Chapter 20: Wronski Faints
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
With a few days until the first quidditch match of the year, the Scotland climate remembered that it was, in fact, Scottish, and erupted with an ocean’s worth of storms.
But Oliver Wood, who was also, in fact, Scottish, refused to take this slap from his ancestral grounds, and with the ancient furore of the clans, he shepherded his vassals onto the pitch through swells of thunder and rain alike, emptying bellyfuls of Shakespearean curses at the heavens, often shouting himself voiceless in the course of a single lesson.
Draco Malfoy, who was English, would have just as soon stayed inside.
“They’re going to cancel it, aren’t they?” he begged Harry (of origin indeterminate, but tolerance respectable). “They must. They can’t expect us to play in this.”
“You’d better hope they do,” said Harry darkly, peeling the gray leech of his sock from his foot. He twisted it, and emptied almost a gallon of water onto the floor. “Can you imagine what Wood will do if they don’t?”
Chilled to the bone, Draco shook his head. Oliver had become nearly unbearable as the match approached. He was temperamental and irritable, prone to snapping at all of them, especially Fred and George, who admittedly took joy in provoking him. At the last practice before the match, they had pretended to miss every bludger that came their way, which drove Oliver into such fits of apoplexy and fear that afterwards they had to talk him down from a panic attack in the shower.
“We’re sorry about that one,” George admitted to Draco, as they shrugged on their school robes. “Didn’t think he’d take it that seriously, to be honest. It’s kind of a tradition — we always fake him out before the first game of the year, pretend to lose our edge. He must’ve forgotten.”
“Not like he didn’t get us back, either,” Fred said glumly, casting a Waterproofing Charm on his cloak. “Last year, he made us fly practices in cheerleader uniforms for a month… I miss the old Oliver.”
“Joke’s on him, we looked fantastic,” said George. “I have shapely thighs.”
“Course you do, Georgie. Best in the family.”
A gust of wind shuddered violently through the bleachers above them, which groaned under the strain. Water gushed from the eaves.
“The visibility is zero,” Draco protested. “It’s asking for a crash. Hell, I’m worried for me, let alone Potter, and he’s out there in glasses.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, with what Draco thought was rather a lot of sass, for someone who had flown into the goalhoops earlier that day.
George shrugged. “It’ll probably clear up,” he suggested. “Chin-up, kiddies. Maybe Flint will fly into a tornado, and we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
But it did not clear up, because Draco did not have the kind of life where such things were allowed to happen to him ever. Instead, the day of the match dawned every bit as wet, cold, and angry as the one before. He listlessly consumed four mouthfuls of porridge and a cup of tea, and then one slice of the bacon trencher Hermione kept nervously pushing at him, and sort of held a bit of toast in his mouth for a while until it felt easy to swallow. Harry fiddled with the athletic strap on his glasses, which had developed a worrying habit of coming undone during practices.
“I can’t believe they’re going to let you fly in this,” Hermione muttered darkly, poking at her (also untouched) plate of eggs. “Quidditch is incredibly dangerous to begin with, but this is beyond the pale. One of you is going to run into somebody, or fly into the stands, or fall off, or—”
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said. He swallowed forcefully.
Sensing her defeat with Harry, she turned to Draco. “Harry’s done this before,” she whispered. “You haven’t. Are you sure you want to—”
“Granger, stop.”
“Nobody would blame you! Oliver can’t possibly expect you to play in this!”
“He can,” said Draco, “and he should. I’m his chaser. He’s depending on me.” He sat up straighter, talking as much to himself as to Hermione. “Anyway, faint heart never won fair match. In 1987, Ireland and Estonia played the finals of the World Cup right through a sandstorm. They didn’t find the snitch for three days.”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” said Hermione worriedly. She pushed another trencher of bacon at him. “Eat more, then, if you must. Your body temperature drops faster when you haven’t enough calories. I read about it in — never mind where I read it, but you should eat.”
He looked at her in interest. “You read a book about sports?”
“In a misguided attempt to reassure myself you weren’t both going to get yourselves killed,” she huffed, “which was unsuccessful, incidentally, and by the way, if you ever want to get really scared out of your skin, just ask me to show you some statistics about quidditch injuries. You’ll never look at flying the same way.”
