Voldemort’s headquarters were in Wales. Harry hadn’t been sure what to think about that, other than speculating that possibly Tom Riddle’s orphanage had taken him there on another school trip, and then Malfoy had told him that the headquarters were located somewhere called the Black Mountains and he’d decided that Voldemort was simply grandstanding.
The countryside was quiet below Harry in the twilight, all green curves and shadows. There was a mountain at the east end of the range that looked as if it had been broken in half by some cruel or clumsy monster, and that was the one where Malfoy had told him Voldemort was hiding.
Invisible but moving as quietly as he could through the sliding sandstone all the same, Harry climbed. He tried to remember what Malfoy had told him: that he had to go past the Devil’s Table before he reached the entrance. According to Malfoy, the Devil’s Table was a weirdly shaped rock and Harry would know it when he saw it.
Harry wasn’t sure why Malfoy thought he was such a geology expert, but it turned out he’d been right. There was a rock outlined against the slate-grey sky, massive but giving the impression of something squatting. It looked like a vast dark toadstool with obscene growths that appeared as Harry drew closer: there was a sickly tree beside the stone, leaning away from it as if it was afraid.
He felt incredibly uneasy about touching it, but Malfoy had been quite specific. So he laid his hand against one side of the stone, feeling the grey, rough stone catch at the calluses on his palm, and said: “Castigatus.”
He understood that much, at least, the urge to have a password to get into his place and even the choice of password. He remembered being in second year and hearing Malfoy say ‘Pureblood’ to get into the Slytherin common room.
So much of Voldemort’s motivations had to do with Hogwarts.
On the top of the mountain there was a haze, a shimmer as if something was changing. Any Muggle tourist, even any wizard who didn’t have the password, would have seen only the remnants of a hill fort and an ancient church. But now moving from invisibility into Harry’s sight, like a tall stone flower unfurling, there was a tower.
Harry forced himself to remember caution and went with care up the mountain, no more than a whisper of wind as he went past hill-walking tourists. He saw one shiver as he passed and then say it was nothing: someone walking over her grave.
The door to Voldemort’s tower was shaped like a church door. Harry stared at the stone curve of the top, like a swallow’s wings spread and set in stone, as he waited. The cold of night falling was dull, as if stone was pressing all around him, and then the door creaked open and a Death Eater ducked out and suddenly Harry’s blood was running hot with savage anticipation.
He caught the door, carved wood almost slipping out from under his grasping fingers, and slid in, seeing his shadow clear for a moment and betraying him, then blending with all the darkness inside.
It was a stone corridor, rough sandstone that looked scooped out of the rock by careless magic, not even trying to look like it was Muggle-made. Torches set in little hollows in the wall made the stone look red as if each light was being cupped in a bloody hand. Corridors spanned out from the hall, fanning out like the legs of a monstrous spider. Harry chose one at random and went down from shadow into blood-tinged light, deeper into the earth.
He walked for a long time, passing by Death Eaters who went through the corridors talking in loud cheerful voices about their families or their Quidditch games on Sunday, as if they were not in the heart of evil. He was listening for a voice like the voice in the walls during his second year at Hogwarts, some basilisk whisper of death, but he didn’t hear anything. He wondered if he should turn back: there weren’t even any Death Eaters anymore, he’d gone so far. The doors had the look of store rooms rarely used.
Then he saw a door creak open, and out of the darkness into a gleam of red-tinted light stepped a moving shadow. When the light hit it the gleam turned rich red, as if there was a blaze being kindled under the earth. Harry’s heart was suddenly racing and so was he: he was flying down the corridor, feet pounding, and if any Death Eaters heard him and came he’d just run right over them.
She whirled around the instant before he was on her, wand suddenly at his throat, and then she hesitated, her dark eyes widening. Harry didn’t even care about the wand. She could hex him if she wanted.
“Harry,” she whispered, and he had his hands on her. She was real, slim waist under his fingers, and he just lifted her off her feet so he could have her full weight in his arms, against his chest.
“Ginny,” he whispered back, and kissed her like he’d never kissed her before, hand at the small of her back, his other hand cupping the curve of her jaw. He kept his eyes open so he could see her, really there and safe, wild curls the colour of sunset and the orange freckles all over her nose, her mouth sweet and hot on his.
She was kissing him back, arms tight around his neck, the wand pressing into the back of his head now. He laughed, breathless and desperate and so relieved, so happy, and Ginny made a small glad sound and moved in closer to him, her legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed her mouth and her chin and her cheeks and her freckled nose.
“God, I was so worried,” he said. “I was going crazy. What are you doing here?” He froze for a moment, her weight suddenly seeming heavy in his arms. “It is you,” he said in dread. “Isn’t it?”
Ginny laughed a fraught little laugh and kissed Harry again, mouth soft and tongue touching the corner of his lips. “My dad calls my mum Mollywobbles. What are you doing here?”
Harry relaxed and hastened to reassure her. “It’s really me, too.”
“I know,” Ginny said, her mouth curving against his. “Everyone else asks before they pounce.”
“I am so happy to see you,” Harry said, shutting his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see her think about what he was saying, so he’d get it all out, “I’m so relieved you’re all right. I’m so—”
“I know,” Ginny said again, sounding happy and relieved and as if she hadn’t known at all, and she kissed him, her free hand curled in his hair.
They clung to each other. For a moment he thought that his knees might give out, and then she pulled her face away, breathing hard against his cheek, and said: “Put me down. I have things to do.”
Harry blinked at her in the low lights, possibly too obviously startled, and Ginny grinned at him. Carefully, he did what she wanted and put her down. Once she was a few steps away he saw that she was wearing a pair of jeans that looked like cast-offs and a Weasley jumper with a pattern of large, clearly mutant daisies on it. She looked well, and Harry looked at the jumper and felt a few things slot into place in his head.
