Chapter 26: Operation Prewett
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
The weekend after Valentine’s Day, a package came for Draco in the morning mail. Ulysses dropped it in Draco’s lap and alighted primly on a roast ham, giving Colin Creevey such a fright that he toppled back off the bench.
It was wrapped in gold foil, and tied with an emerald ribbon.
Dear Draco,
Hello, my sweet one! Mummy is very sorry she has been so absent these few months, but she has been most preoccupied with her travels. Did you know that Briselda can carry absolutely marvelous amounts of luggage on her back? Rather like a pack animal! Really, we should have started using human help years ago. And she can be quite hilarious, too!
I attached the book you asked for. It did take some doing to find it; the library has grown sulkish and temperamental for lack of use. You know how magical libraries like to hoard their treasures. But be proud of me, dear one: I stood fast and threatened quite meanly to auction it all off to a public charity unless it shaped up and gave me what I wanted, and it snapped to attention (although I think it tossed a volume of my favorite romances into the Biography section, so I doubt I shall see them again). Your father always said the way to deal with a library was like dealing with a dog: you have to hold your ground and remind it that YOU are its master. Otherwise it will run all over you and never give you what you want and you will end up reading Proust for the rest of your days.
A surprising batch of white roses have bloomed under the willow tree. The narcissus are flourishing. They take so well to Briselda’s care.
I love you more than tea and champagne and porcelain and silk pillowcases, my little crown jewel of all worldly pleasures.
All my heart,
Mummy
P.S. I was so proud to hear you’re already into advanced brewing; Moste Potente is a classic! Did you know my Aunt Walburga was something of a potions mistress herself, before she wed? Perhaps I can scrounge up some of her old recipes for you, once I have rested from my bout with the library. XOXOX.
“Is that what I think it is?” said Hermione, peering over Draco’s shoulder. “Ooh, it is! Give it here — let me see—”
He slipped it behind his back and caught her groping hand. “Manners, now. It’s my property, remember. I’ll have the first look.”
“Fine!” she said impatiently. “But look quickly.”
From spite, and also from the desire to see what her face would look like when he did it, he nestled the package into his book bag and went back to his omelet.
Feeling her daggered stare on his cheek, he murmured, “I’m not going to open that thing at the Gryffindor table, are you mad? It’s a Dark book. If a teacher sees it, the game’s up, and I personally don’t feel like making a charitable donation to the Minerva McGonagall Fund for Confiscated Materials today.”
Hermione wrestled with the tactical wisdom of his decision, which warred terribly with her own desire to hoover up all information as soon as possible, like a fuzzy-haired Charybdis.
“Hurry, then,” she urged, and perhaps feeling the need to demonstrate what hurrying looked like, she shoved a whole wedge of toast in her mouth at once. She shoved her plate away and leapt up from the bench. “There’s no time.”
“To do what, digest?” he said, appalled. Two seconds and a rather unsporting yank on his collar later, he was scrambling up from the bench, muttering: “Fine! We’re going! Don’t mind me, I’ll just starve, I suppose.”
At which point an apple came winging over her shoulder and nearly whacked him in the eye.
Back in the bathroom, they set up a portable cauldron and some stools. The location of their setup had been the subject of much bickering between the potion-makers of the party. Draco insisted that a windowsill would provide more ventilation, which would become crucial in the not-unlikely event that something went wrong, and they found themselves whiffing lungfuls of toxic fumes; Hermione, who was many parts less concerned with either of their safety than he, countered that the temperature would vary too widely between day and night; they compromised on a sheltered alcove in the corner of the chamber, where the cauldron could sit just out of the sun, and Draco could reach the window with a well-placed Bombarda if he needed to.
“Now this has to brew for eighty minutes,” read Hermione. She held Moste Potente Potions cracked open between her crossed legs, which, Draco thought idly, would have given Snape an absolute conniption if he’d ever seen it.
They had breezed through the first step of the brewing. The copy of Moste Potente, being secondhand, had all sorts of little scrawls and notes in the margins, some of which were illegible or obscure, but Draco found that many of them were quite helpful. One note about grinding the lacewing flies with some nettle dust had saved them an hour of stewing time; another note, with reference to the best knife work techniques for leeches, had not improved the potion per se but led to greatly reduced mess during prep, which he appreciated, since Hermione still made him do all the butchery. Whoever had been writing the notes had an extraordinary knowledge of potioneering and a willingness to experiment: some of the notes were struck through, a few more violently than others, or given addendums such as: Didn’t work, or Not helpful, or once, simply and alarmingly: DON’T, thrice underlined.
He had suspected the notes were Snape’s, but the man’s name appeared nowhere on the book; the plate on the inside cover said only H.B.P., which gave him little help in the way of identifying the previous owner.
“The lacewing flies we’ll have to do after Potions, once Harry and Ron get back from the stores,” Hermione said, flipping ahead. “Do you think maybe one of us ought to stay and watch it?”
Draco, who lay sprawled-out and drowsing in the pool of sunlight, rolled up on one elbow to see if she was serious. When he saw she was, he cracked a smirk. “Hermione Granger,” he said, “are you suggesting we play hooky?”
She turned a shade of pink he had rarely seen outside of rouge advertisements. “Well,” she said, with adorable wretchedness, “I don’t like it, but yes! Just for the potion’s sake. We can do our best to secure the bathroom, but a teacher could still come in, or a prefect, and frankly, I don’t trust Myrtle, either.”
As if on cue, the toilet gave a sour rattle, and a jet of water spurted from the stall. Draco, who was still acclimating to the sensation of being surveilled by a nosy bit of septic engineering, said sharply: “Mind your own business, would you? Silencio,” and the stall fell silent with a lonesome gurgle.
“We’d have to take turns,” Hermione added. “If we don’t want the teachers to suspect.”
“They’ll suspect something if you miss one class. I expect some of them will reasonably conclude you’ve been killed. Do you have any idea who you are?”
“Yes, I thought of that! And I don’t want to miss classes, obviously! But you can’t stay here all the time,” she objected. “That’s not fair.”
“I appreciate the even-handedness, but in all candor, I had no intention of volunteering myself to remain captive in a bathroom. Such selflessness lies outside even my considerable powers of generosity.”
She snorted at the word “considerable,” which he resented deeply.
“So what’s your suggestion, then?” she asked. “Let it sit here?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully, lacing his hands behind his head. He laid back and wriggled comfortably on the warm stone, closing his eyes. “That won’t do.”
“So why don’t you help me come up with something, instead of lazing about over there?”
“I’m thinking,” he yawned. “It takes effort to perform this sort of profound cognitive activity. Haven’t the strength to do that and sit up at the same time.”
“Sometimes,” she said, more amused than irritated, “it amazes me that we make the same grades.”
“Me, too. Must make all that studying feel like an awful waste of time.”
