Harry looked around. It was a dark, somewhat gloomy night, the clouds pressing low upon the earth in a damp, sulky-looking grey mass. There was a hill, and beyond that there were some lights in the distance, bright yellow and refracting in the night air.
“That’s not how I meant it!”
“That’s how it sounded,” Malfoy informed him. He gave him an odd look: Harry was caught by it for a moment. He’d known what Malfoy’s eyes were like, he’d thought: cold and grey. It had not struck him before that they were particularly clear, but that was what held him for an instant. “You don’t usually mean it, do you, Potter? The things you do.”
Harry thought of Dean, who he had apparently hurt. “No,” he said, and then feeling defensive: “You mean them. That’s worse.”
“Maybe so,” Malfoy said. “But at least if I know what I’m doing, I can control myself.”
“Do you?” Harry demanded.
“Maybe I will,” Malfoy said. “If you intend to think about things once in a while.”
“Maybe I will,” Harry said, mimicking Malfoy’s tone. Malfoy rolled his eyes. “What’s this place, then?”
“The Crow and Council,” Malfoy answered. “Nearest Muggle pub to Hogsmeade there is. We’ve been here a few times, when we could get away and felt like slumming it.”
“Get under the Cloak, will you?” Harry asked, glancing around. The hills looked deserted, but there was no sense in Malfoy risking himself.
Malfoy shook his head and Harry noticed that Malfoy looked tense, on the edge of happiness or pain. He thought about what Malfoy had said: if it was Harry, and if—
They reached the crest of the hill and on the slope downward, almost but not quite mingled with the lights of a village below, stood a little grey inn. It had its doors open and a coloured sign flashing on and off, a few old men smoking outside it, and in front of them the two large shapes of Crabbe and Goyle. Beside them, looking nervous in a short denim skirt, stood Pansy Parkinson.
Malfoy set off down the hill at a run.
They did not see him until he was halfway towards them, and then Pansy let out a little shriek, and Crabbe and Goyle’s faces lit up. Pansy hit him first, throwing both arms around his neck, and Malfoy laughed and spun and kissed the side of her face, then put her down to meet the charge of Crabbe and Goyle. For a moment Harry couldn’t even see Malfoy between the two bigger boys, and then he realised that Malfoy had an arm around Crabbe’s neck and Goyle was thumping his back.
“Stop trying to break my ribs,” were the first words Malfoy said, in his most autocratic tone, and Goyle made a gleeful sound and lifted Malfoy, tall though he was, off his feet for a moment. After a moment, Malfoy said: “I didn’t mean, stop trying and just do it. I meant let me go.”
Goyle put him down and Malfoy gave a last rough affectionate squeeze around Crabbe’s neck.
“Come over all girly and sentimental, haven’t you,” Crabbe said, with the same rough affection. The way he spoke was almost as if he was adding a silent ‘boss.’
“Oh, sentimental? Who’s been teaching you words of four syllables?” Malfoy demanded, beaming at him.
“Millie,” Crabbe said, grinning back. “But don’t worry. I still can’t spell them.”
He thumped Malfoy on the back. Harry’d expected them to be pleased to see him—but they were so pleased to see him. He was smiling helplessly at them all, and they kept thumping him or patting him as if he might disappear at any moment. How would you feel, Malfoy had said, and he was glad that he hadn’t stopped Malfoy coming.
“Slipped away from those Gryffindors all right, I see,” Goyle said, proudly.
“Ah,” Malfoy said. “About that. Someone interfered. I had to bring him.” He sighed dramatically, and stepped back from his friends a little. “Come on, take it off.”
Harry, quietly cursing Malfoy’s dramatic turn, took off his cloak and draped it over his arm. “Hi,” he said, avoiding their eyes.
“Potter?” Pansy exclaimed, in the tone of a woman unexpectedly slapped in the face with a live fish.
“This is one of those jokes of yours I don’t get, isn’t it,” Goyle said in a forbearing sort of way. After a pause, he added: “I don’t get it.”
Harry looked at all of them and saw they had immediately ranged themselves against him, like soldiers at the approach of an enemy. Though they didn’t look much like soldiers: Pansy was wearing her short skirt and looking distinctly conscious of it, and Goyle was dressed in red shorts, a black and red jumper, and a red cap. Crabbe was dressed in jeans and a shirt and looked fairly normal, aside from the fact his expression when he looked at Harry was nothing short of murderous.
“Don’t make a fuss,” Malfoy said, and added carelessly: “To please me.”
It was only the expression on all their faces that told Harry this was Malfoy asking a particular favour rather than giving an order. It was hard to tell the difference with him.
“Let’s all go get a drink,” Malfoy proceeded, in the face of blank silence.
