The kiss lasted for a single warm, lingering moment. Then Malfoy stepped back fast, out of Harry’s reach, and sat down abruptly on the bed. His back was against the bedpost and the back of his hand was against his mouth, as if contact with Harry’s mouth had burned him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice so shocked it was subdued and totally unlike Malfoy. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Er,” said Harry, brilliantly.
He was still trying to process what Malfoy had done. Well, of course, he knew perfectly well what Malfoy had done, he’d—Harry’s mind wrenched away from contemplating it. But he knew.
He didn’t know why, or what Malfoy had meant by it. He didn’t know much of anything right now. He felt a little punch-drunk, the world spinning, as if he had just been punched instead of kissed. Except without the pain.
“I was trying to reassure you.” Malfoy’s mouth twisted. “Obviously that got a little out of hand.”
“You thought,” Harry said, his voice tentative and the world still in a whirl. “You thought I wanted you to—?”
“No,” Malfoy said sharply. “No, of course I didn’t think that. I know you didn’t want me to: don’t concern yourself about that. It was just that I wanted to—comfort you and I wanted comfort too. I’m allowed to be upset by the horrific slaughter as well, you know!” He glared at Harry defiantly for a moment. “It was very traumatic.”
Harry blinked. Night was brimming outside the windows of their house. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was humming the little midnight melodies of an old house to itself, creaking floorboards and old pipes: sounds that had once seemed ominous in the dark and now seemed friendly and companionable, as if the house or Harry had changed. Malfoy was making no sense at all.
Everything should have been familiar, and somehow wasn’t.
“I don’t understand,” Harry said at last, and winced at how lost he sounded. “I thought—we were family.”
“We are,” Malfoy said, immediate and intense. His hand dropped from his mouth and he seemed about to reach out for an instant, then the gesture wavered and his hand fell to the coverlet. “That’s not really a deterrent for purebloods. You may have heard.”
The feeble attempt at a joke fell flat. Even Malfoy’s attempt at a smile didn’t work properly on his face.
Even though nothing made sense Harry felt a bit better, the foundations of the earth unshaken, the ground solid under his feet again. He could proceed from here and work out this new madness.
“Did you want to—?” he began carefully.
“No,” Malfoy snapped. “I just have these impulses sometimes. Yesterday I kissed Mr Weasley. With tongue.”
Harry took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. “I’m taking a special moment to be appalled by that mental image.”
He noticed that Malfoy had gone all spiky and defensive, which was never a good sign. When he opened his eyes, Malfoy’d sagged against the bedpost and was looking helpless: Harry could empathise with that.
“Oh look, I’m sorry again,” Malfoy said, sounding wretched, possibly because he liked admitting he was wrong about as much as Harry did himself. “What a mess. I’ll have you know it was not my intention to pursue this thing. I mean, even if I thought it was possible, which I don’t. So you can rest assured in your Gryffindor manhood or whatever. I happen to like Ginny, and more important than that I owe her. And I think you two could work together, if you managed to control your stupidity impulses for more than ten minutes at a stretch and she learned to question you more and occasionally beat you senseless. Not that it’s any of my business. But I didn’t want our lives to be any more complicated, so I think perhaps we should chalk this up to excessive zeal in comforting people and try to forget about it. I’m like Florence Nightingale, in a way. She was a famous Muggle nurse. I read about her in Muggle Studies. I’m like Florence Nightingale with making out.”
“This is a thing?” Harry asked.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You don’t listen, Potter.”
“I do listen,” Harry said, the shock finally starting to wear off and his teeth suddenly on edge with how incomprehensible all this was. “Which, let me tell you, is pretty hard to do what with how much you talk and how little you say. I’m trying to sort out the important bits from your blithering—”
“I don’t blither,” Malfoy said hotly, which was just a ridiculous lie.
“Some days you do nothing else,” Harry told him. “And I actually think I’m taking this pretty well, so don’t start getting all annoyed at me. Lots of guys would have—would have hit you, or—or—”
Malfoy bared his teeth. “You want to hit me? Feel free.”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
Harry crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, at the shadows and moonlight writhing mingled on the wall. He’d had enough of violence today, enough of blood to last him a lifetime. He didn’t want even to be angry with Malfoy, not really. He just wanted things to make sense.
“Lots of people would be flattered,” Malfoy told the wall in darkling tones. “The correct response, as all those not raised by bears or octopi or dust balls under the bed know, to someone else having a crush is to say you’re very flattered and turn them down nicely. Tactfully. I realise tact may be a concept unknown to your people, and the basic elements of it include—”
“You have a crush on me?”
The words sounded foreign and unreal coming out of Harry’s mouth, like a new kind of Parseltongue. Colour flared in Malfoy’s cheeks as if someone had just delivered him two stinging slaps and run away, leaving nothing but the faint stains of blood rising under his skin behind to tell the tale.
“I didn’t say that.”
Harry thought of another thing that might be important in all that Malfoy blithering about Florence Nightingale, like finding a gleam of gold in the sand.
“You want to make out with me?”
“Not at the moment,” Malfoy said, with the air of a man on the edge.
“But before,” Harry said. “Like, ten minutes ago. Did you—”
“Is that all it was, it seems like years that I’ve been listening to you talk about hitting me and other things that are stupid and obvious,” Malfoy snarled. “Do you remember the bit where I said we should try to forget about it? I’d like to do that.”
“I heard. Look, this is a lot to deal with,” Harry began, and then stopped because he did not know what else to say.
“So don’t deal with it,” Malfoy said, sounding almost desperate. “It’ll go away. It’s probably just—some sort of weird mental breakdown. People get those, from strain. I’ve been under a lot of strain lately. Maybe it’s battle fatigue. I haven’t been in a battle, that is true, but I probably will be. I’m probably having some sort of mental breakdown related to anticipatory battle fatigue.”