He could hear her smiling. “It might, if I didn’t know your secret,” she said. “I’ve never understood why you like to pretend you don’t study. Being apathetic isn’t half as impressive as all the work you actually do.”
It did not please him at all that she thought he was impressive; in fact, he couldn’t care less. He repeated this to himself several times, so as to commit it to memory.
“Au contraire, mon swot. What are people to envy me for, if I don’t make it look effortless?”
“You think people envy you, do you?”
“Of course they do. I’m wonderful.”
“And you like that? Feeling like people envy you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She hesitated. He slitted open one eye and angled it meaningfully at her.
“Being envied doesn’t make people like you very much,” she admitted, giving the potion a whisk to clear some residue at the bottom. “From experience.”
“So? That’s their affair,” he said indifferently. “They want what I have. And why shouldn’t they? I’d want it, if I didn’t have it. There’s nothing worth having that someone else doesn’t want to take. Just don’t let him take it, and you’ll be fine.”
Hermione’s brows became a little brown caterpillar that wriggled more suspiciously with every word. “I don’t think Crabbe and Goyle want what you have,” she said carefully. “For example.”
“Are you joking? Of course they do.” He sat up and braced himself on his elbows. “There’s nothing they have that I haven’t got better, plus more. I’ve got a better bloodline, a bigger house, a bigger fortune, I’m better-connected, I’ve got better looks—”
“It’s a wonder they don’t like you,” she muttered.
He went on, counting off on his fingers, in part because he knew it was obnoxious. “More charming, more intelligent, better grades, better friends — see, you’re not denying it — not to mention I’m better at sports, and I’ve got better hygiene than a mountain troll. If they don’t envy me, they need to have their heads checked.”
“Really, Draco. One would think you’ve never had a self-conscious thought in your life.”
“That’s easy, I haven’t,” he said cheerfully. “Whenever I feel sorry for myself, I simply remember that I’m marvelous. You ought to try it sometime, it might cheer you right up.”
“Remembering that I’m marvelous?” she said, a bit distracted by adjusting the burner temperature.
“No, that I’m marvelous. You know, as a source of inspiration, or something.”
The wad of paper that smacked him in the head was not particularly surprising, though he was rather impressed by the precision of its aim.
“None of this solves the problem of who’s to watch the potion,” she said, chewing her lip. “Maybe we could set up a rotation? I’ll take one class, then you, Harry, Ron…? I could always ask Myrtle nicely, but I really don’t trust her.”
“Nonsense. I know.” He sat all the way up and stretched. “We’ll ask Dobby.”
“Oh! Now that’s a good idea,” she said, with frankly insulting levels of relief, “but are you sure he’ll do it? Can you summon him and ask?”
“Can’t, he’s not my elf anymore. He wouldn’t hear me.” He amended, “But I can pop down to the kitchens and ask him, and he’ll do it for me as a favor, I’m pretty sure. We can always get him a scarf or something as payment.”
“He should be paid in galleons—”
“Which he is, thank you.”
“—but aside from that, it sounds fine,” she sniffed. “If he checks in every hour or so, that should be enough. I’ll feel much better knowing that nobody will wander in.”
Indeed, Dobby was happy to watch over the potion, with or without the promise of knitwear that Hermione offered. It gave him special delight to think that he might be helping Draco perform an important operation for one of his friends; they did not tell him what the potion was for, but assured him that it could very well save somebody’s life.
“Saving the life of a wizard!” said Dobby. His eyes had reached sizes previously regarded by magizoologists as theoretical. “Dobby could be a hero? Like Mister Dumbledore?”
“Well,” said Hermione doubtfully, “in a manner of speaking, I suppose…”
“Yes,” Draco interrupted. “Absolutely the same. They’ll probably give you a chocolate frog card.”
“You shouldn’t lie to him,” Hermione complained, after Dobby had fallen into spasms of excitement and then scurried off to perform his duty. “Just because he’s not a human doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”
“No, the fact that he’s Dobby means he’s a bit stupid.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I didn’t say it to his face, did I? Anyway, I lived with him for twelve years, I should know. He’s a good little creature, and I’m fond of him, but you know full well that he’s two sickles short of a galleon.”
“He has a big heart,” she said stubbornly.
“Simply tremendous,” he agreed. “It takes up half the space for his brain.”
If Draco had dreamed that the long waiting periods required for the Polyjuice Potion would be spent idly or at rest, he was rudely awoken. When they weren’t in classes, in Myrtle’s bathroom, or asleep, they were in an abandoned Charms classroom on the fourth floor, learning Patronus Charms from Harry. Mealtimes, recesses, and study halls were sacrificed to this dubious goal, which subjected Draco to far more emotional scrutiny than he thought appropriate, necessary, or dignified. At the beginning of each interminable period of torture, his tutor would produce a model Patronus in the vague form of a quadruped, while Draco’s own wand refused (understandably, he thought, in bitter solidarity with it) to produce more than wisps of fog.
“A happy memory, Draco, a happy one,” was the constant exhortation, as if he didn’t damn well know what a happy memory was. “Something from your childhood, something simple and easy, come on…”
On the few days when he managed, stiff-jawed and white-knuckled with effort, to summon a gust of macilent mist, he was immediately shown up by Ron. After hearing Harry describe the spell once, he nodded, screwed up his face in concentration, and let out a wary: “Er. Expecto patronum,” and summoned a dense white clump of something that pranced boastfully around his ankles until Draco called him a showboat.
As for Hermione, whose idea the whole thing had been in the first place, she was mysteriously absent from Harry’s lessons. Oh, she had come to the first one all right, and listened with breathless fascination to Harry as he described the theory of the charm and its uses. But after several dozen attempts at casting a Patronus ended in harmless white shimmers, she had turned pink in the face, stomped out of the room, and declined to return even on Harry’s invitation. This was a small mercy to Draco, who did not have to try nearly so hard in her absence, and a greater mercy to Ron, whose relative ease in producing a Patronus gave her an obvious and sore temptation to strangle him.
Harry admitted to Draco in confidence that she had asked him to teach her separately.
“She doesn’t get it, I reckon,” he said. “It doesn’t come naturally to her. And she’s used to everything coming naturally, so it feels like she’s failing in it. That’s her problem, really; she focuses too much on doing the spell right, and not enough on actually doing the spell.”
“I’m sure that made sense somewhere in that scar-addled head,” mumbled Draco, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Ron was busy trying to get his fuzzy white creature, whatever it was, to go fetch a rubber ball.
“It’s just that there’s no right way to be happy,” said Harry. He passed Draco a flagon of water, which Draco gratefully drank. “The memory isn’t even really the crucial bit, says Lupin. It’s the feeling that’s important. And that’s what’s hard about doing it in front of the dementors, too. You’ve got to feel joy, really feel it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ron. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like… this warm thing, coming up from your belly. And then you have to push it through your wand, sort-of. And then you get this white stuff, which I — oi,” he said, when Harry and Draco started snickering. “Laugh it up! It’s true, though. I thought it might help to hear how it feels from someone else who’s actually done it.”
