Terry didn’t talk about the Quibbler interview. Draco supposed it was reassurance, that Terry didn’t want to hear anything about Draco’s father that would make him change his mind about Draco, but Draco might have preferred some shouting and arguing and an open assurance that nothing would make him change his mind about Draco.
He had no right to expect that kind of assurance, though. It wasn’t like Terry had chosen him, not really, not when the other options were Zacharias Smith and celibacy. He and Terry were friends and Draco didn’t believe it was a matter of convenience or anything, but there was no evidence that Terry would have chosen him from all the world, let alone wanted him enough to keep choosing him, no matter how inconvenient it might become.
Those were uneasy thoughts that stirred only briefly, on nights dark enough to seem lonely despite all the others in the room or when everyone else was at the DA and April kept making the skies open and weep. Even the fact Dumbledore had hired a teacher more horse than man hardly cheered Draco up on those days, since there was nobody to see his ‘classroom complete with trough’ routine.
Even Hermione was too busy for the library some days—probably off planning her next expose on Draco’s father—and one day, on his way back from the library, he ran into Crabbe, Goyle, Zabini and that girl Pansy Parkinson. They were laughing and called him over.
“Some girl called Marietta told us Dumbledore had organised a secret army of students and we got to chase them down!” Zabini exclaimed. Draco raised his eyebrows at Crabbe and Goyle inquiringly, and they shrugged. Zabini, still beaming uncharacteristically, said: “We got fifty points for Slytherin!”
Draco shifted his heavy bag from one shoulder to the other. “Congratulations.”
“They say they’re going to expel Potter!”
Draco smiled properly then. “Not before time, if you ask me.”
“Come down to our common room,” Pansy said. “We know where Trelawney keeps her stash.”
“What a coincidence,” Draco told her. “So do I.”
Potter was unfortunately not expelled, which relieved Draco’s mind a bit because he hadn’t seen how Hermione would escape the same fate, but somehow Umbridge managed to get Dumbledore not only fired but on the run from the law. Draco thought he might’ve misjudged Umbridge—she wasn’t much of a teacher, but clearly she was brilliant at administration. Anyone would be an improvement on Dumbledore, and there might be some order in Hogwarts now.
Draco was in quite a good mood all that day, until the next morning when they all made a trip to the infirmary, and he saw Marietta’s face, and realised Hermione—his Hermione—had actually cursed someone to be scarred for life if they spilled the beans about her precious little club.
“How can you even think about that when Dumbledore’s gone?” Hermione demanded later, in a fraught whisper. “I wanted to keep us all safe! I thought it was a brilliant idea—”
“Yes, brilliant,” Draco said coldly. “Shame you didn’t just put the mark on her arm where it’d be less conspicuous, though. Otherwise there isn’t much to choose between you and the Dark Lord.”
Hermione stood up and looked older, suddenly, old enough so Draco was aware of a cold space between them. “I’m sorry you think that,” she said. “But you have to take harsh measures in a war, Draco. This is life or death.”
“Marietta didn’t think she was in a war,” Draco snapped. “Marietta thought she was at school!”
Hermione stared at him and then, looking furious with him and herself, began to cry, and even though she’d attacked one of his house, he didn’t—he wasn’t all right with seeing Hermione cry. He hissed exasperatedly between his teeth and then sat back down beside her, at the table where all their books were fallen and chaotic, and leaned his forehead against her angry hunched back as she cried.
He thought about his father saying, They’re not stable, Draco. You can’t trust them.
“Miss Parkinson says that you seem to have a very sensible attitude to all of this upheaval,” Professor Umbridge told him after Defence Against the Dark Arts. “Change is difficult, but things do have to change in order to get better, and in trying circumstances, well—the stronger characters prove themselves.”
“And those of weak mind get run off by the law,” Draco said, still lost in happy thoughts about never having to listen to Dumbledore’s end of year speeches again.
Professor Umbridge smiled girlishly, as if they were sharing a confidence. “Exactly. Draco, I think you would be perfect for a little scheme I’m setting up.”
Which meant that Draco was chosen by the new Headmistress, who no matter how absurd her taste in clothing seemed to be an excellent judge of character, to be part of the Inquisitorial Squad. It was better than being a prefect, Father wrote. He was really proud. And that meant Father was in favour of the Ministry, too, it meant Draco didn’t have to choose between extremist individuals like Dumbledore and the Dark Lord.
“We’re a select group supportive of the Ministry of Magic, hand-picked by Professor Umbridge,” he drawled when he came upon one of their little insurrectionist groups, willing Hermione at least to understand that this was the intelligent choice.
Hermione looked at him with her mouth set, and Potter stared at him as if he’d betrayed him. As if Draco had ever been on his side.
“You like that power-mad, crazy old bat?” he demanded.
“Good Lord,” Draco said. “Have I been misinformed? I thought Dumbledore had left Hogwarts. That’s five points for denigrating our new headmistress, Potter.”