“With him?” Crabbe asked, his voice stern.
Harry crossed his arms over his chest. “Why not?”
“I can think of a few reasons,” Crabbe said.
“Forget them,” Malfoy said in a tone of command, and after a moment Crabbe grunted, and nodded with extreme reluctance.
That settled, they proceeded onward into the Crow and Council. Harry took up the rear, which he wasn’t particularly used to doing. Nor was he exactly used to being totally alone and looked down on. He had the weird sensation that Privet Drive had just turned into a Scottish pub.
Malfoy, he thought, must’ve had a bad time of it at the Burrow at first. On the other hand, Harry hadn’t ever planned to kill the headmaster and didn’t deserve this.
“I’ll get the first round,” Pansy said as they all sat down at a round table in the midst of the throng, mysteriously vacated when people Crabbe and Goyle’s size wanted a seat. She ducked in under Malfoy’s arm, pressed a kiss to his cheek and darted off.
Harry noticed that Crabbe and Goyle scooted their stools as far away from him as possible. Malfoy scooted his stool, with a long-suffering expression on his face, so it was equally placed between Harry and the other two. Then Crabbe and Goyle scooted their chairs closer to their chief.
Musical Chairs was really not a very dignified game for seventeen year olds.
At this point Malfoy created a welcome diversion by leaning across the table and saying in tones of profound horror: “Gregory Goyle, what d’you think you are wearing?”
Goyle looked modestly proud. “An authentic 1960s Marvin the Mad Muggle costume.”
“I misspoke,” said Malfoy. “Why. Why on earth are you wearing it?”
“You told us to wear Muggle clothes,” Goyle protested, looking injured. “These are Muggle clothes.”
“Are any of the Muggles here wearing clothes like yours?” Malfoy inquired.
“Ah, well, they wouldn’t be, would they,” Goyle said logically. “They’re not like Marvin. He’s mad, he is!”
“You’re mad,” Malfoy informed him witheringly. His tone was not quite convincing when he could not conceal how completely delighted he was to see him. Harry did not remember seeing Malfoy this simply happy often: he was pink and smiling and looked comfortable in this crowded little pub, utterly relaxed in the company of those he trusted.
Crabbe coughed. “By the way,” he said. “You know that thing, over the summer, that you told Goyle not to do under any circumstances?”
“Oh my God, no,” Malfoy exclaimed, and dropped his head dramatically on the table.
“What?” Harry asked. “Does it have something to do with the Death Eaters?”
“No!” Crabbe rapped out.
“No,” Malfoy said in an easier way. “What Goyle, poor lost soul that he is, has done over the summer is—go to a comic convention. Where people dress up like Muggles and carry on.”
“It was brilliant!” Goyle said. “I wish you’d been there, Malfoy, you would have enjoyed it, there were some really clever people—”
“There is not enough mockery in the world for you, Goyle—”
Malfoy and Goyle were engaged in a laughing exchange when Harry became aware that Crabbe was fixing him with the evil eye.
“Death Eaters,” he said. “Of course, that’s all we talk about.”
“Leave it, Crabbe,” Malfoy said sharply. “Someone tell me some news that isn’t about Goyle’s alarming comic orgies. How is Nott?” He cast a laughing look Harry’s way, and Harry felt a bit cheered up. “You do know who Nott is? About so high, smart, weighs about six stone soaking wet?”
“Sure,” Harry said, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out. “He saw Thestrals.”
“I have high hopes for you as a normal member of society one day, Potter,” Malfoy assured him brightly. “Nott, how is he?”
Crabbe was still glowering, but Goyle seemed prepared to cheerfully follow Malfoy’s lead and included Harry in the answer by—well, by not glowering at him.
“He’s not at school,” he said. “Remember how he always used to say if the war got out of hand he was packing off to Switzerland? He’s packed off to Switzerland.”
“No!” Malfoy said. “Well, good for Nott. He’s well out of this mess.”
It was news to Harry that anyone in Slytherin aside from Malfoy wasn’t currently running to the Death Eaters’ camp. He listened with all his ears.
“Sent us a postcard,” Crabbe said. “Got a cabin. Learning how to ski. Left you a message.” He smiled, a fleeting smile directed entirely at Malfoy. “Said you were a tit, and he’d see you after all this was over.”
Malfoy laughed. “Maybe he will.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Harry. “If he isn’t for Voldemort, why isn’t he on our side?”
“Well,” Malfoy said slowly. “Because it isn’t quite as simple as that, Potter.”
“It is that simple,” Harry said. “You either want a murderous lunatic to take over Britain or you don’t. And if you don’t, you have no right to run away from the fight and let other people suffer in your place.”
