Mother didn’t really talk to him on the journey to the train station. She sat in the carriage opposite him looking pale and beautiful and a hundred cool miles away from him, and Draco wanted Father to criticise him, or Aunt Bella to ramble lovingly about decapitation in his ear, or something.
“Take care, Draco,” she said on the platform, and touched his sleeve. He stared at her.
Then a tall woman with the build of a carthorse and wire-rimmed spectacles and ‘Muggle’ written all over her strode up to them and said, “Hello, I’m Pamela Goldstein. Our boys are such good friends: I thought you and I should get acquainted.”
Draco and his mother stared at her with varying degrees of shock and horror. Then Mother, manners impeccable as usual, held out her hand and said in a faint, colourless tone: “Charmed, I’m sure.”
Pamela Oh My God A Muggle Is Touching My Mother Goldstein smiled and Anthony peeped out from over her shoulder, looking embarrassed but in a normal parent way, as if there were no social conventions, no taboos, being horribly defied as they spoke.
“And this is little Draco,” Pamela said, smiling at him cheerfully. “He’s a cute kid. Looks a bit anaemic, though.”
“I am sixteen years old,” Draco informed her, “And tall. Tall for my age. And I have a—refined complexion.”
“Anthony’s right, you can tell he was homeschooled,” Pamela said, elbowing Narcissa in the ribs. Mother looked on the point of death by scandalized dismay. “He should take iron pills.”
“I thank you for your kind recommendation, but in the wizarding world we are not accustomed to medicating our children with metal,” Mother said stiffly.
“How was your summer?” Anthony asked.
Draco thought of the Dark Lord’s red eyes and the werewolves prowling his house and his Aunt Bellatrix talking about the best way to torture the Muggleborn to death. Filthy halfbreeds, she’d said once. Diluting our blood. It won’t stop unless we make it stop.
She’d also said, which Mudbloods more likely to be shown mercy than the favourites of the Dark Lord’s favourite?
Draco looked at Anthony’s friendly, inquiring face and said, “Fine.”
“So Draco’s a homosexual,” Pamela said. “I think that’s so interesting, I always wanted Anthony to have artistic friends. Besides, really, making boys wear dresses and play with brooms in their formative years is bound to leave a mark. Have you joined PFLAG?”
“I’m afraid I do not quite understand you,” said Narcissa’s mouth, and her eyes said “you terrible, incomprehensible woman.”
“Mum, stop,” Anthony pleaded.
“Oh hush, Anthony. Draco’s not embarrassed! Are you embarrassed, Draco?”
“I only wish I was dead a little bit,” Draco said, for Anthony’s sake. “Oh, listen, did you hear the train—it’s leaving, we’ll be very late, must dash, imperative that we be in our places and—commence studying at once! For we are Ravenclaws, and that is what Ravenclaws do.”
“Don’t you think that the division between houses in this school promotes a sort of gang mentality?” inquired Pamela Goldstein. “I find it most psychologically peculiar. It’s almost like the loyalties in the Mob.”
“My child is not part of any sort of mob,” Mother said with dignity. “If you’re going, Draco, take care of yourself—mind you write,” and her hand trembled a little on his sleeve.
Draco wanted to hug her, but surely she would have hugged him if she’d wanted to, and Anthony and his mother were watching.
“I’ll write,” he said. “Don’t fuss, Mother.”
“Naturally I shall be somewhat concerned,” Mother responded, and then smiled and let go of his sleeve.
Draco turned away, and turning saw her cool smile go all out of shape. He whirled back and hugged her, her back thin under his hands. He was almost taller than her now, his mother, and she’d always been lovely and cold and perhaps fragile as an ice sculpture: it was Father you could count on to be interested in you, even if he was disappointed. She put a hand on his shoulder, returned his embrace cautiously, and Draco burrowed his face against her, glasses pushed into her shoulder.
“It’ll be fine, Mother,” he told her, “it’ll be fine, fine, I’ll take care of everything.”
“You don’t have to,” Mother said.
She didn’t know, of course. She had no idea that the Dark Lord had said, I believe I might count the entire Malfoy clan as… a dead loss. Draco did have to take care of everything, including her, but he would, he could, it was an honour and everything would be all right.
She would never have to know. Draco was going to protect her.
He kissed her cheek, glasses bumping against her cheekbone, and then stepped back and avoided her eyes. “You needn’t worry, I have everything under control,” he assured her, and then he and Anthony ascended the steps into the train.
Behind him he heard Mrs Goldstein say: “Do you frequently have bouts of separation anxiety?” and his mother murmur: “I do apologise, I have an appointment to—have an appointment, excuse me.”
“Thanks for gossiping with your mother about my love life, Anthony Goldstein,” Draco said severely as he dragged his trunk along the corridors. He wasn’t getting stuck talking to Loony Lovegood this year. “You total old biddy at sixteen, you.”
“I needed to work things out,” Anthony said cheerfully and unrepentantly. “Because you and Terry were all close and the break-up is going to impact on the dynamic of our friendship, which is a serious emotional issue for me even though my interest in the matter is strictly platonic. The homosocial bonds we develop in school and their outcome affect us for life, Mum says.”
“You’re really weird, I just thought you should know,” Draco informed him.
“I want there to be as little conflict as possible,” said Anthony, “but of course if it comes down to it I’m on your side.”
“Are you,” Draco said, blankly. “Why?”
“Because we’re closer than Terry and I are, of course,” Anthony said. “You know where you are with you: you always speak your mind. Anyway you’re a big spaz, and I empathise with that.”
