Chapter 11: Samhain
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
“Petrified,” announced Madam Pomfrey, and the Hufflepuffs broke out in cries of relief.
“Thank goodness, ” said Hermione, squeezing Draco’s wrist. They and several other Gryffindors had joined in the long sigil of the Hospital Wing. Draco was sure they’d been a bother to Madam Pomfrey during her examination, but the matron hadn’t the heart to turn them out. “My, but she looked dead.”
Harry rubbed his face. He was still in yesterday’s clothes. “I’m going back to help scrub off the lettering,” he said.
“McGonagall said Filch would do it,” murmured Hermione. She had dark bags in her eyes and wrinkles in her shirt. Ron had borrowed her jumper to use as a pillow.
“Yeah, in the morning, but I’m not going to sleep until it’s gone. Ron?”
Ron jerked awake. “Hm?”
“You any good at Scouring Charms?”
“Reckon so,” he yawned, shoving himself upright. “Can always borrow a mop from the broom closet, if that doesn’t do the trick.”
“I’ll come, too,” said Lavender Brown, who was sitting on the floor nearby. Her hair was in curlers, and she wore a baggy blue sweatshirt instead of robes; her eyes were red and puffy from crying. “I have some acetone and hydrogen peroxide, they’re both good for stains. I don’t know if it works on stone, but I know it gets blood out of clothes.”
“How d’you know that?” Ron said, bewildered. Lavender stared at him.
“Ron,” said Hermione, exasperated.
“What?”
“You have a sister.”
“Wh— oh! Sorry, Lav, I didn’t think.”
“It’s been a long night,” said Lavender in a small voice, and he helped her to her feet.
“We should all go back,” Hermione agreed, pushing herself off the wall. The Hufflepuffs showed no sign of leaving: some had unrolled sleeping bags, while some of the older students were passing out blankets. The hallway outside the Hospital Wing was rapidly turning into an encampment. “It’ll be better in the morning. Madam Pomfrey will take care of her.”
But she was wrong. The next morning, Leanne had not returned to the Hufflepuff table, and Madam Pomfrey announced at breakfast that she would lie in residence at the Hospital Wing until Professor Snape could brew the cure for her condition.
“How long will that take?” Hermione said worriedly. “If Madam Pomfrey can’t cure it, she must have been seriously cursed.”
Dismayed cries erupted from the Hufflepuffs. Madam Pomfrey labored to assure them that Leanne was in no pain, merely a dreamless, comatose state, and that she would be perfectly well once the cure was administered, but this did little to soothe them.
“About six months, give or take,” said Neville sadly. “Poor Leanne. She’s going to m-m-miss so much of second year… maybe they’ll let her do summer classes to catch up, like me.”
Draco, who had been about to say the same thing, dropped his bacon.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
Neville blinked. “I don’t, exactly,” he admitted. “I assumed P-P-Professor Snape is making a Restorative Draught, and he needs m-m-mandrakes for those, which take nine months to grow. And P-P-Professor Sprout’s crop just finished their first trimester.”
“Rare form, Longbottom,” he said, surprised. “That’s correct.”
“Yeah?” said Neville, with a cheeky little twitch of his eyebrow. “Well, anyone could t-t-tell you that, if they p-p-paid attention in Herbology.”
“Don’t get saucy.”
“Sorry.”
“Do they have any leads on who did it?” Harry wondered.
“I’m sure Dumbledore is doing nothing else,” said Hermione, upending half the pitcher of maple syrup on her pancakes. Draco tried to take it from her, and she deftly avoided him. “And McGonagall. All the Gryffindor muggle-borns are supposed to go see her after breakfast… I think she means to try and comfort us. I expect all the heads of house are doing the same.”
Draco took a gulp of tea, neglecting to state the obvious: for at least one head of house, there would be no need.
“And how are you feeling about it?” said Harry gently.
Hermione tossed her hair. “Well, it’s not the sort of thing one likes to find above one’s front door,” she said coolly, though her voice was trembling. “But I’m not going to let it bother me. That’s just what the culprit wants, is for me to feel like I’m not welcome. But it’ll take more than a cruel prank to scare me off.”
Draco and Harry exchanged a glance that suggested neither of them would describe what happened to Leanne as a “prank.” Saying this, though, seemed unlikely to help Hermione, so they changed the subject.
A flurry of movement occurred in the entryway. Students of all houses started to throng the Announcements board near the door.
