Chapter 12: House-Elves and Marigolds
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
“Mister Malfoy,” said Snape, “are you aware of when class starts?”
There were few more dangerous phrases Snape could utter. Draco was not actually sure he wouldn’t have preferred the Cruciatus Curse.
He closed the door behind him. The assembled second years of Gryffindor and Slytherin House watched with macabre interest. “Yes, professor.”
Ritual humiliation was Snape’s favored style of punishment. It was, in fairness, no more than Draco had earned. He had overslept after the bonfire, and woke up five minutes past the bell, his hair rumpled, the smell of woodsmoke still clinging to his clothes.
There were two empty seats left. The first, near the front of the room, sat to Hermione’s left. The other was at a four-top with Theo, Crabbe, and Goyle, who had sequestered near the back. Theo caught his eye, and nodded to it.
Hermione turned over her shoulder and grimaced sympathetically at him. She indicated his seat.
“Ten points from Gryffindor,” announced Snape, and Draco’s housemates grumbled and sighed. “Consider it leniency that I do not take more. In the future, expect more serious repercussions for disrespecting your professors’ time.”
He didn’t know precisely why he did it — whether it was embarrassment, and a desire to sit as far from Snape’s glare as possible, or whether something Theo had said at the bonfire was still percolating in the back of his mind — but Draco dropped his bag at Theo’s table and sat down quickly, before anyone could give him any more strange looks.
“Don’t look so wretched, it could have been worse,” said Theo, as Draco sat down. “For any other Gryffindor, it would’ve been twenty.”
“That makes me feel ever so much better, thank you.”
“Have a sulk if you like. McGonagall will give the points back in Transfiguration, anyway.”
He was not wrong. McGonagall tended to hand a lot of points to Gryffindor, but that was only because Hermione routinely ran circles around the rest of the class, and with such flair it would be insulting not to award points for it. Last week, she had transformed a box of dandelion seeds into a four-foot ice sculpture of a swan so lifelike it seemed on the verge of flight, and then charmed it to waddle around the room, honking.
McGonagall had clapped. It was almost offensive.
“What’s the potion?” he said briskly, flipping open his book. He wasn’t interested in discussing inter-house politics any further.
“Swelling Solution. We’re in teams. Shouldn’t be too much work, but it calls for pufferfish eyes, and of course, we’ve only got whole pufferfish…”
He unbuckled his knife set. “Hand them over,” he said curtly.
“No, I’ve got it,” said Theo absently. “You measure the nettles and get the brew going.”
He blinked. He was used to butchery because he usually worked with Hermione, and working with dead animals made her sick. She pretended it didn’t, but she’d always volunteer to do the other tasks first, and he’d end up taking care of the butchery by default.
“Eyes can be tricky,” he said, eyeing Theo’s inexpert grip on the knife-handle.
“You don’t trust me to hack out an eyeball? Should I feel insulted?”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. Hermione wouldn’t have protested; she would have accepted that if he was asking to do something, it was because he knew he could do it better, and the potion would be better off for it. “I don’t care,” he said shortly. “Just don’t crush them while you’re getting them out, we only get two fish.”
“You make it sound like I’m trying to carve myself a carpaccio. I’m being careful, look. I can still — oh, damn. ”
The first eyeball collapsed, severed by a stray nudge from his knifepoint.
“As I said,” Draco said irritably, “it’s tricky. We need three, so be more careful on the next one.”
“Someone’s quite fussy,” Theo said mildly. “You know, it won’t be the end of the world, if—”
“Excuse me?”
Hermione stood in front of their table. Draco’s heart sank. He wondered what the hell she thought she was doing, coming over here, as if Crabbe and Goyle didn’t already look prepared to spit fire at her for the audacity of showing her face.
She was holding a bag of dried nettles. “Sorry to bother,” she said tentatively, and deliberately not looking him in the eye, “but I wondered if you had any extra pufferfish eyes?”
His heart sank even further.
She hurried to explain, “I had some extra dried nettles, so I thought I could trade you, to save you some time—”
“And why would we do that?” Theo said coolly.
Hermione balked slightly. “Well,” she said, “apart from saving you time, as it happens, I’m not terribly fond of butchering, so I thought…”
“That you’d ask us to cover for your weakness?” Theo clucked his tongue. “Come now, Granger, that’s not how it works.”
“I’m not asking you to cover for anything,” she said indignantly. “It’s a perfectly fair trade. I didn’t come here hat-in-hand—”
“It seems to me like you’re getting something you need in exchange for something we don’t.”
She scowled. “I’m not talking to you, anyway,” she said haughtily. “I’m talking to Draco.”
“Yeah? Doesn’t seem like it benefits him, either.”