Draco had always assumed that Terry was better friends with the entire dorm than Draco was: Terry had tact, and he’d been made prefect, and Entwistle and Corner certainly liked him best, imbeciles that they were, so it seemed to make sense that the third in their group liked Terry best too. He had Crabbe and Goyle to like him best, anyway, he was in the habit of telling himself.
Apparently not just them, though. He favoured Anthony with a warm smile.
“Where’re we going to sit, then,” Anthony said. “Every year I get scared I’ll end up sitting with Loony Lovegood. I still have nightmares from that time she told me about Snorkacks, you know. I told Mother I think she’s verbally harassing me.”
“I’ll verbally harass you, Goldstein, you enormous baby,” Draco said.
Pansy waved to him from down the train corridor and came up with Crabbe trundling both his and her bags. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Draco sometimes thought she fancied him: probably on account of his animal magnetism.
He tried to give her the glasses look in an alluring way, recalled that animals didn’t wear spectacles at all, and fell into some confusion.
“Let’s go find a carriage,” she said, taking his arm. “D’you have something in your eye?” She looked slight askance at Anthony, clearly bent on accompanying them, and extreme askance at his amulet.
“I know,” Anthony told her. “I’m a filthy Muggleborn. You can degrade me and crush my spirit by making me your sex slave if you like.”
Pansy laughed and said: “Clearly, Anthony Goldstein, you are reading far too much Witches
Gone Wild.”
Goyle’s look of incredible guilt was lost on nobody. Draco happened to know that sometimes he cut his comics out of their covers and hid Witches Gone Wild inside them.
They all went and found a compartment. Getting the trunks onto the racks was hard work if women were being lazy and not pulling their own weight, and afterwards Draco collapsed artistically with his head in Pansy’s lap. She stroked his hair amiably enough and called him a gigantic baby.
“Oh, you want me bad,” said Draco.
“I’ll tell you who I want bad,” Pansy told them all. “Anybody seen Potter yet? The summer did him a lot of good—he’s so tall.”
“I’m tall,” Draco put in, offended and shocked.
“And he’s so tanned,” Pansy went on, at which point Draco lapsed into grouchy but no less horrified silence. “I saw him on the platform wearing one of those sloppy jumpers and I wanted to pour honey on the golden hollow of his throat and then lick it off.”
There was a pause, indicative of the fact that everyone thought Pansy should stop reading Wizards Gone Wild.
“I want to be sick,” Draco said at last.
“Potter is nice enough,” Anthony said, and Draco levered himself up on one elbow to give him the Not Sexy Glasses Look of Reproach because he was a Traitor, “but I’ve never had any—breakfast spread thoughts about him. I have to say.”
“Pity Chang says he’s the worst kisser she’s ever kissed and can’t string two words together,” Pansy said. “If he had any sort of acceptable personality at all, I would ride him like a wild pony all night long.”
There was a long pause. Draco wrenched his mind away from ponies tamed or untamed, and concentrated on the deliriously amusing Cho revelations.
“You know,” he said at length, “In many ways, Cho Chang is the love of my life. What else did she say about Potter?”
“I think she was wrong about Potter, though,” Pansy said thoughtfully. “He said more than two words to me. He asked if I’d seen you.”
“Yes,” Draco said, “because he lives to torment me.”
“And to battle You-Know-Who,” Anthony put in brightly. A distinctly uneasy silence fell until Anthony went on: “And I bet he’s Quidditch captain this year.”
Before Anthony and Pansy started filling out forms to join Colin Creevey’s Harry Potter Fan Club and receive the photograph-filled newsletter, Blaise Zabini came into the compartment and crashed about apparently having trouble with the door. Draco was slightly more concerned with the flash of movement in the corner of his eye after Blaise swung the door open.
For a moment he thought he’d imagined it, but then he caught Anthony’s eye and saw Anthony’d spotted it too.
They looked at the luggage rack and nodded to each other. Then they nodded to Crabbe and Goyle, who since third year had periodically leaped at empty air and shouted ‘Got you, Potter!’ as it was. Then he gently elbowed Pansy.
“I expect Slughorn would’ve invited me,” Draco said in a clear, carrying voice; “if some complete bastard hadn’t got my father arrested.”
There was shifty silence from the luggage rack.
“Which is to say that the Ravenclaws are quick-witted and keen-eyed and we’ve totally spotted you, Potter,” Draco said, more loudly. “Come out of there, you’re embarrassing us all.”
Taking his sweet time about it, Potter did so, and he removed the Invisibility Cloak and looked around in a blushy but determined sort of way. Draco examined him: he supposed he was taller and browner and stuff, but his mere presence in the world was a complete offence. And Draco would have been invited to Slughorn’s get-together if it hadn’t been for Potter, Father would still have the position he deserved, everything would be all right. Potter had ruined Draco’s life and didn’t even care, and the only thing Draco wanted to do with him was tear him apart with his bare hands.
“I didn’t know you had an Invisibility Cloak,” Zabini said at length. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Thanks, Zambini,” said Potter.
“Zambini?” said Zabini: Potter wasn’t paying attention.
“So,” he said. “So—here you are, Malfoy. With—you know, on the train. With Pansy Parkinson,” he added, for some reason.
Mad. He was mad.
He was mad but clearly he suspected something, clearly Draco’d given himself away somehow before school had even properly started. Draco was horrified and appalled at himself, and—and not afraid, but uncomfortable. He didn’t… Anthony shouldn’t hear from Potter, he wouldn’t understand. Later, once it was done. Draco would think of something.
He sat up, even though Pansy’s stroking his hair had been very soothing and therapeutic, because he was already at quite enough of a miserable disadvantage with Potter without addressing him while lying flat on his back.
“Well spotted,” Draco observed. “Why’re we being graced with this enormous invasion of privacy, Potter?”