“You’re living with Bill and Fleur, aren’t you,” he said. The first-time couply Christmas at home, the way Mrs Weasley hadn’t looked worried that there was no word from Ginny or aggrieved that there was no sign of Bill, and just the way Weasleys were: of course she’d gone to family.
Ginny gave a cautious nod. “Some of the time.”
“How’re you getting along with Fleur?”
“Not too bad,” Ginny said. “All the French food gets on my nerves a bit. She’s been really good about having me, especially since I don’t—I think I was a bit bratty to her at the wedding. Not that she can’t be a snotty cow sometimes, and I still don’t get all the fussing about dresses and hair…” Ginny shrugged, the tomboy who’d always been so much less concerned about shabby robes than Ron was and who’d worn them so casually nobody even noticed they weren’t new. “But I feel bad about slagging her off. I shouldn’t have done that. I won’t be calling her Phlegm again.”
She looked a bit uncomfortable about admitting she’d been at fault: shrugged and looked off into the darkness. Harry let the subject drop.
“Does wherever you are the rest of the time have anything to do with why you’re here?”
Ginny relaxed, leaning against the wall and giving him a mischievous smile. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”
“I’m here to kill Voldemort’s little pet,” Harry said.
“I’m here to steal Voldemort’s records for the goblins,” Ginny said. “So we can try to persuade some of them that they’ll be better off not going with Voldemort: so we can show them Voldemort doesn’t keep his promises.”
And what would Voldemort do to her, if he caught her sneaking around in his damn headquarters?
“Does your Mum know about this?” Harry demanded, and instantly felt an awful fool. “Well,” he said defensively at Ginny’s level glare. “Well—you’re underage.”
“That might sound a little more convincing if the person saying it to me hadn’t been endangering his life having crazy adventures since he was eleven years old,” Ginny said, maintaining her glare. “Mum doesn’t have to know everything about me. I asked Bill to introduce me to the goblins. I knew they could use a… well, a human representative. People are prejudiced against them, that’s the whole problem, that’s why some of them are siding with Voldemort. I told you I wanted to help with the war, and—helping them seemed the best way.” She looked slightly uncomfortable again. “It’s not like with Hermione and the house elves. The goblins are—well, they’re independent. And kind of stroppy.” She smiled suddenly. “I like them.”
“So you’re working for the goblins,” Harry said slowly.
He supposed he’d pictured her as their leader, or something: he supposed they had leaders of their own who wouldn’t have appreciated that.
“That’s right,” Ginny said. “I’m happy to help. And if I get caught here, I’ll say I’m a pureblood and I’m Draco Malfoy’s girlfriend. Any goblin gets caught here and they die, so don’t try talking to me about how dangerous this is. Even if it didn’t sound rich coming from you, Harry, I wouldn’t listen.”
Harry’s mind had been slightly distracted from the danger Ginny seemed hellbent on putting herself in, even if he hadn’t been feeling a bit hypocritical about objecting to it. Now that she’d pointed that out.
“Malfoy’s girlfriend?”
“Ours is a secret love,” Ginny told him solemnly, and then grinned. “He told me to say so. And to say that I’d left my family home to be with him. Just like a creepy, bigoted, pureblood killer Romeo and Juliet.”
“Just so you know, he’s messing around with your brother.”
“That kind of thing never happened to Juliet,” Ginny said. She didn’t look surprised, so Harry wondered what Malfoy and Ginny were writing to each other, and whether Ginny was writing anything about him that Malfoy could let him know.
“What did you mean,” he said suddenly, “everyone else always asks before they pounce?”
Ginny smiled, not triumphant but amused, looking up at Harry with those warm brown eyes. She lowered her voice and Harry leaned towards her, wanting to kiss her again, and Ginny said: “Oh yes. I’ve been meeting some very sexy goblins.”
They laughed a bit, and even here it was great to laugh with Ginny. She wasn’t doing impressions like she had been in sixth year or trying to get him to pay attention while he was sitting in the Burrow attempting to focus. She was just a little busy and happy to see him, as it had been by the lake in Hogwarts once she was sure he liked her and they could sit around, her doing her homework and Harry lying with his head against her knee. Harry was so glad to see her.
“Will you come back with me?” he asked her. “I’ll help you with the goblins, I’ll do anything you want. Come back. Please.”
Ginny looked at him with her heart in her eyes and Harry smiled at her, eager and glad, and then Ginny looked down and fiddled with the loop of her jeans.
“I guess Hermione and R-Ron aren’t back yet, huh,” Ginny said. He hated hearing her voice break like that and then he remembered Cho in fifth year.
“I am not at all interested in Hermione,” Harry said. “I mean, romantically. She’s very interesting. Obviously. Which you know. Not romantically.”
“It’s Ron you’re after, isn’t it,” said Ginny. “Hey. I know that. It’s not that. It’s just that—I don’t want to go back and let myself fade into the background while you do the hero bit, even though I know you’d be happy to do it. And I won’t do it because you’re lonely and you want someone back. It has to be me you want back—”
“It is,” Harry said, desperate.
Ginny stared at the floor. “And I have to be sure who that is. I’m doing really well, Harry,” she said with a note of desperation in her own voice. “Please don’t ask me again. I’m scared I’ll come.”
So come, Harry said in his mind. She wouldn’t regret it. He’d fix whatever she wanted with the goblins, or—let her do it, obviously, if that was what she wanted. Maybe he could smooth a few things out for her: she’d be glad.
He looked at the ground himself, and got the words out between his teeth. “I won’t ask you.”
“Thanks,” Ginny said, a little awkwardly. He glanced at her and found her glancing at him: their eyes met and caught. “I didn’t want you to know anything,” she said in a quiet voice. “But I’m happy to’ve seen you.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and reached out. Her fingers curled around his, small but tenacious, and he stood staring at her. Eventually he smiled. “You go steal stuff for the goblins.”
Ginny went up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek and pulled her hand out of his. “You go kill Voldemort’s evil snake.”