“Thanks,” said Draco rudely, and Ron, hearing his tone, wisely turned around and went back to practicing.
“You know, I thought about that,” said Harry in a lower voice. “I don’t know why you’re having so much trouble with it. It kind of surprised me. Hermione I thought might have a problem, but I didn’t think you would.”
This, from Harry, was rather like a bowtruckle telling you it was disappointed you hadn’t memorized the Grammatica Arcana. “It’s not like you to be a bad sport, Potter,” he said indignantly. “And for a third year trying to pick up a fifth year spell from another third year, inside a week, I think my performance has been remarkable. And here’s another thing. I don’t go around asking you why you haven’t made a better showing in Potions.”
“No, no, I’m not trying to rub it in!” he said earnestly. “I really did think you’d get it quickly. You use your wand more than any of us. Even more than Hermione, with all her practicing. And I thought, because you and Ron both grew up around magic, you have this sense for it that Hermione and I don’t. So the Patronus would be easy.”
“Weasley must simply have a more joyful disposition than the rest of us,” Draco said, still unconvinced that Ron had not somehow cheated.
Harry made a thoughtful sound. “Ron is pretty cheerful,” he said. “I mean, he’s always said he was fairly happy, growing up. I suppose that’s probably part of it. He’s got a lot of good memories to draw on.”
The implication, which appeared to drift freely over his thick skull, was that neither he nor Draco had the same. Which Draco resented, if for no other reason than that it cast a terrible reflection on his mother.
“And you’ve had such a happy childhood, have you?” snapped Draco. Harry went stiff, and Draco spent the ensuing moment of silence counting the potential uses for magical time travel, e.g., not putting one’s foot in one’s mouth, ever; not revealing, by accident, a profound lack of tact, kindness, or practical intellect; and also never having to apologize to one’s friends.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Below the belt.”
“It’s okay. You’re right, too, the Dursleys are awful.” Harry gave a flagging half-smile. “When I’m trying, I think about quidditch.”
Draco contemplated this. He had been using the memory of an early Christmas with his mother and father at the Manor, one of the few he could remember. He thought it best to reach as far back as possible, so that there weren’t any complex feelings about Hogwarts mixed-in. And it was a happy memory: they had curled up together on the divan by the fireplace, and gone through all their Christmas cards, and laughed at the tacky ones. His father had read to him from Euripedes Gaunt’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Pureblood Dynasties while his mother played piano. Dobby had brought biscuits and hot cocoa. It had been snowing; he remembered it clearly, years later, as one of the best days of his life.
Of course, that was before Dobby was freed. Which was — distracting, now that he thought about it. Hard to think about the memory of Dobby bending and scraping without wincing, internally, at the needlessness of it. Not that it had been Draco’s fault, of course. He had been a small child. He wasn’t to know that there was anything wrong with having a house-elf. Even so.
He curled his lip. It wasn’t his fault that Dobby hadn’t been freed yet. It was still a good memory. He’d been happy. He could remember being happy. If it wasn’t good enough, what was he supposed to do about it? Were all his memories before Hogwarts sullied? He might as well give up, then, because after coming to Hogwarts, everything was too complicated to possibly be of use.
“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” said Harry, which was unexpected for Draco, who had mostly been feeling sorry for himself. “It’s not as bad as that. It’s only a few months every summer, and then I get to come here. That’s enough happiness for anyone. And Dudley was jealous as anything when he heard I got to fly.” He rubbed his mouth, as if to scrub away a smile he was not proud of, but he failed. “I told him that he could use Petunia’s Swiffer, he just had to jump high enough. Milked that one for about a week.”
“Your situation baffles me.” Draco stood and massaged the sore tendon in his wand-arm. “You loathe them whole and entire. Why go back?”
“Because Hogwarts doesn’t run summer school?” Harry said, amused. “Where would I go? They’re the only family I’ve got.”
“Oh, please. You know if you asked Granger, she’d be happy to host you. Or even Weasley, though Merlin knows where they’d put you.”
“I couldn’t do that to them! I couldn’t ask their families to take me in.”
“You think they’d rather you live in misery for three months?”
“It’s not miserable,” lied Harry, who himself had called it miserable too many times to mention. “It’s only three months. And… maybe it won’t be forever. I mean, a lot can change in the next four years.”
Draco paused and lowered his wand. That was oddly prescient, for Harry.
“You’ve considered Lupin,” he guessed.
A streak of guilt crossed Harry’s face.
“You’ve spoken to Lupin,” Draco said in surprise. “That’s why you’re so chummy. Has he offered?”
“No,” he said shyly, averting his eyes. “He says he can’t make any promises. I didn’t ask him, really, but I was having dinner with him and Sirius one day, and Sirius just… said it.”
“He suggested taking you in? Sirius Black?”
“Yeah. After his name’s cleared, I mean, he couldn’t do anything until then. So it would probably be a year, maybe more. But he said that once he was free, and once he found a place to stay, he’d come get me. If that’s what I wanted.”
He was trying and failing to hide a wondrous smile.
“And what would Dumbledore have to say about that?”
Harry’s smile disappeared. “Probably he wouldn’t like it,” he admitted. “He thinks I should stay with my aunt and uncle. But Sirius said that I could stay with them for a few weeks, days maybe, just so Dumbledore would be happy. There’s this blood protection thing, apparently, that’s tied to my mum… I don’t understand it, but Sirius says he could protect me better than the Dursleys could. And I reckon that’s right, isn’t it? He’s a wizard, after all.”
“Sirius Black,” said Draco, dry as parchment, “has half of Azkaban’s security out hunting for him.”
“He won’t always, though,” said Harry stubbornly.
“Sure. Right. Revised: Sirius Black is a homeless man, and most of the world thinks he killed your parents. At what point does he expect to be gainfully employed?”
Harry dodged these reasonable points like a man on the run from a hail of arrows. “So what?” he insisted. “So what if he hasn’t got a — a flat and a corner office? Maybe I’m alright with that. I don’t mind having to be on the move, and it’d be pretty exciting, anyway, getting to travel.”
“You are not seriously contemplating going on the run with this man.”
“Lupin would come with us,” said Harry in a small voice. “It’d be safe.”
Draco could see, for one horrible moment, the world that Harry was imagining. What’s more, he could feel what was alluring about it: two parents, loving and fierce. A place you could come home to. Unbidden, he envisioned Malfoy Manor in wintertime, a snowy tableau of brick and glowing windows, with his father waiting beside his mother on the steps.
