Harry woke to light and warmth, and the vague impression that Malfoy had turned into a girl.
He mumbled something interrogative, and with the turn of her head he recognised the face under the shock of currently white-blond hair, and realised it was just Tonks. She was sitting at the foot of his bed: as she turned she had to catch at the bolster to stop herself tumbling off onto the floor, but after a precarious moment she regained her balance.
“Thank God you’re awake,” she said. “Now I can smack your silly head. What were you thinking, Harry, snatching up that Portkey? You’re in terrible trouble.”
“So nothing new there, then,” Harry said sleepily. “Where’s Malfoy?” Tonks hesitated and Harry sat up and said in a far sharper tone: “He is still here, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s downstairs talking to Charlie Weasley,” Tonks informed him. “And we were all grateful when Charlie showed up, I can tell you. My baby cousin has a bloody nasty tongue on him when he likes, doesn’t he? D’you know, he pretty much insinuated you were mental.”
“If he didn’t come right out and say it, he must’ve been in a pretty good mood,” Harry remarked.
Tonks snorted. “Um, or not. He descended on a meeting of the Order like a tiny blond hurricane with a mincing machine inside: tore strips off Moody and sent them flying about the room.” Harry and Tonks shared a wince at the mental picture. “Didn’t do much good, though. The Ministry still has a hearing scheduled for you.”
“Another?” Harry said. “What fun.”
“This one’s for reckless endangerment of Muggle lives and acts of wanton and criminal violence,” Tonks told him, her voice low. “It’s serious, Harry.”
“That’s rid—” Harry began furiously, and then stopped at the troubled look in Tonks’ eyes.
“Did you really kill those people, Harry?”
Harry’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I had to.”
“That was a terrible thing for a kid to have to do,” Tonks said, and for a moment Harry heard That was a terrible thing to do. It was just for a moment, before he realised that her voice was quiet and sympathetic, that she was wearing her white-blond hair like a flag of allegiance and that she was on his side.
“It was all right,” he said huskily. “I had to do it and so—it’s all right.”
Tonks reached out and patted his hand in a rough, friendly way, as if it was a puppy’s head. The little tomboy gesture reminded him with a pang of Ginny, who had always thought Tonks was brilliant.
“You said Charlie was here,” Harry said, scowling at the thought of him shut up somewhere with Malfoy, who was confused and did not need to be confused further by irresponsible older men. “Did he—was there any news from the Weasleys?”
“Ah,” Tonks said, and looked even more sympathetic. “No.”
She and Harry shared a silence much like their earlier wince, except more prolonged.
“Didn’t know you and Ginny were seeing each other,” Tonks said after a bit. “Draco told me. I’m—I’m sure that even if you did have a tiff she had other reasons for going off like that.”
“We weren’t,” Harry said. “Seeing each other. I thought—until Voldemort—I explained to her that we shouldn’t.”
“Ah,” said Tonks. “I remember when Remus did that with me.”
Her tone suggested she was far less sympathetic about this than about the killing people.
“Um,” Harry said. He really didn’t mean that as encouragement for Tonks to proceed, but Tonks either misread him or did not care.
“He sat me down and told me that he’d always care but there were a thousand reasons, and he explained them all very carefully. Damned if he didn’t number them in order of importance at some point. He was patient and understanding and so bloody reasonable that it took me months of carrying on like an idiot until I realised that I hadn’t had the chance to say anything. And that made me good and mad.”
Tonks’ mouth twisted wryly, the thin shape of it familiar and comforting. Harry had never seen how like Malfoy she was before, somehow: perhaps she was making her features seem more like his in another unconscious show of loyalty or perhaps it was simply that he’d never really seen Tonks wearing the family sneer before.
She spread out her hands. “Eventually I did get my say, even if it was, um, at an inappropriate time.”
“I,” Harry said guiltily. “I don’t think I let Ginny have her say. And now she’s—I don’t know where, and God knows what’s happening to her!”
Tonks crawled up the bed and determinedly wrestled Harry into a hug, one of her thin muscled arms squeezing his shoulders too tight and her new pale hair tickling his nose.
“She may be happening to other people,” Tonks observed, with pride in her protegee. “Look, Harry. Maybe this is none of my business, but Ginny did tell me how things fell apart with, um, what was her name, Chi—”
“Cho.”
“Okay,” said Tonks. “You wanted someone who thought like you do about things. But what in God’s name would be the point of someone who told you that you were right and what, waited in a tower like a damsel in distress for her knight to come back home? That sounds like something from a soppy fairytale. Real women don’t act like that: I have battles of my own to fight while Remus fights his. Ginny believes in what you’re doing and she wants to do something too. You might consider letting her get on with it.”
She thumped Harry on the back. It kind of hurt.
“You might also consider that she’s trying to tell you something by doing this,” Tonks said. “Since you wouldn’t let her have her say. Maybe you can learn something, eh?”
She tried to detach from Harry and found her watch was caught in his hair. There was a moment of brief intense struggle, and Tonks came away with her watch and a clump of Harry’s hair thrown in for free.
“Don’t worry too much,” Tonks added kindly as Harry checked for a bald spot. “She’s still trying to tell you something. That means she hasn’t given up on you.”
So according to Tonks, when a girl stormed out of your house in a fury, ran away and left you out of your mind with worry with no way to contact her, it meant she really fancied you.
On the other hand, he could see her point about not wanting the soppy fairytale girl. He was glad that Ginny was doing something, even though he was frantic and he wanted to stop her at the same time.
Romance was a whole hell of a lot more complicated than he’d ever thought. He’d kind of thought everything was sorted once you knew she liked you.