“I want to,” Potter said. “I want to talk to you.”
“Oh really? I was under the impression that you wanted to spy on me from a luggage rack,” Draco snapped.
“Failing that,” Potter said dryly, though he was still blushing ferociously. “I need to talk to you. Um, privately.”
“And if wishes were horses then Weasleys would ride,” Draco sneered, and then thought, ride, and also, wild ponies, and entirely lost his train of thought and damned Pansy Parkinson to hell.
“Are you blushing, Malfoy?” Potter asked uneasily.
“No!” Draco snapped. “You’re blushing!”
It was true: the idiot was scarlet under his stupid tan, and still not leaving.
“I’m not leaving,” Potter told him mulishly, as if Draco could not see that perfectly well.
“Since you’re the Chosen One now and everything,” Draco commented, “You’d think you’d be able to find some people who might choose to be in your company.”
“Oh shut up, Malfoy,” Potter said.
Draco was deeply dismayed that he actually had the words “You shut up” on his lips before he remembered he wasn’t eleven years old anymore. He decided that the really mature way to handle this was to ignore Potter totally and proceed to give him the silent treatment.
He went back to lying with his head in Pansy’s lap. She was a kind girl, she had lovely soft hands even if she did have terrible horrible taste in men.
Potter sat down and Crabbe and Goyle moved over as far as they could and gave him funny looks from the corner of their eyes. Potter crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles, with all appearance of settling in. Draco could not believe him: he was the most stubborn and unmannerly person in the world.
“So, how was your summer, Potter?” Anthony asked at last.
Potter blinked. “It was okay. I spent it with the Weasleys,” he said. “How was, um, your summer?”
“It was great. I went to a Young Psychologists’ Camp,” Anthony confided enthusiastically.
Potter blinked and said, “Cool,” in a rather unconvinced way.
There was another long silence, broken only by Zabini muttering “Zambini” under his breath, and Goyle getting out his comic book again. Everyone was more or less just staring at Potter, who had gone a dull red. He clearly suspected something, maybe he’d tracked Draco down to Borgin and Burkes in that damned Cloak. Anyway he was staring at Draco, he needn’t think he was going to break Draco’s nerve, no matter how much Potter looked like he wouldn’t leave until he got what he wanted.
“So what did you want to talk to Draco about?” Anthony asked, frowning.
Draco despised himself completely, because he cast a pleading look at Potter, and Potter looked startled.
“Um,” he said. “Stuff.”
Pansy’s fingers were gentle in Draco’s hair. Maybe he should marry her for daily head massages. “Are you going to just sit here glaring at all of us and being incoherent all journey long?” she inquired.
“Maybe,” Potter shot back. “Are you going to just sit there all journey long grooming Malfoy and looking smug about it, as if anyone would—”
He stopped. Draco had no idea, Potter was apparently too much of a freak to even talk properly anymore, he was just babbling gibberish like his Big Crazy Giant adopted father.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Potter asked suddenly, investing the word with a lot of hatred. Enormous hypocritical homophobe that he was.
“He’s,” Anthony began. Draco gave him a quelling look: there was no reason that Harry Potter needed to know that Draco had been ignominiously dumped.
“If you mean Terry Boot,” he said coldly, “He’s in the prefects’ carriage. With, you know, the only two friends you have in the world?”
Potter glared at him. He thought about Hermione and felt sick and unhappy and glared back. They all just sat there. Not much farther, Draco told himself, but as the train jolted on and Potter just stayed there Draco felt himself getting angrier and angrier. Potter came snooping around after Draco, which was fine, they were enemies, Draco would be a Death Eater before long and show him, but to have the utter face to impose himself on Draco and all Draco’s friends, fresh from an exclusive party with Slughorn where precious Potter was invited and disgraced Lucius Malfoy’s son was not, and be rude to Pansy for no reason, and… He was just the limit.
Dad had been in Azkaban all summer while Potter had been reclining on the freckled bosom of the Weasleys and getting his stupid tan.
“How was,” Potter said, and cleared his throat. “How was your summer, Malfoy?”
Draco turned his head and gave him a look of loathing. “How d’you think it was,” he said icily.
The room went silent again. The atmosphere was extremely chilly. Potter looked away at last, but did not move an inch.
When the train finally pulled into the station, Anthony, Crabbe and Goyle almost killed each other trying to escape from the carriage at the same time. Pansy waited so Draco could scramble up and Zabini paused so he could say: “It’s Blaise Zabini, all right? Blaise Zabini!”
Potter looked at him as if he was insane. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever.”
Then he said: “I only want a minute, Malfoy.”
Calm settled on Draco, cool and logical. “All right,” he answered. “All right.”
He closed the doors on the retreating backs of the others, and then leaned against the door and took a deep breath. He heard Potter take a step behind him.
“Look, Malfoy,” he said. “You’re smarter than this.”
“I’m smarter than you,” Draco snapped, and whirled on him. “Petrificus Totalus!”
Potter went down hard, and Draco stooped over his frozen form to get in a good gloat.
“Now, Potter,” he murmured. “You taught me to be quicker on the draw than that.” He was about to proceed on this theme when he looked at Potter’s face: it made him uncomfortable. “Stop looking at me like that,” he said, and felt like an idiot.
Right. There was no point lingering, he should just do as he’d planned. Potter had put his father in prison and he was going to break Potter’s nose and leave him there paralyzed. It would be fun. It would be revenge: Dad deserved that.
Stupid Godforsaken Potter had said last time they were on the train together, You’ll never get the chance to know him now. Like he minded that a Black was dead. Draco wondered how his summer had actually been.
Potter wouldn’t have cared, if the Black in question hadn’t turned his back on everything that made him a Black. Draco should stop being such a child, he wasn’t a child, he could do this. For his father.