She had to pull her hand out of his quite forcibly, and then she walked down the corridor and into the darkness, her red hair lost in shadows, unexpected and beautiful as a gift he could not keep. Harry tried not to look after her like a child who had been forgotten and abandoned at school: he tried to understand where she was coming from.
That was when he heard the voice of the snake.
She was talking to herself, her whispering hiss curling in the air and through the dark honeycomb of corridors. Harry expected to hear words about ripping and killing.
“Lonely,” he heard instead. “Bored, all these fools, perhaps the Master will let me scare another one of them, lonely, I’m alone, alone…”
Harry shut every thought in his mind into boxes, thought of defence, built walls and made himself calm, and then he called: “Come here.”
She was close and he walked back the way he’d come, nearer and nearer until he could hear the slide of her scaly body against the earth and he willed her to come closer, closer, thrilled because the plan was working.
The plan failed from the very start. Any other snake might have failed to differentiate between the only two humans who could speak Parseltongue, but Nagini had been with Voldemort for years. Once they were face to face she lifted her head, eyes glinting jet in the low light, tongue flickering out from her mouth. She was—he could see she was—curious.
“Who are you?” she asked him, in a way that seemed prepared to be friendly. “Why are you invisible?”
Harry felt a little at a loss. He had expected to be reminded of Slytherin’s basilisk, and not the snake he’d met in the zoo years ago and had a better conversation with than he’d had with most people. He wished she wasn’t a girl snake.
“I can’t tell you,” he whispered back, and in one way the words seemed so clear, clearer than English even, every word coming out like it was supposed to and meaning what he wanted it to. On the air hung an alien hiss, and Harry could almost taste the language, rich and strange, heavy on his tongue.
Nagini seemed to appreciate the sound. She leaned in and nosed his invisible hand, tested the skin with her tongue. Then she eased her way up his arm. Harry held his arm steady and let her slither up it, winding sinuously until she was wrapped around his shoulders, settled cool and heavy around him, trusting.
Harry reached behind his back to the sheath he wore for the Gryffindor sword. He closed his fingers around the hilt.
“I didn’t know there were more of you,” said Nagini interrogatively. “There are hardly any snakes here, there were so many more where I come from. But that was a long time ago. There’s only the Master to talk to now.”
She nudged his cheek, inquiring and happy, and Harry slid the sword out of its sheath, listening to the tiny sound of steel sliding free.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“The Master said I was to kill any intruders,” Nagini continued. “But not you, little chatterbox. I wouldn’t kill you.”
It didn’t matter, Harry told himself. She did kill people, and she was Voldemort’s, and it didn’t matter if she was lonely or felt strange in a strange land or that this wasn’t her war. She was a Horcrux. He had to defeat Voldemort: she had to die.
He held the sword drawn under his cloak. Nagini curled around his neck, nosed at the opening of the cloak, and he laid the blade along her scales, braced himself to cut down and kill her.
The sound of voices in the corridor brought Nagini’s head up sharply: moving faster than he would have dreamed, she slithered out of his grasp and into the shadows. Harry clenched his fists in silent frustration and what he was ashamed to realise was relief.
“All I’m saying is that you’re going to get into trouble,” said Blaise Zabini.
“And you care?” Malfoy drawled, walking ahead of him in the same impatient striding way he used to walk with Crabbe and Goyle. “Really.”
Harry hesitated and then followed them. They didn’t go far: the next door they reached Malfoy opened, and he and Zabini went inside. Malfoy didn’t seem all that keen on letting Zabini in, and the scuffle when Zabini shouldered his way in anyway gave Harry time to slip inside.
It was a little bedroom like a monk’s cell. There was no sign to show whose it was, aside from Malfoy’s glare.
“I don’t understand you,” Zabini said, looking furious. “Are you antagonising the Dark Lord—the damn Dark Lord—on purpose?”
Malfoy went to sit at the tiny desk in a corner of his room. He flipped it open and took out his Walkman.
“Not—exactly,” he said.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Zabini exclaimed, making a sharp, disgusted gesture. “Stuff like that stupid Muggle machine—where did you even get it anyway—and, and carrying on when he makes you do things that have to be done! We all saw you get sick that one time. It, I’m not saying that it’s great, any of it, but it’s what has to be done to be on the winning side. Doesn’t it ever occur to you that by acting the way you do, you’re making it all worse?”
Malfoy leaned away from Zabini, face distant, locked up the way he was when he absolutely couldn’t bear to betray himself and he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Doesn’t it ever occur to you,” he said slowly, “that the Dark Lord hates us all?”
Zabini’s handsome face showed a flash of pure terror. He swung around as if he expected to find Voldemort sitting on the bed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Malfoy’s mouth curled, half way between malice and thoughtfulness. “Don’t you think that the whole time he was at Hogwarts, the Dark Lord spent all his time wishing that he was a perfect pureblood boy, of perfect pureblood lineage? And doesn’t his general behaviour indicate to you that he has a whole lot of rage and resentment to share among his lucky followers? He wants to kill the Muggleborn. And us—he wants us to crawl on our bellies like his precious snakes, every day of our lives, so he can tell himself he’s better than any pureblood.”
“And your plan is to show weakness so you’re his favourite focus for all the rage and resentment?” Zabini snapped. “That’s brilliant, that is. You always do this!”
“I always do what?”
“You act like you’re in control when anyone can see you’re not!” Zabini said. “I don’t know how you fool all those people. You never fooled me, and I’ve seen you act like such an idiot—”
“Quite,” said Malfoy dryly.
Zabini looked away from the bed and at Malfoy properly. He blinked and rested his hand on his hip.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, his voice softer.
Malfoy turned the Walkman over and over in his hands, jaw tight. “Okay.”
“It’s an honour for both of us, you know,” Zabini said abruptly. “Being allowed into the Death Eaters so young.”
“That’s how I feel,” Malfoy agreed, his voice cool. “Honoured.”
