Chapter 8: A Nice Day to Start Again
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
He woke to a cramped neck in a small, sweet-smelling room.
He had been laid on a cot in an office of some sort, and a blanket had been drawn up to his chin. The wallpaper in the room bore a cheery print of poppies and hydrangeas, and a vanilla candle guttered on the desk.
In an armchair beside him sat Albus Dumbledore, perusing an issue of Witch Weekly.
Draco sat up.
“Good afternoon, Draco,” said Dumbledore.
“Where’s Snape?”
He did not care that Snape would have boxed him about the ears for showing these kinds of manners. “Where’s Granger?” he demanded. “Where’s Potter and Weasley?”
“Your friends are all quite safe, I assure you. Professor Snape is recuperating in his chambers, having availed himself of the healthful effects of a bezoar. Harry and Mister Weasley are convalescing under Madam Pomfrey’s expert care, and Miss Granger has been harrying that dear lady for some time in an effort to ascertain your location.”
“Convalescing? Did they get hurt?”
“I believe Mister Weasley sprained his arm attempting to wield a shortsword, and Mister Potter has several cuts on his wrists.”
“He got those fighting Quirrell,” said Draco quickly.
“Naturally.” Dumbledore folded his magazine and laid it carefully on the desk. “You will be relieved to know, I expect, that Professor Quirrell is no longer with us. The Stone has been secured, and subsequently destroyed. My dear friend Nicolas and I decided that it was not worth the risk. Both he and Snape, by the way, were quite confounded by your performance in the Potions room; would you ever consider confessing how you did it?”
Draco had any number of responses to this, ranging from the Stone is real? to,what do you mean by ‘no longer with us’? to,so you follow Witch Weekly, do you?
“It was a sodium flame,” he said finally. “I identified it, and — Potter and Weasley stamped it out with their feet.”
Dumbledore laughed and clapped his hands. “With their feet! I could not ask for a better answer. Thank you, Draco. I believe, in exchange for your honesty, you should get to ask some questions of your own.”
Draco thought this was fairly decent of the old man. “Well, good. About time someone had some answers around here,” he said, aggrieved. “I have about a hundred questions about all of this.”
“Goodness, I’m sorry, but that sounds exhaustive. You and I will have to arrange subsequent appointments. As for today, might I politely solicit you to confine your number to three?”
“Three?”
“Oh, dear, you sound so deflated. Forgive me, Draco, I know I have disappointed you profoundly in the past twenty-four hours. I confess I will probably do it again before the next twenty-four have elapsed. If it is any consolation, the disappointment of the young in their elders is one of the most sacred traditions which those same elders pass down.”
“…Why is that supposed to be any consolation?”
Dumbledore’s smile spoke loudly of mischief. “Is that your first question?”
“No.”
He spread his hands, evocatively. Draco swallowed and frowned, thinking hard.
“How did you know we were in the vault?”
“Ah. What a pleasant first question! I anticipated something far more juicy; I was preparing to divulge the entirety of my history with the genus Capra. But I will enjoy answering this much better. To wit: it appears that, in your efforts to enrich and augment his education, you won the loyalty of a very valuable friend in one Neville Longbottom.”
He couldn’t believe it. “Neville ratted on us?”
“We might differ in our choice of verb,” suggested Dumbledore thoughtfully. “‘Rat’ implies a degree of malice which Neville does not possess. The dear boy witnessed the four of you leave the dormitory, and when, after an hour, you had not returned, he alerted Professor McGonagall to the possibility that you might have encountered some trouble. It was this, in part, which delayed my arrival in the Vault: I did not know you had dared to cross the trapdoor.”
“What was the other part?”
“Political matters in London,” he said simply. “And because I decline to elaborate further, we shall not count that as your second question.”
Draco thought some more. During the silence, Dumbledore pulled out a pair of knitting needles and began to clack them merrily, cobbling together the worst cross-stitch Draco had ever seen.
“Cornelius Fudge,” he said.
“Our dear Minister,” Dumbledore affirmed. “What about him?”
“Is he reading my letters?”