For that reason, and the profoundly uncomfortable volumes of pity that were flooding his endocrine system, he said only: “Your funeral, Potter. Don’t come crying to me when you’re having cigarettes for dinner.”
The last week of work on the potion snuck up behind Draco and caught him like a bludger to the head. He and Hermione worked through every meal period for a week on the Polyjuice, which had turned the color of mud, and the viscosity of pus, and with each day Draco found more and more reasons to dread ingesting it. In order to make the hours of tedium spent simply stirring the damn cauldron bearable, he had brought his wireless speaker into Myrtle’s bathroom, and they played some of the new cassettes he’d gotten for Christmas: bands that she found in muggle stores over the summer, Stone Temple Pilots, Third Eye Blind, Echo and the Bunnymen. He even grew to enjoy some of those afternoons in the bathroom, lying in a pool of sunlight while Hermione took her turn stirring, listening to the strains of muggle strings and synths ricochet through the stone chamber. Under blue moon I saw you, so soon you’ll take me…
Hermione had picked over his engineering on the magical wireless and with reluctant astonishment pronounced it sound. She said he had made an utter hash of the wiring, and she hadn’t the foggiest idea how he managed to welt magic with muggle technology without short-circuiting the battery, but it undeniably worked. “Not that it should,” she said, jabbing at the batteries suspiciously with her wand. “I don’t know how you ripped out as much as you did without damaging it, but I suspect it’s being held together by whatever battery of charms you used on it.”
“Tosh. See? Muggle technology’s not so complicated after all.”
“You should show this to Seamus,” she added. “He’d love it. He’s always trying to find a way to make things louder.”
“Are you mad? I like it intact, thank you.”
On Friday afternoon, he left his post by the cauldron to Hermione and went up to the Gryffindor boys’ dorm with Ron, where he spent a baleful half-hour excoriating every article of clothing in the boy’s closet.
“Merlin’s bones, don’t you have a single shirt that isn’t wrinkled? Don’t answer that. I won’t even bother asking about a dinner jacket, I’m not that green. You’ll have to wear your uniform. I’ll loan you a jacket, so you don’t look like some panhandler I picked up from a shelter. Do yourself a favor and don’t spill anything on it, I don’t think your family can afford a second mortgage.”
He turned and gave a squawk of horror. “What are you doing?”
Ron paused, his Gryffindor tie looped in a loose knot around his neck. “My tie?” he said slowly. “For the prissy suit you’ve got? You’re wearing one.”
“You’re not wearing it that way!”
“…No, I am,” said Ron, after a furtive pause in which he appeared to decide it was a trick question.
With a heavily put-upon sigh, Draco tugged out Ron’s tie. Ignoring Ron’s sound of protest, he began tying it himself. “Welcome to Society, Weasley,” he sniffed. “If you wear a tie, you wear a Windsor. Acceptable alternatives include, but are not limited to: the Balthus, the Eldredge, the Trinity, or, if the occasion permits, a cravat. But under no circumstances should you appear in a half Windsor, Prince Albert, or, God forbid, a four-in-hand.”
“You made some of those up,” accused Ron.
Draco massaged the bridge of his nose. “This is going to work,” he said. “This is going to work, because it has to work, because I refuse to endure the abhorrent levels of humiliation I will undergo if it doesn’t. Do you hear me? I refuse.”
“Embarrass you?” said Ron indignantly. “My hands are still blue from that box-dye, and I’m wearing more of Lavender’s makeup than she is. ’Sides, my complexion’s not meant for black hair, I look like a ghoul.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” said Draco. “It’s good enough to be getting on with. Come along, then, Prewett.”
This time, the lecture hall had been draped in Transfigured diamonds and was lit by the blaze of two dozen bronze sconces. Purple-and-gold paper lanterns drifted in packs like wild birds, bespelled to give off the scent of lilacs. There were fewer Ministry officials, but more students, and the energy in the room was higher than it had been the previous night. An expectant excitement ran through the crowd like an electric pulse, transmitted by the hardly-concealed whispers of eager children, trading rumors and champagne glasses like candies on Christmas morning.
Draco noticed Snape’s absence. He presumed that Snape had more important things to do than frequent parties meant primarily for children, and in truth, he was relieved not to see his godfather. Keeping Ron’s familiar visage away from Snape’s prying eyes had been his chief fear going into the evening. He was preoccupied with other, more important things, such as: keeping Ron’s familiar visage away from the eyes of anyone else who might recognize him. His vertical aptitude made this a problem. There simply were not many Slytherins as tall as Ron. This was an observation that Draco had made privately, the once, and Ron had made loudly, many times.
“Blimey, this is posh,” mused Harry’s voice. Draco mustered all his powers of cool and impassivity not to jump out of his mortal skin. “Is this what it’s like in Slytherin? You throw big parties and hobnob with prats?”
“How should I know? Half of my house couldn’t spell ‘hobnob’ with two hours and a dictionary.” Draco was trying not to move his lips. “Try not to talk. Someone could hear.”
“So what, I’m invisible,” said Harry, and, as if to prove his point, stole a canapé.
“Try also to not do things that make me want to perform arcane violences on your person.”
“That’s everything I do, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re starting to get the idea.”
It was admittedly pleasant to see Ron squirm. Every time a group passed by, their eyes did the old seesaw up-and-down of his person that Draco had so dearly come to enjoy, for in his case it was often followed by the classic eyebrow-jump and head-bob; in Ron’s, however, it more often preceded a discerning squint-and-scowl, or worse, the suspicious double-take. Ron gulped and reached for his tie knot, only to be dealt a fierce smack to his hand.
“Don’t you dare.”
“It’s tight!”
“Good. The better to throttle you with, if you mess this up.”
The band was playing something slow and sleepy that even the most excitable students deemed un-dance-worthy, so the crowds had clustered in little geodes of conversation around the sides of the room.
“You came!” cried Professor Slughorn when he saw Draco. “Dear boy! Such a pleasure to see you again. I must introduce you to my friend Lord Thicknesse. He’s a premier undersecretary to my dear absent friend Barty. You’ve heard of Barty, I’m sure? Crouch? Of course, not many haven’t, he’s simply one of those men. And who is this?”
Ron was too well-trained in the art of weathering Percy’s bluster to bat an eye at this barrel-dump of irrelevant information. He turned to Draco and cleared his throat, which was the agreed-upon sign for: Do I sneer at this person or simper?
Draco clicked his tongue, and Ron arranged his face into the weakest, most un-hateful impression of a scowl that Draco ever had the pleasure of not being offended by. He was doing something with his eyebrows that made Draco want to shave them off and burn them at the risk of ever seeing it again.
“Professor, this is Lancel Prewett,” said Draco. He himself indulged in a bit of show-offery with a designer expression from the Malfoy boutique of exquisite sneers — a scalding curl of his lip that in only a flicker of movement conveyed the vast gamut of scorn, indifference, and resentment at the indignity of being forced to expend oxygen on someone of so little consequence.