“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Tonks said. “First thing on the list is keep you out of Azkaban. We can work on your love life afterwards.”
That was when Hurricane Malfoy swept in and announced that Scrimgeour, after what reading between the lines Harry thought might’ve been a flurry of acrimonious Owls, had agreed to see Harry for a private, preliminary hearing. In which he hoped, direct quote—
“—that we could work something out to our, ah, mutual advantage,” said Scrimgeour.
He looked even more like a lion than he had last year. Now he looked like a sleek, well-fed lion, mane-like hair smooth and his whole air serene. Until you looked into his eyes. They darted around his large, calm face, the face that looked so convincing promising the wizarding world a stalwart defence against the Dark Lord, as if they were desperately hunting for escape.
Harry did not know how Malfoy’d convinced him to come here. He glared at the Minister for Magic from his place leaning against the mantelpiece—he’d refused to sit down—and transferred his glare briefly to Malfoy, who had not only sat down but accepted tea and scones.
“Just call off your dogs and let me get on with things,” he said shortly. “I saved those children—”
“Yes, but the Aurors would have been able to do so with far more efficiency and probably less loss of life had you not taken matters into your own hands.”
“That was rash,” Malfoy agreed sycophantically.
Harry glared down at Malfoy’s head some more. Right when he would’ve appreciated some mincing machine in a hurricane action, all of Malfoy’s sound and fury had evaporated and as soon as they’d walked into Scrimgeour’s office he’d found himself stranded there with Lucius Malfoy’s son, sitting at his ease and murmuring unctuous little phrases.
“While the Ministry appreciates your quick thinking, we feel that—especially considering the rumours about your mental health and dangerous temper which have been going around for some years now—your behaviour was—”
“Oh come on,” Harry almost yelled.
“Ill-judged,” murmured Malfoy. “Hasty. He’s always been very volatile, don’t you know, acts without thinking, refuses to consider consequences—”
“What are you going to do?” Harry demanded. “Lock the Chosen One up in Azkaban for killing some Death Eaters? That’ll go over really well.”
“—Makes very good points occasionally. Doesn’t he,” Malfoy said, speaking with a gleam of satisfaction in his smooth voice and looking over with a gleam of approval in his eye.
Scrimgeour regarded them both with dislike. “The Ministry held out the hand of friendship to you once, Potter.”
“And I asked you,” Harry said bitterly, “when you were going to release Stan Shunpike.”
“Wasn’t the poor chap killed by Death Eaters in the big break out of Azkaban?” Malfoy asked sotto voce. “Embarrassing, that. Mistakes seem to have been made on both sides.”
“Will you shut up, you misbegotten whelp!” Scrimgeour snarled. “I have not the faintest notion what you’re doing here. Your whole family is a nest of Death Eaters. I have half a mind to detain you and have a little check for the Dark Mark—”
“Oh, you just try it,” Harry said, and his furious step towards Scrimgeour was checked by Malfoy lunging from his chair and grabbing Harry’s wrist.
“Calm your volatile self, Potter,” he said, and in a louder voice: “I am here as a general interpreter—an administrator, if you will. I record these little meetings for posterity, smooth out small misunderstandings, alert the press—”
“This was meant to be a private meeting!” Scrimgeour thundered.
“Oh yes, a strictly private meeting between the Minister and our Chosen One to discuss the co-ordination of the war effort,” Malfoy said. “Every paper I contacted was most interested. Oh dear, have I misunderstood something? I feel such a fool, I do apologise, oh well, can’t be helped, shall we proceed?”
Harry grinned. He couldn’t help it.
The grin switched itself off right about when Malfoy said: “Potter will be happy to have his picture taken with you and to make a public announcement that you two have come to a mutually satisfactory agreement.”
“The hell I—” Harry began, at which point Malfoy’s grip cut off all the circulation to his hand.
“Provided you have come to a mutually satisfactory agreement, of course. Now, you cannot possibly arrest Potter, not without panicking mobs and blood in the streets. But you can inconvenience him, refuse to help him and present him in the worst possible light to the press. And in turn, you can watch morale hit rock bottom and make us all easy prey for the Dar—Voldemort.”
Scrimgeour was sitting a little forward in his chair now, his eyes stilled enough to be watchful.
“The prospect’s not tempting,” he admitted gruffly.
“Whereas a few statements, a few nice pictures of the valiant boy hero and our wise leader—” Malfoy made a small, careless gesture with his free hand. The relentless pressure of his grip on the other wrist did not slacken. “Instant morale boost. It would be so easy. All we ask for now is a dismissal of charges and the best face we can put on this situation.” He lowered his voice. “We win this war and you can be the minister of a grateful wizarding world for fifty years. Leave it up to Potter to win it—and we’ll leave it up to you to spin it.”
“Malfoy, you are crazy and you always have been,” Harry informed him comprehensively. “I don’t agree, and I won’t—”
“Could I possibly have a moment to interpret for Potter in the hall, sir?” Malfoy asked hastily, and dragged Harry out by main force. “Thank you.”
It was dark in the hall, none of the Ministry officials or even the cleaning staff around this early in the morning. Someone had kicked a cream-coloured rug to one side and it lay in a little crumpled heap in a corner.
“What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” Harry demanded as soon as they were out there. “You sounded just like your dad!”
Malfoy flinched and went red as if Harry had hit him on both sides of his face. He dropped Harry’s wrist.
“I’m trying to help,” he said in a stifled voice.