Malfoy looked across at him, and for a moment the noise and jostle of the bar seemed to grow still, or at least not to matter any more.
“A lot of our families have been raided at random intervals year after year since the Dark Lord was conquered,” he said. “My father had some Dark things. Most of these families haven’t. Dumbledore set up an old boys’ network that was four times the size of Professor Slughorn’s. D’you know the things Mad-Eye Moody was allowed to get away with? A little sneak thief called Mundungus Fletcher was grabbed at the Parkinsons’ two years ago. D’you know who got him off? His approval was a step up for anyone, anywhere, and his disapproval held you back no matter who you were. How long did Fudge last after he stood against Dumbledore? You lot might want to fight for this regime. The rest of us don’t see any way but the Dark Lord to get rid of it.”
Malfoy’d certainly picked up a lot of information from his father.
“Dumbledore had his reasons for everything he did,” Harry said hotly. “Besides, you can’t think Voldemort is a step up from him. Voldemort murders people in their beds!”
Malfoy smirked. “Not purebloods, he doesn’t. Look at the choices we have. Goyle and Crabbe’s fathers are Death Eaters.”
“Hey!” Crabbe exclaimed.
“Oh, he already knows and told the papers, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Malfoy said impatiently. “Pansy’s brother Petrel is a Death Eater: he joined last year. Look at it this way. In a choice between killing our families, and killing strangers who we don’t even believe belong in our world, I think the choice is pretty clear. I think you’re pretty lucky that some of us don’t want to kill anyone and moved to Switzerland. I think Nott was being smart.”
“Maybe he won’t think so when we’re all dead, and Voldemort comes for Switzerland,” Harry snapped. “He’s a maniac and he’s a killer, and none of us are safe until he’s dead.”
“Potter,” Malfoy said, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t you think I know that? You don’t see me in Switzerland, do you?”
Harry felt prolonged exposure to Malfoy might reduce him to a state of gibbering madness. “Then why were you—why—?”
“He gets his back up,” Goyle said comfortably. “And then he goes on and on and on and—”
“I was making some very good points!” Malfoy protested vehemently. “And I was trying to show Potter something which never seems to have occurred to him, which is that other points of view exist in this world besides his own. Didn’t you think I was making some good points?”
“Tell you the truth,” Goyle said. “I wasn’t really listening.”
Malfoy let out a small heart cry.
“Don’t much like talking about politics,” Goyle went on. “I’ll do whatever you think, Malfoy. You know that.”
“Oh, well that’s brilliant,” Harry said. “Can’t you think for yourself?”
Crabbe and Goyle said nothing for a moment, but pushed their massive shoulders together, and suddenly looked a good deal larger.
“Yes,” Goyle said. “I can.”
“Seems to me,” Crabbe said. “Your friends follow you a lot of the time. What, Slytherins don’t have friends? We’re all supposed to follow you?”
Harry felt the scorn in that ‘you’ could have been dispensed with, since the only reason he was here was to help keep their precious leader safe.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “That’s not what I said. I just—it was the way Goyle put it, that’s all.”
Goyle’s hackles went down, and he seemed about to say something when Pansy returned with the drinks. Harry’d been expecting beer and not glasses of whisky.
“Thank you,” Malfoy said. “You’re a cuter bar wench than Madam Rosmerta. We’re all catching up on the news. How’s your little brother?” He clutched at the edge of the table. “Tell me he was Sorted into Slytherin.”
“Peaseblossom is settling into Slytherin very well,” Pansy said proudly.
Petrel, Pansy and Peaseblossom Parkinson. Harry was not making a single comment.
“The midgets are missing you, though,” Crabbe put in. “Zabini’s the new prefect, and he’s doing fine with fifth and sixth years, but the little ones have taken against him. You know how high-handed he can be.”
There was a certain reserve in Crabbe’s tone when he spoke about Zabini that raised Crabbe a notch in Harry’s estimation.
Malfoy looked a little pale, and Harry thought someone should say something before all their eyes turned to him as they kept doing. Since Crabbe had gone up that notch, he found it easy enough to sound good-tempered.
“High-handed? As opposed to Malfoy’s well-known humility, d’you mean?”
Goyle at least responded to the tone and grinned: when Harry looked at Malfoy he’d pulled himself together enough to grin too.
“It is my pure soul that draws the little children to my side.”
“He bullied them like mad,” Goyle translated cheerfully. “They liked it. Zabini’s condescending with them and the little blighters all want to eat his liver for it. Anyway, Malfoy did impressions for them. Oh!” A thought struck him. “Do one now. I miss them. Do Potter fainting on the train, I love that one!”
Harry coughed.
“Oh,” Goyle said. “Oh, right.”