“No, yeah,” said Ron, through a mouthful of egg, “I’m sure you’re right and all, but could you do us a favor, Mione — wait until after the match to scare our players into retirement?”
He had dared to hope that the weather would scare some people away from the match, but the lure of an old-fashioned faceoff between Gryffindor and Slytherin triumphed over the weather, proving once and for all the indomitable nature of human pettiness. A caravan of umbrellas ran down the lawns to the pitch, heads bowed against the concussive rain, losing umbrellas and scarves left and right to the thieving fingers of the storm. As they hurried into the locker room, Draco saw Lee Jordan escorting a gaggle of first years up the stairs under the shield of a Water-Repelling Charm. McGonagall had banned him from wearing his ‘GRYFFINDOR RULES’ windbreaker while commentating, so he had stitched the letters ‘& ETC’ underneath it.
Oliver had no words of encouragement for them in the locker room. He sat with his elbows on his knees, head drooping from his shoulders like a fig. It was not impossible that he had entered a prayer state.
“Team,” said Fred gruffly, doing a very bad ‘Oliver Wood.’ He threw his knee up on the bench and leaned on it. “Listen. You’re terrible players. Each of you. Couldn’t hope for worse. Katie? You got noodle arms. Harry? Couldn’t find a snitch if it snuck up your bum. Angelina? Maybe try modeling, because flying ain’t for you.”
“Stop it,” complained Oliver miserably, amidst giggles from the team. “S’not true. You’re wonderful players. Fantastic… best I’ve ever had…”
“O captain, my captain!” George fell to his knees, hands aloft in supplication. “Is that you? My God! It’s like I can still hear his voice…” Meanwhile, Fred clasped his hands and began humming the tune to ‘Amazing Grace.’
“Alright! Alright,” cried Oliver, wobbling to his feet. “Enough! Let’s go.”
The wind blasted them as they walked onto the field. Harry, the smallest of them, nearly floated off his feet, and George hastily hauled him back to earth. “Easy, tiger,” he shouted. “You get on the broomstick first, remember?”
The Slytherins approached from the other side of the field, their emerald robes blending into the grass. Flint and Oliver briefly tried to shatter each other’s knuckles; neither succeeded, and they took up starting positions. Draco caught the eye of a rain-soaked Theo, who seemed at least half as miserable as he was, but who offered a grim smile and called: “About time, Malfoy.”
Draco smirked and jerked his chin at him. Beside him loomed the lockjawed giant of Gregory Goyle, who had apparently spent the summer growing into a handsome young mountain troll. A sweatband hauled his square fringe out of his eyes, and his uniform yawned at the seams.
“Greg,” shouted Draco. “Good to see you. Your mum would be proud.”
He wasn’t being sarcastic; it really was nice, especially since no one who knew a young Goyle would have expected him to participate in a team sport— at least any that didn’t involve crunching bugs with rocks. But Goyle scowled at him, apparently under the impression that he was making fun.
“Go piss in a cauldron, Malfoy,” he said. “I’m gonna knock your skull down through your pelvis.”
Which, if he hadn’t been about to piss himself in fright, would have impressed Draco, too: he felt Greg deserved a hearty slap on the back for correctly using the term ‘pelvis.’ Perhaps Slytherin had been good for him, after all.
“Right,” he said faintly. “Very good. Carry on, then.”
Fred elbowed him. “C’mon, mate,” he muttered, “you’re embarrassing us here.” Lifting his voice, he shouted, “Not if I punch a tunnel through your proboscis first, you putrid, pustule-brained pack of meat on a stick!”
“WEASLEY!” shouted Madam Hooch, with a tart blast of the whistle. “No trash talk! I want a good, clean game!”
“Sorry, ma’am, but it’s too late, Slytherin’s playing no matter what,” shouted George.
She gave him a quelling look. “Mount your brooms!”
With much squelching and squishing in the mud, they did so. The Nimbus thrummed to life under Draco’s hands, and he gripped its slick handle with all his might, turning his fingertips numb.
A shrill blast pierced the air. The crowd roared. Draco kicked off hard from the pitch, and plunged into the rain.