“You’re being a little insulting now, actually,” Harry muttered.
Plenty of people had crushes on Harry without being actually crazy from stress. There was Ginny, and there was Cho. Well, Cho had been under quite a lot of strain after Cedric had died, he supposed, and the crush on Harry had seemed bizarrely connected to that. Which was pretty disquieting now Harry came to think about it. That Romilda Vane had seemed to like him, though, what with trying to sneak him Love Potions and stuff. Only it was probably just because he was famous. There’d been a lot of girls out on the Quidditch pitch in sixth year, he thought, trying to recall any specific name or face. At least one of them must have liked the look of him as well as being impressed by the celebrity.
Anyway, there was Ginny.
“Anyway, there’s Charlie,” Malfoy rambled on. “It’s hardly fair to him to have this conversation. So let’s not.”
“I thought you broke up with Charlie,” Harry said sharply.
He didn’t know what to think or even how to think of the other stuff, it was so unbelievable, Malfoy, a crush—but he did know what he thought of this.
“No,” Malfoy answered, sounding rather surprised. “Why would I do that? We just had a talk. Confirming that our relationship isn’t serious and that it won’t be lasting beyond the war, which is just what I thought about it anyway. There’s no sense throwing away a good thing in the midst of all this chaos. I’m not an idiot. I was perfectly honest with him,” he added, voice rising as he looked at Harry. “What d’you expect me to do, sit around pathetically and pine—”
“That never even occurred to me,” Harry said hastily and with perfect truth.
There was a silence that stretched out, long and uncomfortable. Harry wanted to lie down and sleep, wanted Malfoy to be there, wanted Malfoy not to have said or done anything to make him question the way things were.
“I want us to be all right,” Harry said at last, when it became clear that Malfoy wasn’t going to say anything else.
Malfoy stirred as if he’d been startled out of a daydream. When he glanced over at Harry his eyes looked like he was a thousand miles away: like there was an uncrossable distance between them.
“Yes,” he said, and after a pause: “I want that too. So let’s just forget about the whole thing.”
“Okay,” said Harry.
“I think I’m going to go sleep in the other room.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I think I’d rather,” Malfoy said with finality.
He swung himself off the bed, skirting Harry as if he was dangerous territory which might contain minefields. Harry hadn’t moved from the time Malfoy moved in towards him, but he did now. He turned his head and watched him go.
At the door Malfoy tossed a smirk over his shoulder.
“Bet that distracted you from worrying about becoming the next Dark Lord, didn’t it?” he asked. “No need to thank me, Potter.”
Harry had time for a surprised laugh and a rude gesture before Malfoy shut the door.
The urge to laugh faded when the door shut and he sank down onto the bed, lying flat on his back and staring up at the sky canopy where there was, as always, a lot going on. There was a helicopter with its searchlight on, scanning the bedclothes, and fireworks like bright pale flowers against the night. Harry didn’t notice that the canopy moon was behind a cloud until the cloud passed, lifting like a shadowy veil. The curved shape of a crescent moon was revealed, bright and white and sharp.
Harry wasn’t asleep when the owl tapped against his window a few hours later that night. He wasn’t thinking: he was having a hard time mustering up something as coherent as thought in his mind. He just—wasn’t asleep.
The owl came as a welcome distraction from the thoughts he wasn’t having. Harry rolled off the bed and made for the window, undoing the latch and pushing it wide. The owl outside was a breed he wasn’t familiar with, very small with darker markings than he was used to, and there was a large dark seal on the letter.
When he opened it, he saw Ginny’s writing, a big sprawling curling mess over the parchment. Just seeing it made him smile: it made him think of her riot of curly hair in the mornings.
Malfoy wrote and said perhaps I should be in touch, her letter began without a greeting. He mentioned that some people had died.
He mentioned that you saved my brother’s life.
It’s funny how sure I am which one of those two things you’re dwelling on.
Remember I told you in my last letter that I wanted to seem like your ideal girl? I also thought that the ideal girl would be supportive. And I still want to be supportive. Only I don’t want to be the girl who said it was okay to cut up Malfoy. I don’t think that it was okay anymore. I want to really look at what you’re doing and decide whether it’s okay, not think it must be because I’m still ten years old and you’re my hero.
Remember me yelling at you about you not being possessed by Voldemort in the library that one time? I knew about possession. I knew what I was talking about then.
I know what I’m talking about now. I’ve been in a few—my friend Acwela calls them skirmishes. I killed a couple of people. And I know that Ron and Hermione and Malfoy haven’t, yet. It’s different once you have.
If you want to write to me about it you can. I’d like to talk about it, one day. I’m not much good at writing, but I wanted you to know two things. Afterwards, when I was trying to cope with what I did, I thought about you and the way you cope with everything that gets thrown at you because you have to, because the only other thing to do is give up and you don’t know how to do that.
You get it wrong sometimes. This time, you didn’t. When it’s important, I trust you to do the right thing.
This is a really disgustingly sappy thing to end the letter on, Harry, but I’m tired and I can’t think of a better, cooler way to say it.
I’m not ten anymore. Some days I feel a lot older than sixteen.
You’re still my hero.
She hadn’t signed it. Harry folded up the letter and held it in his hand like a talisman, like a kid clutching a security blanket. He was glad she’d written. He was glad Malfoy’d thought to write to her. He couldn’t quite… thinking of Ginny seemed dangerous, somehow, almost as dangerous as thinking of Malfoy. He couldn’t help thinking of Malfoy possibly—sacrificing his own apparent feelings, God this was so weird, and he could see no way to get through this without everything changing.
He folded the letter and put it in his back pocket with her other letter, and Ron and Hermione’s Christmas card, and Malfoy’s picture. Then he pulled a pillow over his face so he couldn’t see Malfoy’s sky, and finally he was able to get to sleep.