The music in this place was mostly blasting noise, the words hard to catch, but just now something a little more tuneful was playing. Harry only noticed because he saw Malfoy tapping his fingertips against the table.
“Pansy,” Malfoy said, the instant after Harry had noticed. “Will you dance with me?”
The look on Pansy’s face made Harry think for a moment that she was pretty.
“Will you be all right, Potter?” Malfoy added casually.
For a moment Harry didn’t quite understand why he was asking, and then he remembered Crabbe’s words about Harry’s friends following him. Not that they did: not all the time, but—he understood a little about how Malfoy stood in relation to his friends, because of how Harry stood in relation to his own.
Malfoy saw himself as protecting them: even, weird though it was, massive Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy was offering protection.
Harry didn’t need anything of the kind, of course, but he was touched. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Malfoy nodded at him, then slid off his stool, walked a few paces and held his hand out to Pansy. She took it and he spun her to his side, and together they made their way into the middle of the floor. Trust Malfoy to pick centre stage.
Pansy wasn’t as good a dancer as Ginny, and they looked less showily good together. Ginny was so little, and light: she could toss her curls around and Malfoy could toss her around. Harry’d got used to seeing that sight. It was strange seeing Malfoy dance with someone else.
Pansy was tall, and looked awkward in her Muggle clothes, and when she put her arms around Malfoy’s neck she looked like she really meant it.
Malfoy had to bring Pansy with him, instead of having Ginny keep up with him: but there was something different about it in another way, as well. He pressed his forehead against hers, and spoke to her a few times, looking serious about it. It looked a little more real, and a little more intimate.
Considerably more intimate, actually, Harry saw as Malfoy’s hands lingering at the space between Pansy’s skirt and her light top, long fingers brushing the inch of skin. Malfoy’s sharp nose was almost touching Pansy’s cheek, his legs guiding the movements of hers. Pansy was laughing, whispering back, her face bright: they looked like they were going to snog any minute. It occurred to Harry that it was almost certain, especially given the amount of time they’d gone out and Malfoy’s little comment about the prefects’ bathroom, that Pansy and Malfoy’d—
Harry looked away from Malfoy and Pansy apparently having a wonderful time shaking what their mothers’d given them because of Crabbe’s voice. “Hey. How about giving them a little privacy, all right?” He looked at Crabbe, and saw the bloke was glowering again. “I don’t know why you felt you had to come spy on him—”
“I’m not spying on him,” Harry snapped. “I came here to look out for him.”
“We can look out for him,” Crabbe argued.
“Weeeell,” said Goyle. “I dunno. Not if, like, a lot of Death Eaters come after him. I don’t really think we’d win. And obviously, Potter’s concerned about Malfoy’s—you know, great big necklace of evil.”
“Right!” said Harry, feeling quite grateful to Goyle. He hadn’t really been looking forward to explaining things like the promise to Narcissa Malfoy, and the somewhat fragile understanding between him and Malfoy.
A girl came up and asked Harry to dance at this point, eyes sparkling and Scottish accent beguiling. Harry said he didn’t dance.
“Anyway, it’s obvious they’re getting on better now,” Goyle proceeded placidly. “Why shouldn’t they? Malfoy’s easy to like.”
Harry didn’t quite share this opinion on Malfoy’s charm, but he was distracted by another girl asking him to dance. He did his best to explain that he was flattered but there might be casualties.
“He cut Malfoy up!” Crabbe snarled.
“I apologised for that,” Harry said.
“Really,” Crabbe said. “Don’t recall seeing your fruit basket with the card of apology on it at the infirmary. Seemed to me you were busy celebrating slicing up Slytherins by snogging that bad-tempered Weasley girl.”
Another girl approached the table with a shy look.
“I don’t want to dance,” Harry said loudly.
“That’s—nice to know?” she answered, seeming somewhat taken-aback. Then she turned her shy smile on Crabbe. “I was wondering if you did?”
Crabbe laughed and went a bit red. “Um,” he said. “I’d love to, but my girlfriend would have me for breakfast.”
“Ah well, worth a try,” the girl said, and with another odd look at Harry, she swung jauntily away.
Harry resumed the conversation. “I apologised this summer,” he said.
“Bit late, don’t you think?” Crabbe demanded, at which point Malfoy and Pansy rejoined the table, flushed and breathing hard and smiling all around until Malfoy caught the end of Crabbe’s question.
“Lay off,” he said. “It’s just—let’s put it behind us, all right? I may have provoked Potter slightly more than I let on. All right?”
Crabbe regarded him narrowly. “How?”
“Might’ve been about to use Cruciatus,” Malfoy said. “Slightly.”
“Malfoy!” Goyle exclaimed. “You could’ve been expelled!”
