Harry woke with a crick in his neck from sleeping sitting up against an overly ornate headboard. He thought that the carved wooden eagles had left imprints on his back.
He also woke with a distinct desire to stretch and get out of this really uncomfortable position, which intention lasted until he looked down at Malfoy’s ruffled blond head laid against Harry’s white shirt, and remembered why he was in this really uncomfortable position in the first place.
Harry really doubted that Malfoy was awake, but decided he should check anyway.
“Malfoy,” he said in a low voice. “Malfoy, how are you feeling?”
“Finble,” Malfoy grumbled, screwing his eyes up tight and turning his face into Harry’s ribs.
Not awake, then. Harry was an investigative genius.
Harry felt extremely disinclined to wake him. Last night had been—sort of spectacularly horrible. Malfoy had kept moving in his sleep, and waking with a moan of pain.
He was sleeping quietly now, breathing even and warm against Harry’s ribs. He’d actually drooled a little on Harry’s shirt.
Only a thought was trying to kick down the door of Harry’s reluctant, still-sleepy brain, and it went like this: Ginny was undoubtedly going to tell everyone about Malfoy’s current state of health, and Mrs Weasley and Charlie at least were undoubtedly going to check on him. And Malfoy would find sleeping curled up against Harry an ignominious position and then he would have fourteen fits.
“Malfoy,” Harry said, still quietly. “Um. Malfoy?”
“Griffle,” Malfoy complained, screwing up his whole sleep-pink face.
“D’you want some coffee?” Harry tried.
“Yes,” Malfoy said sleepily, opening his eyes up a slit. Then he sat up and pushed Harry summarily away, and almost off the bed. “Get off,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
Harry cracked his neck and was thankful about it. Malfoy sat on the bed squinting sadly around at the world, looking still-floppy from sleep and more or less like a martyred bunny rabbit. Harry decided not to share this revelation.
Eventually, Malfoy had rubbed his eyes enough to torture them into opening all the way, and he said: “God, I feel like sh—”
“Draco, dear?” said Mrs Weasley, opening the door.
“A little peaky,” Malfoy corrected himself. “I feel a little peaky.”
“I brought you breakfast,” Mrs Weasley said, beaming at him maternally. “With your favourite marmala—oh, good morning, Harry. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Morning,” said Harry, still cracking his neck and trying to work out if the carved eagles had permanently damaged his spine.
Mrs Weasley carried the tray in and put it on Malfoy’s bedside table.
“Draco, why is your bed all covered with canvas?” she inquired, trying to smooth down the covers.
“Don’t touch it!” Malfoy squawked. “It’s a special secret project. I’ll show you when it’s done.”
He let Mrs Weasley tug the canvas over him obediently enough, possibly because of the lure of the heaped tray she placed on his knees. She kept up a running monologue on how she planned to give Severus Snape a piece of her mind, and how Malfoy was very creative but he wasn’t to ruin the antique furniture, and ended up checking Malfoy’s forehead for fever.
Malfoy turned his face away from her hand a little, and looked sadly into his cup.
“Tea,” he said hollowly.
“All that caffeine isn’t good for you, dear,” Mrs Weasley said. “There’s lovely pumpkin juice too.”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows at her, and then after a moment’s pause said in a subdued voice: “Thank you.”
“You’re to stay in bed today,” Mrs Weasley said, as if Malfoy was about six. “Call me if you need anything.”
She bustled out. Malfoy started on his eggs.
“Didn’t you say something about coffee?” he asked Harry. “I distinctly remember something about coffee. Don’t try to weasel out of it.”
“Yeah, all right,” Harry said, and stole a piece of toast off the tray. “How’re you feeling?” he asked, frowning. “Aside from like sh—a little peaky.”
“‘M all right,” Malfoy said. “Seven sugars, please.”
“It’s usually four.”
“I could be on my death bed,” Malfoy pointed out. “I need seven. And stop stealing from my personal breakfast tray. All right, no, have the pumpkin juice, I think that stuff’s revolting.”
Harry took the glass and drained it, and took another piece of toast and the marmalade.
“Can I use your knife?”
“You can’t use my marmalade,” Malfoy said.
Harry took the knife. “Thanks.”
He ate his toast while Malfoy squiggled his eggs around his plate, looking queasy but territorial about his tray. He was thinking about the way Mrs Weasley had reached out, in an easy motherly way, to feel Malfoy’s forehead, and Malfoy had turned away. She wasn’t Malfoy’s mother: Malfoy didn’t have a mother anymore. He just had Harry.
Harry put down the knife and reached forward to press a hand against Malfoy’s forehead. Malfoy looked at him with shocked-wide eyes, but did not turn away. Malfoy’s skin was warm, but people typically were warm. Malfoy’s hair was kind of tickling Harry’s hand, and Malfoy was distracting him by making a face.
“I don’t, um,” Harry said. “How warm are people supposed to be? How d’you know if they have fever?”
Malfoy picked up the marmaladey knife and waved him away.
“Get going,” he said. “Before I die of old age or lack of caffeine.”
Harry stole the last piece of toast on his way out.
“I said I was all right!” Malfoy snapped.
“You also said you might be on your death bed,” Harry pointed out.
He’d got Malfoy a cup of coffee and himself a new shirt, and now he’d come back to find Malfoy waffling on about being perfectly able to get up. Harry’d had enough. It wasn’t like he’d slept particularly well last night.
“Give me one good reason why I can’t get up,” Malfoy said.
Harry said: “Because I say so.”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed hold of the bedpost and hauled himself immediately out of bed and to his feet. Which lasted all of three seconds before he let go of the bedpost, gave a sharp cry and Harry saw his knees go out from under him.
Harry moved fast: he was on the other side of the bed with his hands under Malfoy’s elbows before Malfoy could fall. Malfoy tried to shake him off and then grimaced.
“Everything hurts, I hate this,” Malfoy said, in a furious whisper between clenched teeth.
“I know,” Harry said, at which point Malfoy’s bedroom door opened again and Charlie came in.
“I’m absolutely fine,” Malfoy declared loudly, grabbing the bedpost and then shaking Harry off with decision.
Harry let him do it and leaned back against the wall, within easy distance if Malfoy decided to do something stupid like walk on his own. Charlie stood at the door, looking larger than he usually did, and unhappy.
“I didn’t come to ask if you were fine,” Charlie said quietly. “I came to ask you what the hell you thought you were doing.”
He paused, took a deep breath and made a helpless gesture.
“I just,” he began. “I come home from work and Ginny’s talking about spies and You-Know-Who and then, God help us, this morning the Cruciatus curse, and I had no idea about any of this. What have you got yourself into, Draco?”
“It’s my own business,” Malfoy said.
Charlie pinched the skin between his eyebrows as if he was getting a bad migraine. “Harry,” he said. “Could you give us a minute, please?”
Harry looked interrogatively at Malfoy.
“I need him,” Malfoy said. “He brings me coffee. I may require more at any moment.”
“Seems I couldn’t,” Harry said.
Charlie looked like he might explode from frustration or anxiety. “I—look, Draco, I don’t know what the hell is going on. Why didn’t you tell me? I thought we were friends!”
“We are,” Malfoy said. “But friends don’t tell each other everything.” His voice sharpened. “Do they, Charles?”