“Quidditch rosters are going up,” Ron said, craning his neck. “I can’t read them at this distance. Wood’s handwriting is so damn small… why can’t he write nice and big like Davies, I could tell you the Ravenclaw seeker from here…”
“I’m going to be sick,” mumbled Harry.
“Would you like me to go look f-for you?” offered Neville courteously.
“Yes. No, no, I’ll… Actually, would you?”
“Finish your crumpets,” said Draco, tossing his napkin on the table. “I’ll look, I’m going up anyway.”
He elbowed his way through the crowd of disappointed hopefuls in front of the Announcements board, hip-checking a third year Hufflepuff out of the way. The rosters had been pinned on top of the board, identical except for the names and the stamps on the bottom.
TEAM ROSTER FOR VARSITY QUIDDITCH
HOUSE: Gryffindor
YEAR: 1992-93
CAPTAIN: Oliver Wood
FIRST CHASER: Katie Bell (3)
SECOND CHASER: Angelina Johnson (4)
THIRD CHASER: Alicia Spinnet (4)
RESERVE CHASER: Ishika Gupta (7)
FIRST BEATER: Fred Weasley (4)
SECOND BEATER: George Weasley (4)
RESERVE BEATER: Andrew Kirke (4)
KEEPER: Oliver Wood (6)
RESERVE KEEPER: N/A
SEEKER: Harry Potter (2)
Before Draco could work up the resentment to feel properly snubbed, his eyes fell on the last line.
RESERVE SEEKER: Draco Malfoy (2)
“I confess I’m relieved,” said a droll, familiar voice behind him, “though it’s bad form. I’ll take far more satisfaction from thrashing Potter than thrashing you.”
Draco said nothing. Theodore cocked his head, scanning the Gryffindor roster. “Reserve,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Almost worse than a rejection, isn’t it? Knowing they wanted you just a bit less than the other man?”
Draco bit down on his tongue. Then he turned, smoothly, and said, “Yes, it’s quite the slap in the face.”
Theodore’s mouth flattened. “You know, Pansy’s scared of going to Potions, now. Because it’s a double block with Gryffindor.”
“The luxury of a stress-free life,” said Draco, “is cheaply purchased by learning to watch one’s mouth.”
“Are we going to be enemies? Because I’d rather we not be enemies, especially over something as silly as this. Let’s at least have an argument of substance before we start being brats to each other.”
Privately, Draco agreed; outwardly, he wasn’t going to give Theodore the satisfaction of playing peacemaker.
“Nott, I’m flattered, but I don’t think about you half enough for us to be enemies,” he drawled. “I apologize if that’s a disappointment.”
“Well, it’s no ‘Reserve Seeker,’ but I can’t say it doesn’t sting.” He snapped his fingers. “Here’s your daily dose of miracles. Greg made the team. He and I are going to be Beaters.”
“Good for him,” said Draco, so surprised he forgot to sound ironic. “He’s certainly got the arms. Is he pleased?”
“As punch. Of course, he’s trying to be stoic about it, but the big lump’s been giggling to himself all morning.”
“Greg never could lie for love nor money.”
“No, indeed. Vince is sulking; I think he’s jealous.”
“Vince wouldn’t want it, anyway,” he said absently. “He’d hate the practices. Getting up early and exercising, they’re his perfect nightmare.”
“I think that’s right,” said Theodore after a moment. Draco shrugged. Of course it was. He’d had Crabbe over for sleepovers, and it took a small army to get the goon out of bed.
“Tell you what, Malfoy,” said Theodore suddenly, slipping his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing for Samhain?”
“What, Halloween?”
“Don’t be a pleb. I’m talking about Samhain, the proper holiday. Are you doing a bonfire?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Would you like to?”
Draco arched an eyebrow. “Are you throwing?”
He grinned. The expression was rather wicked. “Nah. Slytherin is, though. Didn’t you go last year?”
“Couldn’t make it. Got tied up fighting a troll.”
He also hadn’t been invited, but Theodore didn’t need to know that.
“All right, don’t tell me, then,” Theodore said easily. “But if you happen to find yourself troll-free on the night of, swing by the Whomping Willow around eight. Sans entourage, if you please, I don’t want any problems with Pans.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said, noncommittal, and strolled back to the Gryffindor table.
He had no particular intentions of going; he knew full well that most of Slytherin still viewed him with disdain. Nor, frankly, did he trust the intentions of Theodore Nott, who struck him as perhaps the least trustworthy member of a uniformly untrustworthy bunch. But nevertheless, as the end of October rolled around, he found himself making excuses not to attend the Gryffindor Halloween Party being planned by Fred and George.