“I’ll let him answer that.”
Draco, who was staring at the floor, lifted his eyes. “We don’t have spare pufferfish eyes,” he told her. “Nott fudged one. Ask Potter for help cutting yours.”
He felt, rather than saw, her scowl of confusion. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You were late this morning, and you’re not sitting in your seat.”
“I fancied a change. You should sit down.”
“Is something wrong?” she said. “Did I do something?”
This was excruciating. If one could bottle the earnestness in her voice, they could use it for interrogations in Azkaban.
Unexpectedly, Goyle grunted, “She bothering you, Malfoy?”
Draco looked at him, alarmed. From Goyle, this was an unprecedented declaration of fidelity, and some part of him was warmed by it, at the same time as the rest of him was panicking about what to do.
“No,” he said. To Hermione, he said, “You really should sit down.”
“You haven’t answered me! Why are you sitting back here?”
“Granger—”
“I don’t think Malfoy’s been particularly unclear,” drawled Theo, resting an arm on Draco’s chair. “He’s asked you twice, nicely, to leave us alone. I think if it gets to a third time, I’d have cause to tell Snape you’re trying to distract us.”
“I’m not!”
“Professor?” said Theo, raising his hand. “Granger’s bothering us.”
Snape looked up from the lectern, his sneer cold. “Find your seat, Miss Granger,” he called. He spoke so loudly the whole class could hear him. “Let Mister Malfoy and Mister Nott finish their potion. I hope yours is not so mediocre that you feel the need to sabotage others’ work.”
“But I wasn’t, professor! I came over to ask—”
“You were asked to find your seat, not to explain yourself,” said Snape, examining his fingernails. “Five points for Gryffindor, for the inability to understand instructions.”
Hermione’s hands curled into fists at her sides. Her jaw hardened, and she blinked back tears of frustration. Stonily, she marched back to her seat.
“Knacker,” said Ron, in a low voice.
“What was that, Mister Weasley?”
Draco hoped against hope that Ron would take the chance, for once in his life, to simply let the thing be.
But Ron never missed an opportunity to prove Draco Malfoy a fool.
“I said, she was asking for help,” Ron said loudly, throwing down his knife. Harry nodded, his expression furious. “If you don’t want her to get up, maybe you ought to — I don’t know — offer to help her? Like a teacher would?”
Titters rose from the other Gryffindors. Hermione shrank in on herself, looking miserable. Theo muttered something about weasels under his breath.
Snape said silkily, “Twenty-five points from Gryffindor, for cheek. One word and it’s detention, Weasley.”
“Shocker,” said Ron, undeterred. “Didn’t see that coming. Here’s another one: why don’t you ask what Nott and Malfoy were saying to her? You notice she’s looking pretty upset? Is that something you’re worried about, or can you only see it when the student’s wearing green?”
“Detention,” said Snape, with a stare that could have leveled castles. “Two weeks. If you continue to disrupt class, I will remove you from it.”
Ron blew out a long breath, and fell silent, folding his arms. Hermione covered her face in her hands.
Theo leaned over and gave a low whistle in Draco’s ear. “You have to admit, they bring it on themselves. Snape’s only being fair.”
He scowled. “You didn’t have to make a scene.”
“What are you talking about?” Theo was dumbfounded.
“With Granger. You didn’t have to go after her.”
“I didn’t go after her.”
“You were rude.”
“It was competitive banter,” said Theo, bemused. “It was — a bit of inter-house competition, that’s all. Daphne hears worse than that from me every morning—”
“Granger doesn’t,” Draco snapped. “And it’s not inter-house competition, Nott, need I remind you. That’s thirty points you just lost me.”
Then, spitefully, he seized the remaining pufferfish from Theo’s station, and freed the eyeball in three brisk cuts.
Draco arrived at second-period Defense Against the Dark Arts prepared to offer Hermione Granger two arguments, three excuses, and several very good lies explaining why she shouldn’t be angry with him. As it happened, he didn’t have the chance to try any of them: Harry and Ron had arrived first, and wedged an extra chair in at their desk, so she was sandwiched safely between them for the duration of the lesson, and Draco was left by himself.
It became apparent that he was being punished once the lesson started. He tried to get Hermione’s attention, first by waving, and then a harsh: “Psst!” and finally a written note, which he crumpled up and lobbed across the aisle at her head. But Harry snatched it out of the air without looking, and deliberately dropped it beneath his foot.
“Potter,” he hissed. Harry lifted an eyebrow at him.
“What?” he mouthed.
“Give that to Granger.”
He frowned and shook his head.
“What? Why not?”
Harry glanced at the professor — Podmore was occupied answering a Hufflepuff’s question about gnomes — and leaned over. “Because you’re a git,” he informed him.