There was a tiny window high up in the bedroom, that showed grass and stones and let in very little light.
“If you’d just keep your head down and stop saying stupid things, we could both get past this and get rewarded! You won’t get anywhere showing weakness to Voldemort. He’ll only exploit it.”
Malfoy cleared his throat. “He likes to have me around,” he said. “To terrorise. I hear a lot, that way. You know how I like to keep up on the gossip.”
Zabini looked completely dismayed. “Oh my God, Malfoy. You don’t have a plan, do you? Tell me you don’t have a plan.”
Malfoy bridled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My plans are all gold.”
“Do you remember that time I said Harry Potter suspected something and you said you had it all under control and the next week he cut you open and almost killed you?” Zabini demanded. “Quit playing around, we’re not having little power struggles at Hogwarts any more. This is real life. People are dying.”
“Yeah, people are dying,” Malfoy said. “Mostly because our side are killing them.”
“There’s one thing you should keep in mind,” Zabini told him. “People are dying. But we’re not. We’re on the winning side, Malfoy. We’ve got every chance. Don’t mess it up.” He took a step towards Malfoy, and then another, reaching out and running his fingers along the back of Malfoy’s chair. Harry was outraged and alarmed when Zabini’s voice and eyelashes began to lower. “And I’d rather,” Zabini said in his new voice. “I’d rather you survived.”
“Thanks,” Malfoy said, going pink and pushing Zabini’s hand away. “But no thanks,” he added. His air of studied indifference might have been convincing if it wasn’t for his still-pink cheeks. “You said it. We’re not having little power struggles at Hogwarts anymore.”
Zabini looked puzzled and offended, as if the git thought he was so attractive all he’d have to do was crook a finger.
“Seem to recall you thought it was more than that,” he said, his voice deliberately nasty.
Malfoy’s eyes lit up with answering malice. “I think finding you attractive was one of the first signs that I was going insane from stress,” he confided. “I feel much better now.”
Zabini snorted and said in his most disdainful tones: “I suppose that means there’s someone else.”
“Yeah, since you mention it,” Malfoy said, looking at the desk. “There is absolutely someone else. And you don’t even compare.”
Zabini didn’t like that one much. “Nice. I only wanted to see that you were all right after what—”
“We’re not talking about that!” Malfoy’s voice lashed out, attacking viciously as the best form of defence even when there was no defence possible.
“I only wanted to give you a friendly warning. But I expect you want to be alone, to get sick or cry or whatever, like you have in front of the Dark Lord a dozen times. You always think you’re so smart, Malfoy. Why can’t you just do what needs to be done?”
“Oh, I will,” Malfoy said, all ice. “Why can’t you get lost?”
Zabini made a low, frustrated sound deep in his throat and looked at Malfoy with spite and fury and maybe, weirdly enough, a touch of concern. He hesitated and then bit out “Fine” and strode towards the door, slamming it after him.
Malfoy took a deep, slow, shuddering breath and put his face in his hands. Harry shook off the cloak and went to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, Malfoy, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Malfoy looked up, his face white. “Oh my God,” he said, as if he’d just been told the apocalypse was due tomorrow. “What are you doing here?”
“Er, Malfoy,” Harry said. “You did tell me to come here. And how to get here.”
“Er, Potter,” Malfoy said, doing impressions even while in what seemed to be a state of shock. “I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to you, but the Dark Lord doesn’t keep his snake in my bedroom!”
Harry frowned. “Yeah. I already saw Nagini. We talked for a bit. She, uh, she knew I wasn’t Voldemort. But I used the Occlumency. She didn’t know who I was. She seemed to want to be—friendly. I think she’ll come to me again. And then…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The weight of the sword on his back was enough: he bit his lip.
“She is an evil, scary, vicious, fanged killer,” Malfoy said. “She is death in scales. Do not, do not tell me you have bonded with her.”
“Of course not,” Harry snarled. He remembered Mr Weasley, even though of course really that had been Voldemort. It just seemed—it seemed hard luck on an animal. He’d never killed anything that had come to him, friendly and trusting, before. He wasn’t like that.
But he’d be however he had to be. He’d do whatever had to be done.
He looked down at Malfoy, forgetting defensiveness for a moment.
“What,” he asked softly, “does Voldemort have you doing?”
There was a knock on the door. Lucius Malfoy’s voice rang out behind it a moment later.
“Draco,” he said. “Let me in.”
Malfoy erupted from the chair, running over to lock the door with greyhound speed, every line of his thin body tense with nerves and misery.
“No!” he shouted at the door. “I’ve told you before. Leave me alone!”
“Draco, I must speak to you,” Lucius said, an edge to his voice that made Harry extremely uneasy.
Malfoy curled his hand into a fist and held it against the door, as if Lucius was planning to break it down and Malfoy was planning to hold him off with the sheer force of his determination.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to you. Not ever.”
“You leave me with no choice, Draco,” Lucius said, and when his voice was thin and desperate he sounded almost young, almost like his son, and it pulled at something in Harry’s chest until he reminded himself that this was Lucius Malfoy, who had tried to kill Ginny and who had murdered Narcissa.
And who was currently making Malfoy unhappy.
“Do you want me,” Lucius panted behind the door, “to go fetch the Dark Lord? He’ll come, Draco. You know that he’s told me that he has witnessed your insubordination: you know he’d—”
“No!” Malfoy exclaimed and cast a hunted look at Harry.
Harry wasn’t sure if the sudden terror stark on Malfoy’s face was for Harry or for himself. Probably it was for both of them: God, this was such a mess.
“Okay, look,” Malfoy said in a trembling, bargaining voice. “I’ll let you in. We’ll talk. But not now, Dad, please, give me an hour and then I’ll—”
Lucius’s voice was almost shrill with desperation. “I know you better than that! You’ll slither off somewhere. Let me in right now, Draco, or I swear—”
Even the fist Malfoy had clenched against the door was shaking. He controlled himself and strode over to Harry, picking up the cloak and swathing him with it like a mother covering up her child against the cold. His face was close, his eyes gleaming.