Autumn spread her damp, cold fingers through the castle. After the attack, Prefects were assigned to walk first years to their classes, and it became commonplace to see Percy Weasley sprinting, red-faced and puffing, from one side of the castle to another to pick up his group. Madam Pomfrey churned out batch after batch of extra-strength Pepperup Potions, which left the imbibers smoking from the ears for hours, and so a smoky scent began to linger in the hallways, along with the odor of damp stone and rain-soaked earth. Raindrops the size of fists pelted the castle windows, and the lake overflowed its beaches, laving up the pebble banks and turning the hills above it into a marsh. The flower beds drowned, and Hagrid’s pumpkins reached the size of carriages.
Harry, who spent many of these rainy afternoons at practices, took to trailing mud all over the common room. While everyone felt very sorry for him in practice, Draco did less than most, because every muddy footprint became a reminder of the position he held and Draco did not.
“I spoke to Wood about it,” Harry told him. “He says that reserves are really important, and you shouldn’t give up. He wants you to try again next year.”
“Like hell,” Draco said immediately.
“No, he does! And there’s other things he has to consider. It doesn’t look so good for him to have two second years on the team. It makes us look inexperienced. And Ron says when you’re picking a Chaser, you typically want someone bigger, like Ishika—”
“So what you’re telling me,” he said, “is you’re the reason I’m not on the team.”
“The Reserve Seeker is still part of the team,” said Harry. “And if you do want Wood to take you seriously, you should probably come to practice.”
“I say again: like. Hell.”
Draco had not attended a single practice that October, and had no intention of doing so. If Wood wanted him to slog out at the crack of dawn, in the cold, rainy muck, and spend two hours working himself to the bone, he should have given him a real position. He told Harry as much.
“I understand,” said Harry, “but Draco, I’m just saying, it doesn’t make you look like much of a team player, does it?”
“I’ll be a team player once he puts me on the actual team, ” snapped Draco, and went to go read somewhere else.
On Halloween night, he feigned a cold. The other boys dressed for the Gryffindor party while he reclined in his four-poster, hacking and sniffling, and generally had a wonderful time pretending to be sick.
“You sure you d-d-don’t need anything?” said Neville, peering at him from a safe, antibacterial distance. “Soup from the kitchens? Hot t-t-towel?”
“No, thank you.” He coughed so violently into his elbow that Neville balked.
“If I were you, I’d chug a Pepperup Potion and push through,” advised Ron. “It’s going to be a madhouse. Fred and George have been plotting for weeks. They’re bringing food up to the Astronomy Tower from the kitchens, and Lee Jordan’s deejaying.”
“Does this look right?” said Dean Thomas, turning in the mirror. He wore a puffy red vest over a denim jacket and a pair of muggle jeans. “I charmed the color to match, but it doesn’t look like the film…”
“Of course it doesn’t look like the film, Michael Fox has two feet on you,” said Seamus. “Check my zip.” He was wearing a hideous beige jumpsuit and carrying some kind of backpack-cum-vacuum cleaner.
Draco didn’t know what they were doing, and didn’t want to ask.
Ron made a final press. “Everyone’s going to be there, mate. The twins say everyone shows up for Gryffindor parties, even Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Percy’s coming. Hermione’s coming!”
“Granger? Really?”
“Well, she said she’d stop by,” he amended. “She had a meeting with Podmore, before, I think. Wanted to talk house-elves.”
Draco scowled. “I expect she’ll have a liberation movement going by All Hallow’s Day.”
“Yeah, most likely,” Ron said amicably. “Anyway, you sure?”
“Quite.” He blew his nose pointedly.
The others trailed out, and he waited for the sounds of their voices to fade from the common room before climbing out of bed.
He pulled on a dark green cardigan, traded out his Gryffindor tie for a black one, and pinned his cloak with an emerald broach he hadn’t yet occasioned to wear at school. It was hardly the Royal Caledonian, but it wouldn’t do to come underdressed.
The last drops of sunlight suffused through the mists and vanished into a blue twilight. Its last fires burned low behind the trees, and the castle’s silhouette turned shadowy against the purple velvet of night. The air smelled of wood and dew and fallen leaves, and a pack of crows migrated musically from tree to tree, cawing. Draco’s shoes crunched over a carpet of fallen leaves and twigs. Down by the lake, near the foot of the Whomping Willow, a trio of Slytherins floated out of the gloom like phantoms, their murmuring voices echoing queerly over the field.