“Me? I didn’t do anything!”
Harry gave him a flat look.
“I sat with someone else! Is that a crime?”
He rolled his eyes and turned back to his book.
“Hey! Potter!” Draco threw another wad of parchment at him. “Listen!”
This one smacked him on the side of the head. He glowered.
“I didn’t mean for Snape to dock her points,” he said in a low voice. “Nott called him down, not me.”
Harry stared at him.
“That’s it?” he said. “You think we’re cross because you lost points?”
“Well, in point of fact, Weasley was the one who—”
“You’re barking if you think that’s all it is. If you really don’t understand, then I really don’t want anything to do with you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Draco, only half lying. “I didn’t do anything to you. ”
Harry shook his head.
Draco sat back in his seat, huffing. Podmore was saying cheerfully, “Now, of course, the curse you’ll want is a clever little spell called Rictosempra Minor, which will slow its heartbeat to a state of slumber…”
“Much like this class,” he muttered, loud enough for others to hear. Susan Bones gave him a dark look and pressed her finger to her lips, but Hermione gave a little snort that might have been a chuckle.
For the rest of the day, Harry and Ron flanked Hermione like a pair of guardsmen.
It was intolerable. He hadn’t even done anything wrong. And he was expected to apologize — well, he wouldn’t, not to them. His father never would have let himself be bullied into an apology, and neither would he.
Now, for Granger, perhaps, some amends might be in order. But only because she had been trying to ask him an innocent question, and because Nott had been a tosser. That wasn’t her fault, and she had a bad time of it. It didn’t seem fair that her day ought to be ruined on account of Nott’s bad judgment, or Snape’s preference for Slytherins.
At dinner, he sat by himself, stewing. After the meal was over, he hopped up and dashed up to the common room early, taking the stairs two by two. Hermione would be there before anyone else. She always left dinner early on Mondays, because she did her Charms homework for Friday on Monday evenings, like the maniacal little over-achiever she was, and Harry and Ron always stayed late for pudding. Ron’s appetite was a constant more reliable than gravity.
Her habits didn’t fail him; as the bell struck seven, she came hurrying through the portrait hole, absent either of the boys.
“Granger,” he said briskly, striding out of the shadows. “This is silly.”
“Draco!” She dropped her books, and they landed with a punctuating thump. “Why are you lurking in the common room?”
He paused, put out.
“I live here,” he said indignantly.
“Yes, I know that, but—”
“And here’s another thing, I object to that term, ‘lurking,’ when I’m only standing here—”
“Lurk,” she said, “verb: ‘be or remain hidden, so as to wait.’ Is that not what you’re doing?”
“It connotes some sort of ambush.”
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“I’m not trying to ambush you.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
There was a pause.
“Are we going to talk about this morning?” she said stiffly. “Because if we’re not, I’d — I’d rather like to go up to bed, please. I have reading to do.”
“Charms,” he said automatically.
“…Yes.”
“I know.”
“Right. Well, that’s what it is.”
She adjusted her grip on her books. He shuffled his feet. For some reason, neither of them did anything.
“Merlin. Come on, then,” he snapped. He strode past her and hauled open the portrait door.
“No,” she said, blinking. “Where are you going?”
“Where we’re going. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you unless you explain yourself!”
“Yes, you are.” He stepped down the portrait-hole and held the door.
“I’m not! And here’s another thing,” she said, stepping after him. “I think I ought to make you apologize for this morning before we go anywhere. I didn’t do anything to you, and it was horrid, and I felt incredibly stupid, and you didn’t say a word.”
She continued to explain herself, in his wake, as he trotted down a back-staircase to the ground floor, and cut through a secluded courtyard to the lawns.
“…and I really did feel awful about it, not to mention the thirty points, which might have been Ron but he wouldn’t have done them if you’d only been a little more decent, and I don’t think —” She stopped. “Where are we going?”
“No, keep going, we’re almost there,” he said, feeling almost cheerful. He headed down the gentle slope of the lawns from the castle, down a set of stone steps, past the place where Ginny had knocked down Pansy.
“Well, as I was saying,” she huffed, “I’m not going anywhere with you until I get an apology.”
“Right. This morning was an unmitigated disaster, and it won’t happen again.” He would do a better job of keeping Theo apart from Hermione in the future. They clearly couldn’t be trusted to interact on their own.
She frowned. “That’s not really an apology.”
“Isn’t it close enough?” he said irritably, as they drew up to the quidditch pitch. “I’m not going to drop on my knees and beg your forgiveness, for anything, and least of all a little tiff with Nott. Besides, if you’d pay attention, I’m about to make it up to you.”
“That’s not — you’re what?”