“Why? Potter wasn’t expelled,” Crabbe said, looking a little shaken but still sticking to his point.
“Oh, for—Come with me, Crabbe,” Malfoy said. “You too, Goyle. We’re going to get the next round of drinks.”
He knocked back his first glass. Goyle and Crabbe, in spite of the impatient look Malfoy was giving Crabbe, seemed happy enough to go with him.
As they went towards the bar, they closed in on him at either side with a movement that seemed like a slotting into place.
Harry looked away, and met Pansy’s dark eyes. She wasn’t beaming adoringly at Malfoy any more. She was giving Harry an extremely unimpressed look.
“Not really in the mood to take any more,” Harry warned her.
“Fine,” Pansy said. “Draco asked me not to insult you to your face anyway.”
“Great,” Harry said.
“Fine,” Pansy repeated.
She crossed her arms under her breasts and glared. Then her face changed.
“Potter,” she said in a quiet voice. “Blaise is here, and he’s coming towards us. He can’t see Draco. We have to do something.”
Before Harry could even reply, there was a voice behind him, and he turned around to face Blaise Zabini.
He was curious enough, after the terrible Blaise Zabini talk, to get a proper look at Blaise Zabini, and now Zabini was standing in front of him.
Harry didn’t think he was anything special. He wore his Muggle clothes with a bit of an air, and he held his head high. He was good-looking and he looked as if he knew it. Harry didn’t see what Malfoy had seen in him.
“Well, Pansy,” Zabini drawled. “This is a bit of a surprise.”
“Fancy seeing you here,” Pansy said defiantly.
“Hi there, Zabini,” Harry said in a cold voice.
“I wonder why you’re meeting him?” Zabini pursued, keeping his eyes on Pansy. “Maybe he’s come here with news of a mutual friend of yours and mine? If he is, Pansy, you should tell our friend that he’s likely to find more favour with the other side these days.” Pansy stared at him speechlessly, and Zabini saw his advantage and added a few more words. “I’d trust me sooner than Potter. He is my friend too, you know.”
“If you mean Malfoy,” Harry remarked in a bored way, “why don’t you just say so? And why d’you think I’d care enough to come running around England over what Malfoy’s doing with himself?”
Zabini gave him a long dark look. “You seemed pretty interested last year.”
“Last year he was planning to murder the headmaster,” Harry said. “This year he’s on his own, he’s on the run and he’s pathetic. I have better things to do with my time then to look for him. Or to talk to you.”
Pansy gave him a look of open admiration and he felt quite pleased with himself.
“Sure,” Zabini said. “Then why are you here, Potter?”
There, Harry was uneasily aware, Zabini might have him.
“Er,” he said. “Well—” and then he felt warm fingers slip into his own, taking the place of his empty glass.
“Honestly, Blaise,” Pansy said. “A girl. A boy. A bar. I thought you had experience with this sort of thing.”
Harry tried, very carefully, to keep his face expressionless.
Zabini’s lip curled. “Oh really,” he said. “Whatever happened to Ginny Weasley?”
“We broke up in June,” Harry answered, with the strictest truth.
Pansy laughed, a low sweet sound. “And in August Potter and I had a little—encounter,” she said, sticking to truth in her turn.
Harry cautiously put out his arm, and found Pansy there so he could put it around her shoulders. “So here we are!” he said with enormous cheer. “Now get lost, Zabini.”
Zabini’s eyes travelled from Harry’s face to Pansy’s, mouth twisting. Eventually, he said in his deep, unhurried voice: “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Harry was out of ideas. Apparently, Pansy was not.
“I don’t really care what you think, Blaise,” she said, her sweetness unimpaired. “But I do wish you’d give me and Potter some privacy.”
At which point she turned in the circle of Harry’s arm, and when Harry glanced at her, startled by the movement, she captured his mouth with hers.
Blaise Zabini was there to be fooled. He couldn’t pull back. Pansy’s fingers were tightly knotted in his t-shirt, so it might be a little difficult to do in any case. He shouldn’t have had that whisky. Pansy Parkinson was a very good kisser.
Her lips were damp, from whisky or possibly from Malfoy’s mouth. They parted easily against Harry’s and the kiss went deep, Harry drawing his tongue against the inside of her mouth. He put his hands at the spot where Malfoy had put his, the small space of skin where thin shirt ended and before her skirt began, and he felt Pansy’s breath catch in her throat.
“Um?” said Goyle’s voice.
Harry came up for air to find Pansy standing between his legs, and Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle all staring at them in horror.
“You know, two girls asked him to dance and now this,” Goyle went on. “Obviously, Morag was right and Potter’s got something.”
Malfoy turned eyes of scorn on Goyle for this reaction, which he clearly did not consider appropriate for the occasion.