When he woke he rolled off the bed and made his way up the stairs to check on Ron. That was clearly his first priority, and he didn’t have to think about anything else until he’d done it.
He took the stairs two at a time and was turning the corner to Ron’s bedroom when he heard Malfoy’s voice and froze.
“Listening outside the door, Smith?” Malfoy inquired. “That’s—kinky and distressing of you.”
“God, Malfoy,” Smith snapped. “You have a filthy mind.”
“That’s true,” Malfoy conceded.
“What are you doing here—just on your way down from Charlie Weasley’s room?” Smith sneered.
“That’s right,” Malfoy said. “Ten points to Hufflepuff for making two really obvious observations in a row. And yet you have still to explain why you’re lurking outside Ron Weasley’s bedroom. Now I realise I may not want to know the answer to this, and in fact it may scar me for life to hear that you’re hoping to be invited to join them, but—”
“Oh my God, what is wrong with you?” Smith demanded. “I am guarding this door.”
“Oh guarding the door,” Malfoy repeated. “Oh, well, now everything makes sense. Thank God you were here: someone might have come in and assaulted them with breakfast in bed.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, Malfoy, but I am guarding them from interruptions,” Smith said. “Ron talks to me, you see—”
“Lucky you,” Malfoy drawled, sounding deeply unconvinced.
“He’s had terrible luck with getting time alone with Hermione and explaining exactly how he feels,” Smith said, sounding absorbed in the doomed romance of it all. “I think that Potter was always around putting his nose in.”
“Don’t blame Potter for Weasley’s poor romantic performance,” Malfoy said. “He should take responsibility for his own lack of skills at the wooing. And shouldn’t you be pleased by them, anyway? I thought you had an interest in the object of his clumsy affections yourself.”
There was an edge of malice to Malfoy’s voice, as if he would’ve liked to tease Smith, but if Smith noticed that it did not make his reply any less earnest.
“Yes. I did. I mean, I still do. I still like her, but—Ron really deserves her, you know. He’s a hero. And there’s no time left to mess about. They like each other and it’s right, it being that way. I can accept it. I can be perfectly happy with it—I think it’s the way it should be. And you’re not going to mess it up, Malfoy, so don’t even think about playing some kind of mean joke—”
“As you have observed, Smith, there is no time left to mess about,” Malfoy said, the edge to his voice considerably less sharp than it had been. “I think I’m good.”
Harry left Malfoy to bond with Smith, if he could possibly manage it. He felt it was too early in the morning for him to have to deal with Smith without snagging a cup of tea first.
He was extremely amused to find Hermione in the kitchen, briskly spreading strawberry jam on a piece of toast and reading the paper. She looked up and smiled as he came in.
“Hermione,” Harry said, and couldn’t suppress a grin. He leaned down and dropped a kiss on her upturned face. “Smith’s guarding your privacy with Ron upstairs.”
“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” Hermione asked. “I wondered why he was sleeping outside the door. I had to step over him.” She took a bite of toast. “That’s very thoughtful of him,” she remarked approvingly once she’d swallowed.
“Wanted your privacy, did you?” Harry inquired, going to the counter and rifling the cupboards on his quest for tea.
“Harry, I do not know what you could be implying, Ron had suffered dramatic blood loss,” Hermione said primly. “However, if you are hinting about the status of our relationship, I might go so far as to say we’re—official.”
She went a faint pink and buried herself in the papers.
“Congratulations,” said Harry, and meant it with all his heart. He added: “Not before time,” and meant that too.
Hermione looked up instantly and indignantly from her paper, and then caught Harry’s grin and smiled a tiny bit back.
“None of it would’ve been possible without you,” she said in a quiet voice, the half-smile fading away. “Without you, Ron would’ve been—”
Harry made an abrupt dismissive gesture and tried to busy himself at the counter, flicking on the kettle, throwing the teabag in a mug, doing anything rather than look at Hermione’s face.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But I do worry about it,” Hermione said. “I worry about you. Harry, I know I was pretty clearly—horrified last night. And I still am. I’m scared that you were in a situation where you had to do that, and I’m scared that you could do it so easily. I’m worried about how we’re all going to end up.”
“You won’t have to,” Harry said, and the words stuck in his throat. “I’ll take care of you.”
He glanced over in time to see Hermione tilt her chin and give him a look that made him feel eleven years old and not particularly bright.
“I can take care of myself,” she said. “I’ll do what I have to do. And so will you. But you can worry about me, if you like. And I’ll worry about you.”
“Okay,” Harry said, put in his place.
He made Hermione a cup of tea the way she liked it and brought both cups over to the table. He wanted to say something to her: he was thinking of the way Smith had said there was no time left.
“It’s good to know that you won’t be—judging me,” he said at last, awkwardly.
“Oh, but I will,” Hermione told him, and Harry spilled a bit of tea on her paper. “It’s what I do,” she continued, and then she reached out and pulled at his hair with a rough sisterly hand, drawing his head down towards hers. “But I love you,” she said. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, and took her hand out of his hair and into his, lacing their fingers together. “Er. Me too.”
“Yes, I know,” said Hermione, and turned a page of the newspaper with her free hand.
Harry held on and read the stretches of print with her, the subtly anti-Muggleborn measures mysteriously being passed at the Ministry by a majority despite Scrimgeour’s best efforts, the unexplained deaths. The explained deaths. Amycus Carrow had been made the new High Inquisitor of Hogwarts—because the last one had gone over so well—despite the fact his sister had been taken away to Azakaban for the murder of Professor McGonagall.
There was an article today that said the Death Eaters had broken her out. Well, at least she wasn’t at Hogwarts.
“Do you happen to know how the others are getting on at Hogwarts?” Hermione asked after a while.