The headmaster chuckled. “Is he, personally, reading your letters? I do not claim to know the Minister’s predilections, but if pressed, I would guess not, for any number of reasons. For one, he is a busy man, and we busy men try to let the affairs of eleven-year-olds resolve themselves. For two, I think that Professor Snape’s efforts to conceal your correspondence with your mother have secured you thoroughly against the Minister’s snooping.”
“You knew—?”
“Professor Snape does little in this castle of which I am unaware,” he said simply. “I was aware that he was taking regular visits to Malfoy Manor; he made no secret of his purpose in assuring your privacy. I did not stop him, for I considered it benign, and for I thought that there was little the Ministry could do to protect you here that I could not.”
Draco wrinkled his nose. “Protect me?”
“Protection, yes. That is, of course, the reason your mail is watched.” Dumbledore paused. “Did you not know this?”
“I don’t know anything about any of this. The only reason I know someone was reading my mail is Snape told me.”
“Ah. Yes, Snape and I differ in opinion about why the Ministry does certain things. He is generally more suspicious of its intentions, whereas I — having the rare and unwisely coveted ability to ‘see behind the curtain,’ as it were — attribute its most alarming behaviors to incompetence, not malice.”
“I don’t care if they were incompetent or malicious, or both. Who’s reading my mail?”
“Nobody,” said Dumbledore patiently. “If you had used owl post, however, the document would have been copied and filed away for future consultation should it ever come up in an investigation of yourself or your family. More likely still, it would have been used to gather information about the whereabouts and activities of former Death Eaters who might seek revenge on the scion of a house that betrayed them. As at least one has done before.”
Draco fell silent.
“You don’t like to think of it,” he said softly. “Of course. I apologize for my indiscretion.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said brusquely, but Dumbledore could tell he was lying.
“How much do you know about her?” he inquired gently. “If you would forgive the discourtesy of the question.”
“Not much.”
Dumbledore set down his knitting, and waited.
Begrudgingly, Draco continued. “She’s my aunt,” he said unwillingly. “My mother’s sister. She was a Death Eater. She and my father worked together in the war.”
“Well done.”
“It’s family history. Of course I know it. My mum can do the whole tree back to 1800, it’s mad. Like this: Bellatrix Irma Lestrange, neé Black, born in 1951, eldest child of Druella Rosier and Cygnus Black, first of three — if you’re writing, drop an asterisk — and then: married to Rodolphus Lestrange, eldest son of Rodney and Delphinia Lestrange, first of two, born 1947, died 1988. Childless,” he finished.
“Draco.”
“Oh, and she put Neville Longbottom’s parents in St. Mungo’s, apparently—”
“She killed your father.”
“So?” he said roughly. “My father betrayed her.”
Dumbledore put away his needles and folded his hands calmly in his lap. “Your father bought your family’s freedom by cooperating with a Ministry investigation to eliminate the festering remnants of a cause that was long since lost.”
“My father gave up his wife’s sister for sixty years off his sentence and a government pardon.”
“A pardon for his wife,” corrected Dumbledore. “Circumstances which, one might think, would buy him some familial fidelity.”
“If you think that, you don’t understand the Blacks.”
“I most certainly do not,” he admitted. “There are a hundred things about your mother’s family which I shall never understand, and never hope to. But I flatter myself by saying that I do understand loss, and death; and the effect that both can have when suffered by children.”
Draco looked at the ceiling. He refused to take the bait.
Dumbledore sighed.
“I apologize. I did not intend to plumb the bony depths of your family closets here today. I meant only to suggest that, were certain dangerous parties to take a renewed interest in you or your family, the Ministry would be interested in protecting you against these threats.”
Far from reassuring Draco, this infuriated him. He spat, “Great. So after they let my father get murdered, they decided to start stealing my owls and screening all my family’s mail under the flimsy pretext that they can, what, stop her from killing him twice—”
“The Minister of Magic is undoubtedly a somewhat foolish man, but his shame at the tragedy of your father’s death was earnest. He has no desire to see it repeated.”
