Draco came stumbling from the Christmas party to find Anthony sitting alone in the boys’ dormitory. He looked pleased when Draco entered the room, and then saw Draco’s face and fetched him a chair as if his inhaler amulet gave him the power to read minds. Draco collapsed into it thankfully.
“Where’ve you been all night?” Anthony inquired.
“Crashed Slughorn’s party,” Draco lied promptly.
“Was it brilliant?” Anthony asked in an excited tone. “Do Hermione and Blaise Zabini do dark sexual spells like the Hufflepuffs say?”
“I will not have you smirching Hermione’s reputation,” Draco said indignantly. “The worst thing you can accuse her of is having an unfortunate freckle fetish. She is more to be pitied than blamed.”
“Did Harry really go to the party with Luna Lovegood?” Anthony pursued, and on Draco’s nod looked awed. “Wow, I don’t dare talk to her in case she brings up those Snorkacks again. Truly, he is the valiant Chosen One.”
Draco would really have appreciated it if Anthony could have refrained from mentioning Potter’s name. He actually felt ill when he thought of how Potter had looked at the party. More ill than usual.
He had—things to do. He couldn’t think about it now.
“Draco, are you feeling all right?” Anthony asked, and felt his forehead. “D’you want an iron pill?”
“I’ve told you time and again, Anthony, I am not going to take that kind of risk,” Draco said. “I could break all my teeth on that metal. Where is everyone?”
“Well, Terry’s—you know,” Anthony said awkwardly, and Draco felt too tired to even hate Zacharias Smith. “And Michael’s with Cho, and I think Kevin—well, you know, the Christmas season can be lonely, Draco, let’s not be too quick to judge, but I think I saw him sneaking up to the teachers’ quarters with a fresh bottle of sherry.”
Draco absorbed this in silence for a moment, and then said at length, “You don’t need Divination to know that Entwistle is a very disturbed man.”
“Well… I’m sort of glad they’re all gone,” Anthony said. “It gives us a chance to talk. You’ve just—been acting very odd lately, Draco.”
Oh God, no, Draco thought desperately, not tonight of all nights, not when Potter had just—looked at him, he was doing this for everyone, for Anthony too, because Aunt Bella’d said the only way Mudbloods would be spared was if they had someone to speak up for him, but Draco couldn’t, couldn’t tell him now. He couldn’t look at Anthony and tell him.
He could hardly hear Anthony through his panic, as if he was drowning and his ears were filling and his mouth was filling, he couldn’t hear or speak.
Anthony finished detailing the particulars of Draco’s strange behaviour and said, “So I concluded, after the break-up with Terry and all, you’ve become a self-loathing homosexual and, obviously, an anorexic.”
Draco stared at him. “Are you insane?”
“Mother and I agree that all the evidence points that way,” Anthony informed him. “I know, Draco, it’s a common misconception that the disease is exclusive to women. Don’t worry, though. You’re not alone in this. The first step is to admit that you have a problem. Tell me the truth, Draco: do you hate your body?”
“No!” Draco squawked.
“You’re in denial, then, that’s okay too,” Anthony said. “I got a pamphlet. Denial is very common. Er. I’m to help you get over your body issues and admit your own very human weakness.”
“Have you shown Crabbe and Goyle this pamphlet?” Draco asked, touched by cold fear. “Don’t show Crabbe and Goyle this pamphlet.”
Anthony moved his chair to touch Draco’s.
“Er,” he said. “No. Er. Okay, Draco, you are a dear friend, and your sexuality does not make you, whatever you may think, unworthy of love.”
“Anthony, I really don’t hate my body,” said Draco. “Really. I swear. I’m quite attached to it.”
“I wish,” Anthony ploughed on, “to show you that there are people who care for you and are in no way repelled by you. Er. So. You may kiss me, if you like.”
Draco sat petrified by astonishment, staring at Anthony’s earnest face in the darkness. Anthony looked nerved for a homosexual leap at any moment.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Anthony said bravely. “But! I want to say, Draco, I would not feel comfortable with any… wandering hands.”
“Anthony, I thank you,” Draco said as seriously as he could. “You are a true friend. But I’m all right for kissing just now, honestly.”
“Oh,” said Anthony, almost collapsing with relief. “Oh, well, thank God for that. My next thought was this,” he went on, cheering up. “I have decided to find you a boyfriend, to help with your self-esteem issues and also contribute to your recovery with positive physical reinforcement. My first thoughts were of Justin Finch-Fletchley, who as you may know has taken up quilting, or Theodore Nott, who was seen the other day discussing a serial romance featured in Witch Weekly, but then I struck on a better plan. You may think it’s crazy, Draco, but hear me out!”