Charlie ran a hand through his curly red hair and looked harassed. “Draco,” he said. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I don’t understand what you’re doing, either, which is slightly more important since the Cruciatus curse is apparently involved—”
“It’s not your concern,” Malfoy informed him.
“It is my concern,” Charlie exclaimed, obviously losing his tenuous grip on patience. “Because I’m concerned about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you, so you can’t do things like this—”
“I have to!” Malfoy hurled at him. “I’m going to. Nobody’s going to stop me!”
“You can’t do things like this without telling me,” Charlie said.
That seemed to defuse Malfoy, or else he had already shot his bolt of defiance. Harry saw his shoulders sag and pushed off the wall easily, waiting in case Malfoy needed someone to catch him.
“Just leave me alone,” Malfoy said in a worn voice. “I can’t argue now. I hurt all over. We are friends and I will—I’ll explain everything. Just not when I’m like this.”
Charlie hesitated, and then said: “All right.” He looked at Malfoy properly for the first time since he’d come in, and his face changed. He reached out and then checked himself: he walked forward until he was standing on the other side of the bed and looked closely into Malfoy’s face. “God, Draco,” he said. “You didn’t have to do something like this. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“It’s taken care of,” Harry said.
Malfoy abruptly gave up on the effort of standing, and crawled onto the bed.
“I don’t need anything,” he said. “Thank you. I just want to sleep. And I’d like to be alone.”
There were two things that had always been immediately obvious about Malfoy which were no longer true. One was that he constantly had a smug, sleek look about him.
Harry had presumed this was because Malfoy was prissy and besides that his self-satisfaction formed a kind of force field around his hair and clothes. Now it occurred to him that Narcissa Malfoy, miles away in Wiltshire, must have constantly sent fresh supplies of clothes and ordered haircuts and tucked combs into suitcase linings, must have been thinking of her son every day from a distance, with the same care that had made up Malfoy’s parcels of sweets every week.
Now it was clear Malfoy had a fairly normal boy idea of self-maintenance, and a habit of chewing on his jumper sleeves. He cut and brushed his hair and everything, but he no longer had the sleek, pampered look of a meticulously cared-for pet.
There was nothing to be done about it. Harry tried, but when he threw Malfoy a hairbrush Malfoy stared at him incredulously, said he’d never been so insulted in his life, and hurled the brush with extreme force back in Harry’s face.
Far more important and upsetting was the other thing that had always been true about Malfoy, and which no longer was.
Malfoy used to swagger about the place with easy grace. It hadn’t been a side-effect of the Quidditch because Harry was better at Quidditch, and he had all the grace of a wild boar. It was just something else Harry had taken as a product of the force field of self-satisfaction, a lordly sort of air which made every movement smooth as he swaggered or lounged round Hogwarts. Harry’d used to wish Malfoy would just stop.
Now he moved with painful care, as if he was old. Harry wished his wishes would stop coming true.
It was a bit of a comfort that Malfoy was milking it for all it was worth. That at least was familiar, and reminded Harry of Malfoy’s Buckbeak-related theatrics and not the patient grey-faced endurance of last year. If Malfoy was making a fuss, it couldn’t be so bad.
“I’m not comfortable,” Malfoy complained sadly, lying on a picnic rug out in the garden while the others were getting on with some work.
The garden with its crazily tangled growing spells needed quite a lot of manual labour, and despite the fact it was late November after about ten minutes of trying to shovel up roots, Harry and Ron both had their shirts off. Malfoy was lying at his ease with Hermione beside him. They were doing what they did best: Hermione was reading, and Malfoy was going on and on.
“I don’t care,” Hermione said, making a careful note as she balanced parchment on her knee. “You’re not putting your head in my lap. I don’t like you enough.” She paused thoughtfully, and then said: “Actually, I don’t really like you at all.”
Ginny, emerging from under the trees where she was collecting ingredients for some Potions Malfoy was teaching her to make, came and sat down, shooting Malfoy a covert anxious look. Since Malfoy had asked her to help him up the stairs, Ginny had apparently decided that a trust had been placed in her and she was going to be responsible.
She was the youngest of them all, of course. Harry recalled how she always tried to cosset Pigwidgeon and Arnold the Pygmy Puff.
“You can put your head in my lap,” she said, and Malfoy did.
“I like you, Girl Weasley,” he confided. “If romance doesn’t work out for us, do you want to come with me to a villa in Tuscany and give me a heir while you spend my millions?”
“Don’t know,” Ginny said. She petted Malfoy’s hair a bit awkwardly, her small calloused tomboy’s hands moving uncertainly. “How many millions are we talking about?”
“Lots,” Malfoy promised, shutting his eyes.
“How many heirs?” asked Ginny.
Malfoy opened his eyes a slit, and smirked at her upside down. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just one to start with, and then depending on whether you think it would be fun—”
“Hermione,” Ron said over his shoulder. “Hit Malfoy, would you?”
“You can’t, I’m very sick, I might die,” Malfoy said hurriedly, though he did not open his eyes or move an inch.
“I’ll write a memorandum to hit Malfoy later,” Hermione said, and kept writing. Ginny kept petting Malfoy. Harry and Ron kept digging.
The intention had been to loosen the earth around the tree roots, and think about seeds and flowerbeds and so forth later. The only flaw in this plan was that the earth seemed to be composed entirely of tree roots.
“Looks like you two could use some help,” Charlie said when he came home.
Harry had no idea how he’d picked that up from Ron hitting the tree roots with his shovel and muttering: “Just stop being roots!” as if his shovel was a wand and he was in Transfiguration class.
There was a note of constraint in Charlie’s voice when he addressed Malfoy. Harry was pretty sure that Malfoy and Charlie hadn’t had their promised talk yet, since Malfoy was persistently avoiding Charlie, but Charlie was obviously making an effort to be casual.
“Why aren’t you helping, Draco?”
“Can’t move,” Malfoy claimed with his eyes shut. “Very unwell. So sad, when menial labour is my passion.”
“If I hit you,” Ron said. “Do you promise you’ll die?”
“Don’t hit him, Ron,” Harry warned. “Think about how long it would take us to dig a grave.”
Malfoy laughed.
“Chuck me a shovel, Ron,” said Charlie, and pulled off his jumper.
Malfoy opened his eyes. Hermione looked up from her book. They both looked at Charlie’s extremely broad shoulders and then they glanced at each other, Malfoy raised an eyebrow, and they shared a small smile.
Charlie didn’t notice. Ginny hit Malfoy in the side of his head.
“Ow,” Malfoy said comfortably, throwing a hand over his eyes either to express his enormous tragic pain or to shield his eyes from the sun.
The long sleeve of his jumper was already all frayed, and slipped down his arm. Harry saw the edge of the Dark Mark appear.
So did Ginny. She pushed Malfoy’s sleeve up as far as it would go, until it almost covered his fingers, and Malfoy blinked up into her face.
“I do like you, Girl Weasley,” he said again, reaching up with his sleeve-covered fingers and briefly clasping the back of her neck.
When Harry caught Ginny’s eye he grinned at her. Ginny ducked her head, blushed and grinned back.