The wind shoved him sideways, twisting all his flight lines into curves. He adjusted for it as best he could while the rain and sleet drove him downward. The keepers split off for the goalposts, and Harry plummeted into the gray oblivion, but the chasers swirled into a formation at centerfield. Katie won the initial tossup and ducked through a two-chaser guard, missing Flint’s greedy claw, and with a start, Draco remembered that he ought to be flanking her; he shot forward, pulling up aside and below her, so she could drop it instead of throwing against the wind.
“Katie!” he cried.
She saw him, and pitched it without a second thought. He let go of his broomstick — dizzied, momentarily, by the wobble it created, and the wind that tried to rip him from the seat — and fumbled a messy catch, clutching the quaffle to his chest. For a moment, he was delighted at having caught it at all; and then Marcus Flint descended on him like the ugliest angel in God’s creation, and he remembered that he was supposed to be flying. He shouted a word he was glad his mother couldn’t hear and shot off for the goalposts, clinging to the broomstick like a life preserver.
A dark shape whizzed past his ear. He yelped and spun out of its reach, whirling end over end in midair, only to right himself once he’d pulled way off his line and moved out of reach of a good shot. He searched wildly for its source, and saw Theo floating nearby, spinning his beater’s club casually around one finger.
“Training for the ballet, Malfoy?” he called pleasantly.
“Nott!” he shouted, furious. “What the hell was that?”
Theo quirked an eyebrow. “A bludger,” he said. “I’m sorry, were you under the impression I was on your team?”
His smirk was interrupted when the same bludger came hurtling for his knees. Theo twisted and dove, but it caught the straw end of his broomstick, and sent him wheeling wildly through the air, scrabbling to regain control of his broom. The stands roared with laughter; only the Slytherins booed. Draco felt a quick pulse of strange, complex gratitude — it appeared that most of the school was on his side.
Fred whizzed by, shaking out his club-arm. “That’ll fix him,” he shouted. “And oi, Draco, that thing goes in the goalhoop, ta!”
“Got it,” he gritted out, and flew on.
The spectators’ faces were lost under a sea of cloaks and umbrellas. Some Gryffindors had painted the shields of their umbrellas to spell W-O-O-D, but in the gloom it was hard to see them unless you flew directly overhead. Lee Jordan’s commentary was lost to the storm. Bludgers shot in and out of the mist like birds of prey. Draco weaved in formation with Katie and Angelina, clinging to his broomstick, growing lost in the lulling rhythm of catch, pass, shoot. The cold seeped into his skin and he lost track of time. Occasionally, he caught sight of Harry drifting somewhere above the pitch, clearly lost.
Lightning flickered in the distance. Hooch’s whistle blasted, and they splashed down in the muck. Under a small tent on the edge of the field, they huddled up and wiped the rain from their faces. Harry was polishing his glasses furiously.
“What’s the score?”
“We’re fifty points up,” said Oliver, to Draco’s pleasant surprise. He’d long since lost track of the score, since he couldn’t hear Jordan. “But we’re fading fast. Have you put eyes on the snitch?”
“No. And these things aren’t helping,” said Harry tightly, scrubbing at his glasses.
The tent flap burst open, and they all turned. A witch in Gryffindor robes hurried in, using her cloak as a makeshift umbrella, her face splattered with threads of mud and rain. Draco startled, and then felt queerly warm: it was Hermione. He’d never seen her dirty before.
“Harry, your glasses! They’re no use!” she gasped. “You can barely see!”
“No, really?” said Harry savagely.
“Yes! But I have an idea. Give them here.”
“You’re not allowed to be in here,” Oliver said weakly, but Draco waved him off.
She tapped the glasses with her wand and said, “Impervius. There — they’ll repel water.” Handing them back, she said, beaming: “Now you won’t die horribly!”
Oliver was having a transcendental experience.
“Now you can see the snitch!” he shouted.
Hermione blinked at him. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s true… also…”
Draco leaned over her. “You’d better get out of here, or he’ll try to kiss you,” he murmured. “Of course, maybe that’s your game. I know it’d be Lavender’s.”
She snorted. “And for you,” she said, turning to him, “you ought to be more careful of Goyle. He’s sending half his bludgers at you, but he always misses to the left, because he overcompensates on the swing, so they go for whoever’s behind you — maybe you can use that, somehow, I don’t know.”
He realized she must have been watching the match quite closely, and grinned. “You clever thing, Granger, who says you don’t like quidditch?”