“I know,” Harry said. “I do know. Don’t look like that. It’s just that—we don’t need to make bargains with a man like that, we shouldn’t compromise—”
“What the hell d’you think war is?” Malfoy snapped. “Did you just—did you just picture it as finding the damn Horcruxes and then killing off Voldemort in some suitably noble way? You already know it’s not like that. It’s killing people you don’t even know and making compromises with people on your side even when you don’t like them or agree with them on a single thing, it’s—it’s messy and you’re damn right I sounded like my father. War is about politics. Have you never heard of propaganda?”
Harry crossed his arms over his chest. “It doesn’t matter what lies they write about me in the papers.”
“Yes it does,” Malfoy snapped, looking despairing. “It bothered you enough when it was just me telling lies in the paper—”
“When it was just Rita Skeeter—”
Malfoy met Harry’s faint smile with one of his own. “She took all her best lines from my reports. But this, Potter. Think about this. You’ve actually killed people. The papers take their cue from Scrimgeour and talk about a seventeen year old butcher, a future Dark Lord—no, listen, listen! They won’t stop you doing what you have to do. But your life afterwards, it’ll be ruined—”
“Do you think I care about that?” Harry asked, his voice softer because he was touched and surprised that Malfoy did.
“Okay, think about this instead,” Malfoy said rapidly. “You and some of the Order are cornered by some Death Eaters and you send off an Owl to Scrimgeour for men but he stops to verify your situation is as you say it is or to drive a bargain with you and Tonks dies—”
“Stop it!” Harry shouted.
“Dies,” Malfoy repeated, and looked sick. “Slowly. I—I’m not saying that you were wrong, that you shouldn’t have stood up for Shunpike or Dumbledore or who the hell ever, I’m sure you were very heroic. But you can’t win a war just being heroic. Sometimes you have to be practical!”
Harry sort of wanted to hit Malfoy for making Harry think about doing this. He hated Scrimgeour, he didn’t think he was a good man, Harry was Dumbledore’s man and no-one else’s, this all sounded like a stupid game to him.
But—Tonks dies, Malfoy had said, and it made sense. And Harry knew about playing games to win.
Besides that, he thought, and remembered crying and having Malfoy panic and towel his hair dry. Malfoy might be scheming and devious and not heroic at all, but he knew that Malfoy was being scheming and devious for him. They were family: Malfoy had no-one else. Harry could trust him, and did.
“What do you suggest, then?” he said tiredly.
“Well,” Malfoy said, and looked encouraged, his face all lit up. “Well—go in there and make an agreement with Scrimgeour and then both of you can tell the press that you look forward to working together to bring down Voldemort. Oh, oh, and you might want to mention that Scrimgeour promised you full access to all his resources in your fight. Mention that to the press, mind, not Scrimgeour.” Malfoy blinked because Harry was staring, and smiled a tiny bit. “What?”
“Nothing,” Harry said. “Just, you’re sneaky.”
Malfoy beamed as if it had been a compliment. “You’ll do it?”
“I guess,” Harry said. “If he does something wrong enough—I break all ties. I’m warning you. There are some things I won’t stand for.”
Malfoy’s hands flew out to trace some soothing insane pattern on the air. “Of course, of course. As long as you get your story to the papers first. Tell them exactly why Scrimgeour is a scheming opportunist and you’re a hero. Really quickly. Promise me.”
“If I’m not doing something more important,” Harry said. “I promise you.”
“Okay,” Malfoy said, and took a deep breath. “Okay then. You’re going to do sensible things and you’re feeling all right and—and I have to go.”
“No,” Harry said, and couldn’t make it come out as anything that wasn’t a command with an edge to it. “No, don’t go—”
“I have to,” Malfoy said, and his voice shook a little. “I wasn’t meant to stay out all night, I—I’m going to be in trouble already, but I couldn’t—look, I have to go. I’m not heroic at all.”
“You keep mentioning that word,” Harry said slowly. “So—you think I’m heroic, then?”
Colour started up in Malfoy’s cheeks.
“I didn’t say that.”
“And as I recall, I’m going to be a great man in a few years,” Harry said thoughtfully, and watched Malfoy stop looking pale and frightened and start looking indignant and pink. “It’s all right, Malfoy. Lots of people admire me. Lots.”
“Not me!” Malfoy declared. “I’ve called you many things in my time, Potter, and just because your overweening vanity, your overwhelming arrogance, leads you to remember the only vaguely positive things I have ever said about you—”
“It’s okay to think I’m brilliant, Malfoy,” Harry said calmly. “I’m not embarrassed. I will even give you my autograph.”
“You’re a freak,” Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. “Totally mentally unstable. Everyone knows. I read it in the paper. I’ll see you in—I’ll try to come back within the week.”
“Okay,” Harry said, the cold weight on his chest lifting a little. “Good. You should, anyway, this time around you talked to Charlie Weasley more than to me.”
“You were unconscious, crazy person,” said Malfoy loftily. “Besides, Charles and I had things to work out. I like Charles. He’s so sane. I find that restful.”
He had to almost yell ‘restful’ because he was walking backwards, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Harry wondered if he would try to leave the Ministry without turning away.
“Malfoy,” he said, and Malfoy tilted his head in what Harry was fairly certain was an unconscious gesture, the one he used in class when he was interested. Harry cleared his throat. “You’re—you said that you weren’t, you know, heroic. But you’re doing okay. You’re doing better than okay.” He stopped and added: “And you’re the freak.”
Malfoy made a deliberate sweeping gesture this time, a big swooping shape that seemed to indicate birds swooning in midair. Large birds.
“Your opinion naturally means everything to me, Potter.”