“I do,” said Harry, and prayed things had got no worse. He didn’t like to think of Amycus Carrow with any more power over the girls than he’d already had. “It’s not so bad. Neville and Pansy are handling things pretty well. Luna and Dean and Justin Finch-Fletchley are pitching in, and Cho and Marietta Edgecombe—” he watched Hermione flinch at the mention of that name—“they’ve stayed on as teacher’s assistants and they’re in with Carrow and reporting back. But Neville and Pansy are in charge.”
“Pansy Parkinson?” Hermione’s nose wrinkled. “I hope Neville’s not getting mixed up with a girl like that.”
“Pansy’s not so bad,” Harry said, stung.
He thought of her sitting on a fence with Malfoy’s fingers in her hair, looking down at him with love. He thought of her kissing him in a Muggle pub in front of Blaise Zabini, her mouth whisky-slick, and of Neville relaxing when she took his arm.
“Actually,” he continued. “I quite like her.”
Hermione sniffed and said: “Boys.”
“Hey, I am trying to like Smith,” Harry protested, and on Hermione’s look he admitted: “Okay, not really. I think he’s a prat. But I think Malfoy’s bonding with him upstairs: that should count for something. Like five points for Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.”
“Malfoy cannot earn you points,” Hermione said sternly, and then she hesitated. “About Malfoy.”
Harry stared at their linked hands and wondered frantically if Hermione had perhaps learned to read minds out of Hogwarts: A History and just never bothered to mention it.
“What about Malfoy?”
“I couldn’t help noticing,” Hermione said, and paused delicately. “I’m pretty certain. I’m just not sure that it’s the right thing to tell you.”
Harry looked at her warily, feeling as if she was a scorpion. A scorpion who was his very good friend and who he would defend with his life, of course, but who might sting him all the same.
“I… probably know,” he said reluctantly.
Hermione moved her hand in his as if she wanted to pat him soothingly without letting go. “He seems a bit—smitten.”
“He’s—I wouldn’t say—not Malfoy,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“Well,” Hermione said. “How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t—I don’t know how to feel about it,” Harry answered, staring at the table. “I wish I could be angry. I’d understand that. But I’m not: I don’t know what to do.”
He looked up, hopeful suddenly that she could offer a solution, tell him that naturally all they had to do was make a potion or break a few school rules and everything would be fine. She was frowning thoughtfully.
“How did you know about it, anyway?” he asked. “Wait, why am I even asking? You always know everything. Have done ever since we were eleven.”
“No, I didn’t,” Hermione said, but she smiled all the same. “I was just a bit more grown-up than you two. Which really, Harry, it wasn’t hard.”
“Oh, being grown up,” Harry said. “Wonder when I’ll manage that.”
Hermione leaned into him a bit. “I think you’re almost there.”
Harry picked up his cup of tea and swirled the brown liquid around without drinking. “And then I’ll understand things, will I, and I’ll know what to do. Well… I’m looking forward to it.”
Hermione paused for a long moment, and then observed quietly: “It’s better than him still being hung up on Blaise Zabini.”
That hadn’t occurred to Harry.
“You know,” he said, slowly and with gathering conviction. “That’s true.”
Hermione blinked at him and nodded. “There won’t be any question of wavering loyalties.”
Harry pulled his hand abruptly out of hers. “His loyalties aren’t in question.”
She opened her mouth and Harry just knew she was going to say something that would remind him of Malfoy’s father or Malfoy’s face when Lucius said that he loved him: he didn’t need this, not now.
He was saved by the advent of Ron and Smith, Ron striding into the kitchen in his blue worn pyjamas looking terribly pale and terribly happy, and Smith running after him like a mother hen whose chick had just declared aquatic ambitions.
“Oi,” he said. “Making time with my girl when my back is turned? Some best mate you are.”
Harry was pretty sure he said it just so that he could say ‘my girl.’ He bent and kissed Hermione’s cheek, nervously proprietary, and beamed when she went a little pink and let him.
“Well, I tried,” Harry said. “But she told me I didn’t have a chance with her.”
Ron grasped Hermione’s hand and she smiled up at him. Then he ended up jostling her when Smith pushed him down on the chair beside hers.
“Sit down,” Smith told him sharply. “I can fix you breakfast.”
“All right,” said Ron, in the tones of one who had achieved breakfast, his best girl and the pinnacle of human happiness. Harry caught his eye and grinned.
“I’d like an egg please, Zacharias, if you would,” Hermione told him.
“I was thinking more kind of toast,” said Smith apologetically. “I’m good at toast.”
“I like toast,” Ron said.
“Where’s—” Harry began.
“He’s getting Charlie,” Smith said absently, messing about with the bread bin as if he was not the toast master he’d claimed.
Harry tilted his chair to one side so he could look out the kitchen door Smith had left open and confirm Smith’s words: Malfoy and Charlie were standing in the hall, looking deep in discussion. Harry couldn’t see Malfoy’s face but he could see Charlie’s, grey in the shadows of the hall: Charlie looked wretched, in pain but resigned about it, and tired. Malfoy said something and Charlie shook his head, and when Malfoy kept talking Charlie smiled, a faint but real smile.
Harry looked away and after a moment Malfoy came into the kitchen, hand in hand with Charlie. Ron looked faintly ill: Harry could hardly blame him.
“How are you feeling, Ron?” Charlie asked.
Ron shrugged and smiled in Hermione’s direction. “Can’t complain.”
“Do let me know if you feel faint anytime, Weasley,” Malfoy said solicitously. “I will be standing by. To take pictures and distribute them around our school.”
“Fine by me,” said Ron. “The ladies like a vulnerable man. Not that I’m interested in the ladies. I mean, other ladies. Though I’m sure they’re nice. I really haven’t noticed.”