If Malfoy wasn’t locked up in his bedroom with his mystery project, he was either in the kitchen wheedling Mrs Weasley into making his favourite things, in Ginny’s room teaching her Potions, or in the drawing room being entirely too friendly with the curtains.
The next day Mrs Weasley was occupied writing an Owl to Fleur, and Maud and Ernestine were hanging around looking lonely. Harry made his way up to Ginny’s room, but just before he opened the door he heard a round of girlish laughter, and he stepped hastily back. He hadn’t known Ginny had friends over: he could deal without a pack of girls giggling at him.
He was halfway down the corridor when the door opened. He looked around apprehensively, but it was Ginny.
There was a window behind her, turning her hair into a mass of gold. Her dark eyes were wide and she looked rather startled to see Harry. Then her bow mouth quivered on the edge of what looked like laughter, and she smirked over at him.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to go see something.”
She swept by him down the stairs. He noticed she was wearing jeans.
Before she went into the drawing room, she looked back over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows raised. Her mouth trembled again as if she wanted rather badly to laugh at him, but she winked instead, and then disappeared behind the door.
Harry followed her.
He found her with her elbows propped up on the mantelpiece, making faces in the mirror. She made another face when she saw him.
“Oh. You again,” she drawled, sounding distinctly unimpressed. Then she touched her nose with the tip of her tongue and went off into a fit of laughter.
“Um,” Harry said, half smiling at her and lingering in the doorway. “Ginny? What are you doing?”
She looked both disconcerted and amused, and shrugged. Her grey jumper was sliding off one of her small shoulders. Something about it struck Harry as familiar.
“Ginny,” he said cautiously. “Are you, uh. Why are you wearing Malfoy’s clothes?”
“Ah,” said Ginny, turning around and looking guilty as a child caught in a misdeed.
Then she seemed to decide this was funny too, and leaned back against the mantelpiece, propping herself up with her elbows and stretching easily. Harry noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Ginny seemed to come to a decision. “The thing is,” she said brightly. “I’m leaving you. Harry,” she added, grinning as if his name was a bit of a joke as well.
“Um, well, we’re not really together, Ginny,” Harry reminded her.
Ginny looked at him with extreme disapproval. “That’s very unchivalrous of you to mention, and not at all in keeping with the noble traditions of house Gryffindor,” she remarked. “The point is. The point is—what was I saying?”
“Malfoy’s clothes,” Harry said.
“Oh yes,” Ginny drawled. “Well, Draco was in my room just now, and did things that no man has done to me before. And now I’m wearing his clothes. So I’m sure you can put two and two together. Don’t be sad, Harry,” she added. “Nobody can fight fate. The better man won. And what a man he is!”
The fact Ginny seemed to be on the point of collapsing with laughter made sure that Harry didn’t exactly take her seriously, but one thing did puzzle him.
“Draco?” he repeated sceptically.
“That is his given name,” Ginny informed him peevishly. “And I happen to think it’s lovely. Distinguished.”
“Right,” Harry said. “Um. I heard—there were at least two girls behind your door. I thought you had a friend over.”
“You were listening outside—my door,” Ginny said slowly. “Okay. That’s nice and creepy. Try not to be such a stalker.” She waved a dismissive hand and continued: “Besides, so what if there were two girls in there? Draco could totally handle two girls.” She paused and tilted her head thoughtfully. “Or three,” she said. “Me, obviously, and the Patil twins. I would be totally into that.”
“Er,” Harry said. “Did you, er, hit your head recently?”
Ginny seemed to lose interest, and heaved a massive sigh. “My God, Potter,” she said. “I can certainly see why you’re such a devil with the ladies, you silver-tongued charmer, you. Get lost.”
“What?” Harry asked.
Ginny pulled at a glittering chain around her neck until the necklace popped out of her jumper collar, and produced a locket. Then she smirked and spun the Horcrux between her palms.
Harry jumped back and fetched his head a hard thump on the doorframe.
“Oh my God, Malfoy?”
“I wasn’t exactly trying to hide it,” Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. “Has anyone ever insinuated that you’re a little slow, Potter? No, wait, that question may be too difficult for you. Has anyone ever come right out and said it?”
“Urgh, that’s disgusting,” Harry said faintly. “What—why—”
“Polyjuice Potion,” Malfoy answered. “Ginny, untrusting Weasley soul that she is, insisted I take some first. It’s okay. I quite like it.”
“Urgh,” Harry repeated.
Malfoy made a terrible face at him. “Because I enjoy not being in constant pain,” he explained in what was unmistakably Malfoy’s icy drawl. “Not because I enjoy being a girl. You idiot.”
“Oh,” Harry said weakly. “Oh, no. ‘Course not. That’s good. About the pain. I’m glad about that.”
Malfoy stretched again and Harry looked hurriedly and fixedly up at the ceiling. His distracted mind hit on what was bothering him.
“You winked at me!” he exclaimed accusingly. “Why. Why would you do that?”
“It was just a joke, Potter,” Malfoy said. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was, like, your couple code for ‘take me savagely on the drawing-room floor.’”
“Urgh!” Harry said, on a note of appeal.
There was a long pause. Maud and Ernestine, recognising their true love even in his current terrible and disturbing disguise, gave a come-hither rustle. Both of them ignored it.
“Well,” Malfoy said at length. “I think I’ll go and—take a shower.”
Harry’s eyes snapped down from the ceiling. “You will not,” he said in a voice of great conviction.
Malfoy’s suddenly-dark eyes sparkled. “I think I will. Cleanliness, you know, it’s next to godliness, so obviously—”
Face alight with mischief, he began to edge around Harry, on a mission to slip through the door.
Ginny was a lot smaller than Harry, and not as fast. It was easy to catch him.
“No,” Harry said against Malfoy’s ear. “No, you’re not.”
Malfoy let out a small startled gasp, and then slammed an elbow into his stomach. Harry could’ve sworn Ginny’s elbows were not as sharp as this.
“Let me go!”
“No showers,” Harry stipulated.
“Let me go this instant,” Malfoy commanded, struggling vehemently and obviously unused to only having a girl’s upper-body strength.
“Harry, let her go!”
The door opened and Harry found Malfoy lifted summarily out of his arms, and found himself instead staring into the outraged face of Oliver Wood.
“Um,” he said. “This isn’t what you think. There’s an explanation—”
“I always knew you had a bit of a temper, Harry, but this is completely out of order,” Wood said sternly.
Malfoy, standing behind Wood’s burly left shoulder, looked massively delighted with the unexpected turn things had taken.
“My hero,” he drawled. “Let me explain.”
“‘Course, Ginny,” Wood said at once.
Malfoy widened Ginny’s eyes. “It’s not that Harry is a bad person,” he explained, and then batted his lashes for good measure. “He just flies into these dreadful rages—I suppose he’s been through a lot—”
“That’s absolutely no excuse,” Wood told them both, and fixed Harry with a severe look.
Harry squirmed. “That’s not—”
Malfoy tucked a hand into the crook of Wood’s elbow. “Don’t leave me. Oliver,” he pleaded, grinning over at Harry like a fiend. “I fear him in his Black Moods.”
“Of course I won’t, Ginny,” Oliver said instantly, and glared at Harry some more.
Life was unfair, and deeply horrible and disturbing.