Hermione’s eyes did the baby-deer thing. It was excellent.
“I don’t,” she said passionately. “I don’t at all. This isn’t an approval, or endorsement, of any kind!”
The whistle blasted. “Got to go,” he told her. “Thanks for the tipoff. Keep watching out for me, would you?”
“I’m not watching you!” she shouted after him. “I’m just observing the match! It’s raining bullets, there’s nothing else to do!”
The team filed out. Harry was flying far better than he had before. Draco, Katie, and Angelina braided a complex play across the field and scored twice, but Slytherin recaptured and got three shots on goal. Draco flew in a tight line with Pucey, trying to tempt Goyle into taking a shot; he wanted to get him to tag Pucey’s broom on accident… Katie passed to Draco passed to Angelina back to Draco again, and he shot dodged Pucey, ducked Flint, outpaced Warrington…
A clap of thunder rattled the posts. “Harry!” shouted Oliver, pointing.
Draco spun around. Harry had flung himself flat on the broomstick and was racing across the pitch, in the opposite direction of Higgs, chasing a glint of gold at the far end of the stands. Draco let out a bark of delight: he’d spotted it, the sharp little git.
Another clap of thunder followed — and died. Silence swept over the stadium. Draco touched his ear, fretting he’d gone deaf, but he could hear his own breath, and the scrape of his gloves against his temple. Only the rain had gone quiet, and the roar of the crowds, and the howl of the wind. It was the kind of silence that left you alone with your body, the kind that bred fear and alarm.
Cold descended from above, not windchill, but bone-deep, arctic cold, the cold of being without warmth for so long one forgot its feeling. Draco gasped and clutched the quaffle with stiff fingers, resisting the urge to curl into a fetal ball.
Black shapes poured over the sides of the stands. The tide of darkness converged on the field, knitting a black sea over the green pitch, and then rose in a swirling spire, their dead fingers protruding in hungry open claws, talons reaching for the players who drifted above them like shipwrecked sailors on their brooms…
He could hear the stands screaming, but distantly, as through water. Highest above them all, Harry floated, his head swaying; Draco watched with his heart in his throat and a shout on his lips as the boy swayed, lazy fingers fumbling for his broom handle — missed — slipped free of it—
Harry Potter became a falling star.
The screams broke through the water. A pulse of fear sharper than any cold seized Draco’s limbs, and he breathed sharply.
Harry fell. And fell. And fell.
Draco hocked the quaffle at Marcus Flint, who caught it with a surprised grunt. Then he threw his weight forward and dropped like a stone.
And fell, and fell, and fell.
Draco flew and flew and flew.
Wind shredded his hair and his face and his hands. Rain stung his skin. The ground came roaring hungrily at both of them, close and hard and deadly. Harry’s body lolled in freefall, strangely limp, almost like he was floating.
Somewhere below them, a white shape exploded onto the field, vast and glowing, and the dementors cleaved like the Red Sea. They peeled away from the pitch.
And still, Harry was falling, but now Draco was close enough — and the ground was so very close — that he could reach his hand — and so very hard — tug him onto the broomstick — and so very deadly — and pull UP.
The whiplash almost snapped his neck.
The ground almost snapped his spine.
The force almost snapped his broomstick.
But they skidded out of the fall, hurtling a few bare feet from the ground and parallel to the earth. Draco had just enough time for a bellow of pure victory before Harry’s weight finally spilled sideways, and they both went tumbling together into the mud.
Draco landed on his elbow, and there was an insidious CRACK, and a flower of pain exploded in his arm. He slid twenty feet from his broomstick and rolled to a halt, his face half-buried in mud.
Someone was screaming. A lot of people, actually. That was gratifying. Unless he’d killed Harry after all, in which case: less gratifying; also, very bad.
“Potter! Potter, are you—? Good — where is Malfoy — Malfoy! Malfoy!”
Footsteps splashed towards him. The roar was deafening. Several people were shouting his name at once, and it was confusing. He was in a lot of pain.
“Malfoy!” The shrill brogue sounded beside herself. A splotch came in the mud beside him, and then hands bullied him onto his back, smacking his cheeks, patting his chest. “Are you living? Say something, boy!”
“Something, boy,” he groaned, prying his eyes open.
McGonagall’s lined face peered down into his, alight with commingled fear and exasperation.