Draco waited in dread to hear about Professor Firenze’s enormous capabilities of pleasing a man.
“Harry Potter!” Anthony announced triumphantly. “Cho said she definitely got that vibe from him. And he does kind of eye our table and turn up in the library a lot. I don’t know, Draco, I know you have a holy hatred for him and everything, but I think you should investigate the possibility. You could, like, use him for his body.”
Draco started to laugh, partly because Anthony was insane and partly because his life was surreal and it hurt and he didn’t want to cry about it in bathrooms again. He laughed, and laughed, until it became a little hysterical, and then he kept laughing until he found it hard to breathe.
Anthony helplessly offered him his amulet.
“I still don’t see why it was so funny,” Anthony complained the next morning, which was the morning everyone but Draco was going home for Christmas.
Anthony had insisted, with a terrifying light in his eyes, that he wanted to see Draco eat a hearty breakfast, so they were shoving through the crowds of girls who had planted themselves under the mistletoe waiting for their last chance with Harry Potter.
“Coming through,” Draco said, administering a judicious push in the back. Anthony followed in his wake, since he wasn’t vicious with his elbows like Draco. “Can’t the cult of the Chosen One, I don’t know, commit ritual suicide or something? Out of my way, I don’t care how tall he got over the summer, I want my porridge!”
“Malfoy!”
“Hide me,” Draco said urgently. “Anthony, if you ever loved me at all—”
“Hi, Harry!” Anthony said brightly. “Over here! Nice to see you! How are you? So, you’re still single, aren’t you?”
“I hate you,” Draco muttered. “I’ve always hated you. I just wanted you to know.”
Potter shambled through the crowds of girls as if they were so much mist and he, frankly, had no idea why the mystifying mist was there or what it could possibly want.
You know, the clues had all been there for a long time. Draco probably should have known.
“I—yeah,” Potter said. “Yeah, I am. Hi, Malfoy.”
There was a pause.
“Hi, Anthony,” Potter added.
He was hopeless, hopeless and unbelievable, Draco should have withered him with a look of scorn and passed on his way. Only he found himself staring at the floor and not able to look at him at all. Draco was enraged with himself for being such a complete pathetic idiot.
“Hi, Harry!” Anthony said again.
“Yeah, hi, Anthony,” said Potter.
“Hi, Potter,” Draco muttered in order to end the madness, and stared at the floor some more.
“Oh, look,” Anthony said ingenuously. “Mistletoe!”
“I don’t really like you that way, Anthony,” Potter said gruffly. “Uh. Malfoy. Look, I’m going away—to the Weasleys’, you know, because, um, it’s Christmas—and I wanted to, before I went—”
“Anthony, I need to go eat! At once!” Draco said imperiously. “I feel very faint. Faint with the hunger pangs,” he added out of sheer shameless desperation, and actually now he came to think about it, it was true.
“I’m sorry, Harry, we must go. Let us continue this fascinating conversation later!” said Anthony.
“Yeah, you should—eat,” Potter said. Only the warning bells in Draco’s head saved him: he looked up, saw Potter was reaching out, and stepped smartly away using Anthony as a human shield. Unfortunately then he was looking at Potter. “Happy Christmas,” Potter said. “Don’t—do anything you might regret.”
“I have to go,” Draco told him, and hauled Anthony off to the Ravenclaw table.
Potter was ridiculous, ridiculous, he could barely get out words, and he was going to die. And Draco had always hated him. And he should want him to die.
Once at the table, Draco had to feebly resist Anthony’s attempts to feed him. Terry joined in since apparently it was okay to encourage Draco to eat, though Terry preferred boyfriends who were, who hadn’t almost killed Katie Bell.
Yes, well, put that way, it was understandable.
Draco put down his spoon. His reverie was interrupted by a girl with dark hair and a prominent chin, who leaned over and grabbed the front of his robes.
“You,” she said. “Do you know how to make a Polyjuice Potion?”
“Unhand me!” Draco ordered in ringing tones.
She did not seem to hear. “No matter,” she informed him, “that part should be easy enough.” She fixed him with a bright smile. “My name’s Romilda Vane,” she said. “I want to buy a lock of your hair.”
For a Potion? Draco had always felt he had an interesting and individual face, but really, wanting to wear it was going a little far.
