Harry woke alone the next morning, blinking hard to convince himself that he wasn’t as tired as his aching eyes and muscles were trying to tell him he was. The first thing he focused on was the vacant pillow next to his own, white and crumpled, the lines of it sharp in the morning sunlight. He could smell breakfast.
He grinned and went to find clothes. He was pulling his jumper on over his head as he came out the door and found Ron giving Smith the grand tour.
“—and that’s Malfoy’s bedroom,” Ron said.
“And Potter sleeps in there too, does he,” said Smith. “Well, that’s—”
“Zach,” Ron exclaimed in warning tones.
“Perfectly normal. As I was just about to observe,” Smith said.
Somehow, Harry found him unconvincing. He raked his hands through his hair and gave them both a smile anyway, because he was happy and Ron and Hermione were here and what did Smith matter, after all?
“Morning.”
“Morning, mate,” Ron said, and they knocked elbows amiably as they went down the stairs to breakfast.
Malfoy was cooking, though this obviously broke Kreacher’s heart. He was standing as far away from Hermione as he could, looking tragic and reproachful on top of the chest of drawers. Hermione was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and Malfoy was drawing her out about Albanian runes.
“Less of a Latin base for the spells, don’t you see,” she said, tracing a funny little squiggle on her crumb-covered plate.
“Fascinating,” said Malfoy in his terribly posh talking-to-visitors voice. It was impossible to tell if he meant it or not, but what mattered was that he was laying himself out to be charming: that he was making up for last night.
“Morning,” said Harry, leaning against the kitchen wall and sliding his hands into his pockets.
Malfoy glanced over his shoulder, sunlight turning his grey eyes gold, like the dazzle of light on the surface of water. He smiled his bright lopsided smile.
“Morning.”
“Harry,” Hermione said, and reached out as if she could grab him. He went and sat down beside her so she could if she felt so inclined. She ruffled his hair. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine: Malfoy and I went flying last night, that’s all,” Harry said.
Hermione said “Boys” in the same tone she’d been using since they were eleven years old and Harry grinned at her because he was so helplessly pleased to have her back.
It wasn’t bad that he had to take Malfoy into account, too. That was what Malfoy had meant last night: that Harry had to consider Malfoy, remember to spend time with him, show him he felt—well, the way he did.
That was what families did.
Hermione slid her arm around his neck and Harry leaned in, a bit awkwardly but glad to be close, and touched foreheads with her. It could only last for a moment or Ron would become indignant that he didn’t get forehead-touching action with Hermione.
“And you look happy,” Hermione told him.
That was when Charlie came into the kitchen, to a chorus of greetings. He nodded to everyone and walked over to the stove, where he put his hands on Malfoy’s waist. Malfoy leaned backwards into him and Charlie kissed him on the mouth.
Then he stepped away from Malfoy and glanced at Ron to see how his point had been taken.
Ron decided that he hadn’t seen anything and started a loud conversation with Smith about how delicious cheese was.
“I mean it’s just basically the best food in the world, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Smith said uneasily. “Cheese is nice.”
Apparently Charlie thought this was good enough. He sank into the chair beside Ron’s and clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad you’re back, little brother.”
Harry looked at Hermione.
“Of course I’m happy,” he said. “You guys are back, and today we destroy another Horcrux. Can’t see any reason not to be happy.”
Charlie’s dragon tamer friends brought Norbert to a designated location in Dartmoor. Most of them were in the skies already making sure that no hikers were able to get back to the authorities with stories of a dragon sighting. Malfoy had offered to help out with that.
Hermione hadn’t come. She said she had to catch up on her reading, disregarding Ron’s plaintive cries that she couldn’t possibly have reading, did she not remember they were taking the year off school to fight evil?
Which left Charlie and Harry to witness the Smith and Ron ‘no really, you go first’ argument.
“You know, you should be the one to destroy the Horcrux,” Smith told Ron. “You’re the one who—”
“You’re the one with the Hufflepuff blood, idiot, we couldn’t have done it without you.”
“But you killed that troll,” Smith said. “And you wore that dress—”
“Yeah, we don’t talk about that. Zach, get on the dragon,” Ron ordered.
Smith looked embarrassed and pleased and didn’t need all that much persuasion. Ron looked indulgent and promised to go stand with Melisande, the Muggle dragon tamer, where he could see it all.
“That’s nice,” Charlie said, nodding at Ron as he walked off. “Ron’s not used to—well, you and Hermione aren’t really the follow-my-leader type.”
“I guess not,” Harry answered warily, not sure what Charlie was driving at.
“Ginny had a whole bunch of us to look up to and copy, and anyway it’s different with girls. Ron always used to ask Mum if he could have a little brother,” Charlie said. “Of course we would’ve had to raise another one in the garden with the gnomes, so all Mum did was give a hollow laugh. It’s just nice to see someone look up to Ron. It’ll help him out.”
Harry was about to say that there was absolutely nothing that Smith could help Ron out with, but he remembered Ron looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing himself as the leader of the whole school, Head Boy and holding the Quidditch Cup and everything. He remembered how pleased Ron had been when he was made prefect.
Even then, Dumbledore would have chosen Harry first.
“Then I guess there’s one reason to be glad Smith’s around,” he said at last, and shrugged. He shielded his eyes with one hand and looked up at the sky.
“You’re not—you’re not jealous?” Charlie asked.