“Pansy,” Malfoy announced. “You have betrayed your house, and broken my heart!”
“Zabini’s here,” Harry said while they were all still startled, to get Malfoy’s reaction over as soon as possible. One of Malfoy’s hands clenched in a fist, and that was all. Crabbe and Goyle closed in on him tight. “Let’s go now,” Harry added, and tossed Malfoy his cloak. “Put that on.”
He hadn’t even realised he was giving orders before Crabbe looked to Malfoy to confirm them. Malfoy shrugged before he was invisible, and the Slytherins went where Harry went.
He held the door open for Pansy as anyone might for a girl, and kept holding it while Crabbe and Goyle smuggled Malfoy out. As he did so, he scanned the crowded bar to see the too-calm, too-handsome face of Blaise Zabini. He wanted to know why Zabini’d been out that night.
He was the last one out the door. He was the only one who saw the man Zabini was with.
It didn’t matter. None of the others, save perhaps Malfoy, would have recognised Peter Pettigrew.
It was cold out on the hills. Pansy began shivering and Malfoy took off his Invisibility Cloak and wound it around her, putting his hand under her chin so he could smile at her about how massively invisible she was.
“As bobbing heads go, you’re my favourite,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Harry and putting his arm around her. “Now. What was Zabini—” his voice was not quite steady for a second and he looked furious with himself, which was much more noticeable than the tremor. “What was he doing there?”
“Meeting a Death Eater,” Harry answered. Everyone looked at him and he said shortly: “Trust me. I know the man.”
“Oh my God,” Malfoy said. “What—what—is he getting into?”
“Trying to do one better than you,” Crabbe suggested in an unimpressed sort of way. “Like he always wanted to, and because he doesn’t know what else to do. No more do any of us. He’s gone to the Death Eaters. We’ve come to you. Tell us, Malfoy. What’s it going to be?”
Malfoy wrapped an absent arm around Pansy’s invisible shoulders. “I’ll tell you what it’s going to be,” he said fiercely. “You three are going to pack your bags and join Nott in Switzerland until I tell you it’s safe to come back.”
They were all silent for a moment, and then Crabbe glanced with a heavy sort of appeal to Pansy. From the look on her face, she straightened her shoulders under the Cloak and felt herself appointed spokeswoman.
“We’re not going to do that, Draco,” she informed him.
Malfoy gave her a look of blistering outrage that reminded Harry quite forcibly of Lucius Malfoy, and made him think Malfoy must be scared.
“Well,” Pansy said, gaining encouragement from Crabbe and Goyle’s silent support, “Well, we’re not. Potter’s right, even though he’s an idiot. This is our country too, and—and these people want to kill you, and they already—What we’ve got now is better than this, and besides, people are saying that if we help the Ministry now, they’ll listen to us more later. There won’t be any talk of Death Eaters who got off this time.”
Malfoy looked as if he was about to launch into a tirade, but then something that Pansy had said seemed to register.
“What,” he said slowly, “What are people saying?”
“My mum always said it was a lot of nonsense that Dad should’ve given up when he got married,” Goyle put in. “Did her a lot of harm with the Unspeakables, Dad’s carry-on. And she was—Mum always liked—Mrs Malfoy.”
“We didn’t want to talk about it while Potter was here,” Crabbe said. “But you know—you know—”
Malfoy’s face was white, but he pushed his shoulder against Crabbe’s and said, “I know.”
“The Dark Lord made a mistake there,” Pansy said. “Everyone’s talking about it. Your mum gave a lot of dinners—she had a lot of friends—she was a Black and she wasn’t a Death Eater and everyone thought she was clever. They’re saying that if Narcissa Malfoy was killed, anyone could be next. People aren’t happy.”
“Besides that,” Crabbe said stolidly. “Last year, we didn’t ask you what you were doing. We helped you. We’re going to help you again. You can’t tell us to go away. You can tell us how to help you.”
Malfoy’s pale narrow face seemed to grow narrower, as if it was shutting up on itself. He said at last: “I’ll—I will. I’ve got the beginnings of a plan. It’s going to be a big one. I’ll tell you.”
Goyle beamed. “I knew he’d have a plan. Didn’t I tell you both he’d have a plan?”
Crabbe grinned back at him, both of them apparently content to place perfect faith in Malfoy. “Whatever it is,” Crabbe said. “We’ll do it.”
“If it could not involve girl bodies,” Goyle added, “that’d be great.” Something seemed to occur to him, and he looked suspiciously at Harry. “Tell me,” he said. “First things I hear—about in the corridors—and now Pansy. Are you some sort of sex fiend?”