Hermione patted his hand and he subsided into a grateful silence. Malfoy raised his eyebrows and slid his hand out of Charlie’s, going off to separate Smith from the bread before one of them could be harmed.
“Draco, we want eggs,” Charlie called over to him, taking the chair to Ron’s left.
“Do I look like a house elf to you, Charles?” Malfoy asked, fetching eggs.
“You kind of look like one to me,” said Smith, in a different sort of way than he usually spoke to Malfoy but still being basically obnoxious. He had no social skills at all, and Harry was never going to take to him.
He’d been right about Malfoy and Smith bonding, though, because Malfoy regarded him tolerantly and simply said: “I demand clothes,” before pushing Smith in the direction of the table and away from the toast.
As if conjured by the mention of house elves, Kreacher appeared, and almost had a heart attack seeing his precious master performing menial chores. He started to make a sumptuous breakfast while muttering darkly about how it was going to waste and might as well be served in a pig trough.
“I have missed his sweet little face,” said Ron.
Malfoy insisted on making the eggs just to torture Kreacher. He put in pepper while Kreacher wept and begged him to stop demeaning himself, tossing cruel comments about omelettes over his shoulder to Charlie and laughing, and eventually sat down and started complaining about how much food Ron had already polished off.
“You’re going to get fat,” he predicted.
“No he isn’t, he has the Weasley metabolism,” Charlie said, with a very creditable attempt at his usual grin. “Never runs to fat. All the fuel gets converted to hard, lean muscle.”
“That’s so true,” said Ron.
“You’re going to look just like Professor Slughorn,” Malfoy persisted. “And when he went by the windows of the dungeons we used to think it was an eclipse.”
“Ron and Harry always ate a lot,” Hermione commented in a voice which nicely combined fondness and disapproval.
“You’ll get fat too, Potter,” Malfoy said, not meeting his eyes at all. “Horribly fat. Brooms will break like matchsticks under you. It’ll be very sad. There goes the Boy Who Lived, people will say, and other people will respond, Where? I can’t see, that fat gent’s in the way.”
And apparently this was Malfoy smitten. Harry didn’t think he could be blamed for not having noticed before. He couldn’t believe it now. It didn’t seem real but he should have been happier, all of them safe and laughing together in the kitchen. Any other day, and this breakfast would have made Harry happy.
Only he wasn’t happy, because Malfoy didn’t seem happy.
He saw Malfoy start to reach for the salt and made a move towards it himself: Malfoy withdrew his hand immediately and leaned closer to Charlie, as if he was a refuge.
“I’ve got to head out to Hogwarts after breakfast,” Charlie said, his voice gentle. “Want to send a note to Pansy or the boys?”
“Can’t,” said Malfoy with a grateful, crooked little smile. “No time to write one. I’m heading back to Voldemort after I’ve eaten.”
“What?” Harry exclaimed violently. Smith jumped.
Malfoy did look at him then, and it was terrible. It reminded him of the way he used to look before and during Quidditch matches against Harry, ashen and already beaten, always.
“Back to Voldemort,” he repeated, as if Harry was hard of hearing.
“No, you aren’t,” Harry said. “Are you stupid? Do you think Voldemort will just welcome you back with open arms? You went off with two men who were found messily dead and vanished for the night. Where the hell will he think you’ve been?”
“I expect,” Hermione said, her voice cool, “that he’ll think Malfoy’s been here.” There was a pause broken only by the clink as Hermione put down her fork. “That’s the only thing that makes sense,” she told the table. “He keeps disappearing and none of the Death Eaters ever question it? Don’t make me laugh. They know he was taken in at the Burrow. They think we’re all friends from school. They think he’s a spy for them. And we think he’s a spy for us.”
Harry felt abruptly and extremely sick.
“Are you wondering,” Malfoy asked in a rather ugly way, “which one of them is right?”
“No,” said Hermione. “I think you’re on our side. But I also think it’s very clever of you. No matter who wins, you’ll be able to say you were on their side all along.”
Malfoy was white to the lips. “That’s not why—”
Harry reached out while Malfoy wasn’t paying attention to him, knocked over the salt heedlessly and grabbed him by the wrist. Malfoy’s attention snapped on to him like an outraged grey spotlight.
“C’mon,” Harry said. “We’re talking. Alone.”
“I beg your pardon,” Malfoy began, and Harry stood up and wrenched Malfoy to his feet. Charlie made an angry sound and grabbed Malfoy’s elbow, but Malfoy shook him off without looking at him: he was still glaring at Harry. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Harry was already at the door, but he stopped there because it occurred to him that this was Malfoy, smitten or not, and he’d learned the hard way that he had to compromise with him to be with him. Looking at the door, he barked: “Please,” and stormed out.
Malfoy followed him and they went into the front room where the Order usually met just because it was closest: as soon as they were in the door Malfoy whirled on him in rage like a lightning storm indoors.
“Don’t you dare ask me if I’m on your side, Potter. How could you—”
“Oh, shut up!” Harry shouted at him. “I know perfectly well you’re on my side. How could you not tell me?”
Malfoy shut up, which was a miracle that had to be taken advantage of, so Harry kept shouting.
“Letting Hermione have time to discover it, which you must have known would take less than a week and make you look bloody suspicious and me look like an idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
Malfoy muttered something.
“Don’t bother, I know what you were thinking,” Harry said. “You thought—with your father and all—that I wouldn’t ever have been quite sure. You idiot. I think you must be the stupidest person I know.”
“How funny,” Malfoy said in a strained voice and almost on automatic. “I always thought exactly the same thing about you. I had to keep coming back here.”
“Yes of course you did, I would’ve gone completely mad otherwise,” Harry snapped. “But God, you didn’t have to keep all these secrets. I don’t want to be shocked every other day. I want to know what’s going on and—and how to fix it.”