“Uh,” Harry said. “No?”
Like there was any reason to be jealous. They were—Ron and Hermione were his, solid as bedrock. Smith didn’t matter, any more than Ron going off sometimes with Dean and Seamus mattered. Nothing could touch them.
“The thing is,” Charlie said with great care, as if each word was a dragon egg he was afraid of dropping. “You’ve always struck me as sort of—the jealous type.”
Harry dropped his hand and looked at Charlie instead of the sky. He stood looking at him for a bit too long, until he realised that he couldn’t really claim that he didn’t know what Charlie was talking about anymore.
“It’s not that I’m jealous,” was what he said.
“Possessive,” Charlie suggested.
“I am not possessive either,” Harry snapped. “It’s that you’re too old for him. I mean, if it wasn’t for the fact that Malfoy was run out of school you’d be his teacher right now, doesn’t anything about that strike you as wrong?”
Charlie went white beneath his freckles and tan. Harry felt a certain satisfaction, as if he’d thrown a punch when he was mad and seen it connect just as he’d wanted it to.
“Well, he did have to leave school,” Charlie said at last. “He’s been through things that’ve made him mature—”
“He’s not that mature,” Harry said, and bit his lip as he recognised that right now he didn’t sound all that mature himself.
Charlie didn’t seem to notice. The colour was back in his face, a rising tide of crimson which almost drowned the freckles, and he looked angry.
“You know, I’m—I’m sick of this,” he snarled. “I’m twenty-four, I don’t see why I should be treated like a dirty old man and I don’t see why he has to leave in the middle of the night and I don’t see why I’m expected to put up with you glaring at me as if—”
“Maybe,” Harry said in a loud voice, “you shouldn’t be sleeping with a seventeen-year-old!”
There was another long silence. Up above, in the grey cold sky, Harry could hear the call of curlews and the whistling furnace breath of the dragon.
He was suddenly furious. He realised, even though it was stupid and unrealistic, that he had kind of expected Charlie to deny it.
“He’s of age,” Charlie said at last. “We’re both adults. There’s a hell of a lot less difference between us than there is between Tonks and Remus.”
“That’s different, Tonks has a job and stuff, and anyway she and Lupin are in love,” Harry said impatiently. “He’s not just messing around with her until he goes back to Romania and his real life. Don’t pretend you’re not going: I know you are, as soon as the war’s over you’ll be out of here.”
Just another reason to end the war fast.
“Well,” Charlie began, and halted. “Well. Yeah. But I was kind of—I was hoping he’d come with me.”
“What?”
“I’m not,” Charlie said, and swallowed. “I’m not messing around with him. It’s not like—God, as soon as I left school I went out to Romania. Dragons were all I wanted, but I didn’t even speak the language and it’s not like you can have much of a social life there anyway, the locals can’t be allowed near the giant magical flame-breathing creatures and the other dragon tamers—it’s a tiny closed community. And at school I was—Percy was there, my little brother, and everyone was talking about Quidditch Cups and looking up to me and expecting stuff from me and I didn’t want to let anybody down. You treat me like I’m some kind of vile seducer, whereas in fact Draco’s quite a bit more—”
“Shut up,” Harry snarled. “I don’t want to hear this! It’s none of my business.”
“It is none of your business,” Charlie said. “But since you’ve apparently decided you’re sitting in judgement on me and since Draco seems to care what you think, maybe you should know what’s really going on.”
“What’s going on is Malfoy is not moving to Romania,” Harry said. “Have you lost your mind? What would he do in Romania?”
“Get a fresh start, maybe,” Charlie said. “He’s—people in England, they’re going to know what went on last year and they’re going to judge him for it. His dad’s here, whatever happens about that. His mother died here. And he doesn’t really have anything to tie him to this country.”
“Is that so?” Harry asked softly.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, a Weasley, used to normal family life and being so sure, all the time, of what family was: even if you moved to another country, even if you didn’t speak to them for a year, the family would still be there. The family would still be an institution and an anchor. “Look, I know you two are pretending to be like family. And I think that’s fine. I think it’s great, even. But it’s not real. It’s not something that’s going to last beyond being a—temporary comfort in all the stress and misery of the war. You two knew each other for six years and couldn’t stand each other, for God’s sake. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it won’t last.”
Charlie sounded calm again, more like the reasonable Charlie who was usually right. Harry drew in a deep breath.
“I really—I’m serious about him,” Charlie continued. “I’m not going to hurt him. I would never. So now you know.”
Harry looked away, up into the sky again, at the huge bulk of Norbert suddenly visible and the flash, very high up and far away, of a cup being tossed into the air. Flame jetted out, a blazing trail that must be visible for miles, and Harry had to turn away and shut his eyes, orange and black snapping on and off behind his eyelids.
“Now I know,” he said, and when he looked up again, the Horcrux was gone.
The air was suddenly full of people, touching down on their broomsticks, guiding Smith and Norbert back towards the ground. Ron and Melisande could be seen running back to them.
“We did it!” Ron yelled as soon as he was in earshot.
He came thundering up to them a moment later and Harry thumped him on the back.
“You did it.”
“Nah,” Ron said, beaming wide. “Hermione and Zach did most of it. I was just along for the ride.”
“You were the one who wore the dress,” Harry said, smirking.
“Yeah, you’re not allowed talk about that either,” Ron informed him. “Nobody is allowed talk about that ever again! Just so we’re clear.”