“You’re crazy,” he whispered, hand clasped hard at the back of Harry’s neck for a brief moment and then gone. “You’re crazy, God knows why I—I’ll get you out of this. I promise. Stay still. Be quiet. I’m begging you.”
Harry nodded the instant before Malfoy pulled up his hood and Harry was lost from sight. Then Malfoy squared his thin shoulders and opened the door for his father.
Malfoy had said that Lucius Malfoy seemed smaller now: Harry had kind of thought he meant metaphorically. But it was literal, too, Lucius stripped of all his self-importance was thinner than Harry’d thought. He seemed a little shrivelled, even his Death Eater’s robes seemed wilted. It was hard to tell with the Malfoy hair, but it looked like it was going white, long and limp and drifting in the air like a drowned man’s.
His face looked so like his son’s, but degraded, like seeing the same profile on a new coin and an old one, darkened by years and ill usage.
“Draco,” he said, and reached out his hands to try and embrace him. Harry thought again of drowning. “I had to say I’d bring the Dark Lord. You wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Don’t touch me,” Malfoy spat and recoiled, bristling like a badly hurt cat.
“Draco, Draco,” Lucius said, as if he was talking to an injured animal, soothing and smooth with some fragment of the politician showing.
Malfoy backed up. He backed up towards the bed and away from Harry, carefully not looking anywhere near the corner where Harry was, and then the back of his legs hit the bed and he had to stop moving away from his father.
Who reached out and grabbed Malfoy’s face in both hands, inescapable, touching with an obvious and absolute feeling of ownership and, even though Harry hated to admit it, with tenderness as well.
“You’re going to have to forgive me some time, Draco,” said Lucius Malfoy. “It’s what she would have wanted.”
“Would she?” Malfoy said, his voice tearing on the edge of tears. “Pity I can’t ask her, then. Since you killed her!”
“I had to do it.”
“Oh yes,” Malfoy said, the words tumbling out of his mouth, “to save your own miserable skin, of course—”
Lucius’s hands were gripping Malfoy’s face so hard they must have hurt, leaving livid white fingerprints against the furious hectic red of Malfoy’s cheeks.
“If I had not done as the Dark Lord commanded then he would have killed us both,” he said, voice rising over Malfoy’s. “And then there would have been nobody left to look after you, Draco. She would have wanted me to do it. I know that! You knew her, Draco. She would have killed me in the same situation. You know that as well as I do. She would never, never have left you on your own. She would have done whatever she had to do.”
Malfoy grasped his father’s wrists and dragged his hands down, stared at him and then turned his eyes to that tiny window. Faint light gleamed on them: he was obviously fighting back tears.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But I know you, too. I could have—I could’ve believed her if she’d said she’d done it all for me. But you—I can’t be sure that you didn’t just do it for yourself.” He swallowed. “She was the ruthless one. You’re the one who chooses little girls to do your dirty work. You’re as big a coward as I am!”
For a moment Harry thought Lucius was going to hit his son, and in that moment he thought about how easy it would be to kill him.
“Be that as it may, Draco,” he said with a thread of rage in his voice. “This family requires your cooperation to stay afloat. The Dark Lord may not have much good to say about the Malfoys now, but we can prove our usefulness to him. You still have Bellatrix Lestrange’s blood in your veins. He’s certainly taken an interest in you.”
Malfoy laughed, a harsh crackling sound. “Lucky me. Look at you, still trying to turn everything to your advantage. You’ve lost it all, haven’t you, power and position and you’re just desperate, that’s why you’ve come to me, that’s the only reason, because there’s nothing left for you!”
“There’s you,” Lucius said, sudden and rough somehow, the politician truly drowned. “I love you. If you forgave me, there’d be something left.”
Malfoy stopped short, his face shocked and sick, as if his father had hit him after all.
“You’ve never said that before,” he said, and laughed a horrible pained laugh. “I wish—I wish you had. I would have believed you once.”
“And you don’t believe me now?” Lucius asked.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” Malfoy said. “I can’t. You were always such a good liar. I used to wish I could lie like you, but I never could. And now I can’t afford to believe you, I can’t, I can’t.”
“We’re on the same side, Draco, stop being so impossibly foolish and melodramatic,” Lucius shouted, and he sounded more like the man Harry remembered and it was easy to hate him again, and then his shout cracked like thin ice. “We’re on the winning side. That has to mean something. We have to be able to build something once all this is over!”
“Oh, maybe not, Father,” Malfoy said. “Maybe we’ll both be dead.”
He shoved his father and Lucius Malfoy actually staggered back.
“Will you believe me now when I say I don’t want to talk to you?” Malfoy demanded. “Ordering me around, persuading me, it doesn’t, it can’t work anymore. I want you to go.”
Lucius Malfoy went, but he stopped at the door. “This isn’t over, Draco,” he said, the politician surfacing. “I won’t stop. And I know you’ll see sense in the end. I know you’ll want to make me proud.”
He shut the door quietly. Malfoy collapsed, sitting on the bed like a puppet with its strings broken. Harry flung off the Cloak and went to his side, kneeling on the floor. Malfoy still wasn’t crying, just holding onto his own left wrist in a death grip.
He’d said he wanted his father’s head on a plate. Harry had believed him: Malfoy had believed it himself. But Malfoy had said that he wanted to get Harry too once, and he’d changed his mind. Blaise Zabini seemed to be his friend: Lucius Malfoy was his father, was real family, not an aunt who’d just waltzed in but the man who’d brought him up. It was all complicated. And Malfoy felt things so much.