“You can’t fix everything,” Malfoy snapped back, his face averted.
Harry leaned back against the window casement and said, with a sort of furious despair: “I trust you.”
It was fairly clear Malfoy did not trust him: didn’t trust Harry not to hurt him or doubt him, trusted him so little that he’d kept important things from him so they could strike like lightning bolts at the worst possible time.
“And you’re still stupid,” he added angrily.
Malfoy still wasn’t looking at him, but he looked a little comforted. “Well,” he said quietly. “So’s your face. And I’m still going back to Voldemort.”
“I can’t stop you, can I?” Harry asked.
Malfoy looked like he was wavering between being absolutely terrified and completely smug, but Harry never learned which he was going to settle on, because just then the front door banged open and Hestia Jones strode into the room.
“Thank heavens I caught you,” she said, looking so pale that she was more like a china doll than ever. “Mr Malfoy, you can’t possibly go back to Voldemort. It’s not safe.”
For a moment Harry was simply and profoundly relieved. Then he looked at Malfoy’s face, and at Hestia’s.
“What—what’s happened?” Malfoy asked, fear making him stumble over his words like a child in the dark.
Hestia put her arms around her body, hugging herself. “Severus has been found out,” she answered. “I imagine they’re torturing him as we speak.”
It did not take very long for most of the Order to assemble in the meeting room. Hestia had to tell her story half a dozen times, looking lost in a huge carved chair, her face growing paler and paler under the black cap of her hair.
“Severus was so very kind as to help me with my research into esoteric potions,” she said. “We were in regular correspondence. He’s a very, very brilliant man, and he shared his thoughts with me on—” Her voice caught. “On many never before heard-of uses for frogspawn. I—the Owl wasn’t even finished, he knew they were coming for him. His one concern was for Mr Malfoy.”
She took a moment then to hunch herself up a little, a handkerchief clasped tightly in her hands. She wasn’t crying: she just had to keep taking little moments.
“Our chief concern, of course, must now be keeping Mr Malfoy safe,” said Kingsley Shacklebolt. “Undoubtedly by now Voldemort knows everything about the location of his last Horcrux. His every effort will be bent towards taking possession of the locket and, by extension, Mr Malfoy. More than that, his pride will be hurt by the fact he had Mr Malfoy in his power for so long without suspecting a thing. He will stop at nothing to get to him.”
Malfoy looked sick, but he’d been looking sick since Hestia had announced the news about Snape. Harry hoped by now he was feeling numb.
“So we distract him,” Harry said.
Megara Prewett sent a frowning glance in Harry’s direction. “Excuse me?”
“Snape must still be alive, mustn’t he, he’s the only one who can speak the word to get the locket off Malfoy,” Harry said. “I imagine he’s locked that one up with all the Occlumency he has. They won’t kill him until they have all the information he might possibly have, and they might still let him live even if they learn the word he needs, just in case it has to be him saying it. So we need to rescue him: once we’ve done that I bet it’ll seem like a good idea to finally speak the word for us so we can get the locket off at last and destroy it. And we need to distract Voldemort from pursuing Malfoy or torturing Snape.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Hermione asked, close by him. There was not a trace of doubt in her voice: she knew he would have an answer.
“Attack,” said Harry.
Malfoy laughed, a soft little sound, and Harry caught his eyes fixed on Harry. The word smitten flashed through him, a memory that was more feeling than thought, and suddenly it did not seem quite so impossible that Malfoy really might be. Only Harry still didn’t know what to do about it, and there was no time for it now.
“Attack his stronghold?” Mr Weasley repeated in a dismayed voice. “Harry, if you’ll consider—”
“No,” said Harry. “We’ve got to get him out of there.”
“And how do you think we can possibly do that?” Megara Prewett asked, her voice thin and distinctly unimpressed. “I cannot imagine that anything would distract Voldemort from pursuit of the last Horcrux. Nothing else is of any importance to him!”
“Can’t you?” Harry asked. “I can. I know him. That’s what will finish him: I know him. There’s one thing.”
It was still morning by the time Harry got to Hogwarts, a bit before lessons would start. He came in with a bunch of Ravenclaws fresh off the Quidditch pitch from an early-morning practice and walked as quietly and as quickly as he could across the stone floor with grey morning light streaming in through the windows. One girl started, looking at his shadow, and then carefully looked away again.
He knocked sharply on the stone wall that hid what had been the Slytherin common rooms and was now the dungeons where everyone slept. Goyle answered the door and peered in confusion out at the empty corridor. He was still staring as Harry slipped by him.
“Who’s at the door, Greg?” Neville asked.
He wasn’t dressed for lessons yet, just wearing a worn shirt and jeans. He was standing in front of a map of the Forbidden Forest that someone had magically suspended in midair.
There were three girls sitting on the beds in front of him and the map. Harry suspected they were all Slytherins: they were all still in their nightclothes.
If you could call them clothes of any sort.
“Nobody,” said a blond girl whose face was vaguely familiar: he thought she was one of Pansy Parkinson’s crowd. She leaned forward and her face seemed extremely unimportant, for two reasons which were pressing against the lace of her nightdress. “Do go on, Neville.”
“Yes, Neville,” said a throaty-voiced girl with chestnut hair. “We’re all fascinated.”
Neville looked unconvinced but turned back to the map, pointing out an area that said ‘Here Be Centaurs’ with his wand. “Sometimes I think you girls aren’t really listening.”
“Oh, Neville, we are, we’re transfixed,” said the blond girl, who was not in any way looking at the map.
Neville coughed. “Well, do you have any, um, questions?”
“I do,” said the third girl with conviction. “It’s about your wand. Indulge my girlish curiosity, how many inches—”
“Er,” Harry said, taking off his Cloak. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Neville spun around. “Harry!”