“You must be mad,” he said flatly.
Romilda Vane leaned across the table with a frightening glint in her eye. “I’ll pay good money.”
“I am independently wealthy, thank you,” Draco sniffed. “Now run along.”
God preserve him from Gryffindors.
“Have some lovely custard,” Anthony coaxed.
“Anthony,” Draco said, “it is breakfast time.”
“Well, I thought you might fancy some custard,” Anthony wheedled. “It’s lovely, you know.”
Terry buttered him a piece of toast.
Draco missed them both when they were gone and he had nothing but the Cabinet, hours and hours of working on it and not getting it right, and trying not to think about anything else. He had a mission: he had something to concentrate on, he didn’t have to think about anything else.
The only real break was a trip to Hogsmeade, where he met Aunt Bella. At first it was a great relief to see her: she wasn’t Fenrir, most importantly, and she kissed Draco on his aching brow and gave him a Christmas present.
It was a tiny guillotine.
“Portable, you know,” she said. “And you can just shrink the Muggles and carry them about with you and take out the whole set when you’re bored!”
“Thank you,” Draco told her. “I’m very touched.”
So was she, but he was too tactful to mention it. They sat together in the pub and she bought him a Butterbeer.
“How’s Mum?” Draco asked.
“Oh, well enough,” Aunt Bella said vaguely. “Worried about you.” Her fine black eyes fell on Draco’s face. “You do look a little ill,” she said, and leaned over the table and kissed Draco again. “My little nephew,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Draco said hopelessly.
“None of this suffering matters,” Aunt Bella went on in an encouraging tone. “For soon the Dark Lord will triumph. Then he will make us all immortal and we will crush the world beneath our feet. Our future is glorious, Draco!”
“It sounds nice,” Draco answered, to be polite.
Then Aunt Bella sat with him and asked him how the plan was progressing and didn’t seem terribly disappointed that it was not yet successful. She recounted the failure of several of the Dark Lord’s darkly ingenious plans to Draco in what seemed like an attempt to cheer him up.
She was truly mad.
After a couple of hours, Draco said: “Which plans actually worked?”
“Well,” Aunt Bella answered. “That plan of the Dark Lord’s to resurrect himself in his present darkly wondrous form and kill Harry Potter was sheer brilliance.”
“But,” Draco pointed out. “Potter’s not dead.”
Aunt Bella looked shifty. “It nearly worked,” she told him. “It was a moral victory.”
Draco’s headache got worse.
When he had to leave, he hugged her and she held him back, and that was nice, and everything was hopeless, and afterwards he trailed into the bathroom where he knew that ghost was, and he sat in it and cried, once again.
By the time Potter got back from Christmas Draco had grimly thought that one out, at least. After all, it was common knowledge that Terry and Zacharias Smith were secretly seeing each other, and Justin’s penchant for quilting aside, nobody else really knew about anyone but Draco.
So obviously, who else was there for Potter to pursue, whatever, it was just one of those things, Draco wasn’t going to think any more about it.
There wasn’t anyone else, that was all it was. It didn’t matter. Potter didn’t even actually like him, he’d proven that often enough. Or—said it, or implied it, or something.
Draco found it particularly easy to hate Potter while he was acing Potions with such perfect ease and bezoar stones and Slughorn’s heaping praises, while Draco found himself covered in cat sick at the end of one lesson. He was so furious with Potter, who’d never been any good at Potions before, who seemed bent on rubbing it in that he’d be getting all the breaks, thank you very much.
He saw Hermione looking furious in Potions, too, and wanted to sit with her and have a discussion on the importance of application in academics so badly that he almost vomited all over the cat vomit on his robes.
He shoved past Potter that day with the best cold sneer and disdainful glare over his glasses he’d ever managed to muster. He was doing fine.
Only ignoring Potter only seemed to make him worse: he kept staring, he was always in the library hovering near Draco’s favourite shelves, Draco was sure people weren’t meant to be stalked by celebrities and he had enough to worry about without trying to work out whether Potter wanted to send him to Azkaban or take him to Hogsmeade.
His father had been in Azkaban for over six months, and the cabinet wasn’t working. Draco had been blind with desperation enough to send out poison, as he’d sent out the cursed necklace, and that had failed too.
Then word came back that Ron Weasley had been poisoned by some mead, and almost died.
It was Katie Bell all over again, and Draco actually waylayed Weasley’s idiot girlfriend to get the story, and it had been so close, and if Potter hadn’t been near a bezoar stone—to think he’d almost hated Potter for knowing about bezoar stones.