“ Alohamora. Making it up to you. Keep up.”
“Making it up how?” she said suspiciously.
“Doing something nice. Merlin knows why, it’s never once helped me.”
Hermione seemed to notice where she was for the first time. “I’m not sure that we’re supposed to be here,” she fretted. “If we’re not practicing for quidditch…”
“Nonsense. Students can use the pitch whenever there’s no practice or a game on, so long as it’s their own broom and they’re not breaking curfew.”
“Those rules only apply to members of the quidditch team,” she said doubtfully.
He hip-checked open the door to the Gryffindor locker room, and grinned at her. “Right you are, Granger,” he said. “And you’re looking at Gryffindor’s only Reserve Seeker.”
The locker room was dustier and smellier than Slytherin’s, but otherwise the same. He noticed one of Fred’s robes draped over a bench, and a bespelled speaker that Wood used to give orders at practice. His Nimbus was tucked in the back of the spare broom closet, locked in its case, to discourage sticky fingers.
She eyed it warily. “I told Harry,” she said, “I’m not watching you practice flying. It’s all fun and games for you, but it’s terribly boring for those of us on the ground.”
“I quite agree.” He hauled out the set of practice balls and mounted his broom on his shoulder.
“Oh, no,” she said, alarmed. “I’m not — I don’t like it. I’m no use with sports. I’ve no interest in them. It’s helpless. My mother enrolled me in girls’ football, it was disastrous, I scored twice on my own goal and got hit in the head.”
“Were the two events related?”
“What?”
“Nothing. And anyway, of course you didn’t like that rubbish, it’s muggle sports.”
“It’s not rubbish,” she said unconvincingly. “I’m just not interested in it. And anyway, wizarding sports aren’t any better, they’re loads more dangerous, and flying is a nightmare—”
“How do you know?” He flexed his fingers, warming the leather glove.
“Because I’ve tried it, and I loathed it utterly!”
“You haven’t.”
“I have, in fact, Madam Hooch made us all spend a miserable forty-five minutes—”
“That’s not real flying.”
“Was so. I was twelve feet in the air,” she said primly, “and hated every second.”
“That doesn’t count,” he said. “The only person you’ve ever flown with is you, and you’re rubbish. You ought to try it with someone who knows how.”
“You mean — oh, no.” She shook her head forcefully. “No. No, Draco, no.”
“Don’t be such a priss.”
“It’s dangerous! And don’t tell me it’s safe, because I’ve seen you fly, and you’re not careful.”
“Well I’m not going to do barrel rolls with you on the back, am I,” he said, irked. “Listen. If you try it, and you really hate it, you’ll get to hand me a big stinking ‘I told you so.’ Won’t that be a treat?”
She pouted. But she followed him onto the pitch, muttering that she could do that just as well with both feet on the ground.
November’s first evening bloomed cool and still, and her sky was veined with clouds and stars like a piece of lapis lazuli. The grass crackled wet beneath their feet. Draco set down the practice set and unlatched the trunk. “Pay attention,” he said, “because I’m tired of explaining the score every time there’s a game. Quaffle, bludger, snitch. Quaffle: goes in the hoop, ten points. Snitch: you catch it, one hundred and fifty points, game over. Quite simple.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she pointed out. “Why wouldn’t everyone just dash after the snitch?”
“Because then you wouldn’t have a game, first off, and second off, it’s an automatic forfeit if anyone but the seeker touches it. Anyway, they usually disappear for the first quarter or two — they go hide in the stands or something, give the Chasers a chance to rack up points.”
“So what if a spectator catches it?”
“Interesting question,” he said brightly, unbuckling the snitch from its berth. “Happened a couple of times in the major leagues. The first time, in 1947, the referees couldn’t figure out what to do; they ended up giving the points to the fan’s team. Obviously, this was heinous. So the League gets together and decides that it doesn’t count, and to discourage pilfering, anyone that tries to tell the seeker where it is incurs a penalty of seventy-five points on the seeker.” The snitch’s wings sprouted from its sides, and spun like a hummingbird’s. He showed it to Hermione. “Rarely happens, anyway. Most people are too busy watching the match. Real snitchionados—”
She burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?”
“Snitch– snitchion– snitch-whats?”
“It’s a perfectly legitimate term,” he said crossly. “People who spend the match watching for the snitch instead of watching the game.”
“This is why I can’t take sports seriously, it’s so — I mean, honestly! And with a straight face, too!”
He scowled. “What, because that’s so much sillier than ‘football’? Foot-ball? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Do they call pottery ‘hand-clay’? Is music ‘sound-make’?”
“It’s certainly not worse than ‘quaffle’!”