Draco called out. The tallest of the three turned, and revealed himself to be Theodore, his dark hair windblown, wearing a black tailcoat and an encrustment of rings on his fingers. He carried a lantern and a horned mask carved from what looked like bone. Beside him was Pansy, her hair in braids instead of pigtails, wearing a black babydoll dress with a round collar and knee-high socks. In addition to a bone mask of her own, she carried a picnic basket.
The third Slytherin was a stranger. She was almost as tall as Theodore, with heavy dark-blonde hair and a hard, beautiful, androgynous face, lips full, eyes lidded. She wore the most unusual costume of the three — beside two dark-haired wraiths in black, the fair girl wore a white dress, cinched with a pale brown corset. In the gloom, the contrast between the three was as stark as gargoyles and cherubs.
“Hail and well-met,” said Theodore, swinging high the lantern. “Glad you can make it. We weren’t sure if you were going to come.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting,” said Draco, glancing at his watch. It was ten past eight. He’d made a point not to leave the dorm until five after.
“Not at all. Draco, have you met…?”
“I don’t think so.”
“This is Daphne Greengrass,” said Theodore. “Daphne, meet Draco Malfoy.”
The blonde girl stuck her hand out, fingers-down, and he touched it lightly.
“Is it true that Gryffindor Tower has a cat?” she said, without preamble.
“Daph,” laughed Theodore.
“What? I’m curious. I wanted to bring Duchess to Hogwarts, but they wouldn’t let me keep him in the commons. And I overheard a seventh year Gryffindor telling Marcus that the Tower has its own cat.”
“I’m not aware of one,” said Draco, though now he thought about it, he did remember noticing a tabby cat slinking around the common room on sunny afternoons. Neville liked to feed it biscuits.
“Oh. That’s a shame. I keep telling everybody that we should petition Snape to let us get one. I think it would be good for morale. And more importantly, we need pest control in the dungeons. I’m sick to death of the sound of rats. Millie found one in the bathroom the other day and screamed so loud I think she woke the mermaids.”
Draco, who had never once encountered a rat in Gryffindor Tower, repressed a shudder.
“But you’re Draco Malfoy,” Daphne said suddenly, as if alerting Draco to the fact. “Did you see the Witch Weekly article about your mother?”
His hackles sprang up on instinct. “I don’t follow tabloids.”
“It came out last week. ‘Lies, Spies, and Bloodlines: An Oral History of the House of Black.’ It’s trash, but I ate it up like candy. It says Bellatrix Black had an illegitimate child with the Dark Lord, and Rodolphus and Narcissa were planning to elope after the war.”
His hand went to the pocket where his wand rested. Daphne’s eyes followed it.
“That’s my mother you’re talking about,” he said coldly.
“Well I didn’t write the article,” she said brazenly. “Besides, my mother and father were second cousins. I think it’s perfectly normal.”
“Let’s get to the party first,” suggested Theodore, “and we can sort out whose mothers were bedding whose cousins later.”
They set off for the Forbidden Forest, trailing the beam of Theodore’s lantern.
They picked their way through the scrubby glades on the edge of the forest and winnowed deeper into the trees, down a worn footpath that only Theodore seemed to particularly recognize. Past the first row of pines, it was dark as midnight.
Daphne and Pansy walked on either side of him, unbothered by the darkness.
“Not to be a total marplot,” Draco drawled, “and not that I’m objecting, but isn’t this all verboten?”
“Being in the Forbidden Forest? Yeah, usually,” said Theodore. “But we get special permissions for Samhain. Religious observance, you know, means you can bend the rules.”
“They don’t want us setting the lawns on fire,” added Pansy.
“That, too. Besides, it’s more fun in the forest. Pucey says a long time ago, there used to be three or four bonfires going on every Samhain, all in different places, and you’d hop from one to one as the night went on… Dumbledore put the kibosh on that when some seventh years tried to sacrifice a goat. Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me, it was only one goat. But the townsman they stole it from kicked up such a fuss.”
“Woe is us,” sighed Daphne, “that we’ve just one fabulous party, instead of four.”
“Are you faking? Because I’m sincerely distressed.”
Music began to strain through the trees ahead. An uptempo drumline thudded, and a medley of fiddles and woodwinds played a fast, harsh melody. Light flickered from behind the trees, drawing them towards a clearing up ahead.