Slughorn’s eyes slithered over Ron in a swift appraisal. “No relation to Ignatius Prewett, surely?”
“Yeah,” said Ron, too quickly. “He’s my great-uncle.”
“By marriage?”
“Er — no, the other thing.”
“Blood,” Draco said sharply. “He’s the blood son of Gideon Prewett. Professor, do you remember Gideon? You must have taught him, he was in your time.”
“Now there was a wizard, Ignatius,” said Slughorn, already distracted by whatever he had thought of to say next. “Quite the specialist in Charms. A talent! But the real prize was his wife. A rare match, volatile, but so much promise… a real shame they never had children…”
Harry coughed, and Draco took Ron by the shoulder. “Fascinating,” he said firmly, in tones that admitted no fascination whatsoever. “Truly. Professor, you must excuse us. As you can deduce by looking at him, Lancel has a condition, and if he doesn’t ingest a liter of champagne every twenty-four hours, he’ll faint dead away. Come, Lancel.”
“Yes,” said Ron. “Champagne. Dizzy. Goodbye.”
The food table had been festively burdened with little trays of crab puffs and stuffed peppers, sandwiched inside a flock of snow-white napkins folded, perhaps a touch too realistically, in the shapes of swans. A trio of Ministry workers sat at a table off to the side near the dias, each dangling a flute of champagne from their fingers as if it were too cumbersome to flex the muscles in their hands. They were Orpheus Greengrass, Sibelius Nott, and Prescott Parkinson. Only Sibelius appeared to be having a good time; the others were bored and restless, as any adult at a party populated mostly by children ought to have been. Their conversation was occasionally interrupted by the approach of a boil-faced teenager, heart in hand, who desired to swoon or bootlick one of them. These were dismissed with the very lower bound of civility and sent unceremoniously away.
“They’re almost the only Ministry people here,” whispered Harry. “Where are the others?”
“Gone, I expect,” Draco said grimly. “Why would they stick around? The Minister’s not here, so what do they care?”
“But why are they still here, then?”
“Because of their children,” he said, with a chill pang of understanding. “That’s Greengrass and Parkinson. And Nott, of course, but we knew he’d be here already. Bet you anything they’re all here tonight.”
“But that’s everything shot, then. They all know me.”
“Calm down, W— Prewett. For one, I highly doubt any of them will recognize you. You look good and awful, there’s a chance they’ll try to avert their eyes from politeness.”
“I danced with Daphne at the twins’ Christmas party! She knows what my face looks like, knobhead!”
“You are at far greater risk of being found out by using the word ‘knobhead’ than you are by the miraculous possibility that someone like Daphne Greengrass even remembers you.”
At this, the malevolent puppeteers in control of Draco’s fortunes gave a gleeful yank of the strings, and someone like Daphne Greengrass herself came limping into the room.
She wore a shimmery skirt in blue so pale it glowed silver under the lights, like its silk had been spun by someone thinking very hard about an untouched bowl of pigment somewhere to the left. Over this she wore a white fur stole of tremendous size that enveloped her whole bodice, a commitment of enough fabric to martyr at least two polar bears, and she wore her hair loose down one shoulder in a billow of yellow curls. She was the kind of beautiful that made everyone else in the room feel a little hopeless and miserable about their own life prospects. This was doubtlessly the desired effect, and Draco respected her for it.
In her left hand she wielded a silver cane long enough to hide a dueling sword. She applied it liberally in the task of hobbling over to them, at which point she thrust it down with a punishing crack against the tile, lifted her chin, and said: “Ronald Weasley, whoever told you to go black over ginger should be locked up with a randy dementor. Are you dying?”
A disembodied fit of mirthful coughing broke out somewhere over Draco’s ear. Draco covered his mouth with his hand. Ron’s cheeks warmed to the normal color of his hair.
“Are you terminally ill?” she continued relentlessly. “Are you counting your time in days? Why would you do this to yourself? You had lovely hair!”
“I did?” said Ron in bewilderment.
“Yes! A lovely copper-red, it was perfect! And this!” She swiped a finger around his ears, and it came away blue. She brandished her fingers in his face as if she intended to drive them into his eyes. “Thank Merlin it’s not a spell. You go home and you wash that at once, and then you tell me what girl hates you.”
“Why do you assume it’s a girl?” said Draco, who thought this was somewhat unfeminist, and also hilarious.
“Because there’s not a fourteen-year-old boy on the planet who’d touch a box of hair dye unless a girl told him to,” she said crisply, “and most of them still wouldn’t, unless they were in love with her. Draco, give it to me honestly. Who is it? Is she pretty?”
“That would be Hermione Granger, and I’m declining to answer the other question, on the grounds that the gut quite simply rebels. You’ll have to use your own judgment.”
She gave a scandalized little gasp. “Hermione! She is pretty. Is he in love with her?”
“No,” said Draco sharply. “That’s disgusting, Greengrass, don’t be ridiculous.” He paused. “And what do you mean, Granger is—”
“But she doesn’t hate you! So why, why, Ronald, why would a nice girl like Hermione—?”
“The hair is part of an operation,” whispered Ron loudly. “I’m undercover. Don’t blow it.”
“Undercover for what? The morgue?” When no one answered, she grimaced at her stained fingers and wiped them on Ronald’s shirt. It was by a matter of centimeters that she missed Draco’s dinner jacket; Ron turned impossibly whiter. “Alright, don’t tell me, it’s sure to bore me anyway. But if you’re planning some Gryffindor prank, please don’t spoil the party until after I’ve left, it took ever so long to do my hair.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ron managed, and she patted him absently on the chest.
“In fact I’m glad you came,” she confided in Draco, looping her arm over his. She passed the cane off to Ron, who was quite tickled by it, and ‘accidentally’ clubbed at least three purebloods in the leg before Draco snatched it away. “The plan was me and Pansy and Theo, but Pansy got a detention for making fun of Eloise Midgen and messed it all up.”
“What’d she say?” said Ron, around a mouthful of crab cake. Draco glared at him and emphatically pressed his own jaw shut. It was as if he were the only one concerned with the ‘undercover’ business at all.
“Some nonsense about her boils. I told her not to get into it, but you know Pansy, she’ll pick a fight with an empty room. Anyway, I was worried, because it was down to just Theo and me, and I think he’d climb out the window to avoid me.”
Her tone was fickle with the deliberate carelessness of someone who cared about it deeply.
“Ugh. Haven’t you two sorted all that out?”
“Sorted out what?” said Daphne, impossibly airier. “I haven’t any idea what I did to disturb him. Maybe he just doesn’t like me. Some people don’t like me, you know. No, it’s true,” she added, when Ron scoffed.