Harry made a rude gesture and then turned away before he had to watch another one leave, again, and faced the polished wood of Scrimgeour’s door. Never had wood seemed so unfriendly, or so complicated.
War was about politics. Girls left you because they liked you. Sneaky liars were absolutely trustworthy.
He hadn’t thought this would be easy, but he hadn’t realised it would be such a tangled mess. He couldn’t see his way clear to anything and he had the sudden thought that this feeling must be why some people just gave up.
He squared his shoulders and pushed open the door. Scrimgeour turned at the sound and looked at him with those hungry, hunted eyes.
“Let’s get this done,” said Harry.
“Now you see,” Snape remarked, pacing the kitchen floor in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place with a long, slow stride that was only broken when he had to stop and duck his greasy head under the hanging pots and pans. “I seem to recall that I said you could try for the snake if the Order reported you had done well. Refresh my memory, if you would—I don’t seem to remember saying that I would be even more impressed if your crazed, unthinking recklessness almost got you thrown in Azkaban for murder.”
Harry’s eyes hurt from flashing cameras and his teeth hurt from gritting out the stupid words that stupid Malfoy had thought he should say and his shoulder hurt, especially, from where Scrimgeour had been grasping it in a fatherly way for the papers. He could feel the places where Scrimgeour’s fingernails had dug in even now, as if the man really was a lion and had claws.
He didn’t have time for Snape.
“The ritual didn’t get completed, did it?” he ground out. “The children were saved. How about you judge me by my results?”
“I’m not an examiner, I’m a teacher,” Snape snapped. “I will watch you step by step, I will judge you by the whole process, and I will not allow you to become lazy just because you happened to get lucky!”
Harry was sitting on the stone step that led into the kitchen, watching Snape with hatred. Snape was standing at the kitchen table, his fingers closed around a heavy wooden chair like claws. The legs of the chair ended in large wooden claws, too: Snape seemed to fit this house much more than he did the tiny shabby hole in Spinner’s End.
Harry remembered to hate Grimmauld Place again when he saw Snape in it.
“The ring and the book and the seal are all taken care of. Ron and Hermione will get the cup. We’ve already got the locket.”
Snape sneered. “Correction, Mr Potter. I have the locket.”
“Malfoy has it,” Harry said. “All I need is to get the snake and Voldemort. I only have to be lucky twice more.”
“And there is no guarantee you will be lucky even once more!”
“I killed people to stop that ritual,” Harry said. “I—”
Snape’s eyes glistened, a shiny unwholesome black like insects found scuttling at the bottom of a pit.
“Do you want to make this a contest?” he inquired. “Do you think it is like Quidditch? Have you any idea, you stupid boy, of how many people I have killed?”
Harry remembered Snape’s last victim, shuddered and had to look away, and hated himself for that weakness.
“What do you want me to do? You want me to sit here and rot like Sirius did? I bet you loved seeing that: I bet you do!”
“If you feel the urge to do something instead of sitting in the old Black place being supremely adolescent, you could go back to school. The Dark Lord ordered me to place Amycus and Alecto Carrow in Hogwarts, you know. The students are having an extremely unpleasant time of it, if that appeals to your melodramatic instincts.”
Harry thought that Snape talking about anyone else’s melodramatic instincts was a bit much.
“Stop messing around,” he said, his voice cracking. “I wish I could go back to school, but I have to do this and you can’t stop me. Will you tell me where that snake is or not?”
Snape’s mouth was thin and straight as a brandished wand. “I will not. I am not going to let you kill yourself!”
“Oh please.” Harry was on his feet and snarling in Snape’s face before he realised it himself.
“Like you care whether I live or die!”
He whirled away and slammed the door before he pulled a wand on the man. The sound echoed through the house, sharp and final as Harry imagined a gunshot might sound, and Harry ran up the stairs with his heart pounding with sick fury. He hadn’t felt this way when he cut the rope, but this was how he should have felt. This felt like the killing rage which would have left him with no regrets.
Suggesting he go back to—
Harry stopped and caught the banister, feeling as if he was trying to get into the girls’ dormitory and the stairs had collapsed away from him.
Ginny.
If people in Hogwarts were in trouble, if one of her friends had written to her—The idea was simple and the relief was unutterably sweet. If Ginny was at Hogwarts, no matter what was happening there, McGonagall was there, and teachers and friendly ghosts and the guarding presence of the very walls. Harry thought with longing of school and Ginny safe in it, of knowing one of them was safe.
He went upstairs and got his Cloak, and Apparated just outside the Hogwarts grounds. It was a cold trek to the school, frosty grass crunching like glass under his feet, but it was all worth it to see Hogwarts in front of him at last. The castle was lit at every window and Harry thought of Ginny seeing the brightness, seeing something almost like home.
He slipped inside and made his way noiselessly towards Gryffindor tower, and before he was half-way there he saw Neville Longbottom. Neville was walking with what seemed to be great purpose in a different direction: Harry put back the hood of the Cloak so Neville could see his face.
Neville stilled, wary as a soldier—so there was something going on at Hogwarts, then—and said quietly: “Put your hood back up, and follow me.”
The Room of Requirement looked like another library. Hermione would’ve been so happy. There were tables with maps and plans spread out on them and between every table was a bookcase. It looked like someone had acquired the entire contents of the Restricted Section: there were a few first years who Neville said were on detail to keep whacking the more recalcitrant books with broomsticks.
On a side wall, over the heads of several Ravenclaws who were all screaming at each other about Julius Caesar—Harry didn’t know, Ravenclaws were weird—there were three flags hanging, bright strips of yellow and red and blue.
“Where’s Slytherin?” Harry asked as soon as he stepped into the room.