“You can’t do that!” exclaimed Ernie Macmillan, the cheeky bastard.
Nice to have some power for a change. “I believe I can,” Draco answered. “Five points for contradicting me, Macmillan. Weasley, your shirt’s untucked, either lose five points or give us all another show.”
Weasley went for his wand and Hermione grabbed his arm, saying: “Don’t” in a subdued voice, and Draco smiled at her.
“Five points to Gryffindor for being the only one with any brains.”
Hermione looked at the floor. “I don’t want them,” she said. “Draco. You’re making a terrible mistake.”
He stared at her bowed head and she kept staring at the floor, and Potter stopped staring at Draco long enough to check the house hourglasses in the wall.
“Noticed, have you?” said the Sociopath Twins as they strolled up.
Potter didn’t glance at them, turning from the hourglasses back to his intent gaze on Draco. “Malfoy here just docked us all points.”
“Montague tried to do us during break,” a Sociopath Twin said, his voice very ugly. “Best not to tell you what we did to him, with one of Umbridge’s little sneaks around.”
“Montague hasn’t been seen since break!” Draco exclaimed. “What did you do, kill him and hide him away because anyone who took house points from Gryffindor doesn’t deserve to live? Yeah, Hermione, I can see you’re right, I should be aligning myself with lunatics and murderers!”
The Sociopath Twins stepped forward as one, which was when Draco realised his fury had led him to be very, very unwise indeed.
“Leave him alone,” Potter said unexpectedly, shoving his shoulder hard in front of Draco’s. “I’m sure they didn’t do anything too bad to Montague,” he went on to Draco, his words tumbling hard against each other. “Even if they did, it’s more trouble for Umbridge, isn’t it?”
Draco raised his eyebrows. “Oh, that’s perfectly all right then. I’m so glad that just because you think you’re right, everything you do is justified!”
“I swear to God, Malfoy, you have to listen to me!” Potter said. “You’re aligning yourself with lunatics and murderers now! You know better than this!”
Possibly one of the reasons Potter was so unbelievably arrogant was that he had some sort of trick that made the rest of the world fall away into unimportance, even the imminent threat to Draco’s life posed by the Sociopath Twins, in comparison with the desire to hit Potter very, very hard.
He tilted his head and Potter followed the motion. “Maybe I’m bringing the system down from the inside, Potter,” Draco said. “Five points for not thinking of that.”
“Are—are you?”
“Maybe I am,” Draco drawled, and he was so sick and tired of Potter (and the universe) measuring him and finding him wanting. “Maybe I’m not.” He stepped back sharply, and said: “Five points because I don’t like you, Potter,” and walked away.
The next day he found Cho crying in the common room and felt that old urge—it seemed very old now—to put his arm around her and keep her safe. Instead he leaned his arm against the mantelpiece and asked her distantly what was wrong.
“I broke up with Harry,” she said. “I think. If it could be called breaking up, I don’t know, we only ever kissed once and—I couldn’t. Marietta’s face, and he defended Hermione Granger—”
“She meant it for the best,” Draco found himself saying.
This did nothing to stop Cho’s tears, and so Draco stopped talking, because Terry had told him sometimes when he talked things just got progressively and unbelievably worse. He stood there at the mantelpiece and waited until she was done crying.
At last, Cho said: “I don’t think he even noticed we were breaking up,” and Draco, carefully so as not to cheat on Terry, touched her shoulder.
“I think you did the right thing,” he said, and then left her in a hurry to go tell Terry not to be jealous, was he jealous?
“Madly jealous,” Terry said, his eyes small with amusement even though he wasn’t smiling, and Draco sat down beside him and dropped a kiss on his neck.
“‘M glad you don’t have to go rushing off to that idiot DA anymore,” he whispered.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Terry said at once, and Draco told himself that was because he was scared of losing Draco, and that it was stupid to expect Terry to hold on too ridiculously hard, to refuse to countenance the possibility of ever losing Draco.
He leaned against Terry’s side, taking comfort in his warmth and the arm that slipped readily about his shoulders, and began to read a letter from his father.
Having Cho and Marietta distraught in the common room was no good if you urgently needed to study for OWLs, and of course studying for the OWLs was so vital Draco did not even consider going home for the Easter holidays.
Fat chance anyone had of studying when Harry Potter was traipsing around the library like a discomfited gremlin. Draco wished they had some moors around so Potter could go wail on them and satisfy his melodramatic instincts, instead of badly startling people who were merely in search of helpful indexes and not expecting Potter to loom out of nowhere.
“I’m sorry,” Draco said pleasantly. “I don’t know where the Little Harry Learns To Read books are.”
“Do you love your father?” was Potter’s idea of a reasonable conversation opener.
“What are you planning to do to him?” Draco snapped.
“No, I mean—if you found out he did something awful.”
“What’s he going to do?” Draco asked, trying to keep the thin edge of panic out of his voice.