Malfoy looked almost hysterically relieved to burst out laughing. Goyle looked rather pleased to have amused him.
They all looked much less pleased the next moment, when Malfoy said: “You lot have to go now. Zabini needn’t know you two were out at all, if you get back before him.”
Crabbe and Goyle stopped smiling entirely, but nodded at once. Pansy’s face betrayed a little more. Harry looked at her and was suddenly, painfully reminded of the girl on the train who’d held Malfoy’s head in her lap and gazed at him as if he was just having a rest after hanging the moon.
At the time, he’d just thought she was stupid to take such pride in Malfoy.
“Draco,” she said, and then reached out from underneath the Cloak and held his hands. He looked down at her, his face pinched, as if he would’ve liked to do something to make her happier but he couldn’t think of anything.
“If you have any messages for me,” he said. “Give them to Charles when no-one can see you.”
“Who’s Charles?” Goyle asked blankly.
“He means Professor Weasley,” Pansy interpreted, and smiled as much as she could. “It does seem odd, to hear you calling a teacher Charles.”
Malfoy looked a little taken aback. “I suppose—I don’t really think of him as a teacher. I mean. He’s not much older than we are.”
“Have you made friends with a teacher, Malfoy?” Goyle inquired, and looked admiring.
“He doesn’t teach me,” Malfoy said, looking somewhat ruffled. “We share a room, for God’s sake.”
“Really,” said Pansy. “If you accidentally take any pictures of him with his robes off, then I’ve already arranged that Daphne will pay top Galleon for them.”
Malfoy burst out laughing again. “In spite of your filthy goings-on with Potter, you are the only girl at Hogwarts worth thinking about,” he said. “Come here.”
He tilted her chin up and kissed her briefly, a lock of his hair touching her face as lightly as his lips did.
“Crabbe, you tell Millicent to take care of you until I get back,” he said, turning to the others. Pansy busied herself taking off the Invisibility Cloak, head bowed so nobody could see her expression.
She put the Cloak into Harry’s hands and said: “You were pretty good in there, Potter,” but she was obviously too wretched to summon a smile.
Goyle looked more and more gloomy as Malfoy made his goodbyes. Crabbe’s face was expressionless, but he gripped Malfoy’s shoulder in one hand and did not let go for a long moment.
Once he had let go, Malfoy turned and Harry joined him, over the crest of the hill to where they’d left the flowerpot.
“Don’t talk to me for a minute,” Malfoy said, his voice brittle.
“Bye, Potter,” Goyle called out.
“Um,” Harry said. “Bye?”
Malfoy’s face wore that look, shut up on itself, that meant he was unhappy. He picked up the flowerpot, and tossed it from hand to hand, until the whirl occurred and they were back in the Burrow with a fine rain falling.
In the Burrow there were lights in every window and the sound of Mrs Weasley shouting.
Malfoy cast the flowerpot aside and sat on the rain-slick steps at the kitchen door. The little porch over them was made of latticework, and the rain dripped in all around them as Harry sat a couple of steps down from him.
Harry had made a promise, and now it seemed to him that it meant he should make Malfoy happy somehow. Whatever strange things would make Malfoy happy, only now he was sitting curled up in the rain missing his friends, and that was something Harry understood.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What for?” Malfoy asked roughly. “I saw them. That made things better. It’s just I’m used to—they were always with me, before. Just be quiet a minute.”
Harry was quiet. Malfoy held onto the wooden latticework at the side of the steps with a wet clenched hand, and the rain pattered down on their heads. Mrs Weasley’s voice was raised higher than a Howler.
At last, Malfoy said: “I’d rather be out here than in there.” There was a ghost of a smirk on his face.
Harry glanced up and said cautiously: “Yeah.”
“Probably they’re glad we’re not there as well,” Malfoy said. “It’d be awkward. They’re not family.”
Harry thought of a few occasions on which Mrs Weasley had scolded her own up and down, and then turned to him with a smile. It warmed him a little, the almost unconscious stress Malfoy had laid on ‘They.’
“Hermione’ll be with Ron,” he said. “And we may be stuck out here for a while.”
Malfoy leaned his sharp chin on his hands. “D’you want to play Beater and Chaser?”
“Sorry?” Harry said. “I don’t really—I’m a Seeker, you know.”
Malfoy started to look a little amused. “No!” he said. “Are you any good?”
Harry rolled his eyes and grinned.
“You have to play other positions,” Malfoy said. “So you know which one you’re best at.”
“I just caught a Remembrall in first year,” Harry reminded him. “I didn’t try out.” He didn’t want to seem to be turning Malfoy down, though, so he added: “Last summer at the Burrow we played with two of us on each team—I guess I did a bit of Chasing then, sort of.”