Draco glanced back at Potter, cursed and hit the wall. Then he just draped Potter’s Invisibility Cloak over him.
“I don’t reckon they’ll find you until the train’s back in London,” he said, with all the frustrated malice he had. “See you around, Potter… or not.”
He got up and rejoined the others on the platform. Anthony was apparently trying to chat up Pansy and she was staring at him blankly. When Draco appeared they both grinned at him.
“You were right,” Pansy said. “Potter’s good-looking, but he’s an enormous weirdo. What the hell was he doing? Acting like you’re the prime suspect in a murder investigation!”
Draco felt briefly cold.
Anthony cheered him up by saying: “I really hope that You-Know-Who doesn’t have to be defeated by stealth. Because Potter? Not stealth.”
The Hat sang another song about the houses uniting, and Anthony talked wistfully about how much he’d like to unite with Pansy Parkinson.
“I thought you had a crush on Hermione,” Draco said at last, saying her name to show he could.
“She’s so stuck on Ron Weasley there might as well be glue involved,” Anthony sighed. “Mother says I should move on. I like Slytherins,” he went on dreamily. “They’re sassy. Uh, not Greg and Vince, of course.”
Terry was oddly quiet for most of the meal, not looking at Draco. Draco didn’t care or told himself he didn’t care, which was just as good, until Terry said: “Harry Potter’s not here. Anthony said—what did you do to him?”
It was nice, that his ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend thought he was murdering people on trains. Really nice.
What was even nicer was that it had passed through Draco’s mind, somewhere between sneering down at Potter and hitting the wall. It had made him feel sick, and he’d been too feeble even to break stupid Potter’s stupid face for his father’s sake.
Another thing making him feel sick was Dumbledore. The old man looked like death, looked aged another century to add to his millions of centuries, his face yellowy-grey, one of his hands a twisted ruin. He looked almost like an evil overlord as well now, but a frail one, decaying.
I could really do it, Draco thought, and felt a chill down his spine. He had to do it: for Father, for Mother, for himself. He had to.
Potter came in just before dessert was served, and Draco was gloomily unsurprised. Of course Potter was going to escape somehow, get out of his predicament in some unlikely hero way like he always did, forever come out on top.
Draco should’ve broken his nose when he had the chance. He scowled significantly at Terry, then scowled less significantly at the treacle tart.
To make himself feel better, he told Cho, Mandy and Lisa how he’d tricked Potter and covered him with the cloak. They were all laughing and reproaching him as he made his I Am Frozen Potter face, and then in the midst of it he saw Potter’s eyes fixed on him, intent, like he wasn’t going to give up or let Draco get away with it.
Draco shuddered and turned his face away. He didn’t have time for Potter now.
When the night came, and he went to the Room of Requirement with the cabinet and looked at it, and looked at it, and had no idea what to do next, he knew he didn’t have time for anything.
“What’ve you been doing?” Terry asked, when he got back to bed late.
“Oh, off killing Harry Potter as usual,” Draco sneered, and turned away in bed. Last year Terry would have joined him.
This year Terry sighed, and turned out the light.
It seemed like the ideal solution when Professor Slughorn offered Felix Felicis as a prize for the winner of his little potion-making contest. Draco stopped whispering to Anthony and evading Potter’s fixed gaze, and felt his heart beat in his throat. If he could win, it meant Father free, Mother safe, himself honoured and special and given everything he wanted—Hermione and Anthony safe—and everything all right, the crushing cold burden of fear he’d started to feel pressing down on him heavier last night gone, vanished like a miracle.
Of course, Potter won instead.
God damn it, Draco thought. God damn it. Potter’d never even been particularly good at Potions, it felt like he was doing it just to spite him.
Added to that Professor Wobbly Bottom looked at Draco like he was something the cat had left on the stairs and would be disciplined for later, and at Potter like he wanted to lick honey off him, in a manner entirely improper within a student and teacher relationship.
Draco actually felt sick with fury and envy and disappointment.
“How did you do that?” Weasley whispered to Potter.
Potter looked at Draco, didn’t look away. “Got lucky,” he said.
Draco swept out of the room and tried very hard not to destroy the entire Ravenclaw dormitory in a fit of rage. He wanted to study with Hermione: she’d sit with him and touch his hand and calm him down, but she wasn’t there, she hated him and she had to stay hating him, too. He couldn’t have someone as smart as Hermione close to him while he was trying to…
She didn’t want to be friends with him again anyway. She was too busy telling Potter how attractive he was, Ginny Weasley told him. She frowned slightly as she said it and Draco marvelled that these Gryffindor girls should waste so much of their time. Apparently now they were telling Potter things that His Chosen Arrogance, the Boy Who Had A Swollen Enough Head Already Thank You, already knew perfectly well.
It was nice that Ginny was still talking to him, though. He was sitting in the library once reading everything he could lay his hands on, the little statue he’d taken from the Room of Requirement in order to control it burning a hole in his pocket, and she walked over to him and put her hand on his forehead and said he looked tired.
He was so grateful he could have cried.
“I’m never too tired for you, redhaired vixen of my heart,” he said wearily, in order to see her brother go red and furious at the table across. Potter wasn’t there, no doubt his ever-expanding crowd of fans had cornered him somewhere and were in the process of having their way with him like crazed jaguars.
Oh yes, life was fair.
He was grateful for Ginny Weasley, though, and he was grateful for Anthony, and he was very grateful for Crabbe and Goyle, who were the best friends a would-be plotter could have. They couldn’t guard the Room in their actual bodies, Draco’d explained to them. They were great big hulking bodies, they always looked dead suspicious. Everyone was always accusing Draco of having thugs even though Crabbe was a Child of Peace.