“No, it’s just—Malfoy, you have the worst father I know, and I just wanted to know if—if you loved him. If you’d love him no matter what you found out about him, what he did when he was younger, or—”
“Yes!” Draco exclaimed. “Yes! All right! Have you rubbed it in sufficiently? Do you feel better now? Do you want to hear it again? Yes.”
Potter looked a little startled to be backed up against a bookshelf by the sheer power of Draco’s rage, but he also looked a little less angry. “I feel a bit better,” he said, quietly.
Draco threw up his hands and stalked away. He wondered if Potter wrote ‘Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater’ all over the walls in Gryffindor tower, did he have nothing else to think of? What had got his mind on fathers in the first place?
He sat down and tried to stop simmering and start studying, only to see Potter not so very far away, engaging in a spot of illegal chocolate and conversation with Ginny. Really, the girl had been on the receiving end of some Ravenclaw love, how was she still Potter’s enthralled slave?
“It’s not Cho I want to talk to,” Potter grumbled through his chocolate and his very sad and angry face.
“Please talk to someone,” Ginny said. “I know something’s bothering you, you haven’t even let us talk to you about Dad, all you do is look confused or angry all the time and—”
“I’m not confused about ANYTHING,” Potter snarled at her. “And you’d be angry too if Voldemort was possessing you and you had to watch—”
Draco picked up his Arithmancy textbook and hurled it viciously at Potter’s head. Everyone in the library looked up.
“SHUT UP,” said Draco. “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR PAIN.”
He stood up, picked up another book and threw it. This time Ginny had to dodge out of the way, for which Draco was a little sorry but too angry to apologise.
“Nobody here cares about your pain!” he shouted, throwing the third book. “We just want to read! AND ALL THIS SHOUTING IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO A LEARNING ATMOSPHERE!”
He paused, wondering how best to achieve a killing throw with an encyclopaedia and whether it would pass as an accident, and then said: “Also unless you are experiencing regular amnesia, nobody is possessing you, you melodramatic twit. And even if you are I’d put it down to psychosis. Don’t you read?”
At that point nobody was allowed to read, because Madam Pince threw them out of the library and gave Draco a look which indicated that she did not know until she met him how full of hate her world could be .
Potter was blinking at Draco like a man dazed. Draco wondered how hard he’d thrown those books, and hoped the brain damage would be permanent. “Really?” he said.
“Yes, really,” Ginny told him, rolling her eyes. “I was about to tell you so myself, before this one went all Ravenclaw on a Rampage.”
Draco made a noise of despair and rage, and stalked off. As he went, he heard Ginny say tentatively: “Is there anyone you would like to talk to?”
Draco wished the world would stop consistently spiralling out of control and comprehension. He would have thought the Sociopath Twins quitting school (and showing the world what value Gryffindors placed on traditional schooling) would have made things better, but it seemed to have given everyone ideas.
Montague was found, half-starved and disoriented, and the Inquisitorial Squad wanted blood. The rest of the school were taking Filch and Umbridge far too seriously, and everyone was walking warily. Ravenclaw was the quietest house, because nobody was going to attack Draco, and Draco certainly wasn’t going to attack any of his housemates, even if he felt like punishing the world when Pansy Parkinson spent all night weeping because she had horns, and Goyle spent all night telling her she was pretty anyway.
Draco gritted his teeth and told himself that once the final match of the year, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw (his house versus Potter’s) was over with, the worst would be over with as well. He’d have loved to think Ravenclaw would win resoundingly, but no matter how much Weasley messed up, Cho was not going to get to the Snitch before Potter.
That match was worse than he had ever dreamed.
Draco sat in the stands, disbelieving, clawing at Terry’s shoulder and begging him to say it was all a nightmare, as Weasley made save after spectacular save. He looked for Hermione’s face, thinking her wrongheaded happiness might console him a bit, but she was mysteriously absent and the whole world was a bleak, barren, disgusting wilderness of Weasley triumph.
By the time Potter got the Snitch from right under Cho’s nose, Gryffindor had beat Ravenclaw by the largest margin ever seen in a school Quidditch game, and Draco didn’t actually trust himself not to turn on people and rend them. He stalked off, away from Terry, to the fields past the pitch and with some vague notion that he’d like to find something in the Forbidden Forest and kick it to death.
“Malfoy!”
And to top this most perfect of all perfectly awful days, there was Potter. Draco wheeled around and saw him coming across the grass, panting, still clutching the Snitch and wearing his horrible sweaty Quidditch robes, with his hair not just wild but actually savage from the wind.
“In what way,” Draco asked furiously, “do you want to make my life unbearable today?”
“So you haven’t cooled off, then,” said Potter, at his most redundant. “Look, I just wanted to talk, I’ve only ever wanted to talk to—”
Which was the biggest lie Draco had ever heard, because all Potter had wanted him to do when Draco was trying to be friends was curl up and die. Of course, he would be gracious now, since he was the big winner at Quidditch and everyone loved him in spite of his rage fits, he might condescend because after all, Draco wasn’t in Slytherin.