“Oh, well, that’s fantastic. Really. I feel so very safe.”
“You are upset.”
Draco sat up. “I want to make it clear,” he said angrily, “that if it weren’t for Snape, I probably would be dead by now. That’s who protected us. Not Fudge. If he wants to help, he can take his promises and his owls and try minding his own business.”
“I have been suggesting the same to him for some time,” Dumbledore said sadly. “Alas, when one is the Minister of Magic, ‘minding one’s own business’ does not in itself constitute a viable option.”
Madam Pomfrey poked her head into the room. “Oh! My apologies, dearie,” she said. “Didn’t realize you were awake.”
“That’s quite all right, Poppy, it sometimes surprises me as well,” said Dumbledore cheerfully. “Thank you for checking in. How fare our recovering heroes?”
“Hearty as horses, each to each. I swear, the things a young body can take. Potter is begging to be released, and I’ve kept Granger at bay with all but force.”
“By all means, retreat, then,” he assured her. “I see no reason to deny young Miss Granger the things she wants, especially when she pursues such simple pleasures with such commendable vigor. I will hold your office hostage but a moment longer.”
“Take all the time you need, Albus.”
When she had gone, Dumbledore turned to Draco. “I expect they will want you as well,” he said. “So I will release you presently. I will say only this: you performed exceptionally last night. Godric Gryffindor himself, I think, would have been proud to see his colors around your neck.”
“Oh, no,” Draco said, alarmed. “Me? I was only there because they made me. I didn’t have a choice.”
“One may exercise a great deal of bravery even in situations where one has no choice,” said Dumbledore gravely. “Great works have been done by those who, despite their own desires, have taken up the mantle of nobility, even with begrudging hands.”
Draco squirmed. “I’m not noble,” he said hotly. “I was scared out of my mind. I froze up. I wanted to run. I was going to run, if I’d just found the right moment—”
“My dear boy,” said Dumbledore, smiling, “there were dozens of moments. Each drifted past you like ships in the night.”
“Not on purpose!”
“Very well. I will ask Mister Potter, then,” he said, “who happens to owe you his life, whether he thinks you acted nobly, or in, as you seem to think, the basest kind of self-interest; and I doubt that his answer will align more with yours than mine.”
“That’s tosh! Weasley hit the Dark Lord with a sword! I stood there and cut their bindings, and what, I get a medal?”
“Your concern for ensuring Mister Weasley receives equitable treatment is touching,” said Dumbledore, in tones of happy surprise. Draco fought the urge to tear his hair out: that wasn’t what he’d meant. “Unexpected, but touching. To your question: no, you do not get ‘a medal.’ However, considering the circumstances, I think a reward may not be entirely out of order.”
He perked up. “Like a present?”
The headmaster laughed. “Yes, you might consider it a gift.”
“Do I get to choose it?”
“Within reason.”
“What’s within reason?”
He smiled. “With your father’s ear for caveats. Very well. Any one wish of yours which is within my power, and which I can bring myself, on moral grounds, to grant, I promise to fulfill.”
Draco said, “Put me in Slytherin.”
A long moment passed. The amusement seeped slowly from Dumbledore’s face, leaving the weathered folds a landscape of chagrin and regret.
“Ah,” he said. “You have hit upon a request that meets neither criteria, I am afraid.”
“Professor, please—”
“You are unhappy in Gryffindor?”
“…It’s not about happiness.”
“You believe you would be better off in Slytherin?”
“Of course I would,” he said immediately. “I’d be with my own people.”
Dumbledore stared at him for what felt like a long time. His eyes were unspeakably sad.
“This is my fault,” he said finally, removing his spectacles. Withdrawing a polka-dot handkerchief from his robes, he began to polish them. “I never try to interfere in Sortings, if I can avoid it. The Hat, whose wisdom has fed centuries of great wizards into the world, should not be questioned on such matters. But there comes the rare case, now and then, where I think I can predict its judgment… and, when that judgment conflicts with what I believe to be the best interests of the student, or perhaps even the Wizarding World at large, I, in my supreme arrogance, will take it upon myself to interject.”