“Sorry, professor,” he said. “You left it wide open.”
“Thank Merlin,” she breathed. “Thank Christ — thank whomever — that was an exceptionally stupid thing to do, Malfoy!”
He spat a mouthful of mud onto the pitch, delicately. He shrugged. “Hat was right,” he mumbled.
She looked away and covered her mouth with her hand, eyes suspiciously bright.
“Fifty points to Gryffindor,” she said abruptly. “No, seventy points to Gryffindor. A hundred points to Gryffindor, for — for saving the life of another student, and — and for selfless activity at the risk of great personal injury, and — and—”
“And the finest Wronski Feint to grace this pitch since James Potter,” roared Hooch, striding up behind her. “Notwithstanding it was completely against the rules. Malfoy! Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” he said candidly, rolling onto his unhurt arm. The other flopped inappropriately. “I don’t think my arm is supposed to move like that. Or feel like that. Ow.”
Both women eyed his elbow in clear agreement. “Hospital Wing,” said McGonagall crisply. “Now. Get a stretcher.”
“A stretcher?” he said delightedly. That would be a great hullabaloo.
“DRACO!”
Harry came sprinting out of the rain. A bruise the size of an eggplant ran across his cheek, and there was a bloody spot on his nose where his glasses must’ve bitten him during the landing, but he was nevertheless very much alive, which had been the general idea.
“DRACO! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”
“Oh, good,” said Draco, flopping back in the grass. “You can join me in my convalescence. Bad news, Potter: they think I’m going to die—”
Harry dropped to his knees, hard, and wrenched Draco into a rib-crushing hug.
“Oof, ow. My bones.”
“You shit,” said Harry giddily. “You looked dead. You weren’t moving. I thought…”
“Me? I’m not the twit who dropped his broomstick at eighty feet. And by the way, for the record, I have dibs on the hot water for the rest of time immemorial, thank you, so get comfortable with that idea.”
Harry only hugged him tighter, so maybe he hadn’t understood. Draco decided to clarify later.
Now more people dropped onto the field, first the rest of the team, and then the Slytherins, who descended reluctantly after Flint made a half-hearted shot on goal. “That was sodding amazing,” hollered Fred, shaking his broomstick over his head. “Almost makes you not care that we lost!”
“Lost?” Harry cried. “What? What, ‘lost’?”
“Higgs caught the snitch just before Harry fell,” said Angelina breathlessly, landing with a thump. “Sneaky bastard. Saw the dementors coming and gunned it. He wouldn’t have even known where it was without Harry… then Dumbledore came running onto the pitch, and he cast a spell, and the dementors ran away… it’s all right though, Harry,” she added, at Harry’s crestfallen expression. “It’s not over. There’s lots of games left in the season, and… I mean, talk about unfair conditions…”
“You’re still the best seeker we’ve ever had,” Fred reassured him, but Harry remained quiet.
“Why’s everyone consoling him?” Draco complained. “There’s an invalid over here. Perishing of his wounds. On death’s doorstep.”
“Yeah, you’re fine,” said Fred, cracking a grin. “Play it up when Hooch comes back, though, she might card Higgs for it. We can say Flint pushed you or something. Oi,” he said sharply, as Theo landed a mere handbreadth from Fred, splattering mud everywhere.
“You alright, Draco?” he said breathlessly.
Draco gestured lazily to his bad arm. “You see,” he said, “ this is what a successful beater’s work looks like, Nott. I thought you might need someone to show you.”
Theo stared at him, and then, belatedly, a bewildered smile twitched his mouth open. “Ha,” he said. “Really funny. You know if you died for Harry Potter, Narcissa would never forgive you, right?”
“Certainly not,” Draco said grimly, as McGonagall and Hooch collectively shimmied him onto a stretcher. It lifted him into the air. “Which is why I have no intention of dying for him or anyone else. Besides, I can’t risk her writing you into the will.”
Another pair of voices joined the clamor on the field, and Draco turned in time to see Hermione hurtling at top speed across the pitch, cloak abandoned. Ron loped behind her, his cheeks painted with the words GO + POTTER. The sight of long-legged Ron struggling to keep up with Hermione was so funny that Draco almost didn’t notice that she wasn’t slowing down.