“How’s your little dog, Potter?” he asked suddenly, and the sudden fear on Potter’s face made him breathless with triumph.
It wasn’t a dog, not if Potter looked like that about it. It must be a person.
“My father saw your dog at the start of school—careless, were we? My father knows all about it,” he went on.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Potter said unevenly, his chest rising and falling hard.
Draco didn’t, really, but he was enjoying himself all the same. “Maybe,” he suggested, “my father could help have it put down.”
He realised he had gone too far when Potter roared and charged at him, the world suddenly and terrifyingly went flying out from underneath him, and Draco’s head hit the earth and Potter’s fist hit Draco’s stomach at approximately the same sickening time.
The bastard was hitting him with a fist that still had the Snitch in it. Draco yelled his rage and struck out, wildly, wishing he’d spent more time flying or doing anything but sitting in the library getting soft because the only thing that mattered was causing Potter a lot of pain right away—and perhaps, the cowardly part of his mind added, not getting his nose broken. He twisted underneath Potter, scrabbled at his stupid robes, lost his glasses as he tried to tumble Potter over and didn’t manage more than getting a grunt of pain. There was still roaring and victory songs for Weasley going on somewhere in the distance but Draco didn’t care, didn’t care, he grabbed hold of the front of Potter’s robes and pulled him down, trying to co-ordinate strangling him and getting him off, and then Potter made an urgent sort of sound in his throat, and Draco made the bad mistake of going still for an instant.
Potter’s hands, still almost in fists but not quite, went to Draco’s face, touching carefully for a moment as if Potter were blind. Draco thought confusedly that that must be it, since Potter had lost his glasses too, but then Potter cupped Draco’s face roughly in one palm and kissed him. Draco’s blood was still roaring with adrenaline and Potter kissed hard, like he was angry and confused and desperate, his face a close, blurring vision of black lashes against heated skin, and Draco raged and fisted a hand in Potter’s hair and kissed him back. Potter’s mouth opened hot and demanding against Draco’s, teeth cutting into his lip, Potter braced and shuddering over him, and Draco pulled his hair and made a demanding sound of his own, and when he heard it Potter moaned.
Draco arched up and Potter’s hands were all over him as if arching was permission, under his shirt, large hands sliding up his back as if in an attempt to touch every inch of Draco he could reach. Draco felt Potter’s fist curl empty against the small of his back before he felt the fluttering at the nape of his neck and realised Potter had let the Snitch go up Draco’s shirt.
He shifted and made a ‘you idiot‘ face at Potter, who looked at him, smiled and moved one hand out from under Draco’s shirt to push hair out of his eyes. The moment for reflection was all Draco needed.
“Wait!” Draco said sharply, shoving Potter away. He felt suddenly ill. “Stop. I’m with someone.”
He reached out and snatched up his glasses, and saw Potter look as if he had been slapped awake.
“I didn’t—” Potter began. “I’m not—”
“Sure you’re not,” Draco snarled, scrambling to his feet. “Leave me alone.”
He crawled onto Terry’s bed and also Terry as soon as he got back to Ravenclaw Tower, burying his face in the worn material of his jumper, hiding from the world but mostly from Terry and how Terry would look when he told him.
“Potter kissed me,” he said. “I let him, I was confused. I’m so sorry.”
Terry almost jumped off the bed, but Draco held onto his jumper with both hands, kept him anchored. “What,” Terry said weakly, “What—Harry Potter?”
“If he has an evil gay twin called Larry Potter,” Draco growled menacingly into the jumper, “I feel I should have been informed.”
Terry laughed, which was neither breaking up with Draco or going mad from jealousy. “But I—but why?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I was so badly startled, but I, but I was thinking,” Draco said, lifting his face a little from Terry’s jumper, “that it might be because things were going so badly with Cho. And I used to go out with Cho, and things went okay, and there’s been all the talk of boys recently, and Potter misses Cho and isn’t exactly the most balanced wand in the shop and it was all a terrible, messy mistake and let us never speak of this again!”
“You should breathe, Draco,” Terry advised him.
“Don’t break up with me,” Draco said. “Not over this. Don’t.”
“No,” Terry answered softly, and Draco kissed him, shook and kissed him, and then took off his own shirt and Terry’s jumper, and then kissed him again.
Terry didn’t break up with him over that, and if he didn’t become possessed with jealousy, well, it wasn’t as if anyone was challenging him to a duel over Draco’s affections. Draco was fine with it. Draco was grateful.
Draco made a point of avoiding Potter afterwards, and thought he might like to avoid Potter forever and ever. As if blackening his father’s name wasn’t enough, he thought furiously at mealtimes when he was forced to be in the same room as Potter, and smashed his egg into tiny inedible bits and tried to listen to all the gossip about Ginny dumping Corner. Potter went silent and red whenever Draco was around, as well he should, and Draco scowled and concentrated ostentatiously on his OWLs. Father knew people on the committee, he said Draco would fly through the tests. Draco meant to fly through them, just as easy and simple as that.