“Voldemort tells me to torture people,” Malfoy said abruptly. He said in his nastiest voice, spitting out the name ‘Voldemort’ rather than saying ‘the Dark Lord’ as he usually did, with a mixture of contempt and fear. “Muggles. The Muggleborn. Blood traitors. He needs to have them tortured, needs to create the—the climate of terror, and he likes doing it himself but he likes telling the people who obviously really hate it to do it even more. Two birds, one Cruciatus curse.”
“Right,” Harry said unsteadily. “How—how do you get out of it?”
The marks of Lucius’ fingers stood out now, faint red marks that would be bruises, against the paper white of Malfoy’s face.
“I don’t,” Malfoy said, very low. “I do torture them. I have to do it, I can’t let him suspect me, it helps me to be a better spy. And I think—sometimes I think—if it hadn’t been for Snape rescuing me and you and everything, I still would’ve done it. I’m so scared of him, it makes me sick. And I don’t want to die. But those people—”
Harry grabbed Malfoy’s right wrist, not the other because he knew it would hurt him.
“Listen,” he said, leaning in, and Malfoy’s eyes snapped up from the floor and fixed on his face. “Listen, listen. All this stuff with your dad and—and your friends, and if that bastard’s—what I’m trying to say is that it’s all right if you can’t cope with it. I—I understand. If you wanted to just—leave the country. Go somewhere else. Until all this is over. I’ll understand.”
Malfoy looked bewildered, as if Harry was speaking a foreign language that Malfoy could not possibly understand though he was trying hard.
“And what would you do?” he said at last.
“Oh—well,” Harry said, looking at Malfoy’s wrist rather than at his face. “When it’s over, I’ll—I’ll come find you.”
“Oh,” said Malfoy, and then irritably: “That’s not what I meant. Everyone else is gone, and you—you are killing people. I have told you before. I have no intention of leaving.”
“I’ll be fine,” Harry assured him.
“Shut up,” said Malfoy. “Just shut up. Ginny’s right to do what she’s doing, you know. You’re so keen to save people that you’d eat them, and you wouldn’t mean to but you would, just because you think it has to be you all alone who saves the world and everyone in it. Well, fortunately for you I have no crippling five-year habit of dependence on you to break. I know precisely who I am. I hate all this, I hate it, but I refuse to be rescued.”
“I was just trying to help,” Harry muttered.
“Well, you are helping,” Malfoy said in a practical tone. “I said before. If there wasn’t—if I wasn’t on your side, I’d still be doing all the things I’m doing. Only none of it would mean anything. And I don’t—I don’t like to think of how I’d feel.”
“That’s not really the kind of proper help I had in mind,” Harry said.
“It’ll do,” said Malfoy.
There was a moment of silence, and then Harry remembered who Malfoy had been talking about before.
“I saw Ginny,” he said. “I suppose that you’d say that the two of us happening to be in touch with you and in here at the same time was a complete coincidence.”
Malfoy drew his wrist away with sudden decision and leaned back on his elbows, managing a very faint rendition of his usual smirk. “It’s a big fortress of evil,” he said in a funny voice. “The chances of running into anyone in it are not good. Unless you’re fated soulmates. I expect that’s it. Anyway, I owe her, and you seemed—upset about the letters. Did it go okay?”
“Yeah,” Harry said slowly. “Yeah, it went really well. It was good to see her.”
“Good,” said Malfoy. He sounded tired. “And next time you’ll get the snake. Everything’s going to be okay. Good.”
“If you want,” Harry offered, “If you want to sleep, I could stay with you for a bit. If you want.”
He more or less expected relentless mockery as a response, but Malfoy shot him an unreadable look and said finally: “All right.”
Malfoy shifted a bit and hit the pillow. Harry uncurled from the floor and sat on the bed, and reached out on impulse and stroked Malfoy’s hair back from his face, a bit. He was still clumsy about it, but not as bad as he had been.
Malfoy’s eyes drifted shut. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, distant and a little sad. “But you’re still crazy.”
Harry did not feel particularly light of heart when he got back to Grimmauld Place. Malfoy’d refused to come back with him. The snake wasn’t dead and Harry didn’t particularly want to kill it but he’d have to anyway, and Malfoy was in trouble and Harry didn’t know what to do about it. He’d seen Ginny, that was the one real bright spot, but she hadn’t wanted to come back.
He’d only had a couple hours of sleep: it hadn’t been particularly comfortable, tangled up with Malfoy on the single bed with Malfoy murmuring sleepy complaints and shoving his sharp elbows in Harry’s stomach. Though it had been more comfortable than Harry might’ve thought.
He thought he could sleep more, but from outside on the street he could see there were lights on in the kitchen, though nowhere else in the house. Probably some of the Order had stopped by: God, Harry hoped there was no bad news.
He pushed open the door and almost tripped over the welcome mat, which used to say ‘Only Purebloods Welcome’ until Charlie’d beaten it into submission. He recovered his balance and made for the kitchen, where he could hear a male voice holding forth: he wasn’t sure if he recognised it or not.
He shoved the door open and the world went still and bright, as if it was captured in a golden bubble. He couldn’t even think for a moment, he was so happy, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
Hermione glanced around, the lights of the kitchen pale gold on her bushy hair, and she knocked over her teacup springing from her chair. The tea spilled all over the table and the cup clattered to the floor and she was in his arms, laughing and crying and saying “Harry” and he held her tight, so tight he might’ve been crushing her but she wasn’t complaining, she just kept saying “Harry.” Ron, tall and hair blazing under the kitchen lights, taller and brighter and more real than Harry had remembered as if the memory of him had faded like an old photograph, came over and started pounding Harry on the back so hard it hurt and Harry was glad it hurt, it made it all seem more real. Hermione’s hair was in his eyes: he couldn’t see properly.
He unclenched one hand from around Hermione and reached out, and Ron grasped it in a tight hold.
“All right, mate?” Ron asked, voice rumbling a bit as if he was embarrassed about being all emotional.
“Yeah,” Harry said, his voice cracking. “All right.”