She sprang up and threw herself at the stretcher, with a short, tight shriek that was a little relieved, but mostly angry.
“I told you so!”
“Thanks,” he said, patting her shoulders. “Your bedside manner is heinous. What, no flowers?”
“Oh, don’t. Please, just — don’t.”
Her eyes were bloodshot, and it was hard to tell how much of her face was wet from rain. He felt bad.
“Easy, Granger,” he said uncomfortably.
She put her head in his shoulder and squeezed him so tightly he feared for his remaining bones.
“I listened to you,” he said lightly, patting her back. “Tried to fly close to Pucey. Thought I could get Goyle to clobber him for me.”
“If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be on a stretcher.”
“And you’d be short a Potter,” he reminded her, knocking her gently atop the skull. She shuddered. “Seems an awful waste.”
She shuddered powerfully, again. “I hate,” she said, quivering, “watching quidditch.”
Then she squeezed tighter, and he said, urgently, “Bones,” and she said, “Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” and unsqueezed him.
Harry and Ron huddled around the stretcher, ignoring Madam Hooch’s attempts to shoo them away. “Draco,” said Ron admiringly, “I think that was the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. We’re confused, but we’re proud.”
“The Slytherin delegation will draw it at ‘confused,’” drawled Theo. “Out of respect for your reputation, we elect to chalk it up to possession by the spirit of Godric Gryffindor. Pansy is preparing an exorcism.”
Draco caught Harry’s shy, owlish stare, and he sighed. Another thing that wouldn’t have happened in Slytherin: all this exit interview nonsense. If he’d saved Theo’s life, they would have shaken hands and walked away, and maybe insulted each other’s pocket squares, if they were feeling especially tender.
“Let me be clear. Most of the time,” he said to Harry, “I would personally drive a bowie knife into your heart to prevent myself from suffering so much as a hangnail. However. Occasionally…” He cleared his throat. “Occasionally, a man gets locked in a girls’ bathroom with a mountain troll.”
(“What,” said Theo.)
But Harry smiled.
“You didn’t need to.”
“I know you think that,” he sighed. “It’s part of why you’re so detestable.”
Then McGonagall came to scold them all away, and Draco had the extraordinary pleasure of being carried up to the castle by a crowd of quidditch fans. There was so much chatter and cheering that he was sorry he hadn’t broken his arm years ago.
They kept both Harry and Draco in the Hospital Wing until nightfall, Draco for his arm, and Harry for several cosmetic injuries that Pomfrey fussed over probably longer than needed. A stream of visitors came throughout the afternoon, including Hagrid, who brought them each fat bouquets of gorse and wild heather, and Ginny with a get-well card for Harry, which sang a very sweet and obviously self-composed tune that made Draco laugh so hard it brought him to tears. (Harry, red from humiliation, stuffed it under his fruit bowl.) Oliver came, accompanied by Angelina (who appeared to be part of a suicide watch), and told Harry solemnly that it hadn’t been his fault. Ron and Hermione stayed until nightfall, and left after bringing them both plates of food from the Great Hall.
Pomfrey gave Draco a foul potion to take with dinner, and he struggled to sleep. He could feel the bones of his arm shifting and rearranging, plastering over the places where they’d cracked. It was a horrible feeling, like a host of worms traveling under his skin. Around midnight, he gave up and tossed back the covers, staying mindful of his arm in a sling, and padded out of bed to the window.
The moon was the shape of a lemon, edged with a smile of black, and spilled pale light over the courtyard below. Draco sat on the windowsill, gazing over the grounds, wishing he’d asked Hermione to bring his walkman. When he couldn’t sleep at home, he usually played something quiet, like that muggle band R.E.M., and lit a candle. Here, he could do neither, and so he killed time by counting the cobblestones, one at a time, until his eyelids grew heavy.
Sometime around one o’clock, a pair of shadows crossed the courtyard. Draco was so drowsy he almost missed them. He blinked awake and knuckled one eye, rubbing sleep out of it, as the figures crossed into the moonlight.
It was Professor Lupin; the silhouette was unmistakable, from his shabby traveling cloak and fluffy hair. Beside him padded a large black dog, tail wagging so strongly it was like to fall off, which kept pausing to bump and nose at Lupin’s knees with quiet little yips. Lupin stumbled, laughing, and shoved its nose away. He tried to say something stern, and it jumped up on him, almost knocking him into the fountain.