“Go on, then, have a laugh. We’ll see who’s laughing when we’re in the air.” He released the snitch, and it darted off into the blue night.
“Oh, don’t say that, I’ll puke,” she said, sobering.
“Do it and I’ll drop you,” he said, swinging his leg over the Nimbus. “On my father’s house, I will drop you. If I feel so much as an intimation that vomit may be at any time approaching my person, I’m offloading all passenger cargo, immediately.”
“Draco!”
“You think I’m joking? This is cashmere.”
He kicked off, and hovered at waist height. She stood at his hip, dithering. “There’s not much room on the broom,” she said hesitantly.
“No, it’s not a tandem bicycle. You’ll have to hold on to me, I’m steering.”
“And — and it won’t be too hard for you to do? With the extra weight? It’ll change the center of balance.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Have you done this before?”
“Why, you’re stalling,” he said, intrigued. “And you, being a lion and all.”
She wrung her hands. “But it’s really not safe—”
“I understand,” he said sympathetically, shaking his head. “And you know what, when we get back to the castle, I’ll help you find Flitwick, so you can ask if there are any slots left in Ravenclaw.”
She gave an indignant cry, and said, “Oh — you sneak, don’t think I don’t see what you’re — hold it still, I’m coming up!”
He grinned and held out his arm, which she grasped to haul herself up. She did it remarkably smoothly, for her first time, straddling the broomstick with only a slight wobble, and then sat down hard behind his hips. He gripped the handle to keep it from bucking.
“There,” she said tightly, putting her hands on her knees. “I did it. See? Not scared.”
“Masterfully done. You’re going to want to lean forward, now, unless you fancy sliding off the back.” He pulled the broom a few feet higher, and his toes lifted off the ground.
She lurched forward, whimpering.
“That’ll do, I suppose. Arms around my waist.”
“What?”
“My waist, Granger, do I have to explain everything? Haven’t you ever seen — never mind, stupid question. Just… here, give me your hands.”
He fastened her hands around his sternum like buckling a harness. She scooted forward, and her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
“You’ll have to speak up if you want me to hear something,” he said. “The wind kicks up and it’s rather loud.”
“Actually,” she said, “I’ve changed my mind. This was a terrible idea, and I’d like to go down, please.”
“Oh, certainly,” he agreed. “Eventually.”
“Oh, no, no, no—”
He took off, and her scream lifted a flock of starlings from the trees across the lake.
They soared to the crest of the quidditch towers and did a loop around the pitch, slow, crawling by Draco’s standards, but Hermione didn’t stop screaming until they leveled out and flew parallel to the ground again. Handling the broomstick was more difficult with someone else on the back, and he couldn’t move as fast, but that was perhaps for the better, because every time he changed direction, she gave a scream and clutched his waist like a liferaft in a monsoon. In so doing, she drove the breath from his lungs, and he grunted, “Easy,” at which she would lessen her grip, but not by much.
He drifted out of the pitch and drew an S-curve over the treetops, careful to turn slowly, so the witch wouldn’t try to put out his eardrums again. She had buried her face in his back when they took off and had not looked up since.
“Granger, you’re missing the view.” The sun was crawling beneath the lake, and shards of gold bloodied the sky around it in a carnage of gilded pink.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. Your eyes are closed.”
“You can’t know that.”
“What am I pointing at?”
“The sky,” she said. “A tree. The lake.”
“Trick question, I wasn’t. Open them up.”
“You can’t make me.”
“You’re perfectly safe. I haven’t dropped you yet, have I?”
He felt her head rise. “That’s a fallacy,” she informed him. “Actually, a rather common one, and quite insidious. It’s called the gambler’s fallacy, and it refers to the belief that separate, independent events can jointly affect the probability of future independent — oh God.”
She headbutted him in the back.
“You see it?”
“Why did you take us so high! There’s no need for us to be up here!”
“No need?” he repeated, as the valley of Hogwarts unfolded beneath them like a diorama. The sunset crowned the castle parapets in deep shadows. “Well, there’s no need for the Elgin Marbles, either. But you’d still like to see them, every now and then.”
“Not if it could kill me!”
“People have died for beauty. Take Hector.”
“In the context of war,” she said, “and also, incidentally, not his choice, which is the point of — oh, you did it again!” And she buried her head back in his shoulder.
“I’m actually rather proud of this,” he said, to no one in particular. “Flying with a passenger isn’t difficult at all. I thought it’d be harder.”
“YOU’VE NEVER DONE IT?”
“Ow. We’re the only ones up here, there’s no need to shout.”
“YOU SAID YOU KNEW HOW!”
“I do know how,” he said, proudly. “I’ve seen it done loads of times, and I’ve ridden tandem before. It didn’t look that complicated, and it’s not.”