So he told them about little girl bodies and pinafores.
“I will not pander to your disturbed sexual fantasies!” Crabbe exclaimed, scandalised. “Homosexuality is one thing, but this! Have you read Lolita? It does not end well, Draco Malfoy!”
It took Draco three hours to persuade them that he was not trying to feed his own dark sexual fantasy life, and then four more hours to get them to accept the pinafores.
They were good friends, the best. They never even asked Draco what he was doing. He was grateful to them, inexpressibly impossibly grateful. They trusted that he knew what he was doing.
He wished he did. He kept following Borgin’s directions but nothing was working, nothing seemed to be going right, and the first time he had to report back, in the village at Hogsmeade, there was Fenrir Greyback. He wished it was Lupin, God, how he wished it was Lupin.
“Looking a little under the weather, Draco?” inquired Fenrir, and touched his face. Draco stepped back with all possible speed.
“Feeling fine!” he said. “In the pink!”
“Your auntie sends her love,” said Fenrir, and Draco breathed a little easier, thought of Aunt Bellatrix, who would serve him up to her Dark Lord with a cut throat but who did love him, who did love him, and felt pathetic and desperate to be relieved by such a message and such a messenger. “Little Rosmerta’s under the Imperius curse, if you find her useful for anything,” went on Fenrir Greyback, and while Rosmerta the barwoman stared at Draco, her face blank as a doll’s, Fenrir traced a suggestive line between her breasts. “Not really my style,” Fenrir drawled. “But if you like her…”
“God, no,” gasped out Draco, and felt dizzy and sick with horror. “God. No.”
But he looked at her and he thought of that cursed necklace in Borgin and Burkes. Simple, a curse, death, it didn’t even have to pass through his hands. He wanted it to happen, of course he did, but he would prefer if it happened from a distance.
He didn’t want to examine why too closely. He might be weak like Dad had always thought, but if he could just get the job done and not have to think about it anymore. If he could just do that.
He had the cursed necklace passed through Madam Rosmerta’s hands. She gave it to some Gryffindor girl Draco only knew by sight, someone called Katie Bell.
She almost died.
Draco spent that night in the bathroom, being sick, crying, being the weak stupid idiot he’d tried not to be, knowing that if Anthony and Terry and Hermione knew, now, what he was and what he’d done, they could never forgive him. He’d reached the point of no return.
The only way was forward.
There was a ghost there who was very nice to him, but he couldn’t look at her, because she was a murdered girl, and he’d almost. He would have been responsible.
“We just have to pretend not to hear him, Ron,” he heard Hermione say on the stairs the next day.
“But he won’t stop,” Weasley was raving, like he thought he had problems. “He won’t stop talking about it and it’s not actually healthy, he’s a man obsessed—”
“We just have to ignore him,” Hermione repeated, so patient with her chosen dolt. “We pretend we’re deaf every time he starts talking about—”
They both saw him at the same time, and Weasley gave him a filthy look. Draco gave him one back with interest, and then swept on his way. He wondered what the hell they were talking about, anyway. Potter being a freak about something, clearly, which was hardly groundbreaking news.
He didn’t have time to think about Potter, anyway, he really didn’t, and so he usually forced himself to stop whenever he did.
It was familiar and sort of comforting to hate Potter, but Draco preferred not to think words like grisly murder any more, and whenever he steered away from the beaten and beloved ‘die, Potter, die’ track he had terrible thoughts about not breaking Potter’s nose, or Potter talking about Sirius Black, or the Truce That Lasted One Day, or God forbid that incident where Potter was Temporarily Deranged and Sexually Confused For Love of Cho Chang and Draco was Quite Possibly Concussed.
He tried not to think about Potter, which was hard to do when Potter was everywhere, watching for the time Draco betrayed himself, obviously, waiting for Draco to slip up so Potter could turn him in. Well, nothing new there. They’d always been enemies, and always would be.
He wished the new Potter fans were quieter, though, with Potter following him like a private eye and them following him like besotted ducklings, Draco had a constant migraine and they kept talking about mad things like how many showers Potter was taking. Draco could have gone his whole life without those mental images, but no.
One day, with that Katie Bell girl still in St Mungo’s and not even the news that the Gryffindors’ Quidditch practise had been sheer mayhem able to cheer him up, Draco broke. Anthony, who had brought him the news and looked up hopefully at him, like a dog bringing slippers or something, for some returning cheer, looked very alarmed.
“Draco, are you going to hyperventilate,” he said anxiously. “Should I get a paper bag, do you want my inhaler—”
“Don’t put your amulet anywhere near my mouth!” Draco exclaimed hastily. “I—God, I—Where’s Terry?”
What he wanted, he realized dully, curled up in a chair and thinking about nothing but cabinets, papers slipping through his fingers like his marks at school were slipping down, was some comfort. He was too weak, like Dad said. He wanted something like when he was in the infirmary and Hermione and Terry came to comfort him.
Terry’d rubbed his back. He’s never collapsed in front of Anthony, wouldn’t in front of Crabbe and Goyle, because they trusted him to be stronger and smarter than they were. But he did have Hermione and Terry, or he used to have them.
He could not go back to Hermione, but he could find Terry. Even with all he suspected, Terry would be kind.
“Er,” Anthony said. “Terry. Terry Boot?”
“Yes,” Draco said.
“Who knows?” Anthony said airily. “The prefects’ bathroom, I expect, yes, Draco, that’s where he is, the prefects’ bathroom, into which tragically you cannot get. Not having the password. Uh. Not being a prefect. Because of the unjust system of this tyrannously cruel school, like you always said. Best to stay here. Perhaps we could write my mother together, Draco. Perhaps we can get you some iron pills.”