Lupin sat down hard on the fountain ledge, and the dog hopped up, licking his face wildly. He threw his head back, and gave the loudest, clearest, happiest laugh Draco had ever heard from him.
Draco shrank back from the window, a little, suddenly worried that Lupin would see him. Presently, both man and dog continued out of the courtyard, heading out of the castle and across the grounds.
He frowned. He hadn’t known that Lupin had a pet. Dogs weren’t on the list for acceptable familiars at Hogwarts; however, he supposed a professor could do as he liked.
He crossed to Harry’s bedside, and flicked him on the forehead.
“Oi. Potter.”
“Hnngmrhg,” said Harry.
“Potter. Don’t wake up all the way, I just need a favor. Can I use the map?”
“Hnngrhgnrnnmgmngnng,” said Harry. “Sure.”
“Class. Thanks.” He crouched and dug through Harry’s satchel, tossing out books at random until he found the Marauder’s Map at the very bottom. He carried it back to his bed, where he drew the curtains closed, sat cross-legged, and unfolded it on the mattress.
“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he yawned.
The world of Hogwarts unfolded before him in parchment and ink. Gryffindor Tower etched itself, full of a dark cluster of names in the dormitories; a few prefects scattered across the hallways, and Filch he found lurking near the second-floor dungeons. Dumbledore, he discovered, lived in a suite near the headmaster’s office, where, for some reason, he was having a conference with Professor Snape.
Turning his eyes south, he moved across the grounds, until he found a pair of names drifting somewhere between the south courtyard and the Whomping Willow. One was Remus Lupin. The other—
He blinked, and scrubbed his eyes again. The other was still Sirius Black.
He flipped the map over, breathing hard. He looked around. The infirmary was as still as the grave, except for Harry’s snoring.
Draco turned the map over again. Both names had disappeared.
“No,” he said out loud. He ran his thumb over the place they’d been, searching the area nearby, but they were gone. Not only that, Lupin was nowhere in the castle. He had completely vanished from the premises.
Harry woke up more fully when the map hit him in the face.
“HMMMNRG.”
“Potter,” hissed Draco. “Look at that for me, and tell me if you can find Lupin anywhere.”
“Wot?” said Harry blearily, lifting his head.
Draco repeated himself. With some complaint, Harry obliged, but he couldn’t find Lupin, either.
“Alright. You’ve got me. Lupin’s out for a night with the lads. Is that your point?” he said tiredly, replacing the map in his satchel. “Teachers are allowed to leave the school after hours. Being adults, and all.”
“I know.” Draco sat on Harry’s bed, ignoring the soft sound of protest, and massaged his temples. “Alright. I might be going insane.”
“Also my first thought,” said Harry, the brat.
“But I swear I’m not lying, and I know what I saw. Potter, I saw Remus Lupin on that map,” he whispered hoarsely. “And he was with Sirius Black.”
“Sirius Black?” said Hermione, in tones incredulous, as if there were any other Sirius he could be talking about.
“Hush!” He shoved his finger to his lips — his left one, since the right still laid in a sling. “Lower your voice.”
“Oh, because the dementors will hear you from the Tower, will they?”
“I don’t want anyone poking around until I’m sure!”
Harry said, for the umpteenth time: “Are you sure it was Lupin, though?”
Draco threaded his fingers through his hair. “Quite certain,” he said thinly. “I saw his face, and I saw his name on the map.”
Hermione worried her lip. “You do know what you’re accusing Lupin of, if you’re right? Failing to surrender a wanted man? You’re essentially calling him a criminal, himself.”
Ron, who was working on a chess problem from the day’s Prophet, moved his knight and raised his voice. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “It’d be sort of fitting, wouldn’t it? We were all getting a little too comfortable in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, on a scale from ‘one’ to ‘having You Know Who in the back of your head,’ harboring a murderer is barely worth a call to the headmaster. Lupin hasn’t even done anything to us.” He yawned. “If he hasn’t tried to murder me, or Harry…”
“Yet!” hissed Draco.
“Yeah, but if he wanted to kill Harry, he’d have done it, right?” said Ron reasonably. “He’s had loads of chances. He had Harry in after class that one time, for the boggart—” Harry shifted, embarrassed— “and he could have held us back for detention whenever he wanted.”