“Oh yes,” said a girl’s voice behind him. “Because when the Carrows do finally find a way in, which they will since the Inquisitorial Squad worked out a way to do it in half the time they’ve had and really, even they can’t be that stupid—I for one really want a great big piece of cloth on a stick handily there to incriminate me. Very cunning, I don’t think.”
Harry turned around and saw, with equal parts pleasure, surprise and awkwardness because of all the kissing her he’d been doing this year, Pansy Parkinson.
She flashed him rather a complicated smile. “Potter. What brings you here?”
“I was looking for,” Harry said, and stopped. “Ginny Weasley.”
Pansy’s heart did not appear particularly crushed by this sign he loved another. “Haven’t seen her,” she said. She had a clipboard that she looked at now and called out: “Eustacia, Vervain, Melvin! You’re on book beating duty. Legaia, go find Christine and bully her in front of one or both Carrows, make sure she cries and really hurt her this time. Tuesday’s performance was wretched, think of what Malfoy would say about your dramatic abilities.” She turned back to Harry and Neville. “Are we meant to know where Ginny Weasley is? I thought she never came to school.”
“I haven’t seen her, Harry,” Neville said, looking pale. “Was she on her way here? We could send out a reconnaissance team into the Carrows quarters—”
“No,” Harry said, and tried not to sound disappointed enough to cry like some lonely, deserted child. “I—I thought she might have dropped by here on her way somewhere else, that’s all. Don’t worry. Uh, this place looks great!”
Neville beamed. “Yeah, it’s good, isn’t it? Luna and I got started on it, we set up the Room and all, and then we sort of—got into trouble a few times, and then Pansy and Vince started on about tactics and Cho got a few ideas and Marietta was brilliant, she has Alecto Carrow completely convinced she’s on the Dark Lord’s side because of what Hermione did to her face and she gets peeks at Alecto’s paperwork. We’ve been able to pass on information about Death Eater raids to the Order!”
“Neville here had a very nice little school revolution going on,” Pansy said, giving Neville an approving smile. “But these are big picture times.”
Neville, moving with a great deal more assurance than Harry had ever seen him show before, leaned against the wall and said: “Well I know that now, don’t I? Don’t forget whose idea it was to blow up the kitchens.”
“Blow up the kitchens!” Harry exclaimed.
That news had better not get out: it’d be bad for morale. Ron and the twins would be heartbroken.
Neville grinned with modest pride. “Found out where the house elves keep the flour,” he said. “Flour barrels are like dynamite if you heat them enough—dynamite’s this great Muggle thing, ask Justin Finch-Fletchley to explain it to you. It’s such a struggle to keep us all fed that they can hardly find any time to educate us about the pureblood agenda.”
Harry blinked and said: “You blew up the house elves?”
Hermione would be heartbroken too.
Neville Longbottom, the Che Guevara of Hogwarts, shook his head and looked upset by the idea of such waste. “Of course not. They’re digging us all these different tunnels that we can use to escape if it comes down to it—and the Order can use to get in.”
“We’ve only got one done right now,” Pansy put in, more practically. “But it’s lucky you showed up, Potter, McGonagall had no idea how we were going to pass word about it. The Carrows have worked out there’s a leak on their side and we’re all being watched pretty carefully.” Pansy smiled dreamily. “They haven’t figured out that their side is pretty much all leak. We’re saving that up as a surprise…” Her smile turned vicious. “And what a surprise it will be for Amycus Carrow and his busy hands. I’m going to hex them off.”
Harry looked at Pansy’s smile and thought about what an unprincipled man with too much power over schoolgirls might be up to.
“I’ve told you, Pansy,” Neville said, his voice unusually grim. “Let me and a team deal with him—I’ve got a plan that’ll make him regret the day he was born.”
“I’ve told you, Neville,” Pansy returned. “I don’t like the Gryffindors planning things, the explosions keep us up all night. And Amycus Carrow is mine. Wait there for a bit, Potter, and I’ll get you some maps and plans for the Order.”
She waved her clipboard in a vague gesture of farewell and strode over to the Ravenclaws. Everyone was so busy they didn’t seem to have noticed Harry at all, and Harry felt weird about that and yet almost relieved.
Scrimgeour had told him today that he was the only hope of the people. But here at Hogwarts it looked like there were a lot of hopes, and a lot of plans.
Not to mention a lot of exploding flour barrels.
“So have you blown up anything else lately, Neville?” he asked.
“It wasn’t just me,” Neville said. “Justin’s kind of a devil for explosions. Tell you the truth, I don’t think Eton could’ve handled him. We’ve got this plan to drain the lake and flood the Great Hall—I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the Giant Squid, Pansy keeps saying sushi but I think that would be unkind—we’re going to talk it over once he gets back from being tortured by Vince in the Great Hall.”
“Er,” Harry said. “Tortured?”
“Amycus loves the Cruciatus curse,” Neville said, his voice going grim again, and then a bit more amused. “Vince is his star pupil.”
The door opened and Justin Finch-Fletchley walked in, flanked by Cho Chang and Crabbe.
“I wasn’t overdoing it!” Justin protested vehemently. “He was completely fooled. That bit where I writhed on the ground and knocked against his boot was a brilliant piece of improvisation. The trouble with you, Chang—and I noticed this when we were doing the play, and Malfoy noticed it too—is that you’re not spontaneous enough!”
“The trouble with you, Finch-Fletchley,” Cho yelled back, “is that you don’t take direction!”
Crabbe scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “I liked the bit where you upset that jug of iced pumpkin juice on Carrow.”