Draco did not want Anthony’s crazed mother to feed him iron or any other sort of metal, but he did want to see Terry.
“I’ll go wait,” he said, and left to the faint, dying-duck sounds of Anthony’s protests. Anthony was a funny little man sometimes.
Draco was scared for him. He was scared for a lot of people. He wasn’t scared for Terry, Terry was a pureblood, and Terry always knew the right things to say—well, mostly—and he’d liked Draco a lot, or seemed to. Draco was frantically aware as he walked down the corridors that he was in a terribly unstable frame of mind and he should go back to Anthony and not do this, but he was doing it anyway.
He went down to the prefects’ bathroom and as he walked towards it, he saw Terry’s back walking away from the closing door.
“Wait up,” called Draco, and ran, dizzy with glad relief that it was so easy. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He caught up and saw that there were several thin dark-haired boys in school, and one of them was indeed Terry, and another was bloody Potter. He was even wearing Muggle clothes. Either Draco was the stupidest man who had ever lived, or he was too delirious with exhaustion to think.
“So sorry,” he said, and he must be in shock if he was being polite to Potter. “I thought you were Terry. I’ll—go away now.”
“Don’t go,” said Potter, and caught his wrist.
Draco realized with a sort of weird shock that Potter, for all he was thin, was pretty strong. Stronger than Draco was, because Potter spent all his time playing sports and Draco spent all his time in the library, very useful, like the library was helping him much now.
Draco felt vaguely blasphemous thinking that way, but mostly he felt panic-stricken, like Potter could read his mind and knew what had happened to Katie Bell. He tried to pull his wrist away but Potter held on tight. He’s not an Occlumens, Draco thought frantically. He’s not an Occlumens.
“Sorry I’m not Terry,” Potter said, with his mouth making a funny shape—he was mental, that’s what he was. “Only. I want to talk to you.”
I won’t tell you a thing! Draco shrieked like a hysterical girl in his mind. Jesus, maybe Potter would let him into the prefects’ bathroom so he could weep there. Again.
Trying to think about anything but death and cabinets and failure and its consequences, his thoughts scattered and fell in unexpected and terrible places. Like light on water, unfocused and then suddenly so bright and sharp it hurt to look at, Draco realized what he’d sort of known before: that the fans were onto something, that Potter was attractive.
He was fresh from a shower, clearly: black hair damp, the new annoyingly tanned skin damp too, with that damp sort of sheen about it. There were wet little bits of hair clinging to Potter’s neck and ears, his white worn T-shirt—why did Potter never have any decent clothes, Draco thought in a bid to distract himself—sticking a little to damp skin beneath, chest and shoulders. His grip on Draco’s wrist was warm and strong.
This, Draco thought with the impulse to hysterics bubbling up again, must be what madness feels like.
“Right,” Potter said, catching an even firmer hold of his wrist and stepping into Draco’s personal space. Draco enjoyed his personal space, he was fond of it, up close and personal with it, he had not invited Potter to invade.
He recalled the history lessons from Muggle Studies. His personal space was like Poland: Potter shouldn’t invade, it would mean war. Potter stepped in again, green eyes bright, intent—oh my God, Draco thought in a moment of purely selfish panic, is he going to torture information out of me?
He’d Crucio’d Aunt Bella.
Draco took a step back and into a wall, and Potter just followed him. Brilliant tactics, Draco, corner yourself, that’s genius, he told himself. He should’ve been Sorted into Hufflepuff.
Potter was talking about doing a lot of thinking over the summer in his low, rough voice. Had Potter always had a voice like that? Maybe it was the insane voices in Draco’s head talking.
“I would rather not talk,” he announced to the voices in his head, or possibly Potter.
Potter’s grip on his wrist became actually painful. “Yeah?” he said. “Too bad.”
At that moment Draco knew it was Potter because nobody besides Potter, not even the voices in Draco’s head, could be so extremely single-minded and irritating. He looked at Potter’s black-fringed, serious eyes and felt a bit light-headed, the thoughts he was thinking were so reckless and insane.
Well, he thought. Potter owed him one moment of sheer insanity. And this might put him off all the snooping.
“No, really,” he said, and grabbed a handful of the faded fabric of Potter’s shirt, twisted. “I don’t want to talk.”
He used his grip on Potter’s shirt and pulled him forward, kissed him hard.
Or that was more or less the intention, but then their glasses hit together and Draco touched his mouth against Potter’s and then there was the little clink and frankly he felt like an idiot, albeit an idiot whose heart was going too fast and breath was coming too fast. All he’d had was a glasses-clinking awkward instant of insanity.
Potter stared at him and Draco realised he was quite possibly about to die. Everyone would definitely forgive Potter for doing it: maybe they’d hide his body in the cabinet, it would be the most ironic cover-up ever.
Then Potter, so close his nose was still touching Draco’s, drew off his glasses—his glasses, leaving him defenceless and not Draco, Draco could totally sucker punch Potter right this minute—and drew Draco back against him, almost gently, mouth open and hungry against Draco’s.
Draco put an arm around Potter’s neck and kissed him back. He kissed him properly, angry and desperate and afraid and confused and this was Potter, he’d never known how to do anything half-way with Potter. What am I doing, he thought with terrible clarity somewhere in the recesses of his mind, as he kissed Potter and kissed him, leaned back against the stone wall with Potter’s warm hands up his shirt, shirt lifting so the stone and Potter’s calluses were both rough against his bare skin. He twisted one hand in Potter’s damp hair and got him closer, teeth light in his lip, face curved towards Draco’s exactly right and the kiss making fire curve sharply down in Draco’s stomach, hit the base of his spine.