The dragon tamers were helping Smith down from Norbert in a jubilant mass, everyone talking and smiling. Even Malfoy smiled at Smith, and then directed a significantly brighter smile at Charlie, who was shouldering through the crowd to be at his side. The air which had been filled with fire seemed filled now with energy, buzzing with excitement. The very colour of the sky seemed brighter.
Harry leaned against Ron’s back and said: “The snake’s next. Are you in?”
“Do you even need to ask?” Ron shouted back.
“No.” Harry grinned. “I know where you stand.”
As soon as they got back Harry took Ron and Hermione up to the parlour where he told them his plans for that night. Including the information about where Voldemort’s lair was. He drew a little map of what he’d observed from his last visit and told them about meeting Nagini, how he thought she’d come to him if he called.
He did not say anything about wanting them there for moral support.
He also let Hermione look up details about that area of Wales and read out to him local folklore about giants and deals with devils and God knew what else, because he knew that he had to talk to Malfoy about what Charlie’d said and he wasn’t looking forward to it at all.
This family thing would be a whole lot easier if Malfoy would just stop having stupid boyfriends, or whatever Charlie thought he was.
“Hermione,” Ron said at last. “That’s really great and interesting and—great. I mean that. And now I have to go get a sandwich.”
“I’d better go get the sword,” Harry said, and made his way upstairs.
Malfoy wasn’t in his room, and Harry considered going down to the kitchen, but Smith was lurking down there somewhere. It occurred to him that he could check with Charlie first, and he bounded up the stairs and pushed open the door of Charlie’s room.
Malfoy was in there. They were kissing.
They were—it was worse than the Pensieve with Zabini, this was kissing with intent in broad daylight, Malfoy was in Charlie’s lap, hand fisted in Charlie’s red hair, as Charlie sat up on the bed and tried to push Malfoy’s all-but-unbuttoned shirt down further. It was hanging off his shoulders already.
“Er,” Harry said, and then said “Sod it,” in an undertone and slammed the door open with a deliberate bang. “Sorry. Can I talk to Malfoy?”
Malfoy turned his head and Charlie snarled into his dishevelled blond hair “Could you give us a minute?”
“A minute? I think I’m very offended,” said Malfoy in a rather breathless approximation of his usual drawl. “What is it, Potter?”
“I need to talk to you,” Harry said. “Alone.”
“Okay,” said Malfoy. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, back to Charlie and doing up his shirt.
Charlie appeared to have lost his somewhere. He didn’t seem all that bothered about finding it: he was busy staring at the back of Malfoy’s head with what seemed to be disbelief.
“Okay?” he repeated.
Malfoy lifted his shoulders a little: a gesture halfway between a shrug and setting his shoulders, bracing himself for an attack. “I’ll be back soon.”
He went and joined Harry at the door, pulling him outside. Malfoy was standing between him and Charlie, so Harry couldn’t see Charlie’s face as they left.
He could see Malfoy’s face though, even in the sudden darkness of the landing.
“I have this cunning idea,” Malfoy said, his mouth twisting into a shape that was a little wry and a little amused. “Stop me if you think it sounds crazy, but I think it might save us all a lot of trouble. What if we had a sort of system whereby when people are behind closed doors, other people—I don’t know, close their hands somehow and thump on the closed door in a certain way? Possibly several times? And then the people inside could answer the door and rearrange their clothing beforehand, if required. Can you think of a good name for this door-thumping idea of mine?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re hilarious, Malfoy. C’mon.”
Malfoy followed him willingly enough, and they went into the sitting room. Harry thought they wouldn’t be disturbed there: people tended to be a little put off by Maud and Ernestine.
Malfoy went to them at once, smoothing a hand over the velvet as Maud leaped for him with a rattle of curtain rings.
“Stay. Hang. Good curtain,” he murmured, and turned an inquiring gaze on Harry.
Harry leaned against the sofa and tried to think of a way to put this. Malfoy looked stupid, he thought irritably: his hair had gone all flyaway and his mouth was a kissed-pink mess.
“You’ve done up your buttons all wrong,” he said, folding his arms and looking at the ground.
“I can go back upstairs anytime, really,” Malfoy said. “Don’t feel you have to keep me entertained.”
“Charlie,” Harry began loudly, and then forced his voice down. “Charlie thinks that you might go back to Romania with him.”
There was a silence interrupted only by the hushed sound of moving velvet. Eventually Malfoy said, soft as the curtains touching his hand: “And you think that too?”
“No,” said Harry. “No, I know you won’t.” He glanced up and met Malfoy’s eyes and added, a little awkwardly: “He doesn’t understand, you see.”
Malfoy nodded. “So…” he drawled. “So since you already know that I’m not going, what is this about?”
“I thought—you should know,” said Harry. “Because you didn’t, did you? And if you went on thinking that it wasn’t a big deal, well. It didn’t seem very fair to Charlie.”
“You don’t even like Charles,” Malfoy pointed out, a little helplessly.
“Well, no,” Harry said. “But still.”
He cleared his throat and re-folded his arms a different way, and Malfoy sat at the window with his buttons done up wrong, the curtains playing over his hand, looking bewildered and a little flattered and mostly distressed. Harry hadn’t liked the whole Malfoy and Charlie thing, didn’t like it now, but he hadn’t wanted to upset Malfoy.