There was another long moment of silence. Then Malfoy drummed Ginny’s fingertips against Oliver’s arm and said: “So. Oliver,” he added quickly. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to see Charlie,” Wood answered.
Malfoy beamed up at him. Even with Ginny’s mouth, his smile came out crooked. “Really,” he said.
“I heard he’s teaching at Hogwarts,” Wood said. “And not even Quidditch, either. It’s a disgusting waste. He could’ve played for England. Puddlemere United want me to sound him out about joining us.”
“Oh,” Malfoy remarked in a slightly dispirited manner. Harry wouldn’t have pegged him for a matchmaker, but apparently so it was.
Also, apparently Malfoy had been telling Charlie the truth when he said that he was still Charlie’s friend, if he wanted to set Charlie up.
Wood seemed to realise he had a responsibility to keep up a pleasant conversation with the lady.
“So,” he said. “I hear you joined the Quidditch team.”
“Oh,” Malfoy said. “Well. Yes.”
“A Chaser, aren’t you? How are you liking it?”
“Oh, well, Chasing,” Malfoy said, looking a bit lost. “Chasing, it’s—the thrill of the chase, isn’t—Frankly, Oliver, I find it very dull,” he concluded decisively. “The position I like is the Seeker.”
Wood looked intrigued.
“Yes, that’s it,” Malfoy said, gathering enthusiasm as he went. “I’ve substituted for Potter several times,” he went on. “And that’s definitely the position for me. I mean, if Quidditch was a one-man game, it’d obviously be the Seeker, but that’s not all. I mean, Quidditch is like a weapon turned into a game, isn’t it? That’s why all the houses go mad about it.”
“That’s a very good point,” Wood said, his eyes shining.
“Right!” Malfoy said, sounding pleased with himself. He started to talk with his hands as he usually did when he got carried away. “And the Seeker is the point. If I was part of a weapon, I’d want to be the point.” He smiled again. “I’d want to be the part that does the most damage.”
Wood looked wonderingly down at him and said: “Are you single?”
Malfoy looked alarmed. “Ahahaha,” he said. “Beg pardon?”
“I thought you were going out with Madam Rosmerta,” Harry put in.
“It’s over between us,” Wood said, still staring avidly at Malfoy, who was edging away. “She could never truly understand me.”
Malfoy looked extremely distressed.
Charlie opened the door and said: “Olly, Mum said you were looking for me—”
“Charles!” Malfoy yelped hysterically. “Charles, thank God!”
Charlie’s head snapped around and he went quite pale. “Urgh,” he said in a low voice. “What are you—Never mind. Later. Come here, Olly.”
“Can I Owl you?” Wood asked Malfoy in an undertone.
Malfoy stared at him with blank horror.
Wood was led firmly out by Charlie, asking him audibly as they went whether his sister was available.
Malfoy collapsed laughing in a chair once he was gone, and mid-laugh his exposed throat went longer, freckles fading like invisible ink and curls chasing themselves out of existence, and was Malfoy once more. He tried to stretch, and winced.
Later at dinner, Ginny was quite pleased by her reported conquest.
“I’ve always thought Oliver Wood was cute.”
“Oh, me too,” Hermione said casually.
“Urgh,” Malfoy said. “Gryffindors.”
They all turned and gave him a meaning look.
“Oh, what?” he said. “None of you want to go out with me.”
“That is so true, Malfoy,” Ron agreed, serving up the potatoes. “It’s just the implied insult to Gryffindors, who are obviously the finest house—”
“Oh sure,” Malfoy sneered. “Aside from the anger management issues. And the entitlement. And the hypocrisy.”
“We’re not hypocrites!” Ginny exclaimed furiously.
“Oh, of course not,” Malfoy said. “Let’s take Quidditch. You’re the team who hardly speaks to people if they beat you, am I right? And who was it who dumped Michael Corner for being a bad loser?”
“There were other reasons too,” Ginny mumbled.
“The Ravenclaws wouldn’t touch a Gryffindor with a ten-foot pole after fifth year,” Malfoy went on. “No wonder you people are reduced to dating each other.” He paused, and added casually: “Speaking of, actually, I thought Wood was here for Charles at first.”
The pause after he’d spoken made the sentence meaningful. Ron and Ginny looked for their mother, but she was out of earshot. Charlie put down his fork and stared at Malfoy.
His point made, Malfoy looked at his plate. “I would, however, make an exception for Parvati Patil,” he said. “But I feel her sister could dilute her Gryffindor spirit with her winsome Ravenclaw reason.”
Harry resolutely avoided making eye contact with either Malfoy or Ginny, all through dinner.
Malfoy was getting better, and that was the important thing. He was moving more easily, and at one point he chased Hermione around the house trying to get her to explain rockets to him.
“They’re like cars with no wheels that go straight up into the air,” Hermione said at last. “Now leave me alone.”
“Straight up in the air,” Malfoy echoed reverently. “Whoosh.”
He locked himself in his room, and came out with paint on his nose. Harry felt that if Malfoy was acting like a complete lunatic, things were getting back to normal.
He tried to dismiss the other incident entirely from his mind, because it had been weird. He felt a certain amount of trepidation outside Ginny’s door even a week afterwards, and he knocked though he could hear Malfoy’s normal masculine voice drawling and then laughing his rather deep laugh, and Ginny laughing too.
“Can I come in?” Harry asked. “Or are you doing something else perverse with Potions?”
“Come in, Harry!” Ginny called, sounding pleased.
Harry went in and found Malfoy stretched out on Ginny’s floor while Ginny perched on her bed. Ginny’s room in Grimmauld Place was quite nice. It was yellow and white, and her shelves were lined with little ornaments she obviously thought were cute.
One shelf was crowded with gleaming hardback books. Harry was a little surprised. He hadn’t thought Ginny was a big reader.
“What’re these?” he asked, coming in and examining them.
“Oh, well,” said Ginny, and looked a little flushed and embarrassed. “They’re actually—what I took out of the Burrow in that sack.”
Hermione’d said that Ginny was getting books. Harry just hadn’t believed her.
He looked at the gold inscription on the books, and made out a name in curling gold letters. It was Gilderoy Lockhart.
“Oh,” Harry said, and grinned. “Didn’t know you were a fan.”
“I’m not,” Ginny blurted, and then she went even redder.
It reminded Harry of when she was eleven, and used to put her elbow in the butter dish when he walked into a room.
Ginny looked at her hands, twisted together in her lap. “You gave them to me,” she said in a muted voice. “When we were little. Mum was worried about affording all our books, and Professor Lockhart gave you his complete works, and you tipped them into my cauldron. I thought—it was the first time you ever seemed to notice me. Don’t you remember?”
“Er,” said Harry.
He remembered wanting to get rid of Lockhart’s stupid books as quickly as possible.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Ginny said in a rush. “Obviously. I mean—it was five years ago—”
This was an awful situation.
Malfoy levered himself up on one elbow, and saved the day unexpectedly by drawling: “I remember.”
“Do you?” Ginny asked.
Malfoy glanced in Harry’s direction, and nobly diverted the fire towards himself.
“Sure. Potter swaggered into the bookshop like he owned it and immediately called a storm of attention down on himself—”
“He didn’t mean to!” Ginny exclaimed fiercely.