She moaned nauseously. He sent a suspicious look over his shoulder, but the vomit forecast seemed clear.
“I’m going to jinx you,” she said, into the back of his neck. Her fingers dug into his waist like she was imagining his neck between them. “When I get down from here, just wait till I get my wand, and I’ll jinx you. I’ll find that nasty one Fred was talking about, the one that makes you puke slugs.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I’m trapped on a floating twig three hundred feet in the air, Draco Lucius Malfoy, do not tell me what I would and wouldn’t dare.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Don’t do that, you sound like my mother,” he said. Banking, he cut a lazy swoop down to the canopy level, and coasted around the edge of the lake. Hermione, clinging tightly, peeked over his shoulder.
“There it is,” he said, pointing. “Do you see it?”
The snitch was speeding steadily along the surface of the lake, its wings skimming a line of foam up from the surf.
“The ball?” she said. “You’re not going to try to catch it, are you? Oh!”
He dipped and sped along the water, so low that sprays of foam brushed their ankles. A wind off the water hopped up and ruffled his hair, and he bent low, forcing Hermione to bend with him, his arm outstretched.
The snitch swerved hard, and he turned, following the arc of the ball. The end of the broom drifted close to the water, kicking up a splash, and Hermione shrieked.
Cool metal struck the surface of his palm. He hauled it in, and pulled up, and they rose from the surface, spilling lakewater and mist. The trail of his broom drew a rainbow over the lake.
“Did you see that?” he called, exhilarated. “Did you see it? Now, that was a catch!”
She didn’t answer, being reduced to inchoate muttering.
“Reserve Seeker, my arse,” he announced. “Goes to show you. If Wood had seen that, he’d be sorry. He’d be begging me to take Potter’s place. What’s that? Oh, don’t whinge, we’re going back down.”
“You know, that really wasn’t so bad,” she said brightly. “It’s not my sport, but I can see the appeal.”
“Sorry, what was that? I’m a bit deaf.”
“Oh, excuse me. I said ‘nice try, I’m not repeating myself.’”
They ended up in the kitchens afterward, because Hermione kept complaining that flying made her cold, and he promised to get her a hot drink if it would shut her up.
They stooped through the portrait door. The kitchens were a warm, brassy space, filled with steam and wood and copper pots and pans, with a roaring fireplace at the back that filled the room with light. A host of house-elves animated it, and filled it with a breathless energy: everywhere one looked, there was an elf chopping vegetables, stirring sauces, carrying dishes, all of them chatting jovially in a series of clicks and squeaks.
One of them greeted Draco at the door. The elf wore a potato sack with the Hogwarts embroidered on the shoulder, and epaulets.
“Evening, Spratt.”
“Good evening, sir,” it said, in a voice that was slow, sad, and deeply nasal. “Might we interest you in some nibbles?”
Draco rubbed his hands together, trying to work the chill out of them. “That sounds excellent. Something simple, we’d like it quick.”
“Very good, sir. And would sir like some hot cocoa with his nibbles?”
“If it wouldn’t trouble you.”
They sat at a low wooden table near the fireplace. Draco wriggled out of his shoes and set them by the hearth, so they could dry, and hung his robe over a rack close to the fire. Hermione followed slowly, staring at everything with naked astonishment.
“Come on and sit down,” he urged, nudging the other stool with his foot. “It’s warm over here, and you were the one fussing about the chill.”
“Draco,” she whispered, “these are house-elves.”
“What about it?”
“You remember what Podmore said about them!” She stumbled onto the stool, still staring. “Do you think they’re all… I mean, they can’t all … Dumbledore wouldn’t let them be enslaved, would he?”
He rolled his eyes. “Spare me.”
“I’m serious!” she whispered. “It’s horrible, what wizards do to the house-elves, and it’s even more horrible that no one seems to care about it! I’ve asked every professor since that lesson what’s being done at Hogwarts to advance house-elf rights, and none of them have an answer! There’s no student groups, no activism, no nothing!”
“That’s not true.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are lobbyists for house-elves,” he said. “It’s just that they’re all nutters, and nobody pays attention to them.”
“It’s not nutters to want to free slaves!”
He leaned on his knees, impatient. “First of all, Hogwarts elves aren’t bound, they’re paid. You see those little badges?”
“Yes, what about them?”
“That means they were given clothes. They’re not chained to Hogwarts. They can leave if they like. But where will they go? They’re house-elves. They can’t own property. They can’t hold a job. They can’t very well open a Gringotts account to keep their savings, even if they could, not with goblin-elf relations being what they are, and anyway, they couldn’t spend the money, even if they wanted to. If you’re a house-elf, Hogwarts is the best life you’re likely to get.”