Only Charlie was a Weasley, and he owed the Weasleys his loyalty, owed them anything he could do for them. And Malfoy liked Charlie, and Charlie had looked after Malfoy at the Burrow, and Harry owed him something for that as well.
Besides, this was the fairest way.
“I can’t believe you’re ruining my fantastic fling with the hot dragon tamer,” Malfoy said at length. “You’re such a pain, Potter. I always said so.”
Harry shrugged. “You always said such a lot of things, Malfoy.”
“That you were a pain and a prat and a nuisance and an insufferable arrogant git,” said Malfoy, which was pretty rich coming from him. “It was all true, as well.” The left corner of his mouth came up, the first reluctant hint of his smile. “And you’re a good guy,” he added. “I may have mentioned that one less often.”
Harry shrugged, feeling his face flush a bit.
“I’m going to go talk to Charles,” Malfoy said at length. “That should be fun. It might take a while, as well. So in case I don’t see you, I’m going back to Voldemort’s this evening.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
Malfoy looked up at him sharply. “Yeah?”
Harry just nodded, and saw understanding and fear cross Malfoy’s face, wiping out all the other, lesser considerations. After a moment his face went blank, everything locked up tight with the icy façade in place because with Malfoy to betray one feeling was to betray all of them. Harry understood that now: that look on Malfoy’s face didn’t bother him anymore, though he wished it wasn’t necessary.
Malfoy looked away, fiddling with the chain around his neck. The locket was a glint of gold in the shadows between his rumpled shirt collar and the hollow of his throat.
“Good luck,” he said at last.
Harry bowed his head. Malfoy pushed off from the window, ignoring the longing flutter of the curtains behind him, and made for the door. He paused when he was passing Harry, their shoulders brushing, and looked at him. Harry felt a certain urge to lean in, touch foreheads like he had with Hermione this morning, take some comfort from being close, but—with Malfoy being a boy, with Charlie and everything, it would have been a bit strange.
After a moment Malfoy said: “Good luck” again, his drawl icier and more drawn out than before. He broke the gaze and walked out of the room.
Going to Voldemort’s lair was easier this time around, now Harry was certain of where he was going and had companions to go with. The sword did not feel as heavy on his belt and even though it was a crush under the Invisibility Cloak, it was a warm comfortable crush. It was raining a little, the sort of drizzle that could hang around all day and looked set to keep falling into the night. That made Hermione’s hair fluff up, apparently on some kind of mission to choke them all.
“Seriously, it’s like having a poodle in here with us,” Ron muttered. “It’s still in my face.”
“Harry just said it was in his face,” Hermione hissed back. “It can’t be in both your faces!”
Harry coughed. “Want to bet?”
There was a small silence, if you counted it as a silence when Hermione was saying “Hmph!”
“Er—an attractive sort of poodle, though, I mean,” Ron said. “Shiny, I mean. Well-groomed. Sort of—smells nice.”
“Ron Weasley, you silver-tongued devil,” said Hermione, sounding very unimpressed.
They climbed through all the loose debris of the Welsh mountains, stumbling and grumbling about Hermione’s hair and happy, or at least purposeful. It felt like old times.
Harry walked up to the Devil’s Table and spoke the password with Hermione’s hand on his arm, and was unsurprised to see the door to Voldemort’s tower standing open for them. Whether it was Malfoy or chance, things tended to go well for them when they were together.
Ron closed the door carefully after the three of them, and they stood together in the stone corridor and stared around in the blood-stained light of the torches.
“I have to give Voldemort points for the creepy, creepy ambiance,” said Ron. “I mean, this could be on postcards. ‘I’m in the lair of an evil overlord—wish you were here!’”
“Perhaps these were originally mines,” Hermione suggested. “The Welsh countryside is full of abandoned mine shafts, you know.”
“Shh,” Harry whispered, hand straying to the hilt of his sword. It fit his palm comfortably, as if it was meant to be there.
They went down a different tunnel than the one he’d been down before, this one a little more level and with disturbing noises from behind some of the doors. Harry didn’t hear anything like a snake’s voice, and so he tried not to think about what they could be and passed on, until they reached a dead end. Harry stopped short and tried not to feel frustrated, as if he’d tried and failed to solve the puzzle of a maze.
“We’re going to have to retrace our steps,” he whispered to the others. Hermione sighed a bit and leaned against his back briefly.
“I like a bit of a hike,” Ron said unconvincingly. “I think it’s jolly.”
They went back and he chose another tunnel, this one going deeper into the earth. Maybe Nagini liked it where it was darkest and coolest, and she could move about with the most freedom.
“Come here,” he whispered as they walked. “Where are you? I’ve come back to talk to you—I want to see you again.”
Hermione, still pressed up against his back, shivered. Harry felt a trickle of unease. Like the feeling he would get as a child, imagining horrors in the highest corner of the cupboard that he could never quite make out and knowing that if there really was something terrible out to get him, there was absolutely no chance anyone would ever come to his rescue.
“Sorry, Harry,” she whispered. “It’s just the sound is a bit alarming.”
“It’s a cool thing to be able to do,” said Ron.
“Oh, I wish I could talk to Crookshanks,” Hermione rushed to agree. “Though of course it already feels like he understands every word I say.”
“Funny how he never seems to understand ‘get off that chair, you rotten cat,’ when I—” Ron began, and then Harry drove an elbow into his ribs.