When OWLs did roll around, malicious fate put him next to Potter while he was trying to perform a Levitation Charm. Professor Tofty was already talking of Potter’s very great fame and Draco could not help throwing a venomous look over his shoulder, but then he remembered how important the OWLs were and how Terry and Hermione would scream if he became distracted.
He went back to his wine glass, which wavered in the air but did not fall.
OWLs triumphantly completed, Draco had imagined he would find some measure of peace left on earth, but no sooner was he comfortably settled in an armchair and contemplating having first years fan him with palm leaves, there came an urgent message from Professor Umbridge with the news that Potter was trying to break into her office.
When he came downstairs he found Umbridge with her hands in Potter’s hair, which was the most disturbing thing he had seen in a good long while.
She looked at him, her eyes glittering oddly, and said: “Take his wand.”
Taking extreme care not to touch Potter more than necessary, Draco slid a hand into Potter’s chest pocket and removed the wand he was thankful to find there. The inside of his wrist banged against Potter’s shoulder as he backed hastily away, but when Draco looked up the look of indignation on Potter’s face was priceless.
Draco grinned, threw Potter’s wand into the air and caught it one-handed. Looked like Potter was finally going to face the consequences for breaking rules everyone else had always had to live by.
Then he saw Millicent Bulstrode was pinning Hermione to the wall, and saw several other Inquisitors march in manhandling, amongst others, Ginny. His mouth went dry and he lowered Harry’s wand, feeling as if he had been caught red-handed instead of they.
Still, they had been breaking the rules, and surely Umbridge could see Potter was the ringleader. She could see enough to call Weasley a buffoon, which made Draco snicker and all of them glare at him. She told Draco to fetch Professor Snape, which meant that she was obviously planning to be reasonable and take the best advice available.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Snape said when informed of the situation, and Draco felt immensely soothed by his cool tones. “Potter has never shown much inclination to follow the school rules.”
Snape had such a masterful and complete understanding of Potter. He should write a book.
He should have some Veritaserum but he didn’t, and Potter was going mad and shouting something about Padfoot, and Draco could see Snape was badly shocked by that. And then Snape made his apologies, and left them all with Umbridge, who was shaking and pulling out her wand.
Suddenly Draco wanted Professor Snape back very badly.
“I am left with no alternative,” Umbridge said. “This is more than a matter of school discipline, this is an issue of Ministry security… yes… yes…”
She’d call in the Ministry, of course, Draco thought with relief. He hoped Potter would be completely and horribly expelled.
“I am sure the Minister will understand that I had no choice,” Umbridge said softly, and Draco watched her carefully, his heart still beating fast, just wanting to hear that Potter was expelled and everyone else had detention forever, or something, something…
Umbridge’s face set, until every drooping line made her look like a toad carved from stone.
“The Cruciatus Curse ought to loosen your tongue,” she breathed eagerly.
Hermione started to scream and Umbridge started to pant and Draco’s mind reeled as he realised that there was no safe place, no middle ground left in the world, and against all reason bloody Dumbledore (where was he, it was all his fault) had allowed another insane teacher to run wild in his school. What had Dumbledore been thinking? What had the Ministry been thinking?
What was he going to do?
Draco held Potter’s wand so tight it hurt his hand, and noticed that Potter was standing still, unmoving as Umbridge trailed her wand to rest on different places on his body, not looking in the least afraid.
Hermione began to sob and Draco thanked God, because he knew Hermione would never cry from fear, and he was suddenly filled with the warm, comfortable knowledge that Hermione had a plan and that she was about to lie through her teeth.
That idiot Weasley started yelling at her and Draco resisted the urge to choke him. Hermione, unfazed and hiding her tearless face, kept talking about looking for Dumbledore to tell him about a weapon and Draco would forgive her for Marietta and everything if she could only get them all out of this.
“Let them see it,” Hermione said dramatically, looking for an intense moment at Draco. “I hope they use it on you! In fact, I wish you’d invite loads and loads of people to come and see! Th—that would serve you right—oh, I’d love it if the wh—whole school knew where it was, and how to u—use it, and then if you annoy any of them they’ll be able to s-sort you out!”
For a moment Draco intensely wished there was a weapon and they could. Most unfortunately, Umbridge looked at him and caught the wish written all over his face.
“All right, dear, let’s make it just you and me,” she said. “And we’ll take Potter too, shall we? Get up, now.”
Hermione could not possibly think Draco would let her go off somewhere with an insane teacher and Harry Rage Blackouts Potter.
“Professor Umbridge,” he said loudly, “I think some of the Squad should come with you to look after—”
The students you might accidentally kill.
“You will remain here until I return and make sure none of these escape,” Umbridge said sharply. She looked at Draco until he nodded grudgingly, and then said: “And you two can go ahead and show me the way. Lead on.”
Before Draco could think up any less suicidal plans, they were gone, and he was left with all the other students looking at him.