“Thank you, Crabbe,” Justin said. “I think that was the best torture you’ve done yet. It’s a pleasure to work with someone who can remain professional about things.”
“I volunteer to torture you next,” said Cho.
That was when they all saw Harry and stopped. Cho and Crabbe smiled at him: Justin looked vaguely panicked.
“Oh my God, did you kill Voldemort already? Is the war over?”
“Er, no,” said Harry.
“Oh, what terrible news,” Justin said with what was clearly relief. “Oh well. Got to keep building those catapults, I suppose. Don’t worry about a thing, Harry. We’re rallying round you.”
“Justin Finch-Fletchley, you crazed warmonger, we are not building any catapults!”
“That’s all you know, Chang, you lily-livered pacifist!”
Cho gave Harry an apologetic smile and dragged Justin off into a corner where Harry heard heated whispering, occasionally rising to a shriek on phrases like ‘lab in the prefects’ bathroom’ and even more worryingly, ‘lasers.’
“Cute couple, aren’t they,” Crabbe said with the tolerant, amused fondness that Harry had only really ever heard him use when talking to Malfoy. “How’s Malfoy?” Crabbe asked suddenly, as if he could read minds.
Harry was prepared to believe Malfoy was an Occlumency whiz, but this was a little much.
“He’s—good,” Harry said. “He’s okay. He’s with Voldemort but—but I saw him today. He’s all right.”
“That’s what I thought,” Pansy said, coming back and hiding her vast relief about as well as Justin had. “That press conference you gave had Malfoy written all over it. He used those exact same turns of phrase when he was trying to excuse himself from McGonagall’s lessons in third year.”
She might as well have just said ‘God bless his duplicitous little heart’ since it was in every word anyway. Harry smiled at her.
“What?” Pansy said, smiling back at him. “Shut up, Potter. Here, take these to the Order.
They’d better do something useful with them. And I suppose you can tell Malfoy that we’re all doing fine, too. You know—as well as can be expected, since we’re lumbered with a catapult-happy loon and a pack of Ravenclaws overdosing on Muggle books of war. Not to mention our leader, General Fat Crybaby.”
“I’m not fat,” Neville said calmly. “And I could call names too, but Gran told me it wasn’t clever.”
“And what do Gryffindors know about being clever, may I ask?” Pansy inquired. “Besides which, I saw you crying that night we blew up the kitchen. Don’t even try to deny it.”
“They were manly tears,” said Neville. “Manly tears. Ron would’ve understood. How is—”
“So where’s this tunnel you guys finished?” Harry asked quickly, feeling like Neville had been about to touch an open wound and Harry’d only just managed to twist away in time.
Crabbe cleared his throat. “I’ll show you.”
“And I’ll show you that Gryffindors can be bloody clever,” Neville said, and then winced as only Neville would have because of swearing before a lady. “Sorry, I mean—jolly clever. Wait ‘til you see what Dean and I came up with as a design for Justin’s catapults.”
“Justin has no catapults. Justin needs no catapults—” Pansy let Neville take her arm anyway, and gave Harry another brief complicated smile. “Fairly tolerable to see you, Potter.”
“Uh, you too,” said Harry. “Bye, Neville.”
“Take care,” Neville said. “Listen, Pansy, I can handle Justin. See what we do is, we use the Astronomy Tower…”
The last he saw of Neville and Pansy, they were leaning over a table with a little matchstick prototype catapult on it. Neville had crouched down to admire it at eye level, and Pansy was flicking at it thoughtfully with a scarlet fingernail, looking almost ready to be won over. Harry left the Room of Requirement with Crabbe, putting his Cloak back on, even though he was sort of curious about the catapults plan.
“Nice guy, Longbottom,” Crabbe said. “Doesn’t ever seem to cop that Pansy swears like a sailor, but still. Makes me feel bad about judging all Gryffindors by your lot.”
“Oh thanks,” said Harry.
Crabbe was silent then, both of them realising that chatting to invisible people was liable to attract attention. Harry watched Hogwarts as they went, even the stone corridors dear to him and making him think that perhaps Ron was in the Gryffindor dormitory, perhaps Hermione was in the library. He remembered being eleven years old here, dizzy and delighted and home safe.
The Slytherin dungeons were far more crowded than Harry remembered them, and that was when he remembered about McGonagall’s plan to move everyone down here because the dungeon would be the easiest place to defend. What had seemed like a terrible idea then seemed a bit less stupid now, after seeing Cho and Justin and Crabbe walk in step and argue about taking direction.
It did look a bit cramped, though. There were twelve unmade beds in what had been the Slytherin common room. One had a black lace negligee lying on the pillow.
“That’ll be one of our girls,” Crabbe said, breaking the silence.
“Really,” said Harry, wondering if everything Ron had told him the twins had told him about Slytherin girls was true after all.
“They’ve been leaving their delicates around ever since Longbottom saw someone’s knickers on the floor and had this sort of bashful seizure,” Crabbe said. “They think it’s hilarious.”
The kitchens were gone and Slytherin girls were only interested in showing Neville their underwear. He could never tell Ron any of this: it would hurt him too much.
Crabbe jerked his head for Harry to follow him and, scrambling a bit over beds, Harry did, until he found what looked to’ve been the seventh year boys’ dormitory. One of the beds had Neville’s alarming plant beside it: Harry supposed he should be thankful that Justin had not made a really disgusting weapon out of it.
There was also a poster of Celestina Warbeck wearing several scarlet ribbons and not very much else on the farthest wall. Crabbe nodded towards it.