“Hush, I think I hear—”
“Little chatterbox?”
And she was coming to him, he could hear the slither of her scales against the earth, the heavy shushing sound as if she was warning the others that they should be quiet, too.
“Don’t go away,” she called out, sounding a little anxious. “I’m coming as quickly as I can.”
And she came, huge and with her eyes like lamps in the darkness, great and golden, her tongue flicking out uncertainly as she sensed Ron and Hermione. And Ron and Hermione drew in a deep scared breath as the monster advanced on them.
“You came back to see me?” she asked. “I was hoping that you would.”
And she sounded happy to see him, glad and relieved, as if someone had come to pick a child up after school long after the child had lost hope that they would come.
She was so lonely. He remembered that.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered in that thick monstrous tongue, and he knelt down on the ground and held out his hands for her. “Yeah, I did.”
Nagini came to him trustfully, a heavy weight against his hands, scales delicately scraping his skin.
“Who are these others?” she asked. “The Master says-”
“They’re my friends!!” Harry exclaimed, quick and harsh and feeling as if he could hurt her now.
Only she fell silent then, and offered no more threats. She did not offer him a promise they would be safe, either. She just put her great snake’s head up to his, and he closed his eyes and tried to make himself do what had to be done. She flickered her tongue over his eyelashes and the corner of his eyes. The sensation was so strange.
“I’ve always wanted to know, do you humans blink for fun?”
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “Harry, do it now!”
“I can’t do it,” Harry exclaimed, and when he heard the despairing note in his voice he realised that he meant it.
“What do you mean, you can’t do it?” Ron asked. The loud sound of his voice made Nagini hiss and sway threateningly close to him: he moved back and the Invisibility Cloak dropped from Harry. “That’s Voldemort’s snake, you know! That’s the thing that almost killed my dad!”
“I know,” Harry said. “Yeah. I mean, I know, you’re right, but—”
She would obey Voldemort, if it came down to it. She was like a guard dog trained by someone evil and it wasn’t her fault but that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. And she was a Horcrux, and that meant she had to be sacrificed.
But she was so lonely. And it had felt right, it’d felt noble, to decide that he wanted to stand against Voldemort even if it meant dying, but killing something that had come trusting to his hand…
“She can talk to me,” he said, low. “She doesn’t mean me any harm.”
“What’s happening?” Nagini asked. “You’re not being very polite, you know.”
There was a silence then and Harry knew how they were looking at him, what they saw when they looked at him now, talking in Voldemort’s language to Voldemort’s pet.
“She looks like she might mean us harm,” Hermione said, sounding resolved. “Give me that sword, Harry, honestly—”
“Wait a minute!”
“Did you hear something?” a cool man’s voice asked. “I’m sure I heard something.”
They all froze for a moment: for the barest fraction of a moment. Then Ron and Hermione crept forward, a shimmering barely-there mass, and draped Harry and Nagini in the Cloak with one accord. Harry held onto Nagini tight and prayed that the urgency of his grip would communicate to her that she mustn’t move, that none of them could risk moving a muscle.
“No,” drawled Malfoy, and for an instinctive instant Harry was simply glad he was there, close by, and then he realised that there were three people to be protected at all costs now, and he was scared. “I don’t hear a thing. And I don’t much relish being sent out to find the Dark Lord’s errant pet, either.”
“Watch your mouth or you’ll be the pet’s lunch,” said the man. They turned the corner and Harry recognised Bellatrix’s husband, Rodolphus Lestrange, and another man who looked rather like him. “Besides, better this than the way you spend most of your time. Honestly, you idiot boy, can’t you keep your mouth shut? You’re making the whole family look bad.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Malfoy. “I don’t consider you my family.”
“That’s right,” said the other man. “No trace of weakness in the Lestrange blood. If you were mine, I’d Crucio you into some better manners.”
“Leave him,” said Rodolphus. “The Dark Lord likes to deal with this one personally.”
Rodolphus might have been speaking to protect Malfoy, a little. Harry wasn’t sure. But the other one laughed a dark malicious laugh at that comment and Harry saw one brief tremor run through Malfoy, as if someone had drawn a sharp nail up the small of his back. He looked smaller in the company of Death Eaters, lost and pale in his black robes, and Harry had to fight the urge to reach out and take him home at once.
“I was sure I’d heard something!” Rodolphus resumed. “Here, snake, your master wants you—”
Nagini stirred at that and Harry pressed his fingers into her scales hard, imploring. Rodolphus Lestrange and the other man who must be his brother obviously registered the movement. Both of them looked right at the place where Harry, Ron, Hermione and the snake stood concealed.
“Maybe it wasn’t the snake,” said the man who could be Rabastan Lestrange slowly. “Didn’t it seem to you that there were human voices—and everyone’s in the hall for the meeting but us.”
“I heard Harry Potter had an Invisibility Cloak,” murmured Rodolphus.
“You’re imagining things!” Malfoy said, his voice going extremely sharp and uneven. “I’ve heard dementia comes with age, but this is ridiculous. I—I’m going back!”
He spun around and started to walk, then stopped dead as Rabastan Lestrange lifted his wand and intoned, gazing at the wall: “Avada—”
“Stop it!” Malfoy shouted, his voice ringing throughout the corridor. “There’s no need for that.”