“Things are better than all right,” said Zacharias Smith, who was still sitting at the table with his cup of tea. It must have been his voice Harry heard, Harry thought dimly, most of his thoughts lost in the whirl of happiness and the much more important matter of holding Hermione close.
Smith looked much the same as ever: blond, nose in the air, annoying sort of face. It didn’t matter.
“You can show him, Zach,” said Ron. “Go ahead.”
Smith smiled and reached on the floor for an old brown rucksack. He put it on the table and it gave a metallic clunk, and Harry stared. He supposed he’d known, Ron and Hermione would never have come back to him without accomplishing what they’d set out to do, but seeing it was something different.
Under the warm kitchen lights, Smith drew it out, gleaming and perfect: a prize the way the Triwizard Tournament Cup hadn’t been, a grail. The Hufflepuff Cup.
“Sorry we took so long, Harry,” Ron said.
Harry tucked Hermione against his side, still bawling. He loved the way she cried like an exploding tap: he loved Ron’s determinedly casual smile. He grinned at him. “Didn’t really notice you were gone,” he said. “Hope you didn’t put yourself to too much trouble.”
“Nah,” Ron said, suddenly beaming, all pride. “It was a piece of cake.”
They all went to the sitting room, where they started to tell Harry stories about the forest and the leaping lizards and a very irascible barkeep.
“Mind you, I wish we’d had more inns,” Ron remarked. “We spent ages camping out in the woods. Not my idea of a good time.”
“Sounds a bit dull, yeah,” Harry said.
Ron did not seem deeply thrilled by the idea of Ginny among the goblins, but Harry thought he would’ve been a good bit less impressed with what Harry could’ve told him yesterday, which would have been that Ginny was off in an unknown place facing unknown but deadly dangers. He left out the part about getting Ginny’s clothes half off before she left.
“Chased her off, did you, Potter?” Smith asked, sounding highly amused. Harry glared at him.
“Zach,” Ron said reprovingly.
“It’s fine, Ron,” Harry said, and might’ve tried to carry off something like Malfoy’s bored drawl. “Not like Smith would know much about having a girlfriend. So, tell me more about—”
Ron was frowning suddenly. “Yeah, um,” he said. “I bet you could do with more tea, Hermione.”
“And biscuits,” Hermione said firmly. “We ate a leaping lizard once, Harry. We had to roast it. It was horrible. Ron had two.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Ron said. “They were buggers to catch, though. C’mon with me, Harry.”
At the moment Harry would have gone with Ron into a fire if he’d asked, but he was still pretty surprised to receive a lecture from Ron as soon as he’d come home and of all things, about the tender feelings of Zacharias Smith.
“I might point out that he started it,” Harry said.
Ron buttered some bread for Hermione. “Yeah, well,” he said. “That’s kind of Zach’s way. The thing is, he’s not a bad guy. He’s just got a bit of an unfortunate manner. I think he’s a bit shy.”
“He seems shy,” Harry said dryly.
“Like,” Ron said. “Remember how he joined the DA, you know, listening in on other people’s conversation and inviting himself along and behaving like a prat once he was there? He just—he doesn’t think of the best way to do things, is all. He hasn’t got many friends and he can be a bit awkward.”
As far as Harry had ever seen, Smith didn’t have any friends, but he suspected Ron meant that and was just trying to be tactful.
“A lot of his family died in the last war,” Ron said. “He told me, this one time. It was late. He was the youngest by a lot. He used to have three older brothers. He doesn’t really remember them. His dad doesn’t want him to have anything to do with the war and he doesn’t think he can live up to those war hero brothers and he’s a bit difficult. But he’s not a bad guy.”
Harry bit his lip. “Okay.”
Ron stared at the plate, which he was piling high with biscuits. “He’s going to have to stay here,” he said. “He can’t go home, he’d be dragged off to Switzerland or something, and he wants to fight. Is that okay?”
“‘Course it is,” Harry said. “You know that. Any friend of yours is—er, someone I’ll put up with.”
Ron grinned. “Cool,” he said. “He saved my life three times.”
“Um,” Smith said from the doorway. “Hermione wants bread and butter. Oh, I see you’ve got it.”
“I am totally learning to anticipate all her needs,” Ron said with some pride. “Grab the biscuits, Harry.”
“Um,” Smith said again. “And that first time, with the life-saving. That was kind of an accident.”
“I know,” Ron said. “Get the door.”
“All right,” Harry said as they all trooped back upstairs to Hermione. “That’s a story I want to hear.”
He didn’t get to hear it, though, because just then the front door opened and Charlie came in, and he made a dash at Ron and only Harry’s Seeker reflexes saved Hermione’s biscuits.
Hermione looked very pleased to see the biscuits. She looked pleased to see Charlie as well, but mostly Charlie was occupied by thumping Ron on the back.
“My little brother, back like a bad penny,” he said. “And with a Horcrux. Mum’ll be so proud, she’ll burst.”
“Well,” Ron said, bright red and looking thrilled.
“Putting Bill and Percy’s noses properly out of joint,” Charlie went on indulgently. “Head Boy’s nothing to this. Can we go and tell her? She’s been sick with worry.”
Ron looked like he was about to nod, and then he looked at Harry, and after a second at Smith. “Couldn’t you bring them all here?” he asked.
Charlie did. Mrs Weasley tried to keep hugging Ron and make dinner at the same time, and they had to eat burned food and Percy arrived late from the Ministry and looking so tired that when Smith said: “Hi, Paul,” Percy nodded and said hello back. Then he asked Ron many questions about Albania that Hermione had to answer. Harry thought this might be Percy’s way of telling Ron he was proud.
The twins arrived and gave Ron a present tied with an enormous bow that Ron utterly refused to open.
Hermione watched all the Weasley furore and looked a little sad, and Harry reached out and took her hand. She could go back to her parents once the war was over: they couldn’t risk leading the Death Eaters to them.