“You think he’s innocent because he hasn’t successfully killed you yet?” demanded Draco. “That’s your best argument?”
“Maybe he was Imperiused,” said Harry stubbornly. “Maybe Black has him under control, like Podmore and Yaxley.”
“That’s even worse,” Draco said, scandalized. “That means Black has a way into Hogwarts. He could come inside the castle at leisure.”
“All right. But he’s not,” said Hermione patiently, putting her foot down on what she clearly considered a frivolous tangent. “We have the Map. It’s been a week, and we’ve checked it every night, and Black’s nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Lupin is perfectly fine, and he’s been in his bed every night since! At this point, I think we should consider the more likely possibility that you had a very long day, and had taken a very strong dose of medicine, and — Draco, you admit this! — were very tired, to begin with, when you looked out that window.”
“It wasn’t a dream. Ask Harry. I woke him up to get the map, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Hermione doubtfully, “Certainly you were awake, then… but there are lots of medicines whose side effects include powerfully vivid dreams, unlike the ones you’re used to, and…”
“And Skele-Gro isn’t one of them,” snapped Draco. “If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, but I still think we ought to tell a teacher—”
“And tell them what?” breathed Hermione, in tones of amusement that rankled him sore. “That you thought you saw Sirius Black? On a magical map of the castle that tracks all of its residents at all times, in violation of at least three school rules? And that you saw Lupin with a dog? Through a window? At a distance? What, exactly, do you think McGonagall is going to say?”
He glared at her and sank further on the sofa, folding his arms. She would say exactly what Hermione had, of course; Hermione had an uncanny ability to evoke a teacher.
“Yeah, Hermione’s right, though,” said Ron suddenly, startling Draco and Harry both — Ron was still upset with Hermione, and more so whenever Crookshanks was around. “You don’t want to go telling a teacher about the Map, Draco. They’ll confiscate it.”
“Which they probably should,” muttered Hermione, but at Ron’s raised eyebrow, she fell quiet.
“It’s a gift for Harry,” said Ron firmly. “Fred and George used it for years, and it didn’t curse them, or anybody else. It’s not Dark magic. And it belongs to Harry.”
“It won’t for long, if he gets offed by Sirius Black,” said Draco sourly.
“Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong,” said Ron, with a fair measure of sympathy. “But look at it from someone else’s perspective. I’m your mate. You could come in here yelling that you saw a unicorn cross-bred with a pygmy puff, and I’d go, fair enough, let’s have a look. A professor’s not gonna give you that sort of credit.”
“I mean,” said Harry in a small voice, “we could try asking Lupin.”
After a pause, when everyone looked at him, he shrugged uncomfortably. “He seems reasonable,” he said. “And he might have an explanation for it — maybe, I don’t know, he named his dog after Sirius Black—”
“Harry,” sighed Hermione, while Ron covered a laugh.
“I mean — really, though! We could at least try — even Draco admits that he doesn’t know exactly how the dog fits in—”
“I’m not going to ask Lupin,” said Draco haughtily. He stood up. “I don’t fancy getting you killed, Potter, even when you make remarks as insipid as that one.” He held out his hand. “Give me the Map.”
Harry held it out of reach, quick with wariness. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to check it. Starting tonight, every night, I’m going to make sure that Lupin stays where he should be. And if he’s not — or if I see so much as a trace of the words ‘Sirius Black’ on that parchment — you’re going to hear about it,” he said grimly. “And so will the rest of this bloody castle.”
alternate titles for the prizoner of azkaban, from this AU:
-“Draco Malfoy and That Time I Saved Harry Potter’s Life,”
-“Draco Malfoy and the ‘Hey, Did I Mention That Time I Saved Harry Potter’s Life?’,”
-“Draco Malfoy and the Boy Who Lived (Because Of Me)”,
-“Draco Malfoy and the Quest for a Single Normal Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor”
it appears that even in an alternate universe, draco cannot get through third year without injuring his arm. at least this time it’s real, and not a feigned injury by an unjustly persecuted hippogriff… lest you think I’ve forgotten buckbeak, though, fear not! he is to return later.
next chapter goes up on tuesday or wednesday! sneak peek: it will be called “The Last Marauder.”
cheers!
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