“Oh, he did too,” Malfoy said, while Harry sat on the floor by Malfoy’s head and mouthed a discreet Thank you. “He was always at it. Never happy unless he had his fan club trailing after him. Who were the fan club again? You, of course, and that kid Creevey—”
“Hannah Abbot and Melissa in Hufflepuff,” Ginny said.
“Wait,” Harry said. “What? There was really a fan club?”
Ginny immediately resumed blushing.
“It was just when I was in first year,” she muttered.
“Um,” Harry said.
“And it was a secret club,” Ginny went on, her eyes suddenly lighting with suspicion. “So how did you know about it, Malfoy? Were you the one responsible for those Dungbombs and that really not amusing drawing we found over Colin’s photos?”
“What?” Malfoy said. “Me? Oh, no. Surely not. Those deeds sound like acts of vandalism. That would be very wrong.” He smirked in Harry’s direction. “I expect I just knew because—I’m also a fan. Yes. Big fan.”
“Really,” Harry said, grinning. “Funny how you never mentioned that.”
Malfoy smirked some more. “I’m shy.”
“You sabotaged our club!” Ginny said indignantly.
“Not just me,” Malfoy protested. “Crabbe and Goyle helped too.”
“Colin worked really hard on that collage,” Ginny said. “He’s a lovely guy, you know. Well, he’s a little intense, I admit, but once he met Francois from Beauxbatons he really settled down—”
“Francois?” Harry repeated.
“Did you never wonder why he stopped chasing you, Potter?” Malfoy drawled. “Or—don’t tell me you really thought it was your autograph he was after.”
“I,” Harry said. “What?”
Malfoy burst out laughing and after a minute, Ginny did too.
Harry thought that was most unfair. “I don’t see how I was supposed to know,” he muttered. “I don’t see why everyone was running around Hogwarts being secretly gay.”
“Secretly?” Malfoy said. “Creevey took at least two hundred pictures of you.”
“There were far fewer after the collage got vandalised,” Ginny pointed out, looking at Malfoy with narrowed eyes. “With all those drawings that were not funny.”
“Come on,” Malfoy said. “They were a little funny. Anyway, where were we? I was on twenty points.”
Harry was quite relieved to be off the subject of collages and Colin Creevey.
“What’re you two doing?”
“Playing a game of how well do we know each other,” Ginny said. “It was Malfoy’s idea. D’you want to play?”
“That would be completely unfair,” Malfoy said. “You two went out for months. The odds are stacked against me. Yet I cannot refuse a challenge.”
“You and Harry are in the same class,” Ginny pointed out. “That’ll mean points.”
“Um,” Harry said. “All right. How do we play?”
“It’s Malfoy’s turn,” Ginny said. “He can ask me a question, and you’ll see.”
Malfoy sat up. “Very well, Girl Weasley. Prepare to meet thy doom. Name—in full—my two best friends.”
“Oh,” Ginny said. “Oh, I know this. Those two big guys. They’re on the team. Um, Crabbe and Toyle. Foyle. Goyle!”
“Full names, please,” Malfoy said.
“Vincent Crabbe,” Ginny said readily. “And, um. Oh, no. I can’t remember. I don’t know.”
“For two and a half points, Potter?”
“Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle,” Harry said.
That’d show Malfoy who remembered names.
Ginny snapped her fingers. “Oh—fine. All right, Harry. Same question, for my two best friends.”
“Er,” said Harry. “Er, Hermione?”
Ginny’s face fell. “Well, no, Harry. She’s not even in my year. She’s your friend.”
“Um,” Harry said. “Dean Thomas?”
“He is my friend,” Ginny agreed, softening. “I’ll give you that one.”
Harry thought hard. He recalled Ginny having a few girls giggling around her at one time and another, but she’d always sent them off quickly enough and he’d been grateful for it.
“Well,” he said, and hesitated before light dawned. “Luna Lovegood.”
“Loony!” Ginny exclaimed, and then looked unhappy. “I mean. I didn’t mean to call her that. Of course not. But Harry, I feel sorry for her, I do, but you can’t honestly think she’s one of my best friends—”
“No,” Harry said hastily. “Obviously not. Er. I mean. Well—Ron?”
Ginny’s face darkened. “He’s my brother, Harry,” she said with a touch of menace.
“Colin,” Harry said in desperation.
Ginny was looking more and more upset. Harry didn’t know what to do.
“Stop letting him guess, that’s cheating,” Malfoy said in a deceptively casual voice. “My turn for two and a half points. Let me see, what’s her name? That one with the spiky dark hair. Very cute.”
“Jemima,” Ginny said. “We call her Gem for short.”
“Of course,” Harry said. “Gem. Obviously.”
The name was completely and utterly unfamiliar to him. He hoped his voice did not make that too clear.
Malfoy’s sideways glance said it did. “All right then,” he said. “No points for anyone. Potter, it’s your turn.”
Malfoy guessed Harry’s favourite class easily enough—“Defence Against the Dark Arts, you only started a clandestine club”—and then it was Ginny’s turn to guess Harry’s favourite book, which she got too. It was Flying with the Cannons.
“Second-rate hacks,” Malfoy mumbled. “The Tutshill Tornadoes will beat them hollow. Same question you asked me, then.”
Harry thought about it for a minute. “You’d say Potions,” he said eventually. “But it’s secretly Muggle Studies.”
Malfoy bit his lip, and then grinned. “All right, you have me there. Five points.”
Malfoy did not guess Ginny’s favourite colour, which was pink. Harry was devoutly grateful he hadn’t got that one. Ginny did guess Malfoy’s favourite drink at lunch, because it was coffee.
Then Ginny said to Harry: “How about my favourite class?”
“Er,” Harry said. “Which classes are you taking?”
He could tell from the frozen look on Malfoy’s face that this was entirely the wrong thing to say.
“Charms,” he said quickly.
“No,” Ginny said, looking as if someone had pulled a rug out from under her.
Harry remembered that she’d gone with Neville to the Yule Ball, and took another stab at it. “Herbology?”
“It’s Defence Against the Dark Arts, actually,” Ginny said in a low voice. “Like you.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
Oh God, this was horrible.
“I need to go,” Malfoy said, climbing gingerly to his feet. “I have—my secret project to be getting on with—”
“It can wait,” Harry said tersely.
“Well, I should talk to Charles,” Malfoy went on.
“He’s not home yet,” Harry said.
“I want to leave,” Malfoy informed him. “You two are having a relationship crisis and I feel awkward.” He reached down and grabbed the back of Harry’s shirt. “You come with me,” he said sternly. “I’ll bring him back once I’ve taught him a lesson, Ginny.”
Ginny did not look at either of them. She was looking at her Lockhart books.
Harry followed in Malfoy’s wake and felt absolutely terrible, and guilty, even though he hadn’t done anything at all.
Malfoy took Harry’s wrist and led him solemnly down to the kitchen, where he started to make coffee with an absent and rather distrait air.
“All right,” he said. “You have a dreadful problem, but it’s all right, because I can help you. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Malfoy talking like a lunatic was a little soothing, but it didn’t help with the current problem.
“Help me?” Harry repeated.