Ron Weasley. Draco’d never liked him. But he was Ginny’s brother, and Hermione loved him, and if Potter knew what Draco had done, now, he’d hate him, really hate him, and Draco would deserve it.
Only Lord Voldemort had said that he might write the entire Malfoy clan off as a dead loss.
Draco had to be able to kill, he had to be able to do it. He went to the bathroom of the dead girl and he wondered who had murdered her, and if they had ever been as sorry as he was, as afraid, or as ashamed.
Then Crabbe had to have a crisis about his sexual identity.
“I want to help you, Malfoy,” he said, speaking in a discreet tone because they’d already been told off by McGonagal. “I honestly do. But so far you just look sick and yesterday Goyle asked me which he thought was his nicest pinafore—we have pinafores in our wardrobes, Nott is starting to ask all sorts of personal questions—How long is this going to last?”
“I don’t know how much longer, all right? It’s taking longer than I thought it would!” Draco exclaimed. God, it would never be done, and he couldn’t let Crabbe be any more complicit than he already was, and he snapped before Crabbe could ask, “Look, it’s none of your business what I’m doing, Crabbe, you and Goyle just do as you’re told and keep a lookout!”
“I tell my friends what I’m up to, if I want them to keep a lookout for me,” Potter said quietly into Draco’s ear.
Draco’s heart almost exploded in his chest from guilt and fear—how long had Potter been there, why was he always there?—but before he could do anything they were all called to order by the Apparition Instructor.
Potter’s best efforts at following Draco around at school all day were curtailed by one thing, though. Blessed, blessed Quidditch matches.
On the day when Gryffindor played Hufflepuff, Draco went towards the castle with Crabbe and Goyle, mutinous but disguised, behind him, and he knew he’d have hours and hours to try and get it right, blissful uninterrupted hours.
Naturally he ran into Potter at once. He directed a hollow and unamused laugh at the mocking heavens.
“Where’re you,” Potter said, almost dropping his Firebolt. He was a wreck, he even looked dishevelled in his Quidditch robes before he played the matches. “Where’re you going?”
God, Quidditch. Draco had played Quidditch when he was a kid. He’d loved it, he remembered distantly, as if it had all happened in a different life.
He sneered. “Yeah, I’m really going to tell you, because it’s your business, Potter. You’d better hurry up, they’ll be waiting for the Chosen Captain—the Boy Who Scored—whatever they call you these days—”
Goyle laughed, and then all laughter in this world was cut short.
Potter scowled darkly. “What’re you doing going up to the castle all alone with a pair of girlfriends?”
Goyle squawked with outrage. “Malfoy!” he said. “He just, he just cast aspersions on our maiden virtue! Beat him up!”
“Uh,” said Potter. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“You cad!” exclaimed Goyle.
Crabbe might be onto something, with how Goyle was being affected by this.
“Actually, we’re, going up for tea and a chat,” Draco informed Potter, improvising madly. “You know how I’m, er, of a certain persuasion, and these are my… hags. Yes, hags, and what we do is, we go to tea and we talk about—boys. It’s um. Liberating for me. Excuse me, I need to be liberated, you need to go greet your adoring audience, we both have lives to lead—”
Potter looked at Draco searchingly, and then straightened his shoulders. “Right,” he said. “Okay. Fine. I’ll come too.”
“You can’t come too,” Draco reminded him. “There’s a match on. That’s why you’re wearing the special clothing and carrying the broom. As I understand, it flies in the air, and the fans all scream, and you catch this pretty ball with wings on it—”
“I’m getting bored with Quidditch,” defiantly uttered Potter, Captain of the Gryffindor team and holder of a record (as Draco knew purely by chance, purely by chance) on how many times he’d taken out Quidditch Through the Ages. “I’ll come and talk about. Um.”
“Are you—liberated too, then?” Crabbe piped up. “Oh my God! Wait’ll I tell Pansy!”
Potter looked briefly diverted. “Who’re you?”
“Ah,” Crabbe said. “Ah. Ah. My name is—Vincentina.”
“That’s a nice name,” Potter said abstractedly.
“You may call me Elspeth Moonfeather,” announced Goyle. “For! That is what my name is.”
“Okay,” Potter said. They were all lucky Potter even had trouble with the teachers’ names, Draco reflected with dull despair. He felt much the same emotion when Potter went deep red under his tan and attempted to answer Crabbe’s question. “And. Uh. Yes. Maybe. I’ve—I think so, I’ve had—thoughts.”