He still didn’t turn around, as if he was afraid of what he was going to see next. His shoulders were set: the torches made the ends of his pale hair look crimson, as if the strands had been dipped in blood.
“Maybe you’re right, boy,” Rabastan murmured, and Malfoy’s show of cowardice had obviously been exactly the right move. Now he was just playing with Malfoy, tormenting him, which was obviously a favourite game. “What was that spell of Snape’s that the Dark Lord plucked out of your little brain? The one you have the dreadful dreams about—oh, I know…”
The shadow of his wand was on them already, such a narrow, flickering bit of darkness in the torchlight. Hermione’s fingers were digging into Harry’s arm, she was curled warm and tight and terrified up against him. Ron’s breathing was ragged and barely controlled in his ear.
“Sectumsempra,” said Rabastan Lestrange, and everything was still.
Malfoy let out a quick breath and looked over his shoulder as if he was leaving hell and knew he shouldn’t look back, but he had to anyway. His whole body relaxed when he saw nothing.
For a moment Harry thought the curse had missed them all. That they’d gotten away with it.
Then Ron let out a wet, terrible gasp and lurched forward. The Cloak went flying and Ron fell on his face, they were all exposed, they could all be seen, but the only thing Harry could see was Ron and the blood that was already starting to spread and soak into the ground.
“Rodolphus,” said the man who might have been Rabastan Lestrange, and Rodolphus Lestrange turned to run, to give the alarm that would kill them all.
“Oh no, you don’t,” snarled Harry. “Avada Kedavra!”
Rodolphus Lestrange collapsed in a heap. Before Rabastan could move—Harry was coldly sure of it, icily certain that he was faster and he was more dangerous—Harry wheeled on him and watched his eyes widen. He even backed up a step, the terribly scary Death Eater who had so enjoyed making Malfoy tremble, who had gutted Ron. He didn’t look so forbidding now.
“As for you,” Harry whispered. “Sectumsempra, wasn’t it? Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra!”
It didn’t matter whether it had been Rabastan or not. He was nothing now, just the bloody rags and fleshy tatters of something that had once been human, spread out all over the tunnel like grisly Christmas decorations.
“Nicely done,” Nagini said from the ground, slithering through blood and entrails to his side. She sounded impressed.
Hermione and Malfoy, kneeling beside Ron, did not look at all impressed. They looked sick, but most of all they looked terrified.
“Ron,” Hermione begged, trying to close the gaping wound in Ron’s belly with one hand while she murmured spells and waved her wand with the other. Some spells seemed to be stopping the blood flow and some seemed to be making the wound bleed faster: Hermione shook bloody hair from out of her eyes and drew in her lower lip, concentrating, trying to learn in the midst of a nightmare. “Malfoy, help me!” she shrieked.
“I am trying to think!” Malfoy screamed back at her. “God, I’m trying, I—”
Ron made a small, terrible sound, like something rattling and gurgling at once. His face was so white that his cheeks seemed faintly blue under the freckles. There was so much blood: Harry couldn’t tell which blood was Ron’s.
Harry remembered when Snape had healed Malfoy’s wound, how he’d said a string of words smoothly, almost melodiously. It had sounded like a song.
Malfoy started to speak, stumbling over the words, and it didn’t sound like a song. Perhaps like someone speaking a song he’d heard sung once, in a tongue he didn’t understand. The words were all probably wrong, the rhythm was off, it wouldn’t work… but it did. Under the combined weight of Hermione’s barrage of spells and Malfoy’s mangled attempt at Snape’s song, as if the sheer weight of their not inconsiderable determination was knitting flesh and bone together, the blood flow ceased. There was a huge ridged scar running along Ron’s stomach. It looked like there was a silver snake, bulging and grotesque, lying just under the skin.
“Is he—” Malfoy said, his voice trembling. He sounded like a child.
“Hermione,” Ron got out with difficulty, “Don’t—”
Hermione gave a scream that was frankly a bit scary, like a triumphant Valkyrie, and she fell on Ron, bloody and shaking as they both were, and kissed him ferociously again and again.
Malfoy leaned away and backed up from this action rather quickly. He stood up, looking rather unsteady and unnerved, and took another step back, clearly intending to lean on the wall.
“I wouldn’t,” Harry said huskily.
Malfoy looked at the wall again and recoiled, obviously registering for the first time that it was slick with blood. He looked over at Harry, eyes wide, and Harry couldn’t read his face. If it had seemed locked before, it seemed barred and chained now, as if Malfoy was putting up every barrier he could think of to stop Harry seeing what he felt.
The moment was broken by the soft, incredible sound of Ron laughing.
“If I’d known that all it would take was getting sliced up by a Death Eater, Hermione,” he said, his voice still rattling a little. “I would’ve done it years ago.”
Hermione laughed in return, helplessly, bowed over him and touching his face and his stomach as if her constant touch was all that was keeping him alive.
“Help me up,” said Ron weakly.
She did it, gasping a little as she took almost his full weight, and Harry hurried to help her. When Ron took his hand, there was so much blood on Harry’s that Ron’s fingers simply slipped out of his palm. Harry quickly grabbed the sleeve of Ron’s jumper and hauled him up that way, but Ron was already looking at him with new, amazed eyes.
“You did,” he said, and his gaze slipped away from Harry like his hands, to the mess around them—“All that.”
“He never even hesitated,” Hermione said, and she might’ve meant it to sound supportive but it came out scared.