In the center of the clearing roared the greatest bonfire he had ever seen. A pillar of flame surged skyward, singing the highest boughs of the pines, pumping voluminous bellows of smoke into the sky like the unrolling of a gray silk bedsheet. It fed on a hearth the size of a collapsed house, ringed by a bed of ruby-red coals, and around the fire danced rings and rings of wizards in horned bone masks, whirling and clapping to the music, their robes undulating in an unbroken chain of dark silks. The trees were strung with garlands of red leaves, and skulls hung from their branches like baubles, each carrying a lit candle in its jaws. In one corner of the clearing, a band of enchanted skeletons hammered on kettle-drums with mallets made of their own ribs, and a scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern head sawed furiously on its violin.
The air was full of smoke and sparks and cackling cries. Those who did not dance sat on benches made from hay-bales and fallen logs, or drifted on broomsticks overhead, sipping from goblets of wine, and nibbling on roast apples or hazelnuts or slices of pumpkin pie. Every so often, one of the dancers would break off, and seize the hands of someone sitting — there would be cheers, protests, a brief and meaningless struggle — and then the victim would be hauled into the circle.
As Theodore stepped into the clearing, he lowered the lantern, sighing. No sooner had his foot touched the clearing than a skeleton melted out of the trees and seized him by the shoulders. Pansy shrieked.
“Not to fret, it’s only helping,” said Theodore, shrugging off his coat. The skeleton folded it over one arm, and then held out its other hand to Draco. He realized it was asking for his cardigan. He shook his head, and it retreated into the trees.
Another skeleton bobbed out of the smoke, carrying a tray of wood goblets. “Drinks!” said Theodore gladly, and took two. “At last! I’m tired of that bilgewater they call pumpkin juice. I want to toast properly.”
He handed one of the goblets to Pansy, and another to Daphne. Draco took one from the skeleton, peering curiously at the contents; they were dark red, and left ruddy stains on the mug. He glanced at Theodore, who was taking a long, contented drag from his own, and putting aside his apprehension, he raised it to his lips. The drink was hot and spiced and sweet, fragrant with cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg and cloves, fused with the sweet sting of brandy. It was mulled wine, he realized, with more relief than he was proud of.
“To Samhain,” said Theodore, lifting his goblet. “To the living, who join us here tonight, and to the dead, whom we invite to do the same; and in particular, to our dearly departed ancestors, whose spirits we shall immortalize by indulging in their very favorite kinds of bad behavior.”
They toasted and drank. Draco and Pansy took moderate sips; Daphne drained her goblet and threw it into the trees. “I want to dance,” she announced. “Theo, lead me in.”
“Splendid idea. Draco, keep an eye on Pans for me?”
“I don’t need babysitting,” snipped Pansy.
“Certainly not. But it would be the height of discourtesy to abandon a lady at a party, especially one you’d come with.”
Draco and Pansy eyed each other without affection.
“It’s that, or Draco has to lead Daphne in,” added Theo, “because one of us gents has to be good for something. It doesn’t have to be me, but I refuse to let down the sex.”
“All right,” said Pansy unhappily.
Theo proffered his hand to Daphne and bowed. She snickered, and folded into an over-elaborate curtsy, full of frivolous hand-twirling and shimmying, ending with her nose nearly flush to the ground; then they joined hands, and went galloping into the ring, where they were soon whisked into the whirling crowd.
Draco and Pansy stood in silence, sipping their wine. He had no idea what to say to her, and she seemed even less inclined to speak to him. The preponderance of masks made it hard to recognize anyone else, and he doubted he would, in any case.
By and by, she said, “Would you like some food?”
“Yes, thank you.”
They fetched plates from another skeleton attendant, and sat at the foot of a giant, gnarled oak tree, whose roots erupted from the earth and fashioned makeshift chairs. The heat from the bonfire warmed their cheeks, and Draco had lost the ability to smell anything but smoke. He and Pansy took thick slices of barmbrack — a sweet bread stuffed with dried fruit and nuts — smothered in yellow butter, and highball glasses of cranachan, a whipped trifle of raspberries, honey, rum, and toasted oats. A skeleton carried around a fat cauldronful of roast hazelnuts, fresh from the fire, and they each took a handful for themselves.
When the sound of wordless chewing became too much to bear, he ventured: “You and Nott seem to know each other well.”
She snorted. “Our fathers have worked together since before either of us were alive.”
Which answered the question of how the Parkinsons spent the war.
“What does your father do?” he said politely.
“He’s an Unspeakable.”