Malfoy looked up at him with frighteningly wide, innocent eyes and nodded. “With girls.”
“Er,” Harry said. “Um. I don’t mean to seem big-headed or anything, but—”
“You’re doing the everyman routine. I have been duly warned,” Malfoy said, looking pained. “I’m about to have an arrogance migraine.”
“I don’t do a routine—”
“Just get it over with,” Malfoy said.
“The thing is,” Harry snapped, “there were a lot of girls last year. Sort of hunting me down. I don’t really think I have a problem there.”
“Oh,” Malfoy said, clasping his head in his hands dramatically. “It hurts, it hurts.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Cut it out.”
“All right,” Malfoy said, suddenly miraculously able to drink his coffee without pain. “Listen to me. This is the way I see it. You don’t have a problem attracting girls, because you’re famous.”
“Thanks, Malfoy.”
“Also, you don’t talk to them that much,” Malfoy said. “Which is also fine, since girls often like the strong but silent type. There’s just one problem. Eventually, if you keep a girl around long enough, you have to talk to them, and it’s going to come as a shock to them when their famous and slightly taciturn boyfriend turns out to be the lamest person on the face of the earth.”
“Thanks a lot, Malfoy.”
Harry was actually starting to feel a bit low about this whole situation. He leaned his elbows against the kitchen table and tried not to think about Ginny’s hurt face.
Malfoy was sitting cross-legged on the table, which would have made Mrs Weasley faint for reasons of hygiene. He absently ruffled Harry’s hair back.
“I said don’t worry. I shall take care of you,” he promised. “You see. The thing is. You’ve been able to get by on the strong but silent gig, but some of us—well. You may have noticed that I talk a lot.”
Harry grinned. “Yeah, I have noticed that once or twice.”
“This means that I had to learn the right thing to say,” Malfoy explained. “It was taught to me young. D’you remember in third year when Granger slapped me?”
“Yes?”
“I was slapped in the face five times that year,” Malfoy said reminiscently. “Ah, third year. It was a big year for me. I was slapped by Granger, and I was slapped by Hannah Abbot, and I was slapped by Professor Sinistra, and I was slapped by Pansy twice before she ever kissed me.”
“Um, Malfoy. I’d rather not get slapped in the face, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Being slapped in the face is not the important part,” Malfoy said. “The important part is that Pansy did eventually kiss me. The important part is learning to say the appropriate thing in the appropriate situation.”
“Like what?” Harry said. “For instance?”
Malfoy slid off the kitchen table and put down his cup. “C’mon. I’ll show you.” He hesitated. “Personal question,” he said.
“Yeah, all right.”
“Do you want her? Because if you don’t, I’m not helping. I owe her.”
“Yes, I want her!” Harry snapped. “Just—just not right now. I’ve got—other things to do. Can’t you understand that?”
“No,” Malfoy said, casting his coffee cup a wistful look. “Whenever I want something, I want it right now oh God yes please. But I’m prepared to accept that Gryffindors do things differently. Follow me.”
Malfoy left the kitchen and after a moment’s hesitation, Harry went after him.
“Why did Hannah Abbot slap you?” he asked.
“I was trying to pay her a compliment,” Malfoy said. “I might’ve said that her plaits really helped to offset the roundness of her face. I was young!”
“Why did Professor Sinistra slap you?”
Malfoy paused on the stairs, fixed Harry with a solemn look, and said: “I don’t talk about that. Ever.”
Malfoy frowned down at his Pensieve, obviously lost in thought, and then seemed to come to a conclusion.
“All right,” he said. “Fifth year. Watch as the young Draco becomes the innocent victim of a terrible misunderstanding, and has to get out of it using only his keen wit.”
Harry snorted.
Malfoy looked nettled. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe you were innocent.”
“You’ll see how horribly you have misjudged me, Potter. Just you wait,” said Malfoy, and he put his wand into the Pensieve. Harry leaned over and dipped his in too.
A silvery, whirling world coalesced around them into a stone corridor in Hogwarts, where Malfoy, obviously right in the middle of a growth spurt and wearing his glittering Inquisitorial Squad badge, was standing extremely close to Cho Chang.
“Our scene opens,” Malfoy announced, and curled up placidly on the floor. “Our hero’s girlfriend is about to walk in on what she thinks is a flirtation between me and Cho Chang. Of course, it’s nothing of the sort.”
It didn’t look like nothing of the sort to Harry. He presumed this was fairly late in fifth year, or else he’d have been quite annoyed.
They really were standing very close together. He’d forgotten how pretty Cho was.
“Beautiful woman!” younger Malfoy declaimed, taking her hand and pressing it to his heart. “Ask me to do anything to win you, and I will!”
“Oh,” Cho murmured, her glowing cheek close to Malfoy’s pale one. “Fair knight. I do not know what to say.”
“Ask me to murder your whole cruel family, wading knee-deep in blood and intestines, and I will do it and bring you a single perfect rose afterwards,” Malfoy announced, and then in a considerably lower voice added: “It’s to be hoped that I’ll have changed my clothes as well.”
Cho laughed and took Malfoy’s free hand in hers. They looked as if they were about to start dancing.
“No, I could never ask you to do such a thing!” Cho declared. “If you did, you would be forever cursed for the murder of a whole family!”
“I care not,” Malfoy informed her superbly.
“I will care for you!” Cho said, her mouth close to Malfoy’s ear. “If you were to do such a thing, I would take the grey veil and the vow of eternal silence, and walk these halls forever praying silently for your soul. I would spare you from the curse!”
“I would walk the halls with you,” Malfoy swore. “I would rather walk the silent halls, a shade stained forever with blood, than be parted from you!”
“We would walk together,” Cho whispered.
“We would always walk together,” Malfoy whispered back.
Cho gazed into Malfoy’s eyes. “I will not speak, but weep, and wear the tears proudly to prove my love.”
Malfoy made a dramatic gesture. “I will not speak, but will always be marked by blood, and wear the stains proudly to prove my love.”
“And nobody,” Cho whispered, now practically into Malfoy’s mouth, the whisper almost a kiss. “Oh, nobody—”
They spoke together. “Nobody will remember our names.”
Malfoy, sitting on the ground, burst into applause. “The Tragic Love Ballad of the Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron,” he explained. “Rehearsal went quite nicely, don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” Harry said. “I also think she was flirting.”
“She was not,” Malfoy said firmly. “You are strangely mistaken. I had a girlfriend.”
“She has a ribbon in her hair,” Harry pointed out.
“So? So what?”
“She had a ribbon in her hair when we went out for Valentine’s Day,” Harry remarked. “I’m just saying.”
Also, younger Malfoy and Cho were now staring into each others’ eyes.
“And then cue Goyle’s dance routine,” younger Malfoy said happily, and dropped Cho’s hands. “Followed by the masked ball.”
“About that,” Cho said slowly, as they began to walk down the hall. “I really appreciate you putting in the masked ball. For Marietta’s sake.”
“Oh, well,” Malfoy said, looking a little embarrassed. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
“I don’t know about enemies,” Cho said, looking at the floor and then shyly at Malfoy again. “But I could use a friend.”
“She was flirting with you,” Harry said flatly.
“She was not!” Malfoy exclaimed. “Do you know the kind of boys Chang goes out with?”