Weasley started cursing through his gag.
“Pipe down,” Draco said, beginning to pace the room. “I know the concept is hard for you to understand, but I am trying to think.”
Hermione and Potter were in the hands of a lunatic, but if he alerted the Ministy—Umbridge was theirs and they might not believe him. If he told Father, he was very unlikely to see why Hermione had to be kept safe, and besides that there was no time, no time to alert anyone.
Draco hated to admit it, but until he thought of something better, it was going to have to be the vigilantes.
“Let them go,” he said sharply.
“Beg pardon?” said Zabini, and Draco wheeled on him.
“Use your brain, or am I the only one here that can? You think the Ministry will be passing out trophies to people who let some woman torture the Boy Who Lived? Think! Or don’t bother because I’ll think for you, and I say let them go.”
Crabbe, Goyle and Millicent Bulstrode all stepped back from their captives at once, and Zabini and Warrington hesitated, looking around at the others in a vaguely betrayed way. Draco looked at them scathingly over his glasses and Zabini stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” Warrington said, “why are we all taking orders from some titchy little Ravenclaw?”
“I have had enough,” exclaimed Ginny, grabbing her wand and casting a Hex that made Warrington fall down with his face covered in bats. She whirled around and Draco was quite thankful to be spared the wrath of Weasley as she pushed her hair out of her face with her wand. “Thanks, Draco. C’mon.”
“Don’t take the gag off Weasley!” Draco called out as she left, but with little hope she would listen.
“What—what should we do?” Crabbe asked. “Should we go help them—I mean we learned a lot of stuff at the—”
“At the what?” Zabini asked quickly.
“Nowhere,” Draco responded, very firmly. “And we’re not going to do anything of the sort. We’re going to go find some teachers.”
“Why?” Warrington demanded.
Draco tilted his glasses down his nose and gave Warrington a look he usually reserved for Potter.
“Because,” he explained slowly, “it’s the smart thing to do.”
He went to Professor Snape and Professor Snape told him it was all under control. Then he looked at Draco again, and told him that he had done well. Draco went upstairs after that, comforted and tired as if he had been studying all day, and crawled into bed beside Terry.
Terry looked at him with wide eyes. “Draco,” he said, his voice fearful. “Draco, what have you done?”
Draco curled his hand into a fist against Terry’s side, and saw Terry had been afraid he would do something terrible all this time. “The right thing,” he said at last. “I think.”
Terry looked surprised and inexpressibly relieved, and Draco curled into him, face light against the curve of Terry’s neck even if his hands were still curled into fists, and slept with some approximation of peace.
Until he woke up in the cold light of day, with Terry dead to the world and all his other friends still and far away in his bed, and heard his owl flapping frantically outside the window, its talons scrabbling desperately at the glass and whispering thinly of disaster before Draco had even wrenched himself from his bed to let the cold world in.
It was an Owl from his mother, saying that Father had been thrown in Azkaban.
That was all that came through to Draco on the first reading, as he left the window open and let himself slide down the wall, sat on the cold space of carpet and held the parchment carefully, trying to concentrate on it, trying to memorise it because that was all he knew to do with things he read, that should make it better.
Father had been sent to get some idiot Prophecy or other, and Potter and his gang had caught him. Not over anything important, over a stupid Prophecy, as if anyone would refuse to go get a prophecy when the Dark Lord told him to. Draco thought of Dad’s tense face and his relenting towards Draco: he’d been afraid, he’d been trying to mend bridges before it was too late, Draco knew it, and in return Draco had let Potter’s henchmen go free to capture his father.
And it didn’t seem to matter anymore that Father hadn’t liked him being Sorted into Ravenclaw, that nothing had been quite as Draco had hoped, because Father had been thrown down so low—he hadn’t had his career hurt or his things confiscated, he, Draco’s proud father, had been thrown in a prison and that was too huge for any of the rest to matter. He was God again, as he’d been in Draco’s childhood, attainable one day if Draco could just be good enough.
Only Draco’d helped throw him in prison instead. That was where trying to walk the middle line got you, that was where even a split second of sympathy with Potter got you, and nobody read letters in Azkaban so Draco couldn’t even write at once and confess it all and say I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…
He didn’t want to talk to anyone for a while, but a few days later he went down to Crabbe and Goyle, and they looked at him with grave scared eyes, and he said the words to them at least.
“I was wrong. I did something and look what happened—we’re going to make it right. Will you trust me?”
They both nodded and Draco stopped holding his breath and looked down at his hands. He hadn’t even noticed his fists were so tightly curled that his nails had cut into his palm. He went upstairs with them, talking quietly, and when he saw Potter the rush of hatred he felt made him feel for a moment as if he was going to choke, all the air pressed out of his lungs.
Potter looked terrible, white and drained, but he was still free and Father wasn’t.
“You’re dead, Potter,” he said quietly.