“I had to,” Harry said.
He’d felt the way they were looking at him with Nagini in his hands, speaking Parseltongue, but it was nothing compared to the way they were looking at him now, to seeing what they saw. They had gone and he had cut the ropes away from Death Eaters on the cliffs, planned out their long cold fall to death, he had killed in the Dursleys’ house and found it so easy, and now he saw how he had changed in the eyes he loved.
He wasn’t what they had left behind. He was something else, now.
Ron’s eyes were steady, and very blue. “Give me that sword, Harry.”
Harry didn’t even think. He just drew the sword from its scabbard and handed it to Ron, gleaming and untouched in the bloody lights, in the bloody tunnel. He saw Ron get a grip on it and he held himself braced for a blow: held his head high.
If he hadn’t been thinking—some stupid thing, he didn’t know—he would have realised what Ron intended. If Nagini hadn’t stopped to look a question at Harry, she would have been fast enough to get out of the way or to strike herself.
Harry could have moved fast enough to save her. He already had his hand on his wand, but he caught himself: he didn’t draw it.
She said plaintively: “Why-” and then the sword came down and carved her in half.
Harry looked away and closed his eyes, the sight of her last sudden writhe a movement of shadows behind his eyelids, the question only he had heard echoing in his ears. Just his.
When he looked back again, Hermione looked almost wondering. Her eyes said, you had to look away from that. Then they travelled the tunnel and returned to Harry, saying: but you could do all this.
Harry looked at the patch of ground where Ron’s blood was still seeping.
“We all have to get out of here,” he said roughly. “Come on, we’re Apparating. We’re doing it now.”
Hermione came, helping Ron to limp over with the sword still in his hand. She leaned against Harry tentatively, possibly because of the mess on Harry’s jumper. Harry did not look to see if Malfoy was hesitating, he just reached out and caught a rough handful: the collar of Malfoy’s robes and the hair at the nape of his neck. He got a solid grip. He was not about to let go: they were all going home now.
There was a rush of cool air, and it was night time and Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was looming over them against the night sky, windows bright and yellow. Blood loss and Apparition together were too much for Ron: he stumbled and sagged, boneless, in Hermione’s arms. Harry went to support him on the other side and the bloody sword clattered to the broken pavement.
Malfoy went running up the steps to thump on the door, which flew open. Smith’s horrorstruck voice rang out, saying: “What’s happened—Ron? Ron!”
“Get Charles,” Malfoy snapped. “Get the Order, we need mediwizards, we need dittany!”
Smith paid no attention, charging down the steps, and Malfoy snapped a curse after him and went rushing inside. Malfoy would handle it, Harry thought with exhausted faith, his job was to hang on to the dead weight of Ron. He couldn’t let him fall.
“What’s happened,” Smith cried, voice panicked. “What’s happened—what have you let happen to him—”
“Be quiet, Zacharias,” Hermione said. “Harry killed the man who did this. He ripped him—ripped him apart.”
This time Harry was certain that Hermione meant to defend him, and this time it didn’t matter. He could only hear the horror and fear in her voice as she described what he had done.
Once the mediwizards and mediwitches had arrived everything became a blur of efficiency, the sudden imposed order unsettling and confusing after so much chaos. They got everyone to describe the effects of Sectumsempra and tried to make Malfoy recite Snape’s incantations again, taking notes all the time. They spent a great deal longer getting Hermione to list every healing charm she had tried and complimenting her on keeping a cool head in a crisis.
Harry didn’t pay much attention: couldn’t, beyond numbly answering all questions addressed to him in as few words as he could manage.
“I suppose he can be kept here if you promise to sit up with him tonight and report to us at once if he takes a turn for the worse,” said a thin mediwizard, reminiscent of a pelican with a combover. “At once, Miss Granger.”
“Oh yes,” said Hermione. “I promise. I will.”
“I can sit up with him too,” volunteered Smith.
“Me too,” Harry said, forcing himself out of his reverie. “I want to—as well.”
“No, Harry, Zacharias,” Hermione said. “That’s not necessary. You both need your sleep. And I’d—I’d like some time with Ron alone. Thank you, though. I’ll call for you—I’ll let you know—you do understand, don’t you?”
She looked beseechingly at Harry.
“Oh yes,” Harry answered, and tried to smile for her because she looked so distressed. “I understand.”
Hermione seemed eager to get them all out of Ron’s room and Harry wanted to oblige her. The mediwizard who looked like a pelican turned to him and said: “Lad, you could really use a change of clothes” and Harry took that as an excuse. He said goodbye to Hermione and just left everyone else, and went to Malfoy’s room. Half of his clothes had ended up there somehow.
He changed wearily, the dried blood on his hands cracking as he pulled off his old clothes and pulled on the new. He left small rusty fingerprints on his new white T-shirt, but he put it on anyway. It was a lot cleaner than the old clothes.
Then he stood with his forehead against the night-cool glass of the window for some time.
“Hey,” said Malfoy from the door, his voice soft.
Harry turned around and looked at him. He was obviously freshly showered, skin pink as if he had scrubbed to wash all traces of blood away. His hair looked a little damp and was standing up a bit: he was back in his Muggle clothes, jeans and a favourite jumper with frayed sleeves.
“I can go to my own room.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Malfoy said, hesitating.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” Harry said. “I saw—I saw how they looked at me. And you hadn’t seen me kill anyone before either, had you?”