“Actually,” Harry said. “I do have some idea.”
Malfoy propped his chin on his knees. “Cedric Whatshisface was very good-looking, and Michael Corner is the second best-looking in our year,” he explained. “Of course, she was letting her standards slide when she went out with you, but after all, you are famous.”
Being friends with Malfoy was doing wonders for Harry’s self-esteem.
“I heard you were a fan of the Tutshill Tornadoes,” Cho offered. “I’ve liked them since I was little.”
Malfoy smirked. “I’ve liked them since they started winning.”
“Maybe we could go to a game sometime,” Cho said, smiling her lovely smile.
Malfoy was visibly affected. “Um,” he answered.
“I have to go to Charms,” Cho said.
“Yes, Potions,” Malfoy said. “That is, I have Potions. It’s a class. That I take. Potions,” he added helpfully.
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want any advice about girls from you,” Harry said.
Malfoy on the floor made a rude gesture.
“If you want to come to rehearsal early,” Cho continued, “We could go over our lines again.”
“I’ll be there. Show business is in my blood,” Malfoy said. “Seriously. I had a great-aunt who was a showgirl. I have her costume.” He reflected on that statement. “It’s in a glass case,” he added. “I don’t wear it. I wanted you to know that.”
Cho laughed. “See you later, bloody baron.”
“In a while, grey lady,” Malfoy answered.
Cho ran the other way down the corridor. Harry saw her glance back over her shoulder at Malfoy, but neither Malfoy saw that.
They were looking straight ahead, to where Pansy Parkinson had stepped out of a shadowy alcove. Younger Malfoy was looking enormously caught in the act.
The current Malfoy winced sympathetically.
The younger Malfoy said: “Pansy, I thought you were still in the infirmary!”
Malfoy winced some more. “Potter. You know how I’ve brought you here to teach you the right thing to say to girls? Well. That wasn’t it.”
“Yes, Draco,” said Pansy in a voice of ice. “I was in the infirmary. I had antlers. I have only just been let out. I still have tiny little horns where those people hexed me for being on our Squad. And now I have found my boyfriend canoodling with Potter’s leavings! This is not a good day!”
“Horns?” little Malfoy asked. “That’s really cool—I mean,” he said, as justifiably homicidal anger leaped to Pansy’s face. “I mean,” he floundered visibly and then struck out wildly for shore. “We’ll get everyone who dared to touch you. I mean it. This is war.”
“Is it,” Pansy said.
“Not just war,” said Malfoy. “Umbridge is an idiot, but she’s from the Ministry and she’s on our side, and Dumbledore’s finally gone. This is a war we’re going to win.”
“In my defence,” older Malfoy pointed out, “I did not know she was clinically insane. Although all the kittens in her office should, in retrospect, have tipped me off.”
Malfoy held out his hand to Pansy, and after a moment she took it.
“You sweet-talker,” she said, rolling her eyes at him.
“Hey,” Malfoy said, and drew her towards him. “Nobody gets away with touching my girlfriend.”
Pansy tilted her head backwards and was almost able to look down her nose at him.
“And who’s that?” she inquired coldly. “For a moment there I could’ve sworn it was Cho Chang.”
“Pansy,” Malfoy said loftily. “I think you’re forgetting who I am.”
“And who are you, Draco?” Pansy asked. “A complete idiot who is about to get his face slapped once again?”
Malfoy pulled at her hand persistently, and after a moment she let him.
“I’m a Malfoy,” he said. “And a Malfoy always wants the best.”
Pansy pushed Malfoy against a wall. “Really? And that’s why I find you alone with the best-looking girl in school while I have antlers, is it?”
Malfoy reached up and pushed Pansy’s thick dark hair away from the little stubs of bone where antlers had been, and touched them lightly.
“These are cool,” he said. “And you should trust me.”
“Should I,” Pansy said.
“Sure,” Malfoy said, then smiled and kissed her lightly. “Always trust a Malfoy,” he whispered, smirking against her lips, “—to pick the best first time.”
Pansy went a little red. “You mean that,” she said in her hardest voice.
Malfoy said: “I mean it,” and she pushed him against the wall and kissed him. It went on for a long time.
Harry looked over at older Malfoy, who looked wistful. “I miss her,” he said, and avoided Harry’s eyes. “But I think you take my point. If a girl is upset with you, you compliment her. And the most important thing is to mean it.”
The younger Malfoy and Pansy parted at last. Malfoy’s blond hair was mussed, his eyes bright and his mouth swollen.
“I was hoping you’d be around to celebrate my return tonight,” Pansy murmured. “But if you’re going to be at rehearsals—”
Malfoy made a grandly dismissive gesture. “I have every faith in my little thespians,” he said. “They can take care of themselves for one night.”
“All right, then,” Pansy said, smiling up at him.
Malfoy checked his watch and did a double take. “Oh my God, we couldn’t be later for Potions, Professor Snape is going to pickle our heads and keep them in jars.”
“Nah,” Pansy said, and patted his shoulder. “I’m under strict orders from Madam Pomfrey to go back to my dormitory and lie down until the horns go away. Your head is going to be pickled and kept in a jar. I’ll come and visit it every now and then.”
Malfoy looked at her with a certain amount of awe. “You are the heart of blackest evil,” he commented, and reached forward to catch her mouth in a last kiss. “I like that in a woman,” he added, and then whirled and ran.
“I will now demonstrate another way in which you misjudged me, Potter,” Malfoy declared. “After him.”
He got up and Harry saw he was running easily as they made their way to the dungeons. They caught up with Malfoy just as he had stopped, panting, at the door of the Potions classroom so he could smooth down his hair.
Then he burst into the room in a flurry of robes and apologies.
“I’m so sorry, Professor Snape, there was a—rockfall of some sort in a corridor, it was mysterious and inexplicable.”
“That will be a mysterious and inexplicable five points,” Professor Snape commented dryly. “To your seat.”
Still grinning, Malfoy swept through the desks, overturning someone’s inkstand on the way.
“Oh, s—” Malfoy’s mouth shaped a silent ‘sorry’ the instant before a black head came up, and a younger Malfoy found himself looking down into a younger Harry’s baleful gaze. Malfoy closed his mouth on the apology, regarded him thoughtfully, and said: “Ha!”
“Professor Snape, Malfoy just knocked over my ink on purpose,” younger Harry said. “Again.”
“I didn’t, Professor Snape, honestly,” Malfoy said, looking down his nose at Harry. Younger Harry’s glower intensified.
“All right, Mr Malfoy, to your seat,” Snape said. “Mr Potter, I doubt that your notes were valuable enough to make a fuss about.”
Malfoy smirked triumphantly and slipped away to a seat beside Theodore Nott.
“Pansy back from the infirmary?” Nott murmured, and Malfoy nodded and beamed.
Harry watched his younger self scowl and start to try and blot away the ink. Ron leaned over to him and whispered: “Don’t worry, Malfoy will get his.”
“How right Ron was,” Harry remarked dryly.
Malfoy threw back his head and laughed.
“But you see my point,” he said. “Complete accident. Could have happened to anybody. I am so misunderstood.”
“You knocked over my inkstand four times in fifth year,” Harry said. “How many times was on purpose?”