“How dare you talk in that unbridled way in front of unspoiled young girls,” hissed Draco, who could feel himself becoming a bit unhinged.
Potter’s neck was all red and he was walking away from Quidditch, his basic raison d’etre, and the world had gone mad and Draco with it.
“Or perhaps,” he said, in maddened defeat, “Now I come to think of it, perhaps school spirit moves me to attend the game. Yes. Yes, come, Vincentina, come… Elspeth, to the stands! Potter, I wish you—” He stopped and brought himself down to sanity. “I hope you get knocked off your broom,” he snapped, and stormed away leaving Potter behind him.
Then Potter did get knocked off his broom.
Anthony was just saying, “Where do you lovely ladies come from?” and Crabbe replied firmly: “We are exchange students,” and Goyle added brightly, “We are from the New World! We wish to learn all about the fine wizarding traditions of England!”
And Potter was just flying, looking a little annoyed about the substitute Keeper—because Weasley couldn’t play, because Draco had almost killed him—and then the bloody idiot incompetent (clearly, a born Gryffindor) Keeper McLaggen hit him in the head with a Bludger.
It made a sickening sound. Potter dropped like a stone.
Draco was on his feet. “Oh my God!” he said. “Is he all right? Can anyone see?”
Terry looked at him oddly. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Draco said automatically, still on his feet. God, stupid Potter with his stupid stalking and his stupid inability to talk and his stupid crazy stubbornness and they’d had a truce, once, for exactly one day in fifth year, and couldn’t he keep his stupid fat head out of danger for one minute?
Terry kept looking at him, with the shrewd look Draco knew so well and which Terry had seemed afraid to turn on Draco this year. “So it’s,” he began, and sounded uncertain. “Is it—like that?”
“No!” Draco answered violently. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he added belatedly, and then in a cold voice: “Not that it’s any of your business if it was. You made it not your business. Remember?”
That got Terry to look away. Draco was glad, even if he felt bad making Terry upset: it wasn’t that Draco blamed him. Terry had it right, Terry had made the sensible decision, Terry’d got away from the boy who was going to do something terrible.
Draco couldn’t have made the sensible decision, in his place, but obviously Terry had morals and things, Terry would’ve been horrified and sickened if he knew half of what Draco had already done.
Anthony turned to them and said: “It’s just a concussion, they’re taking Potter to the hospital wing!”
Draco felt absurdly relieved, considering that it didn’t matter at all. Draco still had to kill someone. Potter was still going to die.
“I think I’m going crazy,” Draco said a week later. “I keep hallucinating house elves. I see them out of the corner of my eye, and then… and then they’re not there.”
“Hmm,” Anthony answered, which was not the reassurance Draco had hoped for. “You know, that Elspeth would be very attractive if she was a little older,” he went on dreamily. “If only I could find her again. I like a lady with mystery. I like the chase!”
“Trust me,” Draco told him. “She’s all wrong for you.”
They were walking back from last class to the Ravenclaw tower, and Draco bit his lip as he tried to explain why he was worried.
“It’s not that I’m surprised I’m having hallucinations,” he said. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and I’ve always been—”
“A screaming spaz of a man,” Anthony supplied.
“A little high-strung,” Draco corrected coldly. “It’s just I don’t know what I may hallucinate next. I mean, house elves, that’s weird, I wouldn’t mind a nice hallucination—”
“Like dancing girls or dancing boys,” Anthony suggested.
“Exactly!” said Draco. “But not, um, dancing house elves.” They paused to consider this picture for a moment. “I’m very upset,” Draco said at length. “If I see dancing house elves, I shall.” He stopped. “I shall have the vapours.”
“You’re so manly, Draco.”
“Oh, what about you?” Draco shot back amiably. “Willing to compromise your sexual preferences out of friendship, that’s Hufflepuffian, that is, you’re as manly as Justin Finch-Fletchley—”
“Take that back!” Anthony said, hitting him with his schoolbag. Draco winced a little: Ravenclaw schoolbags were no joke. “Well, we all know you wouldn’t make a Gryffindor,” Anthony proceeded.
“God forbid!”
“I mean, you probably wouldn’t be hallucinating house elves if you were getting it daily and nightly and ever so rightly,” Anthony said. He talked like this sometimes because of the pernicious influence of Muggle television shows, Draco just knew it. “I told you that you should make a pass at Harry.” He sighed elaborately. “I put it all down to your poor self-esteem.”