“Theo likes you fine. Tell him to stop being an idiot.”
“I have. Slytherin has.”
“Well, tell him again, then.”
Ron opened his mouth, closed it, raised a finger, and chewed vigorously. He swallowed, and unaware that Draco stood beside him almost aflame with pride, said: “Reckon he likes you, doesn’t he.”
“Theo? No, no. Oh, no, no, no. I’m sure he has a row of little alarm bells and levers in the back of his head that start going off whenever he gets Feelings, and it shuts down all blood flow beneath the brain. It’s an injustice, you know, for someone fit to be so unavailable; the Slytherin girls are thinking of unionizing… Oh, piss. Turn me around, quickly. And give me the cane.”
It was too late. Orpheus Greengrass, having spotted his daughter through the maze of heads, had left his table and now came bearing down upon them like six feet of fretful stork.
“Daphne Greengrass,” he hissed, like there was any other Daphne he might be squawking at.
Nothing individually, but the combination of his tone, expression, posture, and accidental resemblance to an anemic swan filled Draco with an instinctive antipathy.
“What am I to make of this? Where is your chair?”
“I don’t know,” said Daphne, sounding sulkier than he’d ever heard her. “The dungeons, I suppose.”
“When I sent Plinky to escort you—”
“For Merlin’s sake, what I’d do with a rolly-chair in a castle full of staircases beggars the mind, as does what possible use I’d have for Plinky, since house-elves can’t be used on Hogwarts grounds, like I told you, Dad.”
“Snape would make an exception,” he said stubbornly.
“You have a house-elf?” said Ron curiously.
“Two,” she said bitterly. “One for me, and one for Astoria. Dad, I asked permission to come.”
“Which was revoked. Your mother and I talked about this. You agreed! After what happened on Tuesday—”
“What happened on Tuesday?” said Ron.
“It was tiny,” Daphne snapped. “Basically nothing. I didn’t even go to the Hospital Wing.”
“What was tiny?” insisted Ron.
Finally the Greengrasses extricated their noses from each other’s business, and ogled him. Daphne was embarrassed and grateful and slightly incredulous, like she couldn’t believe he had the stones. Orpheus Greengrass’ wide gaze traveled from his boots all the way up to the top of his box-dyed hair, and then returned for another helping of the blue stain Daphne’s fingers had left on his dress shirt.
Ron coughed and stuck out his hand. “Lancel Prewett,” he said. “Son of Gideon. And you are?”
Draco was very nearly impressed: And you are? came out dripping with sticky condescension, as if he couldn’t be bothered to move his jaw. Now, that didn’t change the outrageous faux pas of asking for the name of a man who absolutely should not have required an introduction. Someone named ‘Prewett’ ought to have clocked Orpheus Greengrass at a mile. But perhaps, Draco thought valiantly, they could play it off as a simply seismic fit of daring.
“In any case,” said Orpheus, after an arctic lull in the conversation. He turned back to Daphne. “I should have thought—”
“Is this your dad?” Ron interrupted, turning now to Daphne once he realized Orpheus wouldn’t talk to him.
Daphne was frozen in the beam of her father’s disapproval. Draco tried to transmit through her occasionally thick skull the importance of playing this correctly.
“Y-yes,” she said. “Father, this is my dear friend… Lancel.”
There was a pause before Lancel so long that several conversations seemed to start and finish in the background.
“Pleasure,” said Orpheus, as if someone had eked it out of him with a chisel and an awl.
“Smashing,” said Ron indifferently. “What’s this about a Hospital Wing? You didn’t tell me about that.”
“I beg your leave,” said Orpheus quietly. “This is family business.”
“Yeah? Funny place for it,” said Ron. “I was minding my business with my friend here until you came over.”
“R— Lancel,” interrupted Daphne, still caught between embarrassment and gratitude. “It’s okay. My Dad’s just—”
Orpheus gave a yelp and whirled around, clutching his hair. There was no one behind him.
Draco hastened to draw his attention back to the group.
“I want a drink,” he announced. “Does anyone else want a drink? I’m parched—”
“What kind of example,” said Orpheus, with an almost tender sort of anger, “does this set for your sister?”
The effect was immediate: Daphne burned white, then red, then suddenly choked up hard on her cane, and Draco swayed back, seized by a fleeting alarm that she was going to swing with it. “For Astoria?” she shrieked. “For Astoria? You have the gall to tell me I’m bad for Astoria?”
“Following your example has fared poorly for her in the past,” said Orpheus, and Daphne actually shrieked, a momentary pitch above the normal volume of the crowd, driving him back in an apparent peal of fright.
“My example? Mine? How dare you throw her around like that, how dare you, you think you’re the only person who cares about her? I’m the only reason Tori is still alive, and you have the gall to stand there with your heinous presumptions and call me selfish for wanting a life, as if it’s any harm at all to Tori what I do? As if I’d breathe if it stood a chance of hurting her — I’d give a lung for her, I’d give both my lungs for her, don’t you dare throw Tori at me!”
“Whoa,” said Ron quickly, and shouldered in front of her, putting himself in the most probable line of a cane-strike to Orpheus’ head. Orpheus seemed like he didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious. “Let’s put the brakes on. Take a huddle? Take a huddle.” He herded Daphne out of the group, hustling her out of her father’s sight. “Draco,” he added, “why don’t you take the big guy over here—”
But this was a moot point; as soon as Daphne had raised her voice, Orpheus had staggered back. He said to Draco, thickly: “Excuse me.” Then he whirled on his heel and cut away, moving so swiftly that the crowd before him had to part or be trampled.
“Blimey,” said Harry quietly, “are they all like that? Your lot’s parents?”
“That,” said Draco shortly, “is not ‘my lot.’” After a pause, he added, “And my mother would never.”
In a secluded corner of the room, Ron was trying to calm Daphne down. She was hyperventilating.
“It’s all about the breathing, right,” he coaxed. “In and out. Let’s get you something to eat. Mum always says getting something to eat will fix you right up. Gives your mouth something to do, and your hands…”
“I don’t want anything to eat! I want to bludgeon his stupid smug face in with this cane! I want him to die!”
“Got that. On the agenda,” he agreed easily. “Eat first, though. Beat your dad’s arse after. What, you’re going to do cane murder on an empty stomach? Not bloody likely, let me tell you.”
She sniffed, wringing the handle of the cane like it was a neck. Ron lifted a cheese puff from a passing tray and held it patiently, unobtrusively, in his palm. After several beats, she snatched it and shoved it in her mouth.
When Draco judged there to be a negligible risk of getting himself caned or bitten, he interjected himself into their dour silence with an announcement of: “Is your sister dying?”
“Merlin, mate,” Ron said, flashing him an annoyed look. “Buy a sense of timing.”