He frowned. “Nott’s father doesn’t work in the Department of Mysteries.”
“I didn’t say they had the same job,” she snapped. “His dad’s in the Wizengamot. He’s on the Committee for Economic Affairs, he oversees the Department’s budget.”
“Silenas, wasn’t it?” he said, trying to remember. “Silenas Nott?”
The eleven-year-old crossed her legs at the ankle and pursed her lips.
“If I were trapped in a room with Sibelius Nott and a hungry werewolf,” she said, “and you gave me two doses of poison, I’d pour the man a double.”
“Parkinson,” he said, surprised. “You’re talking about a member of the government.”
“So?” She lifted her chin. “I would. Theo knows it.”
“Doesn’t he like his father, either?”
To Draco, if one had the good luck to get a father, it seemed ungrateful in the extreme to resent him. He would much prefer the imperfect ministrations of an unsatisfactory father over the absence of his own.
“It’s complicated,” she snapped. “Theo’s mum died, and he hasn’t got siblings, only… I mean, my dad’s no prince, either, but I’d kill anyone who came after him.”
“That’s the second death threat you’ve made in as many minutes.”
“I’m aware.”
“Do you feel you should slow down?”
“Why.”
“People might get ideas.”
“I’m not a nice person,” she said matter-of-factly. “People already think I’m rude. Why should I waste time convincing them?”
He blinked. “I didn’t say you weren’t nice.”
“No, but you think so,” she pointed out. “You think I’m rude. And I am. I’m not charming, and I can’t make people like me, and I get bored to death trying, so I might as well say what I think.”
“That,” he said, “is one strategy.”
She shrugged. “Why should I care? I’m rich and well-bred and probably going to grow up pretty, so I’ll just graduate and get married and have some babies, and then I’ll be free to do whatever I want.”
“That being…?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure that out when I get there. There’s no point in thinking about it now.” She picked at some barmbrack and threw it on the ground, where a squirrel snapped it up.
“It’s early for you to be trawling the market,” he said, leaning back on the root. His head tipped against the trunk of the tree, and he took in a comfortable eyeful of smoke and stars. “Are you accepting applications now, or will there be a posting on the Announcements board?”
She smoothed her skirts. “My mother debuted at sixteen. I think that’s a perfectly appropriate age.”
“To be married?”
“To debut, you dolt, check your ears. Your mother did it the same way. Come out at sixteen, have your Season, meet a man, have a nine-month engagement, you’re married at seventeen. Quick and painless.”
“Ah, romance,” he said dryly. Draco thought the whole concept of a Season sounded dreadful: stuffy balls with girls in old-fashioned gowns throwing themselves at you, or worse, prowling the sides of the dance floor, performing the mysterious female art of crowd-conduction to isolate and corner the bachelor of her choice. The idea of meeting the person he’d end up marrying there, while every wizard of any significance watched him like hawks, did nothing to warm him to the prospect of matrimony.
She shot an amused look at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a romantic.”
He crossed his arms behind his head, reclining. “Why shouldn’t I be?” he said lazily. “My parents were a love match.”
“Your parents were heirs to the biggest families in Wizarding Britain, and your mother was in- famously beautiful. If it was a love match, that’s only because they had the good sense to fall in love before someone told them to.”
“So young, and so cynical.”
“I’m just telling it like it is. My mum always said if you wanted romance, you should sleep with the help.”
Draco choked. “And this is advice she took?”
“I think she actually meant you shouldn’t do either,” she said, frowning, “but I admit, it’s unclear.”
Theo came bounding out of the circle, hauled off his mask, and collapsed onto the root between them. Sweat slicked his hair to his face, and his cheeks shone. “There you are,” he laughed. “What are you two conspiring about?”
“We’re gossiping about your mother,” said Pansy.
He turned to Draco. “Is she being mean?”
“Exceedingly.”
“Good girl.” He stole a piece of barmbrack off her plate, and she hoisted it out of his reach too late.
“Get your own!”
“Mm-hm. Does this little number sound familiar? ‘I don’t want my own, I want some of yours.’”
“It’s all right when I do that, I’m a girl.” She lifted her nose. “It’s unchivalrous to take a lady’s food.”
Theo dunked the barmbrack in his mulled wine. “And it’s not ladylike to gossip, but I like you anyway.”
Daphne stumbled out of the circle, laughing like mad. “I need a new partner,” she said, “I wore mine out.” Her eyes alighted on Draco. “Malfoy!”