“Malfoy’d kill us if he saw it,” he said. “He thinks this was the period where Celestina was selling herself short as an artist. But we need it.”
He almost had Malfoy’s haughty inflection as he said the line about Celestina: it made Harry smile. Then he paid attention to Crabbe’s remark about needing the saucy poster, and wondered what exactly Neville had gotten himself into with this crowd.
“Oh?” he said weakly.
“Yeah,” Crabbe said, “No. Millie’d kill me.” He went over to the poster and lifted it.
Underneath was a perfectly ordinary stone wall.
Until Crabbe tapped it with his wand and murmured a spell, and Harry saw the dark tunnel beyond. He whistled and Crabbe gave one of his rare smiles—at least, Harry presumed they were rare. He couldn’t really remember seeing one before.
“Splits off three ways,” Crabbe said proudly. “The one on the far left is booby-trapped. We let Justin do it. It made him happy. Don’t, um, go down that one if you want to live.”
“I see,” said Harry.
“Terry Boot says that Justin is acting out because of the psychological trauma inflicted on him by being held captive by a basilisk stare and thus rendered helpless and also, symbolically castrated,” Crabbe said, and then frowned. “I don’t really understand half the stuff Terry says. But Malfoy will, when he comes back.”
The tone of perfect confidence made Harry feel a little better.
“I expect he will,” Harry said. “It’s a great tunnel. Where do the other ways lead?”
“Hogsmeade and to a Portkey that’ll take us all to Finland,” Crabbe said promptly. “Pansy’s idea.”
He sank down onto a bed that wasn’t Neville’s. Harry squinted over and saw that it must be his own. There were photographs stuck up above the headboard: Crabbe and Millicent Bulstrode holding hands at the beach, Crabbe standing between two people who must have been his parents and an older boy who looked enough like him to be a brother. There was a picture of two large boys who looked about five, who Harry wouldn’t have recognised if he hadn’t seen Crabbe and Goyle at eleven in the Pensieve, not so long ago. The boys were watching solemnly as a little girl made a silent speech to them, waggling her finger and occasionally gesturing expansively.
It was the gesture that made Harry squint harder and see that the little girl was in fact Malfoy with a horrific pageboy haircut and wearing what appeared to be sailor suit robes.
Near the centre of the makeshift collage was a picture that showed Crabbe and Goyle in what were obviously brand-new Quidditch robes, looking quietly thrilled with themselves. Malfoy stood between them as he always did, slightly to the front, leaning his wrists against their shoulders and not looking quietly thrilled at all. He was beaming, his pointed face brilliant with a smile and his grey eyes clear and bright in a way they hadn’t been in—a while. He was laughing and fearless and all of fifteen years old. His father and mother were safe at home, and he’d never been marked by death or Voldemort or Harry.
“I want to,” Crabbe began, and Harry jumped and realised that they’d been having an awkward silence without him noticing. He looked at Crabbe and saw Crabbe was frowning down at his own clenched hands. He waited and Crabbe swallowed, and then said: “I want to thank you.”
“Me? What for?”
“I,” Crabbe said, and swallowed again. “I’m not—clever.”
“Um,” Harry said.
“And I’m not very brave either,” Crabbe said, the words tumbling out. “And I get—I get mad and I used to—we were playing with some kids once when we were eight and this boy said something to me and he kept talking and I punched him too many times and he was really hurt and Malfoy had to go get sick in the bushes. And I was angry with Malfoy because he—he was meant to be able to handle everything, he always said he would, and last year I was angry with him again because he seemed lost and I didn’t know what to do. And then he was gone and I thought even if—if we found him he might still seem lost and—this stuff at school is scary. And Mr Carrow taught us how to perform Unforgivable Curses.”
Crabbe lifted his head now and looked at Harry steadily. The look reminded Harry of Snape earlier, talking about killing.
Crabbe’s voice was soft. “And I’m really good. I’ve never been any good at—at anything in class before. But I’m good at hurting people.”
He took a deep breath, his big shoulders going slack.
“But you and Malfoy met up with us, you were already getting on, you were protecting him and Malfoy had a plan and he told us to do all sorts of things. And then Longbottom was trying to set up his res-resistance and Pansy said, let’s talk to him, if Malfoy’s talking to Potter, and some of them wouldn’t listen but Longbottom did, and—everything’s okay. I’m not hurting anyone really. It all—none of it turned out as scary as I thought it might.”
Another deep breath.
“So—thanks,” said Crabbe. “If you hadn’t—if you two hadn’t—I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t know what I would have done.”
He looked about done in with talking so much and something about his eyes was pleading, but Harry wasn’t Malfoy, glib-tongued so-many-assurances Malfoy. He couldn’t be the kind of leader Crabbe needed.
“I’m sure you would’ve done okay,” Harry told him awkwardly at last. “You’re not a bad guy. You would’ve worked something out. And you don’t owe me for anything, but—I’d like a favour.”
Crabbe looked puzzled but willing.
At this extremely unpropitious moment, Goyle bounced in.
“Hi, Potter! Pansy said you were here and then she said she had to get back to helping Cho beat Justin to death and so I thought I’d come say hi!”
“Hi,” said Harry, and smiled cautiously. Goyle smiled back.
“Did you see the tunnel?” he asked, looking eager. “Will you tell Malfoy?”
“Yeah. Yes,” said Harry, trying to pretend even to himself that he was sure of seeing Malfoy, absolutely safe and sound and very soon. “He’ll be thrilled. He’s really—relying on you guys.”
“And tell him I’ve been practising my Beating,” Goyle said. “He gets very narky about that.”
“I definitely will,” said Harry. “Can I have that picture?”