Draco hit him with his own bag, which besides books had screws and bolts and things in it for the Cabinet, and was made happy by Anthony’s yelp of pain.
“For the last time, Goldstein, I do not hate my body!”
“You have been losing your looks, such as they were,” Anthony went on blithely, as Draco belaboured him with blows. “I mean, maybe you’re right, people who look like they’ve got the consumption couldn’t bag the Chosen One—”
Draco hit him over the head. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, I could too. I could have Potter anytime I wanted—”
“Uh,” Anthony said, stopping dead. Draco’s bag caught him on the ear. “Ow,” he added. “What, do you have, like, tools in there, Draco?” he asked, still staring ahead.
Draco had not needed Potter’s presence at this point in his life. He was sorry for complaining about the house elf hallucinations, sorry, sorry. He wanted them back. He would make that trade.
“Hi,” said Potter, who looked flushed from a sprint, Draco thought mordantly, from whatever his last class had been (all right, Defence against the Dark Arts, but shut up, brain!) to someplace conveniently near Ravenclaw. “I just happened to be—passing by,” Potter added, as if he was fooling anyone. “Around.”
Draco was practically being waylayed; if you thought about it logically, Potter was no better than a highwayman.
“Oh is that the time?” Anthony asked, looking at a blank and clockless wall. “I must away, I have an appointment with—Pansy Parkinson! Yes, we have a rendez-vous.”
“You wish!” Draco yelled after his treacherous retreating back.
God, he had stuff for the Cabinet in his bag, and nobody but Potter was here, Potter could grab it and search through it, God. Not to mention what he’d said—this karma of always being humiliated in front of Potter, Draco thought wildly. It could let up while he was trying not to die of stress.
“Right,” he said, fixing his gaze on a point beyond Potter’s ear. “I, er, I was just joking. Well! You know me, always—full of japes…” He found his eyes moving and firmly repositioned them: past Potter, don’t look at him. “A merry jokester!” he added. “Ahahaha. I have to go.”
“No! Can’t you just,” Potter stopped, possibly because his voice had cracked. Draco sneaked a look at him: normally, Potter had no problem being loud, whatever other difficulties advanced conversation had for him. Potter met his eyes and said more quietly, “It’s really humiliating, running after you everywhere.”
Draco’s mouth was dry: he shifted his bag on his shoulders. “Then,” he said. “Then—stop.”
“I have to,” Potter said. “I can’t help it.” He moved forward an inch: Draco saw his hands were in fists. “I’m not stupid, Malfoy,” he told him tightly. “I know you’re up to something. I know you were angry and—and upset when your dad was put away, I was so—I was so angry after Sirius died, but you have to—”
“How long had you known the man?” Draco yelled at him, furious suddenly because—because how dare Potter, comparing himself when there was no comparison and—and sending out confusing signals, damn it! “Wasn’t he a prisoner practically your whole life? It’s not the same!”
“I’m trying here!” Potter shouted back. “It’s not like you even got on well with your dad, Hermione told us—”
Draco remembered, of course, always and now: how Dad had never looked at him the same since he’d been Sorted wrong, how Draco had been nearly resigned to a life with Dad mostly cut out, but he was still Dad and he was still in prison. He had nobody else to help him.
“I loved him!” he screamed, and then wanted to bite out his tongue. “I mean, I love him,” he corrected himself, the word scraping in his throat. “I always did. I do.”
“I know that,” Potter ground out. “But you’re not like him. And you don’t have to—I want to find out what you’re doing,” he said rapidly. “And I want to, I want to stop you doing anything stupid, I want you to understand that you can’t do this, and I want.” He stopped and swallowed. “I want.”
Draco looked at him, green eyes in the shadows and face set. He was blushing again and he did look humiliated, Draco thought distantly, how amazing and impossible, but he also looked even more determined than usual.
“You can, you know,” Potter said, voice shadowed as his eyes. “Have me. Anytime you want.”
Draco couldn’t help himself. He stepped forward before he even had time to think about it, stepped towards Potter and smacked his stupid head.
“I think you must actually be the stupidest person alive,” he exclaimed. “I—God, do you, what’s the matter with you, do you know what I could do with—I could—you know I’m doing something, you know I’m mixed up with, with Voldemort and you say something like that.
You could really die, Potter!” He’d almost killed two people already, he thought, trembling and thinking about death, God, he didn’t want to die. “Do you,” he said. “Do you want to die?”