He shook his head. But she came forward, holding out her hands, and Theo and Pansy began jeering. “Go on, why don’t you,” said Theo, “it’s a tradition, if a witch asks, it’s terrible luck to refuse…”
He was manhandled to his feet, and Daphne seized his hands. “It’s easy,” she said, “you’ll see, it’s just a chain, nothing fancy at all—”
“I know how to dance, Greengrass,” he said, with infinite dignity. “I wasn’t raised in a barn.”
And taking her hand, he led them into the ring.
This confidence vanished in a nonce when he had to take a lurching double-step to avoid being bowled over. The ring moved far faster than he’d expected, and he nearly went down under the stampede. But Daphne, who was surprisingly strong for such a small girl, dragged him upright and spun him neatly under her arm, looping them into the ring with such grace it made his own mistake look deliberate. He suspected she could have danced just as well with one of the skeleton servants, or perhaps an anthropoid rock.
For the first several seconds of the dance, his brain took leave of his skull, triggering a panic response from his limbs, which were quite understandably relying on it to tell them what to do. Seven years of dance lessons vanished in the stagger of a heartbeat. Someone looped their arm through his, and he was hauled into the first set of claps and twirls, and by the third turn about the bonfire his brain re-established residence between his ears, eager to claim credit for the hard work being done in its absence.
Daphne swung herself around and jumped. One of the other dancers caught her seamlessly and spun her, and she landed again, cackling, her blonde hair scything a pale arc through the air. She linked arms with Draco and spun herself hard around on the axis of their elbows, giggling, and he found that dancing and flying weren’t so different, when you got down to it: a series of calculations and movements in space, a game of bodies where the prize was thrill.
He went to spin her. Willingly she went, turning under his arm, as neatly and elegantly as any princess ever born — and he didn’t see what happened next, but there was a cry, and her right ankle folded where it should have held firm, and she disappeared under the crowd.
He lurched after her. She had rolled out of the path of the dancers, curling up close to the coals, so she wouldn’t be stepped on, and was cradling her right leg with a grimace of frustration and with poorly mastered pain. “Damn,” she said. “Damn, damn, damn! Stupid old thing.”
“Greengrass, look, I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault,” she snapped, “don’t apologize, you didn’t do a thing wrong. Damn, damn, DAMN! Daddy’s going to be so mad.”
“That’s ridiculous. He can’t very well be mad at you for tripping.” He knelt and helped her hop upright, bracing her weight on his shoulder. “Come on. Don’t put weight on it, now, don’t be stupid.”
“You sound like Daddy.”
“He sounds like a smart man. Can you walk? Don’t lie.”
“Yes.”
“Right, so that’s lying,” he said, when she took a wobbling step and almost went down again. “We discussed this, I thought.”
“I can walk,” she said stubbornly.
“You look like a drunk ostrich. Look me in the eye and tell me you can stand on your own.”
She set her jaw and shook her head, pain bringing out the vein in her temple.
“Thank you. Now step here, and here…”
He navigated her back to the oak tree. Theo and Pansy swarmed her at once. “Daph! What happened? I saw you go down, but we didn’t see…”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Daphne twittered, flapping her hand. “Must have slipped on a rock. Goes to show you, dancing’s serious business. Did you save me a drink? You did? I love you.”
“We’re all due a break from dancing, I think,” said Theo. “Time for cake and sweets.”
“Pish. All I need’s a quick Episkey, and I’ll be right as rain.”
“If it’s broken, you’ll need more than Episkey, ” said Pansy severely.
“You could out-weep Niobe, Pans. I’m fine.” Daphne glugged half the cup of mulled wine in one go. “But I’ll take a break. For cake and sweets.”
They reclined and watched the dancers for a while. Theo and Pansy amused Daphne by keeping up commentary on the dancers’ skill, and then speculating on who might lie beneath each mask. This period of repose gave Draco the opportunity to look at the other partygoers, and among those few without masks, he recognized a few: Adrian Pucey sat on his broomstick a few meters above the fray, eating a roast apple; Tracey Davis and Terrence Higgs were chatting on a log, looking quite cozy; Gemma Farley, Millicent Bulstrode, and Bridget Gogol were perched under an elm tree, braiding each other’s hair. As the night moved on, these groups dissolved, reformed, traded partners, and otherwise thoroughly cross-pollinated each other, giving everyone an opportunity to see and be seen by everyone else. There was laughter, and cheering, and none of the sneering coldness that possessed them when they walked the Hogwarts halls.