Malfoy looked thoughtful. “Two and a half times,” he decided.
“A half?”
“I was just in a bad mood that day,” Malfoy explained. “Anyone’s ink would have done, but I suppose I was used to passing by your desk.”
He met Ginny in the hall. She was standing at the open front door and watching the London traffic pass by. The afternoon sunlight turned her curls gold.
“Don’t go,” Harry said.
“Don’t go where?” Ginny asked distantly.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Harry said. She glanced over her shoulder, and he came towards her, came to stand beside her. He felt much as he had when he was looking at Cho earlier: he’d somehow forgotten how pretty she was. “I’m the one who has to go,” Harry said. “But I’ll come back to you. You know that.”
Ginny looked up at him. “Do you know who I am?” she asked. “You don’t know my friends, or what I like, or anything about me, really. But that’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” Harry asked helplessly.
“I thought,” Ginny said. “I really liked you. I mean, I loved you. I love you. I thought—I think maybe I thought that—if you liked me back, I didn’t mind who you liked. I like Quidditch, but I acted like I liked Quidditch more than I did. I sent my friends away to spend time with you. I saw how things went wrong with Cho. I tried to make—liking me easy for you. I wasn’t—I wasn’t very fair to Michael or Dean. I liked them, but it was the same as Quidditch. I acted like I liked them more than I did, because I thought you’d notice that. I—”
Ginny stopped, and swallowed. Harry saw that she’d been crying.
“I don’t want you to come back to me,” she said. “Unless you know who you’re coming back to.”
“Well,” Harry said. “I can learn. I mean—can’t I?”
Ginny smiled at him, her bow mouth a perfect curve. “I hope so.” She held out her hand to him, and he took it. “I’m Ginny Weasley.”
“I’m Harry Potter,” Harry said. “And I think—that you’re cute. And I know you’re brave. And—” he weighed her small hand in his, and thought of Malfoy asking: do you want her? “And I’ll try to find out the rest,” he finished.
He drew her closer, and Harry recognised the look on her face: it was the same look Pansy Parkinson had worn, in a corridor in fifth year.
He touched Ginny’s cheek, and leaned down to kiss her, just once. He closed his eyes and her face disappeared, but he felt the warmth of her mouth, and floating behind his eyelids he could still see the golden shimmer the sun had called from her hair.
Harry absorbed a couple of things from that incident. That girls were fiendishly complicated, he’d kind of guessed already.
There was also the fact that Malfoy was getting better, and that Malfoy’s attitude towards him had changed yet again when he wasn’t aware of it.
Harry thought that it stemmed from the night that Malfoy’d come home after the Cruciatus. Malfoy should’ve known that Harry would take care of him—Harry had promised—but apparently he hadn’t, and now he did. He seemed surer now, confident enough to rumple back Harry’s hair as if such gestures were the easiest thing in the world.
He was also, and this was the strange part, trying to take care of Harry back. That was what showing him all that rather personal stuff had been about. Nobody had ever tried to do that before except Sirius, unless Mrs Weasley counted, and she tried to take care of everyone.
Harry wasn’t sure what to do with it.
It wasn’t like it was an isolated incident, either. They were all studying in the kitchen, the radio was blaring, Ginny and Mrs Weasley were bickering and so were Ron and Hermione, so Harry’d said he had a headache and stormed off to the study.
After about ten minutes, the door opened and Malfoy came in, holding a steaming cup in his hand. He pushed it across the table towards Harry.
Harry expected coffee, but when he looked into the cup there was a purple Potion.
“What’s,” he began.
“It’s a Potion,” Malfoy sneered at him, raising his eyebrows. “For your headache?”
“Oh,” Harry said.
“Mum used to get headaches,” Malfoy said, more quietly.
“Oh,” Harry said again.
“Three kinds of headaches,” Malfoy went on. “Your father had a bad day at the Ministry headaches, I have a son who won’t shut up headaches and I just get headaches headaches.”
Harry stopped himself from saying “Oh,” once again. He looked at the Potion, which looked absolutely foul, and toyed with the idea of telling Malfoy that he’d been lying and didn’t have a headache at all.
He drank the Potion instead. It was absolutely foul.
“Thanks,” he said.
Malfoy looked uncomfortable, and then Hermione came in. “Oh good, you’re here already,” she said. “Ron is being impossible today!”
Harry made the decision not to comment.
“Malfoy,” Hermione said. “I’ll give you a biro that has green ink if you help make notes.”
“But I want to keep my Horcrux,” Malfoy objected, though he was already preening over the implied compliment.
“I know, I know,” Hermione said. “But you can do research on the other Horcruxes, can’t you? I have some books on the Hufflepuff Cup.”
“Well,” Malfoy conceded. “If you need me so desperately, Granger—”
“Here’s the pen,” Hermione said. “Here’s the book. Sit down. Start researching.”
Malfoy took them both, and lay on the sofa admiring his green biro for a while to make a point. The point might’ve been that he was obnoxious.
Harry made another scroll’s worth of notes on the possible hiding places for Horcruxes from Voldemort’s youth. Then he sighed and cracked his neck.
“Shove over, Malfoy,” he said, getting up. “I want to sit on the sofa too.”
Malfoy ungraciously levered himself up on one elbow, and when Harry cautiously sat down, Malfoy let his head fall back.
It was obviously a—family sort of gesture. Malfoy was still casually reading his book, his pen in his mouth. Harry touched his hair lightly, as if he was one of Mrs Figg’s cats, and at least this time Malfoy didn’t tell him to stop hitting him.
“Here’s something interesting,” Hermione said, leaning forward.
“What,” Harry exclaimed, and stopped petting.
“The Hufflepuff Cup is in some way connected to the descendants of Helga Hufflepuff,” Hermione said. “It is thought that they would be able to tell if the cup was destroyed, and possibly that if the cup was stolen they might be able to trace it.”
“Hepzibah Smith—that old woman who Voldemort stole the cup off—she was a descendant,” Harry said. “Um. Of course, he killed her.”
“Smith,” Malfoy said. “Like, Zacharias Smith? They’re the only pureblood Smiths there are.”
“Are you sure Smith’s a pureblood?” Harry asked.
“Look, do you ask Granger if she’s quite sure what’s in the book? I know purebloods,” said Malfoy. “I know Smith a bit, too.”
“Well,” Hermione said. “Well, well. I think we’re going to have to pay Zacharias Smith a visit.”
“I’m sure Smith will be delighted,” Malfoy observed, smirking. “He likes you.”
Hermione did not look particularly surprised. Harry remembered that Hermione’d been considering asking Smith to Slughorn’s party. She must have been fairly sure that he would say yes.
He didn’t like Smith, and was abruptly not looking forward to tomorrow. But then Malfoy and Hermione dropped the subject, and everyone got back to their books. Malfoy seemed to be trying to chew his sleeve and the end of his biro simultaneously.
After a bit, Harry started carefully smoothing Malfoy’s hair back again. He could, if he liked. He was supposed to. What he’d told Ron was true, after all. Narcissa had given Malfoy to him. And she could never come back to take him away.
So it was for keeps.
The next day, before they went to see Zacharias Smith, Snape came to take Malfoy back to Voldemort.