“No,” Potter answered, smiling at him faintly—he was mad past house elf hallucinations, past Draco’s wildest lunatic dreams. “So, um, thanks for warning me.”
This called for drastic measures.
Draco advanced. “So,” he said. “I can have you anytime I want, can I? That’s—interesting.” Potter looked at his mouth: clearly a cunning ploy on his part, Draco refused to be distracted! “I have this big, dark plan,” Draco went on. “It’s—large and full of darkness. I could be here to kill you for Voldemort. Who, P.S., in case you’d forgotten, killed your parents. I could very well have had something to do with the poisoning of your friend—”
“Did you?” Potter demanded. “Who were you trying to get to—”
“I’m talking now, Potter! So I can carry on all of this evil plotting, and you know, if I should happen to get bored, need a little restful amusement, I can have you anytime I want! Is that it? Or is it, why yes certainly, anytime you want, as long as you betray your father and your whole family and never have them speak to you again presuming they survive—which they wouldn’t—and eventually, probably after you run off with some Beauxbatons boy, I get hunted down and killed by the Dark Lord! That kind of anytime you want? Forgive me, Potter, if I am something less than tempted!”
It struck Draco that he was awfully close to Potter for someone who was something less than tempted, so he shoved Potter back and said viciously, “You’re so full of shit,” and then ran.
He got to his house and slammed the door shut after him, leaned against it, in full possession of the fact that Potter didn’t have the password and couldn’t get him here.
It was all such a mess, and he was so tired. When he went up to his dormitory he saw himself in a mirror and his skin actually had a greyish tinge. Clearly, Potter was such an enormous Gryffindor that what turned him on was a freaking challenge. He was obviously out of his mind.
Draco hallucinated arguing house elves, all night long.
Potter found out about the Room of Requirement.
He came twice. Once Draco heard him swear and went still, and stayed still while Potter said things in a low, frantic voice like ‘I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you’. Which, frankly, sounded a little obscene even though Draco was too panicked to be amused by it.
He just sat there and put down his tools, rested his cheek against the wall, and waited for Potter to go away and stop talking on the other side.
The second time, he’d just received a letter from his mother and he was reading it while he worked on the Cabinet.
It said:
My darling Draco,
I write to tell you something that I think you should know. Your Aunt Andromeda is not dead.
She married a Mudblood and they had a child who is now grown-up and an Auror. I saw her once, on a raid of the Manor, and she called me Aunt Narcissa. At the time I was angry.
Andromeda and I were very close. I have been angry for a very long time.
Draco, nothing in the world means as much to me as you do. There are people who have split off from our traditions and survived. I think your Aunt Andromeda is happy. I would like, I think, to talk to her again and find out.
You have friends who are not all from our way of life. You have, no matter what you decide to do, a loving mother.
Your Aunt Andromeda is not dead, and she never has been dead to me.
Yours, with all my love,
Narcissa Malfoy
Draco finished reading the letter just when the heard the clash of Goyle’s dropped scales and a scream. He froze for a moment, and then before Potter could start to speak Draco picked up his tools and grimly got back to work on the Cabinet.
Potter might have wanted to forget: even his mother might have wanted to forget.
So Aunt Andromeda wasn’t dead. Neither was his father, and even if everyone else did, Draco would never give up on him.
Draco worked into the night, until he was aching and swaying, and then he made himself check on Goyle before he went to bed.
“Harry Potter hit on me!” Goyle declared in an anguished whisper. “I knew those robes were too form-fitting. I looked like a loose woman! They’ll say I led him on.”
Draco stared and said, “Get ahold of yourself, man.”
The Cabinet, impossibly, seemed to get more impossible to fix every day. It should have been simple—a fluid combination of easy Muggle repair and some spells—Draco knew how to fix bones, he should be able to fix a cabinet!
He even spent hours sanding all the wood to make the transition smoother, but it was just a cabinet, and Draco was left sweating and limp and in despair. When Anthony and Terry tried to force dinner on him that day he snarled at them until they both looked scared.
They didn’t let him try to get his Apparition license because he was too young. He felt like a not very sprightly two hundred year old.
He felt like an embittered and not very sprightly two hundred year old when he and Potter and Ernie McMillan, Draco’s least favourite Hufflepuff, had to sit in class with Slughorn and watch him fawn on Potter and suggest making hilarious joke potions.
Draco wasn’t aware that there was an exam called ‘How To Be a Weasley Twin’ featured in the NEWTs.