Potter broke his wet mouth away to breathe and moan against Draco’s lips for a moment.
Draco had exactly one second to panic before Potter kissed his cheek, and his chin, and his jaw, and then Draco tilted his head back and Potter leaned in, his ridiculous sticking-up hair sort of rough against the underside of Draco’s chin, and bit on Draco’s neck. The bite was quick, good, tingling, and Potter’s lips were warm and trembling against Draco’s throat.
Draco, because he wasn’t used to not being on the sort of terms with people he was kissing that would make gestures appropriate, drew his hand through Potter’s silly hair and was surprised at the reaction he got: Potter pressed his face against Draco’s wrist, as if hardly anyone had ever been affectionate with him before.
Then he bit down on Draco’s neck again.
Draco made a sharp, helpless sound. Potter kissed his ear, and then said into it: “Let me—”
“What, God, I am letting you, Potter, keep up,” Draco said, deeply and very briefly annoyed. He kissed Potter’s mouth again.
Potter’s chest rose and fell, sharply, against his. “Yeah, okay, um, yeah,” he said—clearly the Chosen One wasn’t Chosen after any kind of vocabulary test. “Just, let me, I need to make sure—”
He bit the side of Draco’s jaw and Draco moaned and let his head fall back against the stone and Potter pushed his sleeve down his left arm and…
Pushed his sleeve down his left arm. To get a look at his left arm.
Draco shoved Potter back violently.
“What,” he demanded, “what the hell is wrong with you?”
He stormed off, he didn’t look back, it would take Potter a minute to put his glasses back on and Draco needed that minute for storming. When he got back to the dormitories Anthony looked at him fearfully and said: “All right, you’ve found out, I’m really sorry, I just didn’t know how to tell you about Terry and Smith, again—”
“What,” Draco bit out.
Anthony gulped. “I—need to consult my mother on this subject,” he said. “Hold that thought for tomorrow’s Owl post.”
Draco went and lay on his bed and thought of Cabinets and Potter and how his life was in irredeemable ruins around him. Terry and Smith. Well, well, well. Maybe he’d been second choice all along: nice how things worked out.
Obviously Anthony and Terry had a word, because Terry came and sat by his bed, looked down at his hands.
“It’s not that,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not like, with you. But I can, I can trust him not to—I’m really afraid for you, Draco. I’m really afraid that you’ll do something terrible.”
Draco looked at Terry’s profile, familiar and dear in the low light, and thought of Dad and everything else. It made him want to hurt things, or possibly cry again. “The hell with you,” he said, rolling in bed and turning his back. He thought of Katie Bell, and speaking into the darkness before him, continued: “How do you know I haven’t already done something terrible?”
Terry said nothing. After a while, he left Draco alone.
The next day, apparently Weasley had caught Ginny and her current boy toy kissing and was having knicker fits about her very hypothetical chastity. Ginny came and sat beside Draco and fumed.
“Just because he’s sexually retarded!” she said.
“Well, to be fair, face like that, it’s hard to find partners,” Draco murmured. “Not the poor lad’s fault. Tragic, really.”
“Don’t you talk about my brother that way!” Ginny flared.
Weasleys and their tempers, you’d think they would be ashamed to be such a cliche, but no. Draco poked uninterestedly at his porridge.
“Draco, what’s that on your neck?” Ginny asked.
Draco’s hand flew to cover it. “Er, paperweight,” he said. “Yes, Anthony, he gets—riled. He’s a terror when he’s roused, flings paperweights willy-nilly but with deadly accuracy. It is a painful subject. Let us not discuss it. Let me walk you back to your table.”
Ginny stared at him for a minute, her brown eyes worried, and then she put a hand against his back. He wondered why.
“I think you should sleep more, Draco,” she said, and he wanted to put his head in his arms and have her stroke his head a bit.
He wanted Hermione, whose compassion was all-enveloping and wrong-headed and sometimes involved actual violence, but enormous. He liked Ginny, pretty well, and she was kind to him because she’d noticed him, but she could be thoughtlessly unkind to anyone she hadn’t noticed. He wanted the way Hermione cared about everyone, even the house elves, even when she was showing it all wrong and making everyone want to strangle her with her own bushy hair.
Next to her Ginny was like a cup of water when a man wanted a well, but he was parched anyway. His mother’s weekly letter had arrived today, careful and polite and written for the censors. It began ‘my dearest Draco’ and asked him to re-think staying over Christmas.
He had to stay over Christmas. He had work to do, and no idea how to do it.
He took Ginny over to her own table. He was wearing Anthony’s Excused From Life t-shirt on purpose: he helped Ginny to a seat next to Potter, for which she gave him a grateful glance, and Potter looked at him and looked at him, and Draco deliberately showed him the white, unmarked skin inside his left arm.
He bent down and spoke into Potter’s ear.
“You think Dumbledore would let a student in who had the Dark Mark?” he said. “Be serious! Of course it’s not there, but listen up, Potter… that doesn’t prove anything. And you can’t prove anything. You were wasting your time—and you didn’t have to bloody do that!”
He gave Potter a terrific shove in the back for being a vile whore in the cause of spying for righteousness, and stalked off before Potter could talk to him.
While Potter was winning yet another Quidditch match, this time against Slytherin, Draco was cursing and weeping and hitting a cabinet. Oh, life was grand.
Anthony kept coming to Draco with news he thought might please him, since he knew Draco’s gossip fiend ways all too well.
Apparently Ron Weasley, a man too stupid to be permitted to live but Hermione’d probably want to kill him herself, was going out with Lavender Brown. They made octopuslike displays about the school and Draco caught one himself: he felt glad he’d forgotten to eat anything that day. He watched Hermione furtively from the library shelves, and she seemed furious but more or less all right.