Hermione smiled at him gratefully, then reached out and touched the corners of his eyes with cool fingertips. It didn’t feel at all the same as when Pansy Parkinson had done it: just peaceful, just unutterably comforting.
“Oh, Harry,” she said. “You look so tired. But everything’s all right now. We’re back. We won’t leave you again.”
“Good,” said Harry, drawing his chair closer to hers. “Because I’m counting on you to come kill a snake with me.”
The other Weasleys went home. Mrs Weasley asked Ron to come sleep in his own bed and Ron looked wretched but resolved about refusing, and at last it was just Harry, Ron and Hermione. And Smith and Charlie. Harry supposed he understood about the necessity of Smith, but he thought that Charlie should perhaps understand that it was okay to go home now.
Only of course it was obvious why Charlie was staying. Harry realised that when Malfoy showed up late that night.
They were talking about a distressing incident at a gipsy camp where Ron had not made a terribly convincing woman at all, when Harry heard that swift step in the hall and looked up the instant before the door opened. Malfoy stood there for a moment and looked terribly surprised, shock wiping out even the signs of tiredness from his face.
“Oh hi, Malfoy,” Ron said, not sounding enormously thrilled.
“Hi Malfoy,” Hermione said with more warmth.
“Oh right, you live here too,” said Smith. “Slytherins on our side. That’s pretty funny.”
Malfoy’s gaze turned wintry and fixed on Smith. “I try to pretend that Hufflepuffs don’t exist at all,” he drawled. “Though I admit, sometimes seeing them run after Gryffindor girls? That’s pretty funny.”
“Hey,” Ron said. “Leave it out.”
“I can’t help it that your house is, oh, the house of evil,” Smith snapped.
“And I can’t help it that your house is the house of being terribly pathetic,” Malfoy replied, smirking. “But cheer up! Seems you’ve been adopted by a member of the house of being incredibly patronising.” His scornful gaze swept them all. “I’ll leave you to your emotional reunion,” he said. “Charles, d’you want to play cards?”
“Maybe if you’d like to acknowledge the fact my brother came home alive before getting all snippy,” Charlie said in an affectionate voice that made Ron blink.
“Weasley, Granger. I’m glad you’re not dead,” Malfoy said, not sounding terribly sincere, but Charlie rolled his eyes and went to the other side of the room where they curled up on the sofa and Malfoy could be near his precious curtains.
Charlie had not looked terribly impressed with Malfoy’s behaviour, but Malfoy was obviously and deliberately laying himself out to please. Harry was forcibly reminded of Bill and Fleur’s wedding, but it went beyond that.
Malfoy tilted his head and smiled slow caressing smiles in the moonlight, and Charlie softened and started to look like a man besotted, and Ron looked like he was going to be ill.
“Yeah,” Harry said, frowning. “A lot’s happened since you were gone.”
“That’s appalling,” Smith said, gawking at them. “Isn’t Bill the one who’s married? He shouldn’t be doing that with Malfoy if he’s married!”
“That one is Charlie,” Hermione told Smith.
“Oh,” Smith said, looking apologetically at Ron. “Sorry. I get confused. There are a lot of them. Paul seems pretty nice.”
“Who’s Paul?” Hermione asked blankly.
“The one with the glasses,” Smith told her. “See, it’s easy to get confused.”
Harry was mostly glaring over at the spectacle. Malfoy hadn’t seemed all that anxious to make a show of this whatever-it-was in public before: Harry wondered just exactly what the Malfoy definition of ‘not a big deal’ was anyway.
“You’re absolutely right,” Ron informed Smith, who looked gratified. “This is appalling.”
“Well, it’d be worse if it was the married one,” Smith pointed out.
Over on the sofa Malfoy said something and they both laughed, Charlie throwing his head back. Malfoy reached over and smoothed the collar of Charlie’s robes with careful, clever fingers, not moving too fast. It was clear that Charlie wanted pretty badly to kiss him. Malfoy smiled.
The whole Charlie and Malfoy thing did not please Harry at the best of times. Least of all now, when if Malfoy wanted to make an effort and be charming he could be directing it anywhere but at Charlie. This should be a celebration.
Harry understood that Malfoy couldn’t have been thrilled, coming home after the time he was having at Voldemort’s headquarters to Smith sniping at him. It wasn’t like Harry didn’t think that Smith was a pain too.
Only Hermione and Ron could have been dead and now they had come back safe, beyond all hope, with a Horcrux. Malfoy could have congratulated them: he could have seemed even a little bit pleased to see them.
Charlie and Malfoy went upstairs after a bit. Ron expressed his deep horror at some length. Harry tried to forget all about it and almost did because of how nice it was talking to Ron again, having Hermione tell him interesting facts she’d learned about Albanian magic.
Eventually everyone had to go to bed. Ron helped Smith choose a room, and Smith carried the Horcrux up to bed with him. Hermione gave Harry a last warm hug before she went inside her room, her arms tight enough to strangle him, and he laughed and let her go. He’d see them all at breakfast. It was wonderful just to know that.
He still wasn’t happy with Malfoy, and when he woke to the sound of the door opening he levered himself up on his elbows, grabbed his glasses and gave Malfoy a not all that friendly look through them.
“What do you want?”
“This is my room, Potter, you idiot,” Malfoy snapped.
He had his arms crossed and was leaning against the wall in a beam of moonlight, his face blanched by the light, his eyelids lowered. Harry couldn’t tell much from his expression, except that the corners of his mouth were drawn down. He didn’t look happy, either.
“I’m—sorry,” Malfoy said, the words coming out with obvious difficulty. “I should have—I know how worried you’ve been and I’m not—I am glad they’re all right. I suppose…”
He stopped then and Harry would have let him stop there, would have accepted the peace-offering without asking any questions. He didn’t want to ask any questions. This was enough.
But Malfoy looked away from him to the window, his jaw tight, and continued.
“I suppose I got used to having you to myself,” he said.