Potter looked startled to see him, softer for a second and then grim. “Funny,” he said. “You’d think I’d have stopped walking around. What’s the matter with you, Malfoy? Ginny told me what you—”
“Shut up!”
Potter’s eyes looked much colder, more far-away than Draco was used to. Draco expected he was gloating over his little triumph.
“You’re going to pay,” Draco promised him. “I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done to my father. You said pick a side, but I don’t have to, do I? You’ve picked it for me.”
“What, going off to join Voldemort?” Potter demanded, going whiter and whiter by the second. Draco flinched and felt the other two flinch behind him, and saw Potter’s cold eyes narrow. “Not scared of him, are you?” Potter asked.
Draco moved forward and hated him for five years’ worth of reasons, and most of all for this moment. “You think you’re such a big man, Potter. You wait. I’ll have you.”
At which point Potter went a slow, dull red. “Er…”
“I mean I’m going to kill you, Potter!” Draco yelled, fury and humiliation sharpening to a spike inside him, and he went for his wand.
Potter was faster as he always was, always, and Draco was going to beat him to death with his bare hands if he had to, but then Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall both interrupted them in succession. Draco would not even look at Professor Snape, who had told him he’d done the right thing. He didn’t want to look at anybody or think about anything. He was just biding his time.
He wrote a letter to his mother by the lake, so none of the Ravenclaws could see it, and he promised to do his best from now on, to do better from now on, to take the destiny his father had always meant for his son and make it his own. He bit his lip savagely as he wrote and managed not to actually cry.
Then he watched the owl fly away, a small shape in the sky, becoming smaller by the minute. He wanted to go home, and he wanted Dad to be there when he got back.
He was packing his things in his trunk when Terry said: “Look—Draco, we need to talk about what happened to Harry and the others that night—”
“I wasn’t aware anything had happened to them,” Draco replied in a chilly, distant voice. “The way I hear it, they happened to other people.”
He felt distant enough that he was surprised he couldn’t float away and see them, Terry sitting unhappy at the edge of his bed and Draco hunched over his chest, but he was still there and still had to live through this, folding clothes and scarves, material rough under his hands.
“I know he was your father and I’m sorry,” Terry said. “But isn’t it better this way, so you won’t be forced to do anything you don’t want to do—”
“My father’s in prison and nothing is better this way!” Draco shouted, and he saw Terry flinch from his voice out of the corner of his eye, knew this was the side of himself the other Ravenclaws didn’t want to see and wouldn’t understand, the side he’d buried in books, the side his father might have loved, and he was glad. “And you don’t know anything about what I want.”
“Surely you don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Terry said in the soft, reasonable voice that was driving Draco slowly insane. “I heard Neville came back with blood all over his face—”
“Oh, and what a loss he would have been!”
Draco’s voice went out like a whip and he saw Terry flinch again.
“You don’t mean that.”
Draco was panting. He felt like he’d like someone else to suffer a bit, actually, for a change. “Oh? And what if I do?”
“If I thought you really meant that,” Terry answered, even more slowly than he usually spoke, “then I guess I couldn’t—”
“Fine!” Draco said loudly.
The word rang conclusively around the room, final as a slammed door. Draco was sure Terry was doing what he was doing, looking back at the conversation, searching silently and frantically for the fragments of what had suddenly broken and working out a way to put them back together. Draco was sick and tired of all this thinking.
“I’ll be too busy anyway,” he went on harshly, still not feeling quite as if it was him speaking. “I’ve got plans for next year.”
He saw Terry swallow out of the corner of his eye, and he hit the inside of his wrist hard. The pain brought him back to the room, feeling every little stupid detail and wanting to take it all back, go crawling for some comfort, but it wouldn’t save his father, would it?
“Okay,” Terry said, his voice wavering.
And it was irrational and stupid and too much to ask for, but Draco banged his wrist against the edge of his trunk again and thought, he could’ve fought for me.
He didn’t plan on hexing Potter on the train home. It was just that he walked by, looking remote and untouchable as he did these days, and Draco thought about what he was going home to and nodded to Crabbe and Goyle and sprang out.
Immediately afterwards a carriage full of Hufflepuffs sprang out at Draco, and then Weasley, Ginny and Hermione came rushing out to see what the commotion was, and everyone had their wands out. There was a tight, taut moment when they realised that. Macmillan raised his wand.
“Don’t!” Potter said sharply, and he lowered it like a good little minion.
“Draco,” Ginny said, her hand on her wand and her voice aggressive. “You can’t do this to yourself. It’s not Harry’s fault, your father belongs locked up. He tried to kill me when I was eleven—”
“He can’t have tried very hard. You seem pretty healthy to me,” Draco spat, and Ginny’s face hardened.
“Forget it,” she said. “It’s no use talking to him. You’re your father’s son after all, aren’t you?”
“Who else’s son was I going to be?” Draco shouted at her back as she retreated into the carriage, but she didn’t answer.
Hermione tried next, putting her hand on his arm as she usually did when she was trying to explain something to him, looking up at him with familiar brown eyes. He looked down at her and didn’t want any explanations, didn’t want to think any more.