Daphne swallowed around something large and painful-sounding in her throat. “Not while I’m alive,” she said hoarsely.
“So there’s some degree of uncertainty on the subject.”
“I can’t believe he’d say that. Tori lives for my stories, anyway. It’s not bad enough I have to lie to her every time I go home, give her a sense of hope—”
“Second question,” interrupted Draco. “Are you dying?”
“Not presently.”
“I was looking for a categorical answer,” he said, staring at her. “Third, final question: What the hell, Greengrass?”
She glowered at him. Then she whipped out her wand and pressed it to her own wrist. “Finite incantatem,” she snapped, and a layer of cream-pale glamour peeled off like a sleeve. Beneath it, a long, jagged scar ran from the soft of her elbow to the tapered span of her wrist. Ron sucked his breath through his teeth.
“How recent is that?”
“You won’t believe me,” she said, “but summer.”
“Four months? But it looks awful.”
“Turn out,” she said, “that’s what four months of healing looks like, when you’ve been on a night-mare-y-go-round of medications and blood thinners. It’s murder on the skin and I’m very near dead of anemia, but at least this way I might live until thirty.”
“Thirty? What do you mean, thirty? Are you — are you ill?”
Ron’s eyes were so wide Draco could ride a broomstick through them. He’d chide him for staring if he didn’t suspect he was doing the same, all slack-jawed and stupid with shock, as if they were two rank imbeciles who’d never heard of someone being sick before.
Daphne drew her wand back down her arm and re-cast the glamour. Her expression would have been embarrassed if it were not so very sad. “It’s not so much an illness as a condition,” she said. “Mum calls it a blood maladict. Don’t ever tell her I said so, but I think she likes the way it sounds, all dramatic and evil, like it’s a curse visited upon our house for its sins. Whatever my shit-for-bones body has to do with the sins of the house of Greengrass escapes me entirely. The healers call it something long and complicated that I can never remember. Hereditary something-or-other. Tori and I both have it. Hers is worse than mine, I think I’ve given her half a dozen transfusions since last year. Oh, don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” said Ron weakly.
“It’s not as though I’m losing an arm,” she said casually. “It’s blood, I make more. My parents would do it, but they’re not matches.”
“So when she fell this summer,” Draco began, recalling a distant conversation.
Daphne shuddered. “Yes, that was quite the exciting day for both of us. I don’t think I’ve ever given quite so much at once.”
“That’s why you couldn’t come to France? Your sister?”
“I asked them to take her, too,” she said vaguely. “She could have come, but then you all would’ve had to be let in on the secret, because we’d have had to bring the medical equipment, and the nurses, and the healers… for her and me. And as you might expect, they’re none too keen on spreading the word…”
“But you said thirty,” said Ron, appalled. “You mean with the treatments — and all your medicines, and everything — Greengrass, you are going to get better, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “I am better,” __she said. “I can walk around, and go to school, and everything. I’ll get my O.W.L.s, I’ll get my N.E.W.T.s. That’s more than my grandmother ever got to do. She was bedridden at fifteen. The healers are very optimistic about me, in comparison.”
“But—”
“Don’t boohoo for me, darling, I’ve had quite enough of it for a lifetime,” she said dully. She grasped her cane and hauled herself, wobbling, to her feet; when Draco moved to take her arm, she slapped his hand. “Don’t you dare baby me, either. I haven’t told anyone because if I get so much as a hint of the treatment I get at home, I’m going to set the whole castle on fire and run screaming into the Black Lake. I’m serious. I’ll tolerate it for Tori, and Tori only, but otherwise I’m rather fond of being treated like a person, and I’d like it to continue.”
Draco said, “Your father’s right about the chair, isn’t he?”
“Right about what?”
“That you need it,” he said. “You’re pushing your luck. Look at you, Greengrass, some days you can barely walk. If you fell — Merlin help you, if you’ve got anemia and you walked into a trick stair—”
This riled her with shocking efficiency. “And if I pushed you down those stairs, it’d snap your neck too, so don’t you explain danger to me, Draco Malfoy!” she said shrilly. “I’ve lived here just as long as you have, and I’ve managed, haven’t I! I’m astounded you have the gall to lecture me, when you’re off every year with some madcap plot to get yourself and everyone who likes you killed — just last year you came closer to dying than I ever have, and it was for Harry Potter, of all people, on the quidditch pitch!”
He could feel it when his face locked down, ironing out the traces of hurt. “I’ve handled myself perfectly well on each of those occasions. At least I was putting myself in danger for a reason.”
“For a reason! Life isn’t a reason? My own happiness isn’t a reason? You don’t understand. Nobody understands, nobody except Tori, and she’s all of nine years old. Draco, for my own good, butt out. My health isn’t your shout.”
“It’s my shout if I say it is, and I say it is. Do you think it’d be all trifle and butterbeers for me, if you keeled over tomorrow? Do you think it’d be fine with Nott?”
“Don’t bring Theodore into this.”
“He’s in it whether you want him to be or not. If you died I think he’d just about challenge the Reaper to an honor duel, and count himself lucky to get killed in the bargain.”
“Oh, and there you go, talking like you know him,” she said, regal with scorn. “Shows what you know. That would require him to give a single solitary damn about anyone other than—” But she broke off, pressing the back of her hand to her wobbling lip, and then tumbled back down onto the window seat, where Ron put his arm around her.
“Easy,” he said sternly, to her and Draco both. “Take a cheese puff. You, too, Malfoy.”
Draco did not, in protest, eat another cheese puff. Daphne did, however, and it seemed to calm her somewhat.
“It seems like Nott is a touchy subject,” said Ron tentatively, “so, proposal: let’s leave off him for a second, yeah? Bloke’s not even here to defend himself.”
“Why isn’t he here, come to think of it?” said Draco, frowning. “His father’s here. This is his party.”
Daphne, after annihilating a cheese puff with all the violence Draco suspected she wanted to enact on him, daubed her lips with a napkin and said primly: “He might be late. He’s trying to miss his father’s interval.”
“Miss him?” Ron was confused. “Other way around, isn’t it?”
“If he liked his father a mite more than snogging a blast-ended skrewt, it might be,” she said delicately. “As it is, he’s trying to balance matters. He’s got to keep his father happy, which in his case involves seeing as little of him as possible while keeping up appearances. I don’t envy him… well, not most of the time, anyways.”
“You shouldn’t,” Draco said shortly. He had met Sibelius Nott too many times to harbor many doubts about his ability as a parent. “Nott’s a piece of work.”
“Like father, like son, I suppose.”
“Hopefully not.”