“Interject?” Anger prickled, like the telltale scrape of a match, at the bottom of Draco’s spine. “What do you mean, interject?”
“The Hat tends to sort each student as the student would sort herself. For students seeking like-minded peers, it sorts them so. For students seeking to be challenged, it does the same. For students who do not know their own heart, it chooses the House most likely to help them find it. This is how, incidentally, your friend Neville Longbottom found himself in Gryffindor.”
“But I asked,” he said in a trembling voice, “I asked it. For Slytherin.”
“Yes. I know.” Dumbledore put down his glasses. His shoulders slumped, and Draco might have felt sorry for him, if he weren’t so angry. “As I thought you would. But — and forgive me, Draco — I thought that for a student like yourself to excel, to prove yourself — you might benefit from some additional help.”
“Help,” he repeated.
“Help, yes. From peers more likely to — how shall I put this? Allow you to see yourself clearly.”
“I was supposed to be in Slytherin,” he said, his voice shaking with anger. “I was supposed to be in Slytherin. You admit that. You interfered.”
“Yes.”
“Well, fix it, then! Put me back!”
“I cannot. The Sorting is permanent. Students cannot transfer between Houses.”
“But I’m not where I’m supposed to be!”
“Do you really believe that?” The headmaster tilted his head curiously.
Draco spluttered. “Do I—? What do you mean? You just said you agreed with it! You said I was supposed to be in—”
“Upon your arrival to the castle, you were undoubtedly fit for the House of your choosing. Now, I am no longer sure.” Dumbledore put his head down, twiddling his thumbs. “Perhaps this is arrogance. If so, I apologize. But sometimes, even a year is quite enough for a House to make its mark on its inhabitants. I confess that Professor McGonagall has certainly come to find you an entertaining and enjoyable addition to her charges, which is an opinion she might not have espoused at the beginning of the year.”
He drew his knees up onto the cot and hugged them. To think of it: all his misery, throughout the year, could have been prevented. He could have had a good year instead of a wretched one. He could have avoided every lesson with Longbottom, every sleepless night lost to Finnigan’s CDs, every bothersome pop-quiz with Granger, the time he’d had to fight a troll…
But also, of course, the evenings in the common room when Finnigan had put on a not-horrible piece of music, and the Weasleys brought up snacks from the kitchens, and Granger nattered on at him explaining the thesis of her latest paper. And the rare quiet nights in the Gryffindor dorms, when the rain came down softly on the windowpanes, and he could hear the full bellows of the frogs beneath the lake blow the evening full of sound, reminding him of summer nights at the Manor.
Those hadn’t been awful. He wouldn’t choose to forget them, if he could.
“I leave you with this,” said Dumbledore. “There are three children outside this door who believe that you are their true friend and housemate; and though I clearly cannot persuade you one way or another, I believe they may have thoughts to share on the subject.”
Saying so, he rose, and opened the door. Draco heard him say, “I often reflect on how difficult it must be to eavesdrop when the subject has cast Muffliato. Philosophers often ask: If a significant conversation is not spied upon, is it still significant? With these and other ruminations, I must leave you.”
Then he was gone, and there were shadows in the doorway, shuffling their feet and waiting awkwardly to be invited in.
“Draco?” said Harry tentatively, poking his head into the room. “Are you awake?”
Two other heads appeared under his, wide-eyed. “You wouldn’t believe how much candy they left us, mate,” said Ron ecstatically. “It’s nutters. The twins must have raided the kitchens. You like black Licorice Wands?”
“Nobody likes black Licorice Wands, they’re disgusting,” whispered Hermione, and then: “Draco, I brought our homework from yesterday, I thought you might want to get a head start on it! If you’d like you can copy my answers for part of the Potions homework. I don’t think Snape will mind too much, since you couldn’t go to class.”
This demanded a response. He whipped his head around and glared. “Bite your tongue, Granger, I’ll copy answers in Potions when hell freezes over.”
“Oh, you are awake!”