“And your Hiccoughing Solution,” Slughorn went on, sweeping over to Draco’s side of the room.
Draco glanced at the stuff: it was passable, he supposed. He’d been thinking about the Vanishing Cabinet and trying to fight off a migraine, if Slughorn wanted his attention he might try teaching actual classes. God, he missed Professor Snape in here, the Potions classroom was being desecrated.
“It’s superb, Draco!” Slughorn went on, stroking Draco’s sleeve in a distressing and inappropriate caress. “But I suppose our talented boy’s been giving you some tips, ahahaha!”
It took a moment to sink in that Slughorn was actually implying that Draco needed Potter’s help in class.
“That,” Draco said between clenched teeth, “is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“You’re a funny lad!” Slughorn slapped him on the shoulder. Then he peered into Draco’s face. “My boy, you look very peaky. I know Gryffindors, well, traditionally they have a lot of stamina, but you really mustn’t let him keep you up at all hours of the night.”
Across the room, Potter looked like he wanted to die of mortification. That was the only bright spot on Draco’s life.
“At about the point you said ‘Gryffindors traditionally have a lot of stamina’,” he informed Slughorn distantly, “I vomited a little in my mouth.”
Draco got out of that room about as fast as humanly possible, closely followed by Ernie McMillan, who looked panicked about being the only student in the classroom who Slughorn thought was romantically available.
Draco actually walked instead of running from class as usual, because he was tired and Potter looked like he was going to be in the room with Slughorn for a while. Given that Potter had recently hit on a twelve year old girl and now he apparently wanted Slughorn to taste his potion, Draco could feel a complex about himself coming on.
Walking was a mistake, since Potter caught up with him before he even got out of the dungeons.
“Sorry about that,” he said, still red. “But, I mean, he was right. You don’t look—”
Potter stopped. Draco wearily supposed the mystery was solved now: the list of Potter’s turn-ons included child molestation, morbid obesity and people who looked like they were dying of TB.
Potter reached out and sort of clumsily touched Draco’s hair. Draco would have violently protested this unwarranted intimacy if it had not occurred to him that Potter was exactly copying the gesture Draco had made, that time outside the prefect’s bathroom.
God, God. Potter was hopeless, he was like a robot trying to copy human behaviour, no wonder he’d been such a ruin with Cho, the Muggles hadn’t hugged him or something and now he was broken. And he was definitely going to die. Draco’s throat felt all closed up.
Potter continued to toy with his hair with a sort of determined and horribly awkward tenderness. He said, “You need to take better care of yourself.”
Potter’s eyes continued to be very green, Draco’s mind rambled hysterically. If he and Voldemort stood beside each other, their combined eye colours would make it look like Christmas!
“Potter,” he said with difficulty, “I’ve practically told you—”
“Well, that’s just it. You did tell me,” Potter said.
“You make no sense, no sense at all,” Draco snapped. “It’s not like evil is very stealthy. It’s not like the Dark Lord is exactly hiding his light under a bushel. Evil people, they like to laugh and taunt and mock others. That’s all I was doing. The pain of others, it amuses me, it fills my black heart with joy.”
Potter stared at him as if he was insane, which was an unbearable indignity.
“You don’t,” Potter said. “You don’t look very happy.”
“Look,” Draco shouted. “I’m dangerous, so can you just stay away?”
It took him only a moment to realise that saying that to a Gryffindor was more or less the equivalent of taking all his clothes off and doing an enticing dance.
“Anyway,” he said quickly. “I don’t fancy you.”
The faint shocked sound made Draco spin: he wondered for a frantic instant why he had been stupid enough to linger in the dungeons, when he knew Professor Snape lived there.
Professor Snape advanced on them. “Potter,” he said. “Deeply, deeply as I would have loved to tell your father in enormous detail all about this most recent development in your romantic life—” Professor Snape’s eyes misted over wistfully for a moment—“I must ask for a word alone with Draco.”
Potter retreated, stomping furiously, and left Snape to tell Draco that he’d made an Unbreakable Vow to protect him.
There was no reason for him to have done it, no reason at all, Draco wasn’t a child and he didn’t need protection and this meant that Snape’s life hung in the balance too, along with Mother’s and Dad’s and Aunt Bella’s and Draco’s own. He was responsible for all of them, now.
“Looks like you’ll have to break it, then!” he yelled, and fled back to the Cabinet.
After a while, his hands stopped trembling, and he was able to work again.