“Hi, Neville,” said Harry. “Favour to ask you. Mind getting the others?”
Neville nodded sharply to Goyle, who stared at Harry for a moment and dashed off into the next room.
Neville was staring at Harry too but, being Neville, it didn’t take him long to remember his manners. “Uh, Harry. You know these girls, they’re in Slytherin. They’re with us—”
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” said Harry absently.
The chestnut-haired girl glared at him. “I’m Daphne Greengrass, Potter,” she snapped. “I’m in your year. We had Potions together every day for many, many years.”
“Ah,” said Harry.
“Queenie’s very good at the more experimental Potions,” Neville offered helpfully.
“You may call me Daphne,” said Queenie coldly to Harry, and then turned back to Neville, her voice melting right back into its throaty purr. “And thank you, Neville. You’re such a gentleman. Naturally you may call me anything you like.”
“Um,” said Neville.
The Slytherin girls gazed at him with what appeared to be rapture. Neville looked direly uncomfortable and fiddled with his wand.
Harry was about as relieved as Neville was when Goyle came back with a lot of people in tow, including Cho, Marietta, Crabbe and Justin. Pansy was in front, wearing a black T-shirt and nothing else. She had, Harry couldn’t help noticing, very long legs. And she painted her toenails purple.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” she drawled in a way extremely reminiscent of Malfoy. “Is this favour going to involve deadly danger to us all?”
“Er,” Harry said. “Yeah.”
“Well, I like being right,” said Pansy. “What are we going to do?”
“I want you to stage a revolt in Hogwarts,” Harry told her. “Throw Carrow and anyone on his side in a room and throw away the key. Take a stand. Cause as much fuss as you can. Threaten to burn the whole place to the ground before you let Voldemort have it.”
They all looked at him for a long, serious moment.
“This means using the catapults, doesn’t it?” Justin asked at last, in a voice of unholy joy.
“With careful supervision, Justin,” Cho said warningly. “My eye will be on you every minute.”
The room erupted into pockets of loud discussion about tactics. Luna was in the back somewhere, her voice piercing in the cacophony, talking about using invisible horses as attack dogs and probably confusing everyone within hearing. Dean’s voice followed hers as if they were singing in harmony, trying to explain what she was going on about.
Harry explained to those still listening to him about Snape. The news made Crabbe and Goyle square their shoulders and Pansy’s mouth go thin. Neville reached out and put his hand under her elbow.
“We’ll get him back.”
Pansy took a deep breath. “Of course we will, Longbottom, I know that. Do get on with planning the revolt. Queenie, you could get into Voldemort’s headquarters still, couldn’t you?”
“My mama would welcome me with open arms,” Queenie said with satisfaction.
“Excellent,” said Neville. “All right, you get in there and wait until we’ve got things underway. We should start at nightfall, since it’ll take us a while to get ready and the plan is confusion. Crabbe, can you round up anyone who—might be scared to be part of this and get them out with the Portkey?”
Crabbe ducked his head in assent and went for the door. Pansy grabbed Neville’s wand unceremoniously out of his hand and started using it as a pointer for the Forbidden Forest map.
“So we think the giant spiders are in here,” she said.
“No,” Harry put in. “Further up. Near the grove—there.”
Pansy positioned the wand correctly. “Justin, do we still have those barrels of flour?”
Justin beamed. “I keep them in the Charms classroom, we pretend they’re stands for Professor Flitwick.”
“So,” said Pansy. “We set off the barrels of flour and we send the spiders out in the direction we want them to go…”
While Pansy was talking, Queenie Greengrass slipped off her bed in an interesting rustle of very little lace.
“Off I go,” she said to Neville. “Alone. Into deadly peril. Kiss me for luck?”
“Um,” said Neville again, then bowed down awkwardly and kissed her cheek.
He straightened up going brilliant pink. Queenie flashed a triumphant look at the other two girls and went to find her clothes.
“Longbottom, if you’ve quite finished romancing the admiring multitudes, you might help with our little plan for revolution,” Pansy said sharply, and Neville muttered a confused defence and then, on surer ground, started talking about fire spells from the walls.
“I can see you have matters well in hand,” said Harry. “The Order’ll be helping you out from the rear. Put some guards on the Astronomy Tower, but I and a few others will be flying up there: let them know not to knock us out of the sky.”
“Anything else?” Pansy asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Just one thing,” Harry said. “Leave Voldemort to me.”
When he went home the Order only had more questions, and then Hermione had a couple dozen of her own. Ron only had one question, which was if Harry was sure becoming a guerrilla leader had made Neville irresistible to women, but he asked it several times.
Number Twelve was in a riot, the Order making plans and sending a couple of careful Owls to Hogwarts. Smith seemed to be having an attack of nerves and insisted every other minute that he was not scared. Harry had to pull Charlie aside for a conference about dragons. The twins were urgently trying to arm everyone in sight with things that they claimed were practically all tested.
Harry couldn’t find Malfoy, and didn’t have time to look. The first thing he did, as soon as he could get away, was go up to his room and write to Ginny.
Hi Ginny, he wrote to her after a long period of thought. Thank you for your letter. It meant a lot.
I’m writing to ask you to come back to me and Hogwarts. Bring all your friends.
I thought we might fight a war together.
The house did not start to subside into quiet until day started to slide slowly towards evening and darkness. There were only a few hours to go.
Harry found Malfoy in the parlour. Maud and Ernestine were drawn together, touching him with fond lingering touches, as if they were loving old aunts bidding him goodbye before he went back to school.
“Oh, good, it’s you,” Malfoy said. “I want to talk to you.”
“Me first,” said Harry.
Malfoy looked up at him and for an instant it was like the look across the kitchen table, scared and dreadful. Then he waved his hand for Harry to proceed.