“No,” said Malfoy, and swallowed. “But I knew you had.”
“I don’t think they really realised it,” Harry said. He laughed. “They’ve—they’ve been all I had since I was eleven, all I ever had, I’d never had anyone before. And they looked at me like they didn’t know me.”
“They know you,” Malfoy told him with an edge of irritation to his voice that, stupidly, made Harry feel a little better. “They love you. It’ll all be okay in the morning. You can hardly blame them for being a little taken aback.”
“No, I can’t,” Harry replied, and turned away from the window, leaned against it and stared at Malfoy, daring him to contradict him. “I was—I was down on the floor with a snake in my arms, whispering evil-sounding little words and then when Ron was hurt, your first instinct—both of you, you rushed to help Ron! And I went for the kill.”
“You had to,” Malfoy echoed his words from the tunnel, but that only reminded him of how Hermione had looked at him then. “We would all have died—”
“But I didn’t even think of that,” Harry whispered, the words sliding out easy and natural as Parseltongue. “I just thought about killing him. And I really—Malfoy, I really enjoyed it.”
The words were dark and low. Harry let his eyes rest on Malfoy, challenging him to find anything to say in response to that.
He should’ve known better than to think Malfoy would refuse a challenge.
“Well of course you did, he’d just gutted one of your best friends,” Malfoy snapped back with barely a quaver. “All the world knows you have a rotten temper, Potter. Colour me stunned.”
Harry was speechless for a moment. Malfoy took this as surrender, and he turned away to close the door behind him.
“Hermione didn’t want me in the room with her and Ron.”
“Yes well she didn’t want Smith either and it’s not because she thinks he’s shaping up to be the next Dark Lord,” Malfoy tossed over his shoulder. “I know you three are joined at the hip, but really, there are some things they need their privacy for. Granger’s obviously decided to seal the deal. I could find it in my heart to pity Weasley: I hope she’ll take the blood loss into account when she tots up the points for his performance.”
“That wasn’t all there was to it,” said Harry.
“Oh, maybe not,” Malfoy bit out, determinedly casual and dismissive. “But it’ll all be okay in the morning, or maybe not exactly okay—it won’t matter as much as all that. They’re your friends. They’ll stick with you through anything.”
“I know that,” Harry said savagely.
It was just the thought that they might not want to, that they might think terrible things about him. That Hermione might look at him with dread in her eyes. That he might become—might be all wrong, his instincts all wrong, soul already torn beyond hope of mending, those uncanny resemblances Tom Riddle had mentioned once signs after all.
And after that, an existence so distant from either love or fear. It might be easy.
Harry looked over at Malfoy, who was fussing with the bed curtains in a transparent attempt not to look at him. He went over to him, padding silently and then reaching out to touch him, suddenly, at the base of his throat.
Where the scar started.
Malfoy looked up with a swift indrawn breath, skin and the differently-textured, raised shape of the scar sliding under Harry’s fingers before Malfoy stepped away.
“And you?” Harry asked.
“I’m not following you, Potter,” Malfoy said, a little breathless. “Perhaps this is because you are insane.”
“You remembered the spell because you were scared it would happen again, right?” Harry demanded. “You have dreams about being cut open—so bad that Voldemort can torture you with them, can make you his favourite scared mouse. But you were mine first. I did that to you.”
“You said you were sorry,” Malfoy reminded him.
“But you were scared,” Harry said, intense, willing him to just give in and admit it. “I scared you.”
Malfoy stared at him and then deliberately took back the step he’d taken away. He was close enough so Harry could feel the heat of the shower still on his skin. Harry leaned back against the bedpost and glared at him. Just say it, he thought, get it over and done with, look at me like she did. Say yes.
“Yes, obviously,” said Malfoy, narrowing his eyes. “Oddly enough, almost dying scared me. And yes! Yes, fine. Sometimes you’re terrifying. But you always—you try to do the right thing. You came after me when Mother died. You kept your promise to her, you did more than she could’ve dreamed you would. You let your friends and Ginny go, even if it killed you. You’re fighting this stupid hopeless war. You even minded about what was fair to Charles, for God’s sake. Stop being stupid, if you think you possibly can. Your dimwit friends adore you.”
He’d turned the yes Harry’d wanted against him, in that slippery cheating way Malfoy had. Harry felt a little less steeled against the pain, a little less frozen solid, and he felt irrationally angry. He didn’t want to feel better: then he’d just feel scared to death about what had almost happened to Ron. It was easier to be angry, in a way, easier to take bloody revenge.
“And you?” he repeated, low and dark again. After all, Malfoy had admitted that he was scared.
Malfoy looked scared, he thought. He looked all pinched and pale, jaw held at a certain tense angle that made it look sharper than ever. Harry looked at him, at his eyes wide and clear with moonlight in them, and tried to see what Malfoy saw.
He was taken utterly by surprise when Malfoy reached out and touched him, fingers curling at the spot where he’d touched Malfoy a moment ago. Then Malfoy slid his hand around, to the back of Harry’s neck, fingers resting lightly in his hair. His eyes were very bright.
“You are so completely stupid,” he said quietly. “I adore you, too.”
Malfoy had leaned in to kiss him twice before. This time, nobody interrupted, this time, nothing stopped him. The third time worked like a charm. Malfoy leaned in and pressed up against him, warm, and kissed him on the mouth.