While he spoke, Hermione had grown more and more excited.
“But that’s exactly why people need to advocate for them!” she exclaimed. “Because they can’t do any of those things! Because they ought to be able to own property, and get jobs, and spend money on their own! Can’t you see?”
He thought about Dobby, at home, carefully wrapping a box of gifts to ship off to Hogwarts. He wondered if Hermione would think differently if she met him, and then immediately nixed the idea. That would require Hermione coming to the Manor, and meeting his mother, and there was a myriad of diversely catastrophic reasons that couldn’t happen.
“I can see that you have a lot of feelings about this.”
Spratt reappeared with two tall mugs of cocoa and a silver cloche. “Bruschette, with a balsamic reduction, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella,” he intoned drearily. “And: cocoa.”
“Thank you, Spratt,” Hermione said stiffly. “We appreciate that very much.”
Draco lifted an eyebrow at her.
“At ease,” he mumbled.
“Shut up.”
Spratt bowed, and left them.
“These are so posh,” Hermione said, marveling at the little canoes of bread, which were each piled high with a flotilla of greenery, a rosebud of a tomato, and a pillow of mozzarella. “My parents always gave me string cheese or graham crackers.”
Draco shrugged, sipping his cocoa. It was hot and creamy, with a hint of espresso. “Spratt knows what I like,” he said.
She shook her head ruefully. “I bet you’ve never even had a graham cracker.”
“I don’t know what those are, so odds are slim.”
“So you’ve never had a s’more, either!” The prospect appalled her.
“You needn’t sound so surprised,” he said sourly. “You didn’t know what a Chocolate Frog was when I met you.”
“I knew what they were , I just didn’t know they could move. But you’ve never heard of a s’more at all? With the little Hershey’s bars, and marshmallows?”
He brightened. “Oh, I know what those are.”
“Marshmallows?”
“Yes. My mum likes them,” he said, carefully lifting one of the little towers.
Hermione hummed thoughtfully, and licked up a drift of whipped cream. “I don’t know why that surprises me,” she said, after a moment. “I suppose I don’t know much about your family, except that they’re wizards. And that they’re rather posh. So I wouldn’t see your mother as the marshmallow type.”
“She won’t admit it. My Aunt Andy — we’re not supposed to talk about her, she was disinherited — brought them home one summer, after her boyfriend gave her some to share. Mother told me they ate the whole pack in one go. Granny Black never knew.”
Hermione blinked, as if she wasn’t quite sure where to start. “Your aunt was disinherited?” she said. “That’s… dramatic.”
“Well, she married a muggle-born,” he said matter-of-factly.
There was a beat of silence, a powerful one, like someone had dropped something heavy.
“It was a long time ago,” he said, presently. “My grandfather was very traditional.”
“Of course.” Her tone was deliberately neutral.
He sighed. “Granger, it’s nothing to do with you. The Blacks have been pureblood for centuries; they’re Sacred Twenty-Eight. My aunt would have put an end to all of that. Most wizards wouldn’t care. If it were Potter’s family, or Weasley’s, it wouldn’t matter.”
“But yours is different,” she said, rolling her mug between her hands. “For some reason.”
“Yes, it is. The Blacks were related to most pureblood families in Britain. They were the family, the magical line. It mattered what they did.” He paused. “It didn’t matter so much, for everyone else.”
“Past tense,” she said suddenly. Her eyes glinted like she’d caught a trick question.
“Hm?”
“You used the past tense. To talk about your family. Did something happen to them?”
He palmed his cup, and felt the warmth seep into his fingers. “My mother’s the last one,” he said shortly. “It’s a long story. The Blacks — there was something of a collapse, twenty years ago. A whole generation of them vanished, died, or left in disgrace.”
“Oh,” said Hermione softly. “I’m very sorry.”
He flinched. “I didn’t know them.”
“For your mother, I mean,” she said. “That must have been horrible for her. I very much hope she’s all right.”
He found himself staring at her knees, because he was certain her face was doing something earnest and kind and unendurable.
“Don’t let her hear you pitying her,” he said, aiming for flippancy, landing in weak sarcasm. “She’d have your tongue out for it.”
“I don’t pity her. Well, I suppose I do, a little bit,” she amended. “But mostly I was thinking how miserable my mum would be, if my dad died, and she didn’t have any family to comfort her. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Even your mother, though I know she probably wouldn’t like me very much.”
It would not have comforted his mother in the least to hear herself compared, in any way, to a muggle. But he knew Hermione was trying to be kind, and a warm stir of gratitude was happening somewhere in his traitorous chest, despite his best efforts to stifle it.
He spun his signet ring. It had become something of a tic. His mother would have pinched his wrist and told him not to fidget.