“I want to be with Ginny,” said Harry.
“Mm,” interrupted Malfoy, trying for a drawl and having his voice come out unmistakably in pain. “Well, actually, I knew that. So thank you very much for that stunning news, but really, I find it totally unnecessary—”
“Let me finish,” Harry said. “I want to be with Ginny. I really like her and—and I think I’ll like her better, the more I get to know her. I never really gave myself the chance to know her before. I see that now. You both kept trying to tell me. But I’m doing better now, I think. And I want to be with her all the more because I think I didn’t—do it right before, didn’t give us a chance to be something real. I want to do it right. I want to give it a real chance.”
He took a deep breath and leaned against the wall to look around his parlour, the crazy animated curtains and the snake-shaped chandelier, all the things that had so implausibly grown familiar and dear, and then back at Malfoy’s face.
“And I want us to be family, I don’t want anything to mess that up. Nothing’s more important than that.”
“Yes, of course,” Malfoy responded, his voice strained. “I told you. I want that too. It was never—it was never about—”
“And I,” Harry said, and choked on the words, and tried again, and choked again. “I, you know I—”
“Yes,” Malfoy said almost desperately. “I know.”
Harry straightened his shoulders against the wall, feeling as if he was about to be shot. “In spite of all that, and since it’s possible we’re all about to die,” he said with difficulty. “I don’t—I don’t know what it means and I’m not sure I want to know. But I thought you should know something.”
“Well, what is it?” Malfoy demanded, his voice fraying.
“I’m jealous of Charlie,” Harry said. “I mean—really jealous. I don’t know what to do with it, I don’t want to do anything. I haven’t got anything worked out and I really do want to be with Ginny and I really do want to—not risk being family. But I thought you should know. This isn’t like that damn handshake, not at all. So. There. Now you know.”
“Now I know,” Malfoy echoed. He sounded faintly stunned, his voice fading away like the daylight.
Harry let his breath out, long and slow, and looked at the carpet. Then he went over to the sofa and sat beside Malfoy. The curtains gave his hair a little pat. Oddly enough, it made him feel a bit better.
Malfoy was quiet for a long time.
Then he said: “I have another secret.”
“What?” Harry asked, feeling suddenly, terribly calm with dread.
Malfoy gave him an unreadable look. Then, sitting there in the gathering twilight surrounded by a circle of living velvet, he bowed his head a little, pale hair gleaming at the nape of his neck, mixed with the cold glitter of the necklace. Hands moving slowly, he undid the chain, and the necklace came free as simply as that.
Malfoy held out the last Horcrux, cupped golden in his palm, towards Harry.
“Remember when I told you that I was close to finding out how to undo the spell?” he asked.
That had been long ago, before they were family, when Harry had been holding Narcissa over Malfoy’s head to make him help. Harry had chosen not to think about that time, had been happy to make it seem impossibly distant and remote.
He did remember that now, though.
Malfoy’s eyes were steady on his: his voice was steady, too. “I was coming down to tell you I’d cracked it,” he said. “When I heard Lupin tell you about—what had happened to my mother.”
Harry remembered, in a vision from memory so vivid it was like seeing it again, Malfoy standing at the open door with his face wiped clean by horror, a book falling out of his hands.
“There didn’t seem like a reason to tell anyone,” Malfoy said softly. “And I knew what Snape wanted to do, I knew he wanted to wait for the right moment and call the locket and close it around his own neck, so when Voldemort killed him for his treachery he’d be destroying his last Horcrux along with Snape. I—after Mother died, it didn’t seem terribly important to keep… I thought I shouldn’t let Snape do it. I owe him a lot. So I kept the secret to myself.” He tilted his head, face calm and eyes silvery in the moonlight, and Harry held his gaze. “Nobody knows but me,” Malfoy said. “And now you.”
The paralysing fear about what Malfoy’s plan had obviously been, at the thought that he could have been lost so easily and so deliberately on his own part, made it hard to breathe for a moment. Harry reached out and took Malfoy’s hand, holding on tight as if he were trying to pull him out of cold waters, their fingers locked and the locket caught between their palms.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said hoarsely.
He bowed his head and then reached out because he had to, because all complications aside they had to still be able to be family, it had to be possible for it to be that simple, or he did not know what he would do. He ended up with his head pressed against Malfoy’s shoulder, his eyes shut.
And it was that simple, as well as being complicated. After a moment Malfoy breathed out, and Harry felt his fingers brush through Harry’s hair.
“You’re not going to do it,” Harry continued through gritted teeth.
“Oh really, Potter,” Malfoy drawled, trying to sound superior and ending up with simply fond. “So what’s your cunning plan?”
Harry laughed shakily. “Well, since both of you so-called Slytherins seem determined to be reckless and noble and sacrifice yourselves,” he said, ignoring Malfoy’s yelp of protest. “I think it’s past time for me to come up with a cunning plan.”
It was black night by the time they Apparated away from home and into Hogsmeade. It was just Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy and Smith, who was sticking determinedly by Ron. They all had their brooms in hand.
Things were already underway at Hogwarts. They had left Number Twelve Grimmauld Place deserted and still, waiting for them to come back again.
It was Ron who scanned the horizon, whistled and let out a shaky breath. “We sure this is going to work?” he asked.
Harry thought about life before Number Twelve or even the Burrow, back when the gleaming towers of Hogwarts against the sky were his only hope of salvation, lingering in his dreams like a promise of heaven for a dying man. He thought about the way Voldemort kept coming back to it and back to it again, about the basilisk left like a dog to guard its home until its master’s return. He thought about what he would have done, if things had been a little different.
“Don’t know,” he answered. “But I know Voldemort will come.”
Against the black sky the white towers that he loved were circled with leaping colours, scarlet and gold. Hogwarts was burning.
It had begun.