“Think about this logically, Draco,” she said in her confident way. “Your father deserved everything he got—”
And he was sick of people badmouthing his father when he was in Azkaban and couldn’t say a word to defend himself, when he didn’t want to hear reasons or accusations or anything but the reassurance that his father would be there when he came home. She hadn’t cared about the Quibbler or about Marietta or about him, she didn’t care what happened to his father now, and his father had been disappointed in him for being friends with her—
“Nobody asked your opinion,” Draco said through his teeth. “You filthy little mudblood.”
Hermione snatched her hand off his arm as if it had been burned, and Draco looked at her face. He felt numb again, he would have thought he’d enjoy seeing someone else hurt for a change but he didn’t, he just kept thinking that she’d never heard anyone use that word before, never, because if someone else had said it to her he would have killed them.
“Don’t, Ron,” Hermione said when Weasley went for his wand, her voice trembling. “Don’t—he’s not even worth it,” she finished in husky tones, and then she turned back to Draco and slapped him as hard as she could about the face.
It stung. Draco kept his face to the side and felt his skin burn as she walked away, Weasley at her side, and Crabbe and Goyle slunk away as well and now it was just him and Potter left, this new Potter who was paler than before and looked haunted and who Draco hated more than he would have thought possible.
“Showing me some mercy back there?” he asked. “I’m sure it gave you a warm condescending glow. Excuse me.”
He would have turned away, but Potter said without expression: “Actually, I wanted to hex you until you didn’t even look like a person anymore.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” Draco demanded.
“What would have been the point?” Potter asked. “You’d still have been a person. It wouldn’t have changed your mind about anything. Nothing ever seems to change your mind about anything.”
Draco felt as if his mind had been changed completely and into something new and it had hurt, so he had no idea what to say to that stupid statement. He stepped aside silently for Cho and Marietta as they went by, Cho blushing because of Potter and Marietta wearing a balaclave because Muggles and their Mudblood kind always hurt you unless you got to them first.
“She’s with Corner now,” he blurted, out of the sheer aching desire to hurt Potter, and then winced at how childish he sounded.
Potter looked blank. “I don’t give a damn who she’s going out with,” he said. “I shouldn’t—” he made an angry sound in the back of his throat, which was the first sign of emotion Draco had seen him show. “I don’t care about anything like that. Not now.”
Draco looked out the window at the landscape speeding by, too fast for him to really take note of what was going on.
“Someone died in that attack on the Ministry,” Potter said suddenly, harshly, as if his throat hurt. “He was—he was a cousin of yours.”
Draco wondered desperately what the hell Potter thought he was going on about now. Was he trying to rub it in that Draco had convicts in the family, had he never heard of Aunt Bellatrix? What did Potter care that Sirius Black was dead?
“And he was—you’ll never get a chance to know him now,” Potter said, his voice still sounding like it was scraping his throat. “Other things happened in the Ministry that day besides—”
“I don’t care!” Draco yelled, horrified that he thought he could see tears in Potter’s eyes and horrified that this did not inspire any desire in Draco to mock him until he fell down. He felt something tangled and sharp in his own throat and he wanted to get away. “I don’t care about—about anything, I just want my father back!”
Potter leaned his head back against the window and visibly got a grip on himself. “Fine,” he said, his eyes shut. “Go to hell, Malfoy.”
Draco walked backwards, catching himself before he stumbled. “You first.”
He found Crabbe and Goyle and walked with them through the train corridor, not able to sit still, wishing he could run to some remedy and feeling that even if one existed, he would not be able to run fast enough. He passed one carriage and saw Terry and Anthony inside, obviously deep in conversation and going quiet, staring out at him as they saw him pass.
Crabbe cleared his throat. “If you want, you could—”
“No,” Draco said at once, knowing that he could not sit there and see Terry look sad, see Anthony and think about the consequences if—when he went home and saw the dark figure his father had spoken about, not when he had to go prepared to do what he had to do for his father, when he had to go prepared to kneel. “No,” he said again, and he sounded more certain. “I’m where I’m meant to be.”
He was more certain than ever when the train pulled in, and he saw Potter get off and be surrounded by a mob of people, Weasleys and their old teachers and random pink-haired fans, saw him swallowed in an enormous loving crowd. His mother stood on the platform, tall and poised and looking very alone, and when she saw Draco her face changed and then smoothed almost instantly, but the moment of disturbance was enough to send Draco stumbling off the train towards her. He hadn’t held her in public and without compunction since he was ten years old.
“Oh, Draco,” she said against his ear. “Draco.”
Draco met Potter’s eyes for some reason, in the midst of his crowd, and their gazes held, caught looking at each other for a moment without blinking, until Draco closed his eyes and hid his face, only wanting to hold his mother.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered to her, locking his arms behind her back so she would not feel him shaking. “Mother, don’t. I’ll fix things. I’ll make everything right.”