“Cracking, isn’t it?” said Theo. He sighed, and tipped his head on Draco’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Hogwarts was always like this?”
Draco moved his shoulder, pointedly, and Theo removed his head.
“On fire?” he inquired.
“This way .” He gestured at the circle with his goblet. “Fun. Easy. Everyone here knows each other, everyone respects everyone else. Everyone’s playing by the same rules.”
“It’s a big fire,” said Draco, playing dumb. “There’s not very much to get.”
“You know what I mean. You notice how nothing here stinks of muggle?”
Draco swirled his cup. He had known what Theo meant.
“Careful, Nott,” he said instead. “They keep an eye on people who talk like that.”
“No one who can hear me disagrees.” Theo’s eyes slid sidelong. “Unless, of course, you do.”
Draco took a sip of wine, swallowed, and wet his lips.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Well, you spend a lot of time with them, up in Gryffindor Tower. It’d be understandable if it made you something of a sympathizer.”
“With whom? There are certainly no muggles in Gryffindor.”
“No, mudbloods,” said Theo casually. “They’re all over the place, aren’t they?”
“I don’t ask.”
“Yes, but you can tell.”
He couldn’t, actually. He knew most of his year because they’d said something, but for those who hadn’t, he had no clue.
He made a noncommittal noise and drank again.
“I didn’t know Granger was a mudblood,” said Theo, after a beat. “That came as a surprise, I’ll be honest. Figured she’d be half-blood, at least, with marks like hers. Bit of a shame, I might’ve fancied her otherwise—”
Draco choked.
“Oh, don’t be that way. It’s not the sixties, we can acknowledge when a mudblood is fit. I wouldn’t do anything with her, obviously. She’s no Daphne, of course, what with the teeth, but there’s something about clever girls—”
“You can talk about something else now.”
“All right, fine. Didn’t realize you were so old-school, but have it your way. Speaking of,” he said, sitting up, “have you heard about Thompson?”
He meant Leanne.
“That she’s in the Hospital Wing?” said Draco, carefully neutral.
“For half the year! Snape told us in confidence. What a windfall. Wish whoever did it would come out and say, even just to other Slytherins, I think we’d all like to buy him a drink.”
The phrase — just to other Slytherins — stuck in Draco’s mind. “You think it’s a Slytherin?”
Theo gave him a look that plainly said what a stupid question this was. “It’s vexing. I’ve gone around asking all the upperclassmen, and nobody will own to it. I suppose they’re being cautious, and for good reason. The consequences of getting caught would be tremendous.”
“I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be expelled.”
“Expelled? Bother that, you’re in for the lawsuit of your life,” said Theo mildly. “Luckily, her parents are muggles, so they wouldn’t know how to sue, but there’s all sorts of dribbly advocacy groups… The Allegiance of Muggle-Born Wizards, the British Anti-Discrimination League, Coalition for the Protection of Magical Rights…”
“It doesn’t seem worth the risk.”
“That’s what I thought,” he admitted. “Certainly not for a Slytherin, because everyone suspects us. That’s why I thought it was you, at first.”
Draco’s head snapped up.
“It wasn’t.”
“No, I don’t think it was,” Theo agreed. “Doesn’t seem like your style, now I know you better. But I wondered there, for a moment. I mean, wouldn’t it be the perfect crime? No one would suspect you. You’re a Gryffindor. You’ve got the headmaster and deputy headmistress both around your pinky finger.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Sure it doesn’t,” said Theo, unconvinced. “At any rate, I told Pansy: if it was him, then we’ve really done him a disservice, because that’s the funniest thing that’s happened all year. I mean, here we are in the dungeons, doing nothing, hurting no one, and still getting pulled aside for lectures about ‘muggle-born equality’ from McGonagall, and meanwhile, the kid who did it is sitting pretty up in her own house ! And she doesn’t suspect! It would’ve been Christmas.”
His tone was wistful.
Draco found something distasteful about the conversation. Something tasted sour about it. He was, of course, a staunch traditionalist, in his mother’s fashion and his father’s, but tradition was one thing, and harm was another altogether. One didn’t have to like muggle-borns to think there was something unseemly about wanting to do violence to them. It wasn’t — mannered. It was ill-bred.
His lips thinned. “Funny,” he said.
“Yeah. Pipe dream, I suppose.” Theo lifted his goblet. “To our faceless friend.”
Draco knocked his cup against Theo’s. He lifted it to his lips, but did not drink.
NEXT CHAPTER: 10/3/2022
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