Crabbe and Goyle gave him identical blank stares and Harry lowered his hand. There was a silence, blank and polite on one end and absolutely horribly mortified on Harry’s end.
“That photo?” Goyle asked, brow wrinkling. “Well I mean, I suppose you can—I mean, it’s not mine, it’s Crabbe’s, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t—I mean, will the photo help save the world? Why d’you—”
“Shut up, Goyle,” Crabbe said briefly.
He’d been sitting looking at Harry and squinting, but now he moved fast for such a big guy. He got up, plucked the photo off the wall and handed it to Harry. Harry folded it and put it in his back pocket so he didn’t have to hold it or think about the humiliating fact he’d asked for it, or why.
“So I—have to go,” he said. “Good to see you guys. Thanks. Bye.”
“Good to see you,” Goyle said. Crabbe just nodded. “Take the right turn to Hogsmeade,” Goyle continued anxiously. “Don’t take the left. Justin did an experiment with a doll. We still haven’t found the head. You need your head.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”
“Have a good Christmas,” Goyle continued as Harry started down the dark tunnel.
It was Christmas Eve tomorrow, he remembered. It didn’t seem particularly important, with Ron and Hermione so far away. Ginny wasn’t at Hogwarts. She could be anywhere in the world. She seemed more lost than they did.
He was still glad he’d come. He was glad he’d seen the whole thing. Seeing Hogwarts like this—it made him think of what Malfoy had said, about war. War wasn’t just finding Horcruxes or just politics, it was—a dozen little wars inside one big war, his school against Voldemort’s people and his school was going to win, he was sure about that.
The Sorting Hat had been right on the money with that song in fifth year. It was enough to make Harry wish he hadn’t missed so many of those songs over the years.
There was supposed to be a meeting of the Order on that evening, but when Harry returned to Grimmauld Place he found the house dark and empty. It was strange—he was sure Tonks had told him it was on today.
Harry didn’t turn the lights on. He was used to the house being dark and silent but he didn’t trust this darkness, this silence.
He felt there was a threat in it.
He pushed open the door of the meeting room, hearing the hinge’s long thin moan, and saw the parchment lying on the table. He saw it first in the dusty mirror reflecting the dark wood of the table, the letter pale in the pale light and bearing only a few lines in Tonks’s untidy scrawl.
That was when he saw he was wrong. There was no threat here. The threat was somewhere else.
He Apparated instantly and saw the Dark Mark, livid green and twisting in the sky above him, tattooing the night sky and distorting the whole world. The tidy little pavements with their neat hedges had all turned green and wavering under the light, as if they were underwater in some terrible sea.
Harry stopped for a moment and swallowed down horror. He only felt the rage he’d felt with Snape today, the rage he’d wanted to feel on the killing night so there would be no regrets and no thought, simply blind furious action.
He ran into the hall and through a fight—he saw Tonks’s set face in the green light and didn’t stop to help her because he thought he recognised a voice above and he did, he had. He almost ran into Lupin, facing down two Death Eaters at once, and then shoved past them too to what the two Death Eaters were defending, another Death Eater about to finish off the little task the Dark Lord had set them.
The Death Eater was bleeding where Dudley had punched him in the eye. Harry didn’t know him.
“Avada Kedavra,” Harry said.
It was that simple, when you really meant it.
He whirled away from Dudley when the man fell and advanced on one of the Death Eaters bearing down on Lupin. There was no time.
Later when there was time, a mediwitch had already sedated Dudley. Harry could be of no further use to the living so he walked around and looked at the dead in the swimming green light. Number Four Privet Drive had never looked like this before: what would the neighbours think?
Uncle Vernon was lying on the rug by the boarded-up fireplace and Aunt Petunia was in the hall, beside the door of the cupboard. Maybe she’d been trying to crawl in there and hide, or go in there to curse him.
They hadn’t loved him, but they’d died for him. Harry went into the kitchen and thought about frying bacon in there, thought about lying outside in that green and midnight garden counting the days until he could return to Hogwarts. Aunt Petunia had taught him how to write at this kitchen table, scolding him when his pencil slipped onto the white shiny surface. She’d guided the tip of the pencil, concentrating so that for once her face was not resentful. She’d helped him make a little, wavy ‘g.’ He’d always written them the same way she did, ever after.
There was a card from her sister in her jewellery box upstairs. He had thought she might hug him, the last time he’d seen her. But she hadn’t. She never had.
They’d been afraid of him and they’d been right to be afraid, and if they hadn’t been afraid maybe they would have loved him and he would have loved them and he would be destroyed now, his heart broken and living for revenge.
Harry sat at the kitchen table and Tonks came and sat by him, her hair still white-blond and looking luminous green. She looked ridiculous and very sad.
“Harry,” she said, her voice a long way away for some reason.
War’s killing people you don’t even know, Harry thought and did not say. He didn’t tell her what Dumbledore had said about his soul or ask if she could possibly get Malfoy or even tell her about the time Uncle Vernon had shaved off his moustache and Aunt Petunia had told him he looked perfectly dreadful and Uncle Vernon had taken them in the car and driven them around and around in circles until Aunt Petunia calmed down and he and Dudley had played I Spy in the back seat for hours.
He’d never liked living with them, always dreamed of going away and never coming back. He’d known he didn’t belong with them and they’d known it too and he’d wanted them to love him, so badly, and never been able to admit it even to himself until now.
He didn’t tell Tonks that either.
He said: “It’s all right, Tonks.”
His voice was calm, even if it sounded far away too.
“It was easier this time,” he continued, so distant, so very calm. “Much.”