Potter had asked Loony Lovegood to Slughorn’s dance—he was crazy, here was the proof, Draco had known it all along. Terry and Zacharias Smith were still creeping about, and Ginny was starting to get tired of Dean Thomas because of all the qualities that made him, more or less, Not Harry Potter. Pansy Parkinson was still gloriously on the market and would attend to Anthony’s wooing one fine day.
“Oh really,” Draco said with enormous scepticism. “Well, I—I need to go to… study.”
“You can study here,” Anthony offered. “I’ll be quiet, I’m writing Christmas cards, a lot of people are at the party.”
“I need to get a—thing,” Draco said.
He knew perfectly well a lot of people were at the party, which meant this was an ideal time to go and work on the Cabinet.
Or it was an ideal time if you did not happen to be Draco Malfoy, born under a cloud of ill omen, and Filch caught you sneaking around, utterly and cruelly disbelieved your brilliant lie about being invited to Slughorn’s party, and dragged you by your ear in front of all your professors, chosen classmates and of course the Chosen One himself, Harry Potter.
Potter was standing beside Loony and Professor Wobbly Bottom, laughing at something, clearly having the time of his life.
“So I wasn’t invited,” Draco snapped. Filch could take him away to the dungeons for all he cared, as long as he took him away from Potter. “I was trying to gatecrash, happy?”
“Let him stay,” Potter said suddenly.
God, he was now an object of charity for the Gracious Chosen One, on top of everything else, Draco thought savagely, as Professor Wobbly Bottom rushed genially to comply with every wish of his darling Potter’s heart. He stood there, avoiding Potter’s rude staring, and tried to use Occlumency to kill Potter with his mind.
“I’d like a word with you, Draco,” said Professor Snape.
Draco was filled with extreme dismay. He’d been managing to steer clear of Professor Snape all year, since Mother had been egging him on to interfere with Draco’s plans and Aunt Bella had warned him. He didn’t need this, on top of everything else. God, his head was aching, he was bone weary.
“I want to talk to him first,” Potter snapped. Potter’s disrespect to authority figures was yet another sign that he’d been badly brought up.
“Aren’t I the popular one,” Draco drawled. “I don’t know, I do declare, my dance card is almost filled right up, perhaps I could squeeze one of you in for the waltz—”
Potter grabbed his wrist and Draco went still. Wrist-grabbing had not gone well last time: Draco wasn’t going to spill any information, Potter could bloody well give it up. He wished he’d eaten today, instead of spending lunchtime with the Cabinet, composing an Owl to his father.
He couldn’t send any Owls and they were always the same anyway: I’m sorry I disappointed you, I’m trying harder now. It’s still not enough: I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“Don’t,” Draco said, and tried to wrench his wrist unobtrusively away.
Potter held on. “Don’t do this,” he said. “What. What are you doing?”
“Why, Potter, I think if I told you, it might not be a secret,” Draco explained, and tried to twist his wrist away again.
He wouldn’t look at Potter, so he looked at the other people, at the brilliant lights and the party food, at everyone staring curiously at the boys who were making a scene. Draco was too tired for this, too angry, too ready to snap.
“No,” said Potter. “I mean, what are you doing to yourself?”
Nights up thinking about Katie Bell, about Dad, about what the Dark Lord had promised their family—death or glory, no in betweens, not for any of them. Nights up with the Cabinet, and nobody to talk to or lean on, nobody at all, and how it didn’t seem to matter sometimes, and then it all mattered too much for anything else to matter ever again.
Maybe he might, he should eat or sleep more. He remembered catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror recently and being vaguely stunned, horror slipping through his fingers.
“You look—terrible,” Potter told him, quietly.
Resentment burned, dull in the hollow pit of his stomach, at that. Of course he looked terrible, he was standing about looking terrible at some party he hadn’t been invited to while everyone else had a good time and Draco was alone and he didn’t know how to protect anybody or solve anything, and Potter carried on meanwhile with his charmed, charmed life.
“Sorry I’m not pretty enough for you,” Draco responded sharply. “Let go, Potter.”
“That’s not,” Potter said, and cleared his throat. It sounded painful, which was strange: Draco couldn’t see what Potter might have to feel bad about. “That’s not what I meant.”
His grip went gentle and that made Draco look up, startled. He hadn’t had much gentleness, these past few months, it felt strange, and of course it was strange coming from Potter. What was he supposed to do with that?
He looked at Potter and the world turned over and over. He felt sick and changed: incredulous and sick again. He’d spent half his life wanting to hurt Potter, as badly as he possibly could, planning detailed scenarios of the same. He’d never planned anything like this. He took it back. He didn’t want it after all.
“It’s just,” Potter said, his voice wavering a fraction. “You’re so thin.”
“Leave me alone,” Draco snarled, and pulled his wrist free of Potter’s grasp at last. “I can’t—I can’t.”
He stopped, as if he’d forgotten what it meant to be free to move, and then he was in motion again, away from Potter and Professor Snape and anyone else who might try to stop him doing what he couldn’t do anyway, what he had to do somehow.
“My dear boy,” Professor Slughorn said, eyes moving between them. “I had no idea—you must come to my next little gathering, both of you, naturally—”
“Leave me alone!” Draco repeated, shouting at both of them, shouting at the whole room.
He had to go, he thought even as he was going, running, from all of them towards the Cabinet which was his family’s only hope. He shoved people away, out of his path, desperate to get away from all the laughing crowd and the shining lights and Professor Snape’s stern face and Harry Potter, Harry Potter of all people, looking at Draco as if Draco was breaking his heart.