There was a thump from the crowd, and a tray of champagne glasses went crashing to the floor. While the partygoers whirled and gawked, a shimmer appeared in the air over Ron’s shoulder, and Harry’s face peeked out from a slit in the air. It was sort of like talking to a nose with fringe. “Oi, layabouts,” he hissed. “I’ve been running around yanking the hairs off half the purebloods in this room. What happened to working together?” He noticed Daphne, curled shelteringly under Ron’s arm. “What’s all this?” he said, switching with breathtaking speed into the role of fretful mother hen. “Is she alright? What’s the problem?”
“No, mate,” Ron said, not unkindly. Daphne was mystified into silence at Harry’s talking nose. He patted her shoulder. “We just put this thing to bed. Tell you later, but we’re not picking it up again.”
It was a testament to Harry’s worth as a friend, and his unwavering trust in Ron as the same, that he didn’t object. “Do we need to get her out of here?” he said, nodding to the door. He drew the cloak back a little. “She can have this — I’ll put my hood up, we can make a dash for it.”
“You have an Invisibility Cloak?” gasped Daphne.
“Er. No,” said Harry, uselessly.
“Yes,” sighed Draco. “Greengrass, this is another one of those pain-of-death secrets, alright? Gentleman’s honor.”
“Obviously,” she said. “But what is he doing here? Is that why you’ve done such awful things to Ron’s hair?”
“That’s another pain-of-death secret,” said Draco irritably. “Since apparently Potter has decided, without consulting the group, to induct you into our growing circle of trust.”
Harry shrugged. “She seemed alright,” he said. “Hermione said she had a cat.”
“I do have a cat,” said Daphne eagerly. (“That’s not a recommendation,” said Ron darkly.) “Can I be in on the secret? I’ll keep it, I promise.”
“No,” said Draco.
“Sorry, no,” said Harry the Nose.
“Unfortunately,” sighed Ron, “it’s not ours to tell. There’s other blokes involved, and they’ve got a lot of skin in it, you see.”
“I understand,” she said, and Draco felt surprisingly grateful to her: trust a Slytherin to implicitly understand the importance of discretion. “But I do so love secret plots. I just gobble up all those muggle novels with the people sitting around talking about murder. Are you part of a secret society? Is it dangerous? Is it deadly?”
“Sort of dangerous, yeah,” said Ron, slightly smug. “Deadly, well, you never know. Probably not, but we take our chances, we do.”
She gasped.
“Weasley, knock it off,” said Draco shortly. “You’re not Godric Gryffindor because you gatecrashed a party with a bad dye job. And I’m not sure you want to be made an accomplice here, Greengrass.”
“Oh, but I do,” she said eagerly. “This is the first time anything exciting has happened to me in ages and ages. I can be helpful, you know! And if you’d only come to me in the first place, I could have done a much better glamour than whatever you’ve put in his hair. Would you like to see?” She drew her wand.
“Not here,” hissed Draco, shoving it down. He took back what he’d said about Slytherins; she was as bad as a Gryffindor. It was right back to herding cats. “If you really want to help us, you’ll help us get out of here without attracting attention, since we’ve already done plenty of that. And Potter, put your cloak back on, before someone with more than two brain cells to rub together notices your chin bobbing around like a buoyant wedge of cheese.”
“Uncalled for.”
Daphne drew herself up to her full height and squared her shoulders. “An exit is easy to do,” she said eagerly. “Would you like a distraction? I’m wonderful at those.”
“Should say you are,” muttered Ron, and then coughed, as Draco’s elbow mysteriously appeared in his spleen.
“That’d be aces,” said Harry. “Can you, er — get the attention of the room? As many of them as possible? We’re going to try to get out without anyone noticing, or talking to us.”
“The full room? All of them?”
“Yeah. Or as close to it as you can, it doesn’t have to be perfect—”
“Please, don’t be absurd. I was only clarifying. You’ll go that way?” She pointed to the far door. Ron nodded.
“Thanks, Greengrass. We owe you one—”
“Oh, your manners are atrocious,” she said fondly, standing up. “Don’t you know anything? You don’t say you owe me one, Mr. Prewett, you just bask in miserable envy of my talents while I save your skins. And then you buy me a very nice birthday present.”
Draco was nodding in agreement.
“In the interest of which,” she added, to Draco, “for your recollection: I’m a cool winter; I prefer silver to gold, and diamonds to pearls. But if it must be pearls, then pearls in gold, not pearls in silver. And I favor llama fur to cashmere, for preference. I can write it down, if you like.”
“Don’t insult me.”
She glowed. “You are so nearly tolerable,” she said, which was great praise. Then she turned to Ron, kissed him on the cheek, and said: “You’re a darling. Never touch your hair without my say-so again. Goodnight.”
Hefting her cane, she cantered boldly into the center of the dance floor and turned about, giving her audience some tactical consideration. With a certain satisfaction, she tossed away her cane with a clatter. Then she flung herself to the floor, clutching her heart, and let out a perfectly operatic scream.
At which point — as the party exploded with the uproar, and Orpheus Greengrass very nearly clobbered a third year to death in his effort to get to reach his passionately writhing daughter — Draco, Ron, and Harry made a swift and timely exit.
-draco, confronted with a possible narrative foil and/or counterpart: absolutely not. no thank you
-i may have mentioned this before, but daphne started out as being a much smaller component of this book, but sort of wrestled her way into the narrative by sheer force of personality. in many ways, she’s more like draco than any of the other slytherins — they’re both more changeable, more flexible, and more open to new experiences. and they are both, of course, self-described hot blondes.
-the question of patronuses also raises the question of J.K.R.’s statement — word-of-god, naturally — that draco can’t cast a patronus. this makes about zero sense to me and always has. the terms of the patronus charm are consistently described as emotional; your moral disposition, or how good of a person you are, has no bearing (usually) on whether you can produce a happy memory.
-e.g., bellatrix lestrange. this bint is heinously awful, and she is never not having the time of her life. being cartoonishly evil IS her calling. her job satisfaction is 100%. so she should be able to cast a patronus at the drop of a hat, right? but death eaters can’t, apparently. which means that either lupin doesn’t actually describe the patronus in full accuracy to harry in book 3 (strange) or, alternatively, lupin is right, but that means the only reason that draco would have trouble is if he is sincerely so depressed that he can’t manage a happy memory at all, which… honestly would be an incredible character detail if the books tried to take that seriously. but it’s an INSANE thing to drop on us via word-of-god. like, that’s a profound, character-altering fact. that should have been mentioned in the books.
-anyway, long digression just to say that I think it makes more sense if Draco does have happy memories, but he overthinks them, because one of his great faults is his cynicism, whereas Ron is generally an optimist. that explains why he can’t cast the charm and also draws the parallel between him and hermione, who has the memories and knows how to use them, but just views magic as a clinical field, to her own detriment. /END RANT.
-next chapter next week! a promise: there will be quidditch. thank you to everyone commenting; you’re the reason i’m still here. love and good luck with all school/work/lives starting up again in the new year. ciao!
Bình luận
0