She bounded onto his cot, causing a minor pillow eruption. “Can you read my essay, then? Because it’s due tomorrow and I haven’t had time to revise it and I could really use a second pair of eyes…”
“Blimey, you could give the bloke a minute to catch his breath,” said Ron, slumping into Dumbledore’s chair. He kicked his feet up on the armrest and popped a pack of Chocolate Frogs. “But seriously, black licorice? Takers? We need to get rid of it somehow.”
Harry stood in the doorway, grinning, with his hands in his pockets. Feeling defiant, Draco said, “What are you looking at, Potter?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just trying to remember, that’s all.”
“Remember what?”
“What this looks like,” he said. “So this summer, when I’m back at the Dursleys’, I have something nice to think about.”
And Draco, who found this puerile, and disgusting, to say nothing of embarrassing to everyone involved, rolled his eyes so hard that they hurt afterwards. “For Merlin’s sake, close the door,” he snapped. “I don’t want anyone seeing us associating together.”
“You’re not ashamed of us, are you, Malfoy?” Ron stuck out his tongue, which was stained brown from chocolate.
“Jointly, individually, and of you in particular, Weasley.”
“Feeling’s mutual, you jammy git. Chocolate Frog?”
Draco sighed and rested his head against the cot. He regarded the ceiling with a helpless sense that he was being manhandled brutally by the hands of fate. Or, specifically, the hands of Hermione, who was still trying to sneak her essay into his pocket.
“Yeah. Sure, I could go for a Chocolate Frog.”
It took quite a while for them to unload the Hogwarts Express. It had been a terrible day to leave the castle: June flowers were blooming everywhere, turning the lawns into a patchwork quilt of red and yellow, and the sun filled the sky with a light, watercolor blue. Meanwhile, in King’s Cross, the air smelled of smoke, iron, and the intractable scent of human bodies bustling together, queuing up to leave the platform. Harry and Ron had gone first, after trading hugs and promises to write, and then Ron had hauled Harry off to meet Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.
Hermione had grown somewhat teary when saying goodbye to the boys, and now that she and Draco were alone, the waterworks started gearing up again. “Well, I hope you have a good summer,” she said. She held out her right hand. “Please give my best to your mother. And if you’d ever like to visit, I’m sure my parents would…”
He snorted.
“Right. Never mind. But do, you know, if you ever feel like writing — I’m just going to be in London, it won’t be hard for your owl to find me.”
“My owl?” he said. “What’s this about my owl? Ulysses is still recovering from a wing sprain.”
“If you’re saying you’re willing to try muggle post, I’d be perfectly happy, but I have to warn you, it’s not quite as fast—”
“Granger, I say this without exaggeration: I would much rather die.” He pulled the cover off his trolley and lifted the owl cage, which was covered in a tawny curtain. “You’ll just have to use your owl, instead.”
She didn’t take it at first. She stared at the offering.
He rattled it a little, and the creature inside gave a baleful hoot. “Go on and take it,” he said. “I’ve not got all day. If you don’t like it, you’ll have to take it back to Eeylops, I’m not sure what their policy on returns is. I also don’t know how you’d go about sending it away; if you tell it to go, it’s bred to come right back, so your muggles ought to have some trouble getting rid of it.”
“This is mine?” she said.
She was taking far too long, so he grew impatient and hauled off the tarp himself. The owl inside was on the small side, with a coat of toasted amber and a heart-shaped white face. Its eyes were vast and dark, and it had a lovely little V of a beak that gave its stare an inquisitive effect, as if it were conducting a perpetual examination of the world.
He’d need a cask of Veritaserum to admit it, but he’d picked it because it reminded him of her.
Hermione took the cage, hugging it to her chest, and stared at him in a way that made him fidget and grow warm in the face.
“You got me an owl?”
“Someone needed to. It was beneath both of our dignity. I wasn’t about to let you run a parade of strange owls through the Manor grounds.”
“You got me an owl.”
“Merry Christmas,” he said, looking away. “I owed you a present. Sorry it’s late.”
“How much did you pay for this?”
“Listen, I told Mother, if we have to mortgage the Manor, that’s just the way it is.”