Malfoy got up. He had a trick of dusting himself off as if preparing for something whenever he did get up, even if the something was apparently going to be going out in the rain. “Well, I can play a Beater,” he said. “I trained with Crabbe and Goyle for hours to show them how the Beaters before them used to play.”
It occurred to Harry that he hadn’t thought of training with Ron, but neither had he made up a song titled ‘Goyle Is Our Overlord’ so perhaps it evened out.
When they opened the broomshed and he saw Malfoy hefting a bat thoughtfully in his hands, Harry felt a touch alarmed.
“Exactly how is this played?”
“One Bludger, one Quaffle,” Malfoy replied. “You try to get the Quaffle in the hoop. I try to stop you.” He hefted the bat again. His smile was bright and sharp.
“You’re on,” Harry said.
The first time Malfoy whacked the Bludger with his bat, it almost took Harry’s head off. He had to bank sharply in the blasting wind and rain. If he’d been wearing robes they might have slowed him down too much.
“You don’t have to actually kill me!” he shouted.
Malfoy shouted back: “You don’t have to let me!”
The second time Harry was close to the hoop, and had to sheer off to escape another blow. It occurred to him that the Slytherins might always have regarded Bludgers as weapons against the enemy.
He grabbed the Quaffle, aimed and threw it like a cricket ball at Malfoy’s head. It connected and Malfoy fell off his broom.
“Oh my God!”
Harry swooped down and saw that Malfoy’d landed on his feet, and looked relatively unharmed. The fact he was still holding his bat was forcibly impressed on Harry when Malfoy looked up at him, smiled brilliantly and said: “That’s more like it!” and from his position on the ground, smashed the Quaffle up into Harry’s face.
Harry had been hit unmercifully hard in several places and they were both soaked to the skin when they staggered back into the back-door steps. Malfoy collapsed dramatically with his arm over his face.
“Oh, Quidditch,” he said, and with satisfaction: “Crabbe and Goyle says Gryffindor are being killed this year. Seeker and Keeper and a Chaser and their captain gone in a bunch. They’re dying.”
“What’re Slytherin doing without you?” Harry asked.
Malfoy scowled. “They’re not doing well. Looks like Hufflepuff is going to win the Quidditch Cup.”
Harry and Malfoy sat and contemplated this bleak prospect.
“I know it’s not important now,” Malfoy said crossly. “I knew it wasn’t important last year. But… Ravenclaw had some trouble replacing Chang, too. It’s complete flukey luck for Hufflepuff.”
“Not enough Ravenclaws ever try out,” Harry said. “That’s their problem. They knew Cho was leaving: they should’ve been prepared.”
He felt himself flush a little when he mentioned Cho. Well, they’d both left school now, and that entire hideous episode was well behind them.
“Ah, Cho Chang,” Malfoy said, somewhat dreamily. “Had a terrible crush on her in third year.”
“Really?” Harry almost laughed. “Me too.”
“For about two weeks,” Malfoy went on in a more practical tone. “Then I moved on to the Patil twins. Ah, the Patil twins.”
Harry snorted and Malfoy tried to get his hair, which was plastered all over his face, out of his eyes. He soon gave up and collapsed dramatically backwards again.
“What I said earlier,” he said in a muffled tone from under his arm. “About the Weasleys, and being awkward. Was it all right? I suppose the Burrow is more like home to you than anything.”
“No,” Harry said. “No. Hogwarts was more like home than anything.”
Malfoy put down his arm, but did not sit up. Harry looked over and saw his clear eyes, wide open and looking at the rain. “Potter,” he said, and his voice was a little strange. “Hogwarts is a school.”
Harry shrugged awkwardly, with one shoulder.
“And that Privy Drive place,” Malfoy said, and paused. “When I was—before I was born,” he said abruptly. “Father had a lot of rooms made into a nursery in the south wing of the manor. Because Mother was not—she didn’t like babies much, she thought, and she might not want to be bothered with me when I was little. The house elves were meant to do it. Then I was born and she—she did like me, after all. So the nursery was near her. But I never liked to go into the south wing. It was far away from them both and I didn’t like the thought of—being trapped there.”
It was odd, hearing talk of manors and south wings, and having it mean something a little like understanding. Harry linked his arms around his knees and nodded.
“I thought that Sirius Black left you his house?” Malfoy asked suddenly. “Mother was very annoyed about that. Isn’t that like home? I remember it, when it was Great-Aunt Wally’s home. Isn’t it—I thought it was all right.”
Harry thought of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and how wretched Sirius had looked there.
“It’s nothing like a home,” he said.
Malfoy was quiet for a little while longer. Then, still flat on his back and staring at the sky, he said: “Maybe we can do something about that.”