“What’s that?” said Hermione.
“It’s a ring.”
“Is it? No, really?”
He smirked. “It’s a signet ring,” he said, slipping it off and handing it to her.
She held it to the firelight and inspected the stone. “It’s very intricate,” she remarked. “Oh! I recognize this from your letters. The wax.”
“I used it to seal them.” He took it back. “The signet is the mark of authenticity. So you know a letter is from the head of house.”
She frowned. “Why wouldn’t that be your mother?” she said. “She’s older than you. Or can’t women be heads of house, in the Wizarding World?”
He heard the suspicion in her tone, and he smiled. “They can,” he said. “But not by marrying in. Inheritance passes through strict primogeniture, girls or boys. Something to do with wards and blood signatures. Anyway, she’s head of the house of Black, and I’m head of the house of Malfoy.” He slid the ring back on, and fluttered his fingers. “The last one.”
“For now,” she pointed out.
“Fair point. Although I haven’t any designs on that in the near future.”
“I should think not.” She sipped her cocoa, and said idly, “You know, I’m quite surprised by how backwards all your technology is. If it weren’t all backed up by magic, muggles would be miles ahead of you.”
He arched his eyebrow. “Really.”
“Yes. I mean, take wax sigils. They’re quite unsafe; if you take a hot knife and run them under the seal, you can pop them off and pop them back on again. It’s terribly insecure.” She daubed primly at her mouth with a napkin. “I’d imagine wizards get their mail stolen all the time.”
He rankled. “That’s still better than leaving your post in a box outside your house.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t, and if muggles and wizards put their heads together on this, I’m sure we could come up with something so nobody got their letters stolen.”
He acknowledged this with a grunt. “It’s not the most secure thing in the world,” he admitted. “But you’re not the first to think of it.” He paused, and then — without fully knowing why — he added, “My mother and I write in code to each other, sometimes.”
She looked up in interest. The full weight of Hermione’s attention was a palpable thing, heavy, and pleasurable, like a warm blanket. He felt the quantity of intelligence being concentrated on him, and it made him glow with self-importance.
“Really? Like a cipher?”
“Nothing that complex. It’s all symbology. She’ll write to me about her ‘garden,’ and references to different flowers mean different things.”
“Like Victorian flower language,” she said, delighted.
“Conceptually, I suppose. White roses mean safety; red, danger; yellow indicates a question… carnations mean an insult, marigolds, forgiveness, and so on. Jasmine means me, so she might write, ‘I’m putting red roses in with the jasmines, this year,’ and it would mean ‘you’re in danger.’”
“Jasmine,” she said thoughtfully. “Where does that come from?”
“Sincerely no idea. She came up with it all.” He drained his cup. “Are you finished? I’m knackered, and you’ve still got your Charms for Friday to do.”
“Goodness, I forgot about that,” she said, smacking her forehead. “I’m so behind! I’m wrecked. I won’t finish before midnight, and then I’ll be tired, and then I won’t do well in Transfiguration tomorrow, which is really such a shame; I was so excited, we’re starting on animal transfig, that’s supposed to be really hard—”
“True,” he said blithely, helping her to her feet. “You’re probably screwed. I’ll be shocked if you pass the year.”
“Draco! You don’t mean it? Oh, you’re joking.”
“No, I’m serious. Your academic career is done for,” he said, as they picked their way to the door. Hermione insisted on saying thank-you to every house-elf they passed, which slowed them down considerably. “You’ll have to take a Kwikspell course. In fact, you might as well pack your bags tonight, instead of wasting your time with Charms.”
She hit his shoulder. “Don’t say that! Knock on wood!”
He reached for her head, and she swatted his hand away, laughing. “Git.”
“Madwoman. Do your Charms on Thursday, like the rest of us.”
“But Thursday’s when I do my Potions.”
“For Monday?”
“Naturally.”
“And on Sunday night…?”
“Wednesday’s Astronomy,” she said simply.
He gave a strangled laugh. “You should donate your brain to science, so they can study it for worms.”
“You should donate yours,” she said, breathless, and with the excitement of someone about to commit a violent crime: “Then at least someone would get to use it!”
She skittered out of reach and tumbled out the portrait-door, laughing. He gave chase, wrestling with his facial features to get them into some sort of dignified order.
Their laughter died as they crossed the threshold of the portrait-hole: not for lack of mirth, but because lying beneath the door was something so arresting that Hermione gave a shriek and leapt away. Draco scrambled to avoid stepping on it, and his foot crunched on something brittle. He checked under his foot, and the shattered remains of a flashbulb lay strewn across the floor, littered beside the rigid body of its owner.
It was Colin Creevey.
NEXT CHAPTER: 10/6/22
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