“You’re lying!”
“I never lie about wines or real estate. It’s bad form.”
“Does it have a name?”
He shrugged. “It’ll answer to whatever you call it.”
She lifted it to her face and cooed. It cooed back with regal dignity.
“Thucydides,” she decided. “Do you like that? You do? I like that, too.”
“That’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard. And mine’s named Ulysses.”
“Thucy, for short.”
“That’s worse.”
She grinned at him. “I have a present for you, too.”
He pinched his nose. “No, see, Granger, the way this usually works is, we both give each other gifts at Christmas. What I’ve done is put mine off for half a year, so I’ve had to pay it back with interest—”
“It’s not a Christmas gift! It’s for your birthday. June first, isn’t it? It’s today.”
It was. He was surprised; he didn’t remember mentioning it, though his mother had sent him a boxed cake at breakfast in the Great Hall. He’d received a few ‘happy birthdays’ from people in passing, and the Weasley twins had taken it upon themselves to serenade him at lunch, but aside from these ritual humiliations, the occasion had gone unmarked.
“I wrote my parents, asking them to get this from the mall,” she said, digging around in her satchel. “I told them your parents hadn’t enough money to buy you one, which was a lie, obviously, but I thought it might be worth it.”
“What’s a ‘mall’?”
She was babbling because she was nervous. She really didn’t need to be; he hadn’t expected to get anything from her. “It took me a while to think of it. I tried to come up with something you’d like but you wouldn’t think to get for yourself. That’s what my mum says the best presents are. I was going to get you another book, but I thought that would be a bit boring.”
“Perish the thought.”
“And,” she said, with satisfaction, “this is muggle technology. So if you like it, you have to admit that you like something made by muggles.”
She offered him a small gray box with a black square inset on the face, made of some odd lusterless material. Connected to the box by a cord were a pair of threadbare black earmuffs. The word ‘WALKMAN’ ran along the bottom of the box.
He tried not to look too disappointed.
“Thanks,” he said, with as much feeling as he could. “This is very nice, Granger.”
“Silly! You haven’t seen what it can do yet. Here.” She took back the earmuffs and, going up on tiptoes, slid them over his ears. The cups slid in place, and the band settled into his hair, in what he was certain could not be a flattering look.
“There,” said Hermione in satisfaction. She paused — they were standing very close to each other on the platform — and then, seeming to find her nerve, she threw her arms around his shoulders.
Instinctively, he put his arms around her waist. Uncertain where to go from there, he patted her on the small of the back.
It was hideously awkward. But not, altogether, unpleasant.
“Happy birthday, Draco,” she said.
She pressed a button on the side of the box.
A sound swelled in his ears. He turned around, thinking that perhaps some buskers had come up behind them while they were hugging, but there were none. The thunder disappeared when he removed the earmuffs, and reappeared when he put them on.
Whatever his expression was, Hermione laughed at it. She waved at him and said something, but he couldn’t hear her, because a drumbeat had started behind the ambience.
The music swelled in volume as she disappeared into the crowd of the platform, and he was left standing there, increasingly stunned. It was like Finnigan’s music, but it wasn’t — it was much better, for one thing — and it was closer, like it was inside him, permeating him, going in and through him and leaving him humming like the magic in his wand.
And so Draco stood on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, holding his box of muggle magic, as his world — as it seemed so often wont to do — changed unalterably and forever.
Hello! Thanks for reading!
I’ll be taking a short hiatus while I finish editing Year Two (and continue writing Year Three). Hopefully, it should start coming out in about a week. It’ll be the same length as Year One (seven chapters, approximately novella-length), followed by Year Three, also in the same novella range; after that, each year will get a bit bigger. Y3 will also be the last part of what I consider ‘Volume One’ of this fic, marking the end of this ‘act’ of the characters’ lives. After that… well, after that, everything’s in the planning stages, but there’s lots of irons in the fire.
Thanks for all the love. If you’re reading this, you’re the reason I keep updating. And a special thanks to everyone who commented; I read all of them, and I’m grateful for each one.